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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. The troops had been sent to Boston in late 1768 to support the civil authorities and were themselves subject to the jurisdiction of the local courts. All eight soldiers were jailed and tried for murder. They were defended by John Adams, who later became the second President of the United States, -
Nat Turner's 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. 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 road to warn others. -
The Amistad Revolt
Early in the morning, Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rise up against their captors, killing two crewmembers and seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to a life of slavery on a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. -
Fugitive Slave Laws
The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory. -
The Fugitive Slave Act
The act required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. The act also made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves. -
Dred Scott v. Sandford
March 6, 1857. Delivered by Chief Justice Roger Taney, this opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. In addition, this decision declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. -
John Brown's 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 no
this was not to be.He didnt suceed -
SC Suceeds from Union
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first Southern state to declare its secession and later formed the Confederacy. The first shots of the Civil War were fired in Charleston by its Citadel cadets upon a civilian merchant ship Star of the West bringing supplies to the beleaguered Federal garrison at Fort Sumter January 9, 1861. The April 1861 Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter ignited what became a four-year struggle that divided the nation. -
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." -
The 13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction -
The Assassination of Abraham 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. 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. -
America Ends The Civil War
In an event that is generally regarded as marking the end of the Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signs the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators. With Smith's surrender, the last Confederate army ceased to exist, bringing a formal end to the bloodiest four years in U.S. history. -
The 14th Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. -
The 15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
In a 7 to 1 decision the "separate but equal" provision of public accommodations by state governments was found to be constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause -
The Phoenix Election Riot
Violence ensued when Mr. Ethridge, a respected man in Phoenix was shot dead after he attempted to take the control of the ballot boxes away from the Tolberts. Next a group of armed white Democrats physically attacked Thomas Tolbert for collecting black ballots. The majority of whites claimed that the blacks had brutally killed a faultless man, while conversely the blacks believed that their right to vote was threatened. A race riot ensued, with blacks running to the defense of the Tolbert famil -
Wilimington NC Riot
In November 1898, a mob of up to 2,000 whites roamed the streets of Wilmington, burned the offices of the black-owned Wilmington Record newspaper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents, ran black and white Republican leaders out of town and forced the legally elected Republican city government to resign. The city officials were replaced by a slate of white Democrats chosen by a secret committee. -
The Rosewood Massacre
Rosewood was a quiet, primarily black community. Spurred by unsupported accusations that a white woman in nearby Sumner had been beaten and possibly raped by a black drifter, white men from nearby towns lynched a Rosewood resident. When black citizens defended themselves against further attack, several hundred whites combed the countryside hunting for black people and burned almost every structure in Rosewood. Survivors hid for several days in nearby swamps and were evacuated by train and car. -
The Scottsboro Boys
Alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run. 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. -
The Congressional Hearing ends 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. It resulted in new laws governing medical experiments on humans, and—some would argue—a legacy of suspicion of the medical community that continues among many African Americans. -
The Death of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants--the white woman's husband and her brother--made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body in the river. -
Little Rock 9 (First day of School)
On 4 September 1957, the first day of school at Central High, a white mob gathered in front of the school, and Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering. In response to Faubus’ action, a team of NAACP lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, won a federal district court injunction to prevent the governor from blocking the students’ entry. With the help of police escorts, the students successfully entered the school through a side entrance -
James Meredith (1st day at Ole Miss.)
James Meredith's first day of college at Ole Miss. was different than most, the preseident required the military to excort him to class. They believed that there may be a "miniwar" but the protestors decided to keep it nonviolent. -
The 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. Bombing
On September 15, a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama–a church with a predominantly black congregation that served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured; outrage over the incident and the violent clash between protesters and police that followed helped draw national attention to the hard-fought, often dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans. -
Assassination of Malcom 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 was 39. -
The March on Selma
Also known as Bloody Sunday and the two marches that followed, were marches and protests held in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. All three were attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery where the Alabama capitol is located. -
Voting Rights Act
The Act establishes extensive federal oversight over elections. Echoing the language of the Fifteenth Amendment, Section 2 of the Act generally prohibits any state or local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities. Additionally, the Act specifically outlaws literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disfranchise racial minorities. -
Watts Riots
The Watts Riots (or Watts Rebellion)[1] was a race riot that took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 17, 1965. The six-day unrest resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and over $40 million in property damage. It was the most severe riot in the city's history until the Los Angeles riots of 1992. -
Orangeburg Massarce
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. -
The Assassination of MLK
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader 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. -
The 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. -
Lucy's Discovery
Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray on the November 24, 1974, at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. -
The Beating of Rodeny King
Rodney Glen King was an African-American construction worker who became nationally known after being beaten by Los Angeles police officers, following a high-speed car chase The footage shows five officers surrounding King, several of them striking him repeatedly, while other officers stood by. Part of the footage was aired around the world, inflaming outrage in cities where racial tension was high, and raising public concern about police treatment of minorities. -
President Obama First black US President
His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others. -
Roots Beginning
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Ruby Bridges (First Day of School)
Federal marshals drove her the five blocks to William Frantz. In the car one of the men explained that when they arrived at the school two marshals would walk in front of them an two behind, so they would be protected on both sides. Sure enough, people shouted and shook their fist when they got out of the car, IRuby held hermother's hand and followed the marshals through the crowd, up the steps into the school.spent that whole day sitting in the principal's office never made it to her class.
