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NAT TURNER’S REVOLT
In August 1831, Nat Turner struck fear into the hearts of white Southerners by leading the only effective slave rebellion in U.S. history. Turner inherited a passionate hatred of slavery from his African–born mother and came to see himself as anointed by God to lead his people out of bondage. Some 100 slaves, including innocent bystanders, lost their lives in the struggle. Turner escaped and spent six weeks on the lamb before he was captured, tried and hanged. -
DRED SCOTT CASE
the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Scott v. Sanford, delivering a resounding victory to southern supporters of slavery and arousing the ire of northern abolitionists. During the 1830s, the owner of a slave named Dred Scott had taken him from the slave state of Missouri to the Wisconsin territory and Illinois, where slavery was outlawed, according to the terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Scott sued for his freedom. -
JOHN BROWN’S RAID
A native of Connecticut, John Brown struggled to support his large family and moved restlessly from state to state throughout his life, becoming a passionate opponent of slavery along the way. After assisting in the Underground Railroad out of Missouri and engaging in the bloody struggle between pro– and anti–slavery forces in Kansas in the 1850s, Brown grew anxious to strike a more extreme blow for the cause. -
CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION
The bitter sectional conflicts that had been intensifying between North and South over the course of four decades erupted into civil war, with 11 southern states seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America. Lincoln sought first and foremost to preserve the Union, and he knew that few people even in the North—let alone the border slave states still loyal to Washington—would have supported a war against slavery in 1861. -
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its verdict in Plessy vs. Ferguson, a case that represented the first major test of the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s provision of full and equal citizenship to African Americans. By an 8–1 majority, the Court upheld a Louisiana law that required the segregation of passengers on railroad cars. The Court established the —separate but equal” doctrine that would thereafter be used for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. -
NAACP FOUNDED
A wave of race riots lent a sense of urgency to the Niagara Movement and its supporters, who in 1909 joined their agenda with that of a new permanent civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Among the NAACP’s stated goals were the abolition of all forced segregation, the enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments, equal education for blacks and whites and complete enfranchisement of all black men.
