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Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation proclaims that all slaves in rebellious territories are forever free. Photo: circa 1860 -
The Civil War Ends
The Civil War ends. Lincoln is assassinated. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting slavery, is ratified. The era of Reconstruction begins. -
Civil Rights Act
The “Black Codes” are passed by all white legislators of the former Confederate States. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, conferring citizenship on African Americans and granting them equal rights to whites. The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Tennessee. photo: circa 1867 -
Beginning of the Migration
Thousands of African Americans migrate out of the South to escape oppression. -
Jim Crow Laws
Tennessee passes the first of the “Jim Crow” segregation laws, segregating state railroads. Similar laws are passed over the next 15 years throughout the Southern states. -
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Elizabeth's Lifespan (b. 1888 | age 55)
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Period: to
Quilly's Lifespan (b. 1890 | age 53)
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Jim Crow: Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson case: racial segregation is ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. The “Jim Crow” (“separate but equal”) laws begin, barring African Americans from equal access to public facilities. -
Black Residents in Harlem | 1900s
Black residents have been present in Harlem continually since the 1630s, they could be found especially in the area around 125th Street and in the "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street. By 1900, tens of thousands lived in Harlem. The mass migration of blacks into the area began in 1904, due to another real estate crash, the worsening of conditions for blacks elsewhere in the city, and the leadership of black real estate entrepreneurs. -
Black Churches in Harlem
In 1907, black churches began to move uptown. Several congregations built grand new church buildings, including St Philip's on West 134th Street just west of Seventh Avenue, the Abyssinian Baptist Church on West 138th Street and St Mark's Methodist Church on Edgecombe Avenue. Churches purchased buildings from white congregations, including Metropolitan Baptist Church on West 128th and Seventh Avenue, St James Presbyterian Church on West 141st Street and Mt Olivet Baptist Church on Lenox Avenue. -
Elizabeth Travels to New York to Work
Bess is 19 years old | Quilly is 17 -
Elizabeth Meets Herman and Dates Him
Bess is 20 years old | Quilly is 18 -
Negro Protest Movement in Harlem
Soon after blacks began to move into Harlem, the community became known as "the spiritual home of the Negro protest movement." The NAACP became active in Harlem in 1910 and Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1916. The NAACP chapter there soon grew to be the largest in the country. W. E. B. Du Bois lived and published in Harlem in the 1920s, as did James Weldon Johnson and Marcus Garvey. -
The Great Migration to Harlem
The early Great Migration of blacks to northern industrial cities was to leave behind a Jim Crow South, seek better jobs and education for their children, and escape lynching violence. So many blacks came that it "threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of [southern states]." In 1910, Harlem was app 10% black; 1930 it was 70.18%. The expansion was fueled primarily by an influx of blacks from Virginia, North/South Carolina, and Georgia, who took trains up East Coast. -
Bess returns to Halifax, North Carolina
Bess and Quilly's Mother is Very Sick. Photo of Halifax, North Carolina - Halifax Courthhouse -
Bess Returns to NY after Mama's Death
Bess is 23 years old | Quilly is 21 -
Frogmore, SC | A Map
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Frogmore, SC | The Land, Part 1 of 2
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Frogmore, SC | The Land Part 2 of 2
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Herman Leaves Quilly
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Quilly Runs Away with Herman
Herman and Quilly Marry and Bess and Quilly don't Speak for 8 years. Bess is 25 when Quilly Runs away with Herman | Quilly is 23.
This is also the year that husband and Lou Bessie are born. When the sisters start to speak again, Bess is 33 and Quilly is 31. -
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Husband's Lifespan (b. 1914 | age 29)
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Lou Bessie's Lifespan (b. 1914 | age 29)
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Braddock Hotel
Braddock Hotel was a hotel at the corner of 126th Street and 8th Avenue in New York City, near the Apollo Theater. The hotel bar was popular with black jazz musicians, and Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington performed here. Before he joined the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X (then known as Malcolm Little) often spent time at the hotel's bar -
Bess and Quilly Start to Speak Again
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Renaissance Ballroom
Completed in 1924 as part of a large hub with a casino and 900-seat theatre. Built and operated by black businessmen, the “Rennie” was the only upscale reception hall available to blacks at the time. Prize fights, concerts, dance marathons, stage acts, parties and meetings of the most influential social clubs and political organizations in Harlem. The community’s elite gathered to dance (Charleston and the Black Bottom) to live entertainment by the most renowned jazz musicians of the age. -
Small's Paradise
Smalls Paradise was a nightclub in Harlem, New York City. Located in the basement of 2294 Seventh Avenue, it opened in 1925 and was owned by Ed Smalls. At the time of the Harlem Renaissance, Smalls Paradise was the only one of the well-known Harlem night clubs to be owned by an African-American and integrated. Other major Harlem night clubs admitted only white patrons unless the person was an African-American celebrity.Smalls was open all night. -
Savoy Ballroom | Harlem
The Savoy Ballroom was a large ballroom for music and public dancing at 596 Lenox Avenue, the main thoroughfare through upper Harlem. The Savoy was one of many Harlem hot spots along Lenox, but it was the one to be called the "World's Finest Ballroom". It was in operation from 1926 to 1958, and was the 'soul' of a neighborhood". The Ballroom was shut down in April 1943 as a result of "charges of vice filed by the police department and Army" Its license was renewed in mid-October 1943. -
Kitchen Mechanics
In the late 1920s - 1940s, after long hours of labor, many young Black working-class people took solace in dance at the Savoy Ballroom, including not only "kitchen mechanics," a slang term for maids and cooks, but also waiters, porters, doormen, secretaries, hairdressers, and janitors. These activities were not simply fun; but a way to reclaim one's body as a source of personal enjoyment rather than a mechanism of labor. It provided a chance to resist the dominant culture. -
Harlem Hospital
Harlem Hospital was opened April 18, 1897 in a 3-story building. Harlem Hospital was founded under the Dept of Public Charities and Corrections. The hospital’s initial 54 beds could not support the wave of blacks that traveled to NY after World War I. As the black community grew, they attempted to gain control over aspects of the community that had a direct impact on them and were able to work as physicians in the 1930s. The Harlem Hospital served as a sense of pride for the black community. -
Apollo Theater Reopens
After lavish renovations it re-opened as the "Apollo Theater" on January 16, 1934, catering to the black community of Harlem. Originally, a typical show presented at the Apollo was akin to a vaudeville show, including a chorus line of beautiful girls. As the years progressed, such variety shows were presented less often. During the swing era, along with bands such as Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Webb, Count Basie, and Andy Kirk. -
1940s Harlem
1940s Harlem. The Harlem of Malcolm X, of Duke Ellington, of Zora Neale Hurston. Prohibition is over, and African Americans are fighting a war at a time when they are still regarded as second-class citizens. The energy was palpable, as the northwestern corner of Manhattan was a petri dish for creatives, thinkers and activists whose legacy would largely shape the course of African American history in the 20th century. -
Jimmy's Chicken Shack
1940 showing Jimmy's Chicken Shack which apparently was a famous eatery and jazz hangout in West Harlem. Besides a music group named after the lost Harlem establishment that shows up in searches, there wasn't a lot to go on except that it was Malcolm X's favorite restaurant. The middle photo shows St. Nicholas Avenue and the block south of 148th Street before the single level retail spaces found today were built on the eastside open lot. -
Black Women and Marriage | Pre-Civil Rights Era
The data show, contrary to widely held beliefs, that through 1960, rates of marriage for both black and white women were lowest at the end of the 1800s and peaked in 1950 for blacks and 1960 for whites. Furthermore it is dra-matically clear that black females married at higher rates than white females of native parentage until 1950. -
Black History and Women Timeline 1940s
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Daily Life of African American in 1940s
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Lou Bessie Has a Baby in Frogmore
Lou Bessie is 27 years old -
Lou Bessie Is Running from...
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Black Women Who Never Marry | From 1890
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Husband's Mama Dies
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Husband Stops Hearing from Lou Bessie
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Lou Bessie Leaves Frogmore for NY
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Lou Bessie Starts Living with bucket
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TOS | The Neighborhood
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Harlem | Nightclub Map
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Frogmore, SC | The Community in 1940s
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Great Neck, NY | Where Lou Bessie Works
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The A Train Line | Harlem to Brooklyn
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Bess Begins Writing Husband
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Husband proposes and Bess prepares to Leave
The sister do not speak for 14 days -
Quilly Moves in with Bess
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1943 Harlem Race Riot
A race riot took place in Harlem, New York City, on August 1 and 2 of 1943, after a white police officer, James Collins, shot and wounded Robert Bandy, an African-American soldier; and rumors circulated that the soldier had been killed. The riot was chiefly directed by black residents against white-owned property in Harlem. It was one of six riots in the nation that year related to black and white tensions during World War II.
