Timeline of African-American history

This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.

Europeans arrived in what would become the present day United States of America on August 9, 1526. With them, they brought families from Africa that they had captured and enslaved with intentions of establishing themselves and future generations of Europeans off of the bodies of these African families.

During the American Revolution of 1776–1783, enslaved African Americans in the South escaped to British lines as they were promised freedom to fight with the British; additionally, many free blacks in the North fight with the colonists for the rebellion, and the Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) becomes the first future state to abolish slavery. Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper South free their slaves.

The importation of slaves became a felony in 1808.

After the American Civil War began in 1861, tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans of all ages escaped to Union lines for freedom. Later on, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, formally freeing slaves in the Confederate States of America. After the American Civil War ended, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits slavery (except as punishment for crime), was passed in 1865.

In the mid-20th century, the civil rights movement occurred, and racial segregation and discrimination was thus outlawed.

16th century

1526
* The first African slaves in what would become the present day United States of America arrived on August 9, 1526, in Winyah Bay, South Carolina. Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón led around six hundred settlers, including an unknown number of African slaves there, in an attempt to start a colony. The attempt failed after a month and Ayllón moved the colony, including the slaves, to what is now the state of Georgia. This colony also failed but slavery would continue in Georgia until 1865.

1565
* The Spanish colony of St. Augustine in Florida became the first permanent European colonization of the Americas European settlement in what would become the U.S. centuries later; it included an unknown number of enslaved Africans.

17th century

1619
* The first recorded Africans in English North America arrive when "twenty and odd" men, women and children were brought first to Fort Monroe off the coast of Hampton, Virginia, and then to Jamestown. They had been taken as prizes from a Portuguese slave ship. The group of Africans were treated as indentured servants, and at least one was recorded as eventually owning land in the colony.

1640
* John Punch, a Black indentured servant, ran away with three white servants, James, Gregory, and Victor. After the four were captured, Punch was sentenced to serve Virginian planter Hugh Gwyn for life. This made John Punch the first legally documented slave in colonial Virginia.

1654
* John Casor, a Black man who claimed to have completed his term of indenture, became the first legally recognized slave-for-life in a civil case in colonial Virginia. The court ruled with his master who said he had an indefinite servitude for life.John Henderson Russell. ''The Free Negro In Virginia, 1619–1865''
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1913, pp. 29–30, scanned text online.

1662
* The Colony of Virginia, using the principle of ''partus sequitur ventrem'', proclaimed that children in the colony were born into their mother's social status; therefore children born to enslaved mothers were classified as slaves, regardless of their father's ethnicity or status. This was contrary to English common law for English subjects, which held that children took their father's social status.
1664

* September 20 - The Province of Maryland passes the first law in Colonial America banning interracial marriage.

1670
* Zipporah Potter Atkins, a free woman of color, becomes the first African-American landowner in Boston, and the first Black woman to own land in Colonial America.Baker, Billy and Crimaldi, Laura
"Black and free, woman bought Boston parcel in 1670."
''Boston Globe'', May 20, 2014. Retrieved October 23, 2015.

1676
* Both free and enslaved African Americans fought in Bacon's Rebellion alongside white indentured servants.
1685

* French king Louis XIV issues the Code Noir ("Black Code"), a slave code which applies to France's overseas colonies, including Louisiana.

18th century

1705
* The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 define as slaves all those servants brought into the colony who were not Christian in their original countries, as well as Native American slaves sold by other Indians to colonists.

1712
* April 6The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 breaks out.

1738
* First free African-American community: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (later named Fort Mose) in Spanish Florida


1739
* September 9In the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina slaves gather at the Stono River to plan an armed march for freedom.

1753
* Benjamin Banneker designed and built the first clock of its type in the Thirteen Colonies. He also created a series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and wrote that "blacks were intellectually equal to whites". Banneker worked with Pierre L'Enfant to survey and design a street and urban plan for Washington, D.C.

1760
* Jupiter Hammon has a poem printed, becoming the first published African-American poet.

1770
* March 5Crispus Attucks is among the five men killed by a detachment of the 29th Regiment of Foot in the Boston Massacre, a precursor to the American Revolution.

1773
* Phillis Wheatley has her book '' Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral'' published.''Phillis Wheatley: America's second Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers'' by Henry Louis Gates, Basic Civitas Books, 2003, p. 5.

1774

* As part of a broader non-importation movement aimed at Britain, the First Continental Congress called on all the colonies to ban the importation of slaves, and the colonies pass acts doing so.
* The first black Baptist congregations are organized in the American South: Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina, and First African Baptist Church near Petersburg, Virginia.

1775
*April 14The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage holds four meetings. It was re-formed in 1784 as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and Benjamin Franklin would later serve as its president.
*Thomas Paine publishes one of the earliest and most influential anti-slavery essays in the U.S., called "African Slavery in America."
1776–1783 American Revolution
*Thousands of enslaved African Americans in the South escape to British lines, as they were promised freedom to fight with the British. In South Carolina, 25,000 enslaved African Americans, one-quarter of those held, escape to the British or otherwise leave their plantations. After the war, many African Americans are evacuated with the British for England; more than 3,000 Black Loyalists are transported with other Loyalists to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where they are granted land. Still others go to Jamaica and the West Indies. An estimated 8–10,000 were evacuated from the colonies in these years as free people, about 50 percent of those slaves who defected to the British and about 80 percent of those who survived.
* Many Black Patriots in the North fight with the rebelling colonists during the Revolutionary War.

1777
*July 8The Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) abolishes slavery, the first future state to do so. No slaves were held in Vermont.

1780
*Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery.
*Capt. Paul Cuffe and six other African American residents of Massachusetts successfully petition the state legislature for the right to vote, claiming "no taxation without representation."

1781
*In challenges by Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker, two independent county courts in Massachusetts found slavery illegal under state constitution and declared each to be free persons.

1783
* Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that Massachusetts state constitution had abolished slavery. It ruled that "the granting of rights and privileges aswholly incompatible and repugnant to" slavery, in an appeal case arising from the escape of former slave Quock Walker. When the British left New York and Charleston in 1783, they took the last of 5,500 Loyalists to the Caribbean, who brought along with them some 15,000 slaves.

1787
*July 13The Northwest Ordinance bans the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River.

1788
*The First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia is organized under Andrew Bryan.

1790–1810 Manumission of slaves
*Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper South free their slaves; the percentage of free blacks rises from less than one to 10 percent. By 1810, 75 percent of all blacks in Delaware are free, and 7.2 percent of blacks in Virginia are free.

1791
*February Major Andrew Ellicott hires Benjamin Banneker, an African-American draftsman, to assist in a survey of the boundaries of the federal district that would later become the District of Columbia.

1793
*February 12The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 is passed. (See also Fugitive slave laws.)

1794
*March 14 Eli Whitney is granted a patent on the cotton gin. This enables the cultivation and processing of short-staple cotton to be profitable in the uplands and interior areas of the Deep South; as this cotton can be cultivated in a wide area, the change dramatically increases the need for enslaved labor and leads to the development of King Cotton as the chief commodity crop. To satisfy labor demand, there is a forced migration of one million slaves from the Upper South and coast to the area in the antebellum period, mostly by the domestic slave trade.
*JulyTwo independent black churches open in Philadelphia: the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, with Absalom Jones, and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, with Richard Allen, the latter the first church of what would become in 1816 the first independent black denomination in the United States.

19th century

1800–1859

Early 19th century
*The first Black Codes enacted.

1800
*August 30 Gabriel Prosser's planned attempt to lead a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia is suppressed.

1807
* At the urging of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. It makes it a federal crime to import a slave from abroad.

1808
*January 1The importation of slaves is a felony. This is the earliest day under the United States Constitution that a law could be made restricting slavery.

1816
*The first separate black denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is founded by Richard Allen, who is elected its first bishop.
*The American Colonization Society is begun by Robert Finley, to send free African Americans to what is to become Liberia in West Africa.
*The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground is established in Richmond, VA. With estimated interments of upwards of 22,000, it is likely the largest burial ground for Free People of Color and the enslaved in the United States.
1817
* The First African Baptist Church had its beginnings in 1817 when John Mason Peck and the former enslaved John Berry Meachum began holding church services for African Americans in St. Louis. Meachum founded the First African Baptist Church in 1827. It was the first African-American church west of the Mississippi River. Although there were ordinances preventing blacks from assembling, the congregation grew from 14 people at its founding to 220 people by 1829. Two hundred of the parishioners were slaves, who could only travel to the church and attend services with the permission of their owners.

1820
*March 6The Missouri Compromise allows for the entry as states of Maine (free) and Missouri (slave); no more slave states are allowed north of 36°30′.
*The British West Africa Squadron's slave trade suppression activities are assisted by forces from the United States Navy, starting in 1820 with the USS ''Cyane''. With the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the relationship is formalised and they jointly run the Africa Squadron.

1821
*The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is formed.

1822
*July 14Denmark Vesey's planned slave rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina is suppressed (known also as "The Vesey Conspiracy").
1827

* March 16 - Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in the U.S., begins publication.

1829
*September David Walker begins publication of the abolitionist pamphlet ''Walker's Appeal''.

1830
*October 28Josiah Henson, a slave who fled and arrived in Canada, is an author, abolitionist, minister and the inspiration behind the book ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.

1831
*William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the abolitionist newspaper '' The Liberator''. He declares ownership of a slave is a great sin, and must stop immediately.
*AugustNat Turner leads the most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history. The rebellion is suppressed, but only after many deaths.

1832
*Sarah Harris Fayerweather, an aspiring teacher, is admitted to Prudence Crandall's all-girl school in Canterbury, Connecticut, resulting in the first racially integrated schoolhouse in the United States. Her admission led to the school's forcible closure under the Connecticut Black Law of 1833.

1833
*The American Anti-Slavery Society, an abolitionist society, is founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass becomes a key leader of the society.

1837
*FebruaryThe first Institute of Higher Education for African Americans is founded. Founded as the African Institute in February 1837 and renamed the Institute of Coloured Youth (ICY) in April 1837 and now known as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

1839
*July 2Slaves revolt on the ''La Amistad'', an illegal slave ship, resulting in a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court (see ''United States v. The Amistad'') and their gaining freedom.

1840
*The Liberty Party breaks away from the American Anti-Slavery Society due to grievances with William Lloyd Garrison's leadership.

1842
*The U.S. Supreme Court rules, in ''Prigg v. Pennsylvania'' (1842), that states do not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves, greatly weakening the fugitive slave law of 1793.

1843
*June 1Isabella Baumfree, a former slave, changes her name to Sojourner Truth and begins to preach for the abolition of slavery.
*AugustHenry Highland Garnet delivers his famous speech ''Call to Rebellion''.
1845

* Publication of '' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself''

1847
*Frederick Douglass begins publication of the abolitionist newspaper the ''North Star''.
*Joseph Jenkins Roberts of Virginia becomes the first president of Liberia.

1849
*''Roberts v. Boston'' seeks to end racial discrimination in Boston public schools.
*Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery to Philadelphia, and begins helping other slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad.

1850
*September 18As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which requires any federal official to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave.
1851

* Soujourner Truth gives her "Ain't I a Woman" speech at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio

1852
*March 20''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published.

1853
*December'' Clotel; or, The President's Daughter'' is the first novel published by an African-American.

1854
*President Franklin Pierce signs the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed slaves to be brought to the new territories.
*In opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, the Republican Party is formed with an anti-slavery platform.

1855
*John Mercer Langston is one of the first African Americans elected to public office when elected as a town clerk in Ohio.

1856
*May 21The Sacking of Lawrence in Bleeding Kansas.
*May 25 John Brown, whom Abraham Lincoln called a "misguided fanatic", retaliates for Lawrence's sacking in the Pottawatomie massacre.
*Wilberforce University is founded by collaboration between Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal representatives.

1857
*March 6In ''Dred Scott v. Sandford'', the U.S. Supreme Court upholds slavery. This decision is regarded as a key cause of the American Civil War.

1859
*Harriet E. Wilson writes the autobiographical novel ''Our Nig''.
*In ''Ableman v. Booth'' the U.S. Supreme Court rules that state courts cannot issue rulings that contradict the decisions of federal courts; this decision uphold the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
*August 22 - The last known slave ship to arrive to the U.S., the Clotilde, docks in secrecy at Mobile, Alabama.

1860–1874

1861
*April 12The American Civil War begins (secessions began in December 1860), and lasts until April 9, 1865. Tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans of all ages escaped to Union lines for freedom. Contraband camps were set up in some areas, where blacks started learning to read and write. Others traveled with the Union Army. By the end of the war, more than 180,000 African Americans, mostly from the South, fought with the Union Army and Navy as members of the US Colored Troops and sailors.
*May 2The first North American military unit with African-American officers is the 1st Louisiana Native Guard of the Confederate Army (disbanded in February 1862).
*May 24General Benjamin Butler refuses to extradite three escaped slaves, declaring them contraband of war
*August 6The Confiscation Act of 1861 authorizes the confiscation of any Confederate property, including all slaves who fought or worked for the Confederate military.
*August 30 Frémont Emancipation in Missouri
*September 11Lincoln orders Frémont to rescind the edict.

1862
*March 13Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves
*April 16( Emancipation Day) – District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act
*May 9General David Hunter declares emancipation in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.
*May 19Lincoln rescinds Hunter's order.
*July 17Confiscation Act of 1862 frees confiscated slaves.
*September 22Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation to go into effect January 1, 1863.

1863–1877 Reconstruction Era

1863

*January 1The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect, changing the legal status, as recognized by the United States federal government, of 3 million slaves in the designated areas of the South from "slave" to "free."
*January 31U.S. Army commissions the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a combat unit made up of escaped slaves.
*May 22The U.S. Army recruits United States Colored Troops. (The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment would be featured in the 1989 film '' Glory''.)
*June 1Harriet Tubman the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers liberate 750 people with the Raid at Combahee Ferry.
*July 13–16Ethnic Irish immigrants protests against the draft in New York City turn into riots against blacks, the New York Draft Riots.
*July 18The Second Battle of Fort Wagner begins when the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an African-American military unit, led by white Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, attacked a Confederate fort at Morris Island, South Carolina. The attack on Fort Wagner by the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry failed to take the fort and Gould was killed in the battle. However, the fort was abandoned by the Confederates on September 7, 1863, after many could not stand the constant weeks of bombardment and the smell of dead Union black soldiers sickening them.

1864
*April 12The Battle of Fort Pillow, which results in controversy about whether a massacre of surrendered African-American troops was conducted or condoned.
*October 13Controversial election results in approval of Maryland Constitution of 1864; emancipation in Maryland.

1865
*January 16Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 allocate a tract of land in coastal South Carolina and Georgia for Black-only settlement.
*January 31The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.
*March 3Congress passes the bill that forms the Freedman's Bureau; mandates distribution of "not more than forty acres" of confiscated land to all loyal freedmen and refugees.
*May 29 Andrew Johnson amnesty proclamation initiates return of land to pre-war owners.
*December 18The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits slavery except as punishment for crime; emancipation in Delaware and Kentucky.
* Shaw Institute is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, as the first black college in the South.
* Atlanta College is founded.
*Southern states pass Black Codes that restrict the freedmen, who were emancipated but not yet full citizens.

1866
*April 9The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is passed by Congress over Johnson's presidential veto. All persons born in the United States are now citizens.
*The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Pulaski, Tennessee, made up of white Confederate veterans; it becomes a paramilitary insurgent group to enforce white supremacy.
*May 1–3The Memphis Massacre transpires.
*JulyNew Orleans Riot: white citizens riot against blacks.
*July 21Southern Homestead Act of 1866 opens 46 million acres of land in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi; African Americans have priority access until January 1, 1877.
*September 21The U.S. Army regiment of Buffalo Soldiers (African Americans) is formed.
*One version of the Second Freedmen's Bureau Act is vetoed and fails; another is vetoed and passed via override in July.

1867
*February 14Augusta Institute, now known as Morehouse College, is founded in the basement of Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia.
*March 2Howard University is founded in Washington, D.C.

1868
*April 1Hampton Institute is founded in Hampton, Virginia.
*July 9The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution's Section 1 requires due process and equal protection.
*Through 1877, whites attack black and white Republicans to suppress voting. Every election cycle is accompanied by violence, increasing in the 1870s.
* Elizabeth Keckly publishes ''Behind the Scenes'' (or, ''Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House'').

1870
*February 3The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right of male citizens of the United States to vote regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
*February 25Hiram Rhodes Revels becomes the first black member of the Senate (see African Americans in the United States Congress).
* Christian Methodist Episcopal Church founded.
*First two Enforcement Acts.

1871
*October 10Octavius Catto, a civil rights activist, is murdered during harassment of blacks on Election Day in Philadelphia.
*US Civil Rights Act of 1871 passed, also known as the Klan Act and Third Enforcement Act.

1872
*December 11P. B. S. Pinchback is sworn in as the first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
*Disputed gubernatorial election in Louisiana cause political violence for more than two years. Both Republican and Democratic governors hold inaugurations and certify local officials.
*Elijah McCoy patented his first invention, an automatic lubricator that supplied oil to moving parts while a machine was still operating.

1873
*April 14In the ''Slaughter-House Cases'' the U.S. Supreme Court votes 5–4 for a narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court also discusses dual citizenship: State citizens and U.S. citizens.
*EasterThe Colfax Massacre; more than 100 blacks in the Red River area of Louisiana are killed when attacked by white militia after defending Republicans in local officecontinuing controversy from gubernatorial election.
*The Coushatta Massacre transpires. Republican officeholders are run out of town and murdered by white militia before leaving the state – four of six were relatives of a Louisiana state senator, a northerner who had settled in the South, married into a local family and established a plantation. Five to twenty black witnesses are also killed.

1874
*Founding of paramilitary groups that act as the "military arm of the Democratic Party": the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi, and North and South Carolina. They terrorize blacks and Republicans, turning them out of office, killing some, disrupting rallies, and suppressing voting.
*SeptemberIn New Orleans, continuing political violence erupts related to the still-contested gubernatorial election of 1872. Thousands of the White League armed militia march into New Orleans, then the seat of government, where they outnumber the integrated city police and black state militia forces. They defeat Republican forces and demand that Gov. Kellogg leave office. The Democratic candidate McEnery is installed and White Leaguers occupy the capitol, state house and arsenal. This was called the "Battle of Liberty Place". The White League and McEnery withdraw after three days in advance of federal troops arriving to reinforce the Republican state government.

1875–1899

1875
*March 1 Civil Rights Act of 1875 signed.
*The Mississippi Plan to intimidate blacks and suppress black voter registration and voting.

1876
* Lewis Latimer prepared drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's application for a telephone patent.
*July 8The Hamburg Massacre occurs when local people riot against African Americans who were trying to celebrate the Fourth of July.
*varied – White Democrats regain power in many southern state legislatures and pass the first Jim Crow laws.

1877
*With the Compromise of 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws federal troops from the South in exchange for being elected President of the United States, causing the collapse of the last three remaining Republican state governments. The compromise formally ends the Reconstruction Era.

1879
*SpringThousands of African Americans refuse to live under segregation in the South and migrate to Kansas. They become known as Exodusters.

1880
*In ''Strauder v. West Virginia'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules that African Americans could not be excluded from juries.
*During the 1880s, African Americans in the South reach a peak of numbers in being elected and holding local offices, even while white Democrats are working to assert control at state level.

1881
*April 11Spelman Seminary is founded as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary.
*July 4Booker T. Washington opens the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama.

1882
* Lewis Latimer invented the first long-lasting filament for light bulbs and installed his lighting system in New York City, Philadelphia, and Canada. Later, he became one of the 28 members of Thomas Edison's Pioneers.
*A biracial populist coalition achieves power in Virginia (briefly). The legislature founds the first public college for African Americans, Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, as well as the first mental hospital for African Americans, both near Petersburg, Virginia. The hospital was established in December 1869, at Howard's Grove Hospital, a former Confederate unit, but is moved to a new campus in 1882.

1883
*October 16In ''Civil Rights Cases'', the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional.

1884
* Mark Twain's ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' is published, featuring the admirable African-American character Jim.
*Judy W. Reed, of Washington, D.C., and Sarah E. Goode, of Chicago, are the first African-American women inventors to receive patents. Signed with an "X", Reed's patent no. 305,474, granted September 23, 1884, is for a dough kneader and roller. Goode's patent for a cabinet bed, patent no. 322,177, is issued on July 14, 1885. Goode, the owner of a Chicago furniture store, invented a folding bed that could be formed into a desk when not in use.
*Ida B. Wells sues the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company for its use of segregated "Jim Crow" cars.

1886
*Norris Wright Cuney becomes the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, the most powerful role held by any African American in the South during the 19th century.

1887
*October 3The State Normal School for Colored Students, which would become Florida A&M University, is founded.

1890
*Mississippi, with a white Democrat-dominated legislature, passes a new constitution that effectively disfranchises most blacks through voter registration and electoral requirements, e.g., poll taxes, residency tests and literacy tests. This shuts them out of the political process, including service on juries and in local offices.
*By 1900 two-thirds of the farmers in the bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta are African Americans who cleared and bought land after the Civil War.

1892
*Ida B. Wells publishes her pamphlet ''Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases''.

1893
*Daniel Hale Williams performed open-heart surgery in 1893 and founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first with an interracial staff.

1895
*September 18Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromise address at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.
* W. E. B. Du Bois becomes the first African-American to be earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

1896
*May 18In ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', the U.S. Supreme Court upholds ''de jure'' racial segregation of "separate but equal" facilities. (see "Jim Crow laws" for historical discussion).
*The National Association of Colored Women is formed by the merger of smaller groups.
*As one of the earliest Black Hebrew Israelites in the United States, William Saunders Crowdy establishes the Church of God and Saints of Christ.
* George Washington Carver is invited by Booker T. Washington to head the Agricultural Department at what would become Tuskegee University. His work would revolutionize farming – he found about 300 uses for peanuts.

1898
*Louisiana enacts the first statewide grandfather clause that provides exemption for illiterate whites to voter registration literacy test requirements.
*In '' Williams v. Mississippi'' the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the voter registration and election provisions of Mississippi's constitution because they applied to all citizens. Effectively, however, they disenfranchise blacks and poor whites. The result is that other southern states copy these provisions in their new constitutions and amendments through 1908, disfranchising most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites until the 1960s.
*November 10Coup d'état begins in Wilmington, North Carolina, resulting in considerable loss of life and property in the African-American community and the installation of a white supremacist Democratic Party regime.

1899
*September 18The " Maple Leaf Rag" is an early ragtime composition for piano by Scott Joplin.

20th century

1900–1949

1900
*Since the Civil War, 30,000 African-American teachers had been trained and put to work in the South. The majority of blacks had become literate.

1901
*Booker T. Washington's autobiography '' Up from Slavery'' is published.
* Benjamin Tillman, senator from South Carolina, comments on Theodore Roosevelt's dining with Booker T. Washington: "The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again."

1903
*SeptemberW. E. B. Du Bois's article '' The Talented Tenth'' published.
* W. E. B. Du Bois's seminal work ''The Souls of Black Folk'' is published.

1904
*May 15Sigma Pi Phi, the first African-American Greek-letter organization, is founded by African-American men as a professional organization, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
* Orlando, Florida hires its first black postman.

1905
*July 11First meeting of the Niagara Movement, an interracial group to work for civil rights.

1906
*The Brownsville Affair, which eventually involves President Roosevelt.
*December 4African-American men found Alpha Phi Alpha at Cornell University, the first intercollegiate fraternity for African-American men.

1907
*National Primitive Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. formed.

1908
*December 26 Jack Johnson wins the World Heavyweight Title.
* Alpha Kappa Alpha at Howard University; African-American college women found the first college sorority for African-American women.

1909
*February 12Planned first meeting of group which would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), an interracial group devoted to civil rights. The meeting actually occurs on May 31, but February 12 is normally cited as the NAACP's founding date.
*May 31The National Negro Committee meets and is formed; it will be the precursor to the NAACP.
*August 14A lynch mob moves through Springfield, Illinois burning the homes and businesses of black people and black sympathisers, killing many.

1910
*May 30The National Negro Committee chooses "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" as its organization name.
*September 29Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes formed; the next year it will merge with other groups to form the National Urban League.
*The NAACP begins publishing ''The Crisis''.

1911
*January 5Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity was founded at Indiana University.
*November 17 Omega Psi Phi fraternity was founded at Howard University.

1913
*The Moorish Science Temple of America, a religious organization, is founded by Noble Drew Ali (Timothy Drew).
*January 13 Delta Sigma Theta sorority was founded at Howard University

1914
January 9 Phi Beta Sigma fraternity was founded at Howard University
*Newly elected president Woodrow Wilson orders physical re-segregation of federal workplaces and employment after nearly 50 years of integrated facilities.

1915
*February 8''The Birth of a Nation'' is released to film theaters. The NAACP protests in cities across the country, convincing some not to show the film.
*June 21In '' Guinn v. United States'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules against grandfather clauses used to deny blacks the right to vote.
*September 9Professor Carter G. Woodson founds the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in Chicago.
*A schism from the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. forms the National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.

1916
*JanuaryProfessor Carter Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History begins publishing the ''Journal of Negro History'', the first academic journal devoted to the study of African-American history.
*March 23Marcus Garvey arrives in the U.S. (see Garveyism).
*Los Angeles hires the country's first black female police officer.
*The Great Migration begins and lasts until 1940. Approximately one and a half million African Americans move from the Southern United States to the North and Midwest. More than five million migrate in the Second Great Migration from 1940 to 1970, which includes more destinations in California and the West.

1917
*May–JuneEast St. Louis Riot
*August 23 Houston Riot
*In Buchanan v. Warley, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that a ban on selling property in white-majority neighborhoods to black people and vice versa violates the 14th Amendment.

1918
* Viola Pettus, an African-American nurse in Marathon, Texas, wins attention for her courageous care of victims of the Spanish Influenza, including members of the Ku Klux Klan.
* Mary Turner was a 33-year-old lynched in Lowndes County, Georgia who was Eight months pregnant. Turner and her child were murdered after she publicly denounced the extrajudicial killing of her husband by a mob. Her death is considered a stark example of racially motivated mob violence in the American south, and was referenced by the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

1919
*SummerRed Summer of 1919 riots: Chicago, Washington, D.C.; Knoxville, Indianapolis, and elsewhere.
*September 28Omaha Race Riot of 1919, Nebraska.
*October 1–5Elaine Race Riot, Phillips County, Arkansas. Numerous blacks are convicted by an all-white jury or plead guilty. In ''Moore v. Dempsey'' (1923), the U.S. Supreme Court overturns six convictions for denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

1920
*February 13Negro National League (1920–1931) established.
* Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall are the first two African-American players in the National Football League (NFL). Pollard goes on to become the first African-American coach in the NFL.
*January 16Zeta Phi Beta sorority founded at Howard University

1921
*May 23''Shuffle Along'' is the first major African-American hit musical on Broadway.
*May 31Tulsa Race Riot, Oklahoma
*Bessie Coleman becomes the first African American to earn a pilot's license.

1922
*November 12 Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, was founded at Butler University

1923
* Garrett A. Morgan invented and patented the first automatic three-position traffic light.
*January 1–7Rosewood massacre: Six African Americans and two whites die in a week of violence when a white woman in Rosewood, Florida, claims she was beaten and raped by a black man.
*February 19In ''Moore v. Dempsey'', the U.S. Supreme Court holds that mob-dominated trials violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
*Jean Toomer's novel ''Cane'' is published.

1924
*Knights of Columbus commissions and publishes ''The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America'' by civil rights activist and NAACP cofounder W. E. B. Du Bois as part of the organization's Racial Contribution Series.
*Spelman Seminary becomes Spelman College.

1925–1949

1925
*SpringAmerican Negro Labor Congress is founded.
*August 835,000 Ku Klux Klan members march in Washington, D.C. (see List of protest marches on Washington, D.C.)
*Countee Cullen publishes his first collection of poems in ''Color''.
*Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is organized.
*The Harlem Renaissance (also known as the New Negro Movement) is named after the anthology ''The New Negro'', edited by Alain Locke .

1926
*The Harlem Globetrotters are founded.
*Historian Carter G. Woodson proposes Negro History Week.
Corrigan v Buckley''
challenges deed restrictions preventing a white seller from selling to a black buyer. The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Buckley, stating that the 14th Amendment does not apply because Washington, DC is a city and not a state, thereby rendering the Due Process Clause inapplicable. Also, that the Due Process Clause does not apply to private agreements.

1928
* Claude McKay's '' Home to Harlem'' wins the Harmon Gold Award for Literature.

1929
*The League of United Latin American Citizens, the first organization to fight for the civil rights of Latino Americans, is founded in Corpus Christi, Texas.
* John Hope becomes president of Atlanta University. Graduate classes are offered in the liberal arts, and Atlanta University becomes the first predominantly black university to offer graduate education.
*Unknown'' Hallelujah!'' is released, one of the first films to star an all-black cast.

1930
*August 7 – Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-American men lynched in Marion, Indiana, after being taken from jail and beaten by a mob. They had been arrested that night as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. A third African-American suspect, 16-year-old James Cameron, had also been arrested and narrowly escaped being killed by the mob. He later became a civil rights activist.Monroe H. Little, Review of James Madison's ''A Lynching in the Heartland'', History-net
Retrieved June 11, 2014.
*The League of Struggle for Negro Rights is founded in New York City.
*Jessie Daniel Ames forms the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. She gets 40,000 white women to sign a pledge against lynching and for change in the South.

1931
*March 25 Scottsboro Boys arrested in what would become a nationally controversial case.
*Walter Francis White becomes the executive secretary of the NAACP.

1932
*The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male begins at Tuskegee University.

1933
*'' Hocutt v. Wilson'' unsuccessfully challenged segregation in higher education in the United States.

1934
* Wallace D. Fard, leader of the Nation of Islam, mysteriously disappears. He is succeeded by Elijah Muhammad.

1935
*June 18In ''Murray v. Pearson'', Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston of the NAACP successfully argue the landmark case in Maryland to open admissions to the segregated University of Maryland School of Law on the basis of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

1936
*AugustAmerican sprinter Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

1937
* Zora Neale Hurston writes the novel ''Their Eyes Were Watching God''
*Southern Negro Youth Congress founded.
* Joe Louis becomes first African-American heavyweight boxing world champion since Jack Johnson.

1938
*OctoberNegro National Congress meets at the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia, Pa.
* Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada

1939
*Easter SundayMarian Anderson performs on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. at the instigation of Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall and the federally controlled District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school.
*Billie Holiday first performs " Strange Fruit" in New York City. The song, a protest against lynching written by Abel Meeropol under the pen name Lewis Allan, became a signature song for Holiday.
*The Little League conduct a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library and are arrested after being refused library cards.
*September 21Followers of Father Divine and the International Peace Mission Movement join with workers to protest racially unfair hiring practices by conducting "a kind of customers' nickel sit down strike" in a restaurant.

1940s to 1970
*Second Great Migration – In multiple acts of resistance and in response to factory labor shortages in World War II, more than 5 million African Americans leave the violence and segregation of the South for jobs, education, and the chance to vote in northern, midwestern, and western cities (mainly to the West Coast).

1940
*February 12In '' Chambers v. Florida'', the U.S. Supreme Court frees three black men who were coerced into confessing to a murder.
*February 29Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She wins Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Mammy in ''Gone with the Wind''.
*October 25 Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is promoted to be the first African-American general in the U.S. Army.
* Richard Wright authors ''Native Son''
*NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is formed.

1941
*January 25 A. Philip Randolph proposes a March on Washington, effectively beginning the March on Washington Movement.
*early 1941U.S. Army forms African-American air combat units, the Tuskegee Airmen. The Tuskegee Airmen were involved in 15,000 combat sorties, winning 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 744 Air Medals, 8 Purple Hearts, and 14 Bronze Stars.
*June 25President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, the "Fair Employment Act", to require equal treatment and training of all employees by defense contractors.
*''Mitchell v US''the Interstate Commerce Clause is used to successfully desegregate seating on trains.

1942
*Six non-violence activists in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Bernice Fisher, James Russell Robinson, George Houser, James Farmer, Jr., Joe Guinn and Homer Jack) found the Committee on Racial Equality, which becomes the Congress of Racial Equality.

1943
*Doctor Charles R. Drew developed techniques for separating and storing blood. He was the head of an American Red Cross effort to collect blood for American armed forces. He was the chief surgeon of Howard University's medical school and professor of surgery. His achievements were recognized when he became the first African-American surgeon to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.
*The 1943 Detroit race riot erupts in Detroit, Michigan.
* Lena Horne stars in the all African-American film '' Stormy Weather''.

1944
*April 3In ''Smith v. Allwright'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the whites-only Democratic Party primary in Texas was unconstitutional.
*April 25The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
*July 17Port Chicago disaster, which led to the Port Chicago mutiny.
*August 1–7The Philadelphia transit strike of 1944, a strike by white transit workers protesting against job advancement by black workers, is broken by the U.S. military under the provisions of the Smith-Connally Act
*September 3Recy Taylor kidnapped and gang-raped in Abbeville by six white men, who later confessed to the crimes but were never charged. The case was investigated by Rosa Parks and provided an early organizational spark for the Montgomery bus boycott.
*November 7 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Harlem, New York.
*Miami hires its first black police officers.

1945–1975 The Civil Rights Movement.

1945
* April 5–6 Freeman Field Mutiny, in which black officers of the U.S. Army Air Corps attempt to desegregate an all-white officers' club in Indiana.
*AugustThe first issue of ''Ebony''.

1946
*June 3In ''Morgan v. Virginia'', the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates provisions of the Virginia Code which require the separation of white and colored passengers where applied to interstate bus transport. The state law is unconstitutional insofar as it is burdening interstate commercean area of federal jurisdiction.
*In Florida, Daytona Beach, DeLand, Sanford, Fort Myers, Tampa, and Gainesville all have black police officers. So does Little Rock, Arkansas; Louisville, Kentucky; Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio in Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Chattanooga and Knoxville in Tennessee
*Renowned actor/singer Paul Robeson founds the American Crusade Against Lynching.

1947
*April 9The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends 16 men on the Journey of Reconciliation.
*April 15 Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in professional baseball in 60 years.
*John Hope Franklin authors the non-fiction book ''From Slavery to Freedom''

1948
*United Nations, Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bans slavery globally.
*January 12In '' Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla.'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the State of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Law School could not deny admission based on race ("color").
*May 3In '' Shelley v. Kraemer'' and companion case '' Hurd v. Hodge'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the government cannot enforce racially restrictive covenants and asserts that they are in conflict with the nation's public policy.
*July 12Hubert Humphrey makes a controversial speech in favor of American civil rights at the Democratic National Convention.
*July 26President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 ordering the end of racial discrimination in the Armed Forces. Desegregation comes after 1950.
*Atlanta hires its first black police officers.

1949
*January 20Civil Rights Congress protests the second inauguration of Harry S. Truman.

1950–1959

1950
*June 5In '' McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents'' the U.S. Supreme Court rules that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his race.
*June 5In '' Sweatt v. Painter'' the U.S. Supreme Court rules that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal, partly in that it deprived black students from the collegiality of future white lawyers.
*June 5In '' Henderson v. United States'' the U.S. Supreme Court abolishes segregation in railroad dining cars.
*September 15University of Virginia, under a federal court order, admits a black student to its law school.
*The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is created in Washington, DC to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective civil rights legislation and policy.
*Orlando, Florida, hires its first black police officers.
*Dr. Ralph Bunche wins the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize.
* Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel Clifton and Earl Lloyd break the barriers into the NBA.

1951
*February 2 and 5Execution of the Martinsville Seven.
*February 15Maryland legislature ends segregation on trains and boats; meanwhile Georgia legislature votes to deny funds to schools that integrate.
*April 23High school students in Farmville, Virginia, go on strike: the case ''Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County'' is heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 as part of ''Brown v. Board of Education''.
*June 23A Federal Court ruling upholds segregation in SC public schools.
*July 11White residents riot in Cicero, Illinois when a black family tries to move into an apartment in the all-white suburb of Chicago; National Guard disperses them July 1.
*July 26The United States Army high command announces it will desegregate the Army.
*December 17"We Charge Genocide" petition presented to United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress accuses United States of violating the Genocide Convention
*December 24The home of NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, is bombed by KKK group; both die of injuries.
*December 28The Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) is founded in Cleveland, Mississippi by T. R. M. Howard, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and other civil rights activists. Assisted by member Medgar Evers, the RCNL distributed more than 50,000 bumper stickers bearing the slogan, "Don't Buy Gas Where you Can't Use the Restroom." This campaign successfully pressured many Mississippi service stations to provide restrooms for blacks.

1952
*January 5Governor of Georgia Herman Talmadge criticizes television shows for depicting blacks and whites as equal.
*January 28''Briggs v. Elliott'': after a District Court had ordered separate but equal school facilities in South Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
*March 7Another federal court upholds segregated education laws in Virginia.
*April 1Chancellor Collins J. Seitz finds for the black plaintiffs (''Gebhart v. Belton, Gebhart v. Bulah'') and orders the integration of Hockessin elementary and Claymont High School in Delaware based on assessment of "separate but equal" public school facilities required by the Delaware constitution.
*September 4Eleven black students attend the first day of school at Claymont High School, Delaware, becoming the first black students in the 17 segregated states to integrate a white public school. The day occurs without incident or notice by the community.
*September 5The Delaware State Attorney General informs Claymont Superintendent Stahl that the black students will have to go home because the case is being appealed. Stahl, the School Board and the faculty refuse and the students remain. The two Delaware cases are argued before the Warren U.S. Supreme Court by Redding, Greenberg and Marshall and are used as an example of how integration can be achieved peacefully. It was a primary influence in the '' Brown v. Board'' case. The students become active in sports, music and theater. The first two black students graduated in June 1954 just one month after the ''Brown v. Board'' case.
*Ralph Ellison authors the novel ''Invisible Man'' which wins the National Book Award.

1953
*June 8The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation in Washington, DC restaurants.
*August 13 Executive Order 10479 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower establishes the anti-discrimination Committee on Government Contracts.
*September 1In the landmark case '' Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company'', WAC Sarah Keys, represented by civil rights lawyer Dovey Roundtree, becomes the first black to challenge "separate but equal" in bus segregation before the Interstate Commerce Commission.
* James Baldwin's semi-autobiographical novel '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'' is published.

1954
*May 3In '' Hernandez v. Texas'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
*May 17The U.S. Supreme Court rules against the "separate but equal" doctrine in '' Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.'' and in '' Bolling v. Sharpe'', thus overturning ''Plessy v. Ferguson''.
*July 11The first White Citizens' Council meeting takes place, in Mississippi.
*July 30At a special meeting in Jackson, Mississippi called by Governor Hugh White, T.R.M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, along with nearly one hundred other black leaders, publicly refuse to support a segregationist plan to maintain "separate but equal" in exchange for a crash program to increase spending on black schools.
*September 2In Montgomery, Alabama, 23 black children are prevented from attending all-white elementary schools, defying the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
*September 7District of Columbia ends segregated education; Baltimore, Maryland follows suit on September 8
*September 15Protests by white parents in White Sulphur Springs, WV force schools to postpone desegregation another year.
*September 16Mississippi responds by abolishing all public schools with an amendment to its State Constitution.
*September 30Integration of a high school in Milford, Delaware collapses when white students boycott classes.
*October 4Student demonstrations take place against integration of Washington, DC public schools.
*October 19Federal judge upholds an Oklahoma law requiring African-American candidates to be identified on voting ballots as "negro".
*October 30Desegregation of U.S. Armed Forces said to be complete.
*November Charles Diggs, Jr., of Detroit is elected to Congress, the first African American elected from Michigan.
*Frankie Muse Freeman is the lead attorney for the landmark NAACP case ''Davis et al. v. the St. Louis Housing Authority'', which ended legal racial discrimination in public housing with the city. Constance Baker Motley was also an attorney for NAACP: it was a rarity to have two women attorneys leading such a high-profile case.

1955
*January 7Marian Anderson (of 1939 fame) becomes the first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.
*January 15President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment.
*January 20Demonstrators from CORE and Morgan State University stage a successful sit-in to desegregate Read's Drug Store in Baltimore, Maryland
*April 5Mississippi passes a law penalizing white students who attend school with blacks with jail and fines.

*May 7 NAACP and Regional Council of Negro Leadership activist Reverend George W. Lee is killed in Belzoni, Mississippi.
*May 31The U.S. Supreme Court rules in "Brown II" that desegregation must occur with "all deliberate speed".
*June 8University of Oklahoma decides to allow black students.
*June 23Virginia governor and Board of Education decide to continue segregated schools into 1956.
*June 29The NAACP wins a U.S. Supreme Court suit which orders the University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy.
*July 11Georgia Board of Education orders that any teacher supporting integration be fired.
*July 14A Federal Appeals Court overturns segregation on Columbia, SC buses.
*August 1Georgia Board of Education fires all black teachers who are members of the NAACP.
*August 13Regional Council of Negro Leadership registration activist Lamar Smith is murdered in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
*August 28Teenager Emmett Till is killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi.
*November 7The Interstate Commerce Commission bans bus segregation in interstate travel in ''Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company'', extending the logic of '' Brown v. Board'' to the area of bus travel across state lines. On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation on public parks and playgrounds. The governor of Georgia responds that his state would "get out of the park business" rather than allow playgrounds to be desegregated.
*December 1Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery bus boycott. This occurs nine months after 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin became the first to refuse to give up her seat. Colvin's was the legal case which eventually ended the practice in Montgomery.
*Roy Wilkins becomes the NAACP executive secretary.

1956
*January 2Georgia Tech president Blake R. Van Leer stands up to Governor Marvin Griffin threats to bar Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh player Bobby Grier over segregation.
*January 9Virginia voters and representatives decide to fund private schools with state money to maintain segregation.
*January 16FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader Dr. T. R. M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the "FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South."David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ''Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp. 154–55.
*January 24Governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia agree to block integration of schools.
*February 1Virginia legislature passes a resolution that the U.S. Supreme Court integration decision was an "illegal encroachment".
*February 3Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot for days, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in further legal action against the university.
*February 24The policy of Massive Resistance is declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr.
*February/MarchThe Southern Manifesto, opposing integration of schools, is created and signed by members of the Congressional delegations of Southern states, including 19 senators and 81 members of the House of Representatives, notably the entire delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. On March 12, it is released to the press.
*February 13Wilmington, Delaware school board decides to end segregation.
*February 22Ninety black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are arrested for leading a bus boycott.
*February 29Mississippi legislature declares U.S. Supreme Court integration decision "invalid" in that state.
*March 1Alabama legislature votes to ask for federal funds to deport blacks to northern states.
*March 12U.S. Supreme Court orders the University of Florida to admit a black law school applicant "without delay".
*March 22Martin Luther King Jr. sentenced to fine or jail for instigating Montgomery bus boycott, suspended pending appeal.
*April 11Singer Nat King Cole is assaulted during a segregated performance at Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama.
*April 23U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation on buses nationwide.
*May 26Circuit Judge Walter B. Jones issues an injunction prohibiting the NAACP from operating in Alabama.
*May 28The Tallahassee, Florida bus boycott begins.
*June 5The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) is founded at a mass meeting in Birmingham, Alabama.
*September 2–11Teargas and National Guard used to quell segregationists rioting in Clinton, TN; 12 black students enter high school under Guard protection. Smaller disturbances occur in Mansfield, TX and Sturgis, KY.
*September 10Two black students are prevented by a mob from entering a junior college in Texarkana, Texas. Schools in Louisville, KY are successfully desegregated.
*September 12Four black children enter an elementary school in Clay, KY under National Guard protection; white students boycott. The school board bars the 4 again on September 17.
*October 15Integrated athletic or social events are banned in Louisiana.
*November 5Nat King Cole hosts the first show of ''The Nat King Cole Show''. The show went off the air after only 13 months because no national sponsor could be found.
*November 13In ''Browder v. Gayle'', the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Alabama laws requiring segregation of buses. This ruling, together with the ICC's 1955 ruling in ''Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach'' banning "Jim Crow laws" in bus travel among the states, is a landmark in outlawing "Jim Crow" in bus travel.
*December 20Federal marshals enforce the ruling to desegregate bus systems in Montgomery.
*December 24Blacks in Tallahassee, Florida begin defying segregation on city buses.
*December 25The parsonage in Birmingham, Alabama occupied by Fred Shuttlesworth, movement leader, is bombed. Shuttlesworth receives only minor scrapes.
*December 26The ACMHR tests the ''Browder v. Gayle'' ruling by riding in the white sections of Birmingham city buses. 22 demonstrators are arrested.
* Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission formed.
*Director J. Edgar Hoover orders the FBI to begin the COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt "dissident" groups within the United States.

1957

*February 8Georgia Senate votes to declare the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution null and void in that state.
*February 14Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is named its chairman.
*April 18Florida Senate votes to consider U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation decisions "null and void".
*May 17The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC is at the time the largest nonviolent demonstration for civil rights, and features Dr. King's "Give Us The Ballot" speech.
*September 2Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to block integration of Little Rock Central High School.
*September 6Federal judge orders Nashville public schools to integrate immediately.
*September 15''New York Times'' reports that in three years since the decision, there has been minimal progress toward integration in four southern states, and no progress at all in seven.
*September 24President Dwight Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard and also orders US Army troops to ensure Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine.
*September 27 Civil Rights Act of 1957 signed by President Eisenhower.
*October 7The finance minister of Ghana is refused service at a Dover, Delaware restaurant. President Eisenhower hosts him at the White House to apologize October 10.
*October 9Florida legislature votes to close any school if federal troops are sent to enforce integration.
*October 31Officers of NAACP arrested in Little Rock for failing to comply with a new financial disclosure ordinance.
*November 26Texas legislature votes to close any school where federal troops might be sent.

1958
*January 18Willie O'Ree breaks the color barrier in the National Hockey League, in his first game playing for the Boston Bruins.
*June 29Bethel Baptist Church (Birmingham, Alabama) is bombed by Ku Klux Klan members, killing four girls.
*June 30In '' NAACP v. Alabama'', the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the NAACP was not required to release membership lists to continue operating in the state.
*JulyNAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated.
*August 19Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council conduct the largest successful sit-in to date, on drug store lunch-counters in Oklahoma City. This starts a successful six-year campaign by Luper and the council to desegregate businesses and related institutions in Oklahoma City.
*August Jimmy Wilson sentenced to death in Alabama for stealing $1.95; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asks Governor Jim Folsom to commute his sentence because of international criticism.
*September 2Governor J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia threatens to shut down any school if it is forced to integrate.
*September 4Justice Department sues under Civil Rights Act to force Terrell County, Georgia to register blacks to vote.
*September 8A Federal judge orders Louisiana State University to desegregate; 69 African Americans enroll successfully on September 12.
*September 12In ''Cooper v. Aaron'' the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the states were bound by the Court's decisions. Governor Faubus responds by shutting down all four high schools in Little Rock, and Governor Almond shuts one in Front Royal, Virginia.
*September 18Governor Lindsay closes two more schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, and six in Norfolk on September 27.
*September 29The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states may not use evasive measures to avoid desegregation.
*October 8A Federal judge in Harrisonburg, VA rules that public money may not be used for segregated private schools.
*October 20Thirteen blacks arrested for sitting in front of bus in Birmingham.
*November 28Federal court throws out Louisiana law against integrated athletic events.
*December 8Voter registration officials in Montgomery refuse to cooperate with US Civil Rights Commission investigation.
*Publication of '' Here I Stand'', Paul Robeson's manifesto-autobiography.

1959
*January 9One Federal judge throws out segregation on Atlanta, GA buses, while another orders Montgomery registrars to comply with the Civil Rights Commission.
*January 12 Motown Records is founded by Berry Gordy.
*January 19Federal Appeals court overturns Virginia's closure of the schools in Norfolk; they reopen January 28 with 17 black students.
*February 2A high school in Arlington, VA desegregates, allowing four black students.
*April 10Three schools in Alexandria, Virginia desegregate with a total of nine black students.
*April 18King speaks for the integration of schools at a rally of 26,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
*April 24 Mack Charles Parker is lynched three days before his trial.
*November 20Alabama passes laws to limit black voter registration.
*''A Raisin in the Sun'', a play by Lorraine Hansberry, debuts on Broadway. The 1961 film version will star Sidney Poitier.

1960–1969

1960
*February 1Four black students sit at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking six months of the Greensboro sit-ins.
*February 13The Nashville sit-ins begin, although the students of the Nashville Student Movement, trained by activist and nonviolent teacher James Lawson, had been doing preliminary groundwork towards the action for two months. The sit-in ends successfully in May.
*February 17Alabama grand jury indicts Dr. King for tax evasion.
*February 19Virginia Union University students, called the Richmond 34 stage sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Richmond, Virginia.
*February 22The Richmond 34 stage a sit in the Richmond Room at Thalhimer's department store.
*March 3Vanderbilt University expels James Lawson for sit-in participation.
*March 4, 1960 Houston's first sit-in, led by Texas Southern University students, was held at the Weingarten's lunch counter, located at 4110 Almeda in Houston, Texas

*March 7 Felton Turner of Houston is beaten and hanged upside-down in a tree, initials KKK carved on his chest.
*March 19San Antonio becomes first city to integrate lunch counters.
*March 20Florida Governor LeRoy Collins calls lunch counter segregation "unfair and morally wrong".
*April 8Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster.
*April 15–17The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.
*April 19 Z. Alexander Looby's home is bombed, with no injuries. Looby, a Nashville civil rights lawyer, was active in the cities ongoing sit-in movement.
*MayNashville sit-ins end successfully.
*May 6Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
*May 28 William Robert Ming and Hubert Delaney obtain an acquittal of Dr. King from an all-white jury in Alabama.
*June 24King meets Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK).
*June 28Bayard Rustin resigns from SCLC after condemnation by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
*July 11''To Kill a Mockingbird'' published.
*July 31Elijah Muhammad calls for an all-black state. Membership in the Nation of Islam estimated at 100,000.
*AugustReverend Wyatt Tee Walker replaces Ella Baker as SCLC's Executive Director.
*October 19Dr. King and fifty others arrested at sit-in at Atlanta's Rich's Department Store.
*October 26Dr. King's earlier probation revoked; he is transferred to Reidsville State Prison.
*October 28After intervention from Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), King is free on bond.
*November 8John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.
*November 14Ruby Bridges becomes the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South (William Frantz Elementary School) following court-ordered integration in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was portrayed by Norman Rockwell in his 1964 painting ''The Problem We All Live With.''
*December 5In ''Boynton v. Virginia'', the U.S. Supreme Court holds that racial segregation in bus terminals is illegal because such segregation violates the Interstate Commerce Act. This ruling, in combination with the ICC's 1955 decision in Keys v. Carolina Coach, effectively outlaws segregation on interstate buses and at the terminals servicing such buses.

1961
*January 11Rioting over court-ordered admission of first two African Americans ( Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault) at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension, but they are ordered reinstated.
*January 31Member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and nine students were arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina for a sit-in at a McCrory's lunch counter.
*March 6JFK issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes a Presidential committee that later becomes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
*May 4The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals.
*May 14The Freedom Riders' bus is attacked and burned outside of Anniston, Alabama. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham. The Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend forty to sixty days in Parchman Penitentiary

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