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C. R.A.
Congress passes the first Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans equal rights in transportation, restaurant/inns, theaters and on juries. The law is struck down in 1883 with the Court majority arguing the Constitution allows Congress to act only on discrimination by government and not that by private citizens. -
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Civil Rights in America
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Reconstruction
With the election of Rutherford Hayes as President, Reconstruction is brought to an end and most federal troops are withdrawn from the South while those remaining do nothing to protect the rights of African Americans. -
Higher Education for African-Americans
Spelman College, the first college for black women in the U.S., is founded by Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles. Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It later becomes one of the leading schools of higher learning for African Americans, and stresses the practical application of knowledge. -
A.C.S.
The American Colonization Society, founded by P Robert Finley, establishes the colony of Monrovia in western Africa. The society contends that the immigration of blacks to Africa is an answer to the problem of slavery as well as to what it feels is the incompatibility of the races. Over the course of the next forty years, about 12,000 slaves are voluntarily relocated. -
C.E.A.
Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting further Chinese immigration into the United States for ten years.
1896: -
Carver
In 1896, George Washington Carver begins teaching there as director of the department of agricultural research, gaining an international reputation for his agricultural advances. -
Plessy v Ferguson
The Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, rules that state laws requiring separation of the races are within the bounds of the Constitution as long as equal accommodations are made for African Americans, thus establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine that justifies legal segregation in the South. -
Lynching
Lynching has become virtually a fact of life as a means for intimidating African Americans. Between 1886 and 1900, there are more than 2,500 lynchings in the nation, the vast majority in the Deep South. In the first year of the new century, more than 100 African Americans are lynched, and by World War I, more than 1100. -
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded by W.E.B Du Bois, Jane Addams, John Dewey and others. -
Other Races Also
The Mexican ambassador formally protests the mistreatment of Mexicans in the United States, citing a number of brutal lynchings and murders.
