From The Plantation To The White House

TimeLine In Black History: Captivity, Struggles and Victories

1526: First African slaves arrived in present day United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony –likely area of present day South Carolina—founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón.
1619: African slaves first introduced in Jamestown, English North America.

1807: Slave Trade Act of U.K. Parliament of 1807 abolished the British slave trade
1827: Freedom’s Journal. First Black-owned and operated newspaper.

1857: Dred Scott decision. On March 6, the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves, could never be citizens of the United States, and that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery.
1862: Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln

1863-1877: Reconstruction. U.S. focused on abolishing slavery, destroying traces of the Confederacy, and reconstructing both the South, and U.S. Constitution itself.

1865: Passage of Thirteenth, Amendment. Thirteenth Amendment–Abolished and prohibited slavery and indentured servitude.
1866: Fourteenth Amendment–The Amendment requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all persons within their jurisdictions. KKK Founded.

1867: Black suffrage. On January 8, overriding President Andrew 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.

1869: Fifteenth Amendment–Prohibits each government in the United States to prevent a citizen from voting based on that citizen’s race, color or previous condition of servitude.
1875: Civil Rights Act of 1875.

1877: End Of Reconstruction With The Compromise of 1877–Republican Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South leaving no protection for Blacks in exchange for being elected President of the United States
1877-1965: Jim Crow laws—Restricted the rights of African-Americans through state and local laws mandating de jure segregation in all public facilities.

1881: Tuskegee Institute founded. Booker T. Washington became the first principal of Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, on July 4.
1883: Civil Rights Act of 1875 overturned. The Supreme Court declared that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids states, but not citizens, from discriminating.

1895: Frederick Douglass died on February 20.
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson—Infamous “separate but equal” fantasy

1901: Last African American congressman George H. White gave up his seat on March 4. No African-American would serve in Congress for the next 28 years.
1903: W. E. B. Du Bois published his celebrated book, The Souls of Black Folk.

1904: Mary McCleod Bethune founds a college in Daytona Beach, Florida.
1909: The NAACP is formed.

1910: Jack Johnson becomes the first heavyweight boxing champ when he knocks Jeffries even as 20,000 crowd yell racist slurs throughout the fight
1919: “Red Summer.” Twenty-six race riots between April and October.

1920: The Harlem Renaissance and rise of Marcus Garvey.
1921: Tulsa Race Riots.
1925: A. Phillip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

1925: Malcolm X born.
1945: Adam Clayton Powell elected to the House of Representatives

1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas– “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”
1955: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus.

1955: Montgomery bus boycott led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
1963: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

1965: Voting Rights Act. Codified and effectuated 15th Amendment’s permanent guarantee that no person shall be denied right to vote on account of race or color.
1965- Assassination of Malcolm X
1966: Edward William Brooke III. First African American elected to Senate since 19th century; only Black sent to the Senate in 20th century until Carol Moseley Braun.

1968: Dr. King Assassinated.
1971: Charles Rangel elected to the House of Representatives to succeed Adam Clayton Powell.

1968: Shirley Chisholm, first Black woman elected to Congress.
1972: Chisholm is first Black woman to run for president.

1977: Andrew Young named US ambassador to United Nations.
1984: Jesse Jackson Sr.’s first presidential run

1989: Douglas Wilder elected Governor of Virginia, the first African-American elected as a Governor.
1993: Carol Moseley Braun the first, and to date, the only, African American woman elected to the United States Senate.
1995-The Historic Million Man March

2005: Barack Hussein Obama elected U.S. Senator from Illinois
2008: Barack Hussein Obama elected President of the United States