African American History Timeline
1565-1954
Based on African American Studies Research Guide: Milestones in African American History (Michigan State University Research Guides
Since arriving in America in 1619 as slaves, African Americans have fought for their independence and to be seen as equals. These struggles have produced many historical figures and events that make all Americans proud, and a few that brought major disappointment. Below is a chronological list of a few of the events that shaped black history and some information about the brave men and women who led the way for later generations.
1565: Establishment of the Spanish colony of St. Augustine. Settlers included an unknown number of African slaves.
1619: African Indentured Servants Brought to Jamestown, VA. A Dutch ship brought 20 African indentured servants to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia.
1640: John Punch was sentenced to serve Virginia planter Hugh Gwyn for life. This made Punch the first legally documented slave in Virginia
1664: Maryland Passed First Law Banning Interracial Marriage, 1664. On Septeember 20 1664, Maryland passed the first antiamalgamation law. This was intended to prevent English women from marrying African men. Interracial marriage was a fairly common practice during the colonial era among white indentured servants and black slaves-as well as in more aristocratic circles.
1712: New York Slave Revolt
1739: The Stono Rebellion, 1739. One of the earliest slave revolts takes place in Stono, South Carolina, near Charleston. A score of whites and more than twice as many blacks slaves are killed as the armed slaves try to flee to Florida.
1753: Benjamin Banneker designed and built the first clock in the American colonies. Corresponding with Thomas Jefferson, Banneker wrote that “blacks were intellectually equal to whites.”
1760: Jupiter Hamilton was the first published African American poet.
March 5, 1770: Boston Massacre. Crispus Attucks, 1st American and African Amrican killed in Revolutionary War,
1775: Thomas Paine Published an Anti-Slavery Tract .Although Paine was not the first to advocate the aboliton of slavery in Amerca, he was certainly one of the earliest and most influential. The essay African Slavery in America was written in 1774 and published March 8, 1775 when it appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser. Just a few weeks later on April 14, 1775 the first anti-slavery society in America was formed in Philadelphia. Paine was a founding member.
1774: First black Baptist congregations were organized in the South.
1775: Pennsylvania Abolition Society was formed. Benjamin Franklin would later be its President.
1776: Declaration of Independence. A passage by Thomas Jefferson condemning the slave trade is removed from the Declaration of Independence due to pressure from the southern colonies.
1775-1782: The Revolutionary War. Blacks fought for both the British and the American side during the Revolutionary War, depending on who was offering freedom for doing so.
1777: Vermont abolished slavery. At the time, Vermont was a sovereign nation.
December 25, 1779: Battle of Trenton. African American soldier Prince Whipple, a black man, crossed the Delaware with General Washington on December 25, 1779, on the eve of the Revolutionary War's famous Battle of Trenton. Whipple (pictured in the left rear pulling an oar) was a bodyguard for General Whipple of New Hampshire, an aide to the future President.
1780: Massachusetts Granted African Americans the Right to Vote. On February 9, 1780, Capt. Paul Cuffe and six other African American residents of Massachusetts petitioned the state legislature for the right to vote. Claiming "no taxation without representation," the residents had earlier refused to pay taxes. The courts agreed and awarded Cuffe and the six other defendants full civil rights.
1780: Pennsylvania became the first state to abolish slavery.
1787: The Northwest Ordinance. In addition to laying out the procedure for future states to be created in western territories, the Northwest Ordinace forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory, where the future state of Michigan would be created.
1789: U.S. Constitution Adopted. Slaves counted as three-fifths of a person for means of representation.
1793: First Fugitive Slave Act. Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act, which made it a crime to harbor an escaped slave.
1793: Cotton gin invented. This enabled the cultivation and processing of short-staple cotton to be profitable in the South, which dramatically increased the need for slave labor in the region
1800: Gabriel's Conspiracy. On August 30, 1800, a tremendous storm dropped heavy rain on central Virginia, swelling creeks and turning Richmond's dirt streets into quagmires. The storm aborted one of the most extensive slave plots in American history, a conspiracy known to hundreds of slaves throughout central Virginia. A charismatic blacksmith named Gabriel, who was owned by Thomas Prosser, of Henrico County, planned to enter Richmond with force, capture the Capitol and the Virginia State Armory, and hold Governor James Monroe hostage to bargain for freedom for Virginia's slaves.
1808: Congress banned further importation of slaves into the U.S., as had been specified in the Constitution. Slave trading in the U.S., however, continued
1811: Slave Revolt in Louisiana. More than a century before the first modern-day civil rights march, Charles Deslondes and his make-do army of more than 200 enslaved men battled with hoes, axes and cane knives for that most basic human right: freedom.
1816: The American Colonization Society began. This promoted sending free African Americans to what became Liberia in West Africa.
1820: The Missouri Compromise. This legislation admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state at the same time, so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. It also outlawed slavery above the 36º 30´ latitude line in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory.
1822: The Vesey Conspiracy. In response to the closing of their church in Charleston, which boasted a membership of over three thousand in 1820, Denmark Vesey used his position as a respected free man and Methodist leader to organize other free and enslaved blacks to battle for freedom.
1827-1829: Freedom's Journal. Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm published Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in America, from March 16, 1827-March 28, 1829
1831: Nat Turner Slave Revolt. In late summer 1831 a free man of color named Billy Artis, a celebrated slave known as "Gen. Nelson," and a slave preacher by the name of Nat Turner helped lead an insurrection of slaves seeking freedom in Southampton County, VA. Before he was executed Nat Turner was interviewed, leading to the publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. Baltimore: T. R. Gray, 1831.
1831. William Lloyd Garrison began publication of The Liberator, an Abolitionist newspaper.
1831-1861. Underground Railroad. Over a thirty-year period, approximately 75,000 slaves escaped to the North.
1833: Sarah Harris Fayerweather was admitted to an all-girl school in Canterbury, Connecticut making it the first racially integrated schoolhouse in the U.S. The school was forcibly closed in 1864 under the Connecticut Black Law of 1833.
1837: The first institute for higher education for Africa Americans was founded. The school is now know as Cheney University of Pennsylvania.
1839: Amistad Case. Slaves being transported aboard the Spanish ship Amistad took it over and sailed it to Long Island. They eventually won their freedom in a Supreme Court case.
1818-1895. Frederick Douglass
In 1845 published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, one of the enduring classics of American literature.
Douglass advocated enlisting in the Union Army to lay the groundwork for citizenship during the Civil War.
In December, 1866, The Atlantic Monthly published "Reconstruction", in which Douglass warned Congress of the potential for the de facto re-enslavement of blacks should the South's antebellum political system remain intact. Douglass exhorted Congress to pass a civil-rights amendment affirming the equality of blacks and whites in the United States.
c.1820–March 10, 1913: Harriet Tubman. The most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad. Having escaped slavery herself, she returned time and time again to rescue family and friends in Maryland between 1849 and the outbreak of the Civil War. She was nicknamed General Tubman by John Brown and Grandma Moses by others for leading so many slaves out of bondage. She also served as a spy for Union forces during the Civil War. She was awarded full military honors upon her death.
1842: Prigg v. Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court ruled that states do not have to offer help in the hunting or capture of escaped slaves, greatly weakening the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
1850: The Compromise of 1850. The Compromise of 1850 was actually a series of bills passed mainly to address issues related to slavery. The bills provided for slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty in the admission of new states, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and settled a Texas boundary dispute. The Compromise also included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required any federal official to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave. Boston citizens, including some of the wealthiest, stormed a federal courthouse in an attempt to free escaped slave Anthony Burns.
1851: Sojourner Truth at the Women's Rights Conference. Freedwoman Sojourner Truth, a compelling speaker for abolitionism, gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech in Akron, Ohio. Truth would later move to Battle Creek, Michigan. Truth was born a slave, originally bearing the name Isabella Baumfree. On June 1, 1834, she set out from New York on an historic journey across America, traveling far and wide preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women's rights. She claimed the Lord gave her the name Sojourner Truth, as he had called upon her " to travel up and down the land" declaring the truth to people. She gained her freedom when the New York State Emancipation Act was passed in 1827. Truth was the guest of President Lincoln at the White House on several occasions and was one of the voices that influenced Lincoln to recruit African American soldiers for the Union Army during the Civil War.
1851-1852: Uncle Tom's Cabin published. Angered by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Beecher Stowe published the first of 41 installments of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in an abolitionist weekly. She intended her novel about slaves Uncle Tom, who is sold and resold, and Eliza, who flees to save her child, to “awaken sympathy” for those suffering under a “cruel and unjust” system. In book form the following year, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 300,000 copies and is credited with shaping perceptions leading to the Civil War. In time the novel’s stereotypes, exaggerated in minstrel show versions, altered toward Stowe’s hero, and “Uncle Tom” becomes a pejorative for a passive, subservient black man.
1854: The Kansas-Nebraska Act. In January 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas introduced a bill that divided the land west of Missouri into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska. He argued for popular sovereignty, which would allow the settlers of the new territories to decide if slavery would be legal there. Antislavery supporters were outraged because, under the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery would have been outlawed in both territories. After months of debate, the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed on May 30, 1854. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers rushed to Kansas, each side hoping to determine the results of the first election held after the law went into effect. The conflict turned violent, aggravating the split between North and South until reconciliation was virtually impossible. Opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act helped found the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery into the territories. As a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the United States moved closer to Civil War.
1857: The Dred Scott Decision. In 1846, a slave named Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued for their freedom in a St. Louis city court. The odds were in their favor. They had lived with their owner, an army surgeon, at Fort Snelling, then in the free Territory of Wisconsin. The Scotts' freedom could be established on the grounds that they had been held in bondage for extended periods in a free territory and were then returned to a slave state. Courts had ruled this way in the past. However, what appeared to be a straightforward lawsuit between two private parties became an 11-year legal struggle that culminated in one of the most notorious decisions ever issued by the United States Supreme Court. On its way to the Supreme Court, the Dred Scott case grew in scope and significance as slavery became the single most explosive issue in American politics. By the time the case reached the high court, it had come to have enormous political implications for the entire nation. On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney read the majority opinion of the Court, which stated that slaves were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the Federal Government or the courts. The opinion also stated that Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a Federal territory. This decision moved the nation another step closer to Civil War. The decision in Scott v. Sanford, considered by legal scholars to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court, was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens of the United States.
1859: Last known slave ship Arrived in the United States. On August 22, 1859, Captain Foster guided the slaver Clotilde into Mobile, Alabama, under a veil of secrecy. The vessel was laden with human cargo in violation of the ban on the international slave trade. To avoid being arrested by the federal authorities, Captain Foster hid his African captives ashore and set fire to the ship. Foster and the ship's owner, Timothy Meaher, found it impossible to secure buyers for their contraband cargo and were forced to keep all the intended slaves themselves. Not long afterwards, at the outset of the Civil War, Meaher and Foster freed the Clotilde captives. The Clotilde was the last known slave ship to arrive in America.
April 12, 1861: The attack on Fort Sumter started the Civil War. 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.
1861: Nicholas Biddle: First African American soldier wounded in Civil War. Just days after Fort Sumter, a pro-Confederate mob in Baltimore, Maryland turned ex-slave Nicholas Biddle into the war's first casualty.
August 30, 1861: Slaves Freed in Missouri, But Lincoln Backtracked. On Aug. 30, 1861, Union Gen. John C. Fremont instituted martial law in Missouri and declared slaves there to be free. However, Fremont's emancipation order was countermanded by President Abraham Lincoln)
May 13, 1862: Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate ship and delivered It to the Union. Robert Smalls became a ship's pilot and eventually a Captain for the Union during the Civil War. Unable to read or write and a former slave, Smalls would ultimately achieve the rank of Major General and serve five terms in the U.S. Congress.
Jan 1, 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War, announcing on September 22, 1862, that if the rebels did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states would be free. Since the Confederacy did not respond, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
May 22, 1863: War Department General Order 143: Creation of the U.S. Colored Troops. The War Department issued General Order 143 on May 22, 1863, creating the United States Colored Troops. By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10 percent of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army, and another 19,000 served in the Navy.
July 13-16, 1863: New York draft riots. Ethnic Irish immigrant protests against the draft turn into riots against African Americans.
July 18, 1863: First U.S. Medal of Honor for African American soldier. On July 18, 1863, at the Battle of Fort Wagner outside Charleston, S.C. William H. Carney of the 54th Massachusetts displayed the courage that would ultimately win him the first U.S. Medal of Honor given an African-American.
1864: Wade-Davis Bill. Near the end of the Civil War, this bill created a framework for Reconstruction and the readmittance of the Confederate states to the Union. Although Lincoln used a pocket veto to kill it, after his assassination the Republican Congress passed the measure requiring among other things, that Southern states give the Negro the right to vote.
October 13, 1864: Emancipation in Maryland.
March 3, 1865: Formation of the Freedman’s Bureau by Act of CongressAo
April 15, 1865: The Civil War ended as Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia
1865: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and succeeded by Vice-President Andrew Johnson.
1865: Reconstruction began
1865: 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery. Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
1866: Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." The Act was passed over President Johnson’s veto.
1866: “Black Codes” are passed in Southern states to restrict the activities of freedmen.
1866: The Ku Klux Klan was formed in Pulaski, Tennessee.
1866: First celebration of Juneteenth, marking the end of slavery in Texas.
1866: New Orleans Riot
1866: Formation of the Buffalo Soldiers regiment of the U.S. Army
1866: Second Freedmen’s Bureau Act was passed.
1867: Formation of Morehouse College in Atlanta and Howard University in Washington, DC
1868: The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights. Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to former slaves.
1868: First African American elected official In Michigan. In 1868, the same year the state rejected the 15th Amendment, Dawson Pompey became the first African American to hold elective office in Michigan when Covert residents chose him to oversee local road projects.
1868: Mary Ellen Pleasant. Long before Rosa Parks, Mary Ellen Pleasant sued to win the right to ride on cable cars in San Francisco.
1870: 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights. Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. At the same time, Americans from whites on trains, in depots and wharves. In short order, the rest of the South fell into step. By the end of the century, African Americans were banned from white hotels, barber shops, restaurants, theaters and other public accommodations. By 1885, most southern states also had laws requiring separate schools.
1870: Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African American member of the U.S. Senate, representing Mississippi
1870: First two Enforcement Acts
1871: Civil Rights Act of 1871. This was also known as the Klan Act
1871: First Jim Crow Segregation Law Passed. Tennessee passed the first of the "Jim Crow" segregation laws, segregating state railroads. Other Southern states passed similar laws over the next 15 years.
1872: P.B.S. Pinchback was the first African American governor of a state (Louisiana)
1873: First open-heart surgery performed by Black physician. African American physician Daniel Hale Williams performed the world's first successful open-heart surgery.
1873: The Colfax Massacre. More than 100 African Americans in Louisiana were killed by white militia after defending Republican in local offices; continuing controversy from gubernatorial election
1873: The Coushatta Massacre. Also in Louisiana. Republican officeholders are run out of town and murdered by white militia. 10-25 African American officials and witnesses were killed.
1874: Founding of the White League (Louisiana) and the Red Shirts (Mississippi). These groups style themselves as “the military arm of the Democratic Party.”
1874: Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans. Political violence continued in the wake of the gubernatorial election. Thousands of members of the White League overwhelm the integrated city police force and African American state militia forces and install a Democratic governor. They withdraw after three days in advance of federal troops.
1875: Civil Rights Act of 1875. “That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal and enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.”
1876: “Mississippi Plan” intimidated African Americans and suppressed African American registration and voting.
1876: White Democrats regained power in many Southern states.
1877: Reconstruction was formally ended. This was a result of a compromise in which the Democrats stopped contesting the election results in three states, giving Republican Rutherford B. Hayes enough electoral votes to win the Presidency, in return for the withdrawal of remaining Federal troops from the South, thus ending the effort of the Federal government to protect the civil rights of freedmen.
1879: Thousands of African Americans migrate from the South to Kansas.
1880: Strauder v. West Virginia. The Supreme Court ruled that African Americans could not be excluded from juries.
1881: First “Jim Crow” laws enacted in Tennessee. Similar laws passed in all Southern states over the next 15 years.
July 4, 1881: Booker T. Washington opened the Tuskegee Institute.
1882: Louis Latimer invented the first long-lasting filament for light bulbs. He installed lighting systems in Mew York City and Philadelphia, and in Canada. Later, he became one of the 28 members of Thomas Edison’s Pioneers.
1882: The first public college for African Americans was founded. This was the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. The first mental hospital for African Americans was also opened in Petersburg, VA.
1883: In Civil Rights Cases, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional. “On the whole, we are of opinion that no countenance of authority for the passage of the law in question can be found in either the thirteenth or fourteenth amendment of the constitution; and no other ground of authority for its passage being suggested, it must necessarily be declared void, at least so far as its operation in the several states is concerned.”
1880: First poll tax. Mississippi enacted a poll tax, which most African Americans cannot afford to pay, to try to keep blacks from voting.
1884: Judy W. Reed and Sarah E. Goode were the first African American women to receive patents. Their inventions were, respectively, a dough kneader and roller and a folding bed that formed into a desk when not in use.
1884: Ida B. Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company for its use of segregated Jim Crow cars.
1890: Mississippi passed a new constitution. It included voter registration and electoral requirements (e.g. poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy requirements) that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans.
1892: Ida B. Wells’ Anti-Lynching Crusade. African American journalist Ida B. Wells began a crusade to investigate the lynchings of African Americans after three of her friends were lynched in Tennessee. She published a pamphlet entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases.
1893: Daniel Hale Williams successfully performed open-heart surgery; the patient survived for 20 years. He opened Provident Hospital in Chicago, which was the first with an interracial staff.
1895: Booker T. Washington addressed a racially mixed Southern audience. On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington delivered his famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia. Washington, the founder and president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, was the first African-American man ever to address a racially-mixed Southern audience.
1895: W.E.B. Du Bois was awarded a Ph.D. by Harvard University. He was the first African American to receive that degree.
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson. The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."
1896: The National Association of Colored Women was founded.
1896: George Washington Carver was hired to head the Agricultural Department at what would become Tuskegee University.
1898: Louisiana Disenfranchised All African Americans. Louisiana limited the right to vote to anyone whose fathers and grandfathers were qualified on January 1, 1867, although no African Americans had the right to vote at that time. Other southern states follow suit. Louisiana also grandfathered illiterate whites to be exempt from voter registration literacy requirements.
1898: In Williams v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court upheld the voter registration requirements of the Mississippi constitution. The Court ruled that these requirements applied to all citizens, even though they effectively disenfranchised African Americans and poor whites. Other Southern states copied these provisions in their new constitutions over the next ten years.
1898: Coup d’etat in Wilmington, North Carolina. Many African Americans lost their lives and property
1899: Scott Joplin helped to launch ragtime. Pianist and composer Scott Joplin publisheed "The Maple Leaf Rag," a major hit that helped popularize ragtime music.
1900: Black National Anthem. On November 1, 1900, brothers James Weldon Johnson, author, educator and general secretary of the NAACP (1920-1930), and John Rosamond Johnson composed the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing," commonly referred to as the black national anthem.
1901: Theodore Roosevelt hosted Booker T. Washington for dinner at the White House. Sen. Benjamin Tillman’s (SC) comment reflected a widespread angry response in the South. He said “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n***** will necessitate our killing a thousand n****** in the South before they learn their place again.”
1903: W.E.B. DuBois Published The Souls of Black Folk. William Edward Burghardt DuBois, social scientist, critic and public intellectual, was a leading figure in African-American protest for most of his adult life. He emerged at the turn of the century as an opposing voice to Booker T. Washington, who appeared to have accepted segregation, or in DuBois's eyes, defeat. His book Souls of Black Folk, written in 1903, presented an alternative to Booker T. Washington's "accommodation" platform and is considered a classic work of the civil rights movement. For DuBois the "color line" was the major problem of the 20th century. In 1905 he will help found the Niagara Movement, demanding full equality for African Americans.
1903: African American Woman started a business that would make her a millionaire. Sarah Breedlove MacWilliams, better known as Madam C. J. Walker, started an African American hair-care business in Denver and eventually became America's first self-made woman millionaire.
1903: Chicago Defender launched. Thwarted in practicing law, Robert S. Abbott turned to publishing an African American newspaper in Chicago. Within a decade, it was one of the country's most influential African American weekly papers, and Abbott had become a millionaire.
1906: The Brownsville Affair led to the dishonorable discharge of 167 African American soldiers. It was not until 1972 that the action was reversed with pardons and honorable discharges of the men, but no compensation was awarded. The only man who was alive at that time was given a tax-free pension by Act of Congress.
1909: NAACP Established. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, formed in 1909. Its mission was "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination". Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, is one of the last surviving uses of the term colored people.
1909: African American first to reach the North Pole. On April 6, 1909, Matthew Henson became the first man to reach the North Pole. Adm. Robert E. Peary, the expedition's commander, arrived about 45 minutes after Henson. Henson planted the American flag at 90 degrees north -- the only place on the planet where the only way you can go is south (in 1989, an investigation found that their expedition records were unreliable because they indicated that their final push to the Pole would have had to have been implausibly fast, and that the men could have fallen 30-60 miles short because of navigational errors).
1910-1920. The Great Migration began. Looking for better opportunities, massive numbers of African Americans moved north to seek employment in factories. The trend wouldn't slow down until 1960s, and may have started to reverse in the 2000s.
1910: Publication of The Crisis by the NAACP began.
1911: National Urban League founded. It was started to help the many African Americans who were migrating to the cities to find jobs and housing.
1912: First African American Pilot. Emory Malick won his pilot's license.
1912: Father of the Blues produced his first big hit. W. C. Handy published "Memphis Blues," which becomes a huge hit.
March 10, 1913: Harriet Tubman’s Death. Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman served as a "conductor with the Underground Railroad" leading countless slaves to freedom. For her help during the Civil War as a nurse, cook, and spy, she was awarded full military honors upon her death in Auburn, New York.
1914: Woodrow Wilson ordered the re-segregation of federal workplaces and employment after nearly 50 years of integration facilities.
1915: Birth of a Nation was released.
1915: In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court rules against grandfather clauses used to deny the right to vote to African Americans.
1916: The first issue of the Journal of Negro History was published. This was the first academic journal devoted to the study of African American history.
1917: East Saint Louis race riots. Forty African Americans and eight whites were killed in race riots in East St. Louis, Ill. that were stirred up by white resentment of African Americans working in wartime industry.
1917: Houston riots.
1917-1918. U.S. in World War I. W.E.B. Du Bois called on African Americans to serve in World War I to help build a case for citizenship.
1918: Henry Johnson awarded Croix de Guerre. Kept on the sidelines by the U.S. Army, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts joined the Harlem Hellfighters and fought for the French Army. Attacked by a platoon of German soldiers in the Argonne Woods, running out of grenades, running out of bullets, his rifle splintered, Johnson fought on with a bolo knife to save his comrade Roberts from being captured until reinforcements arrived, receiving 21 separate wounds. For their heroic actions, both Johnson and Roberts were awarded the Croix de Guerre, France's highest military honor; Johnson received an additional coveted Gold Palm for extraordinary valor. Years later, the U.S. belatedly awarded Johnson a Purple Heart, Distinguished Cross, and Medal of Honor.
1918: In Buchanan v. Worley, the Supreme Court ruled that a ban on selling property in white-majority neighborhoods to African Americans, and vice versa, violates the 14th Amendment.
1918: Mary Turner was lynched. Her death, a stark example of racially motivated mob violence was referenced by the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaigns of the ‘20’s, ‘30’s, and ‘40’s.
1919: Madam C. J. Walker’s death. Escaping the cotton fields of Louisiana, born Sarah Breedlove, Madam C. J. Walker developed her own line of African American hair products and sold them across the country. When she died, her wealth was estimated at over a million dollars, making her the wealthiest African American woman at the time.
1919: Red Summer race riots. Scores of race riots across the country left at least 100 people dead. These were again sparked by white resentment of African Americans working in industry, and their large-scale migration from South to North.
1919: Omaha race riot.
1919: Elaine race riot in Arkansas.
1919: Oscar Micheaux produced first film. The pioneering director-producer produced his first film, The Homesteader, based on his novel, for the African American audience.
1920: 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "The rights of citizens...to vote shall not be denied or abridged...on account of sex."
1921: Bessie Coleman received Her pilot's license in France. Suppored by Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, Coleman traveled to France to earn an international pilot's license from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.
1921: Tulsa race massacre. Mobs of white citizens, many of whom were deputized and given weapons by the city, attacked African American residents and businesses on the ground and from the air. It has been termed “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.” At the time, the African American community in Tulsa was the wealthiest black community in the U.S., known as “Black Wall Street.” A 2002 commission estimated from 75-100 to 150-300 people were killed, most of them African American. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and as many as 6000 were interned in large facilities for several days.
1923: In Moore v. Dempsey, the Supreme Court overturned six convictions in ruling that mob-dominated trials violate the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
1924: The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America by W.E.B. Du Bois was published. It was part of the Racial Contribution Series of the Knights of Columbus.
1925: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was founded.
1925: The Harlem Renaissance was named after the anthology The New Negro by Alain Locke (the development was also called the New Negro Movement)
1925: Ku Klux Klan march in Washington, D.C.
1926: The Harlem Globetrotters were founded.
1926: In Corrigan v. Buckley, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment does not apply in Washington, D.C. as it is a city, not a state, rendering the Due Process Clause inapplicable. The Court also decided that the Due Process Clause does not apply to private agreements.
1929: Atlanta University became the first predominantly African American institution to offer graduate education.
1931: The Scottsboro Boys were arrested.
1932: The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro male began.
1933: Holcutt v. Wilson was the first attempt to desegregate higher education in the U.S. The case was dismissed for lack of standing. It was, however, a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education.
1935: In Murray v. Pearson, the Supreme Court ordered the University of Maryland School of Law to integrate its student population on the grounds that “the state has undertaken the function of education in the law, but has omitted students of one race from the only adequate provision made for it, and omitted them solely because of their color.” The case was successfully argued by Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston of the NAACP.
1936: Jesse Owen’s achievement. On August 3, 1936, at the Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, Jesse Owens won the 100-meter sprint, capturing his first of four gold medals. Over the next six days, Owens won Olympic gold in the 200-meter dash, the broad jump, and the 400-meter relay.
1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was published.
1938: In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the Supreme Court ruled that states which provided a school to white students had to provide in-state education to African Americans as well. However, this requirement could be satisfied by allowing African Americans and whites to attend the same school or by providing a second school for African Americans.
1939: Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial. When the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Anderson the opportunity to sing to an integrated audience at Constitution Hall, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and invited her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. Her first song was "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
1939: Billy Holiday performed “Strange Fruit” for the first time. The song was a protest against lynching.
1939: The Little League was formed. It was the first non-segregated youth sport.
1939: Five African American men staged a sit-in at the Alexandria, VA public library. They were arrested after being refused library cards.
1940’s – 1970’s: The Second Great Migration. This was mostly to the West Coast.
1940: In Chambers v. Florida, the Supreme Court freed three African American men who were coerced into confessing a murder.
1940: Hattie McDaniels became the first African American to win an Oscar. She was named for her performance in Gone With the Wind.
1940: Benjamin O. Davis was promoted to become the first African American general in the U.S. Army.
1940: Native Son by Richard Wright was published.
1940: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund was formed.
1941: A. Philip Randolph proposed a March on Washington.
1941: The Tuskegee Airmen unit was formed.
1941: Eleanor Roosevelt flew with a Tuskegee flight instructor, March 29, 1941. No one expected Mrs. Roosevelt to get into a small plane with an African-American pilot. Such events didn't happen in the early spring of 1941.
1941: Executive Order 8802, the “Fair Employment Act,” was issued to require equal treatment and training of all employees by federal contractors.
1941: In Mitchell v. US, the Interstate Commerce Clause was used to desegregate seating on trains.
1942: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded.
1943: Dr. Charles Drew developed techniques for successfully separating and storing blood.
1943: Detroit race riots.
1943: Lena Horne starred in Stormy Weather, the first all African American film.
1944: In Smith v. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the all-white Democratic primary in Texas was unconstitutional.
1944: The United Negro College Fund was formed.
1944: Recy Taylor was kidnapped and raped in Abbeville, Alabama. Six white men confessed but were never charged. The case was investigated by Rosa Parks, and provided an early organizational spark for the Montgomery bus boycott.
1944: The Philadephia Transit Strike. White workers struck to protest job advancement by African American workers. The strike was broken by the U.S. military under a rapidly enacted law that allowed the federal government to seize and operate industries threatened or under strikes that would threaten war production.
1946: In Morgan v. Virginia, the Supreme Court invalidated the provisions of the Virginia Code that required the separation of white and colored passengers on interstate buses.
1946: Executive Order 9808: First President's Committee on Civil Rights established. On December 5, 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order No. 9808. This landmark order established the first President's Committee on Civil Rights charged with examining law enforcement agencies and government systems to determine how their means of safeguarding the civil rights of Americans could improve and strengthened. The committee was ordered to report its findings to the President in writing.
1947: Jackie Robinson -- breaking the color line in baseball. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the playing field at Ebbets Field on April 15th, 1947, he became the first African American in the twentieth century to play baseball in the major leagues, breaking the “color line,” a segregation practice dating to the nineteenth century. Three months later, Larry Doby became the first African American player in the American League when he signed with the Cleveland Indians.
1947: John Hope Franklin published From Slavery to Freedom.
1948: The UN Charter banned slavery globally.
1948: In Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., the Supreme Court ruled that the State of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Law School could not deny admission on the basis of race.
1948: In Shelley v. Kraemer, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not enforce racially restrictive covenants. The Court also stated that such covenants were in conflict with national public policy.
1948: Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces. On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military.
1950: In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, the Supreme Court decided that a public institution of higher learning could not provide differential treatment on the basis of race.
1950: In Sweatt v. Painter, Supreme Court ruled that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal. In part, the Court stated that in that situation, black students were deprived of the collegiality of future white lawyers.
1950: In Henderson v. United States, the Supreme Court abolished segregation in railroad dining cars.
1950: The University of Virginia Law School admitted an African American student. The school was under a federal court order to do so.
1950: Ralph Bunche was the first American recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. On September 22, 1950 Ralph J. Bunch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. African American Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
1950: Three players broke the color line in the National Basketball Association.
1951: The Maryland legislature ended segregation on trains and boats.
1951: The Georgia legislature voted to deny funds to schools that integrated
1951: A Federal Court upheld segregation in South Carolina public schools.
1951: In Cicero, Illinois, white residents rioted when an African American family tried to move into an apartment in the all-white suburb of Chicago. The rioters were dispersed by the National Guard.
1952: Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia criticized television shows for depicting African
Americans and whites as equal.
1952: Eleven African American students attended the first day of school at Claymont High School in Delaware without incident. The next day, the State Attorney General decided that the students would have to be sent home because the court case on which their admission was based was being appealed, but the School Board and the School Superintendent refused and the students remained in school. This peaceful integration was a primary influence on the Brown v. Board of Education case.
1952: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison received the National Book Award.
1953: The Supreme Court struck down segregation in Washington, D.C. restaurants.
1953: Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin was published.
1954: In Hernandez v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that Mexicans and all other racial groups in the US are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.
1954: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. This overturned the "separate but equal" principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, and signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States. In Bolling v. Sharpe, which was announced the same day, the Court ruled that segregation in the Washington, DC was unconstitutional, on different grounds.