-
A Dutch trader brought twenty slaves to Jamestown, Virginia. The number of slaves continued to increase, and by as late as 1670, there were about 2,000 slaves in Virginia.
-
More than fifty slaves along the Stono River in South Carolina marched toward Spanish Florida. On their fifteen mile march, they killed at least twenty whites. The revolt was stopped by the local militia.
-
Congress banned the importation of slaves, however slaves were still smuggled into America.
-
Nat Turner, a slave and black preacher, led a slave rebellion in Southhampton County, Virginia. About sixty Virginians, mostly women and children, were murdered. Turner was later hanged, and Virginia enacted stricter slave laws.
-
The Underground Railroad was a network of safe havens through which thousands of slaves escaped from slavery in the south to Canada. Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave from Maryland, was one of the most famous conductors, rescuing more than 300 slaves.
-
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 was strengthened due to the success of the Underground Railroad. It enforced the capture of runaway slaves in both the north and the south by punishing anyone who aided the runaways.
-
Harriot Beecher Stowe, a white abolishtionist, was determined to reveal the evils of slavery, especially the act of splitting up families. Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was greatly successful in the United States and abroad.
-
Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the basis of his long residence on free soil. The Supreme Court ruled that because Scott was a slave and not a citizen, he could not sue in federal courts.
-
The Civil War began with the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Eleven states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. It was the bloodiest war in America, resulting in about 600,000 deaths.
-
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclaimation declared the slaves in the Confederacy free. However, it did not really free any slaves. Although he could free the slaves in the loyal border states, he did not in order to spare the Union, and he did not have control of the states in the Confederacy.
-
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.
-
Republicans passed the Civil Rights Bill in 1866, which conferred on blacks American citizenship and struck at the Black Codes. The principles of the Civil Rights Bill turned into the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves.
-
In the case of Plessy V. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional under the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
-
W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Ida B. Wells, Henry Moskowitz, and William English Walling founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on February 12, Lincoln's birthday.
-
The Harlem Reinassance was a literary, artistic, cultural, and intellectual movement that lasted until 1935. Harlem in New York City was one of the largest black communities in the world with about 100,000 black residents. Important African American artists, such as poet Langston Hughes and writer Zora Neale Hurston, emerged during this time.
-
The Warren Court ruled that segregation in public schools was "inherently unequal" and therefore unconstitutional. It startled conservatives because it reversed the declaration in Plessy V. Ferguson.
-
Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white male on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, triggering the Montgomery bus boycott.
-
The Freedom Riders were student volunteers that went on interstate bus trips in order to test the implemation of new laws prohibiting segregation.
-
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led 200,000 black and white demonstrators on the "March on Washington." It concluded at the Lincoln Memorial where King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech.
-
Thurgood Marshall, a former NAACP attorney, was appointed to the Supreme Court becoming the first black justice.
-
Colin Powell became the first African American secretary of state.
-
Barack Obama became the first African American president of the United States.
