Black History Month

  • The First Slaves

    Arrived in Virginia
  • Stono Rebellion

    Slave rebellion, largest uprising in British mainland colonies
  • Lucy Terry

    Became the earliest known enslaved poet.
  • Crispus Attucks

    Killed in Boston Massacre
  • Phillis Wheatley

    Her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is published, making her the first Aftrican American to do so
  • Gabriel Prosser

    Organized a slave revolt, rebels were hanged
  • Slavery made illegal

    US Constitution states that congress may not ban the slave trade until 1808
  • Invention of the Cotton GIn

    Eli Whitney's invention increased the demand for slave labor
  • Congress bans importation of slaves from Africa

  • Missouri Compromise

    Bans slavery North of the southern boundary of MIssouri
  • Denmark Vesey

    enslaved African who planned a revolt to lay siege on Charleston, South Carolina, plot is discovered, rebels are hanged
  • Nat Turner

    enslaved preacher, leads the most significant slave revolt in American history
  • William Lloyd Garrison

    begins publishing the Liberator, an abolitionist paper
  • Amistad Case*

    Slaves being transported on Spanish ship overtake it and sail to Long Island
  • Wilmot Proviso

    attempts to ban slavery gained from Mexican-American War
  • Harriet Tubman

    escapes slavery and leads the Underground Railroad
  • Federal Fugitive Slave Law

    Providing for the return slaves who had escaped
  • Compromise of 1850

    California is admitted as a free state, Utah and Mexican Territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty
  • Frederick Douglass

    launches his abolitionist newspaper
  • Sojourner Truth

    Speaking for abolitionism at women's conference
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    anti-slavery novel published by Harriet Beecher-Stowe
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act

    Established territories of Kansas and Nebraska and repealed the Missouri Compromise
  • Dredd Scott Case

    Congress does not have the right to ban slavery in states
  • John Brown

    captured federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry
  • Confederacy founded

    deep south succeeds
  • Emancipation Proclamation

    Slaves within Confederate states are free
  • Freedmen's Bureau

    Established by congress to protect newly freed slaves
  • Civil war ends

  • Lincoln is assassinated

  • Ku Klux Klan

    formed in Tennessee
  • Slavery in US is ended

    Slaves in Texas receive news of the end of the civil wat two months later
  • 13th amendment ratified

    Prohibits slavery
  • Series of reconstruction acts are passed

    5 military districts are created
  • Black codes passed by southern states

    Restricts rights of newly freed slaves
  • 14th Amendment

    Defined citizenship, everyone born is US
  • 15th amendment

    giving blacks the right to vote
  • Hiram Revels

    First African American senator
  • Reconstruction ends in the south

  • Booker T Washington founds Tuskegee Institute

    Higher learning for African Americans
  • Plessy vs Ferguson

    Racial segregation is constitutional
  • NAACP

    founded in New York by W.E.B Dubious
  • Harlem Renaissance flourishes

    New black cultural identity
  • Jackie Robinson breaks MLB color barrier

    Signed by the Dodgers
  • Harry S Truman issued executive order integrating US forces

  • Brown Vs Board of Education

    Racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional
  • Emmett Till

    Murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman
  • Rosa Parks

    refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "Colored Section"
  • Little Rock Nine

    Nine black students are blocked from entering a school
  • Greensboro four

    Four black students had a sit in at a segregated lunch counter
  • Freedom Riders

    Bus trips to the south to test out new laws to prohibit segregation
  • Jackie Robinson

    First African American inducted into the baseball hall of fame
  • The March on Washington for jobs and Freedom/I have a dream speech

    attended by about 250,000, Martin Luther King Jr's speech
  • President Johnson signs the Civil Rights act

    prohibits discrimination
  • Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace prize

  • State Troopers violently attack peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama

  • Black Panthers

    Founded by Huey Nelson and Bobby Seale
  • Thurgood Marshall

    Appointed to Supreme Court, first Black justice
  • Shirley Chisolm

    First black congress woman
  • Martin Luther King Jr assassinated

    Memphis Tn
  • The first race riots in decades errupt

    Los Angeles
  • Barack Obama

    First African American president , defeating John McCain