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Crispus Attucks dies in Boston Massacre
Crispus Attucks was an African-American man killed in the Boston Massacre, making him the first casulty of the American Revolution. -
Nat Turners Rebellon
Nat Turner was born on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, the week before Gabriel was hanged. While still a young child, Nat was overheard describing events that had happened before he was born. This, along with his keen intelligence, and other signs marked him in the eyes of his people as a prophet "intended for some great purpose." A deeply religious man, he "therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped [him]self in mystery, devoting [his] time to fasting and pray -
Amistad Revolt
On July 2, 1839, fifty-two Africans took over La Amistad, a ship embarking from Havana on a journey to bring valuables and slaves to trade, killing the captain, cook, and three of the crew members. Two white passengers, Pedro Montes and Jose Rues, were kept alive in order to navigate the ship. The Africans that lead the revolt originally planned to steer the ship to Africa, but Montes and Rues directed the ship toward the U.S. at night, hoping to run into another vessel or a port to escape thei -
Fugitive slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act mandated the return of runaway slaves, regardless of where in the Union they might be situated at the time of their discovery or capture. Along with the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the ratification of Kansas' admission for free statehood, this legislation is part of the chain of events which culminated in the American Civil War. -
Fugitive slave law
In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which forced Northern law enforcement officers to aid in the recapture of runaways, more than ten thousand fugitive slaves swelled the flood of those fleeing to Canada. The Colonial Church and School Society established mission schools in western Canada, particularly for children of fugitive slaves but open to all. The school's Mistress Williams notes that their success proves the "feasibility of educating together white and colored children." While -
SC secedes from Union
The force of events moved very quickly upon the election of Lincoln. South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to secede from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the Confederacy was formed. Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union. Just as Springfield, Illinois celebrated the election of its favorite son to the Presidency on November 7, so did Charleston, South Carolina, which did not cast a single vote for him. It knew th -
Emancipation Proclamation
One of the most important acts of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency was his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. It consists of two executive orders issued September 22, 1862 that declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863 and one issued January 1, 1863, named the specific states where it applied. Historian Seth Kaller notes that: -
13 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 -
End of civil war
One hundred fifty years ago the Civil War in America was started and fought with the express primary purpose to abolish chattel slavery in the Antebellum South, Territories, and in all States. Chattel slavery was said to have been abolished with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865):
"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 -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Accompanying him at Ford's Theater that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancee, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a figure with a drawn derringer pistol stepped into the presidential box, aimed, and fired. The president slumped forward. -
14th Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able -
Plessy Vs Ferguson
The statute of Louisiana, acts of 1890, c. 111, requiring railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that State, to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations; and providing that no person shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches other than the ones assigned to them, on account [p538] -
Phoenix election riot
In 1898 blacks in South Carolina outnumbered whites 3 to 1. The majority of whites feared blacks possessed too much power and therefore supported decreasing the black vote through disfrancisement. -
Wilmington Riot
The Wilmington Riot of 1898 was not an act of spontaneous violence. The events of November 10, 1898, were the result of a long-range campaign strategy by Democratic Party leaders to regain political control of Wilmington—at that time state’s most populous city—and North Carolina in the name of white supremacy. In 1894, a Populist and Republican coalition known as Fusionists had won control of the General Assembly and, in 1896, Daniel Russell, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstr -
Rosewood Massacre
On January 1, 1923 a massacre was carried out in the small, predominately black town of Rosewood in Central Florida. The massacre was instigated by the rumor that a white woman, Fanny Taylor, had been sexually assaulted by a black man in her home in a nearby community. A group of white men, believing this rapist to be a recently escaped convict named Jesse Hunter who was hiding in Rosewood, assembled to capture this man. Prior this event a series of incidents had stirred racial tensions withi -
Scottsboro Boys
March 25: In the depths of the Depression, a fight breaks out between white and black young men who are riding as hoboes on a Southern Railroad freight train. The train is stopped by an angry posse in Paint Rock, Alabama, and nine black youths are arrested for assault. Rape charges are added, following accusations from two white women who have also come off the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. The accused are taken to Scottsboro, Alabama, the Jackson County seat. The women are examined by D -
Tuskegee Study
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the 20th century is often cited as the most famous example of unethical medical research. Now, evidence has emerged that it overlapped with a shorter study, also sponsored by U.S. government health agencies, in which human subjects were unknowingly being harmed by participating in an experiment. -
Mc Laurin Vs Oklahoma
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, an important case leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, struck down the Oklahoma statute that mandated segregation in education. The case began when the University of Oklahoma denied George W. McLaurin admission to its graduate program in education, citing the segregation statute, which made it a misdemeanor to operate a school where both blacks and whites were taught. McLaurin filed suit in federal court in Oklah -
Sweatt Vs Painter
On June 5, 1950—62 years ago today—the Supreme Court, in one of two education desegregation decision that day, struck another blow to segregated education when it declared an Oklahoma statute unconstitutional, arguing that the differential treatment shown to an African American student was itself a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution -
Brown vs Board day of the decision
On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson and served as a catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement -
Death of emmit till
Riots in Chicago fracture the Cold War consensus, 1968 CrimeMurdered students are discovered at the University of Florida, 1990 Fugitive polygamist leader Warren Jeffs is arrested, 2006 DisasterAir-show accident burns spectators, 1988 General InterestZulu king captured, 1879 The death of Emmett Till, 1955 King speaks to March on Washington, 1963 Protests at Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 1968 HollywoodJohn Huston dies, 1987 LiteraryRobertson Davies is born, 1913 MusicMahalia Jackson -
Little rock 9
On the morning of September 23, 1957, nine African-American teenagers held the line against an angry mob protesting integration in front of Little Rock's Central High School. As the students met their new classmates for the first time inside the school, outside violence escalated and the Little Rock police removed the Nine from the school for their safety. The next day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to escort the nine students int -
James Meredith 1st day at Ole Miss
James H. Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, is shot by a sniper shortly after beginning a lone civil rights march through the South. Known as the "March Against Fear," Meredith had been walking from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, in an attempt to encourage voter registration by African Americans in the South. A former serviceman in the U.S. Air Force, Meredith applied and was accepted to the University of Mississippi in -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage. Background 1963 was noted for racial unrest and civil rights demonstrations. Nationwide outrage was sparked by media coverage of police actions in Birmingham, Alabama, where attack dogs and fire hoses were turned against protestors, many of -
16th St. Church Bombing
On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls. This murderous act shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement. -
Assanassination of Malcolm X
Malcolm Little or Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as black muslims. He made a comment regarding the assassination of President John Ballroom. Suddenly he was rushed on the stage by three gunman. -
March on Selma
On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, where local African Americans, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had been campaigning for voting rights. King told the assembled crowd: ‘‘There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of cler -
Voting rights act
he arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. assured his followers. But was he right? The arc of American history, at least, has a different shape. During the 19th century, a high point for justice was reached after the Civil War, with Reconstruction Republicans guaranteeing equal protection and voting rights for blacks in the 14th and 15th amendments. But these brave words did not prevent a tragic retreat, from the Gilded Age beginning in t -
Watts Riots
The Watts Riots began on the evening of August 11, 1965. Near Watts, a Black resident flagged down a white officer and told him that a man had drove by recklessly. The white officer pulled over the car that he had been told about on 116th and Avalon, an area Southwest of Watts. The driver was Marquette Frye. He was driving with his brother, Ronald. According to the police, Marquette failed a sobriety test and the white officer told him he would be arrested for drunk driving and that his car woul -
Orangeburg Massacre
At 10:33 p.m. on the night of Feb. 8, 1968, eight to ten seconds of police gunfire left three young black men dying and 27 wounded on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. Exactly 33 years later, Governor Jim Hodges addressed an overflow crowd there in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium and referred directly to the “Orangeburg Massacre”—an identifying term for the event that itself had been controversial among South Carolinians. Gov. Hodges called what happened “a great t -
Assassination of MLK
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. The .30-caliber rifle bullet entered King's right cheek, traveled through his neck, and finally stopped at his shoulder blade. King was immediately taken to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Arrest of Angela Davis
Angela Davis, radical black activist and philosopher, was arrested as a suspected conspirator in the abortive attempt to free George Jackson from a courtroom in Marin County, California, August 7, 1970. The guns used were registered in her name. Angela Davis was eventually acquitted of all charges, but was briefly on the FBI's most-wanted list as she fled from arrest. -
Ruby Bridges
When Ruby finally stepped into the school,*at the age of six, it was almost empty. Some of the white parents took their children out of school, because they didn't want their child to have to deal with a little black child. White people thought that black or any other race shouldn't be treated as equals. Some white people threatened to poison Ruby and hurt her and her famlily if she went to their school. Her dad lost his job because his boss didn't think that someone should be working for him if -
LUCY
Lucy was found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray on November 24, 1974 at the site of Hardar in Ethiophia. They had taken a Land Rover out that day to map in another locality. After a long hot morning of surverying for fossils they decided to retruned to the vehicle. -
Roots was published
After 12 years -
Beating of Rodney King
Rodney King was thrust into the public spotlight when a camera captured him being brutally beaten by Los Angeles police in 1991. Four officers involved were acquitted, sparking infamous riots that shut down the city of Los Angeles and created a national controversy. -
Barack Obama becomes first black president
Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, shattered more than 200 years of history Tuesday night by winning election as the first African-American president of the United States. -
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 -
John Brown's Raid
On the evening of October 16, 1859 John Brown, a staunch abolitionist, and a group of his supporters left their farmhouse hide-out en route to Harpers Ferry. Descending upon the town in the early hours of October 17th, Brown and his men captured prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. -
Scott Vs Sanford
The Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that blacks could not be U.S. citizens, exacerbated sectional tensions between North and South. Above, a portrait of Dred Scott. Reproduction courtesy of the Library of Congress
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) In Dred Scott v. Sandford (argued 1856 -- decided 1857), the Supreme Court ruled that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The Court also ruled that Co
