1520s

Alfonso I writes to King João III of Portugal condemning the devastation Portuguese traders cause by enslaving Kongo subjects, including nobles and even royal family members. He demands that only the Kongo king have authority over who may be sold. His letters are the earliest documented African royal protest against the transatlantic slave trade.

Estevanico (Mustafa Zemmouri), a Black Muslim man from Azemmour, Morocco, is enslaved and joins the 1527 Narvaez expedition to Florida. After catastrophic shipwrecks, he and three survivors spend eight years crossing the continent, from Florida to the Gulf of California, becoming the first documented non-indigenous people to traverse what is now the American Southwest.