Early American Discrimination Timeline

  • Massacre at Mystic

    Massacre at Mystic

    The Mystic Massacre, also known as the Pequot Massacre, occurred on May 26, 1637, during the Pequot War when English colonists and their Mohegan and Narragansett allies attacked and burned a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River in Connecticut.
  • 3/5s compromised

    3/5s compromised

    The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement at the 1787 Constitutional Convention where three out of every five enslaved people would be counted when determining a state's total population for purposes of legislative representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and for taxation
  • Battle of Tippecanoe

    Battle of Tippecanoe

    The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, between American forces led by William Henry Harrison and Native American warriors led by Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa (The Prophet).
  • The Missouri Compromise

    The Missouri Compromise

    The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a U.S. federal law that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state to maintain a balance of power between free and slave states in Congress.
  • Indian Removal Act

    Indian Removal Act

    The Indian Removal Act, signed into law by U.S. President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorized the president to negotiate treaties for Native American tribes to exchange their homelands east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river.
  • Indian Removal Act

    Indian Removal Act

    The Indian Removal Act, signed into law on May 28, 1830, by President Andrew Jackson, authorized the U.S. government to negotiate treaties to exchange Native American land east of the Mississippi River for lands in the west.
  • Nat Turner Rebellion

    Nat Turner Rebellion

    Nat Turner's Rebellion was a bloody uprising of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by the enslaved preacher Nat Turner.
  • Trail of Tears

    Trail of Tears

    The Trail of Tears refers to the forced relocation and removal of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole—from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States to "Indian Territory" (present-day Oklahoma) during the 1830s and 1840s
  • The Fugitive Slave Acts

    The Fugitive Slave Acts

    The Fugitive Slave Acts were federal laws passed in 1793 and 1850 that required the return of escaped enslaved people to their enslavers.
  • Dred Scott Decision

    Dred Scott Decision

    The Dred Scott Decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford) was a landmark 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling stating that people of African descent could not be U.S. citizens, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories
  • Emancipation Proclamation

    Emancipation Proclamation

    The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all enslaved people in the rebellious Confederate states were free.
  • Slave Trade Ends in the United States

    Slave Trade Ends in the United States

    The slave trade to the United States was formally abolished by the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 6, 1865,
  • 13th Amendment

    13th Amendment

    The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, formally abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States and its territories, except as punishment for a crime for which a person has been duly convicted.
  • 14th Amendment

    14th Amendment

    The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and prohibited states from infringing on the rights of citizens without due process and equal protection under the law
  • The 15th amendment

    The 15th amendment

    The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, prohibits states from denying any citizen the right to vote based on their "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
  • Battle of the Little Bighorn

    Battle of the Little Bighorn

    The battle was a momentary victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne. The death of Custer and his troops became a rallying point for the United States to increase their efforts to force native peoples onto reservation lands.
  • Battle of Wounded Knee

    Battle of Wounded Knee

    The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, involved nearly three hundred Lakota people killed by soldiers of the United States Army. More than 250 people of the Lakota were killed and 51 wounded. Some estimates placed the number of dead as high as 300.
  • Plessy vs. Ferguson

    Plessy vs. Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the \"separate but equal\" doctrine, which stated that racially segregated public facilities were permissible as long as the facilities were of equal quality.