This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.
Europeans arrived in what would become the present day United States of America on August 9, 1526. With them, they brought families from Africa that they had captured and enslaved with intentions of establishing themselves and future generations of Europeans off of the bodies of these African families.
During the American Revolution of 1776–1783, enslaved African Americans in the South escaped to British lines as they were promised freedom to fight with the British; additionally, many free blacks in the North fight with the colonists for the rebellion, and the Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) becomes the first future state to abolish slavery. Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper Southfree their slaves.
The importation of slaves became a felony in 1808.
John Punch, a Black indentured servant, ran away with three white servants, James, Gregory, and Victor. After the four were captured, Punch was sentenced to serve Virginian planterHugh Gwyn for life. This made John Punch the first legally documented slave in colonial Virginia.[6][7][8][9][10]
1654
John Casor, a Black man who claimed to have completed his term of indenture, became the first legally recognized slave-for-life in a civil case in colonial Virginia. The court ruled with his master, who said he had an indefinite servitude for life.[11]
1662
The Colony of Virginia, using the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, proclaimed that children in the colony were born into their mother's social status; therefore children born to enslaved mothers were classified as slaves, regardless of their father's ethnicity or status. This was contrary to English common law for English subjects, which held that children took their father's social status.[citation needed]
The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 define as slaves all those servants brought into the colony who were not Christian in their original countries, as well as Native American slaves sold by other Indians to colonists.[citation needed]
As part of a broader non-importation movement aimed at Britain, the First Continental Congress called on all the colonies to ban the importation of slaves, and the colonies pass acts doing so.[25]
Thomas Paine publishes one of the earliest and most influential anti-slavery essays in the U.S., called "African Slavery in America."[12]
1776–1783 American Revolution
Thousands of enslaved African Americans in the South escaped to British lines, as they were promised freedom to fight with the British. In South Carolina, 25,000 enslaved African Americans, one-quarter of those held, escaped to the British or otherwise leave their plantations.[26] After the war, many African Americans were evacuated with the British for England; more than 3,000 Black Loyalists are transported with other Loyalists to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where they are granted land. Still others go to Jamaica and the West Indies. An estimated 8–10,000 were evacuated from the colonies in these years as free people, about 50 percent of those slaves who defected to the British and about 80 percent of those who survived.[27]
Capt. Paul Cuffe and six other African American residents of Massachusetts successfully petition the state legislature for the right to vote, claiming "no taxation without representation."[12]
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that Massachusetts state constitution had abolished slavery. It ruled that "the granting of rights and privileges [was] wholly incompatible and repugnant to" slavery, in an appeal case arising from the escape of former slave Quock Walker. When the British left New York and Charleston in 1783, they took the last of 5,500 Loyalists to the Caribbean, who brought along with them some 15,000 slaves.[28]
Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper Southfree their slaves; the percentage of free blacks rises from less than one to 10 percent. By 1810, 75 percent of all blacks in Delaware are free, and 7.2 percent of blacks in Virginia are free.[31]
March 14 – Eli Whitney is granted a patent on the cotton gin. This enables the cultivation and processing of short-staple cotton to be profitable in the uplands and interior areas of the Deep South; as this cotton can be cultivated in a wide area, the change dramatically increases the need for enslaved labor and leads to the development of King Cotton as the chief commodity crop. To satisfy labor demand, there is a forced migration of one million slaves from the Upper South and coast to the area in the antebellum period, mostly by the domestic slave trade.[citation needed]
The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground is established in Richmond, VA. With estimated interments of upwards of 22,000, it is likely the largest burial ground for Free People of Color and the enslaved in the United States.[citation needed]
1817
The First African Baptist Church had its beginnings in 1817 when John Mason Peck and the former enslaved John Berry Meachum began holding church services for African Americans in St. Louis.[33] Meachum founded the First African Baptist Church in 1827. It was the first African-American church west of the Mississippi River. Although there were ordinances preventing blacks from assembling, the congregation grew from 14 people at its founding to 220 people by 1829. Two hundred of the parishioners were slaves, who could only travel to the church and attend services with the permission of their owners.[34]
October 28 – Josiah Henson, a slave who fled and arrived in Canada, is an author, abolitionist, minister, and the inspiration behind the book Uncle Tom's Cabin.[35]
February – The first Institute of Higher Education for African Americans is founded. Founded as the African Institute in February 1837 and renamed the Institute of Coloured Youth (ICY) in April 1837 and now known as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.[citation needed]
April 12 – The American Civil War begins (secessions began in December 1860), and lasts until April 9, 1865. Tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans of all ages escaped to Union lines for freedom. Contraband camps were set up in some areas, where blacks started learning to read and write. Others traveled with the Union Army. By the end of the war, more than 180,000 African Americans, mostly from the South, fought with the Union Army and Navy as members of the US Colored Troops and sailors.[citation needed]
August 6 – The Confiscation Act of 1861 authorizes the confiscation of any Confederate property, including all slaves who fought or worked for the Confederate military.[citation needed]
1863 Medical examination photo of Gordon showing his scourged back, widely distributed by Abolitionists to expose the brutality of slavery.
1863
January 1 – The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect, changing the legal status, as recognized by the United States federal government, of 3 million slaves in the designated areas of the South from "slave" to "free."[citation needed]
July 18 – The Second Battle of Fort Wagner begins when the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an African-American military unit, led by white Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, attacked a Confederate fort at Morris Island, South Carolina. The attack on Fort Wagner by the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry failed to take the fort and Gould was killed in the battle. However, the fort was abandoned by the Confederates on September 7, 1863, after many could not stand the constant weeks of bombardment and the smell of dead Union black soldiers sickening them.[citation needed]
1864
April 12 – The Battle of Fort Pillow, which results in controversy about whether a massacre of surrendered African-American troops was conducted or condoned.[citation needed]
July 21 – Southern Homestead Act of 1866 opens 46 million acres of land in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi; African Americans have priority access until January 1, 1877.[citation needed]
Through 1877, whites attack black and white Republicans to suppress voting. Every election cycle is accompanied by violence, increasing in the 1870s.[citation needed]
Disputed gubernatorial election in Louisiana cause political violence for more than two years. Both Republican and Democratic governors hold inaugurations and certify local officials.[citation needed]
Elijah McCoy patented his first invention, an automatic lubricator that supplied oil to moving parts while a machine was still operating.[39]
Easter – The Colfax Massacre; more than 100 blacks in the Red River area of Louisiana are killed when attacked by white militia after defending Republicans in local office – continuing controversy from gubernatorial election.[citation needed]
The Coushatta Massacre transpires. Republican officeholders are run out of town and murdered by white militia before leaving the state – four of six were relatives of a Louisiana state senator, a northerner who had settled in the South, married into a local family and established a plantation. Five to twenty black witnesses are also killed.[citation needed]
1874
Founding of paramilitary groups that act as the "military arm of the Democratic Party": the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi, and North and South Carolina. They terrorize blacks and Republicans, turning them out of office, killing some, disrupting rallies, and suppressing voting.[citation needed]
September – In New Orleans, continuing political violence erupts related to the still-contested gubernatorial election of 1872. Thousands of the White League armed militia march into New Orleans, then the seat of government, where they outnumber the integrated city police and black state militia forces. They defeat Republican forces and demand that Gov. Kellogg leave office. The Democratic candidate McEnery is installed and White Leaguers occupy the capitol, state house and arsenal. This was called the "Battle of Liberty Place". The White League and McEnery withdraw after three days in advance of federal troops arriving to reinforce the Republican state government.[citation needed]
varied – White Democrats regain power in many southern state legislatures and pass the first Jim Crow laws.[citation needed]
1877
With the Compromise of 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws federal troops from the South in exchange for being elected President of the United States, causing the collapse of the last three remaining Republican state governments. The compromise formally ends the Reconstruction Era.[citation needed]
1879
Spring – Thousands of African Americans refuse to live under segregation in the South and migrate to Kansas. They become known as Exodusters.[citation needed]
During the 1880s, African Americans in the South reach a peak of numbers in being elected and holding local offices, even while white Democrats are working to assert control at state level.[citation needed]
Lewis Latimer invented the first long-lasting filament for light bulbs and installed his lighting system in New York City, Philadelphia, and Canada. Later, he became one of the 28 members of Thomas Edison's Pioneers.[40]
A biracial populist coalition achieves power in Virginia (briefly). The legislature founds the first public college for African Americans, Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, as well as the first mental hospital for African Americans, both near Petersburg, Virginia. The hospital was established in December 1869, at Howard's Grove Hospital, a former Confederate unit, but is moved to a new campus in 1882.[citation needed]
1883
October 16 – In Civil Rights Cases, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional.[citation needed]
Judy W. Reed, of Washington, D.C., and Sarah E. Goode, of Chicago, are the first African-American women inventors to receive patents. Signed with an "X", Reed's patent no. 305,474, granted September 23, 1884, is for a dough kneader and roller. Goode's patent for a cabinet bed, patent no. 322,177, is issued on July 14, 1885. Goode, the owner of a Chicago furniture store, invented a folding bed that could be formed into a desk when not in use.[citation needed]
Mississippi, with a white Democrat-dominated legislature, passes a new constitution that effectively disfranchises most blacks through voter registration and electoral requirements, e.g., poll taxes, residency tests and literacy tests. This shuts them out of the political process, including service on juries and in local offices.[citation needed]
By 1900 two-thirds of the farmers in the bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta are African Americans who cleared and bought land after the Civil War.[41]
In Williams v. Mississippi the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the voter registration and election provisions of Mississippi's constitution because they applied to all citizens. Effectively, however, they disenfranchise blacks and poor whites. The result is that other southern states copy these provisions in their new constitutions and amendments through 1908, disfranchising most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites until the 1960s.[citation needed]
November 10 – Coup d'état begins in Wilmington, North Carolina, resulting in considerable loss of life and property in the African-American community and the installation of a white supremacist Democratic Party regime.[citation needed]
Benjamin Tillman, senator from South Carolina, comments on Theodore Roosevelt's dining with Booker T. Washington: "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again."[45]
May 15 – Sigma Pi Phi, the first African-American Greek-letter organization, is founded by African-American men as a professional organization, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[citation needed]
August 14 – A lynch mob moves through Springfield, Illinois burning the homes and businesses of black people and black sympathisers, killing many.[citation needed]
1910
May 30 – The National Negro Committee chooses "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" as its organization name.[citation needed]
September 29 – Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes formed; the next year it will merge with other groups to form the National Urban League.[citation needed]
Newly elected president Woodrow Wilson orders physical re-segregation of federal workplaces and employment after nearly 50 years of integrated facilities.[47][48][49]
1915
February 8 – The Birth of a Nation is released to film theaters. The NAACP protests in cities across the country, convincing some not to show the film.[citation needed]
January – Carter Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History begins publishing the Journal of Negro History, the first academic journal devoted to the study of African-American history.[citation needed]
The Great Migration begins and lasts until 1940. Approximately one and a half million African Americans move from the Southern United States to the North and Midwest. More than five million migrate in the Second Great Migration from 1940 to 1970, which includes more destinations in California and the West.[citation needed]
Mary Turner was a 33-year-old lynched in Lowndes County, Georgia who was eight months pregnant. Turner and her child were murdered after she publicly denounced the extrajudicial killing of her husband by a mob. Her death is considered a stark example of racially motivated mob violence in the American south, and was referenced by the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.[citation needed]
Garrett A. Morgan invented and patented the first automatic three-position traffic light.[50]
January 1–7 – Rosewood massacre: Six African Americans and two whites die in a week of violence when a white woman in Rosewood, Florida, claims she was beaten and raped by a black man.[citation needed]
Knights of Columbus commissions and publishes The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America by civil rights activist and NAACP cofounder W. E. B. Du Bois as part of the organization's Racial Contribution Series.[citation needed]
Corrigan v Buckley challenges deed restrictions preventing a white seller from selling to a black buyer. The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Buckley, stating that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply because Washington, DC is a city and not a state, thereby rendering the Due Process Clause inapplicable. Also, that the Due Process Clause does not apply to private agreements.[citation needed]
John Hope becomes president of Atlanta University. Graduate classes are offered in the liberal arts, and Atlanta University becomes the first predominantly black university to offer graduate education.[citation needed]
August 7 – Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-American men lynched in Marion, Indiana, after being taken from jail and beaten by a mob. They had been arrested that night as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. A third African-American suspect, 16-year-old James Cameron, had also been arrested and narrowly escaped being killed by the mob. He later became a civil rights activist.[51]
August 21 – Five African-American men recruited and trained by African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker conduct a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library and are arrested after being refused library cards.[53]
Doctor Charles R. Drew developed techniques for separating and storing blood. He was the head of an American Red Cross effort to collect blood for American armed forces. He was the chief surgeon of Howard University's medical school and professor of surgery. His achievements were recognized when he became the first African-American surgeon to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.[56]
September 3 – Recy Taylor kidnapped and gang-raped in Abbeville by six white men, who later confessed to the crimes but were never charged. The case was investigated by Rosa Parks and provided an early organizational spark for the Montgomery bus boycott.[58]
June 3 – In Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates provisions of the Virginia Code which require the separation of white and colored passengers where applied to interstate bus transport. The state law is unconstitutional insofar as it is burdening interstate commerce – an area of federal jurisdiction.[60]
June 5 – In Sweatt v. Painter the U.S. Supreme Court rules that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal, partly in that it deprived black students from the collegiality of future white lawyers.[citation needed]
February 15 – Maryland legislature ends segregation on trains and boats; meanwhile Georgia legislature votes to deny funds to schools that integrate.[citation needed]
June 23 – A Federal Court ruling upholds segregation in SC public schools.[citation needed]
July 11 – White residents riot in Cicero, Illinois when a black family tries to move into an apartment in the all-white suburb of Chicago; National Guard disperses them July 1.[citation needed]
March 7 – Another federal court upholds segregated education laws in Virginia.[citation needed]
April 1 – Chancellor Collins J. Seitz finds for the black plaintiffs (Gebhart v. Belton, Gebhart v. Bulah) and orders the integration of Hockessin elementary and Claymont High School in Delaware based on assessment of "separate but equal" public school facilities required by the Delaware constitution.[citation needed]
September 4 – Eleven black students attend the first day of school at Claymont High School, Delaware, becoming the first black students in the 17 segregated states to integrate a white public school. The day occurs without incident or notice by the community.[citation needed]
September 5 – The Delaware State Attorney General informs Claymont Superintendent Stahl that the black students will have to go home because the case is being appealed. Stahl, the School Board and the faculty refuse and the students remain. The two Delaware cases are argued before the Warren U.S. Supreme Court by Redding, Greenberg and Marshall and are used as an example of how integration can be achieved peacefully. It was a primary influence in the Brown v. Board case. The students become active in sports, music and theater. The first two black students graduated in June 1954 just one month after the Brown v. Board case.[citation needed]
September 2 – In Montgomery, Alabama, 23 black children are prevented from attending all-white elementary schools, defying the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brownv. Board of Education.[citation needed]
September 7 – District of Columbia ends segregated education; Baltimore, Maryland follows suit on September 8.[citation needed]
September 15 – Protests by white parents in White Sulphur Springs, WV force schools to postpone desegregation another year.[citation needed]
September 16 – Mississippi responds by abolishing all public schools with an amendment to its State Constitution.[citation needed]
September 30 – Integration of a high school in Milford, Delaware collapses when white students boycott classes.[citation needed]
October 4 – Student demonstrations take place against integration of Washington, DC public schools.[citation needed]
October 19 – Federal judge upholds an Oklahoma law requiring African-American candidates to be identified on voting ballots as "negro".[citation needed]
October 30 – Desegregation of U.S. Armed Forces said to be complete.[citation needed]
Frankie Muse Freeman is the lead attorney for the landmark NAACP case Davis et al. v. the St. Louis Housing Authority, which ended legal racial discrimination in public housing with the city. Constance Baker Motley was also an attorney for NAACP: it was a rarity to have two women attorneys leading such a high-profile case.[citation needed]
January 15 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment.
November 7 – The Interstate Commerce Commission bans bus segregation in interstate travel in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, extending the logic of Brown v. Board to the area of bus travel across state lines. On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation on public parks and playgrounds. The governor of Georgia responds that his state would "get out of the park business" rather than allow playgrounds to be desegregated.
December 1 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery bus boycott. This occurs nine months after 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin became the first to refuse to give up her seat. Colvin's was the legal case which eventually ended the practice in Montgomery.
January 2 – Georgia Tech president Blake R. Van Leer stands up to Governor Marvin Griffin threats to bar Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh player Bobby Grier over segregation.
January 9 – Virginia voters and representatives decide to fund private schools with state money to maintain segregation.
January 16 – FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader T. R. M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the "FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South."[62]
January 24 – Governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia agree to block integration of schools.
February 1 – Virginia legislature passes a resolution that the U.S. Supreme Court integration decision was an "illegal encroachment".
February 3 – Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot for days, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in further legal action against the university.
February/March – The Southern Manifesto, opposing integration of schools, is created and signed by members of the Congressional delegations of Southern states, including 19 senators and 81 members of the House of Representatives, notably the entire delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. On March 12, it is released to the press.
February 13 – Wilmington, Delaware school board decides to end segregation.
February 22 – Ninety black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are arrested for leading a bus boycott.
February 29 – Mississippi legislature declares U.S. Supreme Court integration decision "invalid" in that state.
March 1 – Alabama legislature votes to ask for federal funds to deport blacks to northern states.
March 12 – U.S. Supreme Court orders the University of Florida to admit a black law school applicant "without delay".
March 22 – Martin Luther King Jr. sentenced to fine or jail for instigating Montgomery bus boycott, suspended pending appeal.
September 2–11 – Teargas and National Guard used to quell segregationists rioting in Clinton, TN; 12 black students enter high school under Guard protection. Smaller disturbances occur in Mansfield, TX and Sturgis, KY.
September 10 – Two black students are prevented by a mob from entering a junior college in Texarkana, Texas. Schools in Louisville, KY are successfully desegregated.
September 12 – Four black children enter an elementary school in Clay, KY under National Guard protection; white students boycott. The school board bars the 4 again on September 17.
October 15 – Integrated athletic or social events are banned in Louisiana.
November 5 – Nat King Cole hosts the first show of The Nat King Cole Show. The show went off the air after only 13 months because no national sponsor could be found.
November 13 – In Browder v. Gayle, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Alabama laws requiring segregation of buses. This ruling, together with the ICC's 1955 ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach banning "Jim Crow laws" in bus travel among the states, is a landmark in outlawing "Jim Crow" in bus travel.
December 20 – Federal marshals enforce the ruling to desegregate bus systems in Montgomery.
December 24 – Blacks in Tallahassee, Florida begin defying segregation on city buses.
December 25 – The parsonage in Birmingham, Alabama occupied by Fred Shuttlesworth, movement leader, is bombed. Shuttlesworth receives only minor scrapes.
December 26 – The ACMHR tests the Browder v. Gayle ruling by riding in the white sections of Birmingham city buses. 22 demonstrators are arrested.
April 18 – Florida Senate votes to consider U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation decisions "null and void".
May 17 – The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC is at the time the largest nonviolent demonstration for civil rights, and features Dr. King's "Give Us The Ballot" speech.
September 6 – Federal judge orders Nashville public schools to integrate immediately.
September 15 – New York Times reports that in three years since the decision, there has been minimal progress toward integration in four southern states, and no progress at all in seven.
October 7 – The finance minister of Ghana is refused service at a Dover, Delaware restaurant. President Eisenhower hosts him at the White House to apologize October 10.
October 9 – Florida legislature votes to close any school if federal troops are sent to enforce integration.
October 31 – Officers of NAACP arrested in Little Rock for failing to comply with a new financial disclosure ordinance.
November 26 – Texas legislature votes to close any school where federal troops might be sent.
June 30 – In NAACP v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the NAACP was not required to release membership lists to continue operating in the state.
July – NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated.
August 19 – Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council conduct the largest successful sit-in to date, on drug store lunch-counters in Oklahoma City. This starts a successful six-year campaign by Luper and the council to desegregate businesses and related institutions in Oklahoma City.
August – Jimmy Wilson sentenced to death in Alabama for stealing $1.95; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asks Governor Jim Folsom to commute his sentence because of international criticism.
September 2 – Governor J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia threatens to shut down any school if it is forced to integrate.
September 4 – Justice Department sues under Civil Rights Act to force Terrell County, Georgia to register blacks to vote.
September 8 – A Federal judge orders Louisiana State University to desegregate; 69 African Americans enroll successfully on September 12.
September 12 – In Cooper v. Aaron the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the states were bound by the Court's decisions. Governor Faubus responds by shutting down all four high schools in Little Rock, and Governor Almond shuts one in Front Royal, Virginia.
September 18 – Governor Lindsay closes two more schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, and six in Norfolk on September 27.
September 29 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states may not use evasive measures to avoid desegregation.
October 8 – A Federal judge in Harrisonburg, VA rules that public money may not be used for segregated private schools.
October 20 – Thirteen blacks arrested for sitting in front of bus in Birmingham.
November 28 – Federal court throws out Louisiana law against integrated athletic events.
December 8 – Voter registration officials in Montgomery refuse to cooperate with US Civil Rights Commission investigation.
January 9 – One Federal judge throws out segregation on Atlanta, GA buses, while another orders Montgomery registrars to comply with the Civil Rights Commission.
February 13 – The Nashville sit-ins begin, although the students of the Nashville Student Movement, trained by activist and nonviolent teacher James Lawson, had been doing preliminary groundwork towards the action for two months. The sit-in ends successfully in May.
March 4, 1960 – Houston's first sit-in, led by Texas Southern University students, was held at the Weingarten's lunch counter, located at 4110 Almeda in Houston, Texas. [2]
March 7 – Felton Turner of Houston is beaten and hanged upside-down in a tree, initials KKK carved on his chest.
March 19 – San Antonio becomes first city to integrate lunch counters.
March 20 – Florida Governor LeRoy Collins calls lunch counter segregation "unfair and morally wrong".
April 8 – Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster.
April 19 – Z. Alexander Looby's home is bombed, with no injuries. Looby, a Nashville civil rights lawyer, was active in the cities ongoing sit-in movement.
November 14 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South (William Frantz Elementary School) following court-ordered integration in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was portrayed by Norman Rockwell in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With.
December 5 – In Boynton v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that racial segregation in bus terminals is illegal because such segregation violates the Interstate Commerce Act. This ruling, in combination with the ICC's 1955 decision in Keys v. Carolina Coach, effectively outlaws segregation on interstate buses and at the terminals servicing such buses.
May 4 – The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals.[65]
May 21 – Dr. King, the Freedom Riders, and congregation of 1,500 at Reverend Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church in Montgomery are besieged by mob of segregationists; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sends federal marshals to protect them.
September 25 – Voter registration activist Herbert Lee killed in McComb, Mississippi.
November 1 – All interstate buses required to display a certificate that reads: "Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission."[66]
November 17 – SNCC workers help encourage and coordinate black activism in Albany, Georgia, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition.[67]
November 22 – Three high school students from Chatmon's Youth Council arrested after using "positive actions" by walking into white sections of the Albany bus station.[67]
November 22 – Albany State College students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.[67]
December 10 – Freedom Riders from Atlanta, SNCC leader Charles Jones, and Albany State student Bertha Gober are arrested at Albany Union Railway Terminal, sparking mass demonstrations, with hundreds of protesters arrested over the next five days.[68]
December 11–15 – Five hundred protesters arrested in Albany, Georgia.
December 15 – King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.[65]
December 16 – Dr. King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.[65]
December 18 – Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; King leaves town.[69]
Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin, a white southerner who deliberately tanned and dyed his skin to allow him to directly experience the life of the Negro in the Deep South, is published, displaying the brutality of "Jim Crow" segregation to a national audience.
1962
January 18–20 – Student protests over sit-in leaders' expulsions at Baton Rouge's Southern University, the nation's largest black school, close it down.
February – Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP).
February 26 – Segregated transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate, ruled unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court.
March – SNCC workers sit-in at U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's office to protest jailings in Baton Rouge.
September 30-October 1 – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black orders James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss.; he enrolls and a riot ensues. French photographer Paul Guihard and Oxford resident Ray Gunter are killed.
October – Leflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive.
October 23 – FBI begins Communist Infiltration (COMINFIL) investigation of SCLC.
November 20 – Attorney General Kennedy authorizes FBI wiretap on Stanley Levison's home telephone.
November 20 – President Kennedy upholds 1960 presidential campaign promise to eliminate housing segregation by signing Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in Federally funded housing.
1963
January 18 – Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address.
April – Mary Lucille Hamilton, Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, refuses to answer a judge in Gadsden, Alabama, until she is addressed by the honorific "Miss". It was the custom of the time to address white people by honorifics and people of color by their first names. Hamilton is jailed for contempt of court and refuses to pay bail. The case Hamilton v. Alabama is filed by the NAACP. It was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1964 that courts must address persons of color with the same courtesy extended to whites.
April 7 – Ministers John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith and A. D. King lead a group of 2,000 marchers to protest the jailing of movement leaders in Birmingham.
April 12 – Dr. King is arrested in Birmingham for "parading without a permit".
May 2–4 – Birmingham's juvenile court is inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested after James Bevel launches his "D-Day" youth march. The actions spans three days to become the Birmingham Children's Crusade.[70]
May 9–10 – After images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on protesters are televised, the Children's Crusade lays the groundwork for the terms of a negotiated truce on Thursday, May 9 puts an end to mass demonstrations in return for rolling back oppressive segregation laws and practices. Dr. King and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth announce the settlement terms on Friday, May 10, only after King holds out to orchestrate the release of thousands of jailed demonstrators with bail money from Harry Belafonte and Robert Kennedy.[71]
May 11–12 – Double bombing in Birmingham, probably conducted by the KKK in cooperation with local police, precipitates rioting, police retaliation, intervention of state troopers, and finally mobilization of federal troops.
May 13 – In United States of America and Interstate Commerce Commission v. the City of Jackson, Mississippi et al., the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit rules the city's attempt to circumvent laws desegregating interstate transportation facilities by posting sidewalk signs outside Greyhound, Trailways and Illinois Central terminals reading "Waiting Room for White Only — By Order Police Department" and "Waiting Room for Colored Only – By Order Police Department" to be unlawful.[72]
May 24 – A group of Black leaders (assembled by James Baldwin) meets with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss race relations.
May 29 – Violence escalates at NAACP picket of Philadelphia construction site.[73]
May 30 – Police attack Florida A&M anti-segregation demonstrators with tear gas; arrest 257.[74]
June 11 – President Kennedy makes his historic civil rights address, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes", in his speech he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves."
Summer – 80,000 blacks quickly register to vote in Mississippi by a test project to show their desire to participate.
June 19 – President Kennedy sends Congress (H. Doc. 124, 88th Cong., 1st session) his proposed Civil Rights Act.[76] White leaders in business and philanthropy gather at the Carlyle Hotel to raise initial funds for the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership
August 28 – Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Northwest Baltimore, County, Maryland is desegregated.
September 19 - Iota Phi Theta fraternity was founded at Morgan State College (now Morgan State University)
November 10 – Malcolm X delivers "Message to the Grass Roots" speech, calling for unity against the white power structure and criticizing the March on Washington.
November 22 – President Kennedy is assassinated. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, decides that accomplishing Kennedy's legislative agenda is his best strategy, which he pursues.[78]
1964
All year – The Alabama Voting Rights Project continues organizing as Bevel, Nash, and James Orange work without the support of SCLC.
Summer – Mississippi Freedom Summer – voter registration in the state. Create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to elect an alternative slate of delegates for the national convention, as blacks are still officially disfranchised.
July 2 – Civil Rights Act of 1964[79] signed, banning discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations.[78]
August – Congress passes the Economic Opportunity Act which, among other things, provides federal funds for legal representation of Native Americans in both civil and criminal suits. This allows the ACLU and the American Bar Association to represent Native Americans in cases that later win them additional civil rights.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965.
1965
February 18 – A peaceful protest march in Marion, Alabama leads to Jimmie Lee Jackson being shot by Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler. Jackson dies on February 26, and Fowler is indicted for his murder in 2007.
March 7 – Bloody Sunday: Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama, begin the Selma to Montgomery march but are forcibly stopped by a massive Alabama State trooper and police blockade as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many marchers are injured. This march, initiated and organized by James Bevel, becomes the visual symbol of the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
March 25 – After the completion of the Selma to Montgomery March a white volunteer Viola Liuzzo is shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama, one of whom was an FBI informant.
August 6 – Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson. It eliminated literacy tests, poll tax, and other subjective voter tests that were widely responsible for the disfranchisement of African Americans in the Southern States and provided Federal oversight of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such discriminatory tests were used.[81]
August 11–15 – Following the accusations of mistreatment and police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department towards the city's African-American community, Watts riots erupt in South Central Los Angeles which lasted over five days. Over 34 were killed, 1,032 injured, 3,438 arrested, and cost over $40 million in property damage in the Watts riots.
September – Nichelle Nichols is cast as a female black officer on television's Star Trek. She briefly considers leaving the role, but is encouraged by Dr. King to continue as an example for their community.
June 13 – Thurgood Marshall is the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
July 23–27 – The Detroit riot erupts in Detroit, Michigan, for five days following a raid by the Detroit Police Department on an unlicensed club which celebrated the returning Vietnam Veteran hosted by mostly African Americans. More than 43 (33 were black and ten white) were killed, 467 injured, 7,231 arrested, and 2,509 stores looted or burned during the riot. It was one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit's 1943 race riot.
March – While filming a prime time television special, Petula Clark touches Harry Belafonte's arm during a duet. Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor, insists the moment be deleted, but Clark stands firm, destroys all other takes of the song, and delivers the completed program to NBC with the touch intact. The show is broadcast on April 8, 1968.[84]
April 3 – King returns to Memphis; delivers "Mountaintop" speech.
April 4–8 and one in May 1968 – In response to the killing of Dr. King, over 150 cities experience rioting.
April 11 – Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed. The Fair Housing Act is Title VIII of this Civil Rights Act – it bans discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. The law is passed following a series of contentious open housing campaigns throughout the urban North. The most significant of these campaigns were the Chicago Open Housing Movement of 1966 and organized events in Milwaukee during 1967–68. In both cities, angry white mobs attacked nonviolent protesters.[85][86]
June 6 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a Civil Rights advocate, is assassinated after winning the California presidential primary. His appeal to minorities helped him secure the victory.
September 17 – Diahann Carroll stars in the title role in Julia, as the first African-American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.
October 3 – The play The Great White Hope opens; it runs for 546 performances and later becomes a film.
In Powe v. Miles, a federal court holds that the portions of private colleges that are funded by public money are subject to the Civil Rights Act.
Shirley Chisholm becomes the first African-American woman elected to Congress.
1969
January 8–18 – Student protesters at Brandeis University take over Ford and Sydeman Halls, demanding creation of an Afro-American Department. This is approved by the University on April 24.
February 13 – National Guard with teargas and riot sticks crush a pro-black student demonstration at University of Wisconsin.
February 16 – After 3 days of clashes between police and Duke University students, the school agrees to establish a Black Studies program.
February 23 – UNC Food Worker Strike begins when workers abandon their positions in Lenoir Hall protesting racial injustice
April 3–4 – National Guard called into Chicago, and Memphis placed on curfew on anniversary of MLK's assassination.
April 19 – Armed African-American students protesting discrimination take over Willard Straight Hall, the student union building at Cornell University. They end the seizure the following day after the university accedes to their demands, including an Afro-American studies program.
April 25–28 – Activist students takeover Merrill House at Colgate University demanding Afro-American studies programs.
May 8 – City College of New York closed following a two-week-long campus takeover demanding Afro-American and Puerto-Rican studies; riots among students break out when the school tries to reopen.
June – The second of two US federal appeals court decisions confirms members of the public hold legal standing to participate in broadcast station license hearings, and under the Fairness Doctrine finds the record of segregationist TV station WLBT beyond repair. The FCC is ordered to open proceedings for a new licensee.[87]
September 1–2 – Race rioting in Hartford, CT and Camden, NJ.
October 29 – The U.S. Supreme Court in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education orders immediate desegregation of public schools, signaling the end of the "all deliberate speed" doctrine established in Brown II.
December – Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, is shot and killed while asleep in bed during a police raid on his home.
United Citizens Party is formed in South Carolina when Democratic Party refuses to nominate African-American candidates.
May 27 – The film Watermelon Man is released, directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge. The film is a comedy about a bigoted white man who wakes up one morning to discover that his skin pigment has changed to black.
January 25 – Shirley Chisholm becomes the first major-party African-American candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
November 16 – In Baton Rouge, two Southern University students are killed by white sheriff deputies during a school protest over lack of funding from the state. The university's Smith-Brown Memorial Union is named as a memorial to them.
November 16 – The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment ends. Begun in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service's 40-year experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis has been described as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."
1973
May 8 – Nelson Rockefeller signs the Rockefeller Drug Laws for New York state with draconian indeterminate sentences for drug possession, as well as sale.
July 25 – In Milliken v. Bradley, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision holds that outlying districts could only be forced into a desegregation busing plan if there was a pattern of violation on their part. This decision reinforces the trend of white flight.
Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc Collective, the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanists and women of color formed in New York City.
1975
April 30 – In the pilot episode of Starsky and Hutch, Richard Ward plays an African-American supervisor of white American employees for the first time on TV.
November 30 – Michael Jackson releases Thriller, which becomes the best-selling album of all time.
1983
May 24 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Bob Jones University did not qualify as either a tax-exempt or a charitable organization due to its racially discriminatory practices.[88]
August 30 – Guion Bluford becomes the first African-American to go into space.
The Public Broadcasting Service's six-part documentary Eyes on the Prize is first shown, covering the years 1954–1965. In 1990 it is added to by the eight-part Eyes on the Prize II covering the years 1965–1985.
June 7 – James Byrd Jr. is brutally murdered by white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. The scene is reminiscent of earlier lynchings. In response, Byrd's family create the James Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing.
October 23 – The film American History X is released, powerfully highlighting the problems of urban racism.
1999
Franklin Raines becomes the first black CEO of a fortune 500 company.
July 30 – United States Congress apologizes for slavery and "Jim Crow".
August 28 – At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, in a stadium filled with supporters, Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
November 4 – Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States of America, opening his victory speech with, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."[93]
July 19 – Shirley Sherrod first is pressured to resign from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and immediately thereafter receives its apology after she is inaccurately accused of being racist towards white Americans.
August 3 – Fair Sentencing Act reducing sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine to an 18:1 ratio.
2011–2020
2011
January 14 – Michael Steele, the first African-American Chairman of the RNC lost his bid for re-election.
June 25 – The U.S. Supreme Court overturns part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder.
July 13 – George Zimmerman acquitted, provoking nationwide protests. The Black Lives Matter movement is created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, in response to the ongoing racial profiling of and police brutality against young black men.
August 19 - First African-American to be nominated as a major party U.S. vice-presidential candidate: Kamala Harris, Democratic Party (See also: 2021)[97][98]
A 2022 Buffalo shooting occurs killing 10, with the shooter live streaming the attack on Twitch . The majority of victims are African American, with the shooter driving over 200km to reach the supermarket in which it occurred in.[100]
^Slavery in Colonial Georgia. Original entry by Betty Wood, Girton College, Cambridge, England, 09/19/2002. Last edited by NGE Staff on 09/29/2020. www.google.com/amp/s/m.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/slavery-colonial-georgia%3famp. Retrieved March. 15, 2021.
^Potter, Joan (2002). African American Firsts. Kensington. p. 288.
^Berry, Faith (2001). From Bondage to Liberation. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. p. 50. ISBN0-8264-1370-6.
^Rollins, Charlemae (1965). Famous American Negro Poets. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. pp. 15–16. ISBN0396051294.
^Kachun, Mitch (Summer 2009). "From Forgotten Founder to Indispensable Icon: Crispus Attucks, Black Citizenship, and Collective Memory". Journal of the Early Republic. 29 (2): 249–86. doi:10.1353/jer.0.0072. S2CID144216986.
^Kachun, Mitch (2017). First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN9780199910861.
^Phillis Wheatley: America's second Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Henry Louis Gates, Basic Civitas Books, 2003, p. 5.
^The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself: Electronic Edition.
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^Wormley, G. Smith."Prudence Crandall", The Journal of Negro History Vol. 8, No. 1 January 1923.
^"Connecticut's "Black Law" (1833)". Citizens All (project). Yale University. Archived from the original on 2012-10-19. Retrieved 2012-03-19. Lacking no legal means to prevent Prudence Crandall from opening her school, Andrew Judson, a local politician, pushed legislation through the Connecticut Assembly outlawing the establishment of schools 'for the instruction of colored persons belonging to other states and countries.'
^"Morehouse Legacy". morehouse.edu. Morehouse College. Archived from the original on 27 September 2018. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
^Potter, Joan (2002). African American Firsts. Kensington. p. 292.
^ abPotter, Joan (2002). African American Firsts. Kensington. p. 293.
^John C. Willis, Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000
^Potter, Joan (2002). African American Firsts. Kensington. pp. 295–296.
^Wolgemuth, Kathleen L. (April 1959). "Woodrow Wilson and Federal Segregation". The Journal of Negro History. 44 (2). Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, Inc.: 158–173. doi:10.2307/2716036. JSTOR2716036. S2CID150080604.
^Blumenthal, Henry (January 1963). "Woodrow Wilson and the Race Question". The Journal of Negro History. 48 (1). Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, Inc.: 1–21. doi:10.2307/2716642. JSTOR2716642. S2CID149874271.
^Potter, Joan (2002). African American Firsts. Kensington. p. 300.
^McGuire, Danielle L. (2010). At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. Random House. pp. xv–xvii. ISBN978-0-307-26906-5.
^David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp. 154–55.
^"James L. Bevel The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" by Randall L. Kryn, a paper in David Garrow's 1989 book We Shall Overcome, Volume II, Carlson Publishing Company
^"Kamala Harris's selection as VP resonates with Black women". Associated Press. August 12, 2020. making her the first Black woman on a major party's presidential ticket ... It also marks the first time a person of Asian descent is on the presidential ticket.
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Lowery, Charles D., and John F. Marszalek, Encyclopedia of African-American civil rights: from emancipation to the present (Greenwood, 1992).
Palmer, Colin A. (ed.), Encyclopedia Of African American Culture And History: The Black Experience In The Americas (2nd edn, 6 vol, 2005)
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