African American History

Freetown, Sierra Leone. Paul Cuffee, a successful shipowner (son of a former African-American slave) brought 38 free African-Americans to settle in this British colony on Africa’s west Coast.

The American Colonization Society (ACS) founded. Formed to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States.

1822 Colony for African-American emigrants established by the American Colonization Society in West Africa. In 1847 this became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, The American Colonization Society had sent 13,000 African-American freed slaves to this migrant colony.

Race riot, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 10. White mobs looted and attacked residents of Africa town, a Cincinnati neighborhood of African-American freedmen. More than 1,000 Negroes left the city for Canada.

Slave revolt on slave trader 'Creole' which was en route from Hampton, Va., to New Orleans, La., Nov 7. Slaves overpowered crew and sailed vessel to Bahamas where they were granted asylum and freedom.

Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland, summer. She returned to South 19 times and brought out more than 300 slaves.

Fugitive Slave Act - Compromise of 1850 - allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from helping escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. The act also required government officials in Northern states to help in the recapture of runaway slaves. Freedmen without adequate identification feared legally sanctioned kidnapping and enslavement.

Daniel A. P. Murray born. Born in Baltimore on March 3. Murray, an African-American, was assistant librarian of Congress, and a collector of books and pamphlets by and about black Americans.

Publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, published on March 20, focused national attention on the cruelties of slavery.

Booker Taliaferro Washington born. Born in Franklin County, Virginia, on April 5, Washington was the first principal of Tuskegee Institute (1881), and was the individual most responsible for its early development. Washington was considered the leading African-American spokesman of his day.

Supreme Court rules on the Dred Scott case. On March 6, the Supreme Court decided that an African-American could not be a citizen of the U.S., and thus had no rights of citizenship. The decision sharpened the national debate over slavery.

John Brown's raid. On October 16-17, John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (today located in West Virginia). Brown's unsuccessful mission to obtain arms for a slave insurrection stirred and divided the nation. Brown was hanged for treason on December 2.

The last slave ship arrives. During this year, the last ship to bring slaves to the United States, the Clothilde, arrived in Mobile Bay, Alabama.

Abraham Lincoln elected president. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860.

1860 Census: U.S. population: 31,443,790 Black population: 4,441,790 (14.1%)

The Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, legally freeing slaves in areas of the South in rebellion.

New York City draft riots. Anti-conscription riots started on July 13 and lasted four days, during which hundreds of black Americans were killed or wounded.

Equal pay. On June 15, Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay, equipment, arms, and health care for African-American Union troops.

The New Orleans Tribune. On October 4, the New Orleans Tribune began publication. The Tribune was one of the first daily newspapers produced by blacks.

Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery would be outlawed in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment, which Congress approved and sent on to the states for ratification on January 31.

The Freedmen's Bureau. On March 3, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to provide health care, education, and technical assistance to emancipated slaves.

Death of Lincoln. On April 15, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, succeeded him as president.

Ratification of Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was ratified on December 18.

Presidential meeting for black suffrage. On February 2, a black delegation led by Frederick Douglass met with President Andrew Johnson at the White House to advocate black suffrage. The president expressed his opposition, and the meeting ended in controversy.

Civil Rights Act. Congress overrode President Johnson's veto on April 9 and passed the Civil Rights Act, conferring citizenship upon black Americans and guaranteeing equal rights with whites.

The Fourteenth Amendment. On June 13, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all citizens. The amendment would also grant citizenship to blacks.

Founding of the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed to intimidate blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities, first met in Maxwell House, Memphis. The Klan was the first of many secret terrorist organizations organized in the South for the purpose of reestablishing white authority.

Black suffrage. On January 8, overriding President Johnson's veto, Congress granted the black citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote.

Reconstruction begins. Reconstruction Acts were passed by Congress on March 2. These acts called for the enfranchisement of former slaves in the South.

Fourteenth Amendment ratified. On July 21, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

DATES	*From the catalogue: Black Art, Ancestral Legacy, The African Impulse in African American Art, Dallas Museum of Art, 1989*
1502	First Africans arrive in the New World
1619	A Dutch slaveship arrives in Jamestown, Virgina and begins the era of slavery in the United States.
1776	Toussaint L'Overture initiates the slave rebellion in Haiti, which eventually leads, in 1804, to the establishment in Haiti of the first independent black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
1816	The American Colonization Society is organized in the U.S. House of Representatives by Bushrod Washington, Henry Clay, and other white legislators to encourage blacks to return to Africa.
1822	Denmark Vesey's slave revolt erupts in Charleston, SC.
1831	Nat Turner's slave rebellion takes place in Charleston, SC.
1835	Fifth National Negro Convention meets in Philadelphia and urges blacks to drop the use of the terms "African" or "colored" in referring to themselves or their institution.
1851	Publication of Clotel, the first novel by a black American, Williams Wells Brown.
1859	Abolitionist John Brown leads a raid on the federal armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.
1861-1865	U.S. Civil War
1867	Beginning of Reconstruction era in what were formerly "slave" states.
1903	W.E.B. Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk is published.
1909	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is organized.
1914	Ethiopia Awakening is completed by sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller. This piece introduces African subject matter into African-American art.
1916	Marcus Garvey arrives in New York from Jamaica and founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which raises the issue of a common African heritage to the general black public through the "Back to Africa" movement.
1917	U.S. enters World War I; 300,000 blacks serve.
1918	Beginning of the Great Migration of blacks from the South to the North.
1926-35	The Harmon Foundation (established by the New York philanthropist William E. Harmon) sponsors annual exhibitions for African-American artists. These are among the first to feature works reflecting an exploration of the artists' ancestral heritage.
1930	The Black Muslims organization is founded by W.D. Ford, who is later succeeded by Elijah Muhammad.
1935	Sargent Johnson creates the sculpture Copper Mask which is the most direct example of African-American art inspired by African art. African Negro Art, the first large exhibition of traditional African art at a major American museum, opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
1937	Les Fetiches is painted by Lois Mailou Jones.
1942	Native Son is published by Richard Wright. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) is organized.
1941-45	World War II.
1954	Brown vs. Board of Education case is decided in favor of school integration by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1955	Rosa Parks begins the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott.
1956	Ghana achieves independence marking the beginning of the Post-Colonial era for Africa and the Caribbean.
1957	The American Society of African Culture is organized in the wake of the First International Congress of Negro Writers and Artists. Texas artist John Biggers travels to West Africa.
1960	Student sit-ins in Greensboro, NC mark the beginning of a broad range of student involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is organized in Atlanta. Black Muslims fourish as their number exceeds 100,000.
1963	Death of Du Bois in Ghana. The March on Washington, D.C. is the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. The Museum of African Art/Frederick Douglass Institute is founded in Washington, D.C.
1964	Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam and launches his Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York. Cassius Clay changes his name to Muhammed Ali after converting to Islam.
1965	Malcolm X is assassinated in New York. Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery, AL. Urban riots in Watts, Los angeles, and Chicago.
1966	First World Festival of Negro Arts is held in Dakar, Senegal. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA.
1968	Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN. Riots in Detroit, MI.
1969	African Arts Magazine is established at U.C.L.A. Cinque Gallery is founded in New York by Romare Bearden. New Black Artists opens at The Brooklyn Museum. Harlem on my Mind is exhibited at the MET. Invisible Americans: Black Artists of the Thirties is presented at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
1974	Alex Haley's Roots is shown on national television.
1976	Two Centuries of Black American Art, organized by David Driskell, opens at the Los Angeles County Museum, CA.
1977	Alex Haley's Roots is shown on national television.
1985	TransAfrica organizes protests against South Africa's apartheid policy.
1987	Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, wins the Nobel Prize.
1988	The Reverend Jesse Jackson runs for president and wins over 6.6 million votes in Democratic primaries. First National Black Arts Festival is held in Atlanta.

Important Dates in the Fight for African American Rights

September 13 — First serious slave conspiracy in colonial America in Gloucester County, Virginia

March 5 — Crispus Attucks, the first black, and one of the first five people, killed in Revolutionary cause

April 14 — First abolition society in the United States organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

January 16 — Continental Congress approves General George Washington's order to enlist free Negroes

September 12 — Prince Hall receives a charter from the Grand Lodge of England for the first Negro Masonic lodge in America

Richard Allen organizes Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia

March 3 — Missouri Compromise enacted, banning slavery to the north of southern boundary of Missouri

May 30 — Denmark Vesey's conspiracy uncovered; Vesey and others hanged on July 2

March 16 — Freedom's Journal, first black newspaper, published in New York City by John B. Russwurm

September 20 — First national black convention meets at Philadelphia's Bethel Church, presided over by Richard Allen

January 1 — William Lloyd Garrison publishes the abolitionist newspaper Liberator

August 21-22 — Nat Turner revolt, Southampton County, Virginia; Turner is hanged in November

Joseph Cinque leads a slave revolt aboard the Amistad. Atlantic slave trade outlawed in the United States

December 3 — Frederick Douglass publishes the first issue of his newspaper, North Star

Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland; will return to the South nineteen times to help other slaves escape

May 30 — Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals Missouri Compromise and opens the Northern Territory to slavery

March 6 — Dred Scott decision by U.S. Supreme Court opens federal territory to slavery and denies citizenship to American blacks

October 16-17 — John Brown attacks U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown is hanged on December 2

May 13 — Robert Smalls sails the armed Confederate steamer Planter out of Charleston Harbor and presents it to the U.S. Navy

July 17 — Congress authorizes President Lincoln to accept blacks for military service

January 1 — President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in all rebel states

January 26 — War Department authorizes Massachusetts governor to recruit the first black troops, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, which makes its famous charge on Fort Wagner on July 18

July 13-17 — New York City Draft Riots by white workers who blame blacks for the Civil War

January 31 — Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery; it becomes part of the Constitution December 18

March 3 — Congress establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to aid refugees and freed slaves

January 14 — Constitutional convention meets in Charleston, South Carolina, with a majority of black delegates

July 28 — Fourteenth Amendment becomes part of the Constitution; declares all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens and entitled to the equal protection of its laws

March 30 — Fifteenth Amendment becomes part of the Constitution; declares that the right to vote cannot be denied because of the race or previous condition of servitude

December 12 — Joseph H. Rainy of South Carolina sworn in as first black in the U.S. House of Representatives

December 11 — P.B.S. Pinchback, a mulatto, sworn in as acting governor of Louisiana; elected to the U.S. Senate the following year

March 1 — Civil Rights Act enacted by Congress; gives blacks the right to equal treatment in public places and transport

November 26 — U.S. Supreme Court declares 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional

August 12-November 1 — Mississippi constitutional convention begins systematic exclusion of blacks from politics

May 18 — U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson case upholds doctrine of "separate but equal"

February 12 — National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and other influential blacks and whites; organization is incorporated in 1910

August 1 — National convention of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association opens in Harlem, New York City

December 8 — NAACP files first suit in campaign for equal pay for black teachers

Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of Bethune-Cookman College, named director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration

January 16 — War Department announces the formation of the first Army Air Corps squadron for black cadets

April 18 — Bus companies in New York City agree to hire black drivers and mechanics after a four-week boycott led by the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

June 18 — A. Philip Randolph and others meet with President Roosevelt about their proposed March on Washington on July 1 to protest discrimination in war industries

June 25 — President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8802, forbidding discrimination in war industries; Randolph calls off the march

First U.S. Army flying school for black cadets dedicated at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama

August 1 — Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., elected the first black congressman from the East

April 9 — Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends first "Freedom Rider" group to test the Supreme Court ban on segregation in interstate travel

July 26 — President Truman issues Executive Order 9981, directing equality of opportunity in the armed forces

May 17 — U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education rules that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional

December 1 — Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for not giving up her bus seat to a white person; the Montgomery Bus Boycott begins December 5

November 13 — U.S. Supreme Court upholds a lower-court decision banning segregation on Montgomery, Alabama, city buses; Martin Luther King, Jr., and other boycott leaders call off the boycott a month later

February 14 — Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as president

September 24 — President Eisenhower orders federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to prevent interference with school integration

February 1 — Students from North Carolina A&T sit in at a "whites only" Woolworth's lunch counter; by February 10 the movement has spread to five other southern cites

April 3 — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., opens anti-segregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama

August 28 — More than 250,000 persons participate in March on Washington, organized by Bayard Rustin

September 15 — Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama is bombed; four young girls are killed

June 21 — Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi, working on a SNCC voting rights project, are murdered; members of the Ku Klux Klan are convicted for the first time

August 5 — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stoned as he leads a march through Chicago's South Side

June 13 — Thurgood Marshall, former NAACP lawyer, nominated as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; confirmed by Senate August 30

July 20-23 — Black Power conference in Newark, New Jersey, attracts largest and most diverse group of black American leaders ever assembled

March 4 — Dr. King announces he will lead a Poor People's March on Washington in April

March 28 — Dr. King leads a protest march in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee

April 11 — President Johnson signs a civil rights bill, banning discrimination in housing and making it a crime to interfere with civil rights workers

May 2 — Ralph David Abernathy, King's successor as head of the SCLC, leads Poor People's Campaign to Washington, D.C.

November 7 — Carl Stokes of Cleveland, Ohio, and Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, are first blacks to be elected mayors of major American cities

April 20 — U.S. Supreme Court rules in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg that busing to achieve integration in public schools in constitutional

January 31 — Andrew J. Young, first black American ambassador to the United Nations, presents his credentials to U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim

June 28 — In the Bakke case, Supreme Court rules that affirmative action with strict racial quotas is illegal

January 15 — Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time

November 7 — L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the first black governor since Reconstruction; David N. Dinkins becomes the first black mayor of New York City

June 27 — Justice Thurgood Marshall announces his resignation from the Supreme Court