African American History 1450 - 1910

Slavery/Rebellion

Between 1450 and 1850, at least 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean — the notorious Middle Passage — primarily to colonies in North America, South America and the West Indies. Eighty percent of these kidnapped Africans were transported during the 18th century. Ten percent to 20 percent of them died en route.

Unknown numbers of Africans, probably at least 4 million, died in slave wars and forced marches in Africa.
1526 Spaniard Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon attempted to create a settlement in South Carolina near the mouth of the Pedee River. He brought in 100 African slaves to build it, but they rebelled and sought refuge with Native Americans.

1619

A Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food in Jamestown 1619. The Africans became indentured servants, similar in legal position to many poor Englishmen who traded several years of labor for passage to America. The race-based slave system did not develop until the 1680s.

 

1638

An African man could be sold for about $27 and serve his entire life as a slave. In contrast, an indentured European laborer could earn as much as 70 cents a day toward paying off his debt and ending his servitude.

1640

Whipping and branding, borrowed from Roman practices, begins.

1641

The Massachusetts colony legalizes slavery.

1660

The trans-Atlantic slave trade begins, producing one of the largest forced migrations in history. From the early 16th to the mid-19th centuries, between 10 million and 11 million Africans were taken from their homes.
The American colonies began enacting laws that defined and regulated slave relations, including a provision that black slaves, and the children of women slaves, would

1664

Slave owners gave a great deal of attention to the education and training of the ideal slave. In general, there were five steps in molding the character of a slave: strict discipline, a sense of his own inferiority, belief in the master’s superiority, acceptance of the master’s standards and a deep sense of his own helplessness and dependence.

1700

Crispus Attucks became the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed by British soldiers in Boston on March 5 in the “Boston Massacre”.

1731

Benjamin Banneker is born into a family of free blacks in Maryland. Banneker learns reading, writing and arithmetic from his grandmother and a Quaker schoolmaster. Later, he teaches himself astronomy and publishes an almanac on his astronomical calculations.

1757

James Derham, the first black physician in America, is born a slave in Philadelphia. Derham was owned by a doctor who encouraged him to practice medicine. Working as a medical assistant and apothecary, Derham saved enough money to buy his freedom in 1783 and opened a medical practice in New Orleans.

1754

Benjamin Banneker builds first clock in the United States.

1791

Thomas L. Jennings, a tailor in New York City, is credited with being the first African American to hold a U.S. patent. In 1821, he was given patent for a dry-cleaning process.

Slaves begin work on the Construction of the White House.

Benjamin Banneker writes to Thomas Jefferson saying it is time to eradicate racial stereotypes. While expressing doubts about the merits of slavery in his “Notes on Virginia,” Jefferson had expressed his belief in the inferiority of Africans.

1793

Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, which increases U.S. cotton planting and produces greater demand for slave labor.

1794

Toussaint L’Ouverture leads a rebellion in Haiti that overthrows British and Spanish forces and frees Haiti.

1797

George Washington writes,” I wish from my soul that the legislature of [Virginia] could see a policy of a gradual abolition of slavery.” Two years later, Washington revised his will, providing for his slaves to be freed after his death. Some 122 of the 314 slaves at Mount Vernon were freed; the others were Martha Washington’s and by law owned by her heirs. Washington left instructions for the care and education of his former slaves, including financial support for the young and pensions for the elderly.
Sojourner Truth, a nationally known speaker on human rights for slaves and women, is born Isabella Baumfree, a slave in Hurley, N.Y.

1804

The Ohio Legislature enacts the first of the Black Laws restricting the rights and movements of blacks. Other Western states soon follow suit. Illinois, Indiana and Oregon later have anti-immigration clauses in their state constitutions.

New Jersey passes an emancipation law. All states north of the Mason-Dixon Line now have laws forbidding slavery or providing for its gradual elimination. However, slaves remain in New Jersey up to the Civil War.

1806
Norbert Rillieux is born. The son of a French planter and a slave in New Orleans, Rillieux was educated in France. He developed an evaporator for refining sugar, which he patented in 1846. Rillieux’s evaporation technique is still used in the sugar industry and in the manufacture of soap and other products.

1818

African-American leader and statesman Frederick Douglass is born. Douglass was one of the leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War.

1820

Harriett Tubman is born. Tubman helped hundreds of slaves escape along a secret route to freedom known as the Underground Railroad. Born a slave herself, she fled from Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia in 1849. For the next 10 years she made repeated secret trips back to Maryland, leading more than 300 escaped slaves to freedom in Canada. She became known as "the Moses of her people."

1822

Denmark Vesey, a freed slave in South Carolina, is implicated in the planning of a large uprising of slaves and hanged. The case led to more stringent slave laws in many Southern states.

1823

Mississippi enacts a law prohibiting the teaching of reading and writing to blacks and meetings of more than five slaves or free blacks.

1827

The Freedom’s Journal is the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829.

1830

Benjamin Bradley is born. A slave, Bradley was employed at a printing office and later at the Annapolis Naval Academy, where he helped set up scientific experiments. In the 1840s he developed a steam engine for a warship. Unable to patent his work, he sold it and bought his freedom with the proceeds.

1837

The Institute for Colored Youth is founded by Richard Humphreys; it later became Cheyney University.

1837

The Institute for Colored Youth is founded by Richard Humphreys; it later became Cheyney University.

1844

Elijah McCoy, the son of escaped slaves from Kentucky, is born. McCoy was born in Canada and educated in Scotland. He settled in Detroit and invented a lubricator for steam engines that was patented in 1872. McCoy established his own manufacturing company and acquired 57 patents.

1846

Rebecca Cole is born in Philadelphia. In 1867, Cole became the second black woman to graduate from medical school. She joined Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white woman physician, in New York and taught hygiene and child care to families in poor neighborhoods.

1848

Lewis Howard Latimer is born in Chelsea, Mass. Latimer learned mechanical drawing while working for a Boston patent attorney. He later invented an electric lamp and obtained a patent for a carbon filament for light bulbs. Latimer was the only African-American member of Thomas Edison’s engineering laboratory.

1852

Edward Alexander Bouchet is born in New Haven, Conn. In 1874, Bouchet became the first African American to graduate from Yale College. In 1876, he received his Ph.D. in physics from Yale, becoming the first African American to earn a doctorate. Bouchet spent his career teaching college chemistry and physics.

1856

Wilberforce University, the first black school of higher learning in the U.S., is founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church

Granville T. Woods is born in Columbus, Ohio. Largely self-educated, he was awarded more than 60 patents. One of his most important inventions was a telegraph that allowed moving trains to communicate with other trains and train stations, thus improving railway efficiency and safety.

Daniel Hale Williams is born in Pennsylvania. He attended medical school in Chicago, where he founded Provident Hospital in 1891. Williams performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893.

1857

The Supreme Court rules on the Dred Scott case. Scott, a slave, claimed his freedom on the basis of seven years of residence in a free state and a free territory. But seven out of nine Justices on the Supreme Court ruled that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a citizen. The court said Scott had no rights and was still a slave. The decision sharpened the national debate over slavery.

1859

On Oct. 16-17, John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va., to obtain arms for a slave insurrection. The raid failed and Brown was hanged for treason on Dec. 2.

The last ship to bring slaves to the United States, the Clothilde, arrived in Mobile Bay, Ala..

1860

George Washington Carver was born circa 1860 into slavery in Missouri. Carver later earned degrees from Iowa Agricultural College. The director of agricultural research at the Tuskegee Institute from 1896 until his death, Carver developed hundreds of applications for farm products important to the economy of the South, including the peanut, sweet potato, soybean and pecan.

1861

The American civil war begins, pitting the slave states of the South against the North.

 Emancipation Proclamation 1863  
 

Early in the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was hard pressed by the Radical Republicans -- the party's abolitionist wing -- to abolish slavery by proclamation. Lincoln was opposed. He said that his main concern was preserving the union and he subordinated his feelings about slavery to that goal: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery." Moreover, he knew that if he  decreed emancipation at the beginning of the war, Missouri, Kentucky, and probably Maryland, all of which technically remained on the Union side, would have joined the South. As the war gloomily dragged on in 1862, and things looked bleak for the Union cause, Lincoln realized that he would have to end slavery. He was willing to issue an Emancipation Proclamation but he felt that the people of the North were not yet ready for it. He needed a military victory. In September of 1862, he barely got one. Five days after the Confederate Army's northward march was stopped at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation.

Freedmen Bureau 1865 - 72

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was created by Congress in March 1865 to assist for one year in the transition from slavery to freedom in the South. The Bureau was given "the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen, under such rules and regulations as may be presented by the head of the Bureau and approved by the President." The bureau was run by the War Department, and its first and most important commissioner was General O.O. Howard, a Civil War hero sympathetic to blacks. The Bureau's task was to help the Southern blacks and whites make the transition from slavery to freedom. Their responsibilities included introducing a system of free labor, overseeing some 3,000 schools for freed persons, settling disputes and enforcing contracts between the usually white landowners and their black labor force, and securing justice for blacks in state courts.

Reconstruction 1865 - 77

Reconstruction generally refers to the period in United States history immediately following the Civil War in which the federal government set the conditions that would allow the rebellious Southern states back into the Union. (The precise starting point is debatable, with some prominent scholars arguing that Reconstruction actually began during the war.) In 1862, Abraham Lincoln had appointed provisional military governors to re-establish governments in Southern states recaptured by the Union Army. The main condition for re-admittance was that at least 10 percent of the voting population in 1860 take an oath of allegiance to the Union. Aware that the Presidential plan omitted any provision for social or economic reconstruction -- or black civil rights -- the anti-slavery Congressmen in the Republican Party, known as the Radicals, criticized Lincoln's leniency. The Radicals wanted to insure that newly freed blacks were protected and given their rights as Americans. After Lincoln's assassination in April of 1865, President Andrew Johnson alienated Congress with his Reconstruction policy. He supported white supremacy in the South and favored pro-Union Southern political leaders who had aided the Confederacy once war had been declared. Southerners, with Johnson's support, attempted to restore slavery in substance if not in name.

Ku Klux Klan 1866

The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in the winter of 1865-66 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social club by six Confederate veterans. In the beginning, the Klan was a secret fraternity club rather than a terrorist organization. (Ku Klux was derived from the Greek "kuklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.) The costume adopted by its members (disguises were quite common) was a mask and white robe and high conical pointed hat. According to the founders of the Klan, it had no malicious intent in the beginning. The Klan grew quickly and became a terrorist organization. It attracted former Civil War generals such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famed cavalry commander whose soldiers murdered captured black troops at Fort Pillow. The Klan spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South and included mayors, judges, and sheriffs as well as common criminals.
 

14th Amendment Ratified 1868

The Fourteenth Amendment was one of three amendments to the Constitution adopted after the Civil War to guarantee black rights. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth granted citizenship to people once enslaved, and the Fifteenth guaranteed black men the right to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in June 1866 and ratified by the states in 1868. The Radical Republicans had been battling with Andrew Johnson for control of Reconstruction. Johnson was in favor of leaving the future of black people in the hands of white Southerners. The Radical Republicans disagreed, and they won. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves.

Enforcement Acts 1870 - 71

Between 1870 and 1871 Congress passed the Enforcement Acts -- criminal codes that protected blacks' right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. If the states failed to act, the laws allowed the federal government to intervene. The target of the acts was the Ku Klux Klan, whose members were murdering many blacks and some whites because they voted, held office, or were involved with schools. Many states were afraid to take strong action against the Klan either because the political leaders sympathized with the Klan, were members, or because they were too weak to act. A number of Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of triggering a race war. But once Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, the situation shifted.

Civil Rights Act 1875

In 1875, the lame-duck Republican-controlled Congress, in a last-ditch effort to protect what remained of Reconstruction, managed to pass a civil-rights bill that sought to guarantee freedom of access, regardless of race, to the "full and equal enjoyment" of many public facilities. Citizens were given the right to sue for personal damages. The two key clauses read as follows: "Be it enacted, That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude."

Hayes - Tilden Election 1876

In 1876, the two major candidates running for President were Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, and Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat. The first returns indicated a victory for Tilden, who had won the popular vote with 4,284,020 votes to Hayes' 4,036,572. But Tilden's 184 electoral votes -- the votes that would decide the Presidency -- were still one short of a majority, while Hayes' 165 electoral votes left him 20 ballots away. The votes of three Southern states and one western state still had not been counted. The 20 electoral votes remaining in dispute were one from Oregon and 19 from the three Southern states that still retained Republican-controlled electoral boards -- Florida (4), Louisiana (8), and South Carolina (7). What complicated the matter was that Democrats in these states had won the state elections, mostly by violence and fraud. Both parties claimed victory.

Tuskegee Institute Founded 1881

In 1881, Booker T. Washington, then a young teacher, arrived in the town of Tuskegee, Alabama, where he had been invited by local whites to start a school for blacks. He was favorably impressed with the town but somewhat dismayed with the school itself. "Before going to Tuskegee, I had expected to find there a building and all the necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching. I found nothing of the kind. I did find, though, hundreds of hungry, earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge." The buildings consisted of a shanty that was to be used as a classroom with an assembly room provided by a nearby church. The shanty roof was so leaky that a pupil had to hold an umbrella over Washington's head while he taught. To start a school with only a run-down building, a small amount of land, and limited funding was challenge enough. An even greater challenge was winning the confidence of the local white community

Civil Rights Act Declared unconstitutional 1883

In 1883, The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights act of 1875, forbidding discrimination in hotels, trains, and other public spaces, was unconstitutional and not authorized by the 13th or 14th Amendments of the Constitution. The ruling read in part:

"The XIVth Amendment is prohibitory upon the States only, and the legislation authorized to be adopted by Congress for enforcing it is not direct legislation on the matters respecting which the States are prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but it is corrective legislation, such as may be necessary or proper for counteracting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts."

Wells Flees Memphis 1892
 

In March of 1892, Ida B. Wells, a journalist and former Memphis school teacher, started a crusade against lynching after three friends of hers were brutally murdered by a Memphis mob. Tom Moss and two of his friends, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart, were arrested for defending themselves against an attack on Moss' store. Moss was a highly respected figure in the black community, a postman as well as the owner of a grocery store. A white competitor, enraged that Moss had drawn away his black customers, hired some off-duty deputy sheriffs to destroy the store.
 

Atlanta Compromise Speech 1865

In 1895 Booker T. Washington, deeply troubled over the racial fury unlashed in the South, searched for a solution. Invited to speak at the Cotton Exposition States in Atlanta, Georgia, a fair that promoted Southern commerce, Washington was encouraged by a display of seeming good will on the part of whites. One of the highlights of the fair was the construction of a Negro Building containing exhibits demonstrating the scientific, cultural, and mechanical achievements of African Americans. For Booker T. Washington, the exposition was an opportunity to promote his agenda rather than protest racism. He had been extremely anxious as he made the trip from Alabama to Atlanta, knowing that one false note in his speech could jeopardize everything he had built at Tuskegee.
 

Pleesy V. Ferguson 1896

On June 7, 1892, 30-year-old Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy could easily pass for white but under Louisiana law, he was considered black despite his light complexion and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. He was a Creole of Color, a term used to refer to black persons in New Orleans who traced some of their ancestors to the French, Spanish, and Caribbean settlers of Louisiana before it became part of the United States. When Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, legally segregating common carriers in 1892, a black civil rights organization decided to challenge the law in the courts. Plessy deliberately sat in the white section and identified himself as black.

Spanish American War  1898  

As wave after wave of racial fury inundated the South at the end of the nineteenth century, a flicker of hope suddenly seemed to appear. America declared war on Spain in 1898, and black soldiers were needed to fight for their country. Out of America's 25,000-man standing army, 2,500 were experienced black veterans. For over twenty years, they had been fighting America's Indian wars on the deserts and plains of the West. The Cheyenne called them "Buffalo Soldiers" for their courage in battle and their rough, shaggy appearance.

Williams V. Mississippi 1898 

Mississippi elections had always been violent as whites tried to prevent blacks from voting, and many courageous blacks and whites who opposed Democratic rule were murdered. To end this violence, a compromise was reached between the planters and their challengers. Blacks would be constitutionally disfranchised and corruption and violence at the polls would stop. A constitutional convention was called to theoretically legally disfranchise all illiterate voters. But everyone knew the real purpose.

Wilmington Riot 1898 

In 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina, located in eastern Carolina, where the Cape Fear River enters into the Atlantic Ocean, was a prosperous port town. Almost two-thirds of its population was black, with a small but significant middle class. Black businessmen dominated the restaurant and barbershop trade and owned tailor shops and drug stores. Many black people held jobs as firemen, policemen and civil servants. A good feeling between the races existed as long as white Democrats controlled the state politically. But when a coalition of predominately white Populists and black Republicans defeated the Democrats in 1896, and won political control of the state, Democrats vowed revenge in 1898.

The Blues 1900 - 10 

Most scholars of the blues believe it was born in the Mississippi Delta shortly before 1900. The blues had its roots in other forms of black music that included African rhythms, field hollers, jump-ups, spirituals, and church music, but it became a distinct form by the turn of the century. It grew out of the hard lives of poor black workers and sharecroppers. J. C. Handy, who would popularize the blues, pointed out, "The blues did not come from books. Suffering and hard luck were the midwives that birthed these songs. The blues were conceived in aching hearts."