Loudoun County Public Schools



Continuity and Change in the Identity of African – Americans

16th-18th centuries

Tens of thousands of slaves in America as a result of reduced migration and a need for a dependable work force and cheap labor (Bacon’s Rebellion caused a change away from indentured servitude). Discriminating slave laws began to increase as well as the triangular trade.

1517 Black plantation slavery began in the New World when Spaniards begin importing slaves from Africa to replace Native Americans

1619 A Dutch ship with 20 African slaves aboard arrived at the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Many held the same status as indentured servants, yet by 1650, the Virginia House of Burgesses enacted laws that discriminated against blacks.

1739 The Stono Rebellion, in South Carolina, was one of the earliest slave insurrections.

1773 Phillis Wheatley became the first notable black woman poet in the United States

1783 By the end of the Revolutionary War, most northern states enacted gradual emancipation laws and eventually ended slavery. Some Southern slaves were emancipated as a condition of their participation in the Revolutionary War. Free blacks face discrimination, but some are able to own land and successful businesses.

1787 The Constitution included the 3/5 Compromise and stated that the slave trade would be abolished in 20 years (1808).

1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, helping to institutionalize slavery. (1 million slaves in 1800; 4 million in 1860)

Early-mid 19th Century

Slaves could have many different types of jobs: field work, skilled crafts, house servants, factory work, etc. Conditions of slavery varied from one plantation to the next. Many families were separated. By 1869, 250,000 African Americans in the South were free; however, state laws prevented equality. Many also had to be careful to avoid kidnapping by slave traders. During the early 19th century, abolitionist arguments increased, compromises were formed, and southerners developed stronger pro-slavery arguments. (justified in the Bible, better than “wage slaves” in the North, the “happy slave” myth)

1800 Gabriel (Prosser) planned the first major slave rebellion in U.S. history, massing more than 1,000 armed slaves near Richmond, Virginia. Following the failed revolt, 35 slaves, including Gabriel, are hanged.

1808 Slave trade was banned in the U.S., however, many southern states smuggled slaves into the country.

1816 The African Methodist Episcopal Church was formally organized and consecrates Richard Allen as its first bishop.

1817 The American Colonization Society was established to transport freeborn blacks and emancipated slaves to Africa, leading to foundation of a colony that becomes the Republic of Liberia in 1847.

1820 The Missouri Compromise provided for Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and western territories north of Missouri's southern border (36, 30) to be free soil.

1822 Freedman Denmark Vesey planned a slave revolt; his plan was revealed before being effected, leading to the hanging of Vesey and 34 others.

1829 Abolitionist David Walker published a pamphlet entitled Appeal…to the Colored Citizens of the World …, calling for a slave revolt.

1831 William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, began publishing the antislavery newspaper The Liberator, which advocates emancipation

1831 Nat Turner led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history. Some six weeks after the defeat of the insurrection, Turner was hanged.

1833 The American Anti-Slavery Society, was founded under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison.

1846 The Wilmot Proviso proposed banning slavery in territories acquired by the Mexican War. The proviso was not passed.

1847 Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave, began publication of the North Star, an antislavery newspaper.

1848 The Free-Soil Party was formed to oppose the extension of slavery into the western territories so whites would not have to compete with black slave labor for jobs (“free soil, free labor, and free men”).

1850 Harriet Tubman used the Underground Railroad to help more than 300 slaves escape (“Moses of her people”)

1850 Compromise of 1850: California free, slave trade in the District of Columbia banned, and the policy of popular sovereignty implemented in the newly acquired territories from Mexico. Part of the compromise was also a new, stricter Fugitive Slave Act, which was met with serious opposition.

1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, incited conflict because of its brutal portrayal of slavery.

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed settlers to determine slavery through popular sovereignty. Resulted in Bleeding Kansas, the dissolution of the Whigs and the creation of the Republicans.

1854 The Republican Party called for a repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law. They were free-soilers.

1856 “Bleeding Kansas:” sack of Lawrence, caning of Senator Sumner, and the John Brown massacre at Pottawatomie Creek.

1857 In its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized slavery in all the territories.

1857 Impending Crisis in the South, written by Hinton R. Helper, stated that slavery was actually hurting the southern economy.

1863 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1. Almost 200,000 served in the Union army and navy.

Reconstruction Period

The Reconstruction period achieved many political victories for African Americans; however, enforcing that legislation in the south became more and more difficult. Economically, many blacks in the south continued to suffer as tenant farming and sharecropping became an entrenched way of life. Socially, some slave families were reunited, increased educational opportunities became available, and some blacks moved out of the south to start new lives. However, the rise of the KKK led to increased violence against African-Americans.

1865 Thirteenth Amendment passed officially outlawing slavery.

1865 Congress established the Freedman’s Bureau to aid four million black Americans in transition from slavery to freedom.

1866 The states of the former Confederacy passed “black code” laws to increase social controls over former slaves.

1866 Civil Rights Act pronounced all African Americans to be U.S. citizens.

1866 Rioting whites kill 35 black citizens of New Orleans, LA, and wound more than 100, leading to increased support for Reconstruction policies.

1868 The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was ratified, defining citizenship and guaranteeing equal protection under the law.

1868 The South Carolina General Assembly became the first state legislature with a black majority.

1870 Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi was elected to the U.S. Senate.

1870 Joseph Hayne Rainey is the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1870 The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

1877 Reconstruction ended as the last federal troops were withdrawn from the South. Southern redeemers (white, Democrats) regained control of their state governments.

1880s The redeemer governments instituted Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, and poll taxes to oppress blacks. Lynch mobs became prevalent.

1881 Tennessee becomes the first state to enact Jim Crow legislation, which requires blacks and whites to ride in separate railroad cars.

1896 In Plessy v. Ferguson the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

1881 Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama is founded on July 4 with Booker T. Washington as the school's first president.

1895 At the Atlanta Exposition, educator Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise” speech, stressing the importance of vocational education for blacks over social equality or political office.

1903 W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk, which declares that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” and discusses the dual identity of black Americans. In protest to the ideology of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois suggests the concept of the “Talented Tenth”—a college-trained leadership cadre responsible for elevating blacks economically and culturally.

1905 The Niagara Movement is founded as a group of black intellectuals from across the nation meet near Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, adopting resolutions demanding full equality in American life. In 1909, they form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

1914 The Universal Negro Improvement Association is founded by Marcus Garvey to further racial pride and economic self-sufficiency and to establish a black nation in Africa.

c. 1916 The Great Migration begins; between 1916 and 1970 some six million African American Southerners migrate to urban centers in the North and West.

1917 Blacks serving in WWI are put into segregated units. On the homefront, many African-Americans obtain war production jobs.

1917 Racial antagonism toward African Americans newly employed in war industries leads to a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois that kills 40 blacks and 8 whites.

1919 During the “Red Summer” following World War I, 13 days of racial violence on the South Side of Chicago leave 23 blacks and 15 whites dead, 537 people injured, and 1,000 black families homeless.

1920s-1940s

The 1920s brought about a resurgence in black culture with the Harlem Renaissance, yet the reemergence of the KKK also led to increased violence.

FDR’s New Deal provided some increased opportunities for blacks, including some leadership positions and the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Truman also pushed for an increase in civil rights, for example banning segregation in the military, however, overall advances were not substantial and African-Americans continued to face discrimination.

1922 Louis Armstrong's work in the 1920s would revolutionize jazz.

1924 The Harlem Renaissance, or New Negro movement, gets underway, with Langston Hughes as its leading poet.

1925 In an era when Ku Klux Klan membership exceeds 4,000,000 nationally, a parade of 50,000 unmasked members takes place in Washington, D.C.

1925 A. Philip Randolph, trade unionist and civil-rights leader, founds the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which becomes the first successful black trade union.

1931 Nine black youths accused of raping two white women on a freight train go on trial for their lives in Scottsboro, Alabama. The Scottsboro case becomes a cause célèbre among Northern liberal and radical groups.

1939 Singer Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of 75,000 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall.

1941 Following considerable protest, the War Department forms the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Corps, later known as the Tuskegee Airmen, commanded by Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr.

1942 The interracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded in Chicago as the Committee of Racial Equality.

1947 Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American baseball player in the major leagues.

Civil Rights Movement- Modern Era

1954 On May 17 the U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

1955 Lynchings continue in the South with the brutal slaying of a 14-year-old Chicago youth, Emmett Till, in Money, Mississippi.

1955 Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP, refuses to surrender her seat when ordered to do so by a local bus driver, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled the segregation on buses was unconstitutional.

1957 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans.

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, after unsuccessfully trying to persuade Governor Orval Faubus to give up efforts to block desegregation at Central High School.

1960 The sit-in movement is launched at Greensboro, North Carolina, when black college students insist on service at a local segregated lunch counter.

1961 Testing desegregation practices in the South, the Freedom Rides, sponsored by CORE, encounter overwhelming violence, particularly in Alabama, leading to federal intervention.

1962 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the University of Mississippi must admit its first African American student, James Meredith.

1963 In Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor uses water hoses and dogs against civil rights protesters, many of whom are children, increasing pressure on President John F. Kennedy to act.

1963 The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

1963 The March on Washington is a demand for passage of the Civil Rights Act. In Washington an interracial audience of more than 200,000 hears Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

1964 Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam, announcing the formation of his own religious organization. He makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, modifying his views on black separatism upon his return.

1964 President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law, giving federal law enforcement agencies the power to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.

1964 The Twenty-fourth Amendment ends the poll tax in federal elections.

1965 The Voting Rights Act is passed following the Selma-to-Montgomery March, which garnered the nation's attention when marchers were beaten mercilessly by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

1965 The Watts area of Los Angeles explodes into violence following the arrest of a young male motorist charged with reckless driving. At the riot's end, 34 are dead, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested.

1966 The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, with the original purpose of protecting residents from acts of police brutality.

1966 Charting a new course for the civil rights movement, Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, uses the phrase “black power” at a rally during the James Meredith March in Mississippi.

1967 Thurgood Marshall, who as a lawyer argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, becomes the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice.

1968 On April 4 the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1978 In the Bakke decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against fixed racial quotas but upholds the use of race as a factor in making decisions on admissions for professional schools.

1983 Civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson (D) becomes the first African American man to make a serious bid for the presidency.

1986 Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is first celebrated as a U.S. national holiday.

1991 Clarence Thomas is appointed Justice to the Supreme Court

1992 Riots break out in Los Angeles, sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers caught on videotape beating Rodney King, a black motorist. The riots cause at least 55 deaths and $1 billion in damage.

2001 General Colin Powell becomes the first African American to serve as U.S. secretary of state.

2001 Condoleezza Rice is named national security adviser, becoming the first woman and second African American to hold this position.

2003 The S.C. issues a ruling on affirmative action in education, which upholds the use of race in collegiate admissions policies.

2005 Condoleezza Rice succeeds Colin Powell as U.S. secretary of state, becoming the first African American woman to hold the post.

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The Gilded Age-1920

Some African Americans went west as cowboys or homesteaders, becoming known as exodusters. Many more went north seeking industrial jobs. There they found discrimination in both hiring and wages, often having to resort to jobs as strikebreakers. Most national labor unions excluded blacks from their membership; however, the Knights of Labor was a notable exception. Booker T. Washington & W.E.B. Dubois emerged as civil rights leaders.

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