-
Feb 18, 1492
Christopher Columbus
A black navigator, Pedro Alonso Niño, travels with Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the New World. -
Aug 15, 1551
Las Casas
On August 15, Pentecost Sunday, listens to a sermon by a Dominican priest, Father Antonio de Montesinos on the text "I am a voice crying in the wilderness," denouncing Spain's treatment of the Indians. As a result Las Casas returns his Indian serfs to the governor and the rest of his life is to be spent in defense of the Indian -
Harriet Tubman
The first African slaves are brought to Virginia -
Lucy Terry
"Bars Fight," the first known poem by an African American. A description of an Indian raid on Terry's hometown in Massachusetts, the poem will be passed down orally and published in 1855. -
Crispus Attucks
Crispus Attucks, an escaped slave, becomes the first Colonial soldier to die for American independence when he is killed by the British in the Boston Massacre. -
Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker publishes the first almanac by an blackAfrican-AmericanAfrican American and is appointed by President George Washington to help survey Washington, D.C. -
Gabriel Prosser
Gabriel Prosser tries to organize the first large-scale slave revolt in the U.S., gathering more than 1,000 armed slaves in Virginia. The revolt fails, and Prosser and more than 35 other slaves are executed. -
John B Russwurm & Samuel Cornish
The first African American newspaper in the U.S., Freedom's Journal, is published in New York by John Brown Russwurm and Samuel Cornish. -
David Walker
In his pamphlet "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World," African American activist David Walker of Boston calls for a national slave rebellion. -
Nat Turner
Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion in Virginia. Fifty-seven whites are killed, but Turner is eventually captured and executed. -
Herny Blair
Henry Blair is the first African American to receive a patent, for a cotton-planting machine. -
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, an international bestseller. -
Sojourner Truth
Freedwoman Sojourner Truth, a compelling speaker for abolitionism, gives her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech in Akron, Ohio. -
Harriet Wilson
Harriet Wilson publishes Our Nig; Or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, the first novel by an African American woman. The novel will be republished over a century later by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -
Coretta Scott King
Had been the first black to enrolled in to Anticch College -
Plessy v. Ferguson
the Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation, overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white person, triggering a successful, year-long African American boycott of the bus system. -
Nelson Mandela
Accused of conspiring to overthrow the South African state by violent means with 155 other political activists and charged with high treason. The Treason Trial of 1956–61 follows and all were acquitted -
Malcolm X
He forms the Organization for Afro-American Unity -
Claudette Colvin
On March 2, 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional.
