The Siddi Trail: Tracing India’s 800-Year-Old African Diaspora in Gujarat & Karnataka
The Siddi are descendants of East Africans brought to India as sailors, soldiers, and enslaved laborers by Portuguese and Arab traders as early as the 1100s. Hundreds of thousands of their descendants still live in Gujarat and Karnataka today â a living community, not a tourist attraction.
Birchtown, Nova Scotia: Home to the Largest Free Black Settlement of the 1780s
Birchtown was where thousands of Black Loyalists landed after the American Revolution, their names preserved in the famous ‘Book of Negroes’ ledger. The Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, opened in 2015, lets visitors search that ledger and walk the original settlement grounds.
Berlin’s African Quarter: Afro-German History, Renamed Streets, and a Growing Community
In Wedding, the Afrikanisches Viertel’s colonial-era street names are being replaced one by one with the names of African resistance leaders.
Keti Koti: Amsterdam’s Powerful Suriname Emancipation Day Festival
Keti Koti commemorates the 1863 abolition of slavery in the Dutch colonies of Suriname and the Caribbean, marked each July 1 with a wreath-laying ceremony, music, food, and a full festival in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark.
Memphis, Tennessee: Standing in Room 306 at the National Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum wraps the actual Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, tracing the movement from slave ships to the sanitation workers’ strike that brought him to Memphis.
Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum: Confronting Britain’s Role in the Slave Trade
Located at the Royal Albert Dock, the International Slavery Museum confronts Liverpool’s central role in the transatlantic slave trade with unflinching exhibits on the Middle Passage, resistance, and the legacy of slavery today.
Madrid’s Afro-Spanish Story: Equatorial Guinea’s Spanish Ties and the LavapiÊs Diaspora
Spain’s Afro-Spanish and West African diaspora communities are often overlooked next to France and the UK, but Madrid’s LavapiÊs district and Equatoguinean community tell a distinct story of colonization, migration, and culture.
Montevideo’s Barrio Sur: Uruguay’s Afro-Descendant Candombe Heartland
Montevideo’s Barrio Sur and Palermo neighborhoods are the historic home of Afro-Uruguayan Candombe, a drumming and dance tradition descended from enslaved Africans brought through the city’s colonial port.
Esmeraldas, Ecuador: Marimba Country on the Pacific Coast
Esmeraldas province traces its Afro-Ecuadorian roots partly to a 1553 shipwreck of enslaved Africans who established free communities alongside later escaped populations. Marimba music and dance here were jointly inscribed by UNESCO alongside Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Matonge: The Congolese Heart of Brussels
Just steps from the EU quarter, Matonge is packed with Congolese restaurants, fabric shops, hair salons, and record stores.
