Civil Rights Timeline (1619 - 2000)
1619 - Twenty Africans arrive in Jamestown, VA, and are sold as indentured servants.
1626 - Dutch West India Co. exports 11 male slaves to New York.
1675 - 100,000 African slaves in the West Indies in Caribbean Sea, south of Florida; 5,000 in North America.
1685 - New York law forbids black and Native American slaves from having meetings or carrying firearms.
1688 - Germantown, PA, Quakers sign first official written protest against slavery in North America.
1700 - 1,000 blacks in New England colonies; Boston becomes slave trade center for New England; first anti-slavery
pamphlet published in New England.
1712 - Pennsylvania outlaws slave trade.
1721 - South Carolina limits the vote to free white Christian men.
1727 - Benjamin Franklin organizes the Junto, an anti-slavery group, in Philadelphia, PA. Blacks and Native Americans
revolt in Middlesex and Gloucester Counties in Virginia.
1733 - Spain promises freedom in Spanish Florida to slaves escaped from English colonies.
1739 - Slaves revolt in South Carolina.
1752 - Future President George Washington acquires the Mount Vernon, VA, estate and its 18 slaves. Eventually he
owns 200 slaves.
1758 - Philadelphia opens schools for black children.
1760 - Black population reaches 325,806 in American colonies.
1770 - Crispus Attucks, runaway slave and seaman, is first American killed in Boston Massacre battle between British and
colonists.
1774 - Continental Congress bars importation of slaves; import continues in defiance of law. Thomas Jefferson declares
abolition of slavery as one of the goals of the colonists and accuses Britain of blocking efforts to end slave trade.
1775 - Philadelphia Quakers organize the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Benjamin Franklin elected
president. Blacks fight in various ways for Colonial freedoms, participate as Minutemen, join Ethan Allen and the Green
Mountain Boys, fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill. George Washington, the new commander of American troops, forbids
officers to recruit blacks for the military. He soon reverses his position. At least 100,000 slaves run away from their
masters.
1776 - Second Continental Congress forbids importation of slaves into 13 colonies. Import continues illegally.
1780 - Pennsylvania passes emancipation law; Massachusetts constitution abolishes slavery; black Massachusetts
taxpayers demand the right to vote, arguing "taxation without representation".
1783 - Revolutionary War ends; 10,000 blacks have served
1784 - U.S. Congress rejects Thomas Jefferson proposal to exclude slavery from all western territories after 1800.
Connecticut passes gradual emancipation law; Rhode Island passes similar law and abolishes slavery.
1785 - New York slaves who served in Revolutionary Army are freed.
1787 - U.S. Constitution adopted, considers one slave equal to three-fifths of a man of another race.
1790 - U.S. Census says 757,208 blacks in U.S.; 59,557 are free.
1793 - Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, prompting expansion of cotton industry and increased demand for African
slaves. U.S. Congress adopts first Fugitive Slave Law, making aid to fugitive slaves a criminal offense.
1802-1805 - Ohio constitution abolishes slavery, then prohibits free blacks from voting and passes the first Black Laws,
restricting rights of blacks in North.
1807 - U.S. Congress prohibits importation of new slaves into U.S., effective Jan. 1, 1808. Between 1808 and 1860,
approximately 250,000 slaves are illegally imported.
1814 - Two black regiments formed in New York to fight in War of 1812; the African Free School in New York City is
burned.
1815 - Levi Coffin establishes Underground Railroad.
1820 - Missouri Compromise enacted—Maine enters union as a free state; Missouri as a slave state. Slavery banned in
Louisiana Purchase territory.
1822 - Denmark Vesey, free black carpenter, organizes plot to seize Charleston, SC. Land now known as Liberia
colonized by black American settlers from American Colonization Society.
1827 - Slavery officially abolished in New York; 10,000 blacks freed.
1828 - William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist writer, attacks slavery in Bennington, VT, periodical.
1830 - Rise of slave revolts prompts restrictions on education, particularly in the South.
1832 - Nat Turner and five other slaves revolt in Virginia. Turner captured and hanged. William Lloyd Garrison begins
publishing the Liberator in Boston, MA.
1843 - Sojourner Truth begins abolitionist work; William Wells Brown begins anti-slavery lectures.
1845 - Frederick Douglass publishes "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass".
1847 - Dred Scott files suit for his freedom in St. Louis, MO, testing Missouri Compromise. Frederick Douglass speaks to
women's rights meeting in Seneca Falls, NY.
1849 - Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland.
1850 - Congressional compromise upholds and strengthens 1793 Fugitive Slave Act; California enters union as a free
state.
1854 - Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals Missouri Compromise and permits admission of Kansas and Nebraska territories to
union, whether or not they allow slavery. Republican Party is formed to oppose extension of slavery into the territories.
1857 - In Dred Scott v. Sanford case, U.S. Supreme Court rules that Dred Scott cannot sue for his freedom in a free state
because he is property.
1859 - John Brown raids federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, WV to undermine slavery. He and 18 other men are captured
and executed.
1861 - Civil War begins when Confederates attack Fort Sumter, SC.
1866 - First Civil Rights Act declaring freed blacks to be U.S. citizens and nullifying black codes passes in Congress,
which overrides President Andrew Johnson's veto. Ku Klux Klan begins campaign of terror against blacks and white
Republicans.
1862 - U.S. Congress bans slavery in the District of Columbia and U.S. territories; slaveholders compensated for their lost
"property". Harriet Tubman serves as a spy, scout and guerrilla for Union Army.
1863 - Abraham Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in those states rebelling against union.
54th Massachusetts Volunteers formed, the first northern black regiment.
1865 - Civil War ends. U.S. Congress ratifies 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.
1868 - U.S. Congress passes 14th Amendment, granting blacks full citizenship and equal civil rights.
1870 - Congress passes first Enforcement Acts to control Ku Klux Klan and guarantee civil and political rights to blacks
through federal courts. 15th Amendment passes, granting male suffrage regardless of "race, color, or previous condition
of servitude."
1873 - U.S. Supreme Court rules that the "due process" clause of the 14th Amendment protects national—not state—
citizenship.
1875 - Civil Rights Act gives blacks right to equal treatment in inns, public conveniences, public amusement places and
prohibits their exclusion from jury duty.
1883 - U.S. Supreme Court rules that Civil Rights Act of 1875 is unconstitutional, on grounds U.S. Congress had gone
beyond its authority by making laws that only states had right to make.
1895 - W.E.B. DuBois receives first doctorate degree awarded to a black from Harvard University in Massachusetts.
1896 - U.S. Supreme Court rules "separate but equal" facilities are constitutional.
1898 - Louisiana begins restricting the vote to those males whose grandfathers were eligible to vote on or before January
1, 1867.
1900 - Booker T. Washington organizes the National Negro Business League.
1905 - W.E.B. DuBois and others meet in Niagara Falls, NY, to discuss actions on behalf of blacks. This and subsequent
meetings lead to the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
1911 - Marcus Garvey establishes the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a grass-roots Pan-Africanist
organization.
1915 - U.S. Supreme Court declares the "grandfather clauses," used in Southern states to block black voting, are
unconstitutional. NAACP protests D.W. Griffith's film, "Birth of a Nation" for its portrayal of African-Americans.
1922 - A bill making lynching a federal offense passes in the U.S. House of Representatives but fails in the U.S. Senate.
1926 - A group of black women is beaten by election officials while attempting to register to vote in Birmingham, AL.
1933 - NAACP begins seeking civil rights through legal suits.
1941 - U.S. Supreme Court rules that separate facilities on railroads must be equal. Union organizer A. Philip Randolph
proposes a march on Washington to protest discrimination in federal programs. The march is called off after President
Franklin D. Roosevelt forbids racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and government training programs.
1943 - Congress of Racial Equality stages the first successful sit-in at a Chicago restaurant.
1947 - Congress on Racial Equality sends an interracial group on a southern bus trip to test compliance with Supreme
Court ruling.
1948 - President Harry Truman creates the Fair Employment Board, to eliminate racial discrimination in federal jobs.
1954 - U.S. Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) that segregated schools are
"inherently unequal." Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, MD., begin desegregating schools.
1955 - Supreme Court prohibits segregation of recreation facilities like playgrounds. Interstate Commerce Commission
bans segregation in interstate buses, waiting rooms and railroad coaches. Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up
her bus seat in Montgomery, AL,
spurring a boycott lasting more than a year. Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy is
murdered in Mississippi after allegedly wolf-whistling at a white woman.
1956 - Montgomery bus boycott ends after federal court rules that racial segregation on the Alabama city's buses is
unconstitutional.
1957 - Civil Rights Act, permitting the federal government to sue on behalf of citizens and creating the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights, is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nine students integrate Central High School in Little Rock,
AR. Eisenhower sends para-troopers to enforce the desegregation.
1960 - President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960, giving federal government responsibility in civil rights
issues.
1961 - Thirteen Freedom Riders begin bus trip through South to force desegregation of terminals. The bus is bombed and
passengers attacked.
1963 - NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers is killed outside his home in Jackson, MS. In 1994 his killer is finally
convicted. More than 250,000 civil rights demonstrators march on Washington, D.C., where Martin Luther King delivers
his "I Have a Dream" speech.
1964 - 24th Amendment, which outlaws the poll tax requirement, is ratified and added to U.S. Constitution. U.S.
Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination in public places, schools, lodging, federal programs
and employment. Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
1965 - King leads 200 marchers from Selma to Montgomery, AL to protest racial discrimination. Malcolm X is
assassinated. Riots breakout in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles after a clash between black residents and white
police.
1966 - Civil rights activist James Meredith is wounded by a sniper during a voter registration march. The next day, nearly
4,000 blacks register to vote. Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts elected first black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
Barbara Jordan becomes first black to serve in Texas state senate since 1883. She later serves in U.S. Congress before
death in January 1996.
1967 - In Newark, NJ, delegates at the Black Power Conference call for partitioning the U.S. into two independent nations,
one for whites and one for blacks.
1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated after addressing striking garbage workers in Memphis, TN. President Lyndon
B. Johnson signs the 1968 Housing Act prohibiting discrimination in sale, rental or lease of housing. Shirley Chisholm of
New York is first black woman elected to U.S. Congress.
1969 - James Earl Ray pleads guilty to murdering Martin Luther King and is sentenced to 99 years in prison.
1970 - Senate extends the Voting Rights Act of 1965 banning literacy tests.
1983 - President Ronald Reagan approves law making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday. Vanessa
Williams is crowned first black Miss America
1988 - Rev. Jesse Jackson places second in Democratic presidential race, winning 13 primaries and caucuses.
Colin Powell becomes first black Chief of Staff for U.S. Armed Forces. In 1995, he considers and then rejects a run for
U.S. President.
1991 - Anita Hill, an African-American law professor, testifies that African-American Supreme Court nominee Clarence
Thomas sexually harassed her, sparking nationwide debate.
1992 - Los Angeles police accused of beating African-American motorist Rodney King are found not guilty, sparking riots
across the city.
1995 - Former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of murdering his wife after 13-month "trial of the century." Verdict
divides nation on racial lines; most whites feel he is guilty, most African-Americans agree with the not-guilty verdict.
1996 - Oakland, CA, plan to use black English, or Ebonics, in schools sparks nationwide debate.
1999 - NAACP launches campaign against TV networks to increase number of minorities in shows.
2000 - Colin Powell becomes the first black U.S. Secretary of State.