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Crispus Attucks dies in the Boston Massacre
Crispus Attucks was the first to fall in the celebrated "Boston Massacre" of 1770. Crispus Attucks was a fugitive slave who had escaped from his master and had worked for twenty years as a merchant seaman. -
Fugitive Slave Law
The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory. -
Nat Turner
A slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, during August 1831.Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55 to 65 people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the American South. -
Amistad Revolt
53 African natives were kidnapped from eastern Africa and sold into the Spanish slave trade. a 25-year-old slave named Sengbe Pieh (or "Cinque" to his Spanish captors) broke out of his shackles and released the other Africans. The slaves then revolted, killing most of the crew of the Amistad, including her cook and captain. The Africans then forced Montez and Ruiz to return the ship to Africa. at night Montez and Ruiz would change course, attempting to return to Cuba. -
Fugitive Slave Act
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was enacted by Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850. It imposed a duty on all citizens to assist federal marshals to enforce the law or be prosecuted for their failure to do so. -
Scott vs. Sanford (day of SC decision)
Supreme court declared that all blacks slaves as well as free were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permiting slavery in all of the country's territories. -
John Browns Raid
abolitionist John Brown and several followers seized the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The actions of Brown's men brought national attention to the emotional divisions concerning slavery. -
SC secedes from the Union
A convention had been called by the governor and legislature of South Carolina once Lincoln's became president.Delegates were elected on December 6, 1860, and the convention convened on December 17. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation was a document signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free a great many slaves in a practical sense, as it couldn't be enforced in areas beyond the control of Union troops. -
13th Amendment
Abolishing slavery in America. The amendment read, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." -
End of Civil War
Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House. The last battle of the American Civil War was the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas on May 12 and 13. -
Assassination of Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. -
Plessy vs Ferguson (day of SC decision)
Plessy v. Ferguson ruling the government would officially tolerate the "separate but equal" doctrine, was eventually used to justify segregating all public facilities, including railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and schools. -
14th Amendment
Constitution of the United States granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase “all persons born or naturalized in the United States. -
15th Amendment
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. -
Wilmington , NC riot
African Americans were business people who owned barbershops, restaurants, tailor shops, and drug stores. African Americans also held positions as firemen and policemen. Overall, the African American and white races existed peacefully but separately. politically motivated attack by whites against the city’s leading African American citizens, the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 documents the lengths to which Southern White Democrats. -
Rosewood Massacre
Between 1900 and 1964, there were 26 racially motivated riots by Whites against Blacks.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. - See mo -
Scottsboro Boys
als, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to March 25, 1931. Over the course of the next two decades, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives and produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, -
Sweatt vs Painter (day of SC decision)
In 1946, Heman Marion Sweatt, a black man, applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School. State law restricted access to the university to whites, and Sweatt's application was automatically rejected because of his race. When Sweatt asked the state courts to order his admission, the university attempted to provide separate but equal facilities for black law students -
Mc Laurin vs Oklahoma (day of SC decision)
By vote of 9 to 0.,Vinson for the Court. McLaurin was a companion case to Sweatt v. Painter (1950), which defined the separate but equal standard in graduate education in such a way as to be unattainable. George W. McLaurin was an Oklahoma citizen and an African‐American. Hoping to earn a doctorate in education, he applied for admission to graduate study at Oklahoma's all‐white university at Norman -
Brown vs Board (day of SC decision)
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 during the decad -
Death of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants--the white woman's husband and her brother--made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with -
Little Rock Nine
first day of school at Central High, a white mob gathered in front of the school, and Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering. In response to Faubus’ action, a team of NAACP lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, won a federal district court injunction to prevent the governor from blocking the students’ entry. With the help of police escorts, the students successfully entered the school through a side entrance on 23 September 1957. F -
Ruby Bridges
first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.She attended William Frantz Elementary School. -
James Medith
Southern segregationist civilians and federal and state forces as a result of the forced enrollment of black student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi (known affectionately as Ole Miss) at Oxford, Mississippi. -
March on Washington
200,000 demonstrators took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation’s capital. The march was successful in pressuring the administration of John F. Kennedy to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress. During this event, Martin Luther King delivered his memorable ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech. -
16th Street Bapist Chruch Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 as an act of white supremacist terrorism. The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the United States 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
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March on Selma
Selma to Montgomery marches, also known as Bloody Sunday and the two marches that followed, were marches and protests held in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. All three were attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery where the Alabama capitol is located. -
Voting right acts
Voting Rights Act bans racial discrimination in voting practices by the federal government as well as by state and local governments. -
Watts Riots
Los Angeles police officer pulled over motorist Marquette Frye he suspected Marquette of driving drunk.hen Rena Frye, the boys mother showed up, a struggle ensued which led to the arrest of all 3 members of the Frye family. More officers had arrived on the scene and had hit the brothers with their batons. The crowd had growny and the police left the scene, the crowd grew tension escalated and sparked the riots, which lasted 6 days. $100 million in property damage. -
Orangeburg Massacre
Southern governor, wanting to appear tough to his white constituents, overreacted to the civil rights protest ordering a massive show of armed force. As emotions frayed and the situation veered out of control, nine white highway patrolmen opened gunfire onto a college campus—killing three black students and wounding 27 others. -
Assassination of MLK
Memphis , TN -
Arrest of Anegla Davis
Angela 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. -
Roots was published
Roots is a television miniseries in the USA based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel, entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family; the series first aired, on ABC-TV, in 1977. -
Congressional Hearings end for Tuskegee Study
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study constituted one of the most shameful acts in the history of American medicine.400 African American men afflicted with syphilis to go untreated 2004. The Tuskegee study was exposed in July 2 1972. -
Beating of Rodney King
Rodney King was caught by the Los Angeles police after a high-speed chase on March 3, 1991. The officers pulled him out of the car and beat him brutally, while amateur cameraman George Holliday caught it all on videotape. The four L.A.P.D. officers involved were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer -
Obama becomes the first black president
He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009.
