1846

US-Mexican War begins when American troops enter disputed land in Southern Texas and are attacked by Mexican forces. War ends in 1848, and US gains northern half of Mexico.

1854

Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, organizing both territories and allowing for "popular sovereignty," where citizens would decide whether the new states would allow slavery or not. Pro- and anti-slavery pioneers flock to Kansas and begin clashing violently. US takes another step closer to civil war.

1861

Civil War begins with Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12.

1863

Four-wheeled roller-skates invented in the US.

1864

Homestead Act passed, opening American West to further white settlement.

1865

Thirteenth Amendment outlaws slavery.

Generals Lee and Grant meet at Appomattox, VA and agree to a cease-fire, effectively ending the Civil War.

KKK founded in Tennessee; similar groups form in other Southern states

Freedmen’s Bureau formed to assist former slaves.

1866

Congress passes the Fourteenth Amendment, granting citizenship to newly freed slaves. Southern states refuse to ratify, prompting Northern Republicans to pass the Reconstruction Acts (1867), dividing the South into military districts. Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment is made a condition of re-admittance into the Union.

1868

Fourteenth Amendment is ratified and becomes Constitutional law.

1869

The Fifteenth Amendment is passed by Congress, granting all male citizens the right to vote.

1876

Presidential election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes ends in uncertainty when key Electoral College votes are disputed. An electoral commission settles the crisis by granting Hayes the delegates, thereby making him President-elect, in return for a pledge to end Reconstruction.

1877

Hayes inaugurated. Reconstruction ends when the last federal troops are removed from the South.

1879

Thomas A. Edison invents the light bulb.

1881

Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama.

1886

Haymarket Riot occurs in Chicago when a bomb explodes in a crowd of workers striking for an 8-hour workday and demonstrating against earlier police violence.

1889

Johnstown Flood kills over 2,200 people.

1890

Massacre at Wounded Knee. US 7th Cavalry rides to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota to put down Hunkpapa Sioux rebellion led by Chief Big Foot. Three hundred men, women, and children are killed, effectively ending the Indian wars.

1892

Homestead Strike between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Corporation erupts in violence when Pinkerton forces are brought in to break the strike. Three workers and seven Pinkertons are killed. Pennsylvania National Guard called in to quell the violence.

1893

World Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World.

1895

September 18: Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise” speech, asking African-Americans to “Cast down your bucket where you are” – asking African-Americans to cultivate friendly relations with their Southern White neighbors.

1896

Mary Church Terrell becomes the first president of the National Association for Colored Women, working for education
and social reform, and an end to racial discrimination.

Supreme Court validates the principle of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

1899

Composer and pianist Scott Joplin publishes “The Maple Leaf Rag."

1901

Booker T. Washington dines with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House.

1903

WEB DuBois publishes The Souls of Black Folk.

1904

World’s Fair held in St. Louis, celebrating the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. Smithsonian Institute builds model villages and puts various aboriginal peoples on display for visitors to see.

1905

The Niagara Movement founded as a groups of black intellectuals from across the nation, adopting resolutions
demanding full equality in American life.

Madame C.J. Walker develops and markets a method for straightening curly hair, on her way to becoming one of the very first black women millionaires in the United States.

Niagara Movement founded to fight for school integration, voting rights, and to assist African-American political candidates. This association is a forerunner of the NAACP.

1906

Race riots in Greensburg, Indiana, in reaction to African-American migration to the North.

1907

National Primitive Baptist Convention, Inc. organized.

1908

In Springfield, IL, the black community is assaulted by several thousand whites.

Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI, established.

African-American heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson defeats the white champion Tommy Burns in a match in Australia, becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. Title is not officially granted until Johnson defeats the retired former champ Jim Jeffries in 1910. Race riots erupt across the nation when Johnson defeats Jeffries.

1909

NAACP founded in NYC in response to 1908 race riots in Springfield, IL.

1910

The Crisis, a monthly magazine published by the NAACP, is founded; W.E.B. DuBois becomes editor.

1911

National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes (National Urban League) formed in NYC to help migrating blacks.

1912

Woodrow Wilson wins presidential election when the Republican vote is split between former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

1914

War breaks out in Europe. Wilson vows to keep US out of conflagration.

Henry Ford institutes his assembly line technique; begins paying employees the unprecedented wage of $5 per day.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association is founded by Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey.

“Ludlow Massacre” occurs in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company mining camp at Ludlow, Colorado. Owner John D. Rockefeller, Jr. responds to mining strike by asking Colorado governor to use state militia to force miners back to work. Soldiers open fire on the mining camp, killing 20 men, women, and children.

1915

KKK reestablished.

A schism in the National Baptist Convention yields the National Baptist Convention of America.

1916

Frances Elliot Davis of Detroit is the first African-American nurse officially accepted into the American Red Cross.

1917

April 2: President Wilson requests declaration of war against Germany from Congress. On April 6 Congress declares war.

Racial antagonism toward blacks employed in war industries lead to riots in East St. Louis, IL.

1918

Influenza epidemic sweeps across the nation, quickly becoming a worldwide pandemic. Over 600,000 Americans die. Over 50 million die worldwide.

November 11: Armistice signed; WWI ends.

1919

Thirteen days of racial violence on the South Side of Chicago leave 23 blacks and 15 whites dead.

League of Nations meets for the first time; US not represented.

Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, outlawing the manufacture, sale and transportation of liquor.

The Nineteenth Amendment is passed by Congress on June 5. One year later, in July 1920, Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the amendment, granting women the right to vote.

1920s

Harlem Renaissance.

1920

KDKA in Pittsburgh transmits the nation’s first commercial radio broadcast.

1922

Louis Armstrong moves to Chicago to play second trumpet in King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.

1923

Charles Clinton Spaulding becomes president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He builds it into the nation’s largest black-owned business by the time of his death in 1952.

Blues singer Bessie Smith, the “Empress of the Blues,” makes her first recording.

Equal Rights Amendment introduced for the first time.

Marcus Garvey tried on trumped-up mail fraud charges. In 1925 he was sentenced to five years imprisonment. President Hoover commuted his sentence in 1927, and Garvey was immediately deported to Jamaica.

1924

Native Americans granted citizenship and the right to vote.

1925

A. Philip Randolph founds the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black trade union.

NAACP’s first major court case. Clarence Darrow defends Dr. Ossian Sweet and his family in Detroit when Sweet is put on trial for the shooting death of a member of an angry white mob that had gathered outside of Sweet’s house. The all-white jury unable to come to a verdict, and Sweet was not re-tried (his brother Henry was re-tried and acquitted).

1926

Jelly Roll Morton records several of his masterpieces, including “Black Bottom Stomp” and “Dead Man Blues."

1927

Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight.

Anarchists and labor radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti tried and sentenced to death in Massachusetts for murder. Despite strong evidence of their innocence, both men were later executed.

1928

Poet and novelist Claude McKay publishes Home to Harlem, the first best-seller by an African-American.

1929

Herbert Hoover inaugurated.

Stock Market crashes on October 29. The Great Depression soon begins.

1931

Scotsboro Trials of nine black youths in Alabama.

1932

Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas is the first woman elected to the US Senate.

1933

FDR is inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States.

First of the New Deal “relief” measures are enacted by Congress.

Congress passes National Industrial Recovery Act, granting the right of workers to bargain collectively.

Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, ending prohibition.

1934

Federal Housing Administration established to encourage slum clearance by lending money for public housing.

Wallace D. Fard, founder of the Nation of Islam movement, disappears, leading to the rise of Elijah Muhammad.

1935

Works Progress Administration (WPA) created as the largest and most comprehensive New Deal agency.

Social Security Act passed.

US Supreme Court validates the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act), giving employees the right to bargain collectively.

1936

United Auto Workers joins the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

c. 1936

Robert Johnson makes his most legendary and influential recordings in Texas, including “Love in Vain."

1937

Zora Neale Hurston publishes Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Fair Labor Standards Act passed, setting the minimum wage at 25 cents per hour.

c. 1938

Billie Holiday makes several of her most famous recordings.

1939

Hitler starts war in Europe by invading Poland.

September 5: US declares its neutrality in the European conflict.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund organized.

Count Basie leads his legendary Kansas City band.

1940

Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. becomes the first black general.

Richard Wright publishes Native Son.

In November, Congress passes the Selective Service Act, requiring men between 21 and 35 to register for the draft.

Booker T. Washington becomes the first African-American featured on a US postage stamp.

1941

Bayard Rustin organizes the NY branch of the Congress of Racial Equality.

War Department forms the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron of the US Army Air Corps.

USO (United Service Organization) incorporated in NYC in February.

First USO club opened in Fayetville, NC, in October.

December 7: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. The next day Germany and Italy declare war on the US.

1942

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) officially founded by a group of Chicago students.

Charles Richard Drew, developer and director of blood plasma programs during WWII, resigns as the armed forces begin
to accept the blood of blacks but resolves to racially segregate the supply.

1943

In November, with unemployment dropping, FDR shuts down the WPA.

Dancer Bill Robinson appears with singer Lena Horne in the wartime all-black musical film, Stormy Weather.

1944

GI Bill passed by Congress.

June 6: D-Day

1945

April: FDR dies of a stroke and is succeeded by Harry S. Truman.

Allies meet at Potsdam, Germany to discuss German surrender and post-war goals. Truman and Stalin clash, heightening tensions between the US and the Soviet Union and marking the start of the Cold War.

August 6: US drops bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Nagasaki is bombed 3 days later.

September 2: Japanese envoys sign surrender terms aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor.

United Nations established.

Ebony magazine is founded by John H. Johnson of Chicago.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, elected to the House of Representatives.

1946

Charlie Parker records “Ornithology."

1947

USO Clubs close.

Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in the major leagues.

1948

President Harry S. Truman orders the end of segregation in the US military.

1949

Housing Act passed to promote urban renewal through slum clearance and the production of new housing.

1950

Gwendolyn Brooks is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, becoming the first African-American to win award.

Refusing to disavow membership in Communist Party, Paul Robeson has his passport withdrawn by State Department.

North Korean troops invade South Korea; Korean War begins.

1951

Trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for treason. Both found guilt and sentenced to death (executed in 1953).

1952

Ralph Ellison publishes The Invisible Man.

1953

Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated.

1954

Supreme Court overturns the 1896 Plessy decision, ruling that separate is not equal, in the Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka.

Policy of all-black military units finally ends.

1955

Emmett Till murdered in Money, Mississippi after whistling at a white woman.

Rosa Parks arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery bus; begins bus boycott in Montgomery (381 days).

Chuck Berry records "Maybellene," an immediate hit.

1957

Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed under leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Civil Rights Act passed.

President Eisenhower orders federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce integration of Central High.

1958

Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson wins back the middleweight title.

1959

Ray Charles records “What’d I Say,” which becomes his first million-copy seller.

Trumpeter Miles Davis records “Kind of Blue."

Motown Records is founded in Detroit by Berry Gordy.

Pioneer free Jazz musician Ornette Coleman and his quartet play for the first time at New York’s Five Spot Café.

Early-1960a

Escalation of conflict in Vietnam; US continues support for the unpopular Diem government in South Vietnam. Diem assassinated by South Vietnamese military in September 1963, with tacit US approval.

1960

The 1960 Civil Rights Act passed, reaffirming voting rights for all citizens. Proves ineffective.

Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton found Stax Records of Memphis, Tennessee, which comes to define southern soul music .

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founded.

Sit-in movement launched in Greensboro, NC, to protest segregation at Woolworth’s.

1961

US formally severs diplomatic relations with Cuba after Fidel Castro nationalizes the islands infrastructure and declares alliance with Soviet Union.

Freedom Rides, sponsored by CORE, encounter overwhelming violence, particularly in Alabama.

Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League.

1962

October: Cuban Missile Crisis brings US and Soviet Union to brink of nuclear war.

1963

Medgar Evers, a Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, is shot and killed in an ambush in front of this home.

In Birmingham, Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor uses water hoses and dogs against civil rights protesters.

MLK writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to eight clergymen who attacked his role in Birmingham.

Sidney Poitier wins the Academy Award for best Actor for his performance in Lillies in the Field.

Governor George Wallace of Alabama defies federal court orders by refusing to admit two black students to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Civil rights activists march on Washington.

Betty Friedan's The Feminie Mystique is published.

November 22: JFK assassinated. Lyndon Johnson becomes President.

1964

The A. Philip Randolph Institute formed to initiate voter registration drives and political education.

Women lead a sit-in at SNCC headquarters to protest inequality within the organization.

Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam and makes a pilgrimage to Mecca.

MLK receives the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway.

Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane records his masterpiece, "A Love Supreme."

Congress approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing LBJ to take necessary measures to defend US forces.

US planes begin bombing raids of North Vietnam.

1964 Civil Rights Act passed to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sex and race in public accommodations and employment.

Organization for Afro-American Unity (OAU) formed to promote closer ties between African Americans and Africa.

Lyndon Johnson proposes his Great Society legislative program to fight racial inequality and poverty.

1964-65

Anti-war movement begins to grow.

1965

March: LBJ authorizes use of US ground troops in South Vietnam, and first combat units land at Da Nang. On July 28, Johnson commits an addition 50,000 troops. Monthly draft calls begin shortly thereafter.

Voting Rights Act nullifies laws and practices that prevent minorities from voting.

Malcolm X assassinated in New York City.

Riots break out in Watts, California.

1966

SNCC breaks with Martin Luther King’s SCLC.

Stokely Carmichael, chairman of SNCC, begins using the phrase, Black Power.”

National Organization for Women (NOW) formed.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

Bill Russell becomes the first black coach of a major professional sports team (Boston Celtics).

The African-American holiday of Kwanzaa, patterned after various African harvest festivals, inaugurated.

1967

Aretha Franklin releases “Respect."

Muhammad Ali violates Selective Service Act and is barred from the ring and stripped of his title.

Jimi Hendrix plays at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, convicted of manslaughter in Oakland, CA.

Riots in Detroit erupt after police raid a Detroit bar and arrest 23 customers and a bartender.

Thurgood Marshall becomes first African-American Supreme Court justice.

1968

Civil Rights Act prevents discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

North Vietnam launches the Tet Offensive with simultaneous military engagements across South Vietnam cities. The outer wall of the American embassy in Saigon is breached.

Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Information, publishes Soul on Ice.

On April 4, 1968, MLK is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; riots erupt in cities across the US. Ralph Abernathy succeeds MLK as president of the SCLC, carrying out the SCLC’s Poor People’s Campaign.

Robert F. Kennedy assassinated.

Shirley Chisholm becomes the first black American woman to be elected to the US Congress, representing Brooklyn, NY.

1969

Nixon inaugurated.

1970

May 4: Kent State shootings kill four students and wound nine when 77 Ohio National Guard troops fire on a group of student anti-war protesters.

Representatives of North and South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and the US sign a cease-fire agreement in Paris.

1971

Angela Davis arraigned on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy.

1972

Five men caught breaking into Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC.

Gloria Steinem co-founds Ms. magazine.

1973

Vietnam cease-fire agreement signed; last US combat troops leave Vietnam.

Oil crisis begins.

Vice-president Spiro T. Agnew resigns and then pleads no contest to tax evasion charges. Nixon appoints Gerald Ford, Republican Congressman from Michigan, as Vice-president.

1974

House Judiciary Committee recommends to full House that Nixon be impeached for obstruction of justice. Nixon resigns on August 8. Ford becomes President and appoints Nelson Rockefeller his Vice-president.

1975

April 29: “Fall of Saigon:” Evacuation of embassy personnel, Marine guards, and remaining American civilians from Saigon.

1977

Jimmy Carter inaugurated.

Alex Haley’s Roots (1976) adapted for television.

1978

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke; Supreme Court rules against fixed racial quotas, but upholds use of race as a factor in making decisions on admissions for professional schools.

1979

Three-Mile Island nuclear reactor malfunction.

Iran hostage situation begins when 66 American embassy personnel are taken hostage in Tehran.

1982

The deadline for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution passes without the necessary votes.

1983

US invades Grenada.

Jesse Jackson announces his intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

1984

Geraldine Ferraro becomes first woman vice-presidential candidate, running with Walter Mondale.

1986

Iran-Contra scandal breaks.

1987

Congress holds public hearings on Iran-Contra investigation.

1989

George H. W. Bush inaugurated as President.

US forces invade Panama and ousts Manuel Noriega.

Fall of the Berlin Wall.

1990

Iraqi troops invade Kuwait.

1991

Persion Gulf War.

1992

Carol Moseley-Braun becomes the first African-American woman elected to the US Senate, representing Illinois.

Soviet Union collapses; Cold War ends.

Riots erupt in Los Angeles.

1993

Bill Clinton inaugurated.

Standoff in Waco, TX between federal law enforcement and the Branch Davidians.

1995

Oklahoma City bombing.

1998

House of Representatives votes to impeach President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

1999

Senate acquits Clinton of impeachment charges.

Columbine High School shootings.