1500's to 1700's
During this century the Dutch, Spanish & Portuguese began trafficking African people in the brutal slave trade.
What is 1500's?
In this year The African Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts became the the first major building in Boston constructed solely by African Americans.
What is 1806?
During this year The Civil War began between the North and the South.
What is 1861?
In this year Jan Matzeliger patents the first successful shoe lasting machine.
What is 1883?
In this year Maggie Lena Walker established the St. Luke's Penny Savings Bank, which became the St. Luke Bank and Trust Company. She also became America's first Black woman bank president.
What is 1903?
In this year Negro History Week, now Black History Month, was begun by Carter G. Woodson.
What is 1926?
In this year Wilma Randolph became the first women to win three gold medals at the Olympics.
What is 1960?
In this year Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
What is 1990?
During this year the number of American slaves increased rapidly as the British gain control over much of the slave trade.
What is 1660?
During this year Denmark Vesey organized a slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina.
What is 1822?
In this year, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, granting freedom to slaves in the states that were at war with the Union.
What is 1863?
In this year Ida B. Wells started her crusade against the lynching of of African Americans. She later helped to develop the NAACP.
What is 1891?
In this year Jack Johnson became the first African American heavyweight champion when he knocked out Tommy Burns in the 14th round.
What is 1908?
During this year The Edgecombe Sanitarium was established in Harlem by Dr. Wiley Wilson and associates.
What is 1928?
In this year The Freedom Rides began. Widespread civil rights activities and mass protests heighten in the US.
What is 1961?
In this year Mae C. Jemison became the first African American woman to make a space flight.
What is 1992?
Benjamin Banneker was born during this year.
What is 1731?
In this year Freedom's Journal, the first Black newspaper, was published.
What is 1827?
In this year Rebecca Cole and Rebecca Lee became the first African American women to receive medical degress.
What is 1864?
In this year, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams became the first person to perform a heart operation sucessfully.
What is 1893?
In this year the NAACP is formed.
What is 1908?
In this year the National Council of Negro Women is formed.
What is 1935?
During this year South African leader Nelson Mandela is imprisoned.
What is 1962?
In this year Toni Morrison became the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
What is 1993?
During this year, Phyllis Wheatley published her first poem, becoming the earlier known published African American woman writer.
What is 1770?
In this year Nat Turner lead a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia.
What is 1831?
In this year, the Civil War ends with Union victory.
What is 1865?
In this year George Washington Carver accepted a position of professor at Tuskegee Institute.
What is 1896?
In this year the NAACP was founded.
What is 1909?
What is 1936?
In this year a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four Black children.
What is 1963?
What is 1993?
During this year Crispus Attucks, a Black man, became one of the first people to die in the American Revolution.
What is 1775?
In this year Joseph Cinque and other captured Africans take over the slave ship Amistad, demanding to be returned to Africa.
What is 1839?
In this year Madame C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove) was born.
What is 1867?
In this year Mary Church Terrell was elected president of the NAACP.
What is 1896?
In this year Madame C.J. Walker opened her own beauty care factory. She became America's first Black self-made millionaire.
What is 1910?
In this year Frederick McKinley Jones patented refrigeration systems for trucks and railroad cars.
What is 1940?
During this year the Civil Rights Act is passed.
What is 1964?
In this year Shirly Ann Jackson became head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
What is 1995?
It was in this year the Declaration of Independence was signed.
What is 1776?
In this year Sojourner Truth started her own protest campaign against slavery.
What is 1843?
In this year, John Mercer Langston founded and organized the Law Department at Howard Univesity.
What is 1868?
In this year the US Supreme Court upheld legal segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson).
What is 1896?
In this year The Universal Negro Improvement Associate (UNIA) was founded by Marcus Garvey.
What is 1911?
In this year Dr. Charles Richard Drew became the first person to set up a blood bank. Dr. Dre found that blood plasma could be used in transfusions rather than whole blood.
What is 1940?
During this year Malcolm X was assassinated.
What is 1865?
In this year Dr. Patricia Bath receives patents for the laser method and apparatus for removing cataracts.
What is 1998?
During this year The Free African Society, the first free secular school in New York City, opened.
What is 1787?
During this year, Norbert Rillieux patented his vacuum evaporation system, which revolutionized the sugar industry and food production in general.
What is 1843?
In this year, Howard University Medical School was founded in Washington, D.C.
What is 1868?
In this year Andrew J. Beard patented a coupling device for railroad cars.
What is 1897?
What is 1914?
During this year World War II ended.
What is 1945?
During this year Arthur Ashe became the first African American male to win a major tennis tournament when he captured the singles title at the United States Lawn Tennis Association Open Tournament.
What is 1968?
In this year The Free African Society of Philadelphia, which was organized by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, was founded.
What is 1787?
In this year Harriet Tubman escaped slavery and began conducting on the Underground Railroad.
What is 1846?
In this year, Hiram M Revels becomes the first African American United States senator when he was elected from the state of Mississippi.
What is 1870?
In this year Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first African American woman to graduate from a professional White nursing school.
What is 1899?
In this year Jane C. Wright is born and Madame C.J. Walker dies.
What is 1919?
In this year Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.
What is 1947?
During this year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
What is 1968?
It was in this year that the First United States Patent Act was enacted.
What is 1790?
During this year, the right of women to vote was proposed for the first time by women's rights leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
What is 1848?
In this year P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana became the first African American to serve as governor of a state.
What is 1872?
During this decade the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.
During this year the US Supreme Court of Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, that segregation is unconstitutional.
What is 1983?
In this year Toussaint L'Ouverture leads a successful slave rebellion, allowing Haiti to become the first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere.
What is 1791?
In this year, William Wells Brown becomes America's first African American novelist when his book Clotel, Or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of a Slave Life in the United States, got published in England.
What is 1853?
What is 1881?
In this year Bessie Coleman, the first African American female pilot, performed her air show in Chicago.
What is 1922?
In this year's Wimbledon Althea Gibson became the first African American to win a singles title.
What is 1957?
During this year the space shuttle Challenger explodes on its way to outer space. Aboard were seven crew members, including Ronald McNair.
What is 1986?
It was in this year that Benjamin Banneker became the first African American to publish an almanac.
In this year, the Dred Scott decision from the US Supreme Court denied citizenship rights to Blacks.
What is 1857?
In this year Lewis H. Latimer patents the first cost-efficient method of producing carbon filaments for electric lights.
What is 1882?
In this year Garrett A. Morgan patented a three-way automatic traffic signal.
What is 1923?
In this year did Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun won the New York Drama Critics Award.
What is 1959?
During this year Jesse Jackson become the first African American to mount a serious run for the presidency of the US.
What is 1988?