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Timeline of African-American history

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.

Europeans arrived in what would become the present day United States of America on August 9, 1526. With them, they brought families from Africa that they had captured and enslaved with intentions of establishing themselves and future generations of Europeans off of the bodies of these African families.

During the American Revolution of 1776–1783, enslaved African Americans in the South escaped to British lines as they were promised freedom to fight with the British; additionally, many free blacks in the North fight with the colonists for the rebellion, and the Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) becomes the first future state to abolish slavery. Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper South free their slaves.

The importation of slaves became a felony in 1808.

After the American Civil War began in 1861, tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans of all ages escaped to Union lines for freedom. Later on, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, formally freeing slaves in the Confederate States of America. After the American Civil War ended, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits slavery (except as punishment for crime), was passed in 1865.

In the mid-20th century, the civil rights movement occurred, and legalized racial segregation and discrimination was thus outlawed.

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16th century

1526

1565

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17th century

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1619

1640

1654

  • 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 colonial Virginia. The court ruled with his master, who said he had an indefinite servitude for life.[11]

1662

  • The Colony of Virginia, using the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, proclaimed that children in the colony were born into their mother's social status; therefore children born to enslaved mothers were classified as slaves, regardless of their father's ethnicity or status. This was contrary to English common law for English subjects, which held that children took their father's social status.[citation needed]

1664

1670

1676

  • Both free and enslaved African Americans fought in Bacon's Rebellion alongside white indentured servants.[14]

1685

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18th century

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1705

  • The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 define as slaves all those servants brought into the colony who were not Christian in their original countries, as well as Native American slaves sold by other Indians to colonists.[citation needed]

1712

1738

1739

1753

1760

1770

1773

1774

1775

1776–1783 American Revolution

  • Thousands of enslaved African Americans in the South escaped 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, escaped to the British or otherwise leave their plantations.[26] After the war, many African Americans were 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.[27]
  • Many Black Patriots in the North fight with the rebelling colonists during the Revolutionary War.[citation needed]

1777

1780

  • Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery.[citation needed]
  • Capt. Paul Cuffe and six other African American residents of Massachusetts successfully petition the state legislature for the right to vote, claiming "no taxation without representation."[12]

1781

1783

  • Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that Massachusetts state constitution had abolished slavery. It ruled that "the granting of rights and privileges [was] wholly incompatible and repugnant to" slavery, in an appeal case arising from the escape of former slave Quock Walker. When the British left New York and Charleston in 1783, they took the last of 5,500 Loyalists to the Caribbean, who brought along with them some 15,000 slaves.[28]

1787

1788

1790–1810 Manumission of slaves

  • 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. By 1810, 75 percent of all blacks in Delaware are free, and 7.2 percent of blacks in Virginia are free.[31]

1791

1793

1794

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19th century

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1800–1859

Early 19th century

1800

1807

1808

1816

1817

  • The First African Baptist Church had its beginnings in 1817 when John Mason Peck and the former enslaved John Berry Meachum began holding church services for African Americans in St. Louis.[33] Meachum founded the First African Baptist Church in 1827. It was the first African-American church west of the Mississippi River. Although there were ordinances preventing blacks from assembling, the congregation grew from 14 people at its founding to 220 people by 1829. Two hundred of the parishioners were slaves, who could only travel to the church and attend services with the permission of their owners.[34]

1820

1821

1822

1827

1829

1830

1831

1832

1833

1837

  • 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.[citation needed]

1839

1840

1842

1843

1845

1847

1849

1850

1851

1852

1853

1854

1855

1856

1857

1859

1860–1874

1861

1862

1863–1877 Reconstruction Era

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

1863

1864

1865

1866

1867

1868

1870

1871

1872

1873

  • April 14  In the Slaughter-House Cases the U.S. Supreme Court votes 5–4 for a narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court also discusses dual citizenship: State citizens and U.S. citizens.[citation needed]
  • 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  continuing controversy from gubernatorial election.[citation needed]
  • The Coushatta Massacre transpires. Republican officeholders are run out of town and murdered by white militia before leaving the state – four of six were relatives of a Louisiana state senator, a northerner who had settled in the South, married into a local family and established a plantation. Five to twenty black witnesses are also killed.[citation needed]

1874

  • 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.[citation needed]
  • September  In New Orleans, continuing political violence erupts related to the still-contested gubernatorial election of 1872. Thousands of the White League armed militia march into New Orleans, then the seat of government, where they outnumber the integrated city police and black state militia forces. They defeat Republican forces and demand that Gov. Kellogg leave office. The Democratic candidate McEnery is installed and White Leaguers occupy the capitol, state house and arsenal. This was called the "Battle of Liberty Place". The White League and McEnery withdraw after three days in advance of federal troops arriving to reinforce the Republican state government.[citation needed]

1875–1899

1875

1876

1877

1879

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

1880

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

1881

1882

  • 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.[40]
  • A biracial populist coalition achieves power in Virginia (briefly). The legislature founds the first public college for African Americans, Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, as well as the first mental hospital for African Americans, both near Petersburg, Virginia. The hospital was established in December 1869, at Howard's Grove Hospital, a former Confederate unit, but is moved to a new campus in 1882.[citation needed]

1883

1884

1886

1887

1890

  • Mississippi, with a white Democrat-dominated legislature, passes a new constitution that effectively disfranchises most blacks through voter registration and electoral requirements, e.g., poll taxes, residency tests and literacy tests. This shuts them out of the political process, including service on juries and in local offices.[citation needed]
  • 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.[41]

1892

1893

1895

1896

1898

  • Louisiana enacts the first statewide grandfather clause that provides exemption for illiterate whites to voter registration literacy test requirements.[citation needed]
  • 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.[citation needed]
  • 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.[citation needed]

1899

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20th century

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1900–1949

1900

  • 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.[44]

1901

1903

1904

1905

  • July 11  First meeting of the Niagara Movement, an interracial group to work for civil rights.[46]

1906

1907

1908

1909

1910

1911

1913

1914

1915

1916

1917

1918

  • 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.[citation needed]

1919

1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925–1949

1925

1926

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

1939

1940s to 1970

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945–1975 The Civil Rights Movement

1945

  • April 5–6  Freeman Field Mutiny, in which black officers of the U.S. Army Air Corps attempt to desegregate an all-white officers' club in Indiana.
  • August  The first issue of Ebony.[59]

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950–1959

[61]

1950

1951

1952

  • January 5  Governor of Georgia Herman Talmadge criticizes television shows for depicting blacks and whites as equal.[citation needed]
  • January 28  Briggs v. Elliott: after a District Court had ordered separate but equal school facilities in South Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
  • March 7  Another federal court upholds segregated education laws in Virginia.[citation needed]
  • April 1  Chancellor Collins J. Seitz finds for the black plaintiffs (Gebhart v. Belton, Gebhart v. Bulah) and orders the integration of Hockessin elementary and Claymont High School in Delaware based on assessment of "separate but equal" public school facilities required by the Delaware constitution.[citation needed]
  • 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.[citation needed]
  • September 5  The Delaware State Attorney General informs Claymont Superintendent Stahl that the black students will have to go home because the case is being appealed. Stahl, the School Board and the faculty refuse and the students remain. The two Delaware cases are argued before the Warren U.S. Supreme Court by Redding, Greenberg and Marshall and are used as an example of how integration can be achieved peacefully. It was a primary influence in the Brown v. Board case. The students become active in sports, music and theater. The first two black students graduated in June 1954 just one month after the Brown v. Board case.[citation needed]
  • Ralph Ellison authors the novel Invisible Man, which wins the National Book Award.[citation needed]

1953

1954

1955

  • January 7  Marian Anderson (of 1939 fame) becomes the first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.[citation needed]
  • 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.
  • January 20  Demonstrators from CORE and Morgan State University stage a successful sit-in to desegregate Read's Drug Store in Baltimore, Maryland.[citation needed]
  • April 5  Mississippi passes a law penalizing white students who attend school with blacks with jail and fines.[citation needed]
  • May 7  NAACP and Regional Council of Negro Leadership activist Reverend George W. Lee is killed in Belzoni, Mississippi.
  • May 31  The U.S. Supreme Court rules in "Brown II" that desegregation must occur with "all deliberate speed".
  • June 8  University of Oklahoma decides to allow black students.
  • June 23  Virginia governor and Board of Education decide to continue segregated schools into 1956.
  • June 29  The NAACP wins a U.S. Supreme Court suit which orders the University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy.
  • July 11  Georgia Board of Education orders that any teacher supporting integration be fired.
  • July 14  A Federal Appeals Court overturns segregation on Columbia, SC buses.
  • 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.
  • November 7  The Interstate Commerce Commission bans bus segregation in interstate travel in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, extending the logic of Brown v. Board to the area of bus travel across state lines. On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation on public parks and playgrounds. The governor of Georgia responds that his state would "get out of the park business" rather than allow playgrounds to be desegregated.
  • 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.
  • Roy Wilkins becomes the NAACP executive secretary.

1956

  • January 2  Georgia Tech president Blake R. Van Leer stands up to Governor Marvin Griffin threats to bar Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh player Bobby Grier over segregation.
  • January 9  Virginia voters and representatives decide to fund private schools with state money to maintain segregation.
  • January 16  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader T. R. M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the "FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South."[62]
  • January 24  Governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia agree to block integration of schools.
  • February 1  Virginia legislature passes a resolution that the U.S. Supreme Court integration decision was an "illegal encroachment".
  • 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 24  The policy of Massive Resistance is declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr.
  • February/March  The Southern Manifesto, opposing integration of schools, is created and signed by members of the Congressional delegations of Southern states, including 19 senators and 81 members of the House of Representatives, notably the entire delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. On March 12, it is released to the press.
  • February 13  Wilmington, Delaware school board decides to end segregation.
  • February 22  Ninety black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are arrested for leading a bus boycott.
  • February 29  Mississippi legislature declares U.S. Supreme Court integration decision "invalid" in that state.
  • March 1  Alabama legislature votes to ask for federal funds to deport blacks to northern states.
  • 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 11  Singer Nat King Cole is assaulted during a segregated performance at Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • April 23  U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation on buses nationwide.
  • May 26  Circuit Judge Walter B. Jones issues an injunction prohibiting the NAACP from operating in Alabama.
  • May 28  The Tallahassee, Florida bus boycott begins.
  • June 5  The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) is founded at a mass meeting in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • September 2–11  Teargas and National Guard used to quell segregationists rioting in Clinton, TN; 12 black students enter high school under Guard protection. Smaller disturbances occur in Mansfield, TX and Sturgis, KY.
  • 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.
  • October 15  Integrated athletic or social events are banned in Louisiana.
  • November 5  Nat King Cole hosts the first show of The Nat King Cole Show. The show went off the air after only 13 months because no national sponsor could be found.
  • November 13  In Browder v. Gayle, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Alabama laws requiring segregation of buses. This ruling, together with the ICC's 1955 ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach banning "Jim Crow laws" in bus travel among the states, is a landmark in outlawing "Jim Crow" in bus travel.
  • December 20  Federal marshals enforce the ruling to desegregate bus systems in Montgomery.
  • 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.
  • December 26  The ACMHR tests the Browder v. Gayle ruling by riding in the white sections of Birmingham city buses. 22 demonstrators are arrested.
  • Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission formed.
  • Director J. Edgar Hoover orders the FBI to begin the COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt "dissident" groups within the United States.

1957

  • February 8  Georgia Senate votes to declare the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 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".
  • May 17  The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC is at the time the largest nonviolent demonstration for civil rights, and features Dr. King's "Give Us The Ballot" speech.
  • September 2  Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to block integration of Little Rock Central High School.
  • September 6  Federal judge orders Nashville public schools to integrate immediately.
  • September 15  New York Times reports that in three years since the decision, there has been minimal progress toward integration in four southern states, and no progress at all in seven.
  • 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 7  The finance minister of Ghana is refused service at a Dover, Delaware restaurant. President Eisenhower hosts him at the White House to apologize October 10.
  • 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.

1958

  • 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.
  • July  NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated.
  • August 19  Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council conduct the largest successful sit-in to date, on drug store lunch-counters in Oklahoma City. This starts a successful six-year campaign by Luper and the council to desegregate businesses and related institutions in Oklahoma City.
  • 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 2  Governor J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia threatens to shut down any school if it is forced to integrate.
  • September 4  Justice Department sues under Civil Rights Act to force Terrell County, Georgia to register blacks to vote.
  • September 8  A Federal judge orders Louisiana State University to desegregate; 69 African Americans enroll successfully on September 12.
  • 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 18  Governor Lindsay closes two more schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, and six in Norfolk on September 27.
  • September 29  The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states may not use evasive measures to avoid desegregation.
  • October 8  A Federal judge in Harrisonburg, VA rules that public money may not be used for segregated private schools.
  • October 20  Thirteen blacks arrested for sitting in front of bus in Birmingham.
  • 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.
  • Publication of Here I Stand, Paul Robeson's manifesto-autobiography.

1959

  • January 9  One Federal judge throws out segregation on Atlanta, GA buses, while another orders Montgomery registrars to comply with the Civil Rights Commission.
  • January 12  Motown Records is founded by Berry Gordy.
  • January 19  Federal Appeals court overturns Virginia's closure of the schools in Norfolk; they reopen January 28 with 17 black students.
  • 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.
  • A Raisin in the Sun, a play by Lorraine Hansberry, debuts on Broadway. The 1961 film version will star Sidney Poitier.[59]

1960–1969

1960

1961

  • January 11  Rioting over court-ordered admission of first two African Americans (Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault) at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension, but they are ordered reinstated.
  • 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.[65]
  • 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.[65]
  • May 17  the Nashville Student Movement, coordinated by Diane Nash and James Bevel, takes up the Freedom Ride, signaling the increased involvement of SNCC.
  • 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.
  • May 29  Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, citing the 1955 landmark ICC ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Boynton v. Virginia, petitions the ICC to enforce desegregation in interstate travel.
  • June–August  U.S. Department of Justice initiates talks with civil rights groups and foundations on beginning Voter Education Project.
  • July  SCLC begins citizenship classes; Andrew J. Young hired to direct the program. Bob Moses begins voter registration in McComb, Mississippi.
  • September  James Forman becomes SNCC's Executive Secretary.
  • September 23  The Interstate Commerce Commission, at Robert F. Kennedy's insistence, issues new rules ending discrimination in interstate travel, effective November 1, 1961, six years after the ICC's own ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company.
  • 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."[66]
  • November 1  SNCC workers Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon and nine Chatmon Youth Council members test new ICC rules at Trailways bus station in Albany, Georgia.[67]
  • 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.[67]
  • 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.[67]
  • November 22  Albany State College students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.[67]
  • December 10  Freedom Riders from Atlanta, SNCC leader Charles Jones, and Albany State student Bertha Gober are arrested at Albany Union Railway Terminal, sparking mass demonstrations, with hundreds of protesters arrested over the next five days.[68]
  • December 11–15  Five hundred protesters arrested in Albany, Georgia.
  • December 15  King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.[65]
  • December 16  Dr. King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.[65]
  • December 18  Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; King leaves town.[69]
  • Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League and begins expanding its size and mission.
  • Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin, a white southerner who deliberately tanned and dyed his skin to allow him to directly experience the life of the Negro in the Deep South, is published, displaying the brutality of "Jim Crow" segregation to a national audience.

1962

  • January 18–20  Student protests over sit-in leaders' expulsions at Baton Rouge's Southern University, the nation's largest black school, close it down.
  • February  Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP).
  • February 26  Segregated transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate, ruled unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court.
  • March  SNCC workers sit-in at U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's office to protest jailings in Baton Rouge.
  • 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.
  • June  SNCC workers establish voter registration projects in rural southwest Georgia.
  • July 10  August 28 SCLC renews protests in Albany; King in jail July 10–12 and July 27 – August 10.
  • August 31  Fannie Lou Hamer attempts to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi.
  • September 9  Two black churches used by SNCC for voter registration meetings are burned in Sasser, Georgia.
  • September 20  James Meredith is barred from becoming the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
  • September 30-October 1  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black orders James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss.; he enrolls and a riot ensues. French photographer Paul Guihard and Oxford resident Ray Gunter are killed.
  • October  Leflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive.
  • October 23  FBI begins Communist Infiltration (COMINFIL) investigation of SCLC.
  • November 7–8  Edward Brooke selected Massachusetts Attorney General, Leroy Johnson elected Georgia State Senator, Augustus F. Hawkins elected first black from California in Congress.
  • November 20  Attorney General Kennedy authorizes FBI wiretap on Stanley Levison's home telephone.
  • November 20  President Kennedy upholds 1960 presidential campaign promise to eliminate housing segregation by signing Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in Federally funded housing.

1963

  • January 18  Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address.
  • April 3–May 10  The Birmingham campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights challenges city leaders and business owners in Birmingham, Alabama, with daily mass demonstrations.
  • 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 2–4  Birmingham's juvenile court is inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested after James Bevel launches his "D-Day" youth march. The actions spans three days to become the Birmingham Children's Crusade.[70]
  • May 9–10  After images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on protesters are televised, the Children's Crusade lays the groundwork for the terms of a negotiated truce on Thursday, May 9 puts an end to mass demonstrations in return for rolling back oppressive segregation laws and practices. Dr. King and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth announce the settlement terms on Friday, May 10, only after King holds out to orchestrate the release of thousands of jailed demonstrators with bail money from Harry Belafonte and Robert Kennedy.[71]
  • 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 13  In United States of America and Interstate Commerce Commission v. the City of Jackson, Mississippi et al., the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit rules the city's attempt to circumvent laws desegregating interstate transportation facilities by posting sidewalk signs outside Greyhound, Trailways and Illinois Central terminals reading "Waiting Room for White Only — By Order Police Department" and "Waiting Room for Colored Only  By Order Police Department" to be unlawful.[72]
  • 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.[73]
  • May 30  Police attack Florida A&M anti-segregation demonstrators with tear gas; arrest 257.[74]
  • June 9  Fannie Lou Hamer is among several SNCC workers badly beaten by police in the Winona, Mississippi, jail after their bus stops there.
  • June 11  "The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door": Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation by the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Wallace only stands aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama National Guard. Later in life he apologizes for his opposition to racial integration then.
  • 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.)[75]
  • 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.[76] White leaders in business and philanthropy gather at the Carlyle Hotel to raise initial funds for the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership
  • August 28  Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Northwest Baltimore, County, Maryland is desegregated.
  • August 28  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held. King gives his I Have a Dream speech.[77]
  • September 10  Birmingham, Alabama City Schools are integrated by National Guardsmen under orders from President Kennedy.
  • September 15  16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham kills four young girls. That same day, in response to the killings, James Bevel and Diane Nash begin the Alabama Project, which will later grow into the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
  • September 19 - Iota Phi Theta fraternity was founded at Morgan State College (now Morgan State University)
  • 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.[78]

1964

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

1965

1966

1967

1968

  • 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.
  • February 12  First day of the (wildcat) Memphis sanitation strike
  • 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.[84]
  • April 3  King returns to Memphis; delivers "Mountaintop" speech.
  • April 4  Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.
  • April 4–8 and one in May 1968  In response to the killing of Dr. King, over 150 cities experience rioting.
  • April 11  Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed. The Fair Housing Act is Title VIII of this Civil Rights Act – it bans discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. The law is passed following a series of contentious open housing campaigns throughout the urban North. The most significant of these campaigns were the Chicago Open Housing Movement of 1966 and organized events in Milwaukee during 1967–68. In both cities, angry white mobs attacked nonviolent protesters.[85][86]
  • May 12  Poor People's Campaign marches on Washington, DC.
  • 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.
  • September 17  Diahann Carroll stars in the title role in Julia, as the first African-American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.
  • October 3  The play The Great White Hope opens; it runs for 546 performances and later becomes a film.
  • 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.

1969

  • 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.
  • February 13  National Guard with teargas and riot sticks crush a pro-black student demonstration at University of Wisconsin.
  • February 16  After 3 days of clashes between police and Duke University students, the school agrees to establish a Black Studies program.
  • February 23  UNC Food Worker Strike begins when workers abandon their positions in Lenoir Hall protesting racial injustice
  • April 3–4  National Guard called into Chicago, and Memphis placed on curfew on anniversary of MLK's assassination.
  • April 19  Armed African-American students protesting discrimination take over Willard Straight Hall, the student union building at Cornell University. They end the seizure the following day after the university accedes to their demands, including an Afro-American studies program.
  • April 25–28  Activist students takeover Merrill House at Colgate University demanding Afro-American studies programs.
  • May 8  City College of New York closed following a two-week-long campus takeover demanding Afro-American and Puerto-Rican studies; riots among students break out when the school tries to reopen.
  • June  The second of two US federal appeals court decisions confirms members of the public hold legal standing to participate in broadcast station license hearings, and under the Fairness Doctrine finds the record of segregationist TV station WLBT beyond repair. The FCC is ordered to open proceedings for a new licensee.[87]
  • September 1–2  Race rioting in Hartford, CT and Camden, NJ.
  • October 29  The U.S. Supreme Court in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education orders immediate desegregation of public schools, signaling the end of the "all deliberate speed" doctrine established in Brown II.
  • 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.
  • United Citizens Party is formed in South Carolina when Democratic Party refuses to nominate African-American candidates.
  • W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research founded at Harvard University.
  • The Revised Philadelphia Plan is instituted by the Department of Labor.
  • The Congressional Black Caucus is formed.

1970–2000

1970

1971

1972

  • 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."

1973

1974

  • July 25  In Milliken v. Bradley, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision holds that outlying districts could only be forced into a desegregation busing plan if there was a pattern of violation on their part. This decision reinforces the trend of white flight.
  • Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc Collective, the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanists and women of color formed in New York City.

1975

  • April 30  In the pilot episode of Starsky and Hutch, Richard Ward plays an African-American supervisor of white American employees for the first time on TV.

1976

1977

1978

1979

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1994

1995

1997

1998

  • 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.

1999

2000

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21st century

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Perspective

2001–2010

2001

2002

2003

2005

2006

  • March 26  Capitol Hill police fail to recognize Cynthia McKinney as a member of Congress.

2007

2008

  • June 3  Barack Obama receives enough delegates by the end of state primaries to be the presumptive Democratic Party of the United States nominee.[92]
  • 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."[93]

2009

2010

  • 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.
  • August 3  Fair Sentencing Act reducing sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine to an 18:1 ratio.

2011–2020

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2020

2021-2022

2021

2022

  • A 2022 Buffalo shooting occurs killing 10, with the shooter live streaming the attack on Twitch . The majority of victims are African American, with the shooter driving over 200 km to reach the supermarket in which it occurred in.[100]
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Further reading

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