Phillis Wheatley's book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is published, making her the first African American to do so
Slavery is made illegal in the Northwest Territory. The U.S. Constitution states that Congress many not ban the slave trade until 1808
Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin greatly increases the demand for slave labor.
Gabriel Prosser, an enslaved African-American blacksmith, organizes a slave revolt intending to march on Richmond, Virginia. The conspiracy is uncovered, and Prosser and a number of the rebels are hanged. Virginia's slave laws are consequently tightened.
Congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa
The Missouri Compromise bans slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri
Denmark Vesey, an enslaved African-American carpenter who had purchased his freedom, plans a slave revolt with the intent to lay siege on Charleston, South Carolina. the plot is discovered, and Vesey and 34 co-conspirators are hanged.
William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator
Nat Turner's slave rebellion
The Wilmot Proviso, introduced by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War
Frederick Douglass launches his abolitionist newspaper
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and becomes one of the most effective and celebrated leaders of the Underground Railroad
The Compromise of 1850
A federal fugitive slave law is enacted, providing for the return of slaves who had escaped and crossed state lines
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is published
Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed by Congress
Lucy Terry, an enslaved person in 1746, becomes the earliest known black American poet when she writes about the last American Indian attack on her village of Deerfield, Massachusetts. Her poem, Bar's Fight, is not published until 1855.
The Dred Scott case holds that Congress does not have the right to ban slavery in states and, furthermore, that slaves are not citizens.
John Brown and 21 followers capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, VA (now W. VA), in an attempt to launch a slave revolt
The Confederacy is founded when the deep South secedes, and the Civil War begins
President Lincoln issues the Emaciation Proclamation
The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Tennessee
slavery is ended in the United States
the 13th Amendment is ratified, prohibiting slavery
Black codes are passed by southern states
Freedman's Bureau is established
The Civil War ends
Lincoln is assassinated
A series of Reconstruction acts are passed, carving the former Confederacy into five military districts and guaranteeing the civil rights of freed slaves.
14th Amendment is ratified, defining citizenship
15th Amendment is ratified, giving black the right to vote
Hiram Revels of Mississippi is elected the country's first African-American senator.
Reconstruction ends in the south
Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama
Plessy v. Ferguson
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded in New York by prominent black and white intellectuals and led by W.E.B. DuBois
Marcus Garvey and the UNIA
The Harlem Renaissance flourishes in the 1920s and 1930s
African Americans in WWII
Jackie Robinson is signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers by Branch Rickey
President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order integrating the U.S. armed forces
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas declares that racial segregation in schools in unconstitutional
Emmett Till is murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger
Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the order of Governor Orval Faubus
Four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworths lunch counter. Six months later the ¨Greensboro Four¨ are served lunch at the same Woolworths counter.
Several groups of ¨freedom riders¨ are attacked by angry mobs along the way through the South as they were going to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities
Integration of Ole Miss
Birmingham Church bombed
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is attended by about 250,000 people. Martin Luther King delivers his famous ¨I Have a Dream¨ speech.
Freedom Summer and the "Mississippi Burning murders
Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968
Selma to Montgomery March
The Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
President Johnson appoints Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. He becomes the first black Supreme Court Justice.
Fair Housing Act
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
State troopers violently attack peaceful demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as they try to cross the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. 50 marchers are hospitalized on ¨Bloody Sunday¨.
The first race riots in decades erupt in south-central Los Angeles after a jury acquits four white police officers for the videotaped beating of African-American Rodney King.
Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected president of the United States