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Crispus Attucks dies in the Boston Massacre
On the night of March 5, 1770, five citizens of Boston died when eight British soldiers fired on a large and unruly crowd that was menacing them. -
Fugitive salve Law
On February 12th, Congress passed the first fugitive slave law, requiring all states, including those that forbid slavery, to forcibly return slaves who have escaped from other states to their original owners. -
Nat Turners Rebellion
In 1831 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. -
Amistad Revolt
A 25-year-old slave named Sengbe Pieh (or "Cinque" to his Spanish captors) broke out of his shackles and released the other Africans. The slaves then revolted, killing most of the crew of the Amistad, including her cook and captain. The Africans then forced Montez and Ruiz to return the ship to Africa -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act mandated the return of runaway slaves, regardless of where in the Union they might be situated at the time of their discovery or capture. -
Scott vs. Sanford
The U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision on Sanford v. Dred Scott, a case that intensified national divisions over the issue of slavery -
John Browns Raid
On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of HARPER'S FERRY, Virginia. His plan was to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. -
SC Secedes from the Union
Seceded because Lincoln won election. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free. -
13th amendment
Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. -
Assassination of President Lincoln
On April 14, 1865, 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. -
End of Civil War
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay. -
14th amendment
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. -
15th Amendment
the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans -
Plessy vs. Ferguson
In 1896, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Henry Brown of Michigan delivered the majority opinion, which sustained the constitutionality of Louisiana’s Jim Crow law -
Phoenix Election Riot
In 1898 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. -
Wilmington, NC riot
On the morning of November 10, 1898, a throng of some 2,000 armed white men took to the streets of the Southern port town of Wilmington, North Carolina. Spurred on by white supremacist politicians and businessmen, the mob burned the offices of a prominent African-American newspaper, sparking a frenzy of urban warfare that saw dozens of blacks gunned down in the streets -
Rosewood Massacre
On January 1, 1923 a massacre was carried out in the small, predominately black town of Rosewood in Central Florida. 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. -
Scottsboro Boys
Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left -
Sweatt vs. Painter
Petitioner was denied admission to the state supported University of Texas Law School, solely because he is a Negro and state law forbids the admission of Negroes to that Law School. -
Mc Laurin vs. Oklahoma
Appellant, a Negro citizen of Oklahoma possessing a master's degree, was admitted to the Graduate School of the state supported University of Oklahoma as a candidate for a doctorate in education and was permitted to use the same classroom, library and cafeteria as white students. -
Brown vs. Board
On May 14, 1954, he delivered the opinion of the Court, stating that "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . ." -
Death of Emmett Till
Emmett Tills corpse was recovered but was so disfigured that Mose Wright could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till's mother, Mamie Bradley, requested it be sent back to Chicago -
Little Rock 9
On September 25, 1957, under federal troop escort, the Nine were escorted back into Central for their first full day of classes. -
Ruby Bridges
On the morning of November 14, 1960, federal marshals drove Ruby and her mother five blocks to her new school. -
James Meredith
On October 1, 1962, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.Meredith graduated with a degree in political science in 1963. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. -
16th St. Church Bombing
On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls. This murderous act shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement. -
Assassination Of Malcom X
Malcolm X had ten bullet wounds in his chest, thigh and ankle, plus four bullet creases in the chest and thigh. -
March on Selma
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. -
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States -
Watts Riots
The riot spurred from an incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway Patrolman, for suspicion of driving while intoxicated -
Orangeburg Massacre
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 others. -
Assassination Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee -
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 -
Lucy is discovered
Lucy is discovered by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray -
Roots was published
In 1976, after twelve years of research, Alex published Roots, a novel based loosely on his family's history. -
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 -
Barack Obama becomes the 1st black President
On November 4th 2008 Senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeats Senator John McCain of Arizona to become the 44th U.S. president, and the first African American elected to the White House. The 47-year-old Democrat garnered 365 electoral votes and nearly 53 percent of the popular vote
