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Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which requires any federal official to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave.
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"Uncle Tom's Cabin" is published by Harriet Tubman. It helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War.
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Case that led to Congress upholding slavery.
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The Union and Confederate armies fought each other.
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Ida B. Wells publishes her pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Date Unknown.
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U.S. Army recruits United States Colored Troops.
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Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the eleven states that were still in rebellion, excluding areas controlled by the Union and thus applying to 3 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time.
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The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Pulaski, Tennessee, made up of white Confederate veterans; it becomes a paramilitary insurgent group to enforce white supremacy
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The Supreme Court upholds the racial segregation of "separate but equal" facilities
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Planned first meeting of group which would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an interracial group devoted to civil rights.
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Rosa Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.
