Early American Discrimination Timeline

  • Massacre at Mystic

    Massacre at Mystic
    The Mystic massacre – also known as the Pequot massacre and the Battle of Mystic Fort – took place on May 26, 1637 during the Pequot War, when Connecticut colonists under Captain John Mason and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies set fire to the Pequot Fort near the Mystic River.
  • The Scalp Act

    The Scalp Act
    On April 8, 1756, Governor Robert Morris enacted the Scalp Act. Anyone who brought in a male scalp above age of 12 would be given 150 pieces of eight, ($150), for females above age of 12 or males under the age of 12, they would be paid $130. The act turned all the tribes against the Pennsylvania legislature.
  • The 3/5ths Compromise

    The 3/5ths Compromise
    Three-fifths compromise, compromise agreement between delegates from the Northern and the Southern states at the United States Constitutional Convention (1787) that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for determining direct taxation and representation in the House of Representatives.
  • Slave Trade Ends in the United States

    Slave Trade Ends in the United States
    An act of Congress passed in 1800 made it illegal for Americans to engage in the slave trade between nations, and gave U.S. authorities the right to seize slave ships which were caught transporting slaves and confiscate their cargo. Then the "Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves" took effect in 1808. However, a domestic or "coastwise" trade in slaves persisted between ports within the United States, as demonstrated by slave manifests and court records.
  • Battle of Tippecanoe

    Battle of Tippecanoe
    The Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 was a conflict between the confederacy of native warriors led by Tecumseh, a Shawnee tribe member, and United States armed forces under the leadership of General William Henry Harrison
  • The Missouri Compromise

    The Missouri Compromise
    The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a law that tried to address growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery. By passing the law, which President James Monroe signed, the U.S. Congress admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state.
  • Indian Removal Act

    Indian Removal Act
    The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Native American tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for white settlement of their ancestral lands.
  • Nat Turners Rebellion

    Nat Turners Rebellion
    Nat Turner's Rebellion, also known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. The rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were White.
  • Trail of Tears

    Trail of Tears
    The Trail of Tears was a series of forced displacements of approximately 60,000 Indigenous people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Part of the Indian removal, the ethnic cleansing was gradual, occurring over a period of nearly two decades.
  • The Fugitive Slave Act

    The Fugitive Slave Act
    The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers
  • Dred Scott Decision

    Dred Scott Decision
    a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".
  • Emancipation Proclamation

    Emancipation Proclamation
    The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War.
  • 13th Amendment

    13th Amendment
    The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
  • 14th Amendment

    14th Amendment
    The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments
  • 15th Amendment

    15th Amendment
    Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.
  • Battle of Little Bighorn

    Battle of Little Bighorn
    The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass,and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of U.S. forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876.
  • Battle of Wounded Knee

    Battle of Wounded Knee
    The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army
  • Plessy vs. Ferguson

    Plessy vs. Ferguson
    Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal"