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c. 1517Black plantation slavery begins in the New World when Spaniards begin importing slaves from Africa to replace Native Americans who died from harsh working conditions and exposure to disease.
1619August 20. Twenty Africans, three of them women, are put ashore off a Dutch frigate at Jamestown, Virginia. They are believed to be of Angolan descent.
1624In Jamestown, a woman known as Isabel, wife of Antoney, gives birth to William, the first documented black child born in English North America.
1641Massachusetts is the first colony to legalize slavery by statute. Connecticut follows in 1650.
1661Virginia gives statutory recognition to slavery; Maryland in 1663; New York and New Jersey, 1664; South Carolina, 1682; Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 1700; North Carolina, 1715; Georgia, 1750.
1662Virginia law establishes that children born in the colony will be held bond or free according to the condition of their mother.
1663September 13. The first documented attempt at a rebellion by slaves takes place in Gloucester County, Virginia.
1688February 18. The Quakers of Germantown, Pennsylvania, pass the first formal antislavery resolution.
1692Tituba, a West Indian slave accused of witchcraft in Salem, MA, is the catalyst for the infamous Salem witch-hunt and trials.
1708Following a Newton, Long Island, NY, slave revolt in which seven white people were killed, a black woman is burned alive and one Native American man and two black men are hanged.
1739September 9. The Cato revolt is the first serious disturbance among slaves. After killing more than 25 white people, most of the rebels, led by a slave named Cato, are rounded up as they attempt to escape. More than 30 black people are executed as participants.
The Stono Rebellion, one of the earliest slave insurrections, mostly comprised of Angolan slaves, leads to the deaths of at least 20 whites and more than 40 black people west of Charleston in the black-majority colony of South Carolina.
1746Lucy Terry composes the poem "Bars Fight," the earliest extant poem by an African-American. Transmitted orally for more than 100 years, it first appears in print in 1855.
1758Frances Williams publishes a collection of Latin poems. Williams is the first African American to graduate from college.
1770March 5. Crispus Attucks, an escaped slave, is killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. He is one of the first to die in the cause of American independence.
c. 1772Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable builds a fur-trading post on the Chicago River at Lake Michigan. Its success leads to the settlement that later becomes the city of Chicago.
1773Phillis Wheatley, the first notable black woman poet in the United States, is acclaimed in Europe and America following publication in England of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
1775April 19. Free black people fight with the Minutemen in the initial skirmishes of the Revolutionary war at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.
1777July 2. Vermont is the first state to abolish slavery. December 31. George Washington reverses previous policy and allows the recruitment of black soldiers. Some 5,000 participate in the Revolutionary War.
1787July 13. The Continental Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, forbiding slavery northwest of the Ohio River. September. The U.S. Constitution provides for a male slave to count as 3/5ths of a man in determining representation.
1789French Revolution begins.
Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) was born in the village of Isseke in what is now Nigeria. At age eleven, he was kidnapped by African slave traders, purchased by Europeans, and sent to the Americas in 1756. He lived briefly in Virginia before being bought by an officer in the British navy and working for several years on British warships. After being sold to a Quaker merchant in the Caribbean, Equiano worked, saved money, and purchased his own freedom in 1766. Following his self-emancipation, Equiano lived primarily in England and worked in the slave trade into the 1770s. By the 1780s, however, he was deeply involved in the growing antislavery movement in the United States and Britain. In 1789 he published his Narrative, one of the first written by a former slave. The story of his capture and sale to Virginia is the story of many of the half million Africans brought to what would become the United States. 1790Benjamin Banneker, mathematician and compiler of almanacs, is appointed by President George Washington to the District of Columbia Commission, where he works on the survey of Washington, D.C.
1793February 12. Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime to harbour an escaped slave or to interfere with his or her arrest.
1799Richard Allen becomes the first ordained black minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
1800Gabriel (Prosser) plans the first major slave rebellion in U.S. history, massing more than 1,000 armed slaves near Richmond, Va. Following the failed revolt, 35 slaves, including Gabriel, are hanged.
1804January 5. The Ohio legislature passes "Black Laws" designed to restrict the legal rights of free black people -- a trend in both the North and the South before the Civil War.
1808January 1. The federal law prohibiting the importation of African slaves goes into effect. It is largely circumvented.
1816April 9. The African Methodist Episcopal Church is organized as the first independent black denomination in the U.S. Richard Allan is consecrated as its first bishop.
1817The American Colonization Society is established to transport freeborn blacks and emancipated slaves to Africa, leading to foundation of a colony that becomes the Republic of Liberia in 1847.
1820The Missouri Compromise provides for Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and western territories north of Missouri's southern border to be free soil.
1821The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is organized, developing from a congregation of blacks who left the John Street Methodist Church in New York City because of discrimination.
1822Freedman Denmark Vesey plans the most extensive slave revolt in U.S. history. The Charleston, South Carolina, rebellion is betrayed before the plan can be effected, leading to the hanging of Vesey and 34 others. It is claimed that some 5,000 black people were prepared to rise in July.
1829September. David Walker's militant antislavery pamphlet, An Appeal to the Colored People of the World, is in circulation in the South. This work is the first of its kind written by a black person. Radical for the time, it is accepted by a small minority of Abolitionists.
September 20-24. The first National Negro Convention meets in Philadelphia.
1831August 21-22. Nat Turner leads the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history, attracting up to 75 fellow slaves and killing 60 white people in Southampton County, Virginia. After the defeat of the insurrection, Turner is hanged on November 11.
William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the antislavery newspaper The Liberator, advocating emancipation for black Americans held in bondage.
1833Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention.Philadelphia, December 4, 1833.
Sixty abolitionist leaders from ten states meet in Philadelphia to create a national organization to bring about immediate emancipation of all slaves. The American Anti-slavery Society, the main activist arm of the Abolitionist movement, elected officers and adopted a constitution and declaration. Drafted by William Lloyd Garrison, the declaration pledged its members to work for emancipation through non-violent actions of "moral suasion," or "the overthrow of prejudice by the power of love." The society encouraged public lectures, publications, civil disobedience, and the boycott of cotton and other slave-manufactured products.
Slavery is abolished in England
1834(Drawing: "Coolie and Negro" -- Indian indentured servant and former African slave in San Josef, Trinidad circa 1834.)
1839July. The slaves of the Spanish ship Amistad take over the vessel and sail to Montauk, Long Island. They eventually win their freedom in a case taken to the Supreme Court. Former U.S. president John Quincy Adams is credited in history as successfully defending the rebels before the Supreme Court.
1840The Liberty Party holds its first national convention in Albany, N.Y. In opposition to fellow Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, members believe in political action to further anti-slavery goals.
1843In a speech at the national convention of free people of colour, Henry Highland Garnet, Abolitionist and clergyman, calls upon slaves to murder their masters.
1845John G. Whittier. "The Branded Hand." Philadelphia, ca. 1845. Leaflet.
Massachusetts sea captain Jonathan Walker, born in 1790, was apprehended off the coast of Florida for attempting to carry slaves who were members of his church denomination to freedom in the Bahamas in 1844. He was jailed for more than a year and branded with the letters "S.S." for slave stealer. The abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized Walker's deed in this often reprinted verse: "Then lift that manly right hand, bold ploughman of the wave! Its branded palm shall prophesy, 'Salvation to the Slave!'"
1847Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the son of free blacks in Virginia, is elected the first president of Liberia. In 1849 he secures British recognition of Liberia as a sovereign nation.
Frederick Douglass begins publication of the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper, contributing to his break with white Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator.
1848The Free Soil Party, a minor but influential political party opposed to the extension of slavery into the western territories, nominates former U.S. president Martin Van Buren to head its ticket.
1849July. Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. She returns to the South at least 20 times, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom.
1850Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 is passed
Speaking on behalf of the Abolitionist movement, Sojourner Truth travels throughout the Midwest, developing a reputation for personal magnetism and drawing large crowds.
Harriet Tubman returns to Maryland to guide members of her family to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Later helping more than 300 slaves to escape, she comes to be known as the "Moses of her people."
Congress passes a series of compromise measures affecting California, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, and the District of Columbia in an effort to maintain an even balance between free and slave states.
1853Episcopalian minister Alexander Crummell becomes a missionary and teacher in Liberia, advocating a program of religious conversion and economic and social development.
William Wells Brown--a former slave, Abolitionist, historian, and physician--publishes Clotel, the first novel by a black American.
1854January 1. Ashmum Institute, the precursor of Lincoln University, is chartered at Oxford, Pennsylvania.
Author Frances E.W. Harper's most popular verse collection, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, is published, containing the antislavery poem "Bury Me in a Free Land."
1855John Mercer Langston, a former slave, is elected clerk of Brownhelm Township in Ohio. He is the first black to win an elective political office in the United States.
1856Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church found Wilberforce University. After the university is closed during the Civil War, it is bought and reopened by the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
In the ongoing contest between pro- and antislavery forces in Kansas, a mob sacks the town of Lawrence, a "hotbed of abolitionism," leading to retaliation by John Brown at Pottawatomie Creek.
1857March 6. The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court denies black people U.S. citizenship and denies the power of Congress to restrict slavery in any federal territory. Slavery is legalized in all the territories, exacerbating the sectional controversy and pushing the nation toward civil war.
1859Harriet E. Wilson writes Our Nig, a largely autobiographical novel about racism in the North before the Civil War.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Ableman v. Booth, overrules an act by a Wisconsin state court that declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional.
c. 1859Martin R. Delany, physician and advocate of black nationalism, leads a party to West Africa to investigate the Niger Delta as a site for settlement of African-Americans.
1861The Civil War begins in Charleston, S.C., as the Confederate troops open fire on Fort Sumter.
c. 1861Pinckney Pinchback runs the Confederate blockade on the Mississippi to reach New Orleans. There he recruits a company of black volunteers for the Union, the Corps d'Afrique.
1862July 17. Congress allows the enlistment of black men in the Union Army. More than 186,000 black people serve in the army during the Civil War; 38,000 die in service.
Future U.S. congressman Robert Smalls and 12 other slaves seize control of a Confederate armed frigate in Charleston harbour. They turn it over to a Union naval squadron blockading the city.
Slavery is abolished in Washington, D.C.
The second Confiscation Act is passed, stating that slaves of civilian and military Confederate officials "shall be forever free," enforceable only in areas of the South occupied by the Union Army.
1863January 1. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, frees slaves in those states rebelling against the Union.
On July 11 anti-draft riots breakout in New York City, and over one thousand people, primarily African-Americans, are killed
1864President Lincoln refuses to sign the Wade-Davis bill, which requires greater assurances of loyalty to the Union from white citizens and reconstructed governments.
Southern outrage at the North's use of black soldiers flares up in Confederate forces capturing Fort Pillow, Tenn., and massacring the black troops within; some are burned or buried alive.
1865On January 16th, General William T. Sherman issues Field Order No. 15. This order set aside a maximum of 40 acres of land in South Carolina and Florida exclusively for African-Americans; however President Andrew Johnson reverses the policy.
On March 3rd, Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees known as the Freedman's Bureau. The Bureau assists Emancipated slaves displaced by the Civil War by providing them with healthcare and education.
The Civil War ends on April 26, after the surrender of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and J.E. Johnston.
December 18. The 13th Amendment is ratified, outlawing slavery in the U.S.
Congress establishes the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands to aid four million black Americans in transition from slavery to freedom.
c. 1866The states of the former Confederacy pass "black code" laws to replace the social controls removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.
1866The U.S. Army forms black cavalry and infantry regiments. Serving in the West from 1867 to 1896 and fighting Indians on the frontier, they are nicknamed "buffalo soldiers" by the Indians.
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act. This act grants citizenship to African Americans, in addition to being designed to guarantee equal rights.
With the complicity of local civilian authorities and police, rioting whites kill 35 black citizens of New Orleans and wound more than 100, leading to increased support for vigorous Reconstruction policies.
Forty-six African-Americans are killed by white citizens and police on May 1-3 in Memphis, Tennessee. During the Memphis Massacre, the angry mob burned ninety houses, twelve schools, and four churches.
The Ku Klux Klan, the first of many white supremacist organizations, is formed.
Buffalo Soldiers was the name used by Native Americans to describe the fierce fighting, curly haired, dark skinned men of the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry created by Congress. They were assigned to the West (Texas and Kansas). One of the missions of these soldiers was to protect white settlers from attacks by Native Americans. Buffalo Soldiers represented one out of every five soldiers in the American West.
1867
Congress overrides President Andrew Johnson's veto, and African-Americans in the District of Columbia are granted the right to vote. Johnson C. Smith College is founded in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Howard University, a predominantly black university, is founded in Washington, D.C. It is named for General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the post-Civil War Freedmen's Bureau.
1868July 6. The South Carolina House becomes the first and only legislature to boast a black majority, having 87 black legislators and 40 white legislators. A white majority is reestablished in 1874. July 28. The 14th Amendment, validating citizenship rights for all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., is ratified.
18691869 Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett becomes the first African-American diplomat and the first African-American presidential appointment when he is named minister to Haiti on April 6th.
1870March 30. The ratification of the 15th Amendment secures voting rights for all male U.S. citizens.
The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is organized, four years after the first efforts among black members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to develop an independent church.
Joseph Hayne Rainey is the first black elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. This congressman from South Carolina will enjoy the longest tenure of any black during Reconstruction.
Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi takes the former seat of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the U.S. Senate, becoming the first elected black person to the Senate.
1872John R. Lynch, speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, is elected to the U.S. Congress.
1875On March 1st the Civil Rights Bill is passed. Under this bill African-Americans are granted equal rights in theaters, inns, and public transportation. The Supreme Court overturned this bill in 1883.
1877Reconstruction ends as the last Federal troops are withdrawn. Southern conservatives regain control of their state governments through fraud, violence, and intimidation.
The Book of NegroesREFERENCES
Low, W. Augustus and Virgil A. Clift, Encyclopedia of Black America (New York: Da Capo Press, 1984).
Ploski, Harry A. and Warren Marr, The Negro Almanac (New York: Bellwether Co., 1976).
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/4275/chronology1.html
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