Timeline of African-American history

16th century

• 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, 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 [History of slavery in Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia (U.S. state)|slavery would continue in Georgia] until 1865.

• The Spanish colony of St. Augustine in Florida became the first permanent European settlement in what would become the U.S. centuries later. It included an unknown number of enslaved Africans.

17th century

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• September 20 - The Province of Maryland passes the first law in Colonial America [Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States|banning Miscegenation|interracial marriage].

• 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.

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

• French king Louis XIV issues the Code Noir, a slave code which applies to France's overseas colonies, including Louisiana.

18th century

• 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.

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

• First free African-American community: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose in Spanish Florida.

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

• Phillis Wheatley has her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral published.

• 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: Baptist Church in South Carolina, and First African Baptist Church near Petersburg, Virginia.

• 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 escaped 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, escaped to the British or otherwise leave their plantations. After the war, many African Americans were 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 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 the 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 wholly 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.

1794

• March 14Eli 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 Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church of what would become, in 1816, the first independent black denomination in the United States.

19th century

1800–1859

• The first Black Codes enacted.

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

• 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.

• 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.

• The first separate black denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 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.

• 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.

• March 6The Missouri Compromise allows for the entry as states of Maine and Missouri ; 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.

• The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is formed.

• July 14Denmark Vesey's planned slave rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina is suppressed.

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

• SeptemberDavid Walker begins publication of the abolitionist pamphlet Walker's Appeal.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 in April 1837 and now known as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

• July 2Slaves revolt on the La Amistad, an illegal slave ship, resulting in a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court and their gaining freedom.

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

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

• 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.

• Publication of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself.

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

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

• DecemberClotel; or, The President's Daughter, by Williams Wells Brown, is the first novel published by an African-American.

• 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.

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

• May 21The Sacking of Lawrence in Bleeding Kansas.
• May 25John 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.

• 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.

• 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

• April 12The American Civil War begins, 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.
• 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 30Frémont Emancipation in Missouri.
• September 11Lincoln orders Frémont to rescind the edict.

• March 13Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves.
• April 16 – 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]

• 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.
• 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.

• 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.

• 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 29Andrew 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.

• 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 is formed.
• One version of the Second Freedmen's Bureau Act is vetoed and fails; another is vetoed and passed via override in July.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church founded.
• First two Enforcement Acts.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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. 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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

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

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

• 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.

• May 18In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds de jure racial segregation of "separate but equal" facilities..
• 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.

• 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.

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

20th century

1900–1949

• 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.

• 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."

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

• National Primitive Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. formed.

• December 26Jack 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.

• February 12Planned first meeting of group which would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 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 [Springfield Race (human categorization)|race riot of 1908|lynch mob] moves through Springfield, Illinois burning the homes and businesses of black people and black sympathisers, killing many.

• 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.

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

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

• January 9Phi 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.

• February 8The 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 9Carter 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.

• JanuaryCarter 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..
• 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.

• May–JuneEast St. Louis Riot.
• August 23Houston 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 Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• 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.

• 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, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns six convictions for denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

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

• May 23Shuffle 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.

• November 12Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, was founded at Butler University.

• 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.

• 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

• SpringAmerican Negro Labor Congress is founded.
• August 835,000 Ku Klux Klan members march in Washington, D.C.
• Countee Cullen publishes his first collection of poems in Color.
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is organized.
• The Harlem Renaissance is named after the anthology The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke.

• The Harlem Globetrotters are founded.
• Historian Carter G. Woodson proposes Negro History Week.
• 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 Fourteenth 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.

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

• 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.
• Hallelujah! is released, one of the first films to star an all-black cast.

• 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.
• 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.

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

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

• Hocutt v. Wilson unsuccessfully challenged segregation in higher education in the United States.

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

• OctoberNegro National Congress meets at the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada

• 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 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 is formed, becoming the nation's first non-segregated youth sport.
• August 21Five African-American men recruited and trained by African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker 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.

• 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 25Benjamin 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.

• January 25A. 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 USthe Interstate Commerce Clause is used to successfully desegregate seating on trains.

• Six non-violence activists in the Fellowship of Reconciliation found the Committee on Racial Equality, which becomes the Congress of Racial Equality.

• 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.

• 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 7Adam 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]

• 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.

• 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.

• April 9The Congress of Racial Equality sends 16 men on the Journey of Reconciliation.
• April 15Jackie 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.

• 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.
• 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.

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

1950–1959

• 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.
• Ralph Bunche wins the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize.
• Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel Clifton and Earl Lloyd break the barriers into the NBA.

• 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 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.

• January 5Governor of Georgia Herman Talmadge criticizes television shows for depicting blacks and whites as equal.
• January 28Briggs 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 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.

• June 8The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation in Washington, DC restaurants.
• August 13Executive 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.

• 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 Brownv. Board of Education.
• 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.
• NovemberCharles 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.

• January 7Marian Anderson 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 7NAACP 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.

• 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 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."
• 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 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.

• February 8Georgia Senate votes to declare the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 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 15New 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 27Civil 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.

• 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.
• AugustJimmy 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.

• January 9One Federal judge throws out segregation on Atlanta, GA buses, while another orders Montgomery registrars to comply with the Civil Rights Commission.
• January 12Motown 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 24Mack 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

• 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, 1960Houston'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 7Felton 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 is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• April 19Z. 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 28William 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.
• June 28Bayard Rustin resigns from SCLC after condemnation by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
• July 11To 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, 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 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.

• January 11Rioting over court-ordered admission of first two African Americans at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension, but they are ordered reinstated.
• January 31Member of the Congress of Racial Equality 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, 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.
• May 17the Nashville Student Movement, coordinated by Diane Nash and James Bevel, takes up the Freedom Ride, signaling the increased involvement of SNCC.
• May 20Freedom Riders are assaulted in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station.
• May 21Dr. King, the Freedom Riders, and congregation of 1,500 at Reverend Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church in Montgomery are besieged by mob of segregationists; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sends federal marshals to protect them.
• May 29Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, citing the 1955 landmark ICC ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Boynton v. Virginia, petitions the ICC to enforce desegregation in interstate travel.
• June–AugustU.S. Department of Justice initiates talks with civil rights groups and foundations on beginning Voter Education Project.
• JulySCLC begins citizenship classes; Andrew J. Young hired to direct the program. Bob Moses begins voter registration in McComb, Mississippi.
• SeptemberJames Forman becomes SNCC's Executive Secretary.
• September 23The Interstate Commerce Commission, at Robert F. Kennedy's insistence, issues new rules ending discrimination in interstate travel, effective November 1, 1961, six years after the ICC's own ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company.
• September 25Voter registration activist Herbert Lee killed in McComb, Mississippi.
• November 1All interstate buses required to display a certificate that reads: "Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission."
• November 1SNCC workers Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon and nine Chatmon Youth Council members test new ICC rules at Trailways bus station in Albany, Georgia.
• November 17SNCC workers help encourage and coordinate black activism in Albany, Georgia, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition.
• November 22Three high school students from Chatmon's Youth Council arrested after using "positive actions" by walking into white sections of the Albany bus station.
• November 22Albany State College students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.
• December 10Freedom Riders from Atlanta, SNCC leader Charles Jones, and Albany State student Bertha Gober are arrested at Albany Union Railway Terminal, sparking mass demonstrations, with hundreds of protesters arrested over the next five days.
• December 11–15Five hundred protesters arrested in Albany, Georgia.
• December 15King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.
• December 16Dr. King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.
• December 18Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; King leaves town.
• Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League and begins expanding its size and mission.
• Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin, a white southerner who deliberately tanned and dyed his skin to allow him to directly experience the life of the Negro in the Deep South, is published, displaying the brutality of "Jim Crow" segregation to a national audience.

• January 18–20Student protests over sit-in leaders' expulsions at Baton Rouge's Southern University, the nation's largest black school, close it down.
• FebruaryRepresentatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the Council of Federated Organizations. A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project.
• February 26Segregated transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate, ruled unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court.
• MarchSNCC workers sit-in at U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's office to protest jailings in Baton Rouge.
• March 20FBI installs wiretaps on NAACP activist Stanley Levison's office.
• April 3Defense Department orders full racial integration of military reserve units, except the National Guard.
• April 9Corporal Roman Duckworth shot by a police officer in Taylorsville, Mississippi.
• JuneLeroy Willis becomes first black graduate of the University of Virginia College of Arts and Sciences.
• JuneSNCC workers establish voter registration projects in rural southwest Georgia.
• July 10August 28 SCLC renews protests in Albany; King in jail July 10–12 and July 27 – August 10.
• August 31Fannie Lou Hamer attempts to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi.
• September 9Two black churches used by SNCC for voter registration meetings are burned in Sasser, Georgia.
• September 20James Meredith is barred from becoming the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
• September 30-October 1U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black orders James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss.; he enrolls and a riot ensues. French photographer Paul Guihard and Oxford resident Ray Gunter are killed.
• OctoberLeflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive.
• October 23FBI begins Communist Infiltration investigation of SCLC.
• November 7–8Edward Brooke selected Massachusetts Attorney General, Leroy Johnson elected Georgia State Senator, Augustus F. Hawkins elected first black from California in Congress.
• November 20Attorney General Kennedy authorizes FBI wiretap on Stanley Levison's home telephone.
• November 20President Kennedy upholds 1960 presidential campaign promise to eliminate housing segregation by signing Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in Federally funded housing.

• January 18Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address.
• April 3–May 10The Birmingham campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights challenges city leaders and business owners in Birmingham, Alabama, with daily mass demonstrations.
• AprilMary Lucille Hamilton, Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, refuses to answer a judge in Gadsden, Alabama, until she is addressed by the honorific "Miss". It was the custom of the time to address white people by honorifics and people of color by their first names. Hamilton is jailed for contempt of court and refuses to pay bail. The case Hamilton v. Alabama is filed by the NAACP. It was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1964 that courts must address persons of color with the same courtesy extended to whites.
• April 7Ministers John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith and A. D. King lead a group of 2,000 marchers to protest the jailing of movement leaders in Birmingham.
• April 12Dr. King is arrested in Birmingham for "parading without a permit".
• April 16Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail is completed.
• April 23CORE activist William L. Moore is murdered in Gadsden, Alabama.
• May 2–4Birmingham's juvenile court is inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested after James Bevel launches his "D-Day" youth march. The actions spans three days to become the Birmingham Children's Crusade.
• May 9–10After images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on protesters are televised, the Children's Crusade lays the groundwork for the terms of a negotiated truce on Thursday, May 9 puts an end to mass demonstrations in return for rolling back oppressive segregation laws and practices. Dr. King and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth announce the settlement terms on Friday, May 10, only after King holds out to orchestrate the release of thousands of jailed demonstrators with bail money from Harry Belafonte and Robert Kennedy.
• May 11–12Double bombing in Birmingham, probably conducted by the KKK in cooperation with local police, precipitates rioting, police retaliation, intervention of state troopers, and finally mobilization of federal troops.
• May 13In United States of America and Interstate Commerce Commission v. the City of Jackson, Mississippi et al., the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit rules the city's attempt to circumvent laws desegregating interstate transportation facilities by posting sidewalk signs outside Greyhound, Trailways and Illinois Central terminals reading "Waiting Room for White Only — By Order Police Department" and "Waiting Room for Colored OnlyBy Order Police Department" to be unlawful.
• May 24A group of Black leaders meets with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss race relations.
• May 29Violence escalates at NAACP picket of Philadelphia construction site.
• May 30Police attack Florida A&M anti-segregation demonstrators with tear gas; arrest 257.
• June 9Fannie Lou Hamer is among several SNCC workers badly beaten by police in the Winona, Mississippi, jail after their bus stops there.
• June 11"The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door": Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation by the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Wallace only stands aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama National Guard. Later in life he apologizes for his opposition to racial integration then.
• June 11President Kennedy makes his historic civil rights address, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes", in his speech he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves."
• June 12NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi.
• Summer80,000 blacks quickly register to vote in Mississippi by a test project to show their desire to participate.
• June 19President Kennedy sends Congress his proposed Civil Rights Act. White leaders in business and philanthropy gather at the Carlyle Hotel to raise initial funds for the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership
• August 28Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Northwest Baltimore, County, Maryland is desegregated.
• August 28March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held. King gives his I Have a Dream speech.
• September 10Birmingham, Alabama City Schools are integrated by National Guardsmen under orders from President Kennedy.
• September 1516th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham kills four young girls. That same day, in response to the killings, James Bevel and Diane Nash begin the Alabama Project, which will later grow into the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
• September 19 - Iota Phi Theta fraternity was founded at Morgan State College
• November 10Malcolm X delivers "Message to the Grass Roots" speech, calling for unity against the white power structure and criticizing the March on Washington.
• November 22President Kennedy is assassinated. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, decides that accomplishing Kennedy's legislative agenda is his best strategy, which he pursues.

• All yearThe Alabama Voting Rights Project continues organizing as Bevel, Nash, and James Orange work without the support of SCLC.
• January 23Twenty-fourth Amendment abolishes the poll tax for Federal elections.
• SummerMississippi Freedom Summer – voter registration in the state. Create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to elect an alternative slate of delegates for the national convention, as blacks are still officially disfranchised.
• April 13Sidney Poitier wins the Academy Award for Best Actor for role in Lilies of the Field.
• June 21Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three civil rights workers disappear, later to be found murdered.
• June 28Organization of Afro-American Unity is founded by Malcolm X, lasts until his death.
• July 2Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed, banning discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations.
• AugustCongress passes the Economic Opportunity Act which, among other things, provides federal funds for legal representation of Native Americans in both civil and criminal suits. This allows the ACLU and the American Bar Association to represent Native Americans in cases that later win them additional civil rights.
• AugustThe Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates challenge the seating of all-white Mississippi representatives at the Democratic national convention.
• December 10Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person so honored.
• December 14In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

• February 18A peaceful protest march in Marion, Alabama leads to Jimmie Lee Jackson being shot by Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler. Jackson dies on February 26, and Fowler is indicted for his murder in 2007.
• February 21Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan, New York, probably by three members of the Nation of Islam.
• March 7Bloody Sunday: Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama, begin the Selma to Montgomery march but are forcibly stopped by a massive Alabama State trooper and police blockade as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many marchers are injured. This march, initiated and organized by James Bevel, becomes the visual symbol of the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
• March 15President Lyndon Johnson uses the phrase "We Shall Overcome" in a speech before Congress on the voting rights bill.
• March 25After the completion of the Selma to Montgomery March a white volunteer Viola Liuzzo is shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama, one of whom was an FBI informant.
• June 2Black deputy sheriff Oneal Moore is murdered in Varnado, Louisiana.
• July 2Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opens.
• August 6Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson. It eliminated literacy tests, poll tax, and other subjective voter tests that were widely responsible for the disfranchisement of African Americans in the Southern States and provided Federal oversight of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such discriminatory tests were used.
• August 11–15Following the accusations of mistreatment and police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department towards the city's African-American community, Watts riots erupt in South Central Los Angeles which lasted over five days. Over 34 were killed, 1,032 injured, 3,438 arrested, and cost over $40 million in property damage in the Watts riots.
• SeptemberRaylawni Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong become the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi.
• September 15Bill Cosby co-stars in I Spy, becoming the first black person to appear in a starring role on American television.
• September 24President Johnson signs Executive Order 11246 requiring Equal Employment Opportunity by federal contractors.

• January 10NAACP local chapter president Vernon Dahmer is injured by a bomb in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He dies the next day.
• June 5James Meredith begins a solitary March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. Shortly after starting, he is shot with birdshot and injured. Civil rights leaders and organizations rally and continue the march leading to, on June 16, Stokely Carmichael first using the slogan Black power in a speech.
• SummerThe Chicago Open Housing Movement, led by King, Bevel, and Al Raby, includes a large rally, marches, and demands to Mayor Richard J. Daley and the City of Chicago which are discussed in a movement-ending Summit Conference.
• SeptemberNichelle Nichols is cast as a female black officer on television's Star Trek. She briefly considers leaving the role, but is encouraged by Dr. King to continue as an example for their community.
• OctoberBlack Panther Party founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
• NovemberEdward Brooke is elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. He is the first black senator since 1881.

• January 9Julian Bond is seated in the Georgia House of Representatives by order of the U.S. Supreme Court after his election.
• April 4King delivers his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, calling for defeat of "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism".
• June 12In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional.
• June 13Thurgood Marshall is the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• July 23–27The Detroit riot erupts in Detroit, Michigan, for five days following a raid by the Detroit Police Department on an unlicensed club which celebrated the returning Vietnam Veteran hosted by mostly African Americans. More than 43 were killed, 467 injured, 7,231 arrested, and 2,509 stores looted or burned during the riot. It was one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in United States history, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit's 1943 race riot.
• August 2The film In the Heat of the Night is released, starring Sidney Poitier.
• November 17Philadelphia Student School Board Demonstration, 26 demands peacefully issued by students, but event became a police riot.
• December 11The film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is released, also with Sidney Poitier.
• In the trial of accused killers in the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the jury convicts 7 of 18 accused men. Conspirator Edgar Ray Killen is later convicted in 2005.
• The film The Great White Hope starring James Earl Jones is released; it is based on the experience of heavyweight Jack Johnson.
• The book Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools is published.

• February 1Two Memphis sanitation workers are killed in the line of duty, exacerbating labor tensions.
• February 8The Orangeburg massacre occurs during university protest in South Carolina.
• February 12First day of the Memphis sanitation strike
• MarchWhile filming a prime time television special, Petula Clark touches Harry Belafonte's arm during a duet. Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor, insists the moment be deleted, but Clark stands firm, destroys all other takes of the song, and delivers the completed program to NBC with the touch intact. The show is broadcast on April 8, 1968.
• April 3King returns to Memphis; delivers "Mountaintop" speech.
• April 4Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.
• April 4–8 and one in May 1968In response to the killing of Dr. King, over 150 cities experience rioting.
• April 11Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed. The Fair Housing Act is Title VIII of this Civil Rights Act – it bans discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. The law is passed following a series of contentious open housing campaigns throughout the urban North. The most significant of these campaigns were the Chicago Open Housing Movement of 1966 and organized events in Milwaukee during 1967–68. In both cities, angry white mobs attacked nonviolent protesters.
• May 12Poor People's Campaign marches on Washington, DC.
• June 6Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a Civil Rights advocate, is assassinated after winning the California presidential primary. His appeal to minorities helped him secure the victory.
• September 17Diahann Carroll stars in the title role in Julia, as the first African-American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.
• October 3The play The Great White Hope opens; it runs for 546 performances and later becomes a film.
• OctoberTommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists to symbolize black power and unity after winning the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games.
• November 22First interracial kiss on American television, between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner on Star Trek.
• In Powe v. Miles, a federal court holds that the portions of private colleges that are funded by public money are subject to the Civil Rights Act.
• Shirley Chisholm becomes the first African-American woman elected to Congress.

• January 8–18Student protesters at Brandeis University take over Ford and Sydeman Halls, demanding creation of an Afro-American Department. This is approved by the University on April 24.
• February 13National Guard with teargas and riot sticks crush a pro-black student demonstration at University of Wisconsin.
• February 16After 3 days of clashes between police and Duke University students, the school agrees to establish a Black Studies program.
• February 23UNC Food Worker Strike begins when workers abandon their positions in Lenoir Hall protesting racial injustice
• April 3–4National Guard called into Chicago, and Memphis placed on curfew on anniversary of MLK's assassination.
• April 19Armed African-American students protesting discrimination take over Willard Straight Hall, the student union building at Cornell University. They end the seizure the following day after the university accedes to their demands, including an Afro-American studies program.
• April 25–28Activist students takeover Merrill House at Colgate University demanding Afro-American studies programs.
• May 8City College of New York closed following a two-week-long campus takeover demanding Afro-American and Puerto-Rican studies; riots among students break out when the school tries to reopen.
• JuneThe second of two US federal appeals court decisions confirms members of the public hold legal standing to participate in broadcast station license hearings, and under the Fairness Doctrine finds the record of segregationist TV station WLBT beyond repair. The FCC is ordered to open proceedings for a new licensee.
• September 1–2Race rioting in Hartford, CT and Camden, NJ.
• October 29The U.S. Supreme Court in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education orders immediate desegregation of public schools, signaling the end of the "all deliberate speed" doctrine established in Brown II.
• DecemberFred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, is shot and killed while asleep in bed during a police raid on his home.
• United Citizens Party is formed in South Carolina when Democratic Party refuses to nominate African-American candidates.
• W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research founded at Harvard University.
• The Revised Philadelphia Plan is instituted by the Department of Labor.
• The Congressional Black Caucus is formed.

1970–2000

• January 19G. Harrold Carswell's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is rejected following protests from the NAACP and feminists.
• April 23Black Panther Marshall "Eddie" Conway arrested in Baltimore, MD.
• May 27The film Watermelon Man is released, directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge. The film is a comedy about a bigoted white man who wakes up one morning to discover that his skin pigment has changed to black.
• August 7Marin County courthouse incident.
• August 14Hoover adds Angela Davis to FBI Most Wanted list.
• October 13Angela Davis captured in New York City.
• First blaxploitation films released.

• April 20The U.S. Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds desegregation busing of students to achieve integration.
• April 27FBI officially ends COINTELPRO
• JuneControl of segregationist TV station WLBT given to a bi-racial foundation.
• June 4Angela Davis acquitted of all charges.
• August 21George Jackson shot to death in San Quentin Prison.
• Ernest J. Gaines's Reconstruction-era novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is published.

• January 25Shirley Chisholm becomes the first major-party African-American candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
• November 16In Baton Rouge, two Southern University students are killed by white sheriff deputies during a school protest over lack of funding from the state. The university's Smith-Brown Memorial Union is named as a memorial to them.
• November 16The infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment ends. Begun in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service's 40-year experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis has been described as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."

• May 8Nelson Rockefeller signs the Rockefeller Drug Laws for New York state with draconian indeterminate sentences for drug possession, as well as sale.
• July 31FBI ends Ghetto Informant Program
• Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist group, is established in Boston, out of New York's National Black Feminist Organization.

• July 25In Milliken v. Bradley, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision holds that outlying districts could only be forced into a desegregation busing plan if there was a pattern of violation on their part. This decision reinforces the trend of white flight.
• Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc Collective, the first "out" organization for lesbians, womanists and women of color formed in New York City.

• April 30In the pilot episode of Starsky and Hutch, Richard Ward plays an African-American supervisor of white American employees for the first time on TV.

• FebruaryBlack History Month is founded by Carter Woodson's Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.
• The novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley is published.
• Runyon v. McCrary bars segregation in private schools whereas Brown only applies to public schools

• Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist group, publishes the Combahee River Collective Statement.
• President Jimmy Carter appoints Andrew Young to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations, the first African American to serve in the position.

• June 28Regents of the University of California v. Bakke bars racial quota systems in college admissions but affirms the constitutionality of affirmative action programs giving equal access to minorities.

• United Steelworkers of America v. Weber is a case regarding affirmative action in which the U.S. Supreme Court holds that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not bar employers from favoring women and minorities.
• November 2Assata Shakur escapes from prison.

• December 9Mumia Abu-Jamal arrested.

• Charles Fuller writes A Soldier's Play, which is later made into the film A Soldier's Story.
• November 30Michael Jackson releases Thriller, which becomes the best-selling album of all time.

• May 24The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Bob Jones University did not qualify as either a tax-exempt or a charitable organization due to its racially discriminatory practices.
• August 30Guion Bluford becomes the first African-American to go into space.
• November 2President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., fifteen years after his death.
• Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple.

• September 13The film A Soldier's Story is released, dealing with racism in the U.S. military.
• The Cosby Show begins, and is regarded as one of the defining television shows of the decade.
• First contract for complete privatization of a prison is awarded to Corrections Corporation of America, beginning a new era of racially disproportionate mass incarceration.

• May 13Bombing of MOVE house in Philadelphia

• January 20Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is first celebrated as a national holiday.
• October 27Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 establishes 100:1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine

• The Public Broadcasting Service's six-part documentary Eyes on the Prize is first shown, covering the years 1954–1965. In 1990 it is added to by the eight-part Eyes on the Prize II covering the years 1965–1985.
• Benjamin Carson became the first person in history to separate conjoined twins that were joined at the head.

• Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988.
• December 9The film Mississippi Burning is released, regarding the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

• February 10Ron Brown is elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African American to lead a major United States political party.
• October 1Colin Powell becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• December 15The film Glory is released: it features African-American Civil War soldiers.

• January 13Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African-American governor as he takes office in Richmond, Virginia.

• March 3Four white police officers are videotaped beating African-American Rodney King in Los Angeles.
• October 15Senate confirms the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• November 21Civil Rights Act of 1991 enacted.
• Henry Louis Gates Jr. becomes Harvard University's Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

• April 29The 1992 Los Angeles riots erupt after the officers accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted.
• September 12Mae Carol Jemison becomes the first African-American woman to travel in space when she goes into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
• November 3Carol Moseley Braun becomes the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate.
• November 18Director Spike Lee's film Malcolm X is released.

• March 29Cornel West's text Race Matters is published.

• June 30In Miller v. Johnson the U.S. Supreme Court rules that gerrymandering based on race is unconstitutional.
• October 16Million Man March in Washington, D.C., co-initiated by Louis Farrakhan and James Bevel.

• 16 MayPresident Bill Clinton apologizes to victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment
• July 9Director Spike Lee releases his documentary 4 Little Girls, about the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
• October 25Million Woman March in Philadelphia.

• June 7James Byrd Jr. is brutally murdered by white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. The scene is reminiscent of earlier lynchings. In response, Byrd's family create the James Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing.
• October 23The film American History X is released, powerfully highlighting the problems of urban racism.

• Franklin Raines becomes the first black CEO of a fortune 500 company.
• February 4Amadou Diallo shooting by New York Police

• May 3Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist South Carolina private institution, ends its ban on interracial dating.

21st century

2001–2010

• January 20Colin Powell becomes Secretary of State.

• Cynthia McKinney introduces a proposed Martin Luther King Jr. Records Collection Act.

• June 23The U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger upholds the University of Michigan Law School's admission policy. However, in the simultaneously heard Gratz v. Bollinger the university is required to change a policy.

• June 21Edgar Ray Killen is convicted of participating in the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.
• October 15The Millions More Movement holds a march in Washington D.C.
• October 25Rosa Parks dies at age 92. Her solitary action spearheaded the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. Her body lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. before interment.

• March 26Capitol Hill police fail to recognize Cynthia McKinney as a member of Congress.

• May 10Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler is indicted for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson on February 18, 1965.
• June 28Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 decided along with Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education prohibits assigning students to public schools solely for the purpose of achieving racial integration and declines to recognize racial balancing as a compelling state interest.
• December 10U.S. Supreme Court rules 7–2 in Kimbrough v. United States that judges may deviate from federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine.

• June 3Barack Obama receives enough delegates by the end of state primaries to be the presumptive Democratic Party of the United States nominee.
• July 12Cynthia McKinney accepts the Green Party nomination in the Presidential race.
• July 30United States Congress apologizes for slavery and "Jim Crow".
• August 28At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, in a stadium filled with supporters, Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
• November 4Barack Obama elected 44th President of the United States of America, opening his victory speech with, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

• January 20Barack Obama sworn in and offered Sherrod a new position as the 44th President of the United States, the first African-American to become president.
• January 30Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele becomes the first African-American Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
• The U.S. Postal Service issues a commemorative six-stamp set portraying twelve civil rights pioneers.
• October 6Judge Keith Bardwell refuses to officiate an interracial marriage in Louisiana.
• October 9Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

• March 14Disney officially crowns its first African-American Disney Princess, Tiana.
• July 19Shirley Sherrod first is pressured to resign from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and immediately thereafter receives its apology after she is inaccurately accused of being racist towards white Americans.
• August 3Fair Sentencing Act reducing sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine to an 18:1 ratio.

2011–2020

• January 14Michael Steele, the first African-American Chairman of the RNC lost his bid for re-election.
• August 22The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. opens to the public, and is officially dedicated on October 16.
• November 19Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.

• February 26Killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida.

• January 20Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term as president.
• March 9New York police officers shoot 16-year-old Kimani Gray, triggering weeks of protests in Brooklyn
• May 9Malcolm Shabazz killed in Mexico.
• May 2FBI promotes Assata Shakur to list of "most wanted terrorists".
• June 24State of Florida v. George Zimmerman begins.
• June 25The U.S. Supreme Court overturns part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder.
• July 13George Zimmerman acquitted, provoking nationwide protests. The Black Lives Matter movement is created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, in response to the ongoing racial profiling of and police brutality against young black men.

• August 9Shooting of Michael Brown by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri is followed by demonstrations and protests which include the term "Hands up, don't shoot". Demonstrations focused on the incident, using the "Hands up" expression, are held across the U.S. and overseas.
• July 17Eric Garner died in Staten Island, New York City, after a police officer put him in a chokehold for 15 seconds.

• June 17Nine African Americans are killed in the Charleston Church Shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, S.C.
• July 13 Sandra Bland dies in jail, days after being pulled over for a traffic stop in Texas.
• In the U.S. Supreme Court case Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.,, the Court held that Congress specifically intended to include disparate impact claims in the Fair Housing Act, but that such claims require a plaintiff to prove it is the defendant's policies that cause a disparity. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on race.
• November 1Michael Bruce Curry becomes the first African-American Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (United States), having been elected by an overwhelming margin on the first ballot of the 78th General Convention the preceding June.

• September 14, 2016 – The National Museum of African American History opens its doors for the first time, becoming the 19th museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

• March 13 – Shooting of Breonna Taylor
• May 25 – The murder of George Floyd leads to a cascade of protests with mottos such as "I can't breathe" and "Defund the police", and the mass of removals of Confederate monuments and renaming of slave-trade memorials around the world.
• May 25 – Central Park birdwatching incident, followed by Black Birders Week
• June 12 – Killing of Rayshard Brooks
• August 19 - First African-American to be nominated as a major party U.S. vice-presidential candidate: Kamala Harris, Democratic Party
• August 23 – Shooting of Jacob Blake
• November 7 - First African-American elected Vice President of the United States: Kamala Harris

2021-2022

• January 20 – Kamala Harris sworn in as 49th Vice President of the United States, the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president as well as the first woman vice president.
• April 11 – The Killing of Daunte Wright

• A 2022 Buffalo shooting occurs killing 10, with the shooter live streaming the attack on Twitch. The majority of victims are African American, with the shooter driving over 200 km to reach the supermarket in which it occurred in.