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Slaves Arrive in America - 398 Years Ago
First African contracted servants arrive in American colonies -
Every American Colony had Slaves - 327 Years Ago
By this year, just about every colony in America had slaves brought from Africa -
The Stono Rebellion - 278 Years Ago
Slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising -
Slave Importing Banned - 209 Years Ago
American Congress bans further importation of slaves -
Liberator - 186 Years Ago
Anti-slavery newspaper the Liberator is published and becomes a leading voice in the Abolitionist movement (Movement that eventually saw slavery become illegal) -
Civil War and Emancipation - 156 Years Ago
Emancipation was the freeing of 3 million slaves in the rebel states of the civil war -
Separate but Equal - 121 Years Ago
The legislation was introduced (Laws)in the southern states which eventuated in separate schools for blacks and whites, “persons of colour” were required to be separate from whites in railroad cars, hotels, theatres, restaurants, hairdressing salons and other establishments -
NAACP Founded - 108 Years Ago
Establishment of the political protest movement who demanded civil rights for blacks. -
Muddy Waters - Mississippi Delta Blues
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Bessie Smith - Nobody Knows You When Your're Down and Out
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Vera Halls - Trouble So Hard
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Big Bill Broonzy - Black, Brown and White
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African Americans in WWII - 76 Years Ago
During World War II, many African Americans were ready to fight for what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the “Four Freedoms” freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear, even while they themselves lacked those freedoms at home. More than 3 million blacks would register for service during the war, with some 500,000 seeing action overseas. According to War Department policy, enlisted blacks and whites were organized into separate units. -
Jackie Robinson - 70 Years Ago
By 1900, the unwritten colour line barring blacks from white teams in professional baseball was strictly enforced. Jackie Robinson, a sharecropper’s son from Georgia, joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1945, after a stint in the U.S. Army (he earned an honourable discharge after facing a court-martial for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus) -
Brown V. Board of Education - 63 Years Ago
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment’s mandate of equal protection of the laws of the U.S. Constitution to any person within its jurisdiction. -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott - 63 Years Ago
On December 1, 1955, an African American woman named Rosa Parks was riding a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama when the driver told her to give up her seat to a white man. Parks refused and was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws. As she later said: “I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen.” -
Central High School Integrated - 60 Years Ago
Central High School, located in the state capital of Little Rock was integrated -
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Didn't It Rain
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Etta James - At Last
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Core and Freedom Rides - 56 Years Ago
Founded in 1942 by the civil rights leader James Farmer, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sought to end discrimination and improve race relations through direct action. In its early years, CORE staged a sit-in at a Chicago coffee shop and organized a “Journey of Reconciliation,” in which a group of blacks and whites rode together on a bus through the upper South in 1947, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel. -
Birmingham Church Bombed - 56 Years Ago
In mid-September, white supremacists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama during Sunday services; four young African-American girls were killed in the explosion. The church bombing was the third in 11 days after the federal government had ordered the integration of Alabama’s school system. -
I Have A Dream - 54 Years Ago
On August 28, 1963, both black and white joined in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators gathered near the Lincoln Memorial, where a number of civil rights leaders addressed the crowd, calling for voting rights, equal employment opportunities for blacks and an end to racial segregation. “King intoned “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” -
Civil Rights Act of 1964 - 53 Years Ago
The civil rights movement had begun to gain serious momentum in the United States by 1960. That year, John F. Kennedy made passage of new civil rights legislation part of his presidential campaign platform; he won more than 70 per cent of the African-American vote. Kennedy’s was killed by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas, Texas in November 1963. It was left to Lyndon Johnson to push the Civil Rights Act legislation supporting racial equality in American history–through Congress -
Freedom Summer and the " Mississippi Burning " Murders - 53 Years Ago
Civil rights organisations urged white students from the North to travel to Mississippi. The organizations believed the participation of white students in the so-called “Freedom Summer”. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white, and James Chaney, a black Mississippian—disappeared from investigating the burning of a church by the KKK. After an FBI investigation (codenamed “Mississippi Burning”) their bodies were discovered on August 4 in a dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi. -
Voting Rights Act - 52 years Ago
Voting Rights Act, which Congress passed in August 1965. The Voting Rights Act sought to overcome the legal barriers that still existed at the state and local level preventing blacks from exercising the right to vote given them by the 15th Amendment. -
Big Mama Thornton - Everything Gonna Be Alright
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Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy
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Skip James - Hard TIme Killing Floor Blues
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J.B Lenoir - Shot on James Meredith
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Chris Thomas King - Da Thrill is Gone From Here
