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A black navigator, Pedro Alonso Niño, travels with Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the New World.
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The first African slaves arrive in Virginia. A Dutch ship brings 20 African indentured servants to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia.
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One of the earliest slave revolts takes place in Stono, South Carolina. A score of whites and more than twice as many blacks slaves are killed as the armed slaves try to flee to Florida.
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Crispus Attucks, an escaped slave, becomes the first Colonial soldier to die for American independence when he is killed by the British in the Boston Massacre.
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Phillis Wheatley's book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is published, making her the first African American to do so.
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George Washington changes a previous policy and allows free blacks to enlist in the Continental Army. Approximately 5,000 do so. The British governor of Virginia promises freedom to slaves who enlist with the British.
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The U.S. Constitution is ratified. It provides for the continuation of the slave trade for another 20 years and required states to aid slaveholders in the recovery of fugitive slaves. It also stipulates that a slave counts as three-fifths of a man for purposes of determining representation in the House of Representatives.
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A federal fugitive slave law is enacted, providing for the return slaves who had escaped and crossed state lines.
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Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, which makes cotton cultivation on a huge scale possible in the South and thus greatly increases the need for slaves, whose numbers skyrocket.
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William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.
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Approximately 75,000 slaves escape to the North and freedom using the Underground Railroad, a system in which free African American and white "conductors," abolitionists, and sympathizers guide, help, and shelter the escapees
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Nat Turner, an enslaved African-American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his band of followers launch a short, bloody, rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. The militia quells the rebellion, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.
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Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, an international bestseller
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The Wilmot Proviso, introduced by Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War. The proviso is blocked by Southerners, but continues to enflame the debate over slavery.
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Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. She returns to the South and becomes one of the main "conductors" on the Underground Railroad, helping more than 300 slaves to escape.
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The continuing debate whether territory gained in the Mexican War should be open to slavery is decided in the Compromise of 1850: California is admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty, and the slave trade in Washington, DC, is prohibited. It also establishes a much stricter fugitive slave law than the original, passed in 1793.
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Freedwoman Sojourner Truth, a compelling speaker for abolitionism, gives her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech in Akron, Ohio.
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Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The legislation repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and renews tensions between anti- and proslavery factions.
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In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court decides that African Americans are not citizens of the U.S., and that Congress has no power to restrict slavery in any federal territory. This meant that a slave who made it to a free state would still be considered a slave.
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The Civil War begins when the Confederates attack Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina. The war, fought over the issue of slavery, will rage for another four years. The Union's victory will mean the end of slavery in the U.S.
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President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
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Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, and establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to assist former slaves. This is the beginning of the Reconstruction era.
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The Civil War ends . Lincoln is assassinated (April 14). The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Tennessee by ex-Confederates (May). Slavery in the United States is effectively ended when 250,000 slaves in Texas finally receive the news that the Civil War had ended two months earlier .
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, prohibiting slavery -
All-white legislatures in the former Confederate states pass the so-called "Black Codes," sharply curtailing African Americans' freedom and virtually re-enslaving them.
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Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which confers citizenship on African Americans and grants them equal rights with whites
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Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, defining citizenship. Individuals born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens, including those born as slaves. This nullifies the Dred Scott Case (1857), which had ruled that blacks were not citizens.
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Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote.
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Spelman College, the first college for black women in the U.S., is founded by Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles. Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. The school becomes one of the leading schools of higher learning for African Americans, and stresses the practical application of knowledge. In 1896, George Washington Carver begins teaching there as director of the department of agricultural research, gaining an international reputation for his
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Plessy v. Ferguson: This landmark Supreme Court decision holds that racial segregation is constitutional, paving the way for the repressive Jim Crow laws in the South.
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W.E.B. DuBois founds the Niagara movement, a forerunner to the NAACP. The movement is formed in part as a protest to Booker T. Washington's policy of accommodation to white society; the Niagara movement embraces a more radical approach, calling for immediate equality in all areas of American life.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded in New York by prominent black and white intellectuals and led by W.E.B. Du Bois. For the next half century, it would serve as the country's most influential African-American civil rights organization, dedicated to political equality and social justice In 1910, its journal, The Crisis, was launched. Among its well known leaders were James Weldon Johnson, Ella Baker, Moorfield Storey, Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Benjamin Hoo
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The Great Migration of southern African Americans to northern industrial towns gets underway. Millions of African Americans will have migrated North by the 1960s.
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Marcus Garvey establishes the Universal Negro Improvement Association, an influential black nationalist organization "to promote the spirit of race pride" and create a sense of worldwide unity among blacks.
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The Harlem Renaissance flourishes in the 1920s and 1930s. This literary, artistic, and intellectual movement fosters a new black cultural identity.
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A. Phillip Randolph organizes the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African American trade union.
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Jazz trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong forms his "Hot Five" band. He will become a jazz legend and a cultural icon.
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Langston Hughes publishes The Weary Blues, his first book of poetry. A pivotal force in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes will go on to become one of the 20th century's most recognized American writers.
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The interracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is formed in Chicago. It will become famous for organizing the Freedom Rides of 1961.
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Baseball great Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to break the color barrier and be allowed to play in the major leagues
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Malcolm X becomes a minister of the Nation of Islam. Over the next several years his influence increases until he is one of the two most powerful members of the Black Muslims (the other was its leader, Elijah Muhammad). A black nationalist and separatist movement, the Nation of Islam contends that only blacks can resolve the problems of blacks.
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In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation, overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
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A young black boy, Emmett Till, is brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Two white men charged with the crime are acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder. The public outrage generated by the case helps spur the civil rights movement (Aug.). Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger (Dec.1). In response to her arrest Montgomery's black community launch a succ
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Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. (Sept. 24). Federal troops and the National Guard are called to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine." Despite a year of violent threats, several of the "Little Rock Nine" manage to graduate from Central High
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Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala. 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. Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The march builds momentum for civil rights legislation (Aug. 28). Despite Governor George Wallace physically
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Track-and-field athlete Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics, thwarting Adolf Hitler's plan to use the games to demonstrate "Aryan supremacy."
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President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin (July 2). The bodies of three civil-rights workers are found. Murdered by the KKK, James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been working to register black voters in Mississippi (Aug.). Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize. (Oct.) Sidney Poitier wins the Best Acto
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Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is assassinated (Feb. 21). State troopers violently attack peaceful demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as they try to cross the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Fifty marchers are hospitalized on "Bloody Sunday," after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later (March 7). Congress passes the Vo
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Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.
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The Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action, but imposed limitations on it to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority.
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In Grutter v. Bollinger, the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body."
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On November 4, Barack Obama, becomes the first African American to be elected president of the United States, defeating Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain.
