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An, enslaved African-American carpenter who had purchased his freedom, plans a slave revolt with the intent to say siege on Charleston, South Carolina. The plot is discovered, and Vesey and 34 conspirators are hanged.
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An enslaved African-American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in american history. He and his band of followers launch a short, bloody, rebellion in Southampton county, Virginia. The Militia quells the rebellion, and Turner in eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.
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Publisher of the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.
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Introduced by Democratic representatives David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War. The proviso is blocked by Southerners, but continues to enflame the debate over slavery.
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It becomes one of the most influential works to stir anti-slavery sentiments.
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The legislation repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and renews tensions between anti- and pro slavery.
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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.
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Carving the former confederacy into five military districts and guaranteeing the civil rights to freed slaves.
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The landmark Supreme Court Decision holds that racial segregation is constitutional, paves the way for the repressive Jim Crow Laws in the South.
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The NAACP is founded in New York by prominent black and white intellectuals and led by W.E.B. Du Bois. For the next half century it would serve as the country's most influential African -American organization, dedicated to political equality and social justice in 1910,
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Marcus Garvey and the UNIA 1916.
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The Harlem Renaissance flourishes in the 1920's and 1930's. The literary, artistic, and intellectual movement fosters a new black cultural identity.
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Jackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball's color barrier when he is signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers by Branch Rickey.
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Although African Americans had participated in every major U, S, war, it was not until after World War II that President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order integrating the U.S. armed forces.
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Brown V. Board of education of Topeka, Kansas declares that racial segregation in school is constitutional.
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A young black boy Emmett Till is brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white women in Mississippi. Two white men charged with the crime are acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder. The public outrage generated by the case helps spur the civil rights movement.
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Rosa Parks refuses to giver up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger (Dec 1). In response to her arrest in Montgomery's black community launched a successful year-long bus boycott. Montgomery's buses are desegregated on December 21, 1956.
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Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus (Sept. 24). Federal troops and the National Guard are called to intervene on behalf of the students, who became known as the "Little Rock Nine" mange to graduate from Central High.
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Four black students in Greensboro, NC, begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolsworth's lunch counter (Feb 1.). Six months later the "Greensboro Four" are served lunch at the same Woolsworth's counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South.
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Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the south to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "Freedom Riders", as they are called, are attacked by mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by the (CORE) and the (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.
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The march on Washington for jobs and freedom is attended by about 250,000 people, the largest demonstration ever seen in the Nation's capitol. MLK delivers his famous "I have a dream" speech. The march builds momentum for civil rights legislation,
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Martin Luther King receives the nobel peace prize.
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President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
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The Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,
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President Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. He becomes the first Supreme Court Justice.
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President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
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Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tn.
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State troopers violently attack peaceful demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, as they try to cross Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Fifty marchers are hospitalized on "Bloody Sunday", as police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.
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The first riots in decades erupt in south-central LA after a jury acquits four white police officers after the videotaped beating of African-American Rodney King.
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Barack Obama, becomes the first African American to be elected president of the United States, defeating Republican candidate, Sen, John McCain.
