The History of African Americans

  • Crispus Attucks Dies in Boston Massacre

    The indictment for the death of Crispus Attucks describes how he died and accuses William Warren for his death by firing two bullets that hit him in the chest.
  • Nat Turner Rebellion

    Nat Turner Rebellion
    A slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, during August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55 to 65 people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the American South.
  • Amistad Revolt

    Amistad was sailing from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba, when the ship's unwilling passengers, 53 slave recently abducted from Africa, revolted.
  • Fugitive Slave Law

    Fugitive Slave Law
    Passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.
  • Dred Scott vs. Sanford

    Dred Scott vs. Sanford
    a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States.
  • John Browns Raid

    John Browns Raid
    An attempt by the white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 by seizing a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accompanied by 20 men in his party, was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his formative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness
  • 13th Amendment

    13th Amendment
    The United States Constitution 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.
  • Assasination of President Lincoln

    Assasination of President Lincoln
    President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning, and Andrew Johnson became the president.
  • End Of Civil War

    End Of Civil War
    Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House.
  • 14th Amendment

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

    15th Amendment
    The United States Constitution 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". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
  • Wilmington, NC Riot

    Wilmington, NC Riot
    Tis event occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina starting on November 10, 1898 into the following days; it is considered a turning point in North Carolina politics following Reconstruction. Originally described as a race riot, it is now observed as a coup d'etat with insurgents having overthrown the legitimately elected local government.
  • Rosewood Massacre

    Rosewood Massacre
    In the violence at least six blacks and two whites were killed, and the town of Rosewood was abandoned and destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a race riot. Racial disturbances were common during the early 20th century in the United States, reflecting the nation's rapid social changes.
  • Scottsboro Boys

    Scottsboro Boys
    Nine black teenagers were accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The case included a frameup, an all-white jury, rushed trials, an attempted lynching, and an angry mob; it is frequently given as an example of an overall miscarriage of justice.
  • McLaurin vs. Oklahoma

    McLaurin vs. Oklahoma
    McLaurin then appealed to the US Supreme Court. On June 5, 1950, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his/her race as doing so deprived the student of his/her Fourteenth Amendment rights of Equal Protection.
  • Sweatt vs. Painter

    Sweatt vs. Painter
    The case involved a black man, Heman Marion Sweatt, who was refused admission to the School of Law of the University of Texas, whose president was Theophilus Painter, on the grounds that the Texas State Constitution prohibited integrated education. At the time, no law school in Texas would admit black students, or, in the language of the time, "Negro" students.
  • Brown vs. Board (Day of SC decision)

    Brown vs. Board (Day of SC decision)
    The U.S. Supreme Court, ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
  • Death of Emmit Till

    Death of Emmit Till
    An African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman.
  • Little Rock Nine (First Day of School)

    Little Rock Nine (First Day of School)
    A group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower.
  • Ruby Bridges First Day at WFES)

    Ruby Bridges First Day at WFES)
    Ruby is an American activist known for being the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South. She attended William Frantz Elementary School.
  • James Meredith (First Day at Ole Miss)

    James Meredith (First Day at Ole Miss)
    James H. Meredith became the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi, after being barred from entering on September 20 and several other occasions in the following days. His enrollment, publicly opposed by segregationist Governor Ross Barnett, sparked riots on the Oxford campus, which required the U.S. Marshals.
  • March on Washington

    as styled in a sound recording released after the event, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C..Thousands of Americans headed to Washington on Tuesday August 27, 1963. On Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to ra
  • 16th Street Church Bombing

    In Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 as an act of white supremacist terrorism. The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the United States 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • Assaination of Malcom X

    Assaination of Malcom X
    He was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled, "Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!" As Malcolm X and his bodyguards tried to quell the disturbance,[I] a man rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun; two other men charged the stage firing sem
  • March on Selma

    When 600 marchers were protesting the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and ongoing exclusion from the electoral process, were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. The second march took place March 9; police and marchers stood off against one another, but when the troopers stepped aside to let them pass, Dr. Martin Luther King turned the marchers back around to go back to the church.
  • The Beating of Rodeny King

    He was an African-American construction worker who became nationally known after being beaten by Los Angeles police officers, following a high-speed car chase on March 3, 1991. A local witness, George Holliday, videotaped much of it from his balcony.
  • Orangeburg Massacre

    The Orangeburg Massacre refers to the shooting of protestors by South Carolina Highway Patrol Officers that were demonstrating against racial segregation at a local bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina near South Carolina State University on the evening of February 8, 1968. Of the 150 protestors in the crowd that night, three African American males were killed and twenty-eight other protestors were injured.
  • Assasination of MLK, Jr.

    He was an american clergyman, activist, and prominent leader of the African-American civil rights movement. While he was standing on the motel's second floor balcony, King was struck by a single .30-06 bullet fired from a Remington Model 760.
  • Arrest of Angela Davis

    Arrest of Angela Davis
    Angela is an American political activist, scholar, and author.Davis had purchased the firearms used in the attack, including the shotgun used to kill Harold Haley, which had been bought two days prior and the barrel sawed off.On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City.
  • Lucy is discovered

    Lucy is discovered
    Several hundred pieces of bone representing a female Australopithecus afarensis was found.
  • ROOTS was published

    ROOTS was published
    Root: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley. It tells a sttory of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery.