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Apr 26, 1500
Middle Passage
Was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans[1] were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials,[2] which would be transported back to Europe to complete the voyage. -
Chattel Slavery
is what most people have in mind when they think of the kind of slavery that existed in the United States before the Civil War, and that existed legally throughout many parts of the world as far back as recorded history. Slaves were actual property who could be bought, sold, traded or inherited. -
Mulattos
is a controversial term used to refer to persons born of one white parent and one black parent or to persons born of a mulatto parent or parents. In English, the term is today generally confined to historical contexts. English speakers of mixed white and black ancestry seldom choose to identify themselves as "mulatto."[6] -
African Slave Trade
has existed throughout the continent for many centuries, and still continues in the current day in some countries. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of the continent, as they were in much of the ancient world. In most African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. -
Traditional Southern Gentry
Gained wealth from tobacco and rice and dominated Chesapeake, SC and GA
Acted like English gentry
Republican aristocracy
Lived extravagantly
"Benevolence" -
Sharecropping
is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. -
Stono Rebellion
Was a slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, with 42-47 whites and 44 blacks killed.[1] The uprising was led by native Africans who were likely from the Central African Kingdom of Kongo, as some of the rebels spoke Portuguese. -
Abolitionism
is a movement to end slavery, whether formal or informal. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism is a historical movement to end the African and Indian slave trade and set slaves free. King Charles I of Spain, usually known as Emperor Charles V, following the example of Louis X of France who abolished slavery within the Kingdom of France in 1315, passed a law which would have abolished colonial slavery in 1542, although this law was not passed in the largest colonial states -
Rev. Richard Allen
Was a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most active and influential black leaders. In 1794 he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[2] -
New York Emancipation Act of 1799
Most of the Revolutionary leaders who came to power in New York in 1777 had anti-slavery sentiments, yet, as elsewhere in the North, the urgency of the war with Britain made them delay, and they restricted their activity to a policy statement and an appeal to future legislatures "to take the most effective measures consistent with public safety for abolishing domestic slavery." This resolution passed in the state Constitutional Convention by a vote of 29 to 5. -
Black Christianity
refers to Protestant churches that currently or historically have ministered to predominantly black congregations in the United States. While some black churches belong to predominantly African-American denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), many black churches are members of predominantly white denominations, such as the United Church of Christ (which developed from the Congregational Church of New England).[1] -
Underground Railroad
Was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early-to-mid 19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
Gag Rule
A regulation or directive that prohibits public discussion of a particular matter, in particular. Congress did this with the issue of slavery because they were tired of hearing the issue and didn't want to upset either side of the matter. -
Benevolent masters
masters that were committed to the welfare of their slaves. Believed that they were treating their slaves well. -
Pan-Africanism
is a worldwide intellectual movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all people of African descent. Based upon a common fate going back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement extends beyond continental Africans, with a substantial support base amongst the African diaspora in the Caribbean and the United States. -
Black Nationalism
advocates a racial definition (or redefinition) of national identity for African Americans. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all black nationalist ideologies are unity and self-determination—that is, separation, or independence, from European society. -
Manumission
Is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. Different approaches developed, each specific to the time and place of a society's slave system. -
Tallmadge Amendment
Was a proposed amendment to a bill requesting the Territory of Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a free state. This amendment was submitted on February 13, 1819, by James Tallmadge, Jr., a Democratic-Republican from New York, and Charles Baumgardner. In response to the debate in Congress regarding the admission of Missouri as a state and its effect on the existing even balance of slave and free states. -
American Colonization Society
The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 to assist free black people in emigrating to Africa, was the brainchild of the Reverend Robert Finley, a Presbyterian minister from Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Finley believed that blacks would never be fully integrated into American society and that they would only be able to fulfill their potential as human beings in Africa, the "land of their fathers. -
Missouri Compromise
is the title generally attached to the legislation passed by the 16th Congress of the United States on May 8, 1820. The measures provided for the admission of the District of Maine as a state free to ratify a state constitution that both did not recognize and prohibited slavery within the state. Further, the Compromise provided that the Missouri territory was free to enact a state constitution that both recognized as legal and permitted, the institution of chattel slavery. -
David Walker
was an outspoken African-American abolitionist, writer and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was a slave, his mother was free so therefore he was free. In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, he published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,[4] a call for black unity and self-help in the fight against oppression and injustice. -
Nat Turner’s Revolt
(also known as the Southampton Insurrection) was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, during August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the Southern United States. -
William Lloyd Garrison
Was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he founded with Isaac Knapp in 1831 and published in Massachusetts until slavery was abolished by Constitutional amendment after the American Civil War. -
American Anti-Slavery Society
Was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison, and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, was a key leader of this society who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown was also a freed slave who often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local charters with around 250,000 members. -
Elijah P. Lovejoy
Was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist. He was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, during their attack on Godfrey and Gillman's warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials. -
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society
split off from the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 over a number of issues, including the increasing influence of anarchism (and an unwillingness to participate in the government’s political process), hostility to established religion, and feminism in the latter. Prominent members included the brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Samuel Cornish, and Theodore S. Wright.[1][2] -
Fredrick Douglas
February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory[5] and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American. -
Northwest Passage
Is a sea route connecting the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.[1][2][3][4] The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from the Canadian mainland by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages or Northwestern Passages.[5] -
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. ... Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.[3] -
Dred Scott v. Sandford 1856
the Supreme Court ruled that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The Court also ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories. -
Lincoln Douglas Debates
Were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. -
Emancipation Proclamation
As the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." -
Black Codes
were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. -
Freedmen’s Bureau
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. federal government agency established in 1865 to aid freedmen (freed slaves) in the South during the Reconstruction era of the United States, which attempted to change society in the former Confederate. -
Civil Rights Act of 1866
Was passed by Congress on 9th April 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act declared that all persons born in the United States were now citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition. -
14th Amendment
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 the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. -
Hiram Revels
Was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a Republican politician, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. He became the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress when he was elected to the United States Senate to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era. -
Fifteenth Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. -
Enforcement Laws
They were criminal codes which protected African-Americans’ right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws the laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act to protect these rights. The acts passed which gave full citizenship to anyone born in the United States or freed slaves, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which banned racial discrimination in voting. -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
Sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service. -
U.S. v. Cruikshank
Was an important United States Supreme Court decision in United States constitutional law, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights to state governments following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Solid South
was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of white Democrats in the southern states. The Southern bloc existed especially between 1877 (the end of Reconstruction) and 1964 (the year of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964). During this period, the Democratic Party controlled state legislatures; most local and state officeholders in the South were Democrats. -
Jim Crow
was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. -
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
Were a group of five US Supreme Court constitutional law cases. Against the famous dissent of Justice Harlan, a majority held the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, because Congress lacked authority to regulate private affairs under the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the Thirteenth Amendment "merely abolishes slavery". The Civil Rights Act of 1875 had banned race discrimination in access to services offered to the public. -
Williams v. Mississippi
is a United States Supreme Court case that reviewed provisions of the state constitution that set requirements for voter registration. The Supreme Court did not find discrimination in the state's requirements for voters to pass a literacy test and pay poll taxes, as these were applied to all voters. -
W. E. B. Du Bois
was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. -
United Negro Improvement Association
is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded in 1914 by Marcus Mosiah Garvey. The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1920s, prior to Garvey's deportation from the United States of America, after which its prestige and influence declined. -
Marcus Garvey
was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a proponent of the Pan-Africanism movement, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).[3] He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. -
Race Riot
was a major racial conflict that began in Chicago, Illinois on July 27, 1919 and ended on August 3. During the riot, thirty-eight people died (23 black and 15 white) and over five hundred were injured. -
Jazz Music
is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States,[1] in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime.[2] Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical parentage with a performance orientation.[3] -
John L. Lewis
Was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. -
Harlem Renaissance
was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. -
Ella Baker
was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist born in Virginia, who grew up in North Carolina and graduated from college there, and worked for most of her life based in New York City. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades -
Executive Order 8802
was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, to prohibit racial discrimination in the national defense industry. It was the first federal action, though not a law, to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the United States. -
Congress of racial equality
is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. -
Double V Campaign
Segregation and discrimination had reached a point that was no longer tolerable, and according to the Pittsburgh Courier, it was time for a campaign. The “Double V Campaign,” as it was called, stood for two victories for black Americans: a victory at home and a victory abroad. -
Executive Order 9981
was an executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces and eventually led to the end of segregation in the services. -
Strom Thurmond and the States’ Rights Democratic Party
was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States. It originated in 1948 as a breakaway faction of the Democratic Party determined to protect states' rights to legislate racial segregation from what its members regarded as an oppressive federal government.[1] Supporters assumed control of the state Democratic parties in part or in full in several Southern states. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. -
Murder of Emmett Till
was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 in 1955 after being falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. -
Integration of Little Rock Central High School
In a key event of the American Civil Rights Movement, nine black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, testing a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The court had mandated that all public schools in the country be integrated “with all deliberate speed” in its decision related to the groundbreaking case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr, had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.[1] -
Greensboro Sit-Ins
Sitting for Justice: Woolworth's Lunch Counter. On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat down at a lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and politely asked for service. Their request was refused. When asked to leave, they remained in their seats. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
was one of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.[1][2] It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 per week salary. -
Freedom Rides
were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years in order to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960),[3] which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.[4] The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. -
March on Washington
was held in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to stand up for civil and economic rights for African Americans during a time when racism was more prevalent throughout society. At the march, Martin Luther King Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism.[3] -
“I Have a Dream Speech”
is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the Civil Rights Movement.[2] -
Bombing of a Baptist Church in Birmingham
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, September 15, 1963, when four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. -
Malcolm X
was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. -
Freedom Summer
was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. Blacks had been cut off from voting since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. -
MFDP
was an American political party created in 1964 as a branch of the populist Freedom Democratic organization in the state of Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. -
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
is a federal agency that administers and enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, children, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, gender identity, genetic information, and retaliation for reporting, participating in, and/or opposing a discriminatory practice.[3] -
Selma March
were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression, and were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Black Panther Party
ounded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The party's original purpose was to patrol African American neighbourhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. -
Stokely Carmichael
was a Trinidadian-American who became a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement and the global Pan-African movement. He grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while he attended Howard University. -
Martin Luther King, Jr.
was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. -
Black Power
is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies aimed at achieving self-determination for people of African descent. It is used by African Americans in the United States. -
Thurgood Marshall
was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice.