Black History Timeline: 1800-1896

19th CENTURY

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

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

1808, Congress mandated that all importation of slaves from Africa is now banned. This mandate set down more lines for the conflict, known as the Civil War. The mandate was trying to be appealed by Southerners in the 1850s but later failed. The importation of slaves is a felony.

1816 Robert Finley begins the American Colonization Society to send free African Americans to what will become Liberia in West Africa.

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

1822 The American Colonization Society, founded by Presbyterian minister Robert Finley, established the colony of Monrovia (which would eventually become the country of Liberia) in western Africa. The society contends that the immigration of blacks to Africa is an answer to the problem of slavery and to what it feels is the incompatibility of the races. Over the next forty years, about 12,000 slaves are voluntarily relocated.

1829 September â€“ David Walker begins publication of the abolitionist pamphlet Walker’s Appeal.

David Walker’s Appeal

1830 October 28 “ Josiah 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 Nat Turner, an enslaved black preacher, led the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his followers launch a short, bloody rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. The militia quells the rebellion, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.

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1831 William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.

1837 February â€“ The first Institute of Higher Education for African Americans is founded. It was founded as the African Institute in February 1837 and renamed the Institute of Coloured Youth (ICY) in April 1837 and is now known as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. The Institute for Colored Youth (ICY) was a school for Black American youth to receive an education and be part of American society.

1839, Fifty-three African slaves on board the slave ship the Amistad revolted against their captors, killing all but the ship’s navigator, who sailed them to Long Island, N.Y., instead of their intended destination, Africa. Joseph Cinqué was the group’s leader. The slaves aboard the ship became unwitting symbols for the antislavery movement in the pre-Civil War United States. After several trials in which local and federal courts argued that the slaves were taken as kidnap victims rather than merchandise, the slaves were acquitted. The former slaves aboard the Spanish vessel Amistad secured passage home to Africa with the help of sympathetic missionary societies in 1842.

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1839 July 2 “ Slaves 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.

1846 Frederick Douglass launches his abolitionist newspaper.

1849 Roberts v. Boston seeks to end racial discrimination in Boston public schools.

1849, Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery and participated in the Underground Railroad. Because of her participation, she later became the movement’s most influential and celebrated leader. She worked hard enough to save seventy Blacks from slavery.

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1850 The continuing debate whether territory gained in the Mexican War should be open to slavery is decided in the Compromise of 1850 (includes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850): California is admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty, and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., is prohibited. It also established a much stricter fugitive slave law than the original, passed in 1793.

1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published. It becomes one of the most influential works to stir anti-slavery D.

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

1854 Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The legislation repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and renews tensions between anti- and pro-slavery factions.

1854 Violence erupted in Kansas, commonly called Bleeding Kansas or the Border War.

1857 The Dred Scott case holds that Congress has no right to ban slavery in states and that slaves are not citizens. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds slavery. This decision is regarded as a key cause of the American Civil War.

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1859 John Brown and 21 followers capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia.), in an attempt to launch a slave revolt.

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1861 April 12 â€“ The American Civil War begins. 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 travelled with the Union Army. By the war’s end, 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.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress

1862 September 22 “ Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation to go into effect January 1, 1863.

1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. (Lincoln, however, initially signed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.) It was “that all persons held as slaves” within the Confederate states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

1863 June 1st, Harriet Tubman, the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, liberate 750 people with the Raid at Combahee Ferry.

1865  Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery.

1865 The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Tennessee by ex-Confederates (May).

Southern states pass 1865-66 Black codes. It was created to restrict the freedom of ex-slaves in the South.

Black Codes & Black Codes for Kids

1867 The Reconstruction Act was passed, which assigned the military to organize the local government. It ensured ex-slaves received the full right to vote and denied the right to vote to supporters of the Confederacy.

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1867 February 14 The college was founded as Augusta Institute by a Baptist minister and cabinetmaker, Reverand William Jefferson White, in Augusta, Georgia. The college was housed in Springfield Baptist Church (the oldest independent African American church in the United States).

1867 March 2 “ missionaries founded Howard University as a training facility for black preachers. The school was named after Civil War hero General Oliver O. Howard, a white man serving as the Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau.

1869  Howard University’s law school becomes the country’s first black law school.

1868 Elizabeth Keckly (a former slave who became a successful seamstress and civil activist) published Behind the Scenes (Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House).

1868 April 1st “ Hampton Institute was founded in Hampton, Virginia.

1870 Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote.

In 1870 Hiram Revels of Mississippi was elected the country’s first Black senator. Sixteen blacks served in Congress, and about 600 served in state legislatures.

1871 October 10th Octavius Catto, a civil rights activist, is murdered during harassment of blacks on Election Day in Philadelphia.

1875 March 1st“The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was signed. It affirmed the “equality of all men before the law” and prohibited racial discrimination in public places and facilities such as restaurants and public transportation.

1875 The Mississippi Plan to intimidate blacks and suppress black voter registration and voting. Their state government was trying to prevent Black political participation.

1876  Lewis Latimer prepared drawings for Alexander Graham Bell’s application for a telephone patent

1879 The Black Exodus takes place, in which tens of thousands of African Americans migrated from southern states to Kansas.

1881 Spelman College, the first college for black women in the U.S., is founded by Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles.

1881  Booker T. Washington establishes the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. The school becomes one of the leading schools of higher learning for Black Americans and stresses the practical application of knowledge.

1883  In Civil Rights Cases, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional.

1884  Judy W. Reed of Washington, D.C., and Sarah E. Goode, of Chicago, are the first African-American women inventors to receive patents. Reed’s license is for a dough kneader and roller—Goode’s patent is for a cabinet bed.

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson, This landmark Supreme Court decision holds that racial segregation is constitutional, paving the way for the repressive Jim Crow laws in the South.

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1896 Ida B. Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company for using segregated “Jim Crow” cars.

Learn Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern Railroad Company v Ida B. Wellsore

1887 October 3rd “ Florida A&M University was founded, first named The State Normal School for Colored Students.

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

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases By Ida B. Wells-Barnett

1895 W. E. B. Du Bois was the first African-American to be awarded a Ph.D. by Harvard University.

1896 The National Association of Colored Women was formed by the merger of smaller groups

In 1896 George Washington Carver began teaching at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama as director of the Department of agricultural research, gaining an international reputation for his agricultural advances.

Work Cited

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Timeline of African-American history – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_African-American_history

History – Chapter 11 Flashcards | Quizlet. https://quizlet.com/1701823/history-chapter-11-flash-cards/

1869 Howard Universitys law school becomes the countrys …. https://www.coursehero.com/file/p5onspa/1869-Howard-Universitys-law-school-becomes-the-countrys-first-black-law-school/

FINAL EXAM History 041 Flashcards | Quizlet. https://quizlet.com/251847209/final-exam-history-041-flash-cards/

The Mississippi Plan, political deviance! – African …. https://aaregistry.org/story/the-mississippi-plan-political-deviance/

The Evolution of Business timeline | Timetoast timelines. https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-evolution-of-business