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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." -
Black Codes
Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Under black codes, many states required Black people to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor. Outrage over black codes helped undermine support for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party. -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a federal law that aimed to protect the civil and legal rights of all citizens in the United States. It was the last major piece of legislation passed during Reconstruction. The act Prohibited discrimination in public places, such as hotels, trains, and theaters, made it illegal to deny accommodations or services based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Provided restitution for those denied access due to race -
The Civil Rights Cases of 1883
As Reconstruction came to an end in 1877, the concept of equal rights collapsed in the wake of legislative and judicial actions. The Civil Rights Cases of 1883 greatly limited the rights of blacks and strengthened Jim Crow laws in the South.Five separate cases were consolidated into a single ruling.The ruling limited the Equal Protection Clause to actions taken by state governments, leaving African Americans to seek legal recourse in state courts,legalizing the idea of "separate but equal" -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Louisiana enacted the Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Plessy who was seven-eighths Caucasian agreed to challenge the Act.He was solicited by a group of New Orleans residents who sought to repeal the Act. They asked Plessy,who was black under Louisiana law, to sit in a "whites only" car. At trial, Plessy’s lawyers argued that the Separate Car Act violated the 13th & 14th Amendments.The Judge found that Louisiana could enforce this law. -
National Negro Business League
The National Negro Business League was founded by Booker T. Washington in Boston, Massachusetts. The league, which predated the United States Chamber of Commerce by 12 years, strives to enhance the commercial and economic prosperity of the African American community.Mr. Washington believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic.Thus, he founded the league to further the economic development of the African American businesses. -
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Atlanta Race Riots
On the afternoon of September 22, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults on local white women, none of which were ever substantiated. Extra editions published throughout the day, the papers added lurid details and evermore inflammatory language, and soon a crowd gathered downtown in protest.By early evening, the crowd had become a mob; they surged down Decatur Street, Pryor Street, Central Avenue, and throughout the central business district, assaulting hundreds of Blacks. -
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
The NAACP was established by Black and white activists in response to the 1908 Springfield race riot in Illinois.These forces converged to help create the “New Negro Movement” of the 1920s, which promoted a renewed sense of racial pride, cultural self-expression, economic independence, and progressive politics. Evoking the “New Negro,” the NAACP lobbied aggressively for the passage of a federal law that would prohibit lynching. -
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Harlem Renaissance aka. The New Negro Movement
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a Black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art. Unfortunately there were many tragedies during this period. -
The Lynching of Mary Turner, May 19, 1918 – Georgia
Abusive plantation owner, Hampton Smith, was shot and killed. A week-long manhunt resulted in the killing of Mary Turner's husband, Hayes Turner. Mary denied that her husband had been involved in Smith's killing, and threatened to have members of the mob arrested. A mob of several hundred brought her to Folsom Bridge, tied Mary's ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, doused her in gasoline and motor oil and set her on fire. Her unborn child was cut from her and crushed to death. -
19th amendment
Ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle, victory took decades of agitation and protest.The 19th Amendment gave Black women the right to vote, but they faced many barriers to exercising that right. -
Negro History Week
Dr. Carter Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926, to ensure that school children be exposed to black history. Woodson chose the second week of February in order to celebrate the birthday of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.Over time, the week-long celebration gained momentum and was eventually expanded to become "Black History Month" in 1976, officially recognized by President Gerald Ford. -
National Council of Negro Women
Mary Mcleod Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women to advocate for equal rights for women of color. -
Jesse Owens defied Nazi racist propaganda
James "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete who gained international fame at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany.he won the first of four gold medals in the following categories: 100 meter, 200 meter, the long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay. -
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Brown v. Board of Education
The case that came to be known as Brown v. Board of Education was actually the name given to five separate cases that were heard by the US Supreme Court.In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. The first case called for the end of segregation in schools, later cases attacked the rules and regulations states were using to continue segregation. -
The Little Rock Nine
A group of African-American students enrolled in what was formerly an all-white school known as Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. These children not only faced racial discrimination but threats to their lives and attempts to stop their education until President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent troops to escort the students into school during the process of racial integration. -
Bailey v. Patterson
Bailey v. Patterson was an important civil rights case that challenged the segregation laws of Mississippi being applied to interstate and intrastate common carriers that served the general public.The Supreme Court declares that segregation in transportation facilities is unconstitutional. Protest efforts by activists led up to this decision. -
Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act (EPA) of 1963 is a law that requires employers to pay men and women equally for the same work in the same workplace.The EPA applies to all forms of compensation, including salary, overtime, bonuses, benefits, and more.The EPA was the first law to protect workers from pay discrimination based on sex, and it aims to correct wage differentials that depress living standards -
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream"
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In his speech,Dr. King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
Voting Rights Act
In 1964, numerous peaceful demonstrations were organized by Civil Rights leaders, and the considerable violence they were met with brought renewed attention to the issue of voting rights. The murder of voting-rights activists in Mississippi and the attack by white state troopers on peaceful marchers in Selma, Alabama, gained national attention.The combination of public revulsion to the violence and Johnson's political skills stimulated Congress to pass the voting rights bill. -
Black Panther Party Founded
African American revolutionary party, founded in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The party’s original purpose was to patrol neighborhoods to protect from acts of police brutality. The Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all African Americans, the exemption of African Americans from the draft and from all sanctions of so-called white America and payments to African Americans for exploitation by white Americans. -
Loving v. Virginia
A unanimous Court struck down state laws banning marriage between individuals of different races, holding that these anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.The plaintiffs in the case were Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and Black woman whose marriage was deemed illegal according to Virginia state law. -
Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m at age 39. -
University of California Regents v. Bakke
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case of the University of California Regents v. Bakke that affirmative action can be used as a legal strategy to deal with past discrimination, a turning point in 1970s Black history. The decision has historical and legal significance because it declares that race can be one of several determining factors in college admission policies, but it rejects the use of racial quotas. -
Miami riots
The 1980 Miami riots were race riots that occurred in Miami, Florida, starting in earnest on May 18, 1980, following an all-White male jury acquitting four Dade County Public Safety Department officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie, a Black insurance salesman and United States Marine Corps lance corporal.The "Miami Riot" lasted 24 hours and an estimated 15 people are killed. The riot is considered the worst in U.S. history since the Detroit Riots of 1967. -
Jesse Jackson's 2nd Attempt to run for President
Jesse Jackson seeks the Democrat Party's presidential nomination for the second time. Jackson receives 1,218 delegate votes but loses the nomination to Michael Dukakis. Though unsuccessful, Jackson's two presidential campaigns—this year and in 1984—lay the groundwork for Obama to become president two decades later. -
Rodney King Riots
Rodney Glen King was an African-American man who was a victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was severely beaten by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department during his arrest after a high speed pursuit for driving while intoxicated on the I-210. Public response to the acquittal of the four white Los Angeles policemen on all but one charge (on which the jury was deadlocked) of this assault led to the Riots in 1992. -
Million Man March
Million Man March, political demonstration in Washington, D.C., on October 16, 1995, to promote African American unity and family values. Estimates of the number of marchers, most of whom were African American men, ranged from 400,000 to nearly 1.1 million, ranking it among the largest gatherings of its kind in American history. -
The Million Woman March
The Million Woman March is held in Philadelphia. The event is "one of the largest gatherings of women globally," according to Ebony magazine, which also notes: "Although the focus (is) on the Black community, women from all backgrounds supported the rally."