Black History Timeline

  • Missouri compromise

    Missouri CompromiseThe Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. Admission of Missouri as a slave state would upset that balance; it would also set a precedent for congressional acquiescence in the expansion of slavery. Earlier in 1819, when Missouri was b
  • Starting of the 13th ammendment

    the 13th ammendmentThe 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.
  • Jackie Robinson

    Jackie RobinsonJack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) second baseman who became the first African American to play in the major leagues in the modern era.[1] Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. The Dodgers, by playing Robinson, ended racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s.[2] Robinson was inducted into the Basebal
  • Sandra Brown

    Sandra BrownSandra Brown was born in Waco, Texas, and raised in Fort Worth. She majored in English at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, but left college in 1968 to marry her husband, Michael Brown, a former television news anchor and award-winning documentarian of Dust to Dust.[1] After her marriage, Brown worked for KLTV in Tyler as a weathercaster, then returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex area where she became a reporter for WFAA-TV's version of PM Magazine.
  • emmett till murder

    Emmit Till MurderFourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them.
  • Barack Obama Bio

    Barack Obama BioBorn on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States. He was a community organizer, civil-rights lawyer and teacher before pursuing a political career. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 and to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He was elected to the U.S. presidency in 2008, and won re-election in 2012 against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination

    emmett till murderMartin Luther King, Jr., was an American clergyman and civil rights leader who was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
  • Central Park 5

    The Central Park 5HE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, a new film from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. The film chronicles The Central Park Jogger case, for the first time from the perspective of these five teenagers whose lives were upended by this miscarriage of justice.
  • Trayvon Martin

    Trayvon MartinTrayvon Martin was born in Florida on February 5, 1995. An athletically-inclined teen with an eye towards aviation, Martin had no criminal record when he was shot and killed by neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman's initial release and later arrest sparked a national debate over racial profiling and the role of armed neighborhood watch members in law enforcement. On July 13, 2013, a jury acquitted Zimmerman of murder. The Trayvon Martin
  • Shooting of Michael Brown

    Shooting Of Michael BrownThe shooting of Michael Brown occurred on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white Ferguson police officer.