On this day — June 19 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
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2C2KPhotography — CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 1865 Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that enslaved African Americans were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation — an event commemorated annually as Juneteenth.
Culture 1913 South Africa's Natives Land Act took effect, barring Black South Africans from owning land across most of the country and laying the legal groundwork for later apartheid-era segregation.
Politics
Rob Croes for Anefo — CC0, Wikimedia Commons 1917 Joshua Nkomo, the Zimbabwean liberation leader who later served as the country's vice president, was born.
Birth
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1932 Sol Plaatje, a founding member of the African National Congress and one of South Africa's first Black journalists and novelists, died.
Death
University of Bridgeport — Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 2010 Manute Bol, the Sudanese-American basketball player who used his NBA earnings and fame to fund humanitarian causes in Sudan, died.
Death