-
A passage by Thomas Jefferson condemning the slave trade is removed from the Declaration of Independence.
-
Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Act, which makes it a crime to harbour an escaped slave.
-
The 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.
-
Angered by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes the first of 41 installments of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in an abolitionist weekly, June 5, 1851. She intends 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery.
-
The 14th amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to former slaves.
-
The 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote.
-
The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.
-
The supreme court ruled that separating children in public schools because of their skin colour was unconstitutional.
-
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. Which she later got arrested for because of the racial segregation laws.
-
-
The Civil Rights Act outlaws discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, national origin.
-
Prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
-
Malcolm X was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. He was killed on February, 21, 1965 while giving a speech in the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights.
-
First African American Woman Secretary of State.
-
First African American President of the United States of America. He was president from 2009-2017.
