Early American Discrimination Timeline

  • Massacre at Mystic

    Massacre at Mystic
    The Mystic massacre – also known as the Pequot massacre and the Battle of Mystic Fort – took place on May 26, 1637 during the Pequot War, when Connecticut colonists under Captain John Mason and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies set fire to the Pequot Fort near the Mystic River.
  • The Scalp Act

    The Scalp Act
    Governor Robert Morris enacted the Scalp Act. Anyone who brought in a male scalp above age of 12 would be given 150 pieces of eight, ($150), for females above age of 12 or males under the age of 12, they would be paid $130. The act turned all the tribes against the Pennsylvania legislature
  • The 3/5ths Compromise

    The 3/5ths Compromise
    Three-fifths compromise, compromise agreement between delegates from the Northern and the Southern states at the United States Constitutional Convention (1787) that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for determining direct taxation and representation in the House of Representatives.
  • Slave Trade Ends in the United States

    Slave Trade Ends in the United States
    The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 is a United States federal law that provided that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
  • Battle of Tippecanoe

    Battle of Tippecanoe
    the victory of a seasoned U.S. expeditionary force under Major General William Henry Harrison over Shawnee Indians led by Tecumseh's brother Laulewasikau (Tenskwatawa), known as the Prophet
  • The Missouri Compromise

    The Missouri Compromise
    The Missouri Compromise was United States federal legislation that balanced desires of northern states to prevent expansion of slavery in the country with those of southern states to expand it.
  • Indian Removal Act

    Indian Removal Act
    he Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Native American tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for white settlement of their ancestral lands.
  • Nat Turner Rebellion

    Nat Turner Rebellion
    Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) was an enslaved man who led a rebellion of enslaved people on August 21, 1831. His action set off a massacre of up to 200 Black people and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people.
  • The Trail Of Tears

    The Trail Of Tears
    The Trail of Tears was a series of forced displacements of approximately 60,000 Indigenous people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Part of the Indian removal, the ethnic cleansing was gradual, occurring over a period of nearly two decades.
  • The Fugitive Slave Act

    The Fugitive Slave Act
    The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.
  • dred scott decision

    dred scott decision
    60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them.
  • Emancipation Proclamation

    Emancipation Proclamation
    President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, 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."
  • 13th Amendment

    13th Amendment
    Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
  • 15th Amendment

    15th Amendment
    Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.
  • 14th Amendment

    14th Amendment
    No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
  • Battle of Little Bighorn

    Battle of Little Bighorn
    The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army.
  • Battle of Wounded Knee

    Battle of Wounded Knee
    The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army.
  • Plessy vs. Ferguson

    Plessy vs. Ferguson
    Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal"