Chapter 8 - Timeline of the history of the Blacks in America

16th century

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The Spanish colony of St. Augustine  in  Florida became the first permanent European settlement in what would become the US centuries later; it included an unknown number of African slaves.
17th century

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• The first record of Africans in English colonial America when men were brought at first to Fort Monroe off the coast of  Hampton, Virginia, and then to the  Jamestown colony who had been taken as prizes from a Spanish ship. They were treated as indentured servants and at least one was recorded as eventually owning land in the colony.

• John Punch, a black indentured servant, ran away with two white indentured servants, James Gregory and Victor. After the three were captured, Punch was sentenced to serve Virginia planter Hugh Gwyn for life. This made John Punch the first legally documented slave in Virginia and thus, the US.

• John Casor, a black man who claimed to have completed his term of indenture, became the first legally recognized slave-for-life in a civil case in the Virginia colony. The court ruled with his master who said he had an indefinite servitude for life.

• Royal African Company is founded in England, allowing slaves to be shipped from Africa to the british colonies in the continent of North America and the Caribbean islands. England enters the slave trade.

18th century

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• The Virginia Slave codes define as slaves all those servants brought into the colony who were not Christian in their original countries, as well as those American Indians sold by other Indians to colonists.
• September 9 – In the Stono  Rebellion,  South Carolina slaves gather at the Stono River to plan an armed march for freedom.

• Benjamin Banneker designed and built the first clock in the British American colonies. He also created a series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and wrote that "blacks were intellectually equal to whites". Banneker worked with Pierre L'Enfant to survey and design a street and urban plan for Washington, D.C.

• Jupiter Hammon has a poem printed, becoming the first published African-American poet.

• Non-Importation Agreements – The First Continental Congress creates a multi-colony agreement to forbid importation of anything from British merchants. This implicitly includes slaves, and stops the slave trade in  Philadelphia. The second similar act explicitly stops the slave trade.

• The first black Baptist congregations are organized in the South: Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina, and First African Baptist Church near Petersburg, Virginia.

• Thousands of enslaved African Americans in the South escape to British lines, as they were promised freedom to fight with the British. In South Carolina, 25,000 enslaved African Americans, one-quarter of those held, escape to the British or otherwise leave their plantations. After the war, many African Americans are evacuated with the British for England; more than 3,000 Black Loyalists are transported with other Loyalists to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where they are granted land. Still others go to Jamaica and the West Indies. An estimated 8–10,000 were evacuated from the colonies in these years as free people, about 50 percent of those slaves who defected to the British and about 80 percent of those who survived.

• July 8 – The Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) abolishes slavery, the first future state to do so. No slaves were held in Vermont.

• Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery.
• The First African Baptist Church of  Savannah, Georgia is organized under  Andrew Bryan.

• Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper South free their slaves; the percentage of free blacks rises from less than one to 10 percent.

• February 12 – The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 is passed.

• July – Two independent black churches open in Philadelphia: the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, with Absalom Jones, and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, with Richard Allen, the latter the first church of what would become in 1816 the first independent black denomination in the United States.

19th century
=========

1800–1859
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• The first Black Codes enacted.

• At the urging of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. It makes it a federal crime to import a slave from abroad.

• The first separate black denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church  (AME) is founded by Richard Allen, who is elected its first bishop.

• The American Colonization Society is begun by Robert Finley, to send free African Americans to what is to become Liberia in West Africa.

• March 6 – The Missouri Compromise allows for the entry as states of Maine (free) and  Missouri (slave); no more slave states are allowed north of 36°30′.

• The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is formed.

• October 28 – Josiah Henson, a slave who fled and arrived in Canada, is an author, abolitionist, minister and the inspiration behind the book Uncle Tom's Cabin.

• William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. He declares ownership of a slave is a great sin and must stop immediately.

• August – Nat Turner leads the most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history. The rebellion is suppressed, but only after many deaths.

• Sarah Harris Fayerweather, an aspiring teacher, is admitted to Prudence Crandall's all-girl school in Canterbury, Connecticut, resulting in the first racially integrated schoolhouse in the United States. Her admission led to the school's forcible closure under the Connecticut Black Law of 1833. 

• The American Anti-Slavery Society, an  abolitionist society, is founded by  William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan.  Frederick Douglass becomes a key leader of the society.

• February – The first Institute of Higher Education for African Americans is founded. Founded as the African Institute in February 1837 and renamed the Institute of Coloured Youth (ICY) in April 1837 and now known as Cheyney University  of  Pennsylvania.

• The U.S. Supreme Court rules, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), that states do not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves, greatly weakening the fugitive slave law of 1793.

• June 1 – Isabella Baumfree, a former slave, changes her name to Sojourner Truth and begins to preach for the abolition of slavery.

• August – Henry Highland Garnet delivers his famous speech Call to Rebellion.

• Frederick Douglass begins publication of the abolitionist newspaper the North Star.

• Joseph Jenkins Roberts of Virginia becomes the first president of Liberia.

• Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery to Philadelphia and begins helping other slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad.

• September 18 – As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which requires any federal official to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave.

• March 20 – Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published.

• December 

• "Clotel; or The President's Daughter" is the first novel published by an African  American.

• In opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, the Republican Party is formed with an anti-slavery platform.

• John Mercer Langston is one of the first African Americans elected to public office when elected as a town clerk in Ohio.

• Wilberforce University is founded by collaboration between Methodist Episcopal  and African Methodist Episcopal  representatives.

• March 6 – In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds slavery. This decision is regarded as a key cause of the American Civil War.

1860–1874
========

• April 12 – The American Civil War begins (secessions began in December 1860), and lasts until April 9, 1865. Tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans of all ages escaped to Union lines for freedom. Contraband camps were set up in some areas, where blacks started learning to read and write. Others traveled with the Union Army. By the end of the war, more than 180,000 African Americans, mostly from the South, fought with the Union Army and Navy as members of the US Colored Troops and sailors.

• May 9 – General David Hunter declares emancipation in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.

• May 19 – Lincoln rescinds Hunter's order.

• July 17 – Confiscation Act of 1862 frees confiscated slaves.

• September 22 – Lincoln announces the  Emancipation Proclamation to go into effect January 1, 1863.

1863 - Medical examination photo of Gordon showing his scourged back, widely distributed by Abolitionists to expose the brutality of slavery.

• January 1 – The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect, changing the legal status, as recognized by the United States federal government, of 3 million slaves in the designated areas of the South from "slave" to "free."

• January 31 – U.S. Army commissions the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a combat unit made up of escaped slaves.

• May 22 – The U.S. Army recruits United States Colored Troops.

• June 1 – Harriet Tubman the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers liberate 750 people with the Raid at Combahee Ferry.

• January 16 – Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 allocate a tract of land in coastal South Carolina and Georgia for Black-only settlements.

• January 31 – The United States Congress  passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.

• March 3 – Congress passes the bill that forms the Freedman's Bureau; mandates  distribution of "not more than forty acres"  of confiscated land to all loyal freedmen and refugees.

• December 18 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits slavery except as punishment for crime; emancipation in Delaware and Kentucky.

• Shaw Institute is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, as the first black college in the South.

• Southern states pass Black Codes that restrict the freedmen, who were emancipated but not yet full citizens.

• April 9 – The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is passed by the Congress over Johnson's presidential veto. All persons born in the  United States are now citizens.

• The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Pulaski, Tennessee, made up of white Confederate veterans; it becomes a   paramilitary  insurgent group to enforce the white supremacy.

• July – New Orleans Riot: the white citizens riot against the blacks.

• July 21 – Southern Homestead Act of 1866 opens 46 million acres of land in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi; African Americans have priority access until January 1, 1877.

• September 21 – The U.S. Army regiment of  Buffalo Soldiers (African Americans) is formed.

• March 2 – Howard University is founded in Washington, D.C.

• Through 1877, whites attack black and white Republicans to suppress voting. Every election cycle is accompanied by violence, increasing in the 1870s.

• February 3 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right of male citizens of the United States to vote regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

• February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels  becomes the first black member of the  Senate.

• US Civil Rights Act of 1871 passed, also known as the Klan Act and Third Enforcement Act.

• December 11 – P.B.S.Pinchback is sworn in as the first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

• Easter – The Colfax Massacre; more than 100 blacks in the Red River area of Louisiana are killed when attacked by white militia after defending Republicans in local office. 

• Founding of paramilitary groups that act as the "military arm of the Democratic Party": the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi, and North and South Carolina. They terrorize blacks and Republicans, turning them out of office, killing some, disrupting rallies, and suppressing voting.

1875–1899
========

• March 1 – Civil Rights Act of 1875 signed.

• July 8 – The Hamburg Massacre occurs when local people riot against African Americans who were trying to celebrate the Fourth of July. 

• Spring – Thousands of African Americans refuse to live under segregation in the South and migrate to Kansas. They become known as Exodusters.

• In Strauder v. West Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that African Americans could not be excluded from juries.

• During the 1880s, African Americans in the South reach a peak of numbers in being elected and holding local offices, even while white Democrats are working to assert control at state level.

• Lewis Latimer invented the first long-lasting filament for light bulbs and installed his lighting system in New York City, Philadelphia, and Canada. Later, he became one of the 28 members of Thomas Edison's Pioneers.

• By 1900 two-thirds of the farmers in the bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta are African Americans who cleared and bought land after the Civil War.

• Daniel Hale Williams performed open-heart surgery in 1893 and founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first with an interracial staff.

• W.E.B. DuBois is the first African-American to be awarded a Ph.D by Harvard University.

• May 18 – In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds de jure racial segregation of "separate but equal" facilities.

• The National Association of Colored Women is formed by the merger of smaller groups.

• As one of the earliest Black Hebrew Israelites in the United States, William Saunders Crowdy re-establishes the Church of God and Saints of Christ.

• In Williams v. Mississippi the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the voter registration and election provisions of Mississippi's constitution because they applied to all citizens. Effectively, however, they disenfranchise blacks and poor whites. The result is that other southern states copy these provisions in their new constitutions and amendments through 1908, disfranchising most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites until the 1960s.

• November 10 – Coup d'état begins in Wilmington, North Carolina, resulting in considerable loss of life and property in the African-American community and the installation of a white supremacist Democratic Party regime.

20th century
=========

1900–1924 
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• Since the Civil War, 30,000 African-American teachers had been trained and put to work in the South. The majority of blacks had become literate. 

• Orlando, Florida hires its first black postman.

• July 11 – First meeting of the Niagara Movement, an interracial group to work for civil rights.

• December 4 – African-American men found Alpha Phi Alpha at Cornell University, the first intercollegiate fraternity for African-American men.

• December 26 – Jack Johnson wins the World Heavyweight Title.

• Alpha Kappa Alpha at Howard University; African-American college women found the first college sorority for African-American women.

• February 12 – Planned first meeting of group which would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an interracial group devoted to civil rights. The meeting actually occurs on May 31, but February 12 is normally cited as the NAACP's founding date.

• May 31 – The National Negro Committee  meets and is formed; it will be the precursor to the NAACP.

• August 14th A lynch mob moves through Springfield, Illinois burning the homes and businesses of black people and black sympathisers, killing many.

• May 30 – The National Negro Committee chooses "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" as its organization name.

• September 29 – Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes formed; the next year it will merge with other groups to form the National Urban League.

• The NAACP begins publishing The Crisis.

• The Moorish Science Temple of America, a religious organization, is founded by Noble Drew Ali (Timothy Drew).

• June 21 – In Guinn v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against  grandfather clauses used to deny blacks the right to vote.

• Los Angeles hires the country's first black female police officer.

• The Great Migration begins and lasts until 1940. Approximately one and a half million African Americans move from the Southern United States to the North and Midwest. More than five million migrate in the  Second Great Migration from 1940 to 1970, which includes more destinations in California and the West.

• In Buchanan v. Warley, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that a ban on selling property in white-majority neighborhoods to black people and vice versa violates the 14th Amendment.

• Viola Pettus, an African-American nurse in Marathon, Texas, wins attention for her courageous care of victims of the Spanish Influenza, including members of the Ku Klux Klan.
• In May 1911, Laura Nelson allegedly shot a sheriff to protect her son. The officer had been searching her cabin for stolen goods as part of a meat-pilfering investigation. A mob seized Nelson along with her son, who was only 14 years old, and lynched them both. However, Nelson was first raped by several men. The bodies of Laura and her son were hung from a bridge for hundreds of people to see.

    

On May 19, 1918 Mary Hayes Turner was lynched to death by a mob of white people.  

• Mary Turner was a 33-year-old lynched in Lowndes County, Georgia who was Eight months pregnant. Turner and her child were murdered after she publicly denounced the extrajudicial killing of her husband by a mob. Her death is considered a stark example of racially motivated mob violence in the American south, and was referenced by the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

Shameless and cruel selling of black people at the hands of whites.  

• February 13 – Negro National League (1920–1931) established.

• May 23 – Shuffle Along is the first major African-American hit musical on Broadway.

• Bessie Coleman becomes the first African American to earn a pilot's license.

• January 1–7 Rosewood massacre: Six African Americans and two whites die in a week of violence when a white woman in Rosewood, Florida, claims she was beaten and raped by a black man.

• February 19 – In Moore v. Dempsey, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that mob-dominated trials violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

• Knights of Columbus commissions and publishes The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America by civil rights activist and NAACP cofounder W.E.B. DuBois as part of the organization's Racial Contribution Series.

1925–1949
========

• Spring – American Negro Labor Congress is founded.

• August 8 – 35,000 Ku Klux Klan members march in Washington, D.C.

• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is organized.

• The Harlem Renaissance (also known as the New Negro Movement) is named after the anthology The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke .

• The Harlem Globetrotters are founded.

• Historian Carter G. Woodson  proposes  Negro History Week.

• Claude McKay's Home to Harlem wins the Harmon Gold Award for Literature.

• The League of United Latin American Citizens, the first organization to fight for the civil rights of Latino Americans, is founded in Corpus Christi, Texas.

• John Hope becomes president of Atlanta University. Graduate classes are offered in the liberal arts, and Atlanta University becomes the first predominantly black university to offer graduate education.

• Unknown – Hallelujah! is released, one of the first films to star an all-black cast.

• August 7 – Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-American men lynched in Marion, Indiana, after being taken from jail and beaten by a mob. They had been arrested that night as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. A third African-American suspect, 16-year-old  James Cameron, had also been arrested and narrowly escaped being killed by the mob. He later became a civil rights activist.

• The League of Struggle for Negro Rights is founded in New York City.

• Jessie Daniel Ames forms the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. She gets 40,000 white women to sign a pledge against lynching and for change in the South.

• Walter Francis White becomes the executive secretary of the NAACP.

• The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male begins at Tuskegee University.

• June 18 – In Murray v. Pearson, Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston of the NAACP successfully argue the landmark case in Maryland to open admissions to the segregated University of Maryland School of Law on the basis of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

• August – American sprinter Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

• Southern Negro Youth Congress founded.

• Billie Holiday first performs "Strange Fruit" in New York City. The song, a protest against lynching written by Abel Meeropol  under the pen name Lewis Allan, became a signature song for Holiday.

• The Little League is formed, becoming the nation's first non-segregated youth sport.

• August 21 – Five African-American men recruited and trained by African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker conduct a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library and are arrested after being refused library cards.

• Second Great Migration – In multiple acts of resistance and in response to factory labor shortages in World War II, more than 5 million African Americans leave the violence and segregation of the South for jobs, education, and the chance to vote in northern, midwestern, and western cities (mainly to the West Coast).

• February 12 – In Chambers v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court frees three black men who were coerced into confessing to a murder.

• February 29 – Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She wins Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Mammy in Gone with the Wind.

• October 25 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is promoted to be the first African-American general in the U.S. Army.

• June 25 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, the "Fair Employment Act", to require equal treatment and training of all employees by defense contractors.

• Six non-violence activists in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Bernice Fisher, James Russell Robinson, George Houser, James Farmer, Jr., Joe Guinn and Homer Jack) found the Committee on Racial Equality, which becomes the Congress of Racial Equality.

• April 3 – In Smith v. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the whites-only Democratic Party primary in Texas was unconstitutional.

• September 3 – Recy Taylor kidnapped and gang-raped in Abbeville by six white men, who later confessed to the crimes but were never charged. The case was investigated by Rosa Parks and provided an early organizational spark for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

• Miami hires its first black police officers.

• June 3 – In Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates provisions of the Virginia Code which require the separation of white and colored passengers where applied to interstate bus transport. The state law is unconstitutional insofar as it is burdening interstate commerce – an area of federal jurisdiction.

• In Florida, Daytona Beach, DeLand,  Sanford, Fort Myers, Tampa, and  Gainesville all have black police officers. So does Little Rock, Arkansas; Louisville, Kentucky; Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Houston,  Dallas,  San Antonio in Texas; Richmond, Virginia;  Chattanooga and Knoxville in Tennessee.

• Renowned actor/singer Paul Robeson  founds the American Crusade Against Lynching.

• April 9 – The Congress of Racial Equality  (CORE) sends 16 men on the Journey of Reconciliation.

• April 15 – Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in professional baseball in 60 years.

• United Nations, Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bans slavery globally.

• January 12 – In Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the State of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Law School could not deny admission based on race ("color").

• May 3 – In Shelley v. Kraemer and companion case Hurd v. Hodge, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the government cannot enforce racially restrictive covenants and asserts that they are in conflict with the nation's public policy.

• July 12 – Hubert Humphrey makes a controversial speech in favor of American civil rights at the Democratic National Convention.

• July 26 – President Harry S. Truman  issues Executive Order 9981 ordering the end of racial discrimination in the Armed Forces. Desegregation comes after 1950.

• Atlanta hires its first black police officers.

• January 20 – Civil Rights Congress protests the second inauguration of Harry S.Truman.

1950–1959
========

• June 5 – In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents the U.S. Supreme Court rules that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his race.

• June 5 – In Sweatt v. Painter the U.S. Supreme Court rules that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal, partly in that it deprived black students from the collegiality of future white lawyers.

• June 5 – In Henderson v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court abolishes segregation in railroad dining cars.

• September 15 – University of Virginia, under a federal court order, admits a black student to its law school.

• The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights  is created in Washington, DC to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective civil rights legislation and policy.

• Orlando, Florida, hires its first black police officers.

• Dr. Ralph Bunche wins the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize.

• February 2 and 5 – Execution of the  Martinsville Seven.

• June 23 – A Federal Court ruling upholds segregation in SC public schools.

• December 24 – The home of NAACP  activists Harry and Harriette Moore in  Mims, Florida, is bombed by KKK group; both die of injuries.
•  Talmadge criticizes television shows for depicting blacks and whites as equal.

• September 4 – Eleven black students attend the first day of school at Claymont High School, Delaware, becoming the first black students in the 17 segregated states to integrate a white public school. The day occurs without incident or notice by the community.

• June 8 – The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation in Washington, DC restaurants.

• September 1 – In the landmark case Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company,  WAC  Sarah Keys, represented by civil rights lawyer Dovey Roundtree, becomes the first black to challenge "separate but equal" in bus segregation before the Interstate Commerce Commission.

• May 3 – In Hernandez v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

• July 11 – The first White Citizens' Council meeting takes place, in Mississippi.

• September 7 – District of Columbia ends segregated education; Baltimore, Maryland follows suit on September 8.

• October 30 – Desegregation of U.S. Armed Forces said to be complete.

• November – Charles Diggs, Jr., of Detroit is elected to Congress, the first African American elected from Michigan.

• Frankie Muse Freeman is the lead attorney for the landmark NAACP case Davis et al. v. the St. Louis Housing Authority, which ended legal racial discrimination in public housing with the city. Constance Baker Motley was also an attorney for NAACP: it was a rarity to have two women attorneys leading such a high-profile case.

• January 15 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment.

• April 5 – Mississippi passes a law penalizing white students who attend school with blacks with jail and fines.
• 
  

  

                             Rosa Parks pictured in 1955

• May 7 – NAACP and Regional Council of Negro Leadership activist Reverend George W. Lee is killed in Belzoni, Mississippi.

• June 8 – University of Oklahoma decides to allow black students.

• June 29 – The NAACP wins a U.S. Supreme Court suit which orders the University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy.

• August 1 – Georgia Board of Education fires all black teachers who are members of the NAACP.

• August 13 – Regional Council of Negro Leadership registration activist Lamar Smith is murdered in Brookhaven, Mississippi.

• August 28 – Teenager Emmett Till is killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi.

• December 1 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This occurs nine months after 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin became the first to refuse to give up her seat. Colvin's was the legal case which eventually ended the practice in Montgomery.

• January 9 – Virginia voters and representatives decide to fund private schools with state money to maintain segregation.

• February 3 – Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot for days, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in further legal action against the university.

• February 22 – Ninety black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are arrested for leading a bus boycott.

• March 12 – U.S. Supreme Court orders the University of Florida to admit a black law school applicant "without delay".

• March 22 – Martin Luther King, Jr. sentenced to fine or jail for instigating Montgomery bus boycott, suspended pending appeal.

• April 23 – U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation on buses nationwide.

• May 28 – The Tallahassee, Florida bus boycott begins.

• September 10 – Two black students are prevented by a mob from entering a junior college in Texarkana, Texas. Schools in Louisville, KY are successfully desegregated.

• September 12 – Four black children enter an elementary school in Clay, KY under National Guard protection; white students boycott. The school board bars the 4 again on September 17.

• December 24 – Blacks in Tallahassee, Florida begin defying segregation on city buses.

• December 25 – The parsonage in Birmingham, Alabama occupied by Fred Shuttlesworth, movement leader, is bombed. Shuttlesworth receives only minor scrapes.

• Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission  formed.

• February 8 – Georgia Senate votes to declare the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution null and void in that state.

• February 14 – Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is named its chairman.

• April 18 – Florida Senate votes to consider U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation decisions "null and void".

• September 24 – President Dwight Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard and also orders US Army troops to ensure Little Rock Central High School  in  Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine.

• September 27 – Civil Rights Act of 1957  signed by President Eisenhower.

• October 9 – Florida legislature votes to close any school if federal troops are sent to enforce integration.

• October 31 – Officers of NAACP arrested in Little Rock for failing to comply with a new financial disclosure ordinance.

• November 26 – Texas legislature votes to close any school where federal troops might be sent.

• January 18 – Willie O'Ree breaks the color barrier in the National Hockey League, in his first game playing for the Boston Bruins.

• June 29 – Bethel Baptist Church (Birmingham, Alabama) is bombed by Ku Klux Klan members, killing four girls.

• June 30 – In NAACP v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the NAACP was not required to release membership lists to continue operating in the state.

• August – Jimmy Wilson sentenced to death in Alabama for stealing $1.95; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asks Governor Jim Folsom to commute his sentence because of international criticism.

• September 4 – Justice Department sues under Civil Rights Act to force Terrell County, Georgia to register blacks to vote.

• September 12 – In Cooper v. Aaron the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the states were bound by the Court's decisions. Governor Faubus responds by shutting down all four high schools in Little Rock, and Governor Almond shuts one in Front Royal, Virginia.

• September 29 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states may not use evasive measures to avoid desegregation.

• November 28 – Federal court throws out Louisiana law against integrated athletic events.

• December 8 – Voter registration officials in Montgomery refuse to cooperate with US Civil Rights Commission investigation.

• February 2 – A high school in Arlington, VA desegregates, allowing four black students.

• April 10 – Three schools in Alexandria, Virginia desegregate with a total of nine black students.

• April 18 – King speaks for the integration of schools at a rally of 26,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

• April 24 – Mack Charles Parker is lynched three days before his trial.

• November 20 – Alabama passes laws to limit black voter registration.

1960–1969
======== 

• February 17 – Alabama grand jury indicts Dr. King for tax evasion.

• March 7 – Felton Turner of Houston is beaten and hanged upside-down in a tree, initials KKK carved on his chest.

• March 20 – Florida Governor LeRoy Collins calls lunch counter segregation "unfair and morally wrong".

• April 8 – Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster.

• April 15–17  The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.

• April 19 – Z. Alexander Looby's home is bombed, with no injuries. Looby, a  Nashville civil rights lawyer, was active in the cities ongoing sit-in movement.

• May – Nashville sit-ins end successfully.

• May 6 – Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

• May 28 – William Robert Ming and Hubert Delaney obtain an acquittal of Dr. King from an all-white jury in Alabama.

• June 24 – King meets Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK).

• July 31 – Elijah Muhammad calls for an all-black state. Membership in the Nation of Islam estimated at 100,000.

• August – Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker  replaces Ella Baker as SCLC's Executive Director.

• October 19 – Dr. King and fifty others arrested at sit-in at Atlanta's Rich's Department Store.

• October 26 – Dr. King's earlier probation revoked; he is transferred to Reidsville State Prison.

• October 28 – After intervention from  Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), King is free on bond.

• November 8 – John F. Kennedy defeats  Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.

• January 31 – Member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and nine students were arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina  for a sit-in at a McCrory's lunch counter.

• March 6 – JFK issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes a Presidential committee that later becomes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

• May 4 – The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by  Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals.

• May 14 – The Freedom Riders' bus is attacked and burned outside of Anniston, Alabama. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham. The Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend forty to sixty days in  Parchman Penitentiary.

• May 20 – Freedom Riders are assaulted in  Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station.

• May 21 – Dr. King, the Freedom Riders, and congregation of 1,500 at Reverend Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church in Montgomery are besieged by mob of segregationists; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sends federal marshals to protect them.

• June–August – U.S. Department of Justice  initiates talks with civil rights groups and foundations on beginning Voter Education Project.

• September 25 – Voter registration activist Herbert Lee killed in McComb, Mississippi.

• November 1 – All interstate buses required to display a certificate that reads: "Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission."

• November 17 – SNCC workers help encourage and coordinate black activism in Albany, Georgia, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition.

• November 22 – Three high school students from Chatmon's Youth Council arrested after using "positive actions" by walking into white sections of the Albany bus station.

• November 22 – Albany State College students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.

• December 15 – King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from Dr. W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.

• December 16 – Dr. King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.

• December 18 – Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; King leaves town.

• March 20 – FBI installs wiretaps on  NAACP activist Stanley Levison's office.

• April 3 – Defense Department orders full racial integration of military reserve units, except the National Guard.

• April 9 – Corporal Roman Duckworth shot by a police officer in Taylorsville, Mississippi.

• June – Leroy Willis becomes first black graduate of the University of Virginia  College of Arts and Sciences.

• October – Leflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive.

• November 20 – President Kennedy upholds 1960 presidential campaign promise to eliminate housing segregation by signing  Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in Federally funded housing.

• April – Mary Lucille Hamilton, Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, refuses to answer a judge in  Gadsden, Alabama, until she is addressed by the honorific "Miss". It was the custom of the time to address white people by honorifics and people of color by their first names. Hamilton is jailed for contempt of court and refuses to pay bail. The case  Hamilton v. Alabama is filed by the  NAACP. It was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1964 that courts must address persons of color with the same courtesy extended to whites.

• April 7 – Ministers John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith and A. D. King lead a group of 2,000 marchers to protest the jailing of movement leaders in Birmingham.

• April 12 – Dr. King is arrested in Birmingham for "parading without a permit".

• April 16 – Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail is completed.

• April 23 – CORE activist William L. Moore  is murdered in Gadsden, Alabama.

• May 11–12 
• Double bombing in Birmingham, probably conducted by the KKK in cooperation with local police, precipitates rioting, police retaliation, intervention of state troopers, and finally mobilization of federal troops.

• May 24 – A group of Black leaders (assembled by James Baldwin) meets with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss race relations.

• May 29 – Violence escalates at NAACP picket of Philadelphia construction site.

• May 30 – Police attack Florida A&M anti-segregation demonstrators with tear gas; arrest 257.

• June 11 – President Kennedy makes his historic civil rights address, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes", in his speech he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves."

• June 12 – NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. (His murderer is convicted in 1994.)

• Summer – 80,000 blacks quickly register to vote in Mississippi by a test project to show their desire to participate.

• June 19 – President Kennedy sends Congress (H. Doc. 124, 88th Cong., 1st session) his proposed Civil Rights Act.White leaders in business and philanthropy gather at the Carlyle Hotel to raise initial funds for the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership.

• November 10 – Malcolm X delivers "Message to the Grass Roots" speech, calling for unity against the white power structure and criticizing the March on Washington.

• November 22 – President Kennedy is assassinated. The new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, decides that accomplishing Kennedy's legislative agenda is his best strategy, which he pursues.

• All year – The Alabama Voting Rights Project continues organizing as Bevel, Nash, and James Orange work without the support of SCLC, the group which Bevel represents as its Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education.

• January 23 – Twenty-fourth Amendment  abolishes the poll tax for Federal elections.

• June 21 – Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three civil rights workers disappear, later to be found murdered.

• June 28 – Organization of Afro-American Unity is founded by Malcolm X, lasts until his death.

• July 2 – Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed, banning discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations.
• December 10 – Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person so honored.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965.

• February 18 – A peaceful protest march in  Marion, Alabama leads to Jimmie Lee Jackson being shot by Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler. Jackson dies on February 26, and Fowler is indicted for his murder in 2007.

• February 21 – Malcolm X is assassinated in  Manhattan, New York, probably by three members of the Nation of Islam.

• March 7 – Bloody Sunday: Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama, begin the Selma to Montgomery march but are forcibly stopped by a massive Alabama State trooper and police blockade as they cross the  Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many marchers are injured. This march, initiated and organized by James Bevel, becomes the visual symbol of the Selma Voting Rights Movement.

• March 25 – After the completion of the Selma to Montgomery March a white volunteer Viola Liuzzo is shot and killed by  Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama, one of whom was an FBI informant.

• June 2 – Black deputy sheriff Oneal Moore  is murdered in Varnado, Louisiana.

• July 2 – Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opens.

• August 6 – Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson. It eliminated literacy tests, poll tax, and other subjective voter tests that were widely responsible for the disfranchisement of African Americans in the Southern States and provided Federal oversight of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such discriminatory tests were used.

• August 11–15 
• Following the accusations of mistreatment and police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department towards the city's African-American community, Watts riots  erupt in South Central Los Angeles which lasted over five days. Over 34 were killed, 1,032 injured, 3,438 arrested, and cost over $40 million in property damage in the Watts riots.

• September 24 – President Johnson signs  Executive Order 11246 requiring Equal Employment Opportunity by federal contractors.

• January 10 – NAACP local chapter president Vernon Dahmer is injured by a bomb in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He dies the next day.

• Summer – The Chicago Open Housing Movement, led by King, Bevel and Al Raby, includes a large rally, marches, and demands to Mayor Richard J. Daley and the City of Chicago which are discussed in a movement-ending Summit Conference.

• October – Black Panther Party founded by  Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in  Oakland, California.

• November – Edward Brooke is elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. He is the first black senator since 1881.

• April 4 – King delivers his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, calling for defeat of "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism".

• June 12 – In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that prohibiting  interracial marriage is unconstitutional.

• June 13 – Thurgood Marshall is the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

• February 1 – Two Memphis sanitation workers are killed in the line of duty, exacerbating labor tensions.

• February 8 – The Orangeburg Massacre  occurs during university protest in South Carolina.

• March – While filming a prime time television special, Petula Clark touches  Harry Belafonte's arm during a duet.  Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor, insists the moment be deleted, but Clark stands firm, destroys all other takes of the song, and delivers the completed program to NBC with the touch intact. The show is broadcast on April 8, 1968.

• April 3 – King returns to Memphis; delivers "Mountaintop" speech.

• April 4 – Dr. King is shot and killed in  Memphis, Tennessee.

• April 4–8 and one on May 1968 – Riots break out in Chicago, Washington, D.C.,  Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and more than 150 U.S. cities in response to the  assassination of Dr. King.

• June 6 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a Civil Rights advocate, is assassinated after winning the California presidential primary. His appeal to minorities helped him secure the victory.

• October – Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists to symbolize black power and unity after winning the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games.

• November 22 – First interracial kiss on American television, between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner on Star Trek.

• In Powe v. Miles, a federal court holds that the portions of private colleges that are funded by public money are subject to the Civil Rights Act.

• Shirley Chisholm becomes the first African-American woman elected to Congress.

• January 8–18  
• Student protesters at Brandeis University  take over Ford and Sydeman Halls, demanding creation of an Afro-American Department. This is approved by the University on April 24.

• December – Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, is shot and killed while asleep in bed during a police raid on his home.

• The Congressional Black Caucus is formed.

1970–2000
========

• First blaxploitation films released.

• April 20 – The U.S. Supreme Court, in  Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds desegregation busing of students to achieve integration.

• January 25 – Shirley Chisholm becomes the first major-party African-American candidate for President of the United States  and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

• November 16 – In Baton Rouge, two  Southern University students are killed by white sheriff deputies during a school protest over lack of funding from the state. The university's Smith-Brown Memorial Union is named as a memorial to them.

• November 16 – The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment ends. Begun in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service's 40-year experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis has been described as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."

• Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc Collective, the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanists and women of color formed in New York City.

• February – Black History Month is founded by Professor Carter Woodson's Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.

• President Jimmy Carter appoints Andrew Young to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations, the first African American to serve in the position.

• November 2 – Assata Shakur escapes from prison.

• November 30 – Michael Jackson releases  Thriller, which becomes the best-selling album of all time.

• August 30 – Guion Bluford becomes the first African-American to go into space.

• November 2 – President Ronald Reagan  signs a bill creating a federal holiday to honor MLK.

• Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple.

• The Cosby Show begins, and is regarded as one of the defining television shows of the decade.

• January 20 – Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is first celebrated as a national holiday.

• Dr. Benjamin Carson became the first person in history to separate conjoined twins that were joined at the head.

• Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988.

• October 1 – Colin Powell becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

• January 13 – Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African-American governor as he takes office in Richmond, Virginia.

• March 3 – Four white police officers are videotaped beating African-American  Rodney King in Los Angeles.

• September 12 – Mae Carol Jemison  becomes the first African-American woman to travel in space when she goes into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

• November 3 – Carol Moseley Braun  becomes the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate.

• 16 May – President Bill Clinton apologizes to victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

• June 7 – James Byrd, Jr. is brutally murdered by white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. The scene is reminiscent of earlier lynchings. In response, Byrd's family create the James Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing.

• October 23 – The film American History X  is released, powerfully highlighting the problems of urban racism.

• Franklin Raines becomes the first black CEO of a fortune 500 company.

• February 4 – Amadou Diallo shooting by New York Police.

• May 3 – Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist South Carolina private institution, ends its ban on interracial dating. 

21st century  
=========
2001–2010 
--------------

• January 20 – Colin Powell becomes  Secretary of State.

• Cynthia McKinney introduces the Martin Luther King, Jr., Records Collection Act.

• June 23 – The U.S. Supreme Court in  Grutter v. Bollinger upholds the University of Michigan Law School's admission policy. However, in the simultaneously heard Gratz v. Bollinger the university is required to change a policy.

• October 25 – Rosa Parks dies at age 92. Her solitary action spearheaded the  Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Her body  lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda in  Washington, D.C. before interment.

• May 10 – Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler is indicted for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson on February 18, 1965.
• December 10 – U.S. Supreme Court rules 7–2 in Kimbrough v. United States that judges may deviate from federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine.

• July 12 – Cynthia McKinney accepts the Green Party nomination in the Presidential race.

• July 30 – United States Congress apologizes for slavery and "Jim Crow".

• August 28 – At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, in a stadium filled with supporters, Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

• November 4 – Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States of America, opening his victory speech with, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

• January 20 – Barack Obama sworn in and offered Sherrod a new position.as the 44th  President of the United States, the first African-American to become president.

• January 30 – Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele becomes the first African-American Chairman of the  Republican National Committee.

• The U.S. Postal Service issues a commemorative six-stamp set portraying twelve civil rights pioneers.
• October 9 – Barack Obama is awarded the  Nobel Peace Prize.

• March 14 – Disney officially crowns its first African-American Disney Princess, Tiana.

• July 19 – Shirley Sherrod first is pressured to resign from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and immediately thereafter receives its apology after she is inaccurately accused of being racist towards white Americans.

2011–2020
--------------

• August 22 – The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. opens to the public and is officially dedicated on October 16.

• November 19 – Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.

• February 26 – Shooting of Trayvon Martin  by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida.

• January 20 – Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term as president.

• March 9 – New York police officers shoot 16-year-old Kimani Gray, triggering weeks of protests in Brooklyn.

• May 9 – Malcolm Shabazz killed in Mexico.

• June 25 – The U.S. Supreme Court overturns part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder.

• July 13 – George Zimmerman acquitted, provoking nationwide protests. The Black Lives Matter movement is created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, in response to the ongoing racial profiling of and police brutality against young black men.

• August 9 – Shooting of Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri is followed by demonstrations and protests which include the term "Hands up, don't shoot". Demonstrations focused on the incident, using the "Hands up" expression, are held across the U.S. and overseas.

• July 17 – Eric Garner died in Staten Island, New York City, after a police officer put him in a chokehold for 15 seconds.

• June 17 – Nine African Americans are killed in the Charleston Church Shooting at  Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, S.C.

• July 13 – Sandra Bland dies in jail, days after being pulled over for a traffic stop in Texas.

• November 1 – Michael Bruce Curry  becomes the first African-American  Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (United States), having been elected by an overwhelming margin on the first ballot of the 78th General Convention the preceding June.

• March 13 – Shooting of Breonna Taylor.

• May 25 – The killing of George Floyd leads to a cascade of protests with mottos such as  I can't breathe and Defund the police, and  the mass of removals of Confederate monuments and renaming of slave-trade memorials around the world.

• May 25 – Central Park birdwatching incident, followed by Black Birders Week.

• June 12 – Killing of Rayshard Brooks.