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Sweatt vs. Painter (day of SC decision)
Racial separation by force of law was a historic custom in the United States until the decision of Sweatt v. Painter by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1950. The manner in which segregation of the races by state action in a variety of contexts became established at law, in the face of the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibiting a state from denying to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, is perhaps best revealed by the case of Plessey v. Ferguson, decided by. -
Crispus Attucks dies in the Boston Massacre
Crispus Attucks, one of the first men to die for American Revolution, was a fugitive slave who had escaped from his master and had worked for twenty years as a merchant seaman. -
Amistad Revolt
, 53 African natives were kidnapped from eastern Africa and sold into the Spanish slave trade. They were then placed aboard a Spanish slave ship bound for Havana, Cuba.The slaves were shackled and loaded aboard the cargo schooler Amistad for the brief coastal voyage.However, three days into the journey, a 25-year-old slave named Sengbe Pieh broke out of his shackles and released the other Africans Africans. The slaves then revolted, killing most of the crew . -
Nat Turners Rebellion
A slave named Nat Turner led a rebellion in Southhampton County, Virginia. A religious leader and self-styled Baptist minister, Turner and a group of followers killed some sixty white men, women, and children on the night of August 21. Turner and 16 of his conspirators were captured and executed, but the incident continued to haunt Southern whites. Blacks were randomly killed all over Southhampton County; many were beheaded and their heads left along the roads to warn others. -
Fugitive Slave Law
This controversial law allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. Because it was often presumed that a black person was a slave, the law threatened the safety of all blacks, slave and free, and forced many Northerners to become more defiant in their support of fugitives. S. M. Africanus presents objections in prose and verse to justify noncompliance with this law. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. -
Scott v. Sanford (day of decision)
The United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. -
John Browns Raid
John Brown, a staunch abolitionist, and a group of his supporters left their farmhouse hide-out en route to Harpers Ferry. Descending upon the town in the early hours of October 17th, Brown and his men captured prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. Brown had hopes that the local slave population would join the raid and through the raid’s success weapons would be supplied to slaves and freedom fighters throughout the country; this was not to be. -
SC Secedes from the Union
On this day, a secession convention meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, unanimously adopted an ordinance dissolving the connection between South Carolina and the United States of America. -
Emancipation Proclamation
It declared that "all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free"—but it applied only to states designated as being in rebellion, not to the slave-holding border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri or to areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control. -
13th amendment
Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War -
End of Civil War
The conclusion of the American Civil War which includes important battles, skirmishes, raids and other events of 1865. These led to additional Confederate surrenders, key Confederate captures, and disbandments of Confederate military units that occurred after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865.[1] -
Assassination of President Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. -
14th amendment
The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
15th Amendment
Prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude -
Plessy v Ferguson (day of SC decision)
A landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal". -
Phoenix Election riot
blacks in South Carolina outnumbered whites 3 to 1. The majority of whites at the time feared blacks possessed too much power and therefore supported decreasing the black vote through disfranchisement. One family in South Carolina, The Tolberts, stood in stark contrast to the majority and supported black rights -
Wilmington, NC riot
The riots began when a group of as many as 1000 men broke into a printing press used by Alex Manly. They continued to break into the building, destroy the printing press, and then burn the building to the ground. During the riots a mob of clergymen, lawyers, bankers, and merchants who all believed that they were asserting their rights as citizens,and proceeded to banish many blacks from the city as well as murdered an unknown number. -
Rosewood Massacre
The massacre was instigated by the rumor that a white woman, Fanny Taylor, had been sexually assaulted by a black man in her home in a nearby community. A group of white men, believing this rapist to be a recently escaped convict named Jesse Hunter who was hiding in Rosewood, assembled to capture this man. -
Scottsboro Boys (day event started)
Nine black teenage boys are 'hoboing' on the Southern Railway line between Chattanooga and Memphis. A fight breaks out on the train between the teenagers and a group of white men and women resulting in the whites being thrown off the train. The train is searched in Paint Rock, Alabama, under instructions to 'capture every Negro on the train'. The boys are arrested on charges of assault. After accusations from two of the white women involved in the fight, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, the charge -
Congressional Hearings end for Tuskegee Study
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study constituted one of the most shameful acts in the history of American medicine. The repercussions of this study, which allowed 400 African American men afflicted with syphilis to go untreated for a period of almost 40 years, are felt to this day -
Mc Laurin vs. Oklahoma (day of SC decision)
George W. McLaurin was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma’s Doctorate in Education program, solely because of his race. A state statute declared it a misdemeanor to operate a school in which both whites and African American students were taught. McLaurin filed suit, and a three-judge panel in federal court struck down the law, ordering the University to admit McLaurin. -
Brown vs. Board (day of SC decision)
Was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. -
Ruby Bridges
Ruby Bridges was the first African-American child to attend an all-white public elementary school in the American South. -
Death of Emmett Till
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. Till's murder and open casket funeral galvanized the emerging Civil Rights Movement. -
Little Rock 9
n a key event of the American Civil Rights Movement, nine black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, testing a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The court had mandated that all public schools in the country be integrated “with all deliberate speed” in its decision related to the groundbreaking case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. -
James Meredith
James Meredith is a civil rights activist who became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962. -
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by a number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. The march, which became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United States, culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Drea -
16th St. Church Bombing
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy.On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out ofa car and placing a bomb box under the the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m.,the bomb exploded killing The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
The former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He joined the Nation of Islam while in prison and adopted his new name upon his release in 1952.Malcolm X rose quickly in the organization and traveled the country preaching the message of the Black Muslims, including the belief that blacks were superior to whites. -
March on Selma
Throughout March of 1965, a group of demonstrators faced violence as they attempted to march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama to demand the right to vote for black people.One of the pivotal days was March 7, when 17 people were injured by police, including future Congressman John Lewis. Since that time, March 7th has been known as "Bloody Sunday." -
Beating of Rodney King
Rodney King was caught by the Los Angeles police after a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991. The officers pulled him out of the car and beat him brutally, while amateur cameraman George Holliday caught it all on videotape. The four L.A.P.D. officers involved were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer. However, after a three-month trial, a predominantly white jury acquitted the officers -
Watts Riots
The Watts Riot, which raged for six days and resulted in more than forty million dollars worth of property damage, was both the largest and costliest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era. -
Orangeburg Massacre
An act of racism in a small Southern town led to a peaceful protest by frustrated black college students who were denied use of the community’s only bowling alley. A conservative Southern governor, wanting to appear tough to his white constituents, overreacted to the civil rights protest ordering a massive show of armed force. As emotions frayed and the situation veered out of control, nine white highway patrolmen opened gunfire onto a college campus killing three black students and wounding 27 -
Assassination of MLK, Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. The .30-caliber rifle bullet entered King's right cheek, traveled through his neck, and finally stopped at his shoulder blade. King was immediately taken to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Arrest of Angela Davis
Angela Davis was arrested in New York by the FBI on Tuesday October 13th 1970. She had been on the run for over two months, crossing the country from Los Angeles to New York. -
Congressional Hearings end for Tuskegee Study
South Carolina was a site of major political and military importance for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The white population of the state strongly supported the institution of slavery long before the war. Political leaders such as John C. Calhoun and Preston Brooks had inflamed regional (and national) passions, and for years before the eventual start of the Civil War in 1861, voices cried for secession -
LUCY is discovered
Paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson is the man who found the woman that shook up our family tree. In 1974, Johanson discovered a 3.2 million-year-old fossil of a female skeleton in Ethiopia that would forever change our understanding of human origins. -
ROOTS was published
Roots chronicles the progress of Haley's own family across many generations, from the kidnapping of an African warrior by American slave traders to eventual post-Civil War freedom. -
Barack Obama becomes first black president
Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States. -
Voting Rights Act
A landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting.
