1600-1799 | 1800-1899 | 1900-1949 | 1950-2006

1619 A Dutch ship with 20 African slaves aboard arrives at the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

1739 The Stono Rebellion, one of the earliest slave insurrections, leads to the deaths of at least 20 whites and more than 40 blacks west of Charleston in the black-majority colony of South Carolina.

1760 Jupiter Hammon writes an autobiography often considered to be the first slave narrative.

1777 Vermont, not yet part of the United States, becomes the first colony to constitutionally abolish slavery.

1787 Slavery is made illegal in the Northwest Territory. The U.S Constitution states that Congress may not ban the slave trade until 1808.

1790 Benjamin 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.

1793 Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin greatly increases the demand for slave labor.

African American slaves using cotton gin
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1793 A federal fugitive slave law is enacted, providing for the return slaves who had escaped and crossed state lines.

1799 Richard Allen becomes the first ordained black minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

1800 Gabriel Prosser, an enslaved African-American blacksmith, organizes a slave revolt intending to march on Richmond, Virginia. The conspiracy is uncovered, and Prosser and a number of the rebels are hanged. Virginia's slave laws are consequently tightened.

1808 Congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa.

1816 The African Methodist Episcopal Church is formally organized and consecrates Richard Allen as its first bishop.

1817 The 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.

1820 The Missouri Compromise bans slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri.

1821 The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, developed from a congregation of blacks who left the John Street Methodist Church in New York City because of discrimination, is formally organized.

1822 Denmark Vesey, an enslaved African-American carpenter who had purchased his freedom, plans a slave revolt with the intent to lay siege on Charleston, South Carolina. The plot is discovered, and Vesey and 34 co-conspirators are hanged.

1829 Abolitionist David Walker publishes a pamphlet entitled Appeal…to the Colored Citizens of the World …, calling for a slave revolt. Radical for the time, it is accepted by a small minority of abolitionists.

1831 William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, begins publishing the antislavery newspaper The Liberator, which advocates emancipation for African Americans held in bondage.

1831 Nat Turner leads the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history, attracting up to 75 fellow slaves and killing 60 whites. Some six weeks after the defeat of the insurrection, Turner is hanged.

1833 The American Anti-Slavery Society, the main activist arm of the abolitionist movement, is founded under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison.

1834 Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.

1839 Slaves revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean. After their arrest in Long Island Sound, former U.S. president John Quincy Adams successfully defends the rebels before the Supreme Court.

1840 The Liberty Party holds its first national convention in Albany, New York. In opposition to fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, members believe in political action to further antislavery goals.

1843 In a speech at the national convention of free people of colour, Henry Highland Garnet, abolitionist and clergyman, calls upon slaves to murder their masters.

1847 Joseph 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.

1847 Frederick Douglass begins publication of the North Star, an antislavery newspaper, which contributes to his break with abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison.

Frederick Douglass
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1848 The Free-Soil Party, a minor but influential political party—formed of Barnburners and Whigs—opposed to the extension of slavery into the western territories, nominates former U.S. president Martin Van Buren to head its ticket.

1850 Speaking on behalf of the abolitionist movement, Sojourner Truth travels throughout the American Midwest, developing a reputation for personal magnetism and drawing large crowds.

1850 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.”

1850 The U.S. 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. Part of the compromise, a new, stricter Fugitive Slave Act, contributes to the spread of the abolitionist movement.

1853 Episcopalian minister Alexander Crummell becomes a missionary and teacher in Liberia, advocating a program of religious conversion and economic and social development.

1853 William Wells Brown—a former slave, abolitionist, historian, and physician—publishes Clotel, the first novel by an African American.

1854 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.

1855 John 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.

1856 - Members 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.

1856 - In the ongoing contest between pro- and antislavery forces in Kansas, a mob sacks the town of Lawrence, a “hotbed of abolitionism,” which leads to retaliation by white abolitionist John Brown at Pottawatomie Creek.

1857 In its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court legalizes slavery in all the territories, exacerbating the sectional controversy and pushing the nation toward civil war.

1859 Harriet E. Wilson writes Our Nig, a largely autobiographical novel about racism in the North before the Civil War.

1859 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. 1859 Martin 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.

1860 After the election of Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina secedes from the Union in December. It is followed in January 1861 by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, and in February by Texas. As battle lines are drawn, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee also choose to secede.

1861 The American Civil War begins in Charleston, South Carolina, as the Confederates open fire on Fort Sumter.

Black Civil War Soldier
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1861 Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman, candidly describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women.

c. 1861 Pinckney 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.

1862 - 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.

1862 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.

1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1.

1864 Southern outrage at the North's use of black soldiers flares up in Confederate forces capturing Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and massacring the black troops within; some are burned or buried alive.

1864 President Lincoln refuses to sign the Wade-Davis bill, which requires greater assurances of loyalty to the Union from white citizens and reconstructed governments.

1865 The American Civil War ends on April 26, after the surrender of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and J.E. Johnston.

1865 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. 1866 The states of the former Confederacy pass “black code” laws to replace the social controls removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.

1866 The 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.

Buffalo Soldiers
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1866 With the complicity of local civilian authorities and police, rioting whites kill 35 black citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana, and wound more than 100, leading to increased support for vigorous Reconstruction policies.

1867 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.

1868 The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing equal protection under the law.

1868 The South Carolina General Assembly convenes with 85 black and 70 white representatives; a product of Reconstruction, it is the first state legislature with a black majority.

1868 Elizabeth Keckley, who rose from slavery in St. Louis, Missouri, to become the modiste and confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, publishes her autobiography, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House.

1870 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.

1870 Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi takes the former seat of Jefferson Davis in the U.S. Senate, becoming the only African American in the U.S. Congress and the first elected to the Senate.

1870 Joseph Hayne Rainey is the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. This congressman from South Carolina will enjoy the longest tenure of any African American during Reconstruction.

1870 The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

1872 John R. Lynch, speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, is elected to the U.S. Congress.

1877 Reconstruction ends as the last Federal troops are withdrawn from the South. Southern conservatives regain control of their state governments through fraud, violence, and intimidation.

1879 Author Joel Chandler Harris's story Tar-Baby, an animal tale told by the character Uncle Remus, popularizes the sticky tar doll figure of black American folktales. It draws on the African trickster tale.

1881 Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama is founded on July 4 with Booker T. Washington as the school's first president.

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1881 Tennessee becomes the first state to enact Jim Crow legislation, which requires blacks and whites to ride in separate railroad cars.

1883 Inventor Jan Ernst Matzeliger patents his shoe-lasting machine that shapes the upper portions of shoes. His invention wins swift acceptance and soon supplants hand methods of production.

1887 Florida A&M University is founded as the State Normal (teacher-training) School for Colored Students.

1887 Journalist T. Thomas Fortune begins editing the New York Age. His well-known editorials defend the civil rights of African Americans and condemn racial discrimination.

1892 The offices of the Memphis Free Speech are destroyed following editorials of part-owner Ida B. Wells denouncing the lynching of three of her friends.

c. 1895 Cornetist Buddy Bolden, legendary founding father of jazz, leads a band in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1895 A merger of three major black Baptist conventions leads to the formation of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., in Atlanta, Georgia.

1895 At the Atlanta Exposition, educator Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise” speech, stressing the importance of vocational education for blacks over social equality or political office.

1896 Believing African Americans to be the descendants of the “lost tribes of Israel,” Prophet William S. Crowdy founds the Church of God and Saints of Christ.

1896 Mary Church Terrell becomes the first president of the National Association of Colored Women, working for educational and social reform and an end to racial discrimination.

1896 In the Plessy v. Ferguson decision the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

1896 Paul Laurence Dunbar, acclaimed as “the poet laureate of the Negro race,” publishes Lyrics of Lowly Life, containing some of the finest verses of his Oak and Ivy and Majors and Minors.

1899 Composer and pianist Scott Joplin publishes The Maple Leaf Rag, one of the most important and popular compositions during the era of ragtime, precursor to jazz.

c. 1900 Originally a slaves' parody of white ballroom dances, the cakewalk becomes a wildly popular dance among fashionable whites as well as white minstrels working in blackface.

1901 Booker T. Washington dines with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. The dinner meeting is bitterly criticized by many whites, who view it as a marked departure from racial etiquette.

Booker T. Washington
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1903 W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk, which declares that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” and discusses the dual identity of black Americans.

1903 In protest to the ideology of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois suggests the concept of the “Talented Tenth”—a college-trained leadership cadre responsible for elevating blacks economically and culturally.

1904 Joe Gans, perhaps the greatest fighter in the history of the lightweight division, loses to welterweight champion Joe Walcott in a 20-round draw.

1905 The Niagara Movement is founded as a group of black intellectuals from across the nation meet near Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, adopting resolutions demanding full equality in American life.

1905 Madame C.J. Walker develops and markets a method for straightening curly hair, on her way to becoming the first black female millionaire in the United States.

1906 President Theodore Roosevelt orders that 167 black infantrymen be given dishonorable discharges because of their conspiracy of silence regarding the shooting death of a white citizen in Brownsville, Texas, an event later known as the Brownsville Affair.

1906 After educator John Hope becomes its president, Atlanta Baptist College expands its curriculum and is renamed Morehouse College.

1907 Black Primitive Baptist congregations formed by emancipated slaves after the Civil War organize the National Primitive Baptist Convention, Inc.

1908 In Springfield, Illinois, the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, a major race riot occurs; the black community is assaulted by several thousand white citizens, and two elderly blacks are lynched.

1909 A group of whites shocked by the Springfield riot of 1908 merge with W.E.B. Du Bois's Niagara Movement, forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1910 The Crisis, a monthly magazine published by the NAACP, is founded. W.E.B. Du Bois edits the magazine for its first 24 years.

c. 1910 Jazz begins to evolve in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1911 The National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes (National Urban League) is formed in New York City with the mission to help migrating African Americans find jobs and housing and adjust to urban life.

1911 Anthropologist Franz Boas publishes The Mind of Primitive Man, a series of lectures on culture and race. His work is used often in the 1920s by those opposed to U.S. immigration restrictions based on presumed racial differences.

1912 The African National Congress is founded as the South African Native National Congress.

1913 Timothy Drew, known as Prophet Noble Drew Ali, founds the Moorish Science Temple of America in Newark, New Jersey. His central teaching is that blacks are of Muslim origin.

1914 The Universal Negro Improvement Association is founded by Marcus Garvey in his homeland of Jamaica to further racial pride and economic self-sufficiency and to establish a black nation in Africa.

1914 George Washington Carver of the Tuskegee Institute reveals his experiments concerning peanuts and sweet potatoes, popularizing alternative crops and aiding the renewal of depleted land in the South.

1915 Historian Carter G. Woodson founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in an attempt to assist the accurate and proper study of African American history.

1915 In Havana Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, loses the title in 26 rounds to Jess Willard, the last in a succession of “Great White Hopes.” Rumors claim he lost to avoid legal difficulties.

1915 A schism in the National Baptist Convention yields the National Baptist Convention of America, the largest black church in the United States.

c. 1916 The period known as the Great Migration begins; between 1916 and 1970 some six million African American Southerners migrate to urban centers in the North and West.

1917 Racial antagonism toward African Americans newly employed in war industries leads to a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinoisthat kills 40 blacks and 8 whites.

1918 James Van Der Zee and his wife open the Guarantee Photo Studio in Harlem. The portraits he shoots later become a treasured chronicle of the Harlem Renaissance.

1919 During the “Red Summer” following World War I, 13 days of racial violence on the South Side of Chicago leave 23 blacks and 15 whites dead, 537 people injured, and 1,000 black families homeless.

1919 A'Lelia Walker inherits the family business and estate upon the death of her mother, Madame C.J. Walker. In the 1920s she entertains the leading writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance.

1920 Marcus Garvey, leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, addresses 25,000 blacks at Madison Square Garden and presides over a parade of 50,000 through the streets of Harlem.

1920 The Negro National League, first of baseball's Negro leagues, is established.

Negro baseball team
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1921 Oscar Charleston, perhaps the best all-around baseball player in the history of the Negro leagues, leads his league in doubles, triples, and home runs, batting .434 for the year.

1921 Shuffle Along, a musical by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, opens on Broadway. It is the first musical written and performed by African Americans.

1922 Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans, arriving in Chicago to play second trumpet in cornetist King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Armstrong's work in the 1920s would revolutionize jazz.

1922 Aviator Bessie Coleman, who later refuses to perform before segregated audiences in the South, stages the first public flight by an African American woman.

1923 Charles Clinton Spaulding becomes president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He builds it into the nation's largest black-owned business by the time of his death in 1952.

1923 Pianist and orchestrator Fletcher Henderson becomes a bandleader. His prestigious band advances the careers of African American musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Roy Eldridge.

1923 Poet and novelist Jean Toomer publishes his masterpiece, Cane, an experimental novel often considered one of the greatest achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.

1923 Blues singer Bessie Smith, discovered by pianist-composer Clarence Williams, makes her first recording. She will eventually become known as “Empress of the Blues.”

1924 Spelman Seminary, which began awarding college degrees in 1901, becomes Spelman College. The school began in 1881 with two Boston women teaching 11 black women in an Atlanta, Georgia, church basement.

1924 At a dinner sponsored by Opportunity magazine, black writers and white publishers mingle; the event is considered the formal beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, or New Negro movement.

1925 The New Negro, an anthology of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays associated with the Harlem Renaissance, is edited by Alain Locke.

1925 Singer and dancer Josephine Baker goes to Paris to dance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in La Revue nègre, becoming one of the most popular entertainers in France.

1925 Countee Cullen, one of the finest poets of the Harlem Renaissance, publishes his first collection of poems, Color, to critical acclaim before graduating from New York University.

1925 In an era when Ku Klux Klan membership exceeds 4,000,000 nationally, a parade of 50,000 unmasked members takes place in Washington, D.C.

1925 A. Philip Randolph, trade unionist and civil-rights leader, founds the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which becomes the first successful black trade union.

1925 At a historic literary awards banquet during the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes earns first place in poetry with The Weary Blues, which is read aloud by James Weldon Johnson.

1926 The literary journal Fire!!, edited by young writer Wallace Thurman, publishes its first and only issue. The short-lived publication remains highly influential among the participants of the Harlem Renaissance.

c. 1926 Pianist, composer, and self-proclaimed inventor of jazz Jelly Roll Morton records several of his masterpieces, including Black Bottom Stomp and Dead Man Blues.

1927 James Weldon Johnson, poet and anthologist of black culture, publishes God's Trombones, a group of black dialect sermons in verse accompanied by the illustrations of Aaron Douglas.

1927 Poet and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké publishes Caroling Dusk, an anthology of her poetry edited by Countee Cullen.

1927 Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, whose works include The Two Disciples at the Tomb, becomes the first African American to be granted full membership in the National Academy of Design.

1927 Singer and actor Ethel Waters makes her first appearance on Broadway in the all-black revue Africana.

1927 The all-black professional basketball team known as the Harlem Globetrotters is established.

1928 Poet and novelist Claude McKay publishes Home to Harlem, the first fictional work by an African American to reach the best-seller lists.

1929 John Hope, noted advocate of advanced liberal arts instruction for blacks, is chosen as president of Atlanta University, the first graduate school for African Americans.

1931 Nine black youths accused of raping two white women on a freight train go on trial for their lives in Scottsboro, Alabama. The Scottsboro case becomes a cause célèbre among Northern liberal and radical groups.

1931 Walter White begins his tenure as executive secretary of the NAACP, his principal objective being the abolition of lynching. In the early decades of the 20th century, there were often more than 60 lynchings nationally each year. By the time of White's death in 1955, lynchings would become a rarity.

1932 In Tuskegee, Alabama, the U.S. Public Health Service begins a study of the course of untreated syphilis in black men, not telling them of their syphilis or their participation in the 40-year study.

1932 Wallace Thurman, young literary rebel of the Harlem Renaissance, publishes his satiric novel Infants of the Spring.

1934 Wallace D. Fard, founder of the Nation of Islam movement, disappears, leading to the rise of Elijah Muhammad.

1936 Track-and-field athlete Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His victories derail Adolf Hitler's intended use of the games as a show of Aryan supremacy.

Jesse Owens
Courytesy: Library of Congress

c. 1936 Delta blues musician Robert Johnson makes his legendary and influential recordings in Texas, including Me and the Devil Blues, Hellhound on My Trail, and Love in Vain.

1937 Writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston publishes her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which receives considerable acclaim and criticism within the black community.

1938 In a knockout in the first round of their rematch, heavyweight champion Joe Louis wreaks vengeance on Max Schmeling of Germany, the only boxer to have knocked out Louis in his prime.

c. 1938 Assisted by saxophonist Lester Young, her romantic companion during these years, jazz vocalist Billie Holiday makes several of her finest recordings.

c. 1939 Count Basie leads his legendary Kansas City band, including saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Buck Clayton, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones.

1939 Singer Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of 75,000 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall.

1939 The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund is organized. Charles Hamilton Houston spearheads the effort to consolidate some of the nation's best legal talents in the fight against legally sanctioned bias.

1940 Author Richard Wright publishes his masterpiece, Native Son. The stark, tragic realism of this novel immediately places Wright in the front ranks of contemporary American writers.

1940 Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr., who in 1930 had become the first black colonel in the U.S. Army, becomes the first black general in 1940.

c. 1940 Painter Jacob Lawrence begins work on his 60-panel Migration series, which depicts the journey of African Americans from the South to the urban North.

c. 1940 Duke Ellington leads his greatest band, including bassist Jimmy Blanton, saxophonist Ben Webster, trumpeter Cootie Williams, and composer-arranger Billy Strayhorn.

1941 Following considerable protest, the War Department forms the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Corps, later known as the Tuskegee Airmen, commanded by Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr.

1942 Charles Richard Drew, developer and director of blood plasma programs during World War II, resigns as the armed forces begin to accept the blood of blacks but resolve to racially segregate the supply.

1942 The interracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded in Chicago as the Committee of Racial Equality. Its direct-action tactics achieve national prominence during the Freedom Rides of 1961.

c. 1942 Bebop is born out of the musical experiments of jazz musicians in Harlem, including saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Thelonious Monk.

Dizzy Gillespie
Courtesy: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

1943 Dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson appears with singer Lena Horne in the wartime all-black musical film Stormy Weather.

1945 Ebony magazine is founded by John H. Johnson of Chicago. Modeled after Life but intended for the black middle class, the magazine is an instant success.

1945 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from Harlem, serving 11 successive terms.

c. 1946 Saxophonist Charlie Parker, though plagued by drug abuse, produces many of the finest recordings of his career, including Now's the Time, Koko, Yardbird Suite, and Ornithology.

1947 Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American baseball player in the major leagues.

1947 Historian John Hope Franklin gains international attention with the publication of From Slavery to Freedom, an enduring survey of African American history.

1948 Satchel Paige, legendary baseball pitcher of the Negro leagues, finally enters the majors after the “gentlemen's agreement” prohibiting the signing of black players is relaxed.

1949 Not satisfied with Billboard magazine's label of “race records” for its black music chart, Jerry Wexler, a white reporter at the magazine and later a legendary record producer, introduces the designation “rhythm and blues.”

1950 Ralph Bunche is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as United Nations mediator in the Arab-Israeli dispute in Palestine.

1950 Gwendolyn Brooks is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Annie Allen (1949), becoming the first African American writer to win the award.

1950 After refusing to disavow his membership in the Communist Party, Paul Robeson—singer, actor, and activist—has his passport withdrawn by the U.S. State Department.

Paul Robeson
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1952 Ralph Ellison publishes his masterpiece, Invisible Man, which receives the National Book Award in 1953.

1954 On May 17 the U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

1954 In the World Series against the Cleveland Indians, New York Giants outfielder Willie Mays makes “the catch.” The extraordinary over-the-shoulder catch remains one of the most talked-about plays in baseball history.

1955 Lynchings continue in the South with the brutal slaying of a 14-year-old Chicago youth, Emmett Till, in Money, Mississippi. Jet magazine publishes a picture of the mutilated corpse.

1955 Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP, refuses to surrender her seat when ordered to do so by a local bus driver, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56.

Rosa Parks
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1955 Opera diva Leontyne Price is triumphant in the title role of the National Broadcasting Company's Tosca, making her the first African American to sing opera for television.

1955 Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Chuck Berry travels from St. Louis, Missouri, to Chicago, where he records Maybellene, an immediate sensation among teenagers. The hit helps shape the evolution of rock and roll.

1956 Clifford Brown, the most influential trumpeter of his generation, dies at age 25 in a car accident. Noted for his lyricism and grace of technique, Brown is a principal figure in the hard-bop idiom.

1956 Arthur Mitchell, future director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, becomes the only black dancer in the New York City Ballet. George Balanchine creates several roles especially for him.

1956 Tennis player Althea Gibson becomes the first African American to win a major title—the Wimbledon doubles—as well as the French singles and doubles and Italian singles.

1957 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans.

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, after unsuccessfully trying to persuade Governor Orval Faubus to give up efforts to block desegregation at Central High School.

The Little Rock Nine
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1957 Fullback Jim Brown begins his professional football career with the Cleveland Browns. He leads the National Football League in rushing for eight of his nine seasons.

1958 Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many to be the greatest fighter in history, wins back the middleweight title for the last time by defeating Carmen Basilio in a savage fight.

1958 Alvin Ailey founds the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Composed primarily of African Americans, the dance company tours extensively both in the United States and abroad.

1958 Mahalia Jackson, known as the “Queen of Gospel Song,” joins Duke Ellington in his gospel interlude Black, Brown, and Beige at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

1959 Trumpeter Miles Davis records Kind of Blue, often considered his masterwork, with composer-arranger-pianist Bill Evans and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane.

1959 Singer Ray Charles records What'd I Say, which becomes his first million-seller and exemplifies the emergence of soul music, combining rhythm and blues with gospel.

1959 Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, becomes the first drama by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. The 1961 film version features Sidney Poitier and receives a special award at Cannes.

1959 Motown Record Corporation is founded in Detroit, Michigan, by Berry Gordy, Jr. The “Motown sound” dominates black popular music through the 1960s and attracts a huge white crossover audience as well, becoming the “Sound of Young America.”

1959 Baseball player Ernie Banks, regarded as one of the finest power hitters in the history of the game, is named the National League's Most Valuable Player for a second consecutive season.

1959 Pioneer free jazz musician Ornette Coleman and his quartet play for the first time at New York's Five Spot Café. The historic performance receives a highly polarized reaction from the audience.

1960 Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, a white brother and sister, found Stax Records of Memphis, Tennessee, which comes to define the Southern soul music sound identified with artists such as Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the MG's, and Otis Redding.

1960 The sit-in movement is launched at Greensboro, North Carolina, when black college students insist on service at a local segregated lunch counter.

1960 Inspired by the sit-in movement, jazz drummer Max Roach composes and records the historic Freedom Now Suite with lyricist Oscar Brown, Jr., and Roach's wife, vocalist Abbey Lincoln.

1961 Testing desegregation practices in the South, the Freedom Rides, sponsored by CORE, encounter overwhelming violence, particularly in Alabama, leading to federal intervention.

1961 Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League. He builds a reputation for his behind-the-scenes work to bridge the gap between white political and business leaders and poor blacks.

1962 Basketball player Wilt Chamberlain becomes the first player to score more than 4,000 points in regular-season National Basketball Association games.

1962 Sierra Leone, Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda gain independence.

1962 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the University of Mississippi must admit its first African American student, James Meredith.

1962 The New Yorker magazine publishes a long article by author James Baldwin on aspects of the civil-rights struggle. The article becomes a best-seller in book form as The Fire Next Time.

1962 South African Nelson Mandela is jailed and sentenced to five years in prison. Two years later he is sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy.

1963 In Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor uses water hoses and dogs against civil rights protesters, many of whom are children, increasing pressure on President John F. Kennedy to act.

1963 Medgar Evers, Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, is shot and killed in an ambush in front of his home, following a historic broadcast on the subject of civil rights by President John F. Kennedy.

1963 The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to eight clergymen who attacked his role in Birmingham. Widely reprinted, it soon becomes a classic of protest literature.

1963 Sidney Poitier wins the Academy Award as best actor for his performance in Lilies of the Field. In 1967 he would star in two films concerning race relations, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night.

1963 The Organization of African Unity (later African Union) is formed.

1963 The civil rights movement reaches a dramatic climax with a massive march on Washington, D.C., organized chiefly by Bayard Rustin. Among the themes of the march “for jobs and freedom” is a demand for passage of the Civil Rights Act. In Washington an interracial audience of more than 200,000 hears Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

c. 1963 Free jazz, an approach to jazz improvisation that emerged during the late 1950s, gains momentum and influence among a wide variety of jazz artists led by Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, and others.

1964 Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam, announcing the formation of his own religious organization. He makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, modifying his views on black separatism upon his return.

1964 LeRoi Jones's play Dutchman appears off-Broadway and wins critical acclaim. The play exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture.

1964 The bodies of three murdered civil rights workers—two white, one black—are found in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

1964 President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law, giving federal law enforcement agencies the power to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.

1964 The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway.

1964 Bob Gibson, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, begins an unprecedented streak of seven straight World Series wins by taking Game Five and, on two days' rest, Game Seven.

1964 Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane records his masterpiece, A Love Supreme.

1964 The Twenty-fourth Amendment ends the poll tax in federal elections.

1965 The Voting Rights Act is passed following the Selma-to-Montgomery March, which garnered the nation's attention when marchers were beaten mercilessly by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

1965 The Watts area of Los Angeles explodes into violence following the arrest of a young male motorist charged with reckless driving. At the riot's end, 34 are dead, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested.

1966 The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, with the original purpose of protecting residents from acts of police brutality.

1966 Charting a new course for the civil rights movement, Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, uses the phrase “black power” at a rally during the James Meredith March in Mississippi.

1966 Bill Russell, one of the greatest defensive centres in the history of basketball, becomes the first black coach of a major professional sports team (the Boston Celtics) in the United States.

1966 Edward Brooke of Massachusetts becomes the first African American to be popularly elected to the U.S. Senate.

1966 The African American holiday of Kwanzaa, patterned after various African harvest festivals, is created by Maulana Karenga, a black-studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.

1967 After being denied his seat in the Georgia state legislature (although duly elected) for opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, civil rights activist Julian Bond is finally sworn in on January 9.

1967 Singer Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” releases a series of hits including I Never Loved a Man, Baby, I Love You, and Respect, the last of which becomes something of an anthem for the civil rights movement.

1967 Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali refuses to submit to induction into the armed forces. Convicted of violating the Selective Service Act, Ali is barred from the ring and stripped of his title.

1967 Blues and rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix makes his spectacular debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival, following the successful release of his first album, Are You Experienced?

1967 Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, is convicted on a charge of manslaughter in the death of an Oakland policeman, leading to the rapid expansion of the party nationwide.

1967 Thurgood Marshall, who as a lawyer argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, becomes the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Hon. Thurgood Marshall
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1967 Carl Stokes (Cleveland, Ohio) and Richard Hatcher (Gary, Indiana) are elected the first African American mayors of major U.S. cities.
1968 Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party's minister of information, publishes the autobiographical Soul on Ice.

1968 On April 4 the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Over the next week riots break out in some 125 cities around the country. Ralph Abernathy succeeds him as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, carrying out the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign.

1968 Bob Beamon sets the world record in the long jump at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, surpassing the previous mark by 21 inches.

1968 After winning the gold medal, sprinter Tommie Smith and teammate John Carlos give a black-power salute during the awards ceremony, leading to their suspension by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

1968 Actor James Earl Jones wins acclaim and a Tony Award for his portrayal of legendary boxer Jack Johnson in Howard Sackler's play The Great White Hope and later stars in the film version (1970).

1968 Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) and Larry Neal publish Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing in the spirit of the black aesthetic movement, which seeks to create a populist art form to promote black nationalism.

1968 Shirley Chisholm becomes the first black American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, defeating civil-rights leader James Farmer.

1968 Swaziland and Equatorial Guinea gain independence.

1969 Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale is ordered bound and gagged by the judge after Seale protests that he was being denied his constitutional right to counsel during his trial for conspiracy to incite rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the previous year.

1970 Baseball player Curt Flood, with the backing of the Major League Baseball Players Association, unsuccessfully challenges the reserve clause but begins its eventual demise.

1971 Author Ernest J. Gaines publishes The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a fictional remembrance by an elderly black woman of the years between Reconstruction and the civil rights movement.

1971 Angela Davis is arraigned on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy for her alleged participation in a violent attempted escape from the Hall of Justice in Marin county, California, in 1970.

1971 In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of court-ordered plans to achieve desegregation of schools, affirming the busing of schoolchildren in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1972 Writer Ishmael Reed publishes Mumbo Jumbo. Its irreverent tone successfully revives the tradition of the black satiric novel.

1972 Shirley Chisholm, a member of the House of Representatives from New York, is the first African American woman to make a serious bid for the U.S. presidency.

Shirley Chisholm
Courtesy: Library of Congress

1973 Gladys Knight and the Pips produce the million-selling album Imagination, winning two Grammy Awards.

1974 Baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, which had stood since 1935.

1974 Actress Cicely Tyson is lauded for her role as the 110-year-old title character of the television drama The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which was adapted from the Ernest J. Gaines novel.

1974 In the storied “Rumble in the Jungle,” boxer George Foreman, previously undefeated in professional bouts, falls to Muhammad Ali in eight rounds at Kinshasa, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo).

1974 Guinea-Bissau gains independence.

1975 Playwright Ntozake Shange receives considerable acclaim for her theatre piece For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

1975 Tennis player Arthur Ashe wins the singles title at Wimbledon, becoming the first African American man to win the prestigious championship.

1975 Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, dies. After his son renames the organization and integrates it into orthodox Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan reclaims and rebuilds the Nation of Islam.

1975 Frank Robinson becomes the first African American manager of a Major League Baseball team, the Cleveland Indians.

1975 Mozambique, Cape Verde, Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Angola gain independence.

1976 Barbara Jordan, congressional representative from Texas, delivers the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, confirming her reputation as one of the most eloquent public speakers of her era.

1976 Congressman Andrew Young of Georgia becomes the first African American U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

1977 Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) is adapted for television, becoming one of the most popular shows in the history of American television.

1977 Benjamin L. Hooks becomes the executive director of the NAACP, succeeding Roy Wilkins. Stressing the need for affirmative action and increased minority voter registration, Hooks serves until 1993.

1977 Djibouti gains independence.

1978 In the Bakke decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against fixed racial quotas but upholds the use of race as a factor in making decisions on admissions for professional schools.

1978 Sociologist William Julius Wilson publishes The Declining Significance of Race, which maintains that class divisions and global economic changes, more than racism, created a large black underclass.

1979 Lou Brock steals his 935th base, becoming Major League Baseball's all-time career stolen-base leader.

1979 United Steelworkers of America v. Weber permits an affirmative action program to privilege African Americans if the program is intended to remedy past discrimination.

1979 Singer and actress Cleo Laine is made an officer of the O.B.E.

1980 Robert Mugabe becomes prime minister of the newly independent state of Zimbabwe.

1981 Civil-rights leader Andrew Young is elected mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, an office he holds through 1989.

1982 Playwright Charles Fuller wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama for A Soldier's Play, which examines conflict among black soldiers on a Southern army base during World War II.

1982 Singer Michael Jackson creates a sensation with the album Thriller, which becomes one of the most popular albums of all time, selling more than 40 million copies.

1983 Writer Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple.

1983 Harold Washington wins the Democratic nomination by upsetting incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley and is elected the first African American mayor of Chicago.

1983 Civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson announces his intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first African American man to make a serious bid for the presidency.

1983 Guion Bluford, Jr., becomes the first African American in space as a member of the crew of the space shuttle Challenger.

1984 The Cosby Show, starring comedian Bill Cosby, becomes one of the most popular situation comedies in television history and is praised for its broad cross-cultural appeal and avoidance of racial stereotypes.

1985 The Israeli government publicly confirms rumours that some 10,000 Ethiopian Jews (Falasha) have been secretly resettled in Israel beginning in 1977.

1986 Playwright August Wilson receives the Pulitzer Prize for Fences, winning it again for The Piano Lesson in 1990. Both are from his cycle of plays chronicling the black American experience.

1986 Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is first celebrated as a U.S. national holiday.

1987 Basketball forward Julius Erving, noted for his balletic leaps toward the basket and climactic slam dunks, retires after becoming the third professional player to score a career total of 30,000 points.

1988 Runner Florence Griffith Joyner captures three gold medals and a silver in the Seoul Olympics.

1989 Modern dancer Judith Jamison becomes the artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, following Ailey's death.

1989 David Dinkins becomes the first African American to be elected mayor of New York City.

1990 John Edgar Wideman becomes the first author to twice receive the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for his novels Sent for You Yesterday (1983) and Philadelphia Fire (1990).

1990 Author Walter Mosley publishes his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, which introduces the enduring character of “Easy” Rawlins, an unwilling amateur detective from the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1948.

1990 Jazz drummer Art Blakey dies. Since founding the Jazz Messengers in 1954, he is responsible for nurturing generations of young jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Jackie McLean, and Lee Morgan.

1991 The Senate votes 52–48 to confirm the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court following charges of sexual harassment by former aide Anita Hill during confirmation hearings.

1991 With much fanfare, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is appointed W.E.B. Du Bois professor of humanities at Harvard University, where he proceeds to build the university's Department of Afro-American Studies.

1991 Most of the social legislation that provided the legal basis for apartheid is repealed, though segregation remains deeply entrenched in South African society.

1992 Riots break out in Los Angeles, sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers caught on videotape beating Rodney King, a black motorist. The riots cause at least 55 deaths and $1 billion in damage.

1992 West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott receives the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1992 Author Terry McMillan publishes Waiting to Exhale, which follows four middle-class women, each of whom is looking for the love of a worthy man. The book's wild popularity leads to a film adaptation.

1992 Mae Jemison becomes the first African American woman astronaut, spending more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour.

Mae Jemison
Coutesy: NASA

1992 Carol Moseley Braun becomes the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, representing the state of Illinois.

1993 Poet Maya Angelou, author of the autobiographical work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), composes and delivers a poem for the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

1993 Cornel West, progressive postmodern philosopher, finds a mainstream audience with the publication of his text Race Matters, which closely examines the black community around the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

1993 Poet Rita Dove, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, is chosen as poet laureate of the United States.

1993 Writer Toni Morrison, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Beloved, receives the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1993 Joycelyn Elders becomes the first African American woman to serve as the U.S. surgeon general.

1994 With his defeat of Michael Moore, 26, in Las Vegas, Nevada, George Foreman at 45 becomes the world's oldest heavyweight boxing champion.

1995 In one of the most celebrated criminal trials in American history, former football running back O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

1995 Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, rises to the height of his influence as the most prominent organizer of the “Million Man March” of African American men in Washington, D.C.

1996 At the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, sprinter Michael Johnson becomes the first man to win gold medals in the 200 metres and the 400 metres, setting a 200-metre world record of 19.32 seconds.

1996 The subject of Ebonics (or Black English Vernacular) is debated throughout the United States.

1997 Tiger Woods becomes the first African American golfer to win the Masters Tournament.

1997 Many African American women join the Million Woman March in Philadelphia.

1998 Michael Jordan, often considered the greatest all-around player in the history of basketball, leads the Chicago Bulls to their sixth championship.

1998 The “Little Rock Nine”—nine black students who were prevented from attending a formerly all-white public school and whose case became a test of power between federal and state governments—are awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

1999 Rosa Parks is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

1999 The mistaken shooting and killing of an African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, by New York City policemen causes a national outcry.

2000 Tennis player Venus Williams becomes the first African American woman since Althea Gibson (1958) to win the singles championship at Wimbledon.

2000 In response to widespread protest and a boycott by the NAACP, the South Carolina Senate passes a bill to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse.

2000 Venus Williams becomes the first African American woman to win a gold medal in singles and doubles tennis at the same Olympic Games.

2001 General Colin Powell becomes the first African American to serve as U.S. secretary of state. He was also the first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–93).

General Colin Powell
Courtesy: Library of Congress

2001 Condoleezza Rice is named national security adviser, becoming the first woman and second African American to hold this position. Concurrently, Roderick Paige is named secretary of education and is the first African American to hold this position.

2001 Bishop Wilton Gregory becomes the first African American to be elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

2002 Athlete Vonetta Flowers wins a gold medal in the women's bobsled event, becoming the first African American to win at the Winter Olympics.

2002 Suzan-Lori Parks, with her play Topdog/Underdog, becomes the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

2002 Halle Berry becomes the first African American woman to win the Academy Award for best actress.

2003 The U.S. Supreme Court issues a ruling on affirmative action in education, which upholds the use of race in collegiate admissions policies.

2003 1st Lt. Vernice Armour becomes the first African American female combat pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. military history.

2004 Barack Obama becomes the third African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate after Reconstruction.

2004 Outfielder Barry Bonds hits his 700th home run.

2005 Condoleezza Rice succeeds Colin Powell as U.S. secretary of state, becoming the first African American woman to hold the post.

2006 Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is inaugurated as Liberia's first woman