Resistance

The monuments and memorials in this section commemorate the enslaved and free men and women who resisted bondage and worked to end the institution of slavery. In her book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016), historian Manisha Sinha examines the long history of Black resistance to chattel slavery. Resistance to enslavement took many forms—from rebellions aboard slave ships and on plantations to the enslaved slowing the pace of work, breaking tools, feigning illness, and escaping from bondage.

The works in this section honor these diverse histories of resistance. The Amistad Memorial in New Haven, Connecticut, recognizes Sengbe Pieh, who led a revolt of abducted Africans against their captors on the Spanish slave ship, the Amistad; the Three Rebel Queens of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, celebrates the women of the Fireburn Revolt of 1878; and the Gaspar Yanga statue highlights a seventeenth-century self-emancipated leader of a maroon colony near Veracruz, Mexico.

In the near future, we will add more commemorative works from the Caribbean to this theme including monuments and memorials in Antigua, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.

Updated January 26, 2026