-
Twenty Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. They were the first blacks to be forcibly settled as involuntary laborers in the North American British Colonies.
-
Massachusetts was the first colony to legalise slavery by statute.
-
Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery.
-
Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery. She would return South at least twenty times, leading over 300 slaves to freedom.
-
The Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was passed by Congress.
-
The Fourteenth Amendment was passed. It made blacks citizens of the United States.
-
Some blacks and whites organized the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago. They led a sit-in at a Chicago restaurant.
-
Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball.
-
Rosa Parks refused to change seats in a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. On December 5 blacks began a boycott of the bus system which continued until shortly after December 13, 1956, when the United States Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation in the city.
-
The March on Washington was the largest civil rights demonstration ever.
-
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
-
Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In the following week, riots occurred in at least 125 places throughout the country.
-
The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools had to end at once and that unitary school systems were required.
-
Barack Hussein Obama II is sworn in as the first black presidents of the United States Of America
-
Geroge Floyd's death spikes outrage in America bringing whites and blacks together.