TIME LINE Black History

TIME LINE Black History

May 7, 1700 / William Penn begins monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation
May 20,1704 / Elias Neau founds school for slaves in New York
April 7, 1712 / The first major American slave revolt occurs in New York City, leading to the death of nine Whites and the subsequent execution of twenty one Blacks
November 9, 1731 / Benjamin Banneker, inventor, mathematician and one of the planners of what is now Washington DC, born.
April 22, 1739 / A major slave revolt occurs in South Carolina, lead by a slave named Cato, resulting in the deaths of twenty to thirty Whites who attempted to stop their trek to Florida and the eventual deaths of dozens of escaped slaves
July 18, 1753 / Lemuel Haynes, First Black minister to serve for a White congregation, born
April 17, 1758 / Frances Williams, first Black American to graduate from college in the Western Hemisphere, publishes collection of Latin poems
January 17, 1759 / Paul Cuffe, merchant, shipbuilder and Black nationalist, born
May 1, 1762 / James Durham, physician, born
September 2, 1766 / James Forten, abolitionist, inventor, entrepreneur,, born in Philadelphia, PA
January 10, 1768 / James Varicick, first AME Zion Bishop, born
March 5, 1770 / Crispus Attucks dies at The Boston Massacre
June 28, 1770 / Quakers open school for Blacks in Philadelphia
1772 / Jean Baptiste Point DuSable decided to build a trading post near Lake Michigan, thus becoming the first permanent resident of the settlement that became Chicago
April 14, 1775 / The first abolition society in the US is founded in Pennsylvania
April 19, 1775 / Free blacks fight with the Minutemen in the initial skirmishes of the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts
July 2, 1777 / Vermont becomes the first US state to abolish slavery
November 1, 1777 / The African Free School of New York City was opened
December 31, 1777 / George Washington reversed previous policy and allowed the recruitment of blacks as soldiers. Some 5,000 would participate on the American side before the end of the Revolution
July 15, 1779 / Pompey Lamb, noted spy, aids the American Revolutionary War effort
December 5, 1784 / Phyllis Wheatley, one of the first Black female poets in America, dies
September 28, 1785 / David Walker, abolitionist and writer of "Appeal", born
April 12, 1787 / Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organized the Free African Society, a mutual self-help group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
May 6, 1787 / First Black Masonic Lodge founded Prince Hall, Boston
July 13, 1787 / Slavery outlawed in Northwest Territory
September 1787 / The Constitution of the United States allowed a male slave to count as three-fifths of a man in determining representation in the House of Representatives
November 18, 1787 / Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and orator, born
January 19, 1788 / Freed Blacks organize Savanna GA's first Baptist church
March 12, 1791 / Benjamin Banneker, along with Charles L'Enfant, commissioned to lay out Washington in the District of Columbia
August 19, 1791 / Benjamin Banneker publishes his first Almanac
May 16, 1792 / Slavery abolished in Denmark
February 12, 1793 / Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Law
March 13, 1794 / Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, based on the ideas and plans of one of his slaves
June 10, 1794 / Richard Allen founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia
August 30, 1797 / A slave revolt near Richmond, Virginia, led by Gabriel Prosser and Jack Bowley, was first postponed and then betrayed. More than 40 blacks were eventually executed
October 28, 1798 / Levi Coffin, founder of The Underground Railroad, born
March 28, 1799 / Slavery abolished in New York
June 10, 1799 / Joseph Boulogne Saint-Georges, composer, violinist and champion fencer, born
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January 22, 1800 / Nat Turner, leader of the Virgina slave revolt, born
May 9, 1800 / John Brown, abolitionist and martyr of the Harper's Ferry Insurrection, born
August 30, 1800 / Gabriel Prosser's VA slave revolt is betrayed
December 17, 1802 / Henry Adams, teacher and minister, born
January 5, 1804 / The Ohio legislature passed "Black Laws" designed to restrict the legal rights of free blacks. These laws were part of the trend to increasingly severe restrictions on all blacks in both North and South before the Civil War
February 21, 1804 / Lemuel Haynes, first Black minister to serve for a White congregation, becomes the first Black person to receive an honorary degree (an MA) from a White college (Middlebury College)
March 28, 1804 / Ohio passes law restricting the movement of Blacks
June 17, 1804 / James Weldon Johnson, co-author of the Black National Anthem and the first Black person admitted to the Florida Bar, born
March 17, 1806 / Norbert Rillieux, inventor, born
September 9, 1806 / Sarah Mapps Douglass, abolitionist, born
October 26, 1806 / Benjamin Banneker, inventor, mathematician and one of the planners of what is now Washington DC, dies
March 2, 1807 / Congress declares importation of slaves into US jurisdiction illegal as of the new year
May 11, 1807 / Ira Aldridge, actor, born
January 1, 1808 / The African Benevolent Society for Education is found
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August 4, 1810 / Robert Purvis, abolitionist, born
February 24, 1811 / Bishop Daniel A Payne, reformer and educator of AME Church, born
June 14, 1811 / Harriet Beecher Stowe, White abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, born
May 6, 1812 / Martin R Delaney, ethnologist, army officer and Black nationalist, born
May 28, 1814 / Daniel Reaves Goodloe, emancipatist, born
April 9, 1816 / The African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized as the first independent black denomination in the United States
September 9, 1816 / John Gregg Fee, Kentucky abolitionist and founder of Berea College, born
February 14, 1817 / Frederick Douglass born
August 18, 1818 / General Andrew Jackson defeated a force of Native Americans and African-Americans to end the First Seminole War
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February 6, 1820 / First organized emigration of U.S. Blacks back to Africa, from New York to Sierra leone, takes place
May 15, 1820 / US Congress declares foreign slave trade an act of piracy punishable by death
March 3, 1821 / Thomas Jennings becomes the fist Black American to receive a patent, for a dry-cleaning process
March 14, 1821 / African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded
October 7, 1821 / William Still, chronicler of The Underground Railroad Records, born
May 30, 1822 / The Denmark Vesey conspiracy was betrayed in Charleston, South Carolina. It is claimed that some 5,000 blacks were prepared to rise in July
June 18, 1822 / Denmark Vesey, slave revolt leader, arrested in Charleston, SC
July 15, 1822 / Public schools for Blacks open in Philadelphia
August 15, 1824 / Liberia established by freed American slaves
March 16, 1827 / John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish founded Freedom's Journal, the first Black newspaper
September 1829 / David Walker's militant antislavery pamphlet, An Appeal to the Colored People of the World, was in circulation in the South. This work was the first of its kind by a black
Sept. 20-24, 1829 / The first National Negro Convention met in Philadelphia
December 14, 1829 / John Langston, Congressman, born
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June 2, 1830 / James Augustine Healey, first Black Catholic Bishop in the United States, born
August 20, 1830 / Richard Allen chairs the first National Negro Convention in Philadelphia
September 15, 1830 / First National Negro Convention held in Philadelphia, PA
September 20, 1830 / First Negro Convention of Free Men agree to boycott slave-produced goods
January 2, 1831 / William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper
January 6, 1831 / The World Anti-Slavery Convention opens in London
March 26, 1831 / Richard Allen, AME Church Bishop, dies
May 28, 1831 / Eliza Ann Gardner, underground railroad conductor, born
June 6, 1831 / People of Color Convention held for the first time
August 21-22, 1831 / Nat Turner leads slave revolt in Southampton, VA that kills 55 Whites
November 11, 1831 / Nat Turner, leader of a Virginia slave revolt, hanged
March 17, 1833 / The Phoenix Society founded
May 21, 1833 / Black students enroll in classes at Oberlin College, Ohio
August 1, 1834 / Slavery declared unlawful in British Empire
October 14, 1834 / Henry Blair patents his corn-planting machine
December 20, 1834 / Mother Matelda Beasley, nun, born
January 8, 1836 / Fannie M Jackson, educator and first Black woman college graduate in the US, born
March 3, 1836 / Jefferson Franklin Long, congressman, born
March 26, 1836 / George Alexander McGuire, bishop, born
November 5, 1836 / Theo Wright becomes the first Black recipient of a Theology Degree in the US
March 24, 1837 / Canada legally recognizes Black suffrage
April 19, 1837 / Cheyney State College, one of the oldest Black colleges in the US, founded in its orignal form as a school for Black boys
May 10, 1837 / PBS Pinchback, first Black state governor, born
November 7, 1837 / Elijah Lovejoy, newspaperman, killed defending his newspaper from a pro-slavery mob
September 3, 1838 / Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery disguised as a sailor
July 1839 / The slaves carried on the Spanish ship, Amistad, took over the vessel and sailed it to Montauk on Long Island. They eventually won their freedom in a case taken to the Supreme Court
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May 16, 1840 / James Milton Turner, educator, born
June 1, 1843 / Sojourner Truth begins travel as an abolitionist speaker
May 2, 1844 / Elijah "The Real" McCoy, inventor and holder of over fifty patents, born
April 29, 1845 / Macon B Allen and Robert Morris Jr, first Blacks to practice law in the US, open practice
September 5, 1846 / John W Cromwell, Secretary of the American Negro Academy, born
January 20, 1847 / WR Pettiford, founder of the Alabama Penny Savings Bank, born
April 28, 1847 / George B Vashon, first Black bachelor's from Oberlin, becomes first Black American to enter the NY Bar
September 10, 1847 / John R Lynch, first Black speaker at a Republican National Convention, born
December 3, 1847 / Frederick Douglass, along with Martin R Delaney, start The North Start, an anti-slavery paper
September 4, 1848 / Louis Latimer, inventor and engineer, born
September 16, 1848 / Slavery abolished in all French territories
May 7, 1849 / Blind Tom Bethune, pianist and composer, born
June 17, 1849 / Thomas Ezekiel Miller, congressman, born
July 1849 / Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery. She would return South at least twenty times, leading over 300 slaves to freedom
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February 27, 1850 / Charlotte Ray, first Black female lawyer, born
September 18, 1850 / Congress passes Fugitive Slave Law as part of the Compromise of 1850
January 25, 1851 / Sojourner Truth addresses the first Black Women's Rights Convention
March 20, 1852 / Harriet Beecher Stowe, White abolitionist, publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin
January 1, 1853 / Lincoln University, the oldest Historically Black University in the US, incorporated
February 10, 1853 / Joseph Charles Rice, educator, born
March 10, 1853 / Hallie Quinn Brown, women's right activist, born
April 20, 1853 / Harriet Tubman starts working on the Underground Railroad
January 1, 1854 / Ashmum Institute, the precursor of Lincoln University, was chartered at Oxford, Pennsylvania
January 18, 1856 / Dr Daniel Hale Williams, pioneer in surgery, born
April 5, 1856 / Booker T Washington, educator, born
April 23, 1856 / Granville T Woods, inventor of over 40 products, born
August 20, 1856 / Wilberforce University established in Ohio
February 16, 1857 / Frederick Douglass, orator and activist, elected President of Freedman Bank and Trust
March 6, 1857 / The Dred Scott decision, asserting that Blacks could not be citizens of the United States, even if they were citizens of their states, handed down by the Supreme Court
January 30, 1858 / William Wells Brown, novelist and dramatist, publishes first Black drama, Leap to Freedom
June 21, 1859 / Henry O Tanner, artist, born
September 7, 1859 / John Merrick, coorganizer of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, born
October 16, 1859 / Harper's Ferry Insurrection begins
October 19, 1859 / Byrd Prillerman, co-founder of Virginia State College, born
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December 20, 1860 / South Carolina secedes from the Union, beginning the rumbles that would become the Civil War
April 12, 1861 / Civil War begins at Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC
July 22, 1861 / Abraham Lincoln reads the first draft of Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet
August 23, 1861 / James Stone of Ohio enlisted to become the first black to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He was very light skinned and was married to a white woman. His racial identity was revealed after his death in 1862
September 17, 1861 / American Missonary Association school established in Fortress Monroe, VA
September 17, 1861 / Hampton Institute founded
September 25, 1861 / Secretary of Navy authorizes enlistment of slaves as Union sailors
April 16, 1862 / Slavery ended in Washington DC
May 9, 1862 / Slaves in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina are freed
June 1, 1862 / Slavery abolished in all United States possessions
June 3, 1862 / Haiti recognized as a nation by the United States
June 3, 1862 / Liberia recognized as a nation by the United States
July 16, 1862 / Ida B Wells, reformer who first gathered statistical records on lynchings in the US, born
July 17, 1862 / Congress allowed the enlistment of blacks in the Union Army. Some black units precede this date, but they were disbanded as unofficial. Some 186,000 blacks served; of these 38,000 died