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Period: Jan 1, 1550 to
Middle Passage
The slave trade uprooted 11 million Africans, draining the nation of people and wealth and changing the African society. -
Beginning of Slavery
The cultivation of tobacco required inexpensive labor, slave labor in colonial Virginia and Maryland spread rapidly as Blacks replaced White indentured servants in the tobacco fields. -
Reason's for Slavery
Supply of indentured from England became insufficient.
The spread of tobacco cultivation created a demand for labor.
Few White colonists at that time viewed racism as morally wrong.
England wanted to compete in the profitable slave trade begun by the Portuguese and Dutch. -
Bacon's Rebellion
The rebellion exposed tensions between farmers and the rich. It prompted the gentry (the rich) to reevaluate their commitment to the system of indentured servants. This led to the transition from indentured servants to slave labor. -
Stono Rebellion
One of the earliest known acts of rebellion against slavery in America.Organized and led by slaves living in Charleston, South Carolina.Slaves tried unsuccessfully to flee to Spanish Florida, where they had hoped to gain their freedom. -
Manumission
Allowed slave owners to release their slaves. This led to 10,000 slaves being freed. -
Mulattos
A interracial mix of blacks and whites. Could either be used as another slave in the south, or they could be considered white. -
Three Fifths Compromise
Agreement between Southern and Northern states, said that three fifths of the population of slaves would be counted for representation purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and apportionment of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The compromise was invalidated by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. -
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Excluded slavery north of the Ohio River, was the first national document containing a prohibition of slavery. -
Constitution of the United States of America
The U.S. Constitution explicitly guaranteed the legality of slavery in every state and like the Declaration of Independence, the main reason for the continued legality of slaves was because of a desire for unity as a nation. -
The Haitian Slave Rebellion
Haitian slave rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture prompted an increased free of slave revolts in the South. -
2nd Great Awakening
Revivals increased public awareness of the moral outrages perpetuated by slavery. Contributed to the growth of the abolitionist movement. -
King Cotton
Invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney made it easier to produce cotton and increased production in the South. Rich new farmland was opened to cultivation of cotton in the Deep South. Rise of textile manufacturing in England created enormous demand for cheap cotton. -
Black Christianity
In second great awakening, evangelical Protestantism swept over the south, many blacks converted from African spiritual religions and became Methodist or baptist, domestic slave trade spread carried message, adopted protestant doctrines to black needs, expressed Christianity in distinct ways such as dancing and singing hymns. -
Period: to
Southern Society
Most White adult males were small farmers rather than wealthy planters in the South.The majority of white families in the antebellum South owned no slaves, but a small minority of planters did own 20 or more slaves and dominated the antebellum South.
Cost of slave labor rose sharply. -
Period: to
William Lloyd Garrison
Garrison issued the first call for the "immediate and uncompensated emancipation of the slaves." Was editor of the famous abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator and also a prominent voice of the women's suffrage movement. -
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States during the time of the Civil war over slavery. Initially, before the war, he wasn't concerned about ending slavery in the south, he just wanted to compromise, but later in his presidency, he decided to attack slavery directly. -
Harriet Beacher Stowe
Wrote the famous, Uncle Tom's Cabin which intensified Northern opposition to slavery. Was the best selling book other than the Bible. -
American Colonization Society
The goal was the return of all freed slaves to Africa. Henry Clay was one of its famous supporters. Most leaders were middle class men and women. -
Frederick Douglass
Most prominent Black abolitionist during the antebellum period.
Wrote an autobiography in 1845 that exposed to Americans the horrors and inhumanity of slavery. Was also a prominent voice for equal rights for women and Native Americans. -
Tallmadge Amendment
Representative Tallmadge proposed an amendment to the bill for Missouri's admission to the Union, which the House passed but the Senate blocked. The amendment would have prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and would have mandated the emancipation of slaves' offspring born after the state was admitted. -
Compromise of 1820
Maine would enter as a free state and Missouri would enter as a slave state. The remaining territory of the Louisiana Purchase above latitude 36 degrees 30' would be closed to slavery. -
Increase of Freed African Americans
Gradual emancipation laws made in individual states.
Manumission (owner freeing his slaves) granted for Revolutionary War and by slaveholders' wills. -
Nat Turner's Revolt
Rebellion in which Nat Turner led a group of slaves through Virginia in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow and kill planter families. Lasting impacts were a tightening of slavery laws and practices and fears of abolitionists. -
Annexation of Texas
President Jackson resisted annexation of Texas into the Union primarily because he feared that the debate over the admission of Texas would cause controversy over slavery. Following a join resolution of Congress, Texas joined the Union in 1845. -
Compromise of 1850
Diffused a four year political confrontation between the north and the south over newly acquired territories that had been gained from the Mexican-American war. this compromise was created by Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser. California was admitted to the Union as a free state.Slave trade (not slavery) was abolished from the District of Columbia (D.C.)Territorial government were created in New Mexico and Utah without immediate decision whether or not they would be slave or free. -
Wilmot Proviso
Created after Mexican War, specifically provided for the prohibition of slavery in lands acquired from Mexico. Congress did not pass the Wilmot Proviso. This bill signaled the start of a deep crisis that would pit the North against the South over issues of slavery, states' rights, and representation. One part of the Missouri Compromise of 1850. -
Underground Railroad
A network of abolitionists that secretly helped slaves escape to freedom by setting up hiding places and routes to the North. Harriet Tubman is a key person to its success. -
Ostend Manifesto
The manifesto was a proposal to seize Cuba by force if Spain wasn't willing to sell if to the United States.Enraged antislavery Northerners prevented it from being implemented because they believed that it would facilitate an increase in the slave trade and plantations. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Proposed the territory of Nebraska would be divided into two, Kansas and Nebraska. The status of slavery in each territory would be decided by popular sovereignty which meant that the settlers in a given territory would have the sole right to decide whether slavery is permitted. Stephen A. Douglass, an abolitionist was a leading proponent of popular sovereignty. -
Consequences of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
Repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which caused tensions in states.The act led to the end of the Whigs party and also ed to the rise of the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of very violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian", or "southern" elements in Kansas. This showed the ever separating gap between southerners and northerners and was one of the causes of the civil war. -
Period: to
Booker T. Washington
Called on blacks to seek economic opportunities over political rights, stressed importance of vocational education and economic self-help. Also called for gradual African American rights through education. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
In a landmark court case, Scott stated that he had the right to be free because he had been in Illinois for 4 years where slavery was illegal. The court ruled that because blacks weren't citizens, then he couldn't sue in a court of law. -
John Brown and Harper's Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was an effort by armed abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt by taking over a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia and then arming the slaves to help fight. This attempt was ultimately a failure and severely damaged the abolitionist movement because this connected violence to northern abolitionists. -
Fugitive Slave Act
This was by far the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850 because it forced northerners to help catch and send back fugitive slaves with no trial by jury. -
African Americans at War during the Civil War
For most of the Civil War, African American soldiers were paid less that White soldiers of equal rank and were separated into different groups.The South considered African Americans serving in the Union army as contraband or fighting just to be freed. -
Civil War
The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America in a conflict over sectional differences between the north and the south: specifically slavery. -
Ida Barnett-Wells
Was an African American civil rights advocate and an earl women's rights advocate. Focused mostly on the issue of lynching in the South. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Lincoln first refrained from taking action to emancipate slaves until the Civil War had been in progress for almost two years.The Union victory at Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which only freed slaves in the rebellious states. It did not free slaves in the Border States.The immediate effect of it was to strengthen the moral cause of the Union. -
Thirteenth Amendment
Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. Mainly an extension of first amendment rights and a big turning point for blacks. -
Fourteenth Amendment
Made former slaves citizens, guaranteed civil rights to former slaves, and equality before the law. -
Black Codes
Placed limits on socioeconomic opportunities and freedoms of black people. Made black people work under conditions that resembled slavery. Very low wages were paid and blacks were often tricked into working. -
Klu Klux Klan
Emerged during radical Reconstruction (1865-1877) and favored white supremacy and immigration restriction. -
Black Codes
Black Codes were intended to place limits on the opportunities and freedoms open to Black people. Black Codes forced Black Americans to work under conditions that resembled slavery. These were applied in the south to combat reconstruction. -
Sharecropping
Most freed African Americans entered sharecropping with former masters and other nearby planters. Sharecropping is a system where the land owner gives a part of his land to someone else who grows crops on the land and then gives part of the crops produced back to the owner. This system led to a cycle of debt and depression for Southern tenant farmers and basically was just a redesigned slavery that was legal. -
W. E. B. DuBois
Advocated for full political, economic, and social equality for blacks and founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 (NAACP). He wanted immediate normalization of the black race. -
Fifteenth Amendment
Gave Suffrage to all black men and guaranteed the rights of all men to vote. -
Slaughterhouse Case of 1873
Case narrowed the meaning and effectiveness of the Fourteenth Amendment. It weakened the protection given to African Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Compromise of 1877
The compromise called for the removal of all federal troops from the South. It supported internal improvements in the South. It promised there would be at least one southerner in the Cabinet. Gave conservative Southern Democrats some control over local patronage. It also gave South a "free hand" in race relations. As a result, white conservatives regained power, lynchings increased, and Black voters were disenfranchised. -
Disenfranchising Black Voters
Southern politicians used tactics including literacy tests and poll taxes to deny African Americans the ballot. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Upheld segregation "separate but equal", but it was later overridden by the supreme court during the civil rights movement. -
Thurgood Marshall
First black supreme court justice to serve. -
NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People founded by W.E.B DuBois and used the courts to achieve full equality and justice for blacks. -
World War I
African Americans fought in segregated units, usually under the command of white officers. A massive wave of migration of Black Americans from the South to the North happened immediately after the war. -
The Harlem Renaissance
Thrived during the 1920s, was an outpouring of Black artistic and literary creativity. Writers, artists, and musicians (Jazz) expressed pride in their African American culture. Key figures included Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Josephine Baker. -
The Great Migration
Resulted because of Jim Crow laws in the south and the belief that the north was kinder towards blacks than the south. -
Malcolm X
Opposed Dr. King's strategy of nonviolent demonstration and wanted a violent black supremacy movement. He was a key leader of the Black Muslims. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Aimed for peaceful integration of races and nonviolent civil disobedience. He founded and was the head of the SCLC. He was an opponent of Malcom X. -
Fair Employment Practices Commision
President Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries, he created the Fair Employment Practices Commission to monitor this. -
Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality. Nonviolent civil rights organization committed to the "Double V" campaign, or victory over fascism abroad and racism at home. After World War II, CORE became a major force in the civil rights movement. -
Desegregation of the military
Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the armed forces. In response, the Dixiecrats (wanted to protect old southern way of life and opposed racial integration) walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention to demonstrate their opposition of Truman and Civil Rights. -
Brown v. Board of Eduction
Segregation in public schools was in violation of the fourteenth amendment and overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. -
Montgomery bus Boycott
After Rosa Parks was arrested, MLK rallied the black community to take part. This seriously hurt the bus companies and lasted more than a year. It ended in '56 when the SC declared segregated buses unconstitutional. -
Integration of Little Rock Central High School
A group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower. On their first day of school, troops from the Arkansas National Guard would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs making threats to lynch. -
President Eisenhower and segregation
Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock's Central High School to enforce court-ordered desegregation. Was not a vigorous supporter of the civil rights legislation. -
Sit-in Movement
College students staged the first sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest segregation in public facilities. -
Freedom Riders
Organized mixed-race groups who rode interstate buses deep into the South to draw attention to and protest racial segregation, beginning in 1961. This effort by northern young people to challenge racism proved a political and public relations success for the Civil Rights Movement, but caused a violent reaction from the south. -
"I have a Dream" Speech
Given by King, this was one of the largest and most successful demonstration in US history. This march was in support of the civil rights bill, and the speech appealed for the end of racial prejudice. -
March on Washington
A large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony at the Lincoln Memorial during the march. widely credited as helping lead to the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the National Voting Rights Act (1965). 80% of the marchers were black. -
Bombing of a Baptist Church in Birmingham
Racially motivated terrorist attack by members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. The bombing of the African-American church resulted in the deaths of four girls. Although city leaders had reached a settlement in May with demonstrators and started to integrate public places, not everyone agreed with ending segregation. Other acts of violence followed the settlement. The bombing increased support for people working for civil rights. -
Freedom Summer
A voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by the collaboration of civil rights groups, the campaign drew the activism of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the north, and was marred by the abduction and murder of three such workers at the hands of white racists. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Invalidated the use of any test or device to deny the vote and authorized federal examiners to register voters in states that had disenfranchised blacks; as more blacks became politically active and elected black representatives, it encouraged greater social equality and decreasing the wealth and education gap. -
Selma March
MLK organizes a march in Selma. Tens of thousands of black protesters petition for the right to vote outside of the city hall and are ignored. They then marched to the governers mansion in Montgomery. Police meet them with tear gas and clubs. "Bloody Sunday" is highly publicized and Americans in the North are shocked. -
Black Power Movement
Movement that advocated that African Americans establish control of their own economic and political life (separate from whites). Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael were key leaders for Black Power. -
Black Panthers
Group who openly carried weapons and clashed with the police on a regular basis. Primarily aimed to protect Blacks from police brutality. Started by Huey Newton. -
1883 Civil Rights Cases
Cases narrowed the meaning and effectiveness of the Fourteenth Amendment, and they weakened the protection given to African Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Barack Obama
The first black president of the United States.