On this day — September 15 in African history

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Britain seized the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa to prevent it falling under French-allied control.

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Claude McKay, the Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose work helped define the Harlem Renaissance, was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica.

The United Nations ceded Eritrea to Ethiopia as an autonomous federated territory, a decision that later fueled decades of the Eritrean War of Independence.

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The Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young Black girls and galvanizing the civil rights movement.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the acclaimed Nigerian author of "Half of a Yellow Sun" and "Americanah," was born in Enugu, Nigeria.