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In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issues an edict, known as the “Dum Diversas” or the “Doctrine of Discovery, giving Portuguese explorers the authority to enslave non-Christian societies and people. -
In 1472, the Portuguese merchant, Ruy do Siqueira forms an agreement with the Oba of Benin to trade for slaves within the borders of the kingdom. -
In 1518, King Charles I of Spain allows the first slave expedition to bring African slaves to Spanish colonies in North America. -
In 1618-1619, captured Africans are seized from a Portuguese ship by English and Dutch privateers. They were bought to Virginia, traded, and 32 of them are brought to Jamestown in 1619. -
In 1662, the House of Burgesses of the Chesapeake colonies declared that whether a child was free or a slave depended on the condition of the mother.
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In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a group of indentured servants, former indentured servants, and some black slaves, in a rebellion against the planter elite. The elite switched from using white indentured servants to black slaves for labor to avoid conflict with the white laborers and decrease the chance of another rebellion. -
From 1775 to 1783, and even before that, African Americans were influenced by the ideas of the enlightenment. Many slaves advocated for their freedom and natural rights as said by John Locke, and there were both black Patriots and Loyalists on both side of the war.
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Ratified on July 13, 1787, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was legislation that banned slavery north of the Ohio River but left territory in the south of the river open to slavery expansion. The ordinance would act as a precedent for excluding slavery from new territory. -
Ratified on March 4, 1789, the U.S. Constitution included many clauses in favor of slavery. For example, a clause in the Constitution had it that Congress could not abolish the slave trade until 1808, causing many Africans to be transported to America for slavery. Another clause led to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which allowed slave owners to go over state lines to capture escaped slaves. The 3/5th's Clause also gave the Southern states more power. -
Ratified on March 6, 1820, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Missouri to become a slave state, Maine a free state, and banned slavery 36 degrees of the 30 line of latitude in the Louisiana Territory. This set a precedent for new free and slave states and led to relations souring between the North and South. -
The Civil War between the Union and Confederacy started on April 12, 1861, and ended April 9, 1865. The war led to the creation of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, and abolished slavery overall. -
Issued on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Nearly four million slaves in areas of the Confederacy were freed. -
Andrew Johnson was sworn in as President on April 4, 1865. He would go on to placate white Southerners, allow former Confederates power on the state level, and ultimately ruin Reconstruction. -
Ratified on December 18, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and indentured servitude except in cases of punishment. -
Ratified on July 9, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment gave African Americans equal civil and legal rights as white Americans which was important for their freedom and the Reconstruction process. -
Ratified on February 3, 1870, black men were given the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment. -
Plessy v. Ferguson was case between Homer Adolph Plessy and District Judge John H. Ferguson about the law that segregated trains in Louisiana. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Justice Henry Billing Brown declared the law did not deny Plessy his Fourteenth Amendment rights and this set a precedent for Jim Crow. -
On February 8, 1915, the film The Birth of a Nation, is released. The impact it has on America society is so large that it incites violence against African Americans and brings back the Ku Klux Klan. -
On May 17,1954, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, declaring that the Fourteenth Amendment had been violated and leading the way to desegregation. -
On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, preventing discrimination by sex, race, nationality, or religion in public spaces.