This is a timeline of African-American history, the part of history that deals with African Americans.
Europeans arrived in what would become the present day United States of America on August 9, 1526. With them, they brought families from Africa that they had captured and enslaved with intentions of establishing themselves and future generations of Europeans off of the bodies of these African families.
During the American Revolution of 1776–1783, enslaved African Americans in the South escaped to British lines as they were promised freedom to fight with the British; additionally, many free blacks in the North fight with the colonists for the rebellion, and the Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) becomes the first future state to abolish slavery. Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper South free their slaves.
The importation of slaves became a felony in 1808.
After the American Civil War began in 1861, tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans of all ages escaped to Union lines for freedom. Later on, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, formally freeing slaves in the Confederate States of America. After the American Civil War ended, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits slavery (except as punishment for crime), was passed in 1865.
In the mid-20th century, the civil rights movement occurred, and legalized racial segregation and discrimination was thus outlawed.
16th century
1526 The first African slaves in what would become the present day United States of America arrived on August 9, 1526, in Winyah Bay, South Carolina. Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón led around six hundred settlers, including an unknown number of African slaves, in an attempt to start a colony. The attempt failed after a month and Ayllón moved the colony, including the slaves, to what is now the state of Georgia. This colony also failed, but slavery would continue in Georgia until 1865.Slavery in Colonial Georgia. Original entry by Betty Wood, Girton College, Cambridge, England, 09/19/2002. Last edited by NGE Staff on 09/29/2020. www.google.com/amp/s/m.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/slavery-colonial-georgia%3famp. Retrieved March. 15, 2021.
1565 The Spanish colony of St. Augustine in Florida became the first permanent European settlement in what would become the U.S. centuries later. It included an unknown number of enslaved Africans.
17th century 1619 The first recorded Africans in English North America arrive when "twenty and odd" men, women and children were brought first to Fort Monroe off the coast of Hampton, Virginia, and then to Jamestown. They had been taken as prizes from a Portuguese slave ship. The group of Africans were treated as indentured servants, and at least one was recorded as eventually owning land in the colony.
1640 John Punch, a Black indentured servant, ran away with three white servants, James, Gregory, and Victor. After the four were captured, Punch was sentenced to serve Virginian planter Hugh Gwyn for life. This made John Punch the first legally documented slave in colonial Virginia.
1654 John Casor, a Black man who claimed to have completed his term of indenture, became the first legally recognized slave-for-life in a civil case in colonial Virginia. The court ruled with his master, who said he had an indefinite servitude for life.John Henderson Russell. The Free Negro In Virginia, 1619–1865, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1913, pp. 29–30, scanned text online.
1662 The Colony of Virginia, using the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, proclaimed that children in the colony were born into their mother's social status; therefore children born to enslaved mothers were classified as slaves, regardless of their father's ethnicity or status. This was contrary to English common law for English subjects, which held that children took their father's social status. 1664
September 20 - The Province of Maryland passes the first law in Colonial America banning interracial marriage.
1670 Zipporah Potter Atkins, a free woman of color, becomes the first African-American landowner in Boston, and the first Black woman to own land in Colonial America.Baker, Billy and Crimaldi, Laura. "Black and free, woman bought Boston parcel in 1670." Boston Globe, May 20, 2014. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
1676 Both free and enslaved African Americans fought in Bacon's Rebellion alongside white indentured servants. 1685
French king Louis XIV issues the Code Noir ("Black Code"), a slave code which applies to France's overseas colonies, including Louisiana.
18th century
1705 The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 define as slaves all those servants brought into the colony who were not Christian in their original countries, as well as Native American slaves sold by other Indians to colonists.
1712 April 6The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 breaks out.
1738 First free African-American community: Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (later named Fort Mose) in Spanish Florida.
1739 September 9In the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina slaves gather at the Stono River to plan an armed march for freedom.
1753 Benjamin Banneker designed and built the first clock of its type in the Thirteen Colonies. He also created a series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and wrote that "blacks were intellectually equal to whites". Banneker worked with Pierre L'Enfant to survey and design a street and urban plan for Washington, D.C.
1760 Jupiter Hammon has a poem printed, becoming the first published African-American poet.
1770 March 5Crispus Attucks is among the five men killed by a detachment of the 29th Regiment of Foot in the Boston Massacre, a precursor to the American Revolution.
1773 Phillis Wheatley has her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral published.Phillis Wheatley: America's second Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Henry Louis Gates, Basic Civitas Books, 2003, p. 5.
1774
As part of a broader non-importation movement aimed at Britain, the First Continental Congress called on all the colonies to ban the importation of slaves, and the colonies pass acts doing so. The first black Baptist congregations are organized in the American South: Silver Bluff Baptist Church in South Carolina, and First African Baptist Church near Petersburg, Virginia.
1775 April 14The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage holds four meetings. It was re-formed in 1784 as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and Benjamin Franklin would later serve as its president. Thomas Paine publishes one of the earliest and most influential anti-slavery essays in the U.S., called "African Slavery in America."
1776–1783 American Revolution Thousands of enslaved African Americans in the South escaped to British lines, as they were promised freedom to fight with the British. In South Carolina, 25,000 enslaved African Americans, one-quarter of those held, escaped to the British or otherwise leave their plantations."The American Revolution and Slavery", Digital History. Retrieved March 5, 2008. After the war, many African Americans were evacuated with the British for England; more than 3,000 Black Loyalists are transported with other Loyalists to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where they are granted land. Still others go to Jamaica and the West Indies. An estimated 8–10,000 were evacuated from the colonies in these years as free people, about 50 percent of those slaves who defected to the British and about 80 percent of those who survived. Many Black Patriots in the North fight with the rebelling colonists during the Revolutionary War.
1777 July 8The Vermont Republic (a sovereign nation at the time) abolishes slavery, the first future state to do so. No slaves were held in Vermont.
1780 Pennsylvania becomes the first U.S. state to abolish slavery. Capt. Paul Cuffe and six other African American residents of Massachusetts successfully petition the state legislature for the right to vote, claiming "no taxation without representation."
1781 In challenges by Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker, two independent county courts in Massachusetts found slavery illegal under the state constitution and declared each to be free persons.
1783 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed that Massachusetts state constitution had abolished slavery. It ruled that "the granting of rights and privileges [was] wholly incompatible and repugnant to" slavery, in an appeal case arising from the escape of former slave Quock Walker. When the British left New York and Charleston in 1783, they took the last of 5,500 Loyalists to the Caribbean, who brought along with them some 15,000 slaves.
1787 July 13The Northwest Ordinance bans the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River.
1788 The First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia is organized under Andrew Bryan.
1790–1810 Manumission of slaves Following the Revolution, numerous slaveholders in the Upper South free their slaves; the percentage of free blacks rises from less than one to 10 percent. By 1810, 75 percent of all blacks in Delaware are free, and 7.2 percent of blacks in Virginia are free.Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619–1877, New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 78 and 81.
1791 February Major Andrew Ellicott hires Benjamin Banneker, an African-American draftsman, to assist in a survey of the boundaries of the federal district that would later become the District of Columbia.
1793 February 12The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 is passed. (See also Fugitive slave laws.)
1794 March 14Eli Whitney is granted a patent on the cotton gin. This enables the cultivation and processing of short-staple cotton to be profitable in the uplands and interior areas of the Deep South; as this cotton can be cultivated in a wide area, the change dramatically increases the need for enslaved labor and leads to the development of King Cotton as the chief commodity crop. To satisfy labor demand, there is a forced migration of one million slaves from the Upper South and coast to the area in the antebellum period, mostly by the domestic slave trade. JulyTwo independent black churches open in Philadelphia: the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, with Absalom Jones, and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, with Richard Allen. The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church of what would become, in 1816, the first independent black denomination in the United States.
19th century
1800–1859
Early 19th century The first Black Codes enacted.
1800 August 30Gabriel Prosser's planned attempt to lead a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia is suppressed.
1807 At the urging of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress passes the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. It makes it a federal crime to import a slave from abroad.
1808 January 1The importation of slaves is a felony. This is the earliest day under the United States Constitution that a law could be made restricting slavery.
1816 The first separate black denomination of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is founded by Richard Allen, who is elected its first bishop. The American Colonization Society is begun by Robert Finley, to send free African Americans to what is to become Liberia in West Africa. The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground is established in Richmond, VA. With estimated interments of upwards of 22,000, it is likely the largest burial ground for Free People of Color and the enslaved in the United States. 1817