Timeline of Events in Black History
15,000,000 - 1,000,000 B.C.E
Homo Sapien estimated origin
10,000 B.C.E.
Earliest records of African people living in highly organized society Nubia religious (spiritual orientation)
Africa is not only the original home of humanity, it is the cradle of its intellect. It was on Africa's savannahs,
riverbanks, highlands, deserts, and forests that the first men and women used the power of their minds to
shape their environment in ways that suited them. Here man established himself as a tool maker and hunter
and advanced social animal. Over the course of millions of years, groups of prehistoric Africans of the genus
Homo reasoned, judged, understood, and created the basis for much of the technology and industry that
exists in the world today.
10,000 - 5,000 B.C.E.
Ethiopian (Kush) Impire
Glacial thaw in Europe estimated completion
6,000 - 5,000 B.C.E.
The Kushite Civilization
5,000 - 4,000 B.C.E.
The Ta Seti civilization
Nubia and the Pharoah system of governement. The first invasions of foreigners into Kemet (Ancient Egypt)
4,240 - 3,100 B.C.E.
The founding of KMT (Kemet/ ancient Egypt)
1st - 14th Dynasties
Narmer Menes is responsible for the unification of Kemet during the 1st dynasty.
The building of the Great pyramids during the 4th dynasty. The development of the sciences and liberal arts.
During this period Imhotep the world first known genius lived.
2,000 B.C.E.
Hyksos (Asians) invaded KMT
15th - 17th Dynasties
1,500 B.C.E.
Africans retook control of KMT
18th - 26th Dynasties
525 B.C.E.
Persians invaded KMT along with Alexander the great who raided the libraries and take African knowledge to Europe
27th - 31st Dynasties
323 B.C.E.
Queen Candace.
Greeks invaded KMT
32nd Dynasty
Herodetus (father of European history), Sacrotes, Aristotle and others studied in Africa.
They all took African higher level of knowledge back to Europe.
45 B.C.E.
Romans invaded KMT
33rd Dynasty
The opening of of the university of Timbuctu.
320 C.E.
KMT reign as leading world high-culture ended.
Mass migrations, the first massive influx of Arabs.
500 C.E.
Moors invaded Europe.
Also the second massive influx of Arabs into Africa.
Universities flourished all over Africa while Europe was in the dark ages.
1,400 C.E.
Moorish rule of Southern Spain ended
Columbus became the 1st European to reach the Americas where the most heinous system of slavery ever known to man was established.
1,500 C.E.
European Slave Trade in Africa
1619
August 20. Twenty Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. They
were the first blacks to be forcibly settled as involuntary laborers in the North American British
Colonies.
1641
Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery by statute.
1663
September 13. The first documented attempt at a rebellion by enslaved Africans in the US took place in
Gloucester County, Virginia.
1664
Maryland was the first state to try to discourage by law the marriage of white women to black
men.
1688
February 18. The Quakers of Germantown, Pennsylvania, passed the first formal
antislavery resolution.
1712
April 7. A slave insurrection occurred in New York City, resulting in the execution of
21 African Americans.
1739
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.
1770
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.
1772
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.
1775
April 19. Free blacks fight with the Minutemen in the initial skirmishes of the
Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.
June 17. Peter Salem and Salem Poor were two blacks commended for their service on
the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
1777
July 2. Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery.
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.
1787
April 12. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organized the Free African Society, a
mutual self-help group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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.
1791
Haitian Revolution began with the revolt of enslaved Africans in the northern province, Aug 22. An
estimated 350,000 people died in this revolution before Haiti was declared a free republic on January 1,
1804. This was the most significant rebellion during the MAAFA.
Benjamin Banneker published the first almanac by a black.
1793
February 12. Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Law.
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.
1794
June 10. Richard Allen founded the Bethel African Methodist Church in Philadelphia.
1797
August 30. An enslave revolt near Richmond, Virginia, led by Gabriel Prosser and Jack
Bowley, was first postponed and then betrayed. More than 40 blacks were eventually executed.
1804
January 1.After a maasive revolt by the enslave Africans in Napoleon, the English and the Spanish army was beaten, Haiti was declared a free independent republic.
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.
1808
January 1. The federal law prohibiting the importation of African slaves went into
effect. It was largely circumvented.
1816
April 9. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized at the first independent
black denomination in the United States.
1818
August 18. General Andrew Jackson defeated a force of Native Americans and
African-Americans to end the First Seminole War.
1822
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.
1829
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.
September 20-24. The first National Negro Convention met in Philadelphia.
1831
August 21-22. The Nat Turner revolt ran its course in Southampton County, Virginia.
1839
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.
1849
July. Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery. She
would return South at least twenty times, leading over 300 slaves to freedom.
1854
January 1. Ashmum Institute, the precursor of Lincoln University, was chartered at
Oxford, Pennsylvania.
1857
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.
1861
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.
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.
1863
January 1. The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in states in rebellion against
the United States.
1865
December 18. The Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was passed by Congress.
1866
Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell were the first blacks to sit in an American legislature,
that of Massachusetts.
1868
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.
July 28. The Fourteenth Amendment was passed. It made blacks citizens of the United
States.
1870
March 30. The Fifteenth Amendment, which outlawed the denial of the right to vote,
was ratified.
1875
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.
Tennessee passed a law requiring segregation in railroad cars. By 1907 all Southern states had
passed similar laws.
1895
September 18. Booker T. Washington
delivered the "Atlanta Compromise" speech at the Cotton States International Exposition in
Atlanta, Georgia.
1896
May 18. In Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court give legal backing to the
concept of separate but equal public facilities for blacks.
1905
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.
1910
April. The National Urban League was established.
1912
September 27. W. C. Handy published "Memphis Blues."
1915
September 9. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life
and History.
1918
February 19-21. The First Pan-African Congress met in Paris, France, under the
guidance of W. E. B. Du Bois.
1920
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.
1922 1929
These are the years usually assigned to the Harlem Renaissance, which marks an epoch in black
literature and art.
1925
May 8. A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
1931
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.
1936
August 9. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin.
1937
June 22. Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock to become heavyweight boxing
champion of the world.
1940
October 16. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., became the first black general in the United States
Army.
1941
June 25. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding
discrimination in defense industries after pressure from blacks led by A. Philip Randolph.
1942
June. Some blacks and whites organized the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago.
They led a sit-in at a Chicago restaurant.
1944
April 24. The United Negro College Fund was founded.
October 2. The first working, production-ready model of a mechanical cotton picker was
demonstrated on a farm near Clarksdate, Mississippi.
1947
April 19. Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball.
1950
September 22. Ralph J. Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator in
Palestine.
1952
After keeping statistics kept for 71 years, Tuskegee reported that this was first year with no
lynchings.
1954
May 17. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme
Court completed overturning legal school segregation at all levels.
1955
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.
1957
February 14. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed with Martin Luther King, Jr., as president.
August 29. Congress passed the Voting Rights Bill of 1957, the first major civil rights
legislation in more than 75 years.
1960
February 1. Sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, initiated a wave of similar protests
throughout the South.
April 15-17. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was founded in
Raleigh, North Carolina.
1963
April 3. Under the leadership of Martin Luther
King, Jr., blacks began a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham.
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.
1964
January 23. The Twenty-fourth Amendment forbade the use of the poll tax to prevent
voting.
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.
1965
January 2. The SCLC launched a voter drive in Selma, Alabama. which escalated into a
nationwide protest movement.
August 11-21. The Watts riots left 34 dead, more than 3,500 arrested, and property
damage of about 225 million dollars.
1966
July 1-9. CORE endorsed the concept "Black Power." SNCC also adopted it. SCLC did
not and the NAACP emphatically did not.
October. The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
1967
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.
1968
April 4. Martin Luther King was assassinated
in Memphis, Tennessee. In the following week riots occurred in at least 125 places throughout
the country.
1969
October 29. The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools had to end at
once and that unitary school systems were required.
1970
July 1. Kenneth Gibson became the first black mayor of an Eastern city when he
assumed the post in Newark, New Jersey.
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.
1971
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.
1973
May 29. Thomas Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
October 16. Maynard H. Jackson was elected the first black mayor of Atlanta.
1974
April 8. Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to become the all-time leading hitter of
home runs.
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.
1977
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.
1980
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.
1982
May 23. Lee P. Brown was named the first black police commissioner of Houston,
Texas.
1983
February 23. Harold Washington won the Democratic party nomination for mayor of
Chicago. On April 12 he would win the election for mayor.
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
1986
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.
1987
Frederick Drew Gregory was the first black to command a space shuttle
1988
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.
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.
1989
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.
November 7. David Dinkins was elected mayor of New York, and L. Douglas Wilder,
governor of Virginia.
1990
February 11. Nelson Mandela, South African Black Nationalist, was freed after 27 years
in prison.
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.
1991
January 15. Roland Burris became the first black attorney general of Illinois.
June 18. Wellington Webb was elected mayor of Denver, Colorado.
1992
April 30. "The Cosby Show" broadcast the final original episode of its highly successful
eight season run.
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.
1993
September 7. M. Joycelyn Elders became the first black and the first woman United
States Surgeon General.
October 7. Toni Morrison was the first black
American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1994
October 21. Dexter Scott King, the youngest son of Martin Luther King, Jr. and , is named chief executive and chairman
of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
1995
October 16. The Million Man March, the idea of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, called the event, held in Washington, D.C.,
"A Day of Atonement and Reconciliation." The march was described as a call to black men to
take charge in rebuilding their communities and show more respect for themselves and devotion
to their families.
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.
1996
April 3. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and distinguished business leaders are killed
in a plane crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
1997
June 23. Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X
and a champion of civil rights, died in New York of burns suffered in a June 1 fire in her
apartment, allegedly set by her 12-year-old grandson, Malcolm.
October 25. Black American women participated in the Million Woman March in
Philadelphia, focusing on health care, education, and self-help.
1998
January 15. Civil rights veteran James Farmer was one of 15 men and women awarded the Medal of Freedom from President Clinton. Born in Marshall, Texas, he was the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality during the 1960s and was one of the most influential leaders of the civil rights movement throughout its most turbulent decade.
January 18. 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.
1999
Alan Keyes announces his candidacy in the Republican presidential primaries for election 2000. Keyes, a radio talk show host and a leader of the conservative movement also ran in the 1996 presidential elections.
January 13. After 13 seasons and six NBA championships, professional basketball star Michael Jordan retired from the game.
August. The NAACP calls for a national boycott of vacation spots in South Carolina in an attempt to force the state government to remove the Confederate flag from the dome of its statehouse. Controversy on this issue grows, involving the flying of the Confederate flag in other southern states as well.
December 2. A location for a national monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., on the mall in Washington D.C. between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument was approved by the National Capital Planning Commission. The architectural design will be determined in an international competition to be completed by November 12, 2003.
2000
January. Basketball star Michael Jordan announced his new position as partner and president of basketball operations of the Washington Wizards.
January 17. More than 46,000 protesters rally in a march on the state capitol at Columbia, South Carolina, to protest the Confederate battle flag flying atop the statehouse dome. NAACP chair Kweisi Mfume, the main speaker at the event, called it the greatest civil rights rally since the 1960s.
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