Milestones
in Black History
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19 century, and used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into free states and Canada. The scheme was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. Not literally a railroad but rather a secretly organized means of movement.
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The Abolitionist Movement
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery. This term can be used both formally and informally. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and set slaves free. King Charles I of Spain, usually known as Emperor Charles V, was following the example of Louis X of France, who had abolished slavery within the Kingdom of France in 1315.
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Andry's Rebellion
Andry's Rebellion, also known as the German Coast Uprising, was a slave revolt that occurred in the Territory of Louisiana between January 8 and 10, 1811. The revolt, the largest servile uprising in United States history, was named after the owner of the plantation, Manual Andry, where the uprising originated.
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Denmark Vesey Conspiracy of 1822
Denmark Vesey and five slaves were rapidly judged guilty by the secret proceedings of a city-appointed court and executed by hanging on July 2, 1822. Vesey was about 55 years old. In later proceedings, some 30 additional followers were also executed. Another group, including his son Sandy, were convicted of conspiracy and deported from the United States.
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Nat Turner Slave Revolt
Nat Turner's Rebellion (Southampton Insurrection) was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. Rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, at least 51 being white. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards. The rebellion was effectively suppressed at Belmont Plantation on the morning of August 23, 1831.
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The Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them.
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El Paso Salt War
The San Elizario Salt War, also known as the Salinero Revolt or the El Paso Salt War, was an extended and complex range war of the mid-19th century that revolved around the ownership and control of immense salt lakes at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas.
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Battle Of Island Mound
The Skirmish at Island Mound was a skirmish of the American Civil War, occurring on October 29, 1862, in Bates County, Missouri. The Union victory is notable as the first known event in which an African-American regiment engaged in combat against Confederate forces during the war.
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Combahee River Raid
The Raid on Combahee Ferry was a military operation during the American Civil War conducted on June 1 and June 2, 1863, by elements of the Union Army along the Combahee River in Beaufort and Colleton counties in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
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The Black Codes
The Black Codes, also known as the Black Laws, were a list of restrictive laws governing the freedom of African Americans enacted in 1865 and 1866 in the states of the former Confederacy succeeding the American Civil War. Intended to satisfy the continuance of white supremacy, the Slave Codes were forerunners of the Black Codes of the mid-19th century.
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The Cockstock Affair
The Cockstock Affair is argued to be the justification that white settlers used to install Oregon’s exclusion laws against African Americans in the 1840s. As the details of the Affair have been widely debated, there are different ways of interpreting the events, causes, and outcomes.
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Booker T. Washington in Seattle, 1913
An unusual incidence of interracial solidarity between blacks and Asian Americans occurred during Booker T. Washington’s visit to Seattle. In March 1913, Washington embarked on a national speaking tour in order to raise money for Tuskegee Institute, the chronically underfunded “Normal and Industrial School” in Alabama over whose fortunes he had presided since its founding in 1881.
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The Great Migration
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1916 and 1970.
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Red Summer of 1919
Red Summer is the period from late winter through early autumn of 1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the United States, as well as in one rural county in Arkansas.
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Black Wall Street (Tulsa, Oklahoma)
The Black Wall Street Massacre, which began on May 31, 1921, was one of the worst race riots in the history of the United States, in which more than 35 square blocks were destroyed by a wave of racial terrorism that left hundreds of Black residents dead, and more than 1,000 houses burned or otherwise destroyed.
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The Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the United States. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz.
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The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the “New Negro Movement”, was an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion centered in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. The movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the Great Migration, of which Harlem was the largest.
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Rosewood Massacre
The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of black people and destruction of a black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida. At least six black people and two white people were killed, though eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll of 27 to 150.
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The Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of primarily African American military pilots (fighter and bomber) and airmen who fought in World War II. They formed the 332nd Expeditionary Operations Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Forces. The name also applies to the navigators, bombardiers, mechanics, instructors, crew chiefs, nurses, cooks and other support personnel.
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The Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a decades-long struggle with the goal of enforcing constitutional and legal rights for African Americans that white Americans already enjoyed. With roots that dated back to the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, the movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s, after years of direct actions and grassroots protests that were organized from the mid-1950s until 1968.
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The Pearsall Plan
The Pearsall Plan to Save Our Schools, known colloquially as the Pearsall Plan, was North Carolina's 1956 attempt at a moderate approach to integrate their public schools after racial segregation of schools was ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Many southern states were challenged by the Brown ruling as they faced opposition to integration from residents.
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The Stolen Girls of Americus, Georgia (1963)
In July 1963, approximately two hundred African American youth met in downtown Americus, Georgia, to peacefully protest local segregation. After sanctioning violent attacks by a white mob, police moved in to arrest the young protestors. While some protestors were shortly released, 35 young African American girls found themselves held in an abandoned Civil War-era prison for almost two months.
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Bloody Sunday (Selma, Alabama)
On March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a 600-person civil rights demonstration ends in violence when marchers are attacked and beaten by white state troopers and sheriff’s deputies. The day's events became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
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Long, Hot Summer of 1967
Long, hot summer of 1967 refers to the 159 race riots that erupted across the United States in 1967. In June there were riots in Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Tampa. In July there were riots in Birmingham, Chicago, New York City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Britain, Rochester, and Plainfield. The most destructive riots of the summer took place in July, in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan.
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1968 Olympics Black Power Salute
During their medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
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The Golden Era of Hip-Hop
Golden age hip hop is a name given to mainstream hip hop music created in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly by artists and musicians originating from the New York metropolitan area. It is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on hip hop after the genre's emergence and establishment in the previous decade.
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1992 L.A. Riots
The 1992 Los Angeles riots were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County in April and May 1992. Unrest began in South Central Los Angeles on April 29, after a trial jury acquitted four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for usage of excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King, which had been videotaped and widely viewed in TV broadcasts.
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The Million Man March
The Million Man March was a large gathering of African-American men in Washington, D.C., on October 16, 1995. Called by Louis Farrakhan, it was held on and around the National Mall. The National African American Leadership Summit, a leading group of civil rights activists and the Nation of Islam working with scores of civil rights organizations, including many local chapters of the NAACP formed the Million Man March Organizing Committee.
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Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a large and destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the costliest tropical cyclone on record and is now tied with 2017's Hurricane Harvey.
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