Black History Timeline

Black History Timeline - 600s

Ghana, locator map (image courtesy of Britannica)

600 - 609

About 600: Ghana, the first of the great medieval western African trading empires, is established. Its people act as intermediaries between the Arab and Berber salt traders to the north and the producers of gold and ivory to the south.

610 - 619

620 - 629

630 - 639

632 - 661: Africans were supplied for slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate.

640 - 649

650 - 649

652: The Rashidun Caliphate in Egypt enforced an annual tribute of 400 slave from the Christian Kingdom of Makuria by the Baqt Treaty, which was to be in effect for centuries.

660 - 669

661 750: Africans were supplied for slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate.

670 - 679

680 - 689

690 - 699

Black History Timeline - 1400s

Transatlantic Slave ship diagram (Image courtesy of Britannica)

1400 - 1409

1410 - 1419

1420 - 1429

1430 - 1439

Mid-14th Century: A loose alliance of seven African states is formed. Known as the Hausa states, they flourish until the 19th century, when they are conquered by the Fulani.

1440 - 1449

1441 - 1444: The first enslaved Africans are transported to Portugal. Portuguese traders first captured Africans on the Atlantic coast of Africa (in what is today Mauritania), taking their captives to slavery in Europe, and established a fort for the slave trade at the Bay of Arguin.

1450 - 1459

1452: Pope Nicholas V issued papal bull Dum Diversas which gave the King of Portugal the right to enslave non-Christians to perpetual slavery.
1454: Pope Nicholas issued Romanus Pontifex. "Written as a logical sequel to Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex allowed the European Catholic nations to expand their dominion over 'discovered' land.

1460 - 1469

1460 - 1500: The removal of Africans increased as Portugal and Spain built forts along the coat of West Africa.
1464: Sonni ʿAli ascends the throne of the Songhai kingdom. By his death in 1492, the Songhai control a vast trading empire that lasts until the end of the 16th century.

1470 - 1479

1479: The Treaty of Alcacuvas provided traders the right to supply Spaniards with Africans.

1480 - 1489

1490 - 1499

1493: Pope Alexander VI issued the Doctrine of Discovery, which was used as a justification by Spain to take lands from non-Christians West of the Azores. The Doctrine of Discovery stated that non-Christian lands should be taken and ruled by Christian nations, and Indigenous people (Africans and Native Americas) living on their lands should convert to Christianity.
1493: Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull called Inter Caetera which gave Spain and Portugal rights to claim and colonize all non-Christian lands in the Americas and enslave Native Americans and Africans.
1494: The Portuguese king had entered agreements with the rulers of several West African states that would allow trade between their respective peoples, enabling the Portuguese to "tap into" the "well-developed commercial economy in Africa . . . without engaging in hostilities."

Black History Timeline - 1500s

Native American enslavement (Image courtesy of ThoughtCo)

1500 - 1509

1500: By 1500, Portugal and Spain had taken about 50,000 West Africans. The Africans worked as domestic servants, artisans, and farmers. Other Africans were taken to work the sugar plantations on the Azores, Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde islands. Europeans participated in African enslavement because of their need for labor, profit, and religious motives.

1510 - 1519

1517: Black plantation slavery begins in the New World when Spaniards begin importing enslaved people from Africa to replace Native Americans. The Native Americans died from harsh working conditions and exposure to Old World diseases to which they had no immunity.

1520 - 1529

1525: The Kongolese King Afonso I seized a French vessel and its crew for illegally trading on his coast. In addition, Afonso complained to the king of Portugal that Portuguese slave traders continued to kidnap his people, which was causing depopulation in his kingdom.

1530 - 1539

1530: An English merchant from Plymouth, William Hawkins, visited the Guinea Coast and left with a few slaves.
1535: Portuguese traders attempted to conquer the Bissagos Islands.

1540 - 1549

1550 - 1559

1560 - 1569

1560: The Portuguese began a regular slave trade to Brazil.
1562: William Hawkin's son, John Hawkins, captured Africans in what is now Sierra Leone and took 300 people to sell in the Caribbean.
1564: John Hawkins sailed to the Guinea Coast and his voyage was supported by Queen Elizabeth I. John later turned to piracy and stole 300 Africans from a Spanish slave ship after failures in Guinea trying to capture Africans as most of his men died afters with the local Africans.
1565: The Spanish take enslaved people to St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement in what would later be the state of Florida.

1570 - 1579

1571: Portugal, supported by the Kingdom of Kongo, took control of the south-western region of Angola in order to secure its threatened economic interest in the area.

1580 - 1589

1580 - 1640: Portugal was temporarily united with Spain in the Iberian Union. Most Portuguese contractors who obtained the asiento between 1580 and 1640 were conversos. For Portuguese merchants, many of whom were "New Christians" or their descendants, the union of crowns presented commercial opportunities in the slave trade to Spanish America.

1590 - 1599

1591: Although Kongo later joined a coalition to force the Portuguese out, Portugal had secured a foothold on the continent that it continued to occupy until the 20th century.

Black History Timeline - 1600s

First enslaved Africans arrive in Jamestown, Virginia (Image courtesy of History.com)

1600 - 1609

1610 - 1619

1619: A Dutch ship with 20 enslaved Africans aboard arrives at the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

1620 - 1629

1620 - 1860: MUSIC IN SLAVERY
1620s: Queen Nzinga (Nzinga Mbande) fought against the expansion of the Portuguese slave trade into Mbundu people's lands in Central Africa. The Portuguese encroached onto Mbundu lands to expand their mission of trading slaves and establishing a settlement. Nzinga allowed sanctuary to runaway slaves in her nation and organized a military called kilombo against the Portuguese. Nzinga formed alliances with other rival African nations and led an army against the Portuguese slave traders in a thirty-year war.

1640 - 1649

1630 - 1639

1650 - 1659

1650: The Yoruba Oyo Empire begins growing powerful in what would later be southwestern Nigeria. The empire reaches its height in the first part of the 18th century.

1660 - 1669

1670 - 1679

1672: The Royal Africa Company was founded.
1674: The New West India Company became deeper involved in slave trade.

1680 - 1689

1682: Spain allowed governors from Havana, Porto Bello, Panama, and Cartagena, Colombia to procure slaves from Jamaica.

1690 - 1699

1692: The English were shipping the most slaves from West Africa.
1698 - 1807: There were were 353 acts of insurrection aboard slave ships.

Black History Timeline - 1700s

1700 - 1709

1700: The Ashanti begin to supply enslaved Africans to British and Dutch traders on the southwestern coast of Africa (later southern Ghana). In exchange, they receive firearms, which they use to support their territorial expansion.
1700: FIELD HOLLERS MUSIC

1710 - 1719

1718 - 1740: Dahomey King Agaja opposed the Atlantic slave trade and refused to sell African people and attacked the European forts built along the slave coast in West Africa. Donna Beatriz Kimpa Vita in Kongo and Sengalese leader Abd al-Qadir, advocated resistance against the forced exportation of Africans.

1720 - 1729

1729: Aboard the slave ship Clare, the enslaved Africans revolted and drove the crew from the vessel and took control of the ship and liberated themselves and landed near Cape Coast Castle in present-day Ghana.

1730 - 1739

1730: The slave ship Little George departed from the Guinea Coast in route to Rhode Island with a cargo of ninety-six enslaved Africans. A few of the slaved slipped out of their iron chains and killed three of the watchmen on deck and imprisoned the captain and the rest of the crew. The captain and crew made a deal with the Africans and pomised them their freedom. The Africans took control of the ship and sailed back to Africa's shore. The captain and his crew tried to re-enslave the Africans but were unsuccessful.
1739: The Stono Rebellion, one of the earliest slave revolts, occurs in Charleston in the Black-majority colony of South Carolina. The rebellion leads to the deaths of at least 20 whites and more than 40 Blacks.

1740 - 1749

1746: Poet and storyteller Lucy Terry, a enslaved teenager, composes the poem “Bars Fight,” the earliest existing poem by an African American. Passed along orally for more than 100 years, it first appears in print in 1855.

1750 - 1759

1750: Europeans who desired safe and uninterrupted trad aimed to prevent kidnapping incidents, and the British passed the "Acts of Parliament for Regulating the Slave Trade" in 1750 which outlawed the abduction of free Africans by "fraud, force, or violence".

1760 - 1769

1760: Jupiter Hammon, an enslaved man from Connecticut, writes an autobiography often considered to be the first slave narrative.

1770 - 1779

1770s: Leader Abdul Kader Khan opposed the Atlantic slave trade through Futa Toro, present-day Senegal. Abdul Kader Khan and Futa Toro nation resisted French slave traders and colonizers who wanted to enslave Africans and Muslims from Futa Toro.
1770: Crispus Attucks, who had formerly been enslaved, is killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. He is one of the first people to die in the cause of American independence.
1772: Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable, a Black pioneer trader, 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.
1773: Phillis Wheatley, the first notable Black woman poet in the United States, publishes in England her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Wheatley is acclaimed in Europe and America following publication of the work, which is the first book of African American literature.
1775 - 1783: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR
1776: DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
1776 - 1795: AMERICAN INDIAN WARS
1777: Vermont, not yet part of the United States, becomes the first colony to abolish slavery in its constitution.
1778: Thomas Kitchin estimated that Europeans were bringing an estimated 52,000 slaves to the Caribbean yearly, with the French bringing the most Africans to the French West Indies (13,000 out of the yearly estimate). The Atlantic slvae trade peaked in the last two decades of the 18th century, during and following the Kongo Civil War. Another reason for surplus supply of enslaved people was major warfare conducted by expanding states, such as the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Oyo Empire, and the Ashanti Empire.

1780 - 1789

1781: James Armistead (later James Lafayette), an enslaved man, spies on British forces in Virginia for the marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolution.
1785 - 1793: Northwest Indian Wars
1785 - 1795: American-Algerian War
1789: Olaudah Equiano publishes his two-volume autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. This pioneering slave narrative becomes highly popular.

1790 - 1799

1790 - 1990s: FOLK SPIRITUAL MUSIC
1790: Benjamin Banneker, mathematician and compiler of almanacs, is appointed by President George Washington to the District of Columbia Commission. For the commission, Banneker works on the survey of Washington, D.C.
1793: Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime to harbor a person who escaped slavery or to interfere with his or her arrest.
1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, a machine that makes it easier to process cotton. It is credited with establishing cotton as the most important crop in the American South. To supply the growing demands of cotton-mill owners, more enslaved Black people are imported to work the cotton fields. The cotton gin thereby helps to institutionalize slavery.
1799: Richard Allen becomes the first ordained Black minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Black History Timeline - 1800s

1800 - 1809

1800: An enslaved man named Gabriel plans the first major slave rebellion in U.S. history. He gathers about 1,000 armed enslaved people near Richmond, Virginia. Following the failed revolt, more than 25 enslaved people, including Gabriel, are hanged.
1801: First Barbary War
1807: Following the British Slave Trade Act 1807 and U.S. bans on the African slave trade that same year, it declined, but the period thereafter still accounted for 28.5% of the total volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

1810 - 1819

1810 - 1860: Over 3.5 Million Africans were transported into slavery.
1810 - 1813: Tecumseh's War
1812 - 1815: War of 1812
1813 - 1814: Creek War
1815: Second Barbary War
1816: The African Methodist Episcopal Church is formally organized. Richard Allen becomes its first bishop.
1817 - 1818: First Seminole War
1817: The American Colonization Society is established to transport freeborn Blacks and Blacks freed from slavery to Africa. The society later founds a colony in Africa that becomes the Republic of Liberia in 1847.

1820 - 1829

1820s: Approximately 850,000 Africans are transported into slavery.
1820: The Missouri Compromise provides for Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a slave state. Slavery will not be allowed in Maine and in the western territories north of Missouri’s southern border.
1822: Denmark Vesey, who was freed from slavery, plans the largest slave revolt in U.S. history, in Charleston, South Carolina. The rebellion is betrayed before the plan can be carried out. Vesey and 34 others are hanged.
1823: Arikara War
1825: Seneca Village was founded by free Black Americans, the first such community in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, NY.
1827: Winnebago War
1829: African American abolitionist David Walker publishes the pamphlet 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.
1829: Town of Brooklyn, Illinois is settled by Black Americans.

1830 - 1839

1831: William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, begins publishing the antislavery newspaper The Liberator. It calls for enslaved African Americans to be freed.
1831: Nat Turner, a enslaved man in Virginia, leads the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history. He is joined by as many as 75 fellow enslaved people, who kill about 60 white people. Some six weeks after the defeat of the rebellion, Turner is hanged.
1832: Black Hawk War
1835 - 1842: Second Seminole War
1836 - 1875: Texas Comanche Wars
1838: The American Anti-Slavery Society, the main activist arm of the abolitionist movement, is founded under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison.
1839: Enslaved Africans revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad near the coast of Cuba. The rebels are arrested in waters near New York. Former U.S. president John Quincy Adams successfully defends them before the Supreme Court.

1840 - 1849

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: Henry Highland Garnet, African American abolitionist and clergyman, makes a controversial speech at the national convention of free Blacks. He shocks his listeners by calling upon enslaved people to murder their masters.
1846 - 1848: Mexican-American War
1847 - 1855: Cayuse War
1847: Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the son of free Blacks in Virginia, is elected the first president of Liberia.
1847: Frederick Douglass, who was formerly enslaved, begins publishing The North Star, an antislavery newspaper.
1848: The Free-Soil Party, a minor but influential political party, nominates former U.S. president Martin Van Buren to head its ticket. The party is opposed to the extension of slavery into the western territories.
1849 - 1924: Apache Wars
1849 - 1866: Navajo Wars

1850 - 1859

1850: Speaking on behalf of the abolitionist movement, Sojourner Truth, a Black evangelist and reformer, travels throughout the American Midwest. She draws large crowds.
1850: Harriet Tubman returns to Maryland to guide members of her family to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Later helping many more enslaved people to escape, she comes to be known as the “Moses of her people.”
1850: In an effort to maintain an even balance between free and slave states, the U.S. Congress passes a series of compromise measures. They include a new, stricter Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which contributes to the spread of the abolitionist movement
1853: American Episcopalian minister Alexander Crummell becomes a missionary and teacher in Liberia. He advocates a program of religious conversion and economic and social development.
1853: William Wells Brown publishes Clotel, the first novel by an African American. Brown, who was formerly enslaved, is an abolitionist, a historian, and a physician as well as an author.
1853: Brazil becomes the last Atlantic import nation to outlaw the slave trade.
1854 - 1861: Bleeding Kansas
1854: Author Frances E.W. Harper’s most popular verse collection, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, is published. It contains the antislavery poem “Bury Me in a Free Land.”
1855 - 1856: Puget Sound War
1855 - 1856: Rogue River Wars
1855 - 1858: Third Seminole War
1855 - 1858: Yakima War
1856 - 1859: Second Opium War
1856: In the ongoing contest between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas, a mob sacks the town of Lawrence, a “hotbed of abolitionism.” In retaliation, white abolitionist John Brown leads a deadly raid on a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek
1857 - 1858: Utah War
1857: In its Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, the U.S. Supreme Court legalizes slavery in all the territories. The decision increases tensions between the North and the South and pushes the country toward civil war.
1858 - 1866: Reform War
1859: Pig War
1859: JOHN BROWN'S RAID ON HARPER'S FERRY
1859 - 1861: First and Second Cortina War
1859: Harriet E. Wilson writes a largely autobiographical novel about racism in the North before the American Civil War.
1859: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Ableman v. Booth, upholds the Fugitive Slave Act of 1950. It overrules an act by a Wisconsin state court that declared the act unconstitutional.
1859: Martin R. Delany, physician and advocate of Black nationalism, leads a party to West Africa. He investigates the Niger Delta as a site for settlement of African Americans.

1860 - 1869

1860: Paiute War
1860: After Abraham Lincoln wins the U.S. presidential election, 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.
1861-1865: THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
1861 - 1875: Avapai Wars
1861: The American Civil War begins near Charleston, South Carolina, as the Confederates open fire on Fort Sumter.
1861: Harriet Jacobs publishes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman.
1861: Pinckney B.S. Pinchback, a freeborn Black man, runs the Confederate blockade on the Mississippi River to reach New Orleans. There he recruits a company of Black volunteers for the Union, the Corps d’Afrique.
1862: Dakota War of 1862
1862: Future U.S. congressman Robert Smalls and 12 other enslaved Black men seize control of a Confederate armed frigate in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. They turn the ship over to a Union naval squadron blockading the city.
1862: The Homestead Act is passed to encourage western migration, providing an opportunity for Black Americans to own land on the frontier. Many Black people living in the South would move to the West to take advantage of the act after the American Civil War ended in 1865.
1862: The second Confiscation Act is passed, stating that enslaved people of civilian and military Confederate officials “shall be forever free.” The act is enforceable only in areas of the South occupied by the Union Army
1863 - 1865: Colorado War
1863: On January 1, President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the enslaved people of the Confederate states
1864 - 1868: Snake War
1864 – 1916: Reconstruction and the Start of The Great Migration
1864: Southern outrage at the North’s use of Black soldiers flares up. Confederate forces capture Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and massacre the Black Union troops within; some are burned or buried alive.
1864: President Abraham Lincoln refuses to sign the Wade-Davis Bill, which requires greater assurances of loyalty to the Union from white citizens and governments in states that had seceded
1865: Powder River Way
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 Freedmen’s Bureau to help four million Black Americans in the transition from slavery to freedom
1865: Atlanta University is founded
1865: Shaw University is founded
1865: Talladega College is founded
1866: Fisk University is founded
1866 - 1868: Red Cloud's War
1866: Memphis, Tennessee, Race Riot
1866: The states of the former Confederacy pass “Black code” laws to ensure that white supremacy continues, despite the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.
1866: The U.S. Army forms Black cavalry and infantry regiments that serve in the West from 1867 to 1896. The units mainly fight American Indians on the frontier. The Indians nickname them “buffalo soldiers.”
1866: Rioting whites kill 35 Black citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana, and wound more than 100 people, with the participation of local police. The riots lead to increased support for strong Reconstruction policies.
1867: Morehouse College is founded
1867: Formosa Expedition
1867 - 1875: Comanche Campaign
1867: Howard University, a predominantly Black university, is founded in Washington, D.C. It is named for General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
1867: Alabama State University is founded.
1868: Hampton University is founded
1868: The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is ratified, granting citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans.
1868: The South Carolina General Assembly consists of 85 Black and 70 white representatives. A product of Reconstruction, it is the first state legislature with a Black majority.
1868: Elizabeth Keckley publishes her autobiography, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Keckley rose from slavery to become the dressmaker and confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

1870 - 1879

1870: Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi takes the former seat of Jefferson Davis in the U.S. Senate. Revels is the first African American 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 representative 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.”
1871: United States Expedition to Korea
1871: Alcorn State University is founded
1871: Tougaloo Colledge is founded
1872 - 1873: Modoc War
1873: Bennett College for Women is founded
1873: The town of Brooklyn, Illinois is officially incorporated
1874: New Orleans Race Riot
1874 - 1875: Red River War
1875: Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University is founded
1875: Las Cuevas War
1875: Civil Rights Act of 1875
1876: Meharry Medical College is founded
1876: Hamburg, South Carolina, Race Riot
1876 - 1877: Great Sioux War of 1876
1876 - 1877: Buffalo Hunter's Way
1877: Jackson State University is founded
1877: Nez Perce War
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.
1878: Bannock War
1878 - 1879: Cheyenne War
1879: Sheepeater Indian War
1879 - 1880: Victorio's War
1879: White River War
1879: Author Joel Chandler Harris’s story “Tar-Baby” popularizes the sticky tar doll figure of Black American folktales. It draws on the African trickster tale.

1880 - 1889

1881: Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama is founded on July 4. Booker T. Washington is the school’s first president.
1881: Spelman College is founded
1881: Tennessee becomes the first state to enact a Jim Crow law. The law requires Blacks and whites to ride in separate railroad cars.
1882: Virginia State University is founded
1882: Egyptian Expedition
1883: Black inventor Jan Ernst Matzeliger patents his shoe-lasting machine that shapes the upper portions of shoes. His invention soon replaces handmade methods of production.
1886: University of Maryland, Eastern Shore is founded
1887: Crow War
1887: Florida A&M University is founded as the State Normal (teacher-training) School for Colored Students.
1887: Black 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.
1887: the Town of Eatonville, Florida is officially incorporated on August 15, 1887, making it one of the first self-governing all-black municipalities in the United States.

1890 - 1899

1890 - 1891: Ghost Dance War
1891: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is founded
1891 - 1893: Garza War
1892: The offices of the Memphis Free Speech are destroyed following editorials by part-owner Ida B. Wells denouncing the lynching of three of her friends.
1892: Delaware State College is founded
1895: At the Atlanta Exposition, educator Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise” speech. He stresses the importance of vocational education for Blacks over social equality or political office.
1896 - 1918: Yaqui Wars
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 concerning racial segregation, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the doctrine of “separate but equal.” It holds that laws that require Blacks and whites to use separate public facilities are constitutional as long as the facilities are reasonably equal.
1896: Paul Laurence Dunbar, acclaimed as “the poet laureate of the Negro race,” publishes the poetry collection Lyrics of Lowly Life.
1896: South Carolina State University is founded
1898 - 1899: Second Samoan Civil War
1898: Spanish-American War
1899 - 1902: Philippine-American War
1899 - 1913: Moro Rebellion
1899 - 1901: Boxer Rebellion
1899: Composer and pianist Scott Joplin publishes “Maple Leaf Rag.” It is one of the most important and popular musical compositions during the era of ragtime—precursor to jazz.

Black History Timeline - 1900s

1900 - 1909

1900: Originally an enslaved people’s parody of white ballroom dances, the cakewalk becomes a wildly popular dance among fashionable whites as well as white minstrels working in blackface.
1900: New Orleans Race Riot
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.
1903: W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk. It declares that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”
1903: In protest to the views of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois suggests the concept of the “Talented Tenth”—a group of college-educated Black leaders responsible for elevating Blacks economically and culturally
1903: Boston Riot
1905: The Niagara Movement is founded as a group of Black intellectuals from across the country meet near Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. They adopt resolutions demanding full equality in American life. W.E.B. Du Bois is the organization’s leader.
1905: Madam C.J. Walker develops and markets a method for straightening curly hair. It leads to her becoming the first Black female millionaire in the United States.
1906: Atlanta Baptist College expands its curriculum and is renamed Morehouse College
1906: Atlanta Race Riot
1908: In Springfield, Illinois, a major race riot occurs; the Black community is assaulted by several thousand white citizens, and two elderly Blacks are lynched.
1908: The Town of Allensworth, California is established, making it the first in California to be founded, financed, and governed by African-Americans.
1909: Crazy Snake's War
1909: A group of whites shocked by the Springfield riot of 1908 merge with W.E.B. Du Bois’s Niagara Movement. Together, they form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
1909: Tennessee State University is founded

1910 - 1919

1910 - 1919: Mexican Border War
1910: A group of whites shocked by the Springfield riot of 1908 merge with W.E.B. Du Bois’s Niagara Movement. Together, they form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
1911: Bailey v. Alabama
1911: The organization later named the National Urban League is formed in New York City. Its mission is to help migrating African Americans find jobs and housing and adjust to urban life.
1911: German-born American 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: Little Race War
1912 - 1933: United States Occupation of Nicaragua
1914 –1918: WORLD WAR I
1914 - 1915: Bluff War
1914: United States Occupation of Veracruz
1914: Marcus Garvey founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in his homeland of Jamaica. The organization aims 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. He popularizes alternative crops and aids in the renewal of depleted land in the South.
1915 - 1934: United States Occupation of Haiti
1915: Historian Carter G. Woodson founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. It is intended to assist in the accurate and proper study of African American history.
1915: Boxer 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 that Johnson lost intentionally in the attempt to avoid legal difficulties.
1915: A division of the National Baptist Convention yields the National Baptist Convention of America, the largest Black church in the United States.
1915: Guinn and Beal v. United States
1916 - 1924: United States Occupation of the Domincan REPUBLIC
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 the West
1917 – 1937: The Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance
1917 - 1923: Russian Civil War
1917: NAACP Silent Protest Parade
1917: Houston, Texas, Race Riot
1917: Hatred among whites toward African Americans newly employed in war industries leads to a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois. Mobs of white people attack Black residents, stabbing, clubbing, and hanging them. Some 6,000 Black people are driven from their homes, and 40 Blacks and 8 whites are killed.
1917: East St. Louis, Illinois, Race Riot
1918: James VanDerZee and his wife open the Guarantee Photo Studio in the Harlem district of New York City. The portraits he shoots later become a treasured chronicle of the Harlem Renaissance
1919: During the Red Summer (meaning “bloody summer”), some 25 race riots erupt in cities across the United States. The most severe violence takes place on the South Side of Chicago. That riot leaves 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
1919: Elaine, Arkansas, Race Riot
1919: Longview, Texas, Race Riot
1919: Red Summer

1920 - 1929

1920 - 1933: Prohibition in the United States
1920: Marcus Garvey, leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), addresses 25,000 Blacks at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He then presides over a parade of 50,000 through the streets of Harlem.
1920: The Negro National League, an association of African American baseball teams, is established. It is the first of baseball’s Negro leagues.
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
1921: Tulsa, Oklahoma, Race Riot
1922: Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago, where he plays second trumpet in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Armstrong’s work in the 1920s would revolutionize jazz.
1922: Airplane pilot Bessie Coleman makes the first public flight by an African American woman. She would later refuse to perform at aerial shows before segregated audiences in the South.
1923: Posey War
1923: Charles Clinton Spaulding becomes president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He builds it into the country’s largest Black-owned business.
1923: Jazz pianist and arranger Fletcher Henderson becomes a bandleader. His famous 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, the experimental novel Cane. It is often considered one of the greatest achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.
1923: Blues singer Bessie Smith makes her first recording. She will eventually become known as “Empress of the Blues.”
1924: American Baptist College is founded
1924: Spelman Seminary becomes Spelman College. The school began in Georgia in 1881 with two Boston women teaching 11 Black women in an Atlanta 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
1925: The New Negro, a collection 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 in a revue. She becomes 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. He graduates from college later in the year.
1925: The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group, stages a parade of 50,000 unmasked members in Washington, D.C. In the 1920s the Klan has more than 4 million members nationwide.
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. His winning poem, “The Weary Blues,” is read aloud by James Weldon Johnson.
1926: Negro History Week was first introduced as a means of commemorating African American history when American history included slavery as the participation of African Americans. Carter G. Woodson and several other colleagues saw a need to preserve the culture of their race and to make sure that persons were informed of the many contributions and accomplishments that were a part of their history.
1926: Pianist, composer, and self-proclaimed inventor of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton records several of his masterpieces. Among them are “Black Bottom Stomp” and “Dead Man Blues.”
1927: James Weldon Johnson publishes God’s Trombones, a book of poetry. It contains verse sermons in the style of traditional Southern Black preachers. The book is illustrated by 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 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 novel by an African American to reach the best-seller lists.
1929: John Hope is chosen as president of Atlanta University, the first graduate school for African Americans. It later becomes Clark Atlanta University.

1930 - 1939

1930s: DON'T BUY WHERE YOU CAN'T WORK
1931: Nine Black youths accused of raping two white women on a freight train go on trial for their lives in Scottsboro, Alabama. Northern liberal and radical groups champion the cause of the “Scottsboro Boys.”
1931: Walter White becomes executive secretary of the NAACP. His main goal is to bring about the end of lynching. In the early 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 40-year study of the course of untreated syphilis in Black men. In this unethical medical experiment, treatment was intentionally withheld from the test subjects, even as some of them went blind and insane from the disease. More than 100 of the men ultimately died of syphilis.
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. He is replaced by Elijah Muhammad.
1935: Harlem Race Riot
1936: Track-and-field athlete Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. His victories derail Adolf Hitler’s intended use of the games as a show of white supremacy.
1936: Delta blues musician Robert Johnson makes his legendary and influential recordings in Texas. They include “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. It is considered her finest book.
1938 – 1959: THE BIRTH OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
1938: In a knockout in the first round of their rematch, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis wreaks vengeance on Max Schmeling of Germany. Schmeling was the only boxer to have knocked out Louis in his prime.
1938: Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday makes several of her finest recordings with saxophonist Lester Young.
1939: Count Basie leads his legendary Kansas City jazz band. It includes saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeter Buck Clayton, bassist Walter Page, and drummer Jo Jones
1939: The Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to allow singer Marian Anderson to rent Constitution Hall for a concert in Washington, D.C. Instead, she performs at the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of 75,000 people.
1939 - 1945: WORLD WAR II
1939: The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund is organized to fight against laws allowing racial discrimination. Charles Hamilton Houston leads the effort to tap some of the country’s best legal talents in the fight for civil rights.

1940 - 1949

1940: Author Richard Wright publishes his masterpiece, Native Son. The stark, tragic novel immediately places Wright in the front ranks of contemporary American writers.
1940: Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. becomes the first Black general in the U.S. Army.
1940: Painter Jacob Lawrence begins work on Migration of the Negro, a series of 60 paintings. The series depicts the journey of African Americans from the South to the cities of the North in the Great Migration.
1940: Duke Ellington leads his greatest band. It includes bassist Jimmy Blanton, saxophonist Ben Webster, and trumpeter Cootie Williams.
1941: Following considerable protest, the U.S. War Department forms the first African American air force unit, the 99th Pursuit Squadron. Its servicemen become known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., commands the squadron.
1942: Although the U.S. armed forces begin to accept blood donations from Blacks, the armed forces resolve to racially segregate the blood supply. As a result, Charles Richard Drew, developer and director of blood plasma programs during World War II, resigns.
1942: James Farmer founds the interracial organization that becomes the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Its direct-action tactics achieve national prominence during the Freedom Rides of 1961.
1942: Bebop (or bop) is born out of the musical experiments of jazz musicians in Harlem, including saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and pianist Thelonious Monk.
1943: Dancer Bill (“Bojangles”) Robinson appears with singer Lena Horne in the wartime all-Black musical film Stormy Weather.
1943: Detroit, Michigan, Race Riot
1943: Harlem Race Riot
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 (New York). He serves 11 successive terms.
1946: Saxophonist Charlie Parker produces many of the finest recordings of his career. Among them are Now’s the Time, Koko, Yardbird Suite, and Ornithology.
1946: Morgan v. Virginia. Segregation on interstate buses was legally sanctioned until 1946, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared a Virginia state law invalid and segregation in interstate buses illegal.
1947: Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American baseball player in the major leagues during the modern era.
1947: Historian John Hope Franklin gains international attention with the publication of From Slavery to Freedom, an enduring survey of African American history.
1947: Texas Southern University is founded
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.
Siquel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma. Despite the Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" precedent handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, schools and colleges for African Americans and whites were nowhere near equal by the mid-twentieth century.
1949: Not satisfied with Billboard magazine’s label of “race records” for its Black music chart, Jerry Wexler, a white reporter at the magazine, introduces the designation “Rhythm and Blues.”
1949: Dorothy J Vaughan is promoted to lead the West Area Computers, making her the NACA’s first black supervisor and one of its few female supervisors.

1950 - 1959

1950s - 2000: Economic Boycotts and Withdrawals
1950s - 1960s: Lexington, Kentucky, Sit-ins
1950 - 1953: KOREAN WAR
1950: Ralph Bunche is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as United Nations (UN) mediator in the Arab-Israeli dispute in Palestine.
1950: Gwendolyn Brooks receives the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Annie Allen (1949), becoming the first African American writer to win the award.
1950: After singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson refuses to swear that he is not a communist, the U.S. State Department suspends his passport.
1950: Henderson v. U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission and Southern Railway. Civil Rights activist Elmer W. Henderson filed a suit before the U.S. Supreme Court ending segregation in railway dining cars.
1952: Ralph Ellison publishes his masterpiece, the novel Invisible Man. It receives the National Book Award in 1953.
1952: Bulah v. Gebbart
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 - 1975: VIETNAM WAR
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 his mutilated corpse.
1955 - 1956: Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP, refuses to surrender her bus seat to a white person. Her action leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56.
1955: Opera diva Leontyne Price is triumphant in the title role of the National Broadcasting Company’s Tosca. She is the first African American to sing opera for television.
1955: Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Chuck Berry travels from St. Louis, Missouri, to Chicago, Illinois. There he records Maybellene, an immediate sensation among teenagers. The hit helps shape the evolution of rock and roll.
1956: Tallahassee Movement
1956: Birmingham Bus Boycott
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 of the hard bop style of jazz.
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 the Italian singles.
1957: Civil Rights Act of 1957
1957: Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom
1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. It is formed to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans.
1957: Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus tries to block desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock, ordering the state military to prevent nine Black students from entering the school. President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops to escort the students to school.
1957: 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 - 1961: Permesta Rebellion
1958: Lebanon Crisis
1958: Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many to be the greatest fighter in history, wins back the middleweight title for the last time. He defeats 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.
1958: Mary W Jackson becomes NASA’s first African-American female engineer.
1959 - 1975: Laotian Civil War
1959 - 1961: Nashville, Tennessee Sit-ins
1959: Trumpeter Miles Davis records Kind of Blue, often considered his masterwork.
1959: Singer Ray Charles records What’d I Say, which becomes his first million-seller. It exemplifies the emergence of soul music, combining rhythm and blues with gospel.
1959: A 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 the Cannes film festival in France.
1959: Motown Record Corporation is founded in Detroit, Michigan, by Berry Gordy, Jr. The “Motown sound” dominates Black popular music through the 1960s. It also attracts a huge white crossover audience, becoming the “Sound of Young America.”
1959: Baseball player Ernie Banks, one of the finest power hitters in the history of the game, is named the National League’s Most Valuable Player for a second season in a row.
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 provokes strong reactions—both admiring and condemning—from the audience.

1960 - 1969

1960–69: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND BLACK POWER MOVEMENT
1960s: National Welfare Rights Movement
1960 - 1962: Tent City
1960: Greensboro, North Carolina, Sit-ins
1960: High Pot, NorthCarolina, Sit-ins
1960: Portsmouth, Virginia, Sit-ins
1960: Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, a white brother and sister, found Stax Records of Memphis, Tennessee. It 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 sit down at a local “whites only” lunch counter. When they are denied service, they politely but firmly refuse to leave. The sit-in is a tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience.
1960: Inspired by the sit-in movement, jazz drummer Max Roach composes and records the historic Freedom Now Suite.
1960: Durham, North Carolina, Sit-ins
1960: Bates v. Little Rock, Arkansas
1960: Boynton v. Virginia
1961: Affirmative Action
1961 - 1962: Albany Movement
1961: Freedom Rides from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, Louisiana
1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion
1961: CORE organizes Freedom Rides, in which Blacks and whites protest segregation by riding interstate buses together through the South. The Freedom Riders encounter overwhelming violence, particularly in Alabama, leading to federal intervention.
1961: Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League. He works to bridge the gap between white political and business leaders and poor Blacks.
1962: Northern Student Movement
1962: Wilt Chamberlain becomes the first basketball player to score more than 4,000 points in regular-season National Basketball Association games.
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: As NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for.
1963: In Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner Eugene (“Bull”) Connor uses water hoses and dogs against civil rights protesters, many of whom are children. This leads to increasing pressure on President John F. Kennedy to act.
1963: Medgar Evers, Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, is shot and killed in front of his home. The murder followed 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.” It is addressed to eight clergymen who attacked his role in leading civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama. Widely reprinted, the letter 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 civil rights movement reaches a dramatic climax with a massive March on Washington, D.C. It is organized chiefly by Bayard Rustin. Among the themes of the march is a demand for Congress to pass 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.
1963 - 1967: Cambridge, Maryland, Demonstrations
1963: Danville, Virginia, Movement
1964: War on Poverty. On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a "War on Poverty" during his State of the Union Address. In that address he called for the creation of a "Great Society".
1964: Harlem Race Riot
1964: Freedom Summer
1964: Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam and forms his own religious organization. He makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, modifying his views on Black separatism upon his return to the U.S.
1964: The play Dutchman by LeRoi Jones (later named Imamu Amiri Baraka) 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 of 1964 into law. It gives 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.
1964: Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane records his masterpiece, A Love Supreme.
1964: The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. It guarantees that citizens cannot be denied the right to vote in presidential or congressional elections because of failure to pay a tax. Such poll taxes were used in the South to deny Blacks the right to vote.
1964: Rochester, New York, Rae Riot
1965: Bloody Sunday
1965 - 1966: Dominican Civil War
1965: Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, March
1965: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed following the Selma-to-Montgomery March in Alabama. The civil rights protest march captured national attention when the peaceful 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 people are dead, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested.
1966 - 1969: Korean DMZ Conflict
1966: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The group’s original purpose is to protect 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.
1966: Basketball player Bill Russell, one of the greatest defensive centers in the history of the sport, becomes the coach of the Boston Celtics. He is the first Black coach of a major professional sports team 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.
1966: Chicago Freedom Movement
1967 - 1975: Cambodian Civil War
1967: Newark, New Jersey, Race Riot
1967: Civil rights activist Julian Bond is sworn in as a representative of the Georgia state legislature. Although properly elected, he was denied his seat for opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. In December 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his exclusion was unconstitutional.
1967: Singer Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” releases a series of hits including “I Never Loved a Man” and “Baby, I Love You.” Her hit “Respect” becomes something of an anthem for the civil rights movement.
1967: At the height of the Vietnam War, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to join the armed forces because of his religious beliefs. Convicted of breaking the law, 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.
1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice. As a lawyer, he argued the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
1967: Carl Stokes is elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. He becomes the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city.
1967: Detroit, Michigan, Race Riot
1968: The National Advisory Commission on Civil Rights released the Kerner Report, which was named for Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, chair of the commission.
1968: Civil Rights Act of 1968
1968: Geier v. Tennessee. This landmark court case in the desegregation of higher education was initiated in 1968 and not officially resolved until 2006.
1968: Resurrection City
1968: Orangeburg, South Carolina, Massacre
1968: Poor People's March on Washington
1968: Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party’s minister of information, publishes the autobiographical book Soul on Ice.
1968: Sanitation Workers' Strike
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 group’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 (53 centimeters). His record would stand until 1991, when it was broken by Mike Powell.
1968: After winning an Olympic gold medal, sprinter Tommie Smith and teammate John Carlos give a Black-power salute during the awards ceremony. The U.S. Olympic Committee suspends them.
1968: Actor James Earl Jones wins acclaim and a Tony Award for his portrayal of legendary African American boxer Jack Johnson in the play The Great White Hope. Jones later stars in the film version (1970).
1968: Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, defeating civil rights leader James Farmer.
1969: Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale is tried for conspiracy to incite rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the previous year. After protesting that he was being denied his right to counsel during trial, the judge orders him to be bound and gagged.
1969: Katherine Johnson helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.

1970 - 1979

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: In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the Supreme Court rules that busing programs aimed to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States are constitutional.
1972: Writer Ishmael Reed publishes the novel Mumbo Jumbo. Its irreverent tone successfully revives the tradition of the African American 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.
1973: Gladys Knight and the Pips produce the million-selling album Imagination, winning two Grammy Awards.
1973: Adams vs. Richardson
1974: Baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record, which stood since 1935.
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).
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.
1976: Barbara Jordan, congressional representative from Texas, delivers the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. She confirms 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 (UN).
1977: Alex Haley’s novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) is adapted for television, becoming one of the most popular shows in the history of American TV.
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.
1978: In the Bakke decision regarding affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the use of fixed racial quotas in making decisions on admissions for professional schools. However, it rules that race can be a factor in admissions decisions.
1979: Baseball player Lou Brock steals his 935th base, becoming Major League Baseball’s all-time career stolen-base leader. Rickey Henderson would set a new record for stolen bases in 1991.
1979: United Steelworkers of America v. Weber allows an affirmative action program to privilege African Americans if the program is intended to remedy past discrimination.
1979: Rap comes to national prominence in the United States with the release of the Sugarhill Gang’s chart-topping song “Rapper’s Delight.”

1980 - 1989

1981: Civil rights leader Andrew Young is elected mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, an office he holds through 1989.
1982 - 1984: Multinational Intervention in Lebanon
1982: Playwright Charles Fuller wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama for A Soldier’s Play. The play 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. It becomes one of the most popular albums of all time, selling more than 40 million copies.
1983: United States Invasion of Grenada
1983: Writer Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple.
1983: Harold Washington wins the Democratic nomination for mayor by upsetting incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley. Washington is then elected the first African American mayor of Chicago, Illinois.
1983: Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson announces his intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He becomes 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. It is praised for its broad cross-cultural appeal and avoidance of racial stereotypes.
1986: Bombing of Libya
1986: Playwright August Wilson receives the Pulitzer Prize for Fences. He wins the prize again for The Piano Lesson in 1990. Both are from his cycle of plays chronicling the Black American experience.
1986: Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is first celebrated as a U.S. national holiday. The holiday, honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was officially established by a law of 1983.
1987 - 1988: Tanker War
1987: Basketball forward Julius Erving 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 Olympics at Seoul, South Korea.
1989 - 1990: United States Invasion of Panama
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 - 1999

1990 - 1991: Gulf War
1990: Jazz drummer Art Blakey dies. After founding the Jazz Messengers in 1954, he was responsible for nurturing generations of young jazz musicians.
1991 - 2003: Iraqi No-Fly Zone Enforcement Operations
1991: The Senate votes 52–48 to confirm the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. During the confirmation hearings, Thomas’s former aide Anita Hill charged that he had sexually harassed her.
1991: With much fanfare, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is appointed W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities at Harvard University. He proceeds to build the university’s Department of Afro-American Studies.
1992 - 1995: First United States Intervention in the Somali Civil War
1992 - 1995: Bosnian War and Croatian War
1992: Riots break out in Los Angeles, California, 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 about $1 billion in property damage.
1992: Author Terry McMillan publishes Waiting to Exhale, which follows four middle-class African American women, each of whom is looking for the love of a worthy man. The book’s wild popularity leads to a film adaptation.
1992: Singer Mary J. Blige releases her first solo album, What’s the 411?, produced primarily by rapper Sean “Puffy” Combs (Diddy). Redefining soul music, the album mixes classic soul with hip-hop and urban contemporary rhythm and blues.
1992: Mae Jemison becomes the first African American woman astronaut, spending more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour.
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, 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 book Race Matters. It is a close examination of the Black community about the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
1993: Poet Rita Dove, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book 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 - 1995: Intervention in Haiti
1994: At age 45, George Foreman 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 and Day of Absence” 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 meters and the 400 meters. He sets a 200-meter world record of 19.32 seconds.
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, Pennsylvania.
1997: President's Initiative on Race, Executive Order No. 13050. President Bill Clinton had a vision of one America in the 21st century - a diverse and democratic community in every sense of the word. Executive Order No. 13050 established a seven-member President's Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race. It would counsel the president on ways to improve the quality of race relations in America.
1998 - 1999: Kosovo War
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 in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957—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.

Black History Timeline - 2000s

2000 - 2009

2000: Tennis player Venus Williams becomes the first African American woman since Althea Gibson (1958) to win the singles championship at Wimbledon. Later in the year she becomes the first African American woman to win a gold medal in singles and doubles tennis at the same Olympic Games.
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.
2001 - 2021: WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
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).
2001: Condoleezza Rice is named national security adviser, becoming the first woman and second African American to hold this position.
2001: Roman Catholic Bishop Wilton Gregory becomes the first African American to be elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
2002 - Present: United States Intervention in Yemen
2002: Athlete Vonetta Flowers wins a gold medal in the women’s bobsled event, becoming the first African American to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
2002: Halle Berry becomes the first African American woman to win the Academy Award for best actress.
2003 - 2011: IRAQ WAR
2003: The U.S. Supreme Court issues a ruling on affirmative action in education, upholding the use of race in collegiate admissions policies.
2003: 1st Lieutenant Vernice Armour becomes the first African American female combat pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. military history.
2004 - 2018: United States Intervention in the War in North-West Pakistan
2004: Barack Obama becomes the third African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate after Reconstruction.
2004: Baseball player 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.
2005: Millions More Movement
2007 - Present: Second United States Intervention in the Somali Civil War
2007: The eloquent silhouettes of artist Kara Walker are the focus of a major traveling exhibit, “Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love.”
2007: Rap pioneer Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five becomes the first hip-hop act inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
2008: Barack Obama is elected president of the United States, becoming the first African American to win that position.
2009 - 2016: Operation Ocean Shield
2009: Eric Holder becomes the first African American to serve as U.S. attorney general.
2009: Rapper Jay-Z breaks Elvis Presley’s Billboard magazine record for the most number-one albums by a solo artist. The Blueprint 3 is Jay-Z’s 11th chart-topping album.

2010 - 2019

2010: The NAACP selects health care administrator Roslyn M. Brock, 44, to follow civil rights activist Julian Bond as its chairman, thereby passing the torch to a new generation.
2011: International Intervention in Libya
2011 - 2017: Operation Observant Compass
2012: Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida. Martin’s death heightens a debate over the persistence of racism and racial profiling in the United States. In 2013 a jury would find Zimmerman not guilty. Protests against the verdict are held across the United States. They lead to the formation of the Black Lives Matter social movement seeking better treatment of African Americans in all facets of American society.
2012: Barack Obama is re-elected president of the United States, becoming the first African American to win re-election for that position.
2013 - 2024: United States Intervention in Niger
2013: In Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates a central provision of the Voting Rights Act. The provision barred certain jurisdictions from changing voting laws and procedures without federal approval. Following the ruling, a number of states in the South introduce controversial changes in their voting laws, such as strict voter ID requirements.
2014 - 2021: United States-led Intervention in Iraq
2014 - Present: United States Intervention in the Syrian Civil War
2014: Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, is fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri. Days of civil unrest and protests break out, drawing national and international attention to police brutality.
2015 - 2019: United States Intervention in Libya
2015: At age 97, Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.
2016: Thirteen years after its establishment, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opens to the public on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

2020 - 2029

2020 - Amid a continuing COVID-19 pandemic, reports show that African Americans were contracting the disease and dying of it at far higher rates than whites. In explaining these large disparities, many experts cite the effects of systemic racism.
2020 - George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, is killed while being pinned to the ground by white police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A police officer kneels on Floyd’s neck for several minutes as Floyd calls for help, indicating that he cannot breathe. Riots and nonviolent demonstrations break out, with large numbers of peaceful protestors gathering nationally, and then internationally. Protests last for weeks as people demand an end to police brutality and to institutions, policies, and practices that perpetuate racism.
2020 - Kamala Harris becomes the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.
2023 - Present: Operation Prosperity Guardian
2024 - On August 22, 2024, the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic nomination for president. Harris was the first African-American woman and first Asian-American to be nominated by a major-party for President of the United States. On November 5, 2024, Harris lost the election to Donald Trump.

Welcome to Black History Database's Timeline

Black History Timeline - 1500s B.C.

1500 - 1509 B.C.

Black History Timeline - 200s & 300s

200s - 300s

Black History Timeline - 600s

600 - 609

610 - 619

620 - 629

630 - 639

640 - 649

650 - 649

660 - 669

670 - 679

680 - 689

690 - 699

Black History Timeline - 700s

700 - 709

710 - 719

720 - 729

730 - 739

740 - 749

750 - 749

760 - 769

770 - 779

780 - 789

790 - 799

Black History Timeline - 1000s

1000 - 1009

1010 - 1019

1020 -1029

1030 - 1039

1040 - 1049

1050 - 1059

1060 - 1069

1070 - 1079

1080 - 1089

1090 - 1099

Black History Timeline - 1100s

1100 - 1109

1110 - 1119

1120 - 1129

1130 - 1139

1140 - 1149

1150 - 1159

1160 - 1169

1170 - 1179

1180 - 1189

1190 - 1199

Black History Timeline - 1200s

1200 - 1209

1210 - 1219

1220 - 1229

1230 - 1239

1240 - 1249

1250 - 1259

1260 - 1269

1270 - 1279

1280 - 1289

1290 - 1299

Black History Timeline - 1300s

1300 - 1309

1310 - 1319

1320 - 1329

1330 - 1339

1340 - 1349

1350 - 1359

1360 - 1369

1370 - 1379

1380 - 1389

1390 - 1399

Black History Timeline - 1400s

1400 - 1409

1410 - 1419

1420 - 1429

1430 - 1439

1440 - 1449

1450 - 1459

1460 - 1469

1470 - 1479