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First Slave Ship Arrives in Jamestown, VA
John Rolfe enters into his diary: "About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. … He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, w[hich] the Governo[r] and Cape Merchant bought for victuall[s]." -
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Slavery
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Publication of "Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral"
Phyllis Wheatley travels to London to publish her collection of poems. She is the first African American and first African American woman to be published so broadly. -
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American Abolitionism Movement
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Fugitive Slave Law passed by Congress
"An Act of the United States Congress to give effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3), which was later superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment. The former guaranteed a right for a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave. The Act, "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters," created the legal mechanism by which that could be accomplished."
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Missouri Compromise enacted by Congress
"Legislation that provided for the admission to the United States of Maine as a free state along with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South in the United States Senate. As part of the compromise, slavery was prohibited north of the 36°30′ parallel, excluding Missouri."
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Frederick Douglas publishes "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave"
Douglas' memoir describes in eloquent detail his life as a slave, from his first memories to his escape to freedom and career as an author and orator. The autobiography is commonly held to be one of, if not the, most important works of abolitionist literature. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
Stowe's anti-slavery novel describes moral and religious imperatives to abolishing slavery, as told through the tragic stories of Tom and Eliza. The book is often criticised for its stereotypical caricatures of African Americans and Tom's tokenistic subservience to his owners. -
Frederick Douglass gives his speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
Douglass delivers a powerful antislavery speech to the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society in Rochester, NY. He calls into question the purported values of the United States - liberty, justice, freedom - as an insult to enslaved people denied the same rights that define the 4th of July celebration. It is considered one of the most influential antislavery orations every delivered.
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"Clotel; Or the President's Daughter" is published
William Wells Brown publishes what is considered to be the first - or one of the first - pieces of fictional literature produced by an African American. The story surrounds the story of Clotel, the mixed race girl fathered by Thomas Jefferson, and covers topics such as slavery and the African American family and hardships faced by light-skinned of Mulatto blacks. -
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Harriet Wilson publishes "Our Nig"
"Our Nig" is the first African American novel published in the United States. It describes the difficulties of free African Americans living in the northern US. -
Harriet Jacobs publishes "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"
Jacob's autobiography describes her life as a slave and the struggle for her achievement of freedom. It also describes the particular horrors of being a female slave, of sexual assault and her efforts to shield her children from its atrocities. -
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Civil War
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Morrill Land Grant Colleges Act enacted by Congress
"Required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion, or else to designate a separate land-grant institution for persons of color. Among the seventy colleges and universities which eventually evolved from the Morrill Acts are several of today's Historically Black colleges and universities."
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Southern Recounstruction
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Sojourner Truth delivers speech "Ain't I a Woman?"
Truth's speaks at Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, arguing for women's rights and decrying racism as destructive to the women's rights movement.
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The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
"Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime."
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The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
"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."
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Enforcement Acts of 1869-1871
"A federal law written to empower the President with the legal authority to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States. The act was the first of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks on the suffrage rights of African Americans from state officials or violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan."
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The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
"Prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude'. It was the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments."
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Naturalization Act enacted by Congress
Formerly a "United States federal law that created a system of controls for the naturalization process and penalties for fraudulent practices. It is also noted for extending the naturalization process to 'aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.'" -
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1875
The act "imposed various criminal penalties against private businesses that practiced racial discrimination. Penalties were imposed on any owner of a public establishment or conveyance who practiced racial discrimination in the conduct of his or her business. Many Northerners and Southerners opposed to Reconstruction saw the law as an infringement of personal freedom of choice."
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Jim Crow Era
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Yick Wo vs. Hopkins
"The Court ruled for the first time that a facially neutral law applied in a racially discriminatory manner violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." -
Charles Chesnutt's "The Goophered Grapevine" is published in The Atlantic Monthly
A puzzling and divisive piece of literature, it is at once condemned for it's blatant use of archetypal caricature and dismissive portrayal of African Americans, but also examined for its subtle yet poignant criticisms of well-intentioned-but-still-racist depiction of Northerners and their hypocritical high mindedness.
The Atlantic
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Alice Ruth Moore's "Violets and Other Tales" is published
Moore's collection of poetry and short stories details the complex difficulties of African American women in the post-slavery 19th century. She discusses her experiences of love, forgiveness, marriage, work, race and women's rights.
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Plessy vs. Ferguson
"The Court stated that segregation was legal and constitutional as long as "facilities were equal"—the famous "separate but equal" segregation policy."
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Booker T. Washington publishes "Up from Slavery"
Washington's autobiography describes his life from his childhood as a slave to his education at the Hampton Institute to his work at the Tuskegee Institute teaching economic and marketable skills to African Americans -
Paul Lawrence Dunbar publishes "The Sport of the Gods"
Dunbar, an accomplished fictionalist and poet known for his works' ambivalence toward its white readers and irreverence to common literary customs, particularly in writing in the then-termed "negro dialect", publishes "The Sport of the Gods", describing in brutal details the bleak prospects of African Americans in urban America. -
W.E.B. Du Bois publishes "The Souls of Black Folk"
Du Bois' seminal work and a cornerstone work in the field of sociology, this collection of essays introduces the concept of African American "double consciousness", in which one must always be aware of how one views themselves, and how the world views them.
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"Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" is set to music
Written by James Weldon Johnson as a poem and first performed by 500 school children on the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday to honor guest Booker T. Washington, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" was set to music by Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson. The song later became known as "The Black National Anthem".
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Sutton Griggs publishes "The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist"
Griggs' epic, 5-part novel includes themes of "amalgamation, emigration, armed resistance, and US overseas expansion; includes a melodramatic love story; and features two of the most sensational scenes in early African American fiction—a harrowingly graphic lynching of an innocent black couple based on actual events and the elaboration of a plot to wipe out white Southerners by introducing yellow fever germs into the water supply."
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William Braithwaite publishes "The House of Falling Leaves"
A collection of poems, The House of Falling Leaves represents Braithwhaite's most celebrated literary achievement. He was honored by the NAACP for his life's work in 1918 after many years of creating and editing anthologies that served as the jumping off point for many historically recognized minority writers. -
Marcus Garvey establishes Negro World
Negro World, with a circulation of nearly 500,000, was the preeminent publication for African American news, arts and culture during the Harlem Renaissance. Opening with a full page editorial from Garvey on the front page, the newspaper was so influential that French and British administrators banned its sale and possession in colonial held territories for fear it would incite resistance and tumult. -
Sarah Lee Browning Fleming publishes "Hope's Highway"
"The first black teacher in the Brooklyn school system, Sarah Lee Brown Fleming is known as an educator and social and community activist, but few know her as a writer. Therefore, her published work has received little critical attention. Her novel Hope's Highway is a tale of racial uplift in which, through education and moral fortitude, a black man rises to become a "leader of his people."
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Harlem Rennaisance
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Claude McKay publishes If We Must Die
If we must die—let it not be like hogs/ Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,/ While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,/ Making their mock at our accursed lot./ If we must die—oh, let us noble die,/ So that our previous blood may not be shed/ In vain. -
Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is published The Crisis magazine
Hughes' first published poem, he would go on to be a massive influence in the arts of the Harlem Renaissance. He's known for depicting the actual, lived lives of African American individuals and families, striving to show what conditions are most representative of reality - including the struggles, joy, laughter, pride and music of everyday life. -
Jean Toomer publishes "Cane"
A classic pioneer of "high modernism", Toomer innovatively uses vignettes, poetry and theater-esque passage dialogue to weave together stories of the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. Though broadly ignored during the Harlem Renaissance, the novel has come to be widely viewed as modern masterpiece for its groundbreaking depictions of the complexity of African American humanity and complicated mosaic of writing style. -
Racial Integrity Act enacted by Virginia
Required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth and divided society into two classifications: white and colored. It defined race by the 'one-drop rule', defining as 'colored' persons with any African or Native American ancestry. It also criminalized all (interracial) marriages. The Sterilization Act provided for compulsory sterilization of persons deemed to be 'feebleminded'" Later overturned by Loving vs. Virginia in 1967 Citation -
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg publishes his essay "The Negro Digs up His Past"
Aiming to prove his 5th grade teacher's statement, "Black people have no past", Schomburg pens this essay describing the achievements of Black intellectuals and abolitionist orators and writers in history. He argues that recognizing and celebrating commonly omitted points and people of history is imperative to understanding and demonstrating modern day oppression.
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Countee Cullen publishes Color
While studying at Harvard, Cullen publishes his collection of poems, Color, which touched on themes of black beauty, racism, identity, injustice and sexuality. The publication is considered a landmark work of the Harlem Renaissance. -
Alain LeRoy Locke publishes "The New Negro"
Renowned as "the Dean" of the Harlem Renaissance ideology and movement, Locke collected what he believed to be the most important African American literature and anthologized it in "The New Negro". Locke established the philosophy of "Race-Building", which called for black awareness of the potential of equality. Through self-confidence and political awareness, he argued, blacks could own the power of the idea, and could enforce it through their actions and perspectives. -
Richard Bruce Nugent's "Smoke, Lilies and Jade" published in Wallace Thurman's "Fire"
The groundbreaking poem, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade", explores bisexuality and interracial desires, both taboo and marginalized subjects in the African American art movement. The publication was criticized for associating effeminacy with the Harlem Renaissance, he has since become an iconic pioneer in the early gay rights movement.
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Rudolph Fisher publishes "The Walls of Jericho"
Fisher's "'The Walls of Jericho' portrays (black) society in New York City during the 1920s. Fisher focuses on the idea of black unity and the discovery of the self. The biblical tale of Joshua is evoked to illustrate his concern for the black person's search for a 'true nature.' it is in this spiritual battle that the divergent segments of Harlem are drawn together in order to battle the "establishment" inside the walls of Jericho."
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Wallace Thurman publishes "The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life"
The novel is notable for its groundbreaking "exploration of colorism and racial discrimination within the black community, where lighter skin was often favored, especially for women."
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Nella Larsen publishes "Passing"
"Passing" explores the complicated idea of racial passing in 1920's New York. Notable for its examinations of racial passing, race, gender and sexuality in 1920's culture, "Passing" is considered a classically significant piece in the American literature canon. -
Sterling Brown publishes "Southern Road"
Brown's controversial poem distances himself from the broader Harlem Renaissance movement and aligns himself with a New Negro Renaissance. He believes, and articulates in "Southern Road", that the ills of modernity are destroying a traditional black, rural culture, and that a return to this communal lifestyle represents black resistance and liberation. -
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Zora Neale Hurston publishes "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Neale Hurston's iconic novel explores the coming of age of a young, light skinned African American woman in Central Florida. Set in the early 20th century, the novel explores themes of love, gender roles, women's liberation, race, language and women's value in relationships. Cemented in the canon of American literature, Neale Hurston's novel was initially poorly reviewed, but upon its "rediscovery" in the 1970's, it has gained notoriety as the seminal feminist work of black literature. -
Richard Wright publishes "Native Son"
"Wright tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright portrays a systemic inevitability behind them. (He) makes the case that there is no escape from this destiny for his client or any other black American since they are the necessary product of the society that formed them"
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Margaret Walker publishes "For My People"
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;
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John Johnson establishes "Negro Digest"
A publication out of Chicago, Negro Digest became an important platform for positive stories about African Americans, and later, a prominent platform for artists during the Black Arts Movement. -
Richard Wright publishes "Black Boy"
Wright's novel "is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States."
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Chester Himes publishes "If He Hollers Let Him Go"
The first novel by American writer Chester Himes, the story revolves around an African-American shipyard worker in Los Angeles during World War II. Themes addressed in the novel include racism, colorism, employment discrimination, and class divisions among whites and blacks. It earned Himes critical acclaim and was considered a "protest novel", in the tradition of Richard Wright.
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Shelley vs. Kraemer
"The justices ruled that a court may not constitutionally enforce a "restrictive covenant" which prevents people of certain race from owning or occupying property."
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Gwendolyn Brooks publishes "A Street in Bronzeville"
Brooks was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, and "A Street in Bronzeville" was her first published collection of poems. A series of vignettes portraying likenesses of the people living in her Chicago South Side neighborhood, the poems examine the alienation of everyday life as African Americans living in the city. -
Ralph Ellison publishes "Invisible Man"
Ellison's "Invisible Man" addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. It is routinely rated as one of the greatest American novels of all time.
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Melvin Tolson publishes "Libretto for the Republic of Liberia"
A major modernist classic, Tolson's poem epic "seeks to preserve the histories of people of African descent throughout the diaspora, writing into the void to un-silence black voices"
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James Baldwin publishes "Go Tell it on the Mountain"
"It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship to his family and his church. The novel focuses on the role of the Pentecostal Church in the lives of African-Americans, as a negative source of repression and moral hypocrisy and also as a positive source of inspiration and community."
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Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka
"Reversed Plessy v. Ferguson 'separate but equal' ruling.' [S]egregation [in public education] is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.'" -
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American Civil Rights Movement
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The Murder of Emmett Till
"Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and murdered in Money, Mississippi, galvanizing support for racial reform in the South." "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."
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
"Local authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, arrested Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, when she refused to vacate her seat in the white section of a city bus on December 1, 1955." African-Americans refused to ride public transportation as an act of protest, with similar protests occurring in Baton Rouge, the arrest of Claudette Colvin and the subsequent Browder vs Gayle supreme court decision.
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Browder vs. Gayle
"Alabama's Middle District Court ruled that racial segregation on buses in Montgomery Alabama was illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision setting a precedent that racial segregation is illegal not only in busing but in all public areas."
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Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, Washington, D.C.
"The Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington for Freedom took place on May 17, 1957, when a crowd of over thirty thousand nonviolent demonstrators, from more than thirty states, gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the third anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling."
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Little Rock Central High School Integration
"The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school."
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Civil Rights Act of 1957
"A federal voting rights bill, (it) was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Its purpose was to show the federal government's support for racial equality after the US Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka."
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Lunch Counter Sit-ins: Nashville, Tenn.
"The Nashville sit-in movement is widely regarded as one of the most successful and sustained student-directed sit-in campaigns of the Civil Rights movement."
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Lorraine Hansberry debuts "A Raisin in the Sun"
"The story tells of a black family's experiences in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood as they attempt to "better" themselves with an insurance payout following the death of the father." Themes include the value of dreams, racial discrimination, pride, poverty, dissatisfaction and family.
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Lunch Counter Sit-ins: Atlanta, Ga.
"In March 1960, students representing Atlanta's six historically black colleges organized a series of sit-ins at area lunch counters to protest the city's legally sanctioned segregation."
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Lunch Counter Sit-ins: Greensboro, N.C.
"On February 1, 1960 four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College students entered the F. W. Woolworth Co. department store in Greensboro, North Carolina and staged a sit-in at the store's segregated lunch counter."
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Civil Rights Act of 1960
"A United States federal law that established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone's attempt to register to vote. It was designed to deal with discriminatory laws and practices in the segregated South, by which blacks and Mexican Texans had been effectively disfranchised since the late 19th and start of the 20th century."
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Freedom Rides
"On May 4, 1961, an interracial group of student activists under the auspices of the Congress of Racial Equality departed Washington D.C. by bus to test local compliance throughout the Deep South with two Supreme Court rulings banning segregated accommodations on interstate buses and in bus terminals that served interstate routes."
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Birmingham Demonstrations
"Despite energetic organization on the local level, Birmingham, Alabama remained a largely segregated city in the spring of 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleagues at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched Project C (for confrontation), an ambitious program that wedded economic pressure and large scale direct action protest to undermine the city's rigid system of segregation."
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Martin Luther King Jr. pens "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
"The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an 'outsider,' King writes, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'."
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March on Washington
"On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million Americans from across the United States converged on the nation's capitol in what was to become a defining moment in the Civil Rights movement." Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream Speech"
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Birmingham Bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
"The bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the deadliest acts of violence to take place during the Civil Rights movement and evoked criticism and outrage from around the world." The blast killed 4 girls attending Sunday School at the church.
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John F. Kennedy's assassination
"On November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in a presidential motorcade."
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Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. vs. United States
"This case challenged the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The court ruled that the motel had no right 'to select its guests as it sees fit, free from governmental regulation.'"
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Freedom Summer
"During the summer of 1964, hundreds of Northern college students traveled to Mississippi to help register black voters and encourage participation in the Civil Rights movement."
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Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nobel Prize
"In 1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dynamic leadership of the Civil Rights movement and steadfast commitment to achieving racial justice through nonviolent action."
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The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution
"Prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax."
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New York School Boycott
"In one of the largest demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement, hundreds of thousands of parents, students and civil rights advocates took part in a citywide boycott of the New York City public school system to demonstrate their support for the full integration of the city's public schools and an end to de facto segregation."
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
"A landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations."
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New York Race Rebellion
"The New York Race Riots of 1964 were the first in a series of devastating race-related riots that ripped through American cities between 1964 and 1965." The disorder occurred after the shooting death of 15-year-old James Powell by an off-duty white police officer in Harlem. The uprisings continued in Albany until Governor Nelson Rockefeller mobilized the national guard to end the rebellion.
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Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
"Authorized the formation of local Community Action Agencies as part of the War on Poverty. These agencies are directly regulated by the federal government. 'It is the purpose of The Economic Opportunity Act to strengthen, supplement, and coordinate efforts in furtherance of that policy.'"
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Amari Baraka publishes "A Poem for Black Hearts"
A tribute to Malcolm X after his assassination, "Baraka’s poem asserts that racial oppression emasculates the African American man, it also suggests that a solution to racial oppression includes reclaiming and redefining African American masculinity in the image of the martyred leader 'Great Malcolm.'" -
The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School opens in Harlem
The establishment of the Black Arts Movement coincided with Amiri Baraka's "opening of the Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School (BARTS) in Harlem. The school’s opening was accompanied by a jazz concert that brought together prominent musicians, artists and innovators. The movement eventually spread across the nation to places like Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco (Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School)."
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Black Power Movement
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Black Arts Movement
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Selma-Montgomery March
"To protest local resistance to black voter registration in Dallas County, Alabama, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized a mass march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965. a column of five hundred to six hundred demonstrators marched without incident through the streets of Selma until reaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they were brutally attacked by state troopers and mounted patrolmen."
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SCOPE project
On June 14, 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference launched an innovative grassroots organizing campaign, the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) project. (It) placed nearly 500 predominantly white college students in nearly 100 predominantly black rural and urban areas in Southern states, including Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina to help lead voter registration drives."
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Voting Rights Act of 1965
"Legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the Civil Rights Movement Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act secured the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South."
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Watts Rebellion
"The Watts Rebellion was the largest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era, spurred from an incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway Patrolman. As a crowd on onlookers gathered at the scene of Frye's arrest, strained tensions between police officers and the crowd erupted in a violent exchange."
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Malcolm X and Alex Haley coauthor "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"
"The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the book's epilogue. He described their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm X's life." -
The Black Panther Party is Established
"The Black Panther Party's core practice was its armed citizens' patrols to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in Oakland. In 1969, community social programs became a core activity of party members.The (BPP) instituted a variety of community social programs, most extensively the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, and community health clinics to address issues like food injustice."
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John A. Williams publishes "The Man who Cried I Am"
Williams' novel is "a fictionalized account of the life and death of Richard Wright, (and) introduced the King Alfred Plan - a fictional CIA-led scheme supporting an international effort to eliminate people of African descent." The book was a best seller, and has been the subject of ongoing conspiracy theories about its origins and credibility. -
Loving vs. Virginia
"This decision ruled that the prohibition on interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time were forced to revise their laws."
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Etheridge Knight publishes "Poems from Prison"
Knight's collection of poetry describes his 8 years incarcerated in prison for armed robbery. Knight was a Korean War veteran who developed a morphine addiction dealing with the psychological trauma of his experiences. His poems, published in Negro World while he was in prison, attracted the attention of prominent African American literary intellectuals, who campaigned for his release from prison. His work is considered of major importance to the Black Arts Movement. -
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.
"The Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 bans racial discrimination in housing by private, as well as governmental, housing providers."
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Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike
"Longstanding tensions between disgruntled African American sanitation workers and Memphis city officials erupted on February 12, 1968 when nearly one thousand workers refused to report to work demanding higher wages, safer working conditions, and recognition of their union, local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees."
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Dr. King's Assassination
"On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by a sniper's bullet while standing on the second-floor balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King's assassin, James Earl Ray, was apprehended by authorities in London, England after a 2-month international manhunt. Upon his extradition to TN, Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and was given a ninety-nine year jail sentence."
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Urban Rebellions - MLK Assassination
110 cities across the country experience varying levels of unrest in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Washington DC, Chicago and Baltimore experienced the most intense demonstrations, with other notable uprisings in Kansas City, New York City, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Trenton, Wilmington and Louisville. King's death and the response are considered to be partly responsible for the passage of several pieces of Civil Rights legislation in the subsequent years. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
"Also known as the Fair Housing Act, (the) legislation provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, religion, or national origin and made it a federal crime to 'by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin.'"
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1968 Olympics Black Power Salute
"A political demonstration conducted by African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony on October 16, 1968, at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. After Smith and Carlos won gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter running event, they turned on the podium to face their flags, and to hear the American national anthem, 'The Star-Spangled Banner'."
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Maya Angelou publishes "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
Angelou pens her "1969 autobiography describing the early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. In the course of Caged Bird, Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice."
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Mari Evans publishes "I Am A Black Woman"
“I am a black woman tall as a cypress strong beyond all definition still defying place and time and circumstance assailed impervious indestructible.”
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Toni Morrison publishes "The Bluest Eye"
Morrison's novel follows, "the life of an African-American girl named Pecola who grows up during the years following the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio. Due to her mannerisms and dark skin, she is consistently regarded as "ugly". As a result, (she desperately desires) the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness". Controversial topics in the book including racism, incest, and child molestation, (leading to attempts to ban the book.)"
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Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
"The United States Supreme Court ruled that the busing of students to promote integration in public schools was legal." -
Griggs vs. Duke Power Co.
"This case was brought by thirteen black employees of the Duke Power Company located in Draper, North Carolina. The Supreme Court ruled that the employees were being discriminated against due to being disqualified for jobs based on test and qualifications that were not needed for the job and had been put in place simply to disqualify them. This was a major step in breaking down barriers to equal employment."
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Ishmael Reed publishes "Mumbo Jumbo"
"Set in 1920s New York City, the novel depicts the elderly Harlem houngan PaPa LaBas and his companion Black Herman racing against the Wallflower Order, an international conspiracy dedicated to monotheism and control, as they attempt to root out the cause of and deal with the "Jes Grew" virus, a personification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom."
[Citation[(https://tinyurl.com/yabjearw) -
Wattstax
Wattstax was a benefit concert organized by Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 (rebellions) in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles. The concert took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972. The concert's performers included all of Stax's prominent artists at the time. The genres of the songs performed included soul, gospel, R&B, blues, funk, and jazz.
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Milliken v. Bradley
"A case involving the Detroit metropolitan area, the Court effectively halted school busing at a city’s borders. The Court’s 5-4 decision blocked Detroit’s city-suburb desegregation plan that would have involved busing across school district boundaries. Ignoring evidence of state governments’ past and continuing involvement in housing and school segregation, the Court said that “local control” was an important tradition in education.
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Alex Haley publishes "Roots: The Saga of an American Family"
"It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, transported to North America; following his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots, led to a cultural sensation in the United States, and it is considered to be one of the most important U.S. works of the 20th century."
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Toni Morrison publishes "Song of Soloman"
"Song of Solomon is a 1977 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American man living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood. The book won the National Books Critics Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature.
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Milliken II
"The Court ordered the state of Michigan, along with the Detroit school system, to finance a plan to address the educational deficits faced by African American children. These deficits, the Court suggested, arose out of enforced segregation and could not be cured by physical desegregation alone. This decision eased in part the impact of denying interdistrict desegregation in Milliken I."
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Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp.
"The Supreme Court upheld the denial of a zoning permit for construction of multi-family housing, which had the practical effect of excluding minority property owners. The Court did not apply strict scrutiny, as is required of an explicit racial classification. Further, the Court required proof of intentional discrimination, and did not allow a disparate impact claim, to establish a Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection violation."
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Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke
"The decision stated that affirmative action was unconstitutional in cases where the affirmative action program used a quota system."
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Octavia Butler publishes "Kindred"
"The book is the first-person account of a young African-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. There she meets her ancestors: a proud black freewoman and a white planter who has forced her into slavery and concubinage... it explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century black woman."
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Lucille Clifton publishes "Two Headed Woman"
Clifton's collection of poetry, including "Homage to my Hair" and "Homage to my Hips" seeks to highlight and celebrate the "transgressive" nature of the portrayal versus reality of African American women's bodies. The book wins the Juniper Prize for Poetry from UMass Amherst for outstanding original poetry.
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Toni Cade Mambara publishes "The Salt Eaters"
"The novel is written in an experimental style and is explicitly political in tone, with several of the characters being veterans of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It's set in the fictional town of Claybourne, Georgia... The entirety of the novel's action revolves around the (a blend modern medicine and traditional) healing, with the planning of the upcoming Spring Festival serving as backdrop."
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Alice Walker publishes "The Color Purple"
"Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of African-American women in the Southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on lists of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence."
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Gloria Nylor publishes "The Women of Brewster Place"
Nylor's 'novel (is) told in seven stories... six are centered on individual characters, while the final story is about the entire community. The primary (and) title characters of each chapter are all women and residents of Brewster Place". It "explores the lives of both men and women in an urban setting and examines relationships, both in terms of friendship and romantic love, including homosexual relationships."
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Jamaica Kincaid publishes "At the Bottom of the River"
The first collection of poems published by Kincaid, the primary thread throughout the prose is that of mother and daughter relationships, often cited as an allegory between the colonizers and the colonized, the powerful and the powerless. Told through the perspective of a young Afro-Carribean girl, 7 of the total 11 poems were published serially in the New Yorker during the early 1980's. -
Toni Morrison publishes "Beloved"
"Set after the American Civil War, the novel is inspired by the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky late January 1856 by fleeing to Ohio, a free state." Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1988.
