June 17. Peter Salem and Salem Poor were two blacks commended for their service on
the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
November 1. The African Free School of New York City was opened.
December 31. George Washington reversed previous policy and allowed the recruitment
of blacks as soldiers. Some 5,000 would participate on the American side before the end of the
Revolution.
July 13. The Continental Congress forbade slavery in the region northwest of the Ohio
River by the Northwest Ordinance.
September. The Constitution of the United States allowed a male slave to count as
three-fifths of a man in determining representation in the House of Representatives.
March 14. Eli Whitney obtained a patent for his cotton gin, a device that paved the way
for the massive expansion of slavery in the South.
September 20-24. The first National Negro Convention met in Philadelphia.
July 28. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed. It made blacks citizens of the United
States.
Tennessee passed a law requiring segregation in railroad cars. By 1907 all Southern states had
passed similar laws.
October 2. The first working, production-ready model of a mechanical cotton picker was
demonstrated on a farm near Clarksdate, Mississippi.
August 29. Congress passed the Voting Rights Bill of 1957, the first major civil rights
legislation in more than 75 years.
April 15-17. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was founded in
Raleigh, North Carolina.
June-August. Civil rights protests took place in most major urban areas.
August 28. The March on Washington was the largest civil rights demonstration ever.
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream"
speech.
March 12. Malcolm X announced his split
from Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. He would be
assassinated on February 21, 1965.
July 18-August 30. Beginning in Harlem, serious racial disturbances occurred in more
than six major cities.
August 11-21. The Watts riots left 34 dead, more than 3,500 arrested, and property
damage of about 225 million dollars.
October. The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
August 7. There was a shootout during an attempted escape in a San Rafael, California,
courthouse. Implicated in the incident, Angela Davis went into hiding to avoid arrest. Davis would be acquitted of all charges on June 4, 1972.
October 16. Maynard H. Jackson was elected the first black mayor of Atlanta.
July 1. The largest single gift to date from a black organization was the $132,000 given
by the Links, Inc., to the United Negro College Fund.
June 22. The state legislature of Louisiana repealed the last racial classification law in
the United States. The criterion for being classified as black was having 1/32nd Negro blood.
November 2. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill establishing a federal holiday in honor of
Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 30. Guion (Guy) S. Bluford, Jr. was the first black American astronaut to make a
space flight on board the space shuttle Challenger
November 4. Bill Cosby announced his gift of $20,000,000 to Spelman College. This is
the largest donation ever made by a black American.
November 7. David Dinkins was elected mayor of New York, and L. Douglas Wilder,
governor of Virginia.
May 13. George Augustus Stallings became the first bishop of the African-American
Catholic Church, a breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church.
November 1. Ebony magazine celebrated its 45th anniversary.
June 18. Wellington Webb was elected mayor of Denver, Colorado.
August 3. Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the first woman to repeat as Olympic heptathlon
champion.
September 12. Mae C. Jemison was first black
American woman in space on board the space shuttle Endeavor.
November 3. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was the first black woman ever elected to
the United States Senate.
October 7. Toni Morrison was the first black American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
April 7. A slave insurrection occurred in New York City, resulting in the execution of
21 African Americans.
September 9. The Cato revolt was the first serious disturbance among slaves. After
killing more than 25 whites, most of the rebels, led by a slave named Cato, were rounded up as
they tried to escape to Florida. More than 30 blacks were executed as participants.
March 5. Crispus Attucks, an escaped slave, was among the five victims in the Boston
Massacre. He is said to have been the first to fall.
Jean Baptiste Point DuSable decided to build a trading post near Lake Michigan, thus becoming
the first permanent resident of the settlement that became Chicago.
April 19. Free blacks fight with the Minutemen in the initial skirmishes of the
Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.
July 2. Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery.
April 12. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organized the Free African Society, a
mutual self-help group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Benjamin Banneker published the first almanac by a black.
February 12. Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Law.
June 10. Richard Allen founded the Bethel African Methodist Church in Philadelphia.
August 30. A slave revolt near Richmond, Virginia, led by Gabriel Prosser and Jack
Bowley, was first postponed and then betrayed. More than 40 blacks were eventually executed.
January 5. The Ohio legislature passed "Black Laws" designed to restrict the legal rights
of free blacks. These laws were part of the trend to increasingly severe restrictions on all blacks
in both North and South before the Civil War.
January 1. The federal law prohibiting the importation of African slaves went into
effect. It was largely circumvented.
April 9. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized at the first independent
black denomination in the United States.
August 18. General Andrew Jackson defeated a force of Native Americans and
African-Americans to end the First Seminole War.
May 30. The Denmark Vesey conspiracy was betrayed in Charleston, South Carolina. It
is claimed that some 5,000 blacks were prepared to rise in July.
September. David Walker's militant antislavery pamphlet, An Appeal to the Colored
People of the World, was in circulation in the South. This work was the first of its kind by a
black.
August 21-22. The Nat Turner revolt ran its course in Southampton County, Virginia.
July. The slaves carried on the Spanish ship, Amistad, took over the vessel and
sailed it to Montauk on Long Island. They eventually won their freedom in a case taken to the
Supreme Court.
July. Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery. She
would return South at least twenty times, leading over 300 slaves to freedom.
January 1. Ashmum Institute, the precursor of Lincoln University, was chartered at
Oxford, Pennsylvania.
March 6. The Dred Scott decision of the
Supreme Court denied that blacks were citizens of the United States and denied the power of
Congress to restrict slavery in any federal territory.
August 23. James Stone of Ohio enlisted to become the first black to fight for the Union
during the Civil War. He was very light skinned and was married to a white woman. His racial
identity was revealed after his death in 1862.
July 17. Congress allowed the enlistment of blacks in the Union Army. Some black
units precede this date, but they were disbanded as unofficial. Some 186,000 blacks served; of
these 38,000 died.
January 1. The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in states in rebellion against
the United States.
December 18. The Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was passed by Congress.
Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell were the first blacks to sit in an American legislature,
that of Massachusetts.
July 6. The South Carolina House became the first and only legislature to have a black
majority, 87 blacks to 40 whites. Whites did continue to control the Senate and became a
majority in the House in 1874.
March 30. The Fifteenth Amendment, which outlawed the denial of the right to vote,
was ratified.
March 1. Congress passed a Civil Rights Bill which banned discrimination in places of
public accommodation. The Supreme Court overturned the bill in 1883.
1881.
September 18. Booker T. Washington delivered the "Atlanta Compromise" speech at the Cotton States International Exposition in
Atlanta, Georgia.
May 18. In Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court give legal backing to the
concept of separate but equal public facilities for blacks.
July 11-13. W. E. B. Du Bois and William
Monroe Trotter were among the leaders of the meeting from which sprung the Niagara
Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
April. The National Urban League was established.
September 27. W. C. Handy published "Memphis Blues."
September 9. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life
and History.
February 19-21. The First Pan-African Congress met in Paris, France, under the
guidance of W. E. B. Du Bois.
August 1-2. The national convention of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Society met in New York City. Garvey would be
charged with mail fraud in 1923. He was convicted in 1925 and deported in 1927 after serving
time in prison.
These are the years usually assigned to the Harlem Renaissance, which marks an epoch in black
literature and art.
May 8. A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
April 6. Nine young blacks were accused of raping two white women in a boxcar. They
were tried for their lives in Scottsboro, Alabama, and hastily convicted. The case attracted
national attention.
August 9. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin.
June 22. Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock to become heavyweight boxing
champion of the world.
October 16. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., became the first black general in the United States
Army.
June 25. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding
discrimination in defense industries after pressure from blacks led by A. Philip Randolph.
June. Some blacks and whites organized the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago.
They led a sit-in at a Chicago restaurant.
April 24. The United Negro College Fund was founded.
April 19. Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball.
September 22. Ralph J. Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator in
Palestine.
After keeping statistics kept for 71 years, Tuskegee reported that this was first year with no
lynchings.
May 17. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme
Court completed overturning legal school segregation at all levels.
December 1. Rosa Parks refused to change
seats in a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. On December 5 blacks began a boycott of the bus system
which continued until shortly after December 13, 1956, when the United States Supreme Court
outlawed bus segregation in the city.
February 14. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed with Martin Luther King, Jr., as president.
February 1. Sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, initiated a wave of similar protests
throughout the South.
April 3. Under the leadership of Martin Luther
King, Jr., blacks began a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham.
January 23. The Twenty-fourth Amendment forbade the use of the poll tax to prevent
voting.
January 2. The SCLC launched a voter drive in Selma, Alabama. which escalated into a
nationwide protest movement.
July 1-9. CORE endorsed the concept "Black Power." SNCC also adopted it. SCLC did
not and the NAACP emphatically did not.
May 1-October 1. This was the worst summer for racial disturbances in United States
history. More than 40 riots and 100 other disturbances occurred.
April 4. Martin Luther King was assassinated
in Memphis, Tennessee. In the following week riots occurred in at least 125 places throughout
the country.
October 29. The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools had to end at
once and that unitary school systems were required.
July 1. Kenneth Gibson became the first black mayor of an Eastern city when he
assumed the post in Newark, New Jersey.
March 24. The Southern Regional Council reported that desegregation in Southern
schools was the rule, not the exception. The report also pointed out that the dual school system
was far from dismantled.
May 29. Thomas Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
April 8. Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to become the all-time leading hitter of
home runs.
February 3. This was the eighth and final night for the miniseries based on Alex Haley's Roots. This final episode achieved
the highest ratings ever for a single program.
May 18. Racial disturbances beginning on May 17 resulted in 15 deaths in Miami,
Florida. This was the worst riot since those in Watts and Detroit in the 1960s.
May 23. Lee P. Brown was named the first black police commissioner of Houston,
Texas.
February 23. Harold Washington won the Democratic party nomination for mayor of
Chicago. On April 12 he would win the election for mayor.
January 16. A bronze bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first of any black American in the halls of Congress. The first national Martin
Luther King, Jr., holiday was celebrated four days later on January 20.
Frederick Drew Gregory was the first black to command a space shuttle
July 20. Jesse L. Jackson received 1,218.5 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. The number needed for the nomination,
which went to Michael Dukakis, was 2,082.
January 29. Barbara Harris was elected the first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church.
August 10. General Colin L. Powell was named chair
of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.
February 11. Nelson Mandela, South African Black Nationalist, was freed after 27 years
in prison.
January 15. Roland Burris became the first black attorney general of Illinois.
April 30. "The Cosby Show" broadcast the final original episode of its highly successful
eight season run.
September 7. M. Joycelyn Elders became the first black and the first woman United
States Surgeon General.
October 21. Dexter Scott King, the youngest son of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, is named chief executive and chairman
of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
November 8. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, ends months of speculation by announcing that he will not run for the U.S. presidency in 1996.
December 9. Kweisi Mfume is unanimously elected as president and chief executive officer of the NAACP.
October 25. Black American women participated in the Million Woman March in Philadelphia, focusing on health care, education, and self-help.
January 18, 1998. Now an annual observance, the New York Stock Exchange closed, for the first time, in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
September 21. Track star Florence Griffith Joyner died at the age of 38. In the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, Griffith became the first American woman to win four track and field medals — three gold and one silver — in one Olympic competition.
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