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Feb 1, 1400
West Africans believed to have arrived in the New World
The first European nation to engage in the Transatlantic Slave Trade was Portugal in the mid to late 1400's. Captain John Hawkins made the first known English slaving voyage to Africa, in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth 1. Hawkins made three such journeys over a period of six years. He captured over 1200 Africans and sold them as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. -
Feb 10, 1481
Portuguese start the slave trade out of West Africa
The Portuguese were the first to engage in the New World slave trade, and others soon followed. Slaves were considered cargo by the ship owners, to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible,[2] there to be sold to labour in coffee, tobacco, cocoa, cotton and sugar plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, and as house servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were also called "indentured servants" -
Jan 1, 1500
Africans were amoung the first to settle what is today James town, Virginia
Not long after the English settled Jamestown in 1607,
the first Africans were brought to Virginia.
They arrived in 1619 from the Kongo/Angola region of
West Central Africa. -
Judge Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts writes one of the first abolitionist tracts
Samuel Sewall (March 28, 1652 – January 1, 1730) was a judge, ... From Parker Sewall acquired a lifelong love of verse, which he wrote in both English and Latin. ... Sewall received his first degree, a BA, in 1671, and his MA in 1674. ... came out strongly against slavery, making him one of the earliest colonial abolitionists. -
Crispus Attucks a runaway slave, leads group
Crispus Attucks is believed to have been born around 1723, in Framingham, Massachusetts. His father was likely a slave and his mother a Natick Indian. A 1750 ad in the Boston Gazette sought the recovery of a runaway slave named "Crispas," but all that is definitely known about Attucks is that he was the first to fall during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In 1888, the Crispus Attucks monument was unveiled in Boston Common. -
Washington accepts African Americans in the Continenetal Army
Washington's Papers
Recruiting African Americans into the Continental Army
Throughout the war, Washington, the Continental Congress, and the state governments struggled with the issue of recruiting sufficient troops to carry on the fight. In 1775, Washington recommended, and the Congress agreed, that the recruitment of African Americans for service in the Continental Army be discontinued. By mid-1777, however, the attitude of colonial leaders began to change. -
Britain and the United States abolish the slave trade
Britain used its international strength to put pressure on other nations to end their own slave trade. The United States acted to abolish its Atlantic slave trade the same month on 2 March (but not its internal slave trade). In 1805 a British Order-in-Council had restricted the importation of slaves into colonies that had been captured from France and the Netherlands.[8] Britain continued to press other nations to end their trade with a series of treaties: the 1810 Anglo-Portuguese treaty whereb -
Fredrick Douglas author and abolitionist
Frederick Douglass (1818-95) was a prominent American abolitionist, author and orator. Born a slave, Douglass escaped at age 20 and went on to become a world-renowned anti-slavery activist. His three autobiographies are considered important works of the slave narrative tradition as well as classics of American autobiography. Douglass’ work as a reformer ranged from his abolitionist activities in the early 1840s to his attacks on Jim Crow and lynching in the 1890s. For 16 years he edited an influ -
Futigitve Slave Act is enacted
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This was one of the most controversial acts of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It declared that all runaway slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were u -
Supreme Court decides the Dred Scott Case
Dred Scott, was a slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as "the Dred Scott Decision." Wikipedia
Born: 1795, Southampton County, VA
Died: September 17, 1858, St. Louis, MO
Nationality: American -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed slaves in states that remained in rebellion during the American Civil War. -
Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. -
Fourteeth Amendment makes civil rights legislation permanent
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in the Congress -
NAACP formed
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, campaigning for equal opportunity and conducting voter mobilization. Founding group
The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Spring -
Great Migration of southern Blacks to northern cities begins
In the spring of 1916, the attention of the American press and public was focused on the Great War in Europe. Few noticed the tiny stream of Southern black men brought north by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to work on the rail lines. But following this experiment between 1916 and 1918 alone, nearly 400,000 African Americans - five hundred each day - took what they hoped was a journey into freedom. -
Harlem Race Riots
On Thursday, July 16, 1964, James Powell was shot and killed by Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan. The second bullet of three, considered lethal, killed the 15-year-old African American in front of his friends and about a dozen other witnesses. The incident immediately rallied about 300 students from a nearby school who were informed by the principal. This incident set off six consecutive nights of rioting that affected the New York City neighborhoods of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. In total, 4,000 N -
Brown vs Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement into a full revolution. -
March On Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. Background Read more: Civil Rights March on Washington (History, Facts, Martin Luther King Jr.) | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/marchonwashington.html#ixzz2tDgiVZey -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the nation's benchmark civil rights legislation, and it continues to resonate in America. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Passage of the Act ended the application of "Jim Crow" laws, which had been upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court held that racial segregation purported to be "separate but equal" was constitutional. The Civil Ri -
Malcolm X assassinated
On Feb. 21, 1965, the former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He was 39. -
Martin Luther King assassinated
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. The .30-caliber rifle bullet entered King's right cheek, traveled through his neck, and finally stopped at his shoulder blade. King was immediately taken to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
NELSON MANDELA
Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in Mveso, Transkei, South Africa. Becoming actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement in his 20s, Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1942. For 20 years, he directed a campaign of peaceful, nonviolent defiance against the South African government and its racist policies. In 1993, Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to dismantle the country's apartheid system. In -
Million Man March
Million Man March, political demonstration in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 16, 1995, to promote African American unity and family values. Estimates of the number of marchers, most of whom were African American men, ranged from 400,000 to nearly 1.1 million, ranking it among the largest gatherings of its kind in American history. -
Barack Obama voted the first african americal president
On this day in 2008, Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, decisively defeated his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, to become the nation’s 44th president and the first African-American to be elected to the White House. Obama, who was 47 at the time, won 365 electoral votes and amassed nearly 53 percent of the popular vote while McCain, 72, won 173 electoral votes and more than 45 percent of the popular vote. -
John Brown's Raid at Harpers Ferry
On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of HARPER'S FERRY, Virginia. His plan was to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. He would seize the arms and ammunition in the federal arsenal, arm slaves in the area and move south along the Appalachian Mountains, attracting slaves to his cause. He had no rations. He had no escape route. His plan was doomed from the very beginning. But it did succeed to deepen the divide between the North and South.
