The first African American indentured servants arrive in the American colonies. Less than a decade later, the first slaves are brought into New Amsterdam (later, New York City). By 1690, every colony has slaves.
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Congress bans further importation of slaves.
1831-1861 Approximately 75,000 slaves escape to the North using the Underground Railroad.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) is elected president, angering the southern states.
The Civil War begins.
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation proclaims that all slaves in rebellious territories are forever free.
The Civil War ends. Lincoln is assassinated.
Thousands of African Americans migrate out of the South to escape oppression.
Tennessee passes the first of the “Jim Crow” segregation laws, segregating state railroads. Similar laws are passed over the next 15 years throughout the Southern states.
The “Jim Crow” (“separate but equal”) laws begin, barring African Americans from equal access to public facilities.
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005) is arrested for breaking a city ordinance by refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man. This defiant act gives initial momentum to the Civil Rights Movement.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968) and others set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading engine of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Civil Rights Act is signed, prohibiting discrimination of all kinds.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Barack Obama (1961 - ) becomes the first African American to win the U.S. presidential race.