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Listings: 1 to 50 of 50
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1.
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1619 - First Africans arrive in Virginia. They were indentured servants, not slaves.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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2.
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1650 - Race-based slavery began. By 1660s, slavery was reserved for Africans only.
Last Updated: 2 February 2023 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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3.
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1793 - Invention of cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor. A federal fugitive slave law is enacted providing for return of escaped slaves who crossed state lines.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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4.
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1800 - Virginia slave laws tightened after Gabriel Prosser, an enslaved blacksmith, organized a slave revolt. His intent was uncovered. Conspirators were hanged.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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5.
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1804 - Haiti becomes world's first independent black republic after fighting five year war against French emperor Napolean Bonaparte. Leaders of the successful insurrection included Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint L'Overture and Henri Christophe.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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6.
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1808 - US Congress bans importation of slaves from Africa.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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7.
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1820 - Missouri Compromise bans slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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8.
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1822 - Denmark Vesey, a carpenter who had purchased his freedom, plans a slave revolt, intending to lay siege to Charleston, South Carolina. Plot is discovered; 35 conspirators hanged.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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9.
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1831 - Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in American history. Militia quelled the rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner was hanged and the Virginia legislature instituted even stricter slave laws. William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a newspaper that advocated complete abolition of slavery.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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10.
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1839 - Led by Joseph Cinqué, 53 African slaves on board the slave ship Amistad revolted against their captors, killing all but the ship's navigator, who sailed them to Long Island, NY. After several trials in which local and federal courts argued that the slaves were taken as kidnap victims rather than merchandise, the slaves were acquitted. They secured passage home to Africa with the help of sympathetic missionary societies in 1842.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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11.
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1849 - Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery and became one of the most effective and celebrated leaders of the Underground Railroad.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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12.
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1850 - Compromise of 1850 closes a ongoing debate over whether territory gained in the Mexican War should be open to slavery. California is admitted as a free state; Utah and New Mexico territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty; slave trade in Washington, DC is prohibited; stricter fugitive slave laws are enacted.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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13.
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1852 - Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published and becomes one of the most influential works to rouse anti-slavery sentiments.
Last Updated: 18 June 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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14.
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1857 - Dred Scott case holds that slaves are not citizens and Congress does not have the right to ban slavery in states.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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15.
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1859 - John Brown and 21 followers launch a slave revolt by capturing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men were killed or captured.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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16.
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1861 - Civil War begins after The Confederate States of America is formed when seven southern slaveholding states seceded from the Union.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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17.
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1863 - President Abraham Lincoln issued Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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18.
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1865 - 13th Amendment to Constitution ratified. Slavery was abolished.
Last Updated: 2 February 2023 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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19.
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1865 - Congress established Freedmen's Bureau to protect rights of newly emancipated slaves. The Civil War ends. President Lincoln is assassinated. Ku Klux Klan is formed in Tennessee by ex-Confederates. 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits slavery, is ratified.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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20.
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1865-1866 - Black codes that drastically restrict the rights of freed slaves are passed by Southern states.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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21.
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1867 - Reconstruction acts are passed that carve the former Confederacy into five military districts and guarantee civil rights for freed slaves.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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22.
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1868 - 14th Amendment to Constitution is ratified. Individuals born or naturalized in the United States are now American citizens, including those born as slaves. This nullifies the Dred Scott Case (1857), which ruled that blacks were not citizens.
Last Updated: 2 February 2023 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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23.
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1870 - 15th Amendment to Constitution ratified, giving Blacks the right to vote. Hiram Revels of Mississippi is elected the country's first African American senator. During Reconstruction, 16 Blacks served in Congress and about 600 served in state legislatures.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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24.
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1879 - "Black Exodus" takes place, in which tens of thousands of African Americans migrate from southern states to Kansas.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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25.
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1882 - American Colonization Society established the colony of Monrovia (which became the country of Liberia) in western Africa. During the following 40 years, 12,000+ former slaves voluntarily relocated.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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26.
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1896 - Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision holds that racial segregation is constitutional, paving the way for repressive Jim Crow laws.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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27.
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1905 - W.E.B. DuBois founded the Niagara movement, partially in protest against Booker T. Washington's policy of accommodation to white society. The movement called for immediate equality in all areas of American life.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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28.
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1909 - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New York by prominent Black and white intellectuals led by W.E.B. Du Bois. For the next half century, it served as the country's most influential African American civil rights organization, dedicated to political equality and social justice
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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29.
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1914-1920 - "The Great Migration" relocated roughly 500,000 black southerners to the North, fundamentally transforming the social, cultural, and political landscape of cities such as Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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30.
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1914 - Marcus Garvey established Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) "to promote the spirit of race pride" and create worldwide unity among Blacks.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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31.
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1917-1918 - Over 200,000 African Americans fight overseas as part of segregated military units dispatched to France in support of the US war effort.
Last Updated: 13 July 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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32.
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1926 - Dr. Carter G. Woodson inspires creation of "Negro History Week," which evolved into "Black History Month."
Last Updated: 18 June 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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33.
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1920-1940 - "Harlem Renaissance" -- a literary, artistic, and intellectual explosion -- fosters a surge of Black cultural identity.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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34.
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1930 - Nation of Islam founded in Detroit by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad with stated goals of improving the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States and all of humanity. Elijah Muhammad becomes its spiritual leader and establishes its headquarters in Chicago.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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35.
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1948 - President Harry S. Truman issued executive order integrating US armed forces after end of WWII.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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36.
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1954 - Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas declares that racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional.
Last Updated: 18 June 2016 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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37.
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1955 - 14 year old Emmett Till was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Two white men charged with the crime were acquitted by an all-white jury and later boasted about committing the murder. Ensuing public outrage helped spur the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat in the "colored section" of a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger. In response to her arrest, the Black community launched a year-long bus boycott that succeeded in desegregating Montgomery's buses in 1956.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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38.
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1957 - Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) established by Rev. Martin Luther King, Charles Steele, and Fred Shuttlesworth. Nine Black students blocked from entering Central High School in Little Rock, AR by Governor Orval Faubus.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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39.
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1957 - Ghana becomes first African country to achieve independence from British colonial rule under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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40.
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1960 - Four Black students sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, triggering a wave of similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded, providing young Blacks with a voice in the civil rights movement.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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41.
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1961 - "Freedom Riders" sponsored by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) take bus rides through the South to test laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities and are attacked by angry mobs.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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42.
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1963 - Rev. Martin Luther King arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama where he writes "Letter from Birmingham Jail" which advocated nonviolent civil disobedience. The "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" is attended by about 250,000 people, the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital. King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The march builds momentum for civil rights legislation. Four young Black girls attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, leading to an eruption of riots.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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43.
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1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It prohibited discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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44.
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1965 - Malcolm X, founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is assassinated. "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama catalyzes adoption of a Voting Rights Act that makes literacy tests, poll taxes and other deterrents to voting illegal. Watts community in Los Angeles erupts in riots.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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45.
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1966 - Black Panther Party for Self Defense is founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.They initiated several African American community survival projects.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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46.
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1967 - Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coined the phrase "Black Power." Major race riots take place in Newark and Detroit. Thurgood Marshall becomes first African American Supreme Court Justice. Supreme Court rules in Loving v. Virginia that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional, forcing 16 states to revise anti-miscegenation laws.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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47.
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1968 - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. President Lyndon Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. Shirley Chisholm becomes first Black female U.S. Congressperson.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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48.
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1965-1969 - Vietnam War employs the highest proportion of African Americans ever to serve in an American war. During the height of US involvement, Blacks, who were 11% of American population, made up 12.6% of soldiers in Vietnam. Percentage of Black combat fatalities Was a staggering 14.9%.
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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49.
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1994 - South Africa emerges from the brutality of Apartheid when Nelson Mandela is elected the first Black president of the "Rainbow Nation."
Last Updated: 27 September 2020 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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50.
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2008 - Barack Hussein Obama is elected first African American President of the United States of America. He is elected to a second term in 2012.
Last Updated: 3 February 2019 [Located in Category: Category 1 (PA)]
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