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The first “indentured servants” aka slaves made their way over to Virginia to be sold.
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Thomas Paine’s “African Slavery in America” published in the Pennsylvania Journal.
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Vermont is the first state to abolish slavery.
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Massachusetts outlaws slavery within its borders.
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Slaves now count as three fifths of a vote.
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The Atlantic slave trade was the enslavement and transportation, primarily of African people, to the colonies of the New World along the Atlantic coast and lasted from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
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The Fugitive Slave Act guaranteed the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave
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The Britain banned the slave trade but not slavery itself.
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The Congress bans the importation of slaves in Africa.
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Nat Turner an enslaved African-American preacher leads a slave uprising.
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Many saw the glaring contradiction in demanding freedom for themselves while holding slaves.
Although the economic center of slavery was in the South, Northerners also held slaves, as did Native Americans and even Blacks. -
18,000 Cherokee indians were forcibly moved of their land to oklahoma
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First Women's Rights convention met in Seneca Falls N.Y.
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Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and becomes one of the most effective leaders of the Underground Railroad.
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Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act and renewed tension between anti- and proslavery factions.
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The Dred Scott Decision was a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves were not protected by the Constitution and could NEVER be U.S. citizens.
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The last recorded slave ship to land on American soil was the Clotilde, which illegally smuggled a number of Africans into the town of Mobile, Alabama.
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The Civil War ends. The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, is ratified.
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15th Amendment barring racial discrimination in voting added to Constitution.
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Supreme Court invalidates 1875 Civil Rights Act, saying that the federal government cannot bar discrimination by corporations or individuals.
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Booker Taliaferro Washington was born into slavery to a white father and a slave mother in rural Virginia.
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Supreme Court approves "separate but equal" segregation doctrine.
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The National Negro Committee convened in New York City.
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Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play major league baseball.
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President Truman signs Executive Order 9981. This order allows anyone to join the armed forces, disregarding their race, color, religion, or national origin.
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The Civil Right Map of America divided the United States into 3 major categories: states with “discrimination for race or color forbidden by law;” states with “segregation of white and colored enforced by law (or permitted);” and states with “no legislation” related to civil rights.
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The murder of Emmett Till he was allegedly whistling at a white women, the women’s husband kidnapped him and shot him and was thrown in the river. In which his body was to be found 3 days later.
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Representative Patsy T. Mink was the first women of color to be elected into congress.
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The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights held a meeting in Washington to discuss the Senate Rules, a procedure that Southern senators utilized to block civil rights bills in debate by filibuster.
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The court case Brown v. Board of Education comes to a conclusion that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
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Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat for a white man on the buss and is arrested. This causes outrage in the black community, and a bus boycott begins and lasts for over a year. Eventually, a law is passed that African Americans no longer have to sit in the back of the bus.
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Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. Troops are sent to intervene on behalf of the students. These students formally become known as the "Little Rock Nine."
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The newly formed “Freedom Riders” are attacked by angry mobs as they drive through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities.
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James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violent riots surrounding the incident caused President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.
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Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested and jailed at an anti-segregation protest in Birmingham, Ala.
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During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Commissioner of Public Safety uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. This brutal act brings sympathy towards the civil rights movement and the people involved.
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Four young girls are killed by a bomb while attending Sunday school at their church. This causes riots to erupt and causes the deaths of two more black youths.
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The 24th Amendment removes the poll tax, which had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor African Americans to vote.
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The Council of Federated Organizations launches a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes known as the Freedom Summer.
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Malcolm X is shot to death. Malcolm X was a large influence in the civil rights movement and was an inspiration to many African Americans.
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A mass group of African Americans march to Montgomery in support of voting rights, but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a blockade consisting of police officers. Fifty African American marchers are hospitalized after police use whips, clubs, and tear gas against them.
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The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
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Detroit erupts into the worst race riots ever in the nation, with 43 people dead. During the nine months of the year, 164 other racial disturbances are reported across the country which kill at least 83 people.
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At age 39, Martin Luther King Jr. is tragically shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room.
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The Supreme Court rules, in a well-known reverse discrimination case that medical school admission programs that allow for positions based on race are unconstitutional.
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Congress passes the Civil Rights Restoration Act. This act expands the reach of non-discrimination laws within private institutions that receive federal funds.
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President Bush signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for damages in cases of discrimination within employment.
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The first race riot occurred during this time period when the jury acquitted 4 white police officers for beating African American Rodney King.
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The ringleader of the Mississippi civil rights murders (see Aug. 4, 1964), Edgar Ray Killen, is convicted of manslaughter on the 41st anniversary of the crimes.
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Barack Obama is the first African American to ever be president in the United States.
