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Labor in North America colonies was rapidly growing, most white Europeans used servants (mainly poor Europeans) to do the labor for them. When a Dutch brought 20 Africans ashore in the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery quickly spread across American colonies. -
A native of Connectcut, John Brown struggled to financially support his family and moved state to state thoughout his life. On October 16, 1859 he led a small band less than 50 men in a raid against the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. He was hanged on December 2, 1859 after they were caught by federal and state governemnts sent troops. Brown's courage turned some people in the South against slavery and his actions made slave owners not want to abolish slavery. -
In 1865 the 13th amendment was adopted to officially ablosih slavery. The follwoing year, the 14th amendment was established granting "equal protection” of the Constitution to people who had been enslaved. In 1870 the 15th amendement guaranteed that a citizen’s right to vote would not be denied—on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Although the African American's were happy about this, white folks thought that their power was slipping away creating the KKK (Ku Klux Clan) -
In June 1905, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), interracial American organization created to work for the abolition of segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation. To oppose racism and to ensure African Americans their constitutional rights. -
The Harlem Renaissance was a good year for African American writers, artists, politics, and musicians. The Harlem Renaissance was happening during the great depression, it gave African Americans to be proud of over how the black experience was represented in American culture as well as setting the stage for the civil rights movement. -
Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the United States during the 20th century. On April 15, 1947, he broke the decades-old “colour line” of Major League Baseball when he appeared on the field for the National League Brooklyn Dodgers in a game against the Boston Braves. -
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment. In 1954 the decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal. -
In 1955, a boy from Chicago, came to Money, Mississippi to visit realtives had went to the grocery and allededly whistled and made a flirtatious remark to the white woman behind the counter, violating the strict racial codes of the Jim Crow South. A few days later, two white men- the womans husband and his halfbrother -dragged Till from his great uncle’s house in the middle of the night. He was beaten, shot dead, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. Justice was never brought to Emmett. -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. -
The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school. -
In his “I Have a Dream” speech, minister and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. outlines the long history of racial injustice in America and encourages his audience to hold their country accountable to its own founding promises of freedom, justice, and equality. He gave his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in front of 250,000 people, after participating in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. -
After JFK's assasination, in 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
In March of that year, in an effort to register Black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. -
The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner after leaving his hotel room on the balconey when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old. -
Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. In 1984, Jesse Jackson became the second African American (after Shirley Chisholm) to mount a nationwide campaign for President of the United States, running as a Democrat. He ran again in 1988 and received 6.6 million votes, or 24 percent of the total primary vote, winning seven states and finishing second behind the eventual Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis. -
Four policemen acquitted of beating Rodney King Killing of Latasha Harlins Racial tension within Los Angeles, which resulted into violent riot. Widespread rioting, looting, assault, arson, protests, vandalism, shootouts, many homes and businesses damaged, etc. When the riots ended, 63 people had been killed, 2,383 had been injured, more than 12,000 had been arrested, and estimates of property damage were over $1 billion. -
Barack Obama is the first African American to become president in the United States. He grew up in Hawaii and studied at Harvard Law School. In Februrary 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. After withstanding a tight Democratic primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady, Obama defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona in the general election that November. He was reelected in 2012. -
The movement swelled to a critical juncture on May 25, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic when 46-year-old George Floyd died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd’s killing came on the heels of two other high-profile cases in 2020. After months of quarantine and isolation during a global pandemic, protests mounted, spreading across the country in the following days and weeks. -
Kamala Harris became the first woman and first woman of color to become vice president of the United States. Then-candidate Joe Biden had nominated Harris in August 2020 during the Democratic party’s “remote” national convention. In her victory speech in November 2020, Harris said that she was thinking "about the generations of women, Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all.”