Zumbi dos Palmares

Palmares was a settlement of people who had escaped slavery, up in the hills of what is now Alagoas. It lasted most of a century and at its height held perhaps twenty thousand people, farming, trading and defending itself against repeated expeditions.

Zumbi refused a treaty that would have freed only those born in Palmares and fought on after the main settlement fell. Betrayed and killed on 20 November 1695, he was beheaded and his head displayed in Recife to disprove the belief that he was immortal. That date is now Brazil's day of Black consciousness.