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Slaves Arrive in America (398 Years ago)
First African contracted servants arrive in American colonies. -
Every American Colony had slaves (327 years ago)
By this year, just about every colony in America had slaves brought from Africa. -
The Stono Rebellion (278 years ago)
Slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising. -
Slave importing Banned (209 years ago)
American congress bans further importation of slaves. -
Liberator (186 Years ago)
Anti-slavery newspaper the Liberator is published and becomes a leading voice in the Abolitionist movement (Movement that eventually saw slavery become illegal). -
Civil War and Emancipation (156 years ago)
Emancipation was the freeing of 3 million slaves in the rebel states of the civil war. -
Separate but Equal (121 years ago)
Legislation was introduced (Laws) in the southern states which eventuated in separate schools for blacks and whites, “persons of colour” were required to be separate from whites in railroad cars, hotels, theatres, restaurants, hairdressing salons and other establishments. -
NAACP Founded (108 years ago)
Establishment of political protest movement who demanded civil rights for blacks. -
Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out Bessie Smith
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Black, Brown and White Big Bill Broonzy
1931-1938 -
Hard Time Killin Floor Blues - Skip James
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Trouble so Hard - Vera Hall
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Mississippi Delta Blues - Muddy Waters
Most songs weren't released until 1981 and the song might have been released in the 1930-1981. -
African Americans in WWII (76 years ago)
During World War II, many African Americans were ready to fight for what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the “Four Freedoms”— freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. More than 3 million blacks would register for service during the war, with some 500,000 seeing action overseas. Enlisted blacks and whites were organised into separate units. Frustrated black servicemen were forced to combat racism even as they sought to protect the U.S.A -
Jackie Robinson (70 years ago)
By 1900, the unwritten colour line barring blacks from white teams in professional baseball was strictly enforced. Jackie Robinson, a sharecropper’s son from Georgia, joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1945, after a stint in the U.S. Army (he earned an honorable discharge after facing a court–martial for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus). -
Brown V. Board of Education (63 years ago)
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment’s mandate of equal protection of the laws of the U.S. Constitution to any person within its jurisdiction. -
Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters
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Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (62 years ago)
On December 1, 1955, an African–American woman named Rosa Parks was riding a city bus when the driver told her to give up her seat to a white man. Parks refused, and was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws.Parks, a 42 year old was also the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She later explained: “I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed.I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen.” -
Central High School Integrated (60 years ago)
A Central High School, located in the state capital of Little Rock was integrated. -
At Last - Etta James
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Core and Freedom Rides (56 years ago)
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sought to end discrimination and improve race relations through direct action. In its early years, CORE staged a sit–in at a Chicago coffee shop (a precursor to the successful sit–in movement of 1960) and organised a “Journey of Reconciliation,” in which a group of blacks and whites rode together on a bus through the upper South in 1947, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel. -
Birmingham Church Bombed (56 years ago)
In mid-September, white supremacists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama during Sunday services; four young African-American girls were killed in the explosion. The church bombing was the third in 11 days, after the federal government had ordered the integration of Alabama’s school system. -
I Have a Dream (54 years ago)
Both black and white participated in the March on Washington. After, the demonstrators gathered, where a number of civil rights leaders talked about calling for voting rights, equal employment opportunities for blacks and an end to racial segregation. Martin Luther King Jr spoke of the struggle facing black Americans and the need for continued action and nonviolent resistance. “I have a dream, one day whites and blacks will stand together as equals, and there will be harmony between the races." -
Didn't it Rain - Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Rosetta Tharpe plays 'Didn't It Rain'. Recorded in Manchester, England in 1964. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (53 years ago)
Thanks to the campaign by Martin Luther King Jr, the civil rights movement had begun to gain serious momentum in the United States by 1960. That year, John F. Kennedy made passage of a new civil rights legislation part of his presidential campaign platform; he won more than 70 percent of the African-American vote. Congress was debating Kennedy’s civil rights reform bill when he was assassinated. It was left to Lyndon Johnson to push the Civil Rights Act. -
Freedom Summer and the”Mississippi Burning” Murders (53 years ago)
In the summer of 1964, civil rights organisations urged white students from the North to travel to Mississippi, where they helped register black voters and build schools for black children. When three volunteers disappeared on their way back from investigating the burning of an African–American church by the Ku Klux Klan. After a massive FBI investigation (code–named “Mississippi Burning”) their bodies were discovered on August 4 buried in an earthen dam. -
Voting Rights Act (52 years ago)
Voting Rights Act, which Congress passed in August 1965. The Voting Rights Act sought to overcome the legal barriers that still existed at the state and local level preventing blacks from exercising the right to vote given them by the 15th Amendment. -
Shot on James Meredith - J. B. Lenoir
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Da Thrill is Gone From Here - Chris Thomas King
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Everything Gonna Be Alright Big Mama Thornton
The song was created in 1966 but released not until 2004.
