1800 to 1899

The U.S. Census reports that the total black population is 1,002,037, of which 108,435 are free and 893,602 are slaves. Read more...

On the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, Gabriel Prosser, his wife Nanny, and more than 1,000 slaves assemble with the purpose of seizing their freedom by force. The rebellion fails and Prosser, along with several others, are captured and hanged. Read more...

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME-Zion) is founded. Read more...

Elizabeth “Madame Betsy” Allergue of Virginia, opens and operates a store in Petersburg. Read more...

Napoleon reinstitutes slavery in the French empire.

Ohio enters the Union as a free state, but does not give blacks the right to vote on an equal basis with whites. Read more...

Louisiana Purchase more than doubles the size of the United States and provides land for new slave states. Read more...

Haiti becomes the first black-led republic in the Western Hemisphere. Read more...

New Jersey becomes the last northern state to pass a gradual emancipation law. Read more...

The Ohio legislature enacts its first Black Laws, restricting the rights and movements of free blacks in northern states. Indiana and Illinois will later pass their own black laws and for a few years Michigan will also have such laws on its books.

William Richmond a free black from Staten Island, New York, fights and loses to English boxing champion Thomas Cribb. Cribb is probably the first African American professional athlete, although his boxing career is in England. Read more...

The Maryland legislature passes a law forcing free blacks to procure a license before being able to sell grain or tobacco. Whites are not required to purchase such licenses.

South Carolina passes a law making it illegal for slaves to participate in mechanical trades except for the benefit of their masters; to apprentice others; to buy, sell, or trade goods without written tickets giving them permission to do so; or to be employed in shops unless whites are also present.

Paul Cuffe's commercial shipping fleet grows to five vessels.

The black jockey “Monkey” Simon is a star at Clover Bottom Race Track near Nashville, Tennessee.

The United States passes a law to abolish the slave trade as of 1 January 1808. Britain passes a similar law.

Rumored to have met in secret as early as 1784, the New York African Society for Mutual Relief is founded for the benefit of African American men. It is one of the earliest fraternal societies to also provide health and death benefits. The members, primarily craftsmen with their own shops and some professionals, use society funds to invest in real estate. Read more...

The African slave trade is banned in the United States and in all British colonies in the Americas.

Black women in Newport, Rhode Island, found the African Female Benevolent Society. Read more...

Thomas Molineaux, a former Virginia slave who gained his freedom by winning boxing purses for his master, fights and loses to Cribb in another celebrated bout in England.

Absalom Jones founds the the first black insurance company in Philadelphia, the African Insurance Company, which is initially capitalized at $5,000. Read more...

In Virginia, the Richmond City Council adopts an ordinance prohibiting African Americans from obtaining draymen licenses.

The black population of the United States totals 1,377,808—of which 186,446 are free and 1,191,362 are slaves.

Paul Cuffe and his partner John Kizell, a repatriated African-born businessman, incorporate the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, a mercantile trading company. Read more...

Federal troops suppress a slave rebellion led by Charles Delondes in the parishes of Saint Charles and Saint John the Baptist in Louisiana, about thirty-five miles from New Orleans. Read more...

The War of 1812 begins. Britain enlists American fugitive slaves living in Florida. Louisiana allows free blacks to serve in the state militia. Read more...

The slave "Free" Frank McWorter establishes a saltpeter manufactory, mining crude niter from limestone caves and processing it into saltpeter. He uses profits from the business to buy his wife's freedom and his own.

The U.S. Navy begins to recruit free blacks. Blacks constitute approximately one quarter of the sailors under Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry's command at the Battle of Lake Erie, a decisive victory for the Americans.

The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is founded. Read more...

Some 5,000 American slaves escape to join British forces as Rear Admiral George Cockburn forms a battalion of black marines to serve in the British navy.

At the Battle of New Orleans over four hundred blacks serve under General Andrew Jackson. After the war Congress prohibits the enlistment of blacks in the U.S. Army. Read more...

Paul Cuffe, a merchant, philanthropist, and promoter of African American colonization in Africa, transports thirty-eight black people to Sierra Leone at his own expense. Read more...

Zulu kingdom emerges among the northern Nguni chiefdoms of southeastern Africa during a period of change that coincides with the era known as mfecane (“time of trouble”), when local populations grew rapidly and were overtaxing the land and water supplies. Read more...

The American Colonization Society is organized to send African Americans back to Africa. Some leaders of the society are slaveholders who hope to remove free blacks from the country. Other founders are humanitarians who believe the work of the Society will stimulate masters to free their slaves to send them to Africa. Read more...

Using $13,000 in profits from his tailoring business, Jehu Jones (who purchased his freedom in 1798) of South Carolina purchases the Burrons-Hall Inn in Charleston, which he runs as an exclusive, whites-only hotel.

African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is established as the first independent black Church in the United States.

François Lacroix, the wealthiest African American man in New Orleans before the Civil War, imports Parisian cloths and clothing to sell in his store, Cordeviolle and Lacroix on Chartres Street. By 1860, he is worth $300,000, the great majority of his wealth being in real estate valued at $242,000. Read more...

The U.S. Army invades Spanish Florida to destroy what is known as the Negro Fort, where hundreds of fugitive slaves live. After the destruction of the fort many of these blacks escape to the Seminole Indians.

Women in Salem, Massachusetts, establish the Colored Female Religious and Moral Society for the purpose of being “charitably watchful over each other.” Read more...

In Philadelphia, the cabinet-maker Eugene Baptiste, with the help of his wife and her family, establishes a catering business, employing as many as 100 people. Read more...

In Charleston, South Carolina, seven women are among the city's nine leading African American grocers, fruit dealers, and confectioners. Read more...

George McGill and partners organize the Maryland Haytian Company in Baltimore, which charters ships for African Americans who want to emigrate to Haiti. The company charters the ship Dromo and sails to Haiti, but the company ultimately fails.

Tremendous upheaval takes place in both Europe and the Americas as demands for the end of slavery increase.

John Vashon, a wealthy businessman and primary financier of the abolition movement in Pittsburgh, opens the first public bathhouse west of the Allegheny Mountains. He will also organize the Pittsburgh Anti-Slavery Society and found one of the earliest schools for African American children. Read more...

Performing in the African Grove Theatre in Greenwich Village in New York City, the first black drama company is founded. Called the African Company, the group provides black women with an opportunity to be seen on stage for the first time. Read more...

The total black population in the United States is 1,771,656, of which 870,000 are women. There are 233,634 free blacks and 1,538,022 slaves in the country. Read more...

Sailing from New York City, eighty-six African Americans emigrate to Sierra Leone. Read more...

The Missouri Compromise allows the Missouri Territory to enter the United States as a slave state, but outlaws slavery north of the 36th parallel. Maine enters the Union as a free state with blacks having equal political rights, including the right to vote. Read more...

Two hundred working-class women in Philadelphia found the Daughters of Africa, an organization established for the mutual benefit of its members. Read more...

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church separates itself from the American Methodist Church, becoming fully independent. Read more...

Thomas L. Jennings receives the first-known patent granted to an African American, for a dry-cleaning process. Read more...

Benjamin Lundy begins publication of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, the first antislavery newspaper in the nation. Publication continues until 1833.

Denmark Vesey, a free black man, is accused of planning a revolt against the arsenal at Charleston, South Carolina. Vesey is betrayed before the rebellion begins; he and his co-conspirators are hanged. Some modern scholars doubt the revolt was actually being planned, but at the time authorities in Charleston were certain of the plot and hanged many blacks and exiled many more. Read more...

American Colonization Society purchases land in western Africa for blacks who want to return; the nation is called Liberia.

Alexander L. Twilight of Corinth, Vermont, graduates from Middlebury College, perhaps making him the first black man to earn a college degree in the United States. He later serves as a teacher in a mostly white school and as pastor to a white congregation. Read more...

The Life of William Grimes, A Runaway Slave, Written by Himself, is published in New York. Read more...

In continued efforts to hamper black business efforts, the Maryland legislature requires that in order for free blacks to sell tobacco they must get a certificate issued by a justice of the peace and witnessed by two whites.

North Carolina laws require free blacks to possess a special license in order to sell goods in adjacent counties. The types of goods they are allowed to sell are also limited by law.

The AME Daughters of Conference receive official approval to provide material assistance to ministers. Black women in Washington, D.C., found the Colored Female Roman Catholic Beneficial Society. Read more...

Samuel Cornish and John Russworm publish Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper. The elder, Cornish, is a Presbyterian minister. Russwurm, a recent graduate of Bowdoin (Maine), is one of the nation’s first black college graduates. Among its main financial supporters is the Female Literary Society of New York City. Read more...

Slavery is abolished in New York. Read more...

Black women in New York City establish the African Dorcas Association to provide clothing to children in the African Free Schools. Read more...

The Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first Roman Catholic religious community of black women in the United States, is founded in Baltimore, Maryland. Elizabeth Lange, originally from Santo Domingo, is the order's Mother Superior. The Oblate Sisters establish St. Francis Academy for Colored Girls. Read more...

David Walker publishes his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the United States, a radical indictment of slavery, in which he urges American slaves to revolt. Read more...

Following a race riot in Cincinnati, Ohio, more than one thousand black men, women, and children emigrate to Canada. Many return to Cincinnati within the next two years. Read more...

The First National Negro Convention meets in Philadelphia's Bethel AME Church; its purpose is to improve the condition of free blacks and slaves. In addition to civil rights, it promotes black business ownership, establishment of a black national bank, and black participation in international trade. Thirty-eight delegates, from New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, attend the meeting. They establish a Free Produce Society and stage a consumer boycott of goods produced by slave labor. Read more...

The total black population in the United States is 2,328,642, of which 1,162,366 are women. Free blacks number 319,599, while 2,009,043 are enslaved. As a result of gradual emancipation laws and state constitutions in the North, there are only 2,780 slaves in northern states, almost all of them in New Jersey. Read more...

Madame Eulalie “Cecee” d'Mandeville Macarty's thirty-two slaves make her the largest African American slaveholder in Louisiana. Macarty, a wealthy New Orleans merchant, sells “fancy goods” from France and acts as a private banker. By 1850, she will accumulate $150,000 from her business activities.

William Wormley owns the largest livery stable in Washington, D.C. He also rents horses and carriages. His business is destroyed in the 1834 “Snow Riot.”

William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper; Georgia puts a price on Garrison's head. Read more...

Nat Turner leads a rebellion of between sixty and eighty fellow slaves in Southampton County, Virginia. After killing approximately sixty whites, Turner and his followers are captured and hanged. Read more...

The first slave narrative by a black woman, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, is published in London. Read more...

John Maslow of South Dartmouth establishes the first prominent black-owned shipbuilding firm in Massachusetts.

South Carolina adopts a statute prohibiting African Americans from making or selling liquor.

The Female Literary Association for free black women in Philadelphia is founded, and Sarah Mapps Douglass becomes secretary of the organization. Weekly meetings are devoted to reading and recitation for the purpose of “mental cultivation.” Black women in Boston establish the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society, a benevolent and literary organization.

Maria Stewart becomes the first native-born U.S. woman to begin a public speaking career when she lectures before a “promiscuous” (male and female) audience in Boston's Franklin Hall, under the sponsorship of the African American Society. Read more...

Free black women, including Mary A. Battys, Charlotte Bell, Eleanor C. Harvey, and Dorothy C. Battys, found the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, Massachusetts. Read more...

Prudence Crandall, a white Quaker schoolteacher, opens a “school for young colored Ladies and Misses” in Canterbury, Connecticut, enrolling fifteen students. Local townspeople attempt to close the school, finally burning it. Read more...

The actor Ira Aldridge performs the title role in Shakespeare's Othello in London, becoming the first black person to gain international acclaim in that role. Read more...

The American Anti-Slavery Society is formed, marking the beginning of organized militant opposition to slavery. Read more...

Louisville, Kentucky, adopts an ordinance that prohibits free blacks from obtaining a license to sell liquor.

The interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society is founded, with nine black women among the charter members: Margaret Bowser, Grace Bustill Douglass, Charlotte Forten, Sarah Louisa Forten, Margaretta Forten, Sarah McCrummell, Harriet D. Purvis, Lydia White, and Mary Woods.

Blacks in Philadelphia establish the Philadelphia Library of Colored Persons to provide books and to sponsor concerts, lectures, and debates.

Blacks in Philadelphia establish the Philadelphia Library of Colored Persons to provide books and to sponsor concerts, lectures, and debates.

The inventor Henry Blair is granted a patent for his corn-planting machine. Blair is often cited as the first African American to receive a patent, though Thomas L. Jennings received one in 1821. Read more...

David Ruggles opens the first black-owned bookstore in New York. A white mob burns it down a year later. Read more...

The “Snow Riot,” starts at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., owned by an African American, Mr. Beverly Snow. The city's first race riot starts after a drunk slave, Arthur Bowen, allegedly appeared with an ax at the door of his master's wife, one of city's leading society women. The riot drives Snow and other African American entrepreneurs out of business. Francis Scott Key, author of the "Star-Spangled Banner,” seeks the death penalty for Bowen. Read more...

Lewis Woodson establishes his family in the barbering business in Pittsburgh. He is the father of eleven children, including six sons who become barbers. Lewis eventually owns five barbershops, three located in downtown Pittsburgh hotels. Read more...

A large number of blacks—both slave and free—revolt in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Most of the rebels are Muslims. Read more...

Oberlin College becomes the first college in the United States to admit students without regard to race or sex. Read more...

The Second Seminole War begins; it continues until 1843. A significant number of fugitive slaves live among the Seminoles and are integrated into their society. Read more...

The Texas Revolution begins. Anglos living in Texas resent Mexican rule but also object to Mexico's refusal to sanction slavery in Texas. Read more...

Georgia prohibits slaves from working in pharmacies and drugstores in an effort to limit their access to lethal substances.

Jarena Lee publishes The Life and Religious Experiences of Jarena Lee, a Couloured Lady, the first autobiography by an African American woman. Read more...

Alexander L. Twilight is elected to the Vermont state legislature. Read more...

In Commonwealth v. Aves, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that any slave brought into the state will become free because there are no laws supporting slavery. Shaw holds that masters can recover fugitive slaves who escape to Massachusetts, but slaves voluntarily brought into the state are free. Read more...

Henry Blair receives his second patent, for inventing a cotton-picking machine. Read more...

The Republic of Texas writes a constitution allowing slavery. Read more...

In response to the "Snow Riot," Washington, D.C., strengthens its black codes and passes a statute making it illegal for African Americans to sell liquor under any circumstances or to “keep any tavern, ordinary shop, porter cellar, refectory, or eating house of any kind, for profit.” Read more...

Free Frank McWorter, a former slave who purchased his freedom, establishes New Philadelphia, Illinois. It is the first town to be legally platted and registered by an African American.

A group of black women rush a Boston courtroom to rescue two fugitive women before they can be returned to their masters; a similar rescue is carried out in New York.

In Pennsylvania, the first black college, Cheyney State Training School, is established. Read more...

The first Antislavery Convention of American Women meets in New York; at least 10 percent of the attendees are black. Sarah Forten's poem “We Are Thy Sisters” is printed by the convention. Read more...

A proslavery mob kills Elijah P. Lovejoy, the white abolitionist editor of the Alton Observer in Illinois; Lovejoy's death inspires the growth of the abolitionist movement throughout the United States. Read more...

In Cincinnati, a group of African Americans found a cooperative steamboat company to take advantage of the lucrative trade on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Read more...

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, a group of African Americans establish a shipping company. Read more...

Southern Presbyterians leave the national organization to form their own pro-slavery synod. Read more...

Georgia statute stipulates that slaves can no longer hire out their own time, conduct trade for themselves, or rent stores or plantations.

Victor Séjour writes “Le mulâtre” (“The Mulatto”), perhaps the first story published by an African American. Read more...

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge is published. It is one of only a few narratives of the life of an early nineteenth-century free black woman. Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince (1850) is another. Read more...

Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery. Read more...

Narrative of Moses Roper is published in Philadelphia; the Narrative of William James, an American Slave is published in New York and Boston. Read more...

David Ruggles publishes the first black-owned magazine, Mirror of Liberty. Read more...

The Abolition Society of Philadelphia issues a report that only 350 out of 997 Afro-Philadelphians work in the trade or craft in which they are trained.

Cinque, a West African, leads a mutiny of Africans illegally imported to Cuba, while being transported from one part of the island to another aboard the ship L' Amistad. The ship reaches Long Island Sound and is taken to Connecticut where the U.S. District Court orders the Africans on the ship (known as “the Amistads”) returned to Africa. The administration of Martin Van Buren unsuccessfully appeals this outcome to the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more...

In New York City, the black abolitionist David Ruggles publishes the Slaveholders Directory, listing lawyers, politicians, and others who help slave catchers. Read more...

The abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld publishes American Slavery As It Is, which becomes a handbook for opponents of slavery. Weld chronicles the evils of slavery mostly through southern sources. Read more...

A Louisville, Kentucky, statute makes it illegal for any person of African descent to “keep a confectionery or victualling house or cellar, or a fruit store or cellar, or sell fruits or melons out of any store, house, or on any street or any other place.”

The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFA-SS) is formed by dissident members of William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society. The AFA-SS rejects Garrison's support for women's equality and favors political activities, which Garrison opposes. One of the leaders of the new society is Reverend J.W.C. Pennington, a fugitive slave known as the “Fugitive Blacksmith.” Read more...

James G. Birney, running for president on the Liberty Party ticket, wins a mere 7,000 votes out of the 2.4 million cast in the presidential election. Read more...

An African American real estate and construction company in Cincinnati establishes the "Iron Chest" to buy real estate and construct buildings, which are then rented only to whites.

The total black population of the United States is 2,873,648—of which 386,293 are free and 2,487,355 are slaves. There are 1,440,660 women, of which 1,240,938 are slaves.

In United States v. L'Amistad the Supreme Court rules that the Africans illegally imported to Cuba who mutinied and captured the ship transporting them must be returned to Africa. Read more...

Wesleyan Methodist Church is founded in Michigan by antislavery Methodists. This is a prelude to the collapse of the nation's largest organization, the Methodist Episcopal Church. Read more...

J.W.C. Pennington publishes A Textbook of the Origin and History of Colored People, probably the first schoolbook published by a black for teaching blacks. That year Pennington becomes the first black member of the Central Association of Congregational Ministers in Hartford, Connecticut. Read more...

Ann Plato publishes Essays, including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Poetry, consisting of four biographical compositions, sixteen short essays, and twenty poems. One of her poems, “To the First of August,” celebrates the end of slavery in the West Indies. Read more...

The successful California businessman, William Alexander Leidesdorff (of Danish and African descent) becomes the first black millionaire.

Henriette De Lille helps establish the second Roman Catholic religious congregation for black women in the United States—the Sisters of the Holy Family—in Louisiana. Read more...

In Prigg v. Pennsylvania the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 and strikes down northern “personal liberty laws” designed to give fair trials to blacks seized as fugitive slaves. Read more...

The Mississippi slave Benjamin Montgomery sets up a general store on the plantation of his owner, Joseph Davis, the brother of the future Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Montgomery establishes and maintains a personal line of credit with New Orleans wholesalers.

Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree van Wagener), a black woman who escaped from slavery, becomes an antislavery speaker and political activist. Read more...

Norbert Rillieux of Louisiana, a Paris-trained machinist and engineer, receives a patent for a new process for refining sugar. Rillieux later designs a sewage system for New Orleans, but the municipal government refuses to adopt it. Read more...

The General Conference of the AME Church defeats the first petition to license women to preach. Read more...

The Liberty Party candidate James Birney gets over 62,000 votes in his presidential campaign. Read more...

The General Conference of the mostly white national Methodist Episcopal Church breaks apart as southern members leave to form the Southern Methodist Church because northerners will not allow a slaveholder to become bishop of the Church. Read more...

City officials in Goachland, Virginia, revoke the liquor license of Jacob Sampson, a successful tavern owner. Nine years later, it is illegal for African Americans to sell alcohol anywhere in the state.

Macon Bolling Allen is admitted to the bar in Maine and becomes the first black attorney in the United States.

Forest Leaves, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's first book of poems, is published. Read more...

The United States annexes Texas, creating what one scholar has called a “great empire for slavery” in the Southwest. Read more...

Frederick Douglass publishes the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the first version of his autobiography. It sells more than thirty thousand copies in its first five years. Read more...

After twenty years of effort by Hezekiah Grice and a group of investors, the state of Maryland finally grants a charter of incorporation to the Chesapeake and Liberia Trading Company. Some Maryland officials refer to it as "that nigger company.”

Black women in New Orleans found the Colored Female Benevolent Society of Louisiana. Read more...

The fugitive slave George Latimer is seized in Boston, but his master is forced to sell him for a nominal amount when local law enforcement will not allow the master to place Latimer in a jail. This leads to “Latimer Laws” in a number of states, which prohibit local law enforcement officials from enforcing the federal fugitive slave law. Read more...

Zilpha Elaw publishes her Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labors of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw. Her book, a spiritual autobiography and ministerial narrative, is published in London, where she is living at the time. Read more...

The Mexican War begins. The war is very unpopular in New England and among opponents of slavery, who see it has an attempt to gain more territory for new slave states. The Democratic congressman David Wilmot amends a war appropriation with the “Wilmot Proviso,” prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The proviso passes in the House but dies in the Senate and sets the stage for a four-year stalemate in Congress over the issue of slavery in the new territories. Read more...

The Danish-African businessman William Leidesdorff opens San Francisco's first luxury hotel, the City Hotel. He also organizes the first horse race in the San Francisco Bay area.

From his home in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass publishes the first issue of his weekly newspaper, North Star. Read more...

In Jones v. Van Zandt the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a large judgment in a private lawsuit by a slave owner (Jones) against a Quaker farmer who gave a ride in his wagon to a group of blacks who turned out to be fugitive slaves, one of whom successfully escaped. The court holds that Van Zandt, even though in the free state of Ohio, did not need “notice” to know that the people he aided were probably fugitive slaves, and thus he is liable for their loss. Read more...

William Wells Brown publishes Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself. It goes through four U.S. and five British editions, making Brown an international figure. Also published that year is the fugitive slave autobiography Narrative and Writings of Andrew Jackson, of Kentucky . . . Narrated by Himself, Written by a Friend. Read more...

A report by the banking committee of the National Negro Convention proposes a resolution to establish a national, black-owned bank, arguing that “a Banking Institution originating among the colored people is needed because they at present contribute to their own degradation by investing capital in the hands of their ‘enemies.'” The delegates vote down the resolution.

Macon Allen is appointed a Justice of the Peace in Massachusetts, where he moved after being admitted to the Maine bar. Robert Morris is admitted to the Massachusetts bar, the second black lawyer (after Allen) in that state.

William and Ellen Craft, husband and wife, escape from slavery. Ellen, a thin, light-skinned woman, is dressed as a young male slave owner, with William as "his" servant. After reaching Boston the Crafts move to London to avoid capture under U.S. fugitive slave laws. Read more...

The Mexican War ends with the United States gaining 500,000 square miles of new territory, which reopens the debate over slavery in the territories. Read more...

Benjamin Roberts files the first school integration suit on behalf of his daughter, Sarah Roberts, who is denied entrance to several nearby white schools in Boston. The state supreme court upholds the legality of segregation. Read more...

George B. Vashon becomes the first black lawyer in New York State. Read more...

Lewis Temple (born in 1800) invents a new whaling harpoon head, the “Temple's Toggle” or “Temple's Iron." It becomes the mid-nineteenth-century whaling industry's standard harpoon.

William Leidesdorff, a successful merchant, rancher, and property owner in San Francisco who passed for white, dies. His African heritage is discovered after he dies, leaving an estate valued at $1.5 million.

The Free Soil Party candidate, former president Martin Van Buren, receives more than 290,000 votes in the presidential election and pulls enough votes away from the proslavery northern “doughface” Lewis Cass to give the election to the more moderate (although, ironically, slaveholding) Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor.

James Augustine Healy, the son of a Georgia master and his female slave, becomes the first graduate, black or white, of Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. Read more...

Madame Mary Ellen Pleasant uses part of a $50,000 inheritance from her husband to purchase and open a boardinghouse in San Francisco. She also lends money at high interest rates and speculates in real estate. Read more...

Aided by the North Star and “conductors” on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia. She returns at least twenty times to rescue more than three hundred people from slavery, and later serves as a spy and scout for the Union during the Civil War. Read more...

Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide is published. Brown's narrative of escaping from slavery by being shipped in a wooden box from Richmond to Philadelphia is not written by him, but by the white abolitionist Charles Stearns. Brown publishes his own story, Narrative of the Life of Henry “Box” Brown, Written by Himself in 1851. Read more...

In London, J. W. C. Pennington publishes his narrative, Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States. Read more...

A survey of African American businesses and occupations in Philadelphia reports fifty-two African American secondhand clothing dealers.

The Women's Association of Philadelphia organizes with the express purpose of raising money to support Frederick Douglass's newspaper, North Star.

Henry Bibb self-publishes the Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave. His recreation of life on the plantation and his attacks on the institution of slavery makes him one of the leading narrators of the antebellum period. Read more...

The former slave Reverend Josiah Henson publishes his autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Though initially it receives little attention, Henson and his slave narrative serve as inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional character Uncle Tom. Read more...

The Compromise of 1850 ends the public sale of slaves in the District of Columbia and brings California into the Union as a free state, giving the free states a permanent majority in the Senate. In addition to the new fugitive slave law the compromise opens up the rest of the lands acquired from Mexico to settlement by slave owners. Read more...

Harriet Tubman makes her first of nineteen trips to the South as a conductor on the Underground Railroad; she eventually leads more than three hundred slaves to freedom. Read more...

Lucy Sessions earns a literary degree from Oberlin College, becoming the first black woman in the United States to receive a college degree. Read more...

The total black population in the United States reaches 3,638,808—of which 434,495 are free and 3,204,313 are slaves. There are 1,827,550 women, of which 1,601,779 are slaves. Read more...

Sojourner Truth, a black woman abolitionist born a slave in New York, publishes her autobiography, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time. During the 1850s and 1860s sales of her book constitute her main source of income. Her firsthand account of slavery is largely nonexistent among narratives of slavery. Read more...

The African American jockey Abe Hawkins becomes well known at the race track outside of New Orleans in Metarie, Louisiana.

David Clay of Ohio manufactures a plow capable of plowing depths of eight to twenty inches, and which comes in custom sizes.

The American League of Colored Laborers is founded in New York to encourage African American craftsmen to become independent business owners.

There are 122 free black barbers in New York City; fourteen in Charleston, South Carolina; and forty-one in New Orleans.

The U.S. Census reveals that 7.5 percent of the free black population (or 439,494) own real property. The census also reveals that African Americans in New York invested $755,000 in black-owned enterprises.

The U.S. Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850. The new law provides for federal commissioners to help recover fugitive slaves with the assistance of federal marshals and, if necessary, the military. Thousands of blacks in the North flee to Canada. Eight days after its passage James Hamlet is seized in New York City and becomes the first fugitive slave returned under the law. Read more...

During a speech at a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth challenges racial and gender hierarchies with the question, “And a'n't I a woman?” Read more...

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (the “Black Swan”), the first black American concert singer, makes her debut in Buffalo, New York. Greenfield sings before an all-white audience in the Metropolitan Hall in New York City two years later. Read more...

Armed fugitive slaves in Christiana, Pennsylvania, resist their master and the federal marshal trying to recapture them. The slave owner is killed and the fugitive slaves all escape to Canada. A Federal grand jury indicts forty-one men, thirty-six blacks and five whites for treason. None were involved in the gunfight, but all refused to aid the U.S. marshal. In U.S. v. Hanway (1852) Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier, while riding circuit, rules that refusing to help enforce the law is not treason and all prosecutions are dropped. Read more...

In Boston a crowd of mostly black men storms a courtroom and removes the fugitive slave known as Shadrach from federal custody. Among those indicted and acquitted for the rescue is Shadrach's black attorney Robert Morris. Read more...

The exhibition “Colored American Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts and Science” opens in Philadelphia. On display are technological and manufacturing innovations developed by African Americans. Read more...

Thomas Sims is returned to slavery after a dramatic hearing in Boston with five hundred policemen guarding the courthouse. Read more...

In Syracuse, New York, a crowd of 5,000 people takes a fugitive slave from federal custody in what is known as the Jerry Rescue. Read more...

William C. Nell, a black activist, printer and historian publishes, Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812. Read more...

Mary Ann Shadd (Cary) publishes A Plea for Emigration or Notes on Canada West, in Its Moral, Social, and Political Aspect: With Suggestions Respecting Mexico, W. Indies and Vancouver Island for the Information of Colored Emigrants, to educate blacks on the advantages of leaving the United States. The following year, Shadd co-founds (with Samuel Ringgold Ward) and becomes editor and financier of Provincial Freeman, published in Windsor, Canada; she is the first black woman newspaper editor in North America. In 1870 she becomes one of the first African American women to practice law in the United States. Read more...

Martin Delany, a black activist and abolitionist, publishes The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, in which he argues that immigration to Central or South America, or the western territories of the United States offers the best opportunities for black freedom. Read more...

Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin in serial episodes in the antislavery newspaper National Era and then as a book, which sells 300,000 copies its first year and is credited with persuading millions of northerners that the fugitive slave law is immoral. Read more...

Philadelphia Quakers establish the Institute for Colored Youth as the first coeducational classical high school for African Americans. Myrtilla Miner, a white educator, founds the Normal School for Colored Girls in Washington, D.C. Read more...

With most slaveholders no longer part of the national organization, Francis Burns becomes first black bishop of the predominately white Methodist Episcopal Church. Read more...

The Ohio Colored Convention passes a resolution condemning African American barbers with a white-only clientele.

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (the “Black Swan”) sings at the Metropolitan Hall in New York City before an all-white audience. Read more...

Solomon Northup, a free black who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, publishes his narrative, Twelve Years a Slave. Ghostwritten by David Wilson, the narrative is immediately successful and is sold in later reprints as “Another Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Read more...

William Wells Brown publishes Clotel; or the President's Daughter, a novel based on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. It is the first novel published by an African American. The book is published in England, where Brown had been living since 1849. In 1854 British abolitionists buy his freedom and he returns to the United States. Read more...

Presided over by Martin Delany, a National Emigration Convention is held in Cleveland, Ohio. Black women account for one-third of the participants; Mary E. Bibb is elected second vice president of the convention. Read more...

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper combines poems and essays into the book Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, published in both Boston and Philadelphia. Containing the antislavery poem “Bury Me in a Free Land,” it is Harper's most popular verse collection. Harper is one of the earliest professional woman orators in U.S. history. Read more...

Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave in Boston is returned to Virginia after a one-week trial, a failed rescue, and the use of hundreds of police and soldiers to remove this one slave from Boston. Read more...

Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowing popular sovereignty to decide if territories will become free or slave states. The Republican Party forms in response to this law. Republicans vow to prevent any new slave states from being admitted to the Union. For the first time an avowedly antislavery political party elects significant numbers of candidates. Throughout the North numerous sitting politicians join the new party. Read more...

John Mercer Langston becomes first black lawyer in Ohio. Read more...

The Ashmun Institute is chartered in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as the first school of higher learning for black men and the first historically black college/university (HBCU) in the United States. Sarah Emlen Cresson is a cofounder. It later becomes Lincoln University. Read more...

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield sings for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. She is one of the first black performers to perform before royalty. Read more...

Elizabeth Jennings sues the Third Avenue Railroad Company in New York City. She wins $225 in damages and a court ruling that “colored persons, if sober, well-behaved and free from disease” could ride the city's horsecars along with white people. Read more...

James Richard Phillips operates a barbershop and bathhouse with twenty tubs, Phillips and Company, in San Francisco. He employs ten barbers. Read more...

Fifty-eight African Americans form a real estate investment company, the Benezet Joint Stock Association of Philadelphia, which accumulates real and personal property valued at $6,100.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the abolitionist Sherman Booth is arrested after a mob rescues the fugitive slave Joshua Glover from federal custody.

Upon returning to the United States, William Wells Brown publishes American Fugitive In Europe; Sketches of People and Places Abroad. Read more...

Mary Ann Shadd (Cary) addresses the National Negro Convention in Philadelphia, where she becomes the first female corresponding member. Read more...

John Mercer Langston, a former slave, is elected township clerk in Ohio. Read more...

Lucy Terry's “Bars Fight” appears in printed form. Read more...

The National Negro Convention issues a report on the value of urban African American businesses for various regions. In the Midwest (which includes Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan), African Americans own businesses valued at $1.5 million; businesses in New England (which includes Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island) are valued at $2 million; in the North (which includes New York and Pennsylvania) businesses are valued at $3 million. Read more...

Massachusetts bans segregated schools in the state. Read more...

Frederick Douglass publishes the second version of his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. Read more...

William C. Nell, publishes Colored Patriots of the American Revolution. Read more...

In Missouri v. Celia, it is ruled that a female slave, as property, does not have the right to defend herself against being raped by her master. Celia is executed.

The radical white abolitionist John Brown leads a raid against proslavery residents of Kansas in response to the burning of the city Lawrence, an antislavery stronghold; five southerners are killed in the "Pottowattomie Massacre." This is just one of many such incidents in the small-scale civil war known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Read more...

Charlotte Forten receives a teaching appointment at Epes Grammar School, in Salem, Massachusetts, making her one of the first African Americans in the nation to teach white students in a public school. Read more...

Mary E. Bibb and Mary Ann Shadd (Cary) are elected to the Board of Publications at the National Emigration Convention.

Booker T. Washington is born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia. Read more...

U.S. Supreme Court decides the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruling that African Americans are not citizens and therefore have no legal rights and that whites who own blacks as property can take them wherever they please, thus opening all the western territories to slavery. Read more...

Elizabeth Thorn Scott-Flood opens what is probably the first colored school in Alameda County, California. Read more...

White craftsmen in Wilmington, North Carolina, burn down a building constructed by blacks and threaten to destroy any other buildings erected by slaves. Read more...

The bar in Maryland (the home of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) refuses to admit the free black Edward Garrison Draper, even though it is admitted that he would be qualified to practice law in the state if he were white. Draper later practices law in Liberia.

Frank J. Webb publishes The Garies and Their Friends in London. Harriet Beecher Stowe writes the preface. It is the second of only four novels published by African Americans before the Civil War. Read more...

Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman, by Austin Steward, is published. Read more...

Mary Ellen Pleasant, the “mother of the Civil Rights Struggle in California,” finances the defense of Archy Lee in California's famous fugitive slave case. Read more...

Sarah Parker Remond becomes a lecturer for the American Antislavery Society and in 1859 begins a two-year tour of Scotland, Ireland, England, and France speaking for the abolition of slavery. Read more...

In Oberlin, Ohio, a mob rescues a fugitive slave from custody. The local black leader Charles Langston is one of two men convicted for the rescue, while scores of others are fined in a plea bargain arrangement. Read more...

The play The Escape, or A Leap for Freedom, by William Wells Brown, is issued by Robert F. Wallcut of Boston. It is the first dramatic work by a black man to be published in America. Read more...

The abolitionist John Brown leads a raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to start a guerilla war against slavery. After two days of occupying the federal armory, Brown is captured by U.S. Marines led by U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee. In December Brown is hanged in Virginia and becomes a martyr to the antislavery cause. Read more...

Aunt Clara Brown becomes the first black woman to cross the Great Plains during the Gold Rush. Read more...

In Philadelphia, Rebecca Cox Jackson founds the first black Shaker community. Read more...

Harriet E. Wilson publishes Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There, an autobiographical novel about racism in the North. Wilson is the first black American to publish a novel in the United States. Read more...

Martin Delany negotiates treaties for the resettlement of African Americans in Nigeria. Included in the agreements is land for settlement and export-oriented cotton production. Read more...

In Philadelphia, there are 166 registered black shopkeepers. Read more...

Baltimore slave owners debate supporting laws to remove free blacks from Maryland in order to break the virtual monopoly on hotel, transportation, and coach services. The plan is abandoned in light of the effect such a move would have on the Maryland economy.

In response to a gold strike in British Columbia, several hundred blacks leave San Francisco and emigrate to Vancouver Island.

Martin R. Delany publishes twenty-six chapters of Blake, or the Huts of America in serial form from January to July in the literary journal, Anglo-African Magazine, founded the same year. Other authors Hamilton will publish in his groundbreaking magazine include Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Read more...

The former slave Elizabeth Keckley, best known as the dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln, owns the largest custom-made dressmaking enterprise in the country. Read more...

William Craft publishes Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom; or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery. He publishes the book in England, having left the United States to avoid capture as a fugitive slave. Read more...

Free blacks in New Orleans own $15 million in property. Louisiana's leading African American planters and slaveholders own nearly $720,000 in real property. Read more...

The African American rice planter Margaret Mitchell Harris, from South Carolina, sells her slaves at auction for over $25,000 and the invests her profits in stocks and bonds. Read more...

The black population of the United States totals 4,441,830—of which 488,070 are free and 3,953,760 are slaves. There are 2,225,086 women, 1,971,135 of whom are enslaved. Read more...

The successful businessman Barney Ford opens the Inter-Ocean Hotel in Denver, after settling there upon escaping from slavery. Read more...

Abraham Lincoln wins the presidential election on the Republican platform of the non-extension of slavery. Following the lead of South Carolina, seven states secede from the Union and in early 1861 establish the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as president. Read more...

There are 664 free black dressmakers in Philadelphia, the most women's garment-trade specialists in the country.

Arkansas passes laws to expel all free blacks from the state. Although other states debate the issue, only Arkansas passes expulsion legislation. The legislation is never implemented.

Harriet Ann Jacobs self-publishes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under the pseudonym Linda Brent. It is the most comprehensive slave narrative about the antebellum period written by a woman. She breaks new ground in the genre by discussing her sexual history as a slave, concentrating her story on the female experience, and centering the narrative on the family. Read more...

The Civil War begins when Confederates fire on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; four more southern states secede and join the Confederacy. Thousands of slave women and men begin the process of self-emancipation, many fleeing to Union lines and adding their efforts to those of the Union soldiers. During the war, as many as 185,000 black soldiers will fight on the side of the Union. Read more...

In a speech the Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declares that slavery is the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy. Read more...

Mary Peake opens a one-room day school in Hampton, Virginia, with the help of the American Missionary Association. Read more...

The Port Royal Commission is begun in the Sea Islands near South Carolina, with Charlotte Forten (Grimké) as the only black teacher in the experiment. Susan King Taylor joins her in 1864. Read more...

Edward Garrison Walker, son of the black abolitionist David Walker, is admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. Read more...

The first Confiscation Act prevents slaveholders from re-enslaving runaways.

After revising the original twenty-six chapters of Blake, Martin R. Delany publishes the entire novel in the Weekly Anglo-African Newspaper from November 1861 to June of the next year. Read more...

Elizabeth Keckley helps form the Contraband Relief Association to raise money to assist freed men and women. Read more...

Susan King Taylor, at fourteen, becomes the first African American army nurse in the United States. Read more...

Mary Jane Patterson earns a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, making her the first black woman to earn an AB degree from an accredited U.S. college. Read more...

In April Congress abolishes slavery in Washington, D.C. Three months later, Congress permits the enlistment of black soldiers. Read more...

Frederick Douglass meets with President Lincoln in Washington, D.C., and agrees to act as a recruiter of black troops for the Union Army. Read more...

President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, liberating slaves in the Confederacy. The decree does not apply to the border states, and it exempts certain areas of Louisiana, Virginia, and West Virginia. Read more...

Harriet Tubman leads Union soldiers in a raid along South Carolina's Combahee River. Soldiers free around 750 slaves and destroy Confederate supplies worth millions of dollars. Read more...

There are two thousand black-owned businesses in the United States. Read more...

Draft riots begin in New York City. Read more...

The New Orleans Tribune, a daily newspaper produced by blacks, begins publication in both English and French. The paper earns a reputation as an advocate for social, economic, and political issues often ignored by the mainstream press. Read more...

Congress approves equal pay for African American soldiers. Read more...

Rebecca Lee (Crumpler) becomes the first black woman to graduate from a U.S. college with a medical degree, and the first and only black woman to obtain the Doctress of Medicine degree from the New England Female Medical College in Boston, Massachusetts. Read more...

Massacre of Union soldiers, including blacks, occurs at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Read more...

Congress repeals fugitive slave laws. Read more...

Mary Ann Shadd Cary receives a commission as a recruiting officer from the governor of Indiana, O. P. Morton, making her the only woman to be given official recognition as a recruiter during the Civil War. Read more...

Maryland abolishes slavery. Read more...

General Nathaniel P. Banks establishes the Free Labor Bank in New Orleans, which accepts deposits from African American soldiers and slaves who labor on federally controlled plantations. Cities like Beaufort, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, also open military savings banks for black soldiers; the banks also accept deposits from free blacks.

Fanny Jackson (Coppin) is the second African American woman to receive an AB degree, when she graduates from Oberlin. Read more...

Congress establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to coordinate aid and relief efforts, including education, for newly emancipated slaves. Two black colleges are founded: Atlanta University (Atlanta, Georgia) and the Shaw Institute (Raleigh, North Carolina). Read more...

Reconstruction begins; it is a period of rebuilding and social change in the United States (especially in the South). Read more...

Thousands of African Americans, individually and through their organizations, become depositors in the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, chartered by the U.S. Congress, with business confined to African Americans. Most depositors lose their money when the bank suspends operations in 1874. Read more...

A census of Southern occupations shows 20,000 skilled white craftsmen and tradesmen, compared to 100,000 skilled African Americans, most of whom are freed slaves. Over the next twenty-five years, African American artisans largely disappear as nearly all skilled positions are claimed by whites.

In Greenfield, Ohio, Charles Patterson founds C. R. Patterson and Sons Carriage Company, later called Patterson, Sons and Company. They build buggies, school wagons, surreys, and hearses.

Wealthy black businessmen in Louisiana organize the New Orleans Freedmen's Aid Association to provide loans, counselling, and education to newly freed slaves. The association is formed in response to ineffectual efforts by the federal government to provide economic independence for freedmen and women.

John Wilkes Booth fatally wounds President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.; the president dies the following day. Read more...

John S. Rock, who is both a lawyer and a physician, becomes the first African American admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more...

The Thirteenth Amendment is ratified, ending slavery throughout the United States. Read more...

The Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Read more...

Washerwomen in Jackson, Mississippi, organize a strike and submit a formal petition to the mayor demanding wages commensurate with the cost of living. Read more...

Frederick Douglass and other black leaders meet with President Andrew Johnson to discuss the personal safety and rights of African Americans. Johnson opposes any federal legislation to protect freed slaves, supporting the states' right and responsibility to solve such issues on its own. Read more...

The newly freed slave Benjamin Montgomery purchases the Davis family plantations Briarfield and Hurricane. Montgomery pays his former master $300,000 for approximately 4,000 acres. Read more...

Three black colleges are founded: Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee), Rust College (Holly Springs, Mississippi), and Lincoln University (Jefferson City, Missouri). Read more...

In Los Angeles, California, the former slave Biddy Mason becomes the first known African American to own property in the city. Read more...

In one of the bloodiest outbreaks of racial violence during Reconstruction, forty-six blacks and two whites are killed in Memphis, Tennessee. Five black women are raped and hundreds of African American homes, schools, and churches are burned. At least thirty-five blacks are killed in another race riot in New Orleans, Louisiana. Read more...

In response to a strike on the Baltimore docks, Isaac Myers, with African American and white investors, raises $10,000 to start the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. The company provides employment for hundreds of African American caulkers until 1884. Read more...

Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill over President Johnson's veto. Congress also sends the Fourteenth Amendment to the states for ratification. Read more...

The Ku Klux Klan organizes in Pulaski, Tennessee. Read more...

Sarah Woodson Early is appointed preceptress of English and Latin and lady principal and matron at Wilberforce University, becoming the first African American woman on a college faculty.

Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell are elected to the Massachusetts state legislature.

Under the directorship of George L. White, the Fisk Jubilee Singers form to raise money for Fisk University's building fund. The group of eleven singers and a pianist tour the United States and abroad, earning $50,000 for their school. Read more...

The former slave Mary Prout founds the Independent Order of St. Luke, a mutual benefit society that provides health and death benefits to its members. Read more...

William Jefferson White, minister and cabinetmaker, establishes Morehouse College in the basement of the Springfield Baptist Church to prepare young black men for the ministry and teaching. Other black colleges—Howard University (Washington, D.C.), Talledega College (Alabama), Biddle Memorial Institute (Charlotte, North Carolina), Morgan State College (Baltimore, Maryland), Johnson C. Smith College (Charlotte, North Carolina), and St. Augustine's College (Raleigh, North Carolina)—are founded. Read more...

Rebecca Cole, the second black woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, graduates from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Read more...

Ku Klux Klan holds its first national meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Read more...

Congress defeats legislation that would have given land to freedmen. Congress passes the first Acts of Reconstruction, stipulating that each unreconstructed southern state remain under military control until popularly elected delegates, from both races, have framed a new constitution. Read more...

Black voters constitute a majority in five southern states. Election commissioners in Alexandria, Virginia, refuse to count ballots; blacks vote in Tuscumbia, Alabama, but the ballots are set aside pending “clarification.” Read more...

Congress enfranchises black men in the District of Columbia. Read more...

The newly created National Association of Baseball bans “colored clubs” from its organization and urges member white clubs not to hire black players. Read more...

States ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, granting citizenship to freed people and guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law for all Americans, without regard to race or previous condition of servitude. Read more...

Congress readmits North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida. Conservatives disrupt the Florida convention and draft a new constitution placing power in the hands of the governor and effectively neutralizing the black vote. South Carolina and Louisiana approve new constitutions with African American officials and anti-discriminatory language in place. Read more...

With financial support from northern philanthropists, Hampton Institute is founded in Virginia to provide industrial education to former slaves to help them achieve self-sufficiency. Read more...

The African Methodist Episcopal Church General Conference creates the position of stewardess, allowing pastors to nominate a board of stewardesses, the first official position for women in the denomination. Read more...

Ulysses S. Grant becomes president. Read more...

Georgia's lower house rules that blacks are ineligible to hold office and ejects that body's African American members. Read more...

John Willis Menard is elected to Congress from Louisiana, but is denied his seat by the House of Representatives. In the debate over seating Menard he becomes the first African American to speak on the floor of Congress. Oscar J. Dunn becomes lieutenant governor of Louisiana. Read more...

Pinckney B. S. Pinchback and James J. Harris are the first African Americans to attend a Republican national convention. Read more...

South Carolina convenes a constitutional convention; 76 of its 124 delegates are African American. Read more...

Elizabeth Keckley publishes her autobiography, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Read more...

W. E. B. Du Bois is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Read more...

Fifteen-year-old Nat Love leaves Tennessee, heading west to Kansas where he becomes one of the most famous black cowboys and rodeo riders, earning the nickname “Deadeye Dick.” Read more...

The American Equal Rights Association, promoting universal suffrage, splits over issues concerning the voting rights of women and black men; two new organizations emerge—the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. Read more...

Frederick Douglass is elected president of the National Convention of Black Leaders. Read more...

Mary Ann Shadd Cary chairs the Committee on Female Suffrage at the Colored National Labor Union (CNLU) convention and becomes the only woman elected to the CNLU's executive committee. Read more...

Clark College (Atlanta, Georgia), Claflin College (Orangeburg, South Carolina), Straight College (now Dillard, New Orleans, Louisiana), and Tougaloo College (Mississippi) are founded. Read more...

Isaac Myers, a publisher, banker, and businessowner in Maryland, establishes possibly the first national union for black workers, the Colored National Labor Union. Read more...

Howard University Medical School opens its doors to both black and white women; by 1900, 103 women have enrolled, 48 of whom—23 black women and 25 white women—had graduated. Read more...

Twelve African American caterers in New York organize the Corporation of Caterers to strengthen and consolidate members' business interests.

George L. Ruffin becomes first black graduate of Harvard Law School. Ruffin and his law partner Harvey Jewell are elected to the Massachusetts state legislature the same year.

The writer and activist Frances E. W. Harper publishes Minnie’s Sacrifice, a serialized novel about the Reconstruction era. Read more...

Fanny Jackson (Coppin) becomes principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. She is the first black woman to head an institution of higher learning in the United States. Read more...

Upon graduation from the New York Medical College for Women, Susan McKinney Steward becomes the third black female doctor in the United States. Read more...

The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is founded (it is renamed Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in 1954). Read more...

The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified giving African American men the right to vote. The amendment is vigorously opposed in the South; white legislators eventually adopt voting requirements such as literacy tests in order to exclude black voters. But for the short term the amendment sets the stage for a revolution in southern politics. The enfranchisement of men sparks a debate within African American communities over woman's suffrage. Read more...

When acts of terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan prevent blacks from voting, Congress passes the first Enforcement Act to carry out the provisions of the Fifteenth Amendment. Read more...

Richard Greener becomes first black graduate of Harvard College. Read more...

Howard University Medical School opens its doors to black and white men and women; by 1900, the school has 103 women enrolled. Along with Meharry Medical School, Howard is the leading producer of black physicians. Read more...

Hiram Revels of Mississippi is elected to the U.S. Senate, taking the seat once held by Jefferson Davis; Jonathan Jasper Wright becomes a justice on the South Carolina Supreme Court. Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first black seated in the House of Representatives. Read more...

Allen University (Columbia, South Carolina), Benedict College (Columbia, South Carolina), and Le Moyne-Owen College (Memphis, Tennessee) are founded. Read more...

The Philadelphia Colored Women's Christian Association is established, perhaps the first black Young Women's Christian Association. Read more...

The black population of the United States is 4,880,009, or 12.7 percent of the total population. There are 2,486,746 women. Read more...

Viro “Black Sam” Small wrestles professionally in New York City.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary addresses the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on the issue of woman suffrage. Read more...

Congress passes the Second and Third Enforcement Acts, giving federal courts and the president broad powers in enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment. Read more...

The wealthy caterer James Wormley establishes the elegant Wormley's Hotel in Washington, D.C. The five-story hotel has an elevator, telephones in all of the rooms, a well-appointed dining room on the first floor, a bar in the basement, and an on-site barbershop. It serves whites only. Read more...

President Ulysses S. Grant declares martial law in nine South Carolina counties affected by Ku Klux Klan activities and violence. Read more...

Elijah McCoy is granted a patent for his invention of a steam engine lubricator for machines, trains, and ocean vessels. Read more...

Pinckney B. S. Pinchback is sworn in as governor of Louisiana. Read more...

Alcorn A & M College (Lorman, Mississippi) is founded. Read more...

Following her graduation from Howard University Law School, Charlotte E. Ray uses the initials “C.E.” to avoid discrimination against women and is admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C. She is the first black woman lawyer in the United States. Read more...

The poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar is born in Dayton, Ohio. Read more...

The Forty-third Congress convenes with seven black members. Read more...

The Colfax Massacre occurs in Grant Parish, Louisiana; more than sixty African Americans are killed. Read more...

Richard T. Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard University, becomes the first black faculty member at the University of South Carolina. Most of the white faculty and students left the university when it was integrated. Read more...

African Americans own 4,000 businesses. Read more...

Bennett College (Greensboro, North Carolina), Wiley College (Marshall, Texas), and Alabama State College (Montgomery) are founded. Read more...

In the Slaughterhouse Cases the U.S. Supreme Court undermines the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, leaving former slaves with far fewer federal protections than the amendment was designed to protect. Read more...

In New Orleans, Clem Geddes establishes a mortuary business.

Peter Dutrieuille establishes the Caterer's Manufacturing and Supply Company and a catering business in Philadelphia.

Father Patrick Francis Healy, the son of a Georgia master and his slave, becomes the president of Georgetown University. Read more...

Sixteen blacks are lynched in Tennessee. Read more...

Frederick Douglass is appointed president of the Freedman's Savings Bank. It fails the same year and 61,000 black depositors lose nearly $3 million. Read more...

The inventor Elijah McCoy is granted a patent for inventing an ironing table. Read more...

The Mississippi legislature elects Blanche Kelso Bruce to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. He is the first African American to serve a full term in that body. Read more...

James Augustine Healy, a former slave, becomes the first black Roman Catholic bishop in the United States. The year before, his brother was appointed president of Georgetown University. Read more...

Congress passes the Second Civil Rights Act, granting African Americans equal access to public accommodations and transportation. Read more...

Oliva (Oliver) Lewis becomes the first black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. Read more...

Alabama A & M College (Normal), Knoxville College (Tennessee), and Lane College (Jackson, Tennessee) are founded. Read more...

George Washington, the son of a slave and a free white woman, founds Centerville (later renamed Centralia) in the Washington Territory. Read more...

The Forty-fourth Congress of the United States convenes with eight black members. Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, a former slave, takes his seat as the second black U.S. senator. Read more...

Democrats suppress the black vote in Mississippi and win the election; President Grant sends federal troops to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Read more...

Edward Bannister, one of the founding members of the Providence Art Club (now the Rhode Island School of Design), wins first prize for painting at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Read more...

Mary Edmonia Lewis is the first black woman to gain recognition as a sculptress. She is the only black artist to exhibit in Philadelphia's Centennial Exposition. Read more...

European countries stake claims to land in Africa: Portugal annexes Mozambique and Angola; Berlin Conference begins the Scramble for Africa, the “legal” portioning of the continent by European countries. Read more...

Yale University awards a doctorate in physics to Edward A. Bouchet, who becomes the first African American to earn a PhD from an American university. He is also the first African American initiated into Phi Beta Kappa. Read more...

Prairie View A & M College (Texas) is founded. Read more...

Meharry Medical College is founded in Nashville, Tennessee, for black medical students. Read more...

The first permanent black musical-comedy troupe, the Hyers Sisters Comic Opera Company, is organized. Read more...

Harriet Purvis is the first African American woman to be elected vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Read more...

P. C. Fisher is granted a patent for inventing a furniture caster. Read more...

After widespread race riots erupt in South Carolina, President Grant sends federal troops to restore order in the state.

Henry O. Flipper becomes the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. As the only black officer in the nation's military, Flipper is hounded by racial prejudice and charges of embezzlement. He is convicted of conduct unbecoming an an officer and a gentleman and is dishonorably discharged. His name is finally cleared in 1977, thirty-seven years after his death. Read more...

Frederick Douglass is appointed U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia. Read more...

Rutherford B. Hayes is elected president on the promise to remove federal troops from the South. Reconstruction ends with the withdrawal of the last Union forces; white violence against freedpeople escalates. Read more...

John Mercer Langston is named minister to Haiti. Read more...

Jackson State College (Mississippi) is founded. Read more...

In northwestern Kansas, six African American entrepreneurs found the American Nicodemus Town Company. Within the year, settlers begin populating the all-black town. Read more...

The Forty-fifth Congress convenes with four black members. Read more...

In downtown Washington, D.C., John Bennett Nails and his brother Edward Nails open the hotel Shakespeare House.

On the heels of the Great Strike of 1877, which crippled the nation's railroad industry, domestic workers in Galveston, Texas, organize a strike.

The black jockey Billy Wakers wins the Kentucky Derby.

John W. “Bud” Fowler becomes the first black professional baseball player, joining an otherwise all-white team in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Fowler is credited with inventing shin guards to protect his legs because white players tried to spike him. Read more...

Approximately 206 African Americans set sail from Charleston, South Carolina, for Liberia in West Africa aboard the Azor, a ship owned by the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. Read more...

J. R. Winters is granted a patent for inventing a fire escape ladder. Read more...

The inventor W. A. Lavalette receives a patent for an advanced printing press. Read more...

Graduating from the School of Nursing, New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, Mary Eliza Mahoney becomes the first African American in the U.S. to receive a diploma in nursing. Read more...

Known as the “Exodus of '79,” significant numbers of southern blacks, called Exodusters, migrate to Kansas and the western territories, founding black towns in Kansas and the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). This is part of a larger westward movement of approximately 25,000 southern black people from the late 1870s to the early 1880s. Read more...

Julia A. J. Foote publishes Brand Plucked from the Five!: An Autobiographical Sketch. Read more...

The Forty-sixth Congress convenes with only one black senator. Read more...

Livingstone College (Salisbury, North Carolina) is founded. Read more...

Afrikaners rebel against Britain in the First Boer War; British withdraw from Transvaal in southern Africa. Read more...

Organized abolitionist movement emerges in Brazil and in 1888 the Lei Aurea (“Golden Law”) is passed, abolishing slavery in Brazil without compensation to slave owners. Read more...

Southern University (New Orleans, later Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is founded. Read more...

Black women organize the Colored Women's Progressive Franchise Association in Washington, D.C., to gain the right to vote and to establish black women in business. Read more...

The African American population of the United States is 6,580,793, or 13.1 percent of the total population. Women total 3,327,678. Read more...

Nearly half of all Virginia's oyster industry workers are African Americans. Read more...

In Cincinnati, the wealthiest African Americans all started their businesses before the Civil War.

Joel Chandler Harris, a southern white journalist, publishes Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. Among the many folktales his invented character, the black Uncle Remus, tells to a young white boy is the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Read more...

William Wells Brown publishes his last autobiography and book, My Southern Home, or the South and Its People. It is the final work in a writing career that spanned thirty-three years, during which he wrote poetry and fiction, excelled as a travel writer, and produced pioneering works of drama and history. Read more...

Washerwomen in Atlanta form the Washing Society and organize the largest known strike by black women to date; at its peak, 3,000 strikers and supporters are mobilized. Read more...

Frederick Douglass publishes the first version of his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. The book portrays Douglass's life as “a life of victory, if not complete, at least assured.” Read more...

Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles found the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary (later renamed Spelman College) in Georgia; it is the first school dedicated to the higher education of African American women. Read more...

Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute, based on the model of Hampton Institute, to provide moral and industrial training for black youth and to train teachers for the public schools. Read more...

In the largest mass migration from South Carolina, 5,000 black women, men, and children leave Edgefield and relocate in Alabama; they equal approximately one-fifth of the Edgefield population. Read more...

Tennessee passes a state railroad segregation law. Similar laws are passed in Florida (1887); Mississippi (1888); Texas (1889); Louisiana (1890); Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky (1891); South Carolina (1898); North Carolina (1899); Virginia (1900); Maryland (1904); and Oklahoma (1907). Read more...

Lewis Latimer receives a patent for the first incandescent electric lamp with a carbon filament. Latimer also made drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, and he later became the chief draftsman for General Electric and Westinghouse. Read more...

Blanche K. Bruce is appointed register of the treasury; Frederick Douglass is appointed recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia; and Henry Highland Garnet is named minister to Liberia. Read more...

The Forty-seventh Congress convenes with two black congressmen. Read more...

Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday play on the Oberlin College baseball team, one of the few integrated college sports teams.

Elijah McCoy continues work for which he will receive patents for more than twenty-five lubricating locomotive engines and other machines; machines that he manufactures become known as “the real McCoy.” Read more...

Forty-nine African Americans are lynched. Read more...

George Washington Williams publishes History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. The first comprehensive study of black America, it establishes Williams as the foremost African American historian of his day. Read more...

Virginia State College (Petersburg) is foundedRead more...

William B. Purvis receives a patent for a paper bag fastening device. Ultimately, he will receive ten patents for paper bag manufacturing. Read more...

Babe Hurd wins the Kentucky Derby

Fifty-three black people are lynchedRead more...

Mary Ann Shadd Cary becomes the second black woman to earn a law degree, when she graduates from Howard University. Read more...

The U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ruling that it is unconstitutional. The Court declares that under the Fourteenth Amendment Congress lacks the power to regulate private actors who deny equal access to public accommodations for African Americas. Most northern states begin to pass state laws requiring equal access for blacks. Read more...

Rebecca Lee Crumpler publishes Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts. Based on nearly twenty years as a physician, the book offers advice to women on providing medical care for themselves and their children. Read more...

African Americans own 10,000 businesses. Read more...

H. H. Reynolds receives a patent for an improved ventilator for railroad-car windows. Read more...

Jan Matzeliger earns a patent for a shoe-manufacturing machine that revolutionizes the shoe industry. Read more...

Four black are killed in a race riot in Danville, Virginia. Read more...

Hartshorn Memorial College for Women is founded in Richmond, Virginia, and becomes (in 1888) the first educational institution in the United States chartered as a college for black women. Read more...

Rev. Joseph Pierce and other African Americans begin constructing a railroad from Wilmington, North Carolina, to a coastal summer resort at Wrightville Sound. They do not complete the project.

Moses Walker signs with the Toledo Blue Stockings.

Sojourner Truth dies in Battle Creek, Michigan. Read more...

T. Thomas Fortune, the son of a prominent Republican politician during Reconstruction, begins to publish the New York Age. It is the foremost African American newspaper of the era, and Fortune becomes known as the leading man in black journalism. Read more...

Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church (Terrell), and Ida A. Gibbs (Hunt) graduate from Oberlin College. Read more...

After her removal from the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad, Ida B. Wells, a schoolteacher, begins a lawsuit against the racial segregation of railway transportation. Read more...

Isaac Murphy wins the Kentucky Derby. Read more...

The black jockey Isaac Murphy wins the first of three Kentucky Derbys. Read more...

Christopher Perry and his son-in-law Eugene Rhodes start the Philadelphia Tribune. It is the oldest daily newspaper serving the African American community. Read more...

Granville Woods receives his first two patents for a steam boiler furnace and a telephone transmitter. Read more...

Sara E. Goode is the first African American woman to receive a patent, for her “folding cabinet bed.” Read more...

The Toledo Blue Stockings join the American Association, the first “major” professional baseball league. The Toledo catcher Moses Walker becomes first black major league player. Read more...

Gertrude Mossell initiates the woman's column in the New York Age with her article “Woman's Suffrage.” Read more...

The first school for black nursing students opens at Spelman Seminary in Atlanta. Read more...

The Forty-ninth Congress convenes with two black congressmen. Read more...

The Colored Men's Professional and Business Directory of Chicago lists 200 businesses owned and operated by African Americans.

Enoch Henderson wins the Kentucky Derby

Frank Johnson organizes the New York Cuban Giants, the first fully professional black team (players are paid a regular salary). The team name is designed to fool whites into thinking the players are Cuban, not African American.

Seventy-four blacks are lynched; twenty blacks are killed in the Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi. Read more...

Kentucky State College (Frankfort) is founded. Read more...

The Knights of Labor, an early organization for workers and a precursor to the American Federation of Labor, reaches its peak membership at approximately 700,000, including between 60,000 and 90,000 African Americans. Read more...

Lucy Craft Laney opens a grammar school in Augusta, Georgia, which develops into the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. Read more...

Louise “Lulu” Fleming becomes the first black woman to be commissioned for career missionary service by the Women's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West. Read more...

The Colored Farmers' Alliance is founded; by 1891 it has organized in twenty states with a membership of 1,125,000.

Frank Grant joins Buffalo's team in the International League. He plays there for three consecutive seasons.

Granville T. Woods patents a rail telegraph system. Read more...

Florida A & M College (Tallahassee) and Central State College (Wilberforce, Ohio) are founded. Read more...

Isaiah Montgomery, the son of Benjamin Davis, founds the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. It will become one of the most successful all-black towns in the country. Read more...

The League of Colored Baseball Clubs forms with teams from Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Louisville, New York, Norfolk (Virginia), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington. Read more...

The International League bans teams from signing any new black players, but allows existing players, like Moses Walker and Frank Grant, to continue to play. Read more...

Mary Ellen Morrison earns a Pharmaceutical Doctor degree from Howard University's School of Medicine.

Isaac Lewis wins the Kentucky Derby

George Washington Williams publishes History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, a monograph on black participation in the Civil War. Read more...

Miriam E. Benjamin receives a patent for a “gong and signal chair,” which is later adopted by members of the U.S. House of Representatives to summon pages. Read more...

The League of Colored Baseball Clubs holds it first Colored Championship of America, with the Cuban Giants coming in first place after a series of games among nine teams. Read more...

William J. Simmons begins publishing Our Women and Children, a black magazine, in Kentucky; Simmons hires several black journalists, including Lucy Wilmot Smith, Mary V. Cook, Ida B. Wells, and Ione E. Wood. Read more...

Frank Grant leaves white professional baseball in the face of racial hostility and pressure to force all blacks from the leagues. Robert Higgins, who plays for Syracuse, also leaves white professional baseball. Read more...

In Philadelphia African Americans incorporate the Bureau Building and Loan Association.

William Browne of Richmond, Virginia, organizes one of the first incorporated African American banks in the country, the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers.

The Capital Savings Bank is incorporated in Washington, D.C. The bank was organized in response to a U.S. senator's comment that “with all their boasted progress, the colored race had not a single bank official to its credit.”

Cornelia Bowen founds Mount Meigs Institute, Mount Meigs, Alabama.

Nancy Jones is the first unmarried black woman commissioned by the Congregational American Board as a missionary to Africa.

Sarah E. Gorham becomes the first woman missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church appointed to a foreign field.

Sarah Woodson Early becomes superintendent of the Colored Division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and serves until 1892.

The Amateur Athletic Union is organized, but does not allow black athletes to join.

Black farmers establish the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union in Lovejoy, Texas.

Frederick Douglass serves as the U.S. resident minister and consul general to Haiti from July 1889 to August 1891. Read more...

Ida B. Wells (Barnett) is elected secretary of the National Afro-American Press Association; Wells also becomes part owner and editor of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. Read more...

Maria Louise Baldwin becomes the first African American woman principal in Massachusetts and the Northeast, supervising white faculty and a predominantly white student body at Agassiz Grammar School in Cambridge. Read more...

Syracuse of the International League releases Moses Fleetwood Walker, thus ending the presence of blacks in white professional baseball until 1946 when Jackie Robinson plays for Montreal, in the International League. Read more...

The Brotherhood of Liberty, a black civil rights organization in Baltimore sponsors the publication of Justice and Jurisprudence: An Inquiry into the Constitutional Limitations of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. This is the first civil rights treatise published in the United States. Read more...

William Henry Lewis plays center for Amherst College and is considered the first black “All American” football star. Read more...

In Virginia the Hampton Institute creates the People's Building and Loan Association to provide home loans to African Americans. Read more...

Josephine A. Silone Yates becomes professor and head of the Natural Sciences Department at Lincoln University (Jefferson City, Missouri), earning $1,000 per year. Read more...

The Middle States or Pennsylvania League is formed by six black baseball teams. By the end of the year the league's name is changed to the Eastern Interstate League. Read more...

The federal government opens the Oklahoma Territory for settlement; an estimated 7,000 African Americans migrate to the territory. Read more...

In Gutherie, Oklahoma, Sidney and Mary Lyons establish the East India Toilet Goods Company. By 1926 the Lyons have built a manufacturing plant and sell to national and international markets.

In San Francisco, the Odd Fellows' Hall Association is incorporated.

The Mutual Trust Company Bank is organized in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

T. Thomas Fortune founds the National Afro-American League, dedicated to racial solidarity and self-help. Read more...

The all-black town of Langston City, Oklahoma, is founded by E. P. McCabe, who came to Oklahoma during the land rush. Read more...

The Locust Street Settlement House is established in Hampton, Virginia, by Janie Porter Barrett; it is one of the first African American settlement houses. Read more...

An estimated 575 black newspapers, established throughout the United States since the end of the Civil War, cover social, religious, and cultural issues as well as current events and commentary. Among these newspapers are the New York Age, Washington Bee, and the California Eagle. Read more...

The Georgia Real Estate Loan and Trust Company is established in Atlanta. Read more...

Receiving a degree from the University of Michigan, Ida Gray is the first African American woman to receive the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree. Read more...

George Jeweth stars for the University of Michigan football team. Arthur Jackson plays football at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Read more...

Thomy Lafon, a New Orleans real estate speculator and private banker, is the first African American since the Civil War to become a millionaire. Read more...

Savannah State College (Georgia) is founded. Read more...

The black population of the United States is 7,488,676, or 11.9 percent of the total population. Women total 3,753,073. Read more...

The U.S. Senate defeats the Blair Bill, designed to promote literacy among African Americans. Read more...

William Purvis receives a patent for inventing a fountain pen. Read more...

Mississippi adopts the “Mississippi Plan,” which uses literacy tests to exclude black citizens from voting; the Mississippi Plan becomes the model for similar legislation in North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma. Read more...

At least eighty-five blacks are lynched. Read more...

Clarence and Corinne; or, God's Way, by Amelia E. Johnson, is the first book by a woman to be published by the American Baptist Publication Society and the first Sunday school book published by an African American. Read more...

African Americans own nearly 121,000 farms.

The grocer B. H. Hudson and Baptist minister W. R. Pettiford establish the Alabama Penny Savings and Loan Company in Birmingham.

The Colored Farmers' Alliance, formerly known as the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, has 1.25 million members.

The National Afro-American League is founded.

Isaac Murphy wins his second Kentucky Derby.

The jockey Pike Barnes wins the Belmont Stakes.

Tuskeegee Institute hires James B. Washington to be athletic director. It is the first black school in the country to have a person in this position.

William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson becomes the first known black athlete to be recruited by a white college; he stars on the track team at Amherst College. He also joins William Henry Lewis on the school's football team. Lewis is the captain of the team.

Jelly Roll Morton, the pioneering jazz composer and musician, is born in New Orleans. Read more...

Zora Neale Hurston, the novelist, is born in Notasulga, Alabama. Read more...

Lucy Parsons begins publishing her newspaper, Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist Communist Monthly. Read more...

An attempt to protect black voters fails as the U.S. Senate defeats the Lodge “Force Bill,” which would have provided federal enforcement to implement the Fifteenth Amendment. Read more...

Daniel Hale Williams opens Provident Hospital in Chicago; it includes a medical school to train black doctors and nurses. In 1893 Williams performs the first successful heart surgery at the hospital. Read more...

Julia Ringwood Coston edits and publishes Ringwood's Afro-American Journal of Fashion. Read more...

Delaware State College (Dover), North Carolina A & T College (Greensboro), and West Virginia State College (Institute) are founded. Read more...

Isaac Murphy becomes the first jockey in history to win three Kentucky Derbies. The jockey “Monk” Overton wins six races in a row at Chicago's Washington Park raceway.

Minnie M. Geddings Cox becomes the first black postmistress in the United States.

At least 161 blacks are lynched. Read more...

Ida B. Wells begins the first phase of the antilynching movement with a series of angry editorials in the Memphis Free Speech (a newspaper she co-owns) and the New York Age in response to the murder of three African American grocers with whom she was acquainted; Wells also publishes Southern Horrors, an exposé; of lynching. Read more...

Anna Julia Cooper publishes the book-length essay Voice from the South, advocating equal rights for black women and touting education as the best way to raise the status of the black race; it becomes her most famous work. Read more...

President Benjamin Harrison invites the African American opera diva Sissieretta Jones to sing at the White House. Read more...

The Woman's Loyal Union is founded in New York City, with Victoria Earle Matthews as its first president. Read more...

Frederick Douglass acts as commissioner of the Haitian Pavilion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; Douglass also releases a revised edition of Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Read more...

George Dixon, an Afro-Canadian from Halifax, Nova Scotia, wins the World Featherweight Boxing crown. Dixon is a descendant of slaves who fought with the British during the American Revolution and were evacuated to Nova Scotia at the end of the war. Read more...

Andrew Beard is granted a patent for inventing a rotary engine. Read more...

While attending Harvard Law School William Henry Lewis plays football for Harvard and is named to Walter Camp's All-American team. Read more...

Mary Moore Booze, Harriet Amanda Miller, and Dixie Erma Williams graduate with BS degrees from Hartshorn Memorial College, the first college degrees granted by a black woman's institution. Read more...

The all-black town of Langston, Oklahoma, organizes a board of trade for its twenty-five businesses.

The Colored Woman's League of Washington, D.C., is founded.

Alfie Clayton wins the Kentucky Derby.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper publishes her novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted, about a black woman raised as a white person. A portrait of Civil War–era life, the novel countered the inaccurate but popular plantation novels of the time. It will later be considered a key work of African American literature. Read more...

Woman's Era, which later becomes the official organ of the National Association of Colored Women, begins publication. Read more...

Meharry Medical College, founded in 1876 in Nashville, Tennessee, awards its first medical degrees to women: Georgianna Patten and Anna D. Gregg. Read more...

In Washington, D.C., Edward Elder Cooper starts the Colored American newspaper; it grows into one of the most influential African American newspapers in the country. Read more...

One hundred and eighteen blacks are reported lynched. Read more...

Julia A. J. Foote becomes the first woman to be ordained as a deacon in the AME Zion Church. Read more...

Charles Spurgeon Johnson is born in Bristol, Virginia; he will become a prominent sociologist and educator, an officer in the National Urban League, and a major supporter of the Harlem Renaissance. Read more...

E. C. Berry establishes the fifty-room Ohio Berry Hotel in Athens, Ohio. The hotel, which includes bathrooms and an elevator, grosses $35,000 per year. Read more...

The Woman's Era Club is founded in Boston. Read more...

In the first intercollegiate football game among black colleges, Biddle (now Johnson C. Smith University) beats Livingstone College. Read more...

The black jockey Willie Simms wins the Belmont Stakes. Read more...

Anna Julia Cooper, Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Fannie Barrier Williams address the Women's Congress at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, on the theme “The Intellectual Progress of Colored Women of the United Sates since Emancipation.” Read more...

Myrtle Hart, pianist and harpist, plays at the British exhibit at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Read more...

Nancy Green, a former slave from Montgomery County, Kentucky, is hired as the model for the first Aunt Jemina pancake mixes. She is the world's first living corporate trademark. Read more...

There are about 17,000 African American businesses.

The Southern Aid Society, the first chartered insurance company organized by African Americans in the South, is founded in Richmond.

The Women's Home and Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church is founded.

Gertrude Mossell publishes Work of the Afro-American Woman. Read more...

At least fifteen black women are lynched. Read more...

George A. Flippin, usually known as Albert Flippin, plays halfback on the University of Nebraska football team. Read more...

Willie Simms wins the Belmont Stakes for the second time. Read more...

In Jacksonville, Florida, the contractor and builder J. H. Blodgett, a former slave with no formal education, starts a contracting business. Having arrived in Florida with only $1.10, by 1913, he is one of the wealthiest African Americans in the state.

In Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Wiley Jones, who was born a slave and worked as a barber after the Civil War, builds the Wiley Jones Street Car Line, and purchases his own trolley cars to operate on the line.

Reflecting the cooperative impulse among Philadelphia's African American caterers, the Caterers Manufacturing and Supply Company is founded to supply equipment and materials such as chairs, linens, and silver.

Amelia E. H. Johnson publishes The Hazeley Family; the novel features characters whose race is not determined and exposes race as an arbitrary categorization. Read more...

Frederick Douglass dies on 20 February at his home, Cedar Hill, in Washington, D.C. A powerful political figure and arguably the most significant black public figure of his century, during his long career he became the most influential and renowned African American writer of the nineteenth century. Douglass’s influence and impact on African American literature continues well into the present. Read more...

Ida B. Wells (Barnett) publishes Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1894 after completing lecture tours in England. Read more...

Victoria Earle Matthews begins a tour of the South to report on the status of southern African American women for the National Federation of Afro-American Women. Read more...

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin organizes the first National Conference of Colored Women, meeting in Boston. Read more...

Mary Church Terrell is appointed to the board of education in Washington, D.C., becoming the first African American woman to serve on a board of educatio. Read more...

Three major African American Baptist conventions merge to form the National Baptist Convention, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Read more...

W. E. B. Du Bois receives a PhD from Harvard University, becoming the first African American at Harvard to do so. Read more...

The Church of God in Christ is founded. Read more...

Fort Valley State College (Georgia) is founded. Read more...

John “Bud” Fowler organizes the Page Fence Giants, an all-black barnstorming professional baseball team. Read more...

Professor Jacob C. White, Dr. Nathan F. Mossell, and other prominent African Americans establish the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School for nurses in Philadelphia. Read more...

The National Federation of Afro-American Women is founded, with Margaret Murray Washington as president and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin as vice president. Read more...

Napoleon Bonaparte Marshall begins a three-year career on Harvard's track team. Read more...

The Penn Relay in Philadelphia allows black runners to compete. Read more...

Henry O. Tanner has three paintings exhibited at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta; Tanner's work is shown in the “Negro building,” while the work of white artists is displayed in the “art exhibit.” Read more...

The National Medical Association is founded. Read more...

The National Steamboat Company of Washington, D.C., is organized. The company launches the George Leary, a luxury boat providing service between Washington, D.C., and Norfolk, Virginia. It accommodates 1,500 passengers, and includes three decks, sixty-four state rooms, one hundred berths, and a dining room.

Thomas C. Windham and his brother Benjamin establish the Windham Brothers Construction Company in Birmingham, Alabama.

“Soup” Perkins wins the Kentucky Derby .

Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise” speech to a mixed-race audience at the Cotton Exposition, maintaining that blacks could best improve their condition through hard work, thrift, and self-reliance—rather than through political action. Most black intellectuals, including W. E. B. Du Bois, criticize Washington's positions. Read more...

Marshall “Major” Taylor becomes first-known black professional cyclist. Read more...

Harvard University Press publishes W. E. B. Du Bois' Ph.D dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to America as the first volume in its Historical Studies Series. The landmark historical investigation will continue to be consulted by historians more a century later. Read more...

Harvard grants an honorary MA to Booker T. Washington. Read more...

The National Association of Colored Women is formed in Washington, D.C., with Mary Terrell as its first president and Josephine Ruffin as Vice President. Read more...

Approximately 321 African Americans set sail in the Laurada from Savannah, Georgia, emigrating to Liberia. Read more...

After earning a masters degree at Iowa State University, George Washington Carver joins the faculty at Tuskegee Institute as the director of agricultural research. Read more...

Sissieretta Jones organizes the Black Patti Troubadours. Read more...

Ohio passes the strongest antilynching law in the country. Read more...

South Carolina State College (Orangeburg) is founded. Read more...

The black golfer John Shippen plays in the the second U.S. Open Campionship at Shinnecock Hills Golf Course. During his career, he will play in four other U.S. Opens. Read more...

The army of Ethiopian emperor Menelik II wins a decisive victory over the Italian army at the Battle of Adwa. Ethiopia is the only African country to maintain its independence from colonial domination. Read more...

Willie Simms wins the Kentucky Derby. Read more...

Republican Party platform demands “that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot, and that such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast.” Read more...

In the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson case, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a Louisiana law providing for separate railroad cars for blacks and whites. This decision establishes the legal basis for racial segregation in public facilities as long as “separate but equal” facilities are provided; the ruling becomes the legal foundation for Jim Crow segregation throughout the nation. Read more...

Paul Laurence Dunbar publishes Lyrics of Lowly Life, the first book of poetry by an African American to be released by a major commercial publisher. It includes poems in the tradition of the English Romantics, as well as the dialect poems that gained him international recognition. It is probably the best-selling book of poems by an African American before the Harlem Renaissance. The book contains more than one hundred poems, the large majority of which had been published in his two previous poetry collections. Read more...

The First Hampton Negro Conference is held; the annual meeting assesses the conditions and strategies of African Americans. At the first conference, Fanny Jackson Coppin speaks on industrial education; later conferences include sessions organized by state and national women leaders on topics such as women's education, community services, and health issues. Read more...

Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, with the help of Jessie Dorsey, founds the Denmark Industrial School in Denmark, South Carolina (later Voorhees Industrial School, now Voorhees College). Read more...

Lutie A. Lyte is the first black woman to graduate from a southern law school, Central Tennessee College. She is also the first black woman to practice law in Tennessee and to be admitted to the Kansas Bar Association. Read more...

Victoria Earle Matthews establishes the White Rose Mission in New York City to serve as a community center providing assistance to black women migrating from the South. Read more...

American Negro Academy is founded to promote scholarly work and fellowship among leading black intellectuals; Anna Julia Cooper is the only woman elected to membership. Read more...

Langston University (Oklahoma) is founded. Read more...

George Dixon loses his boxing title. Read more...

George Chadwell plays football for Williams College; Howard J. Lee plays for Havard; William Washington is in his third year on the Oberlin College football team. Read more...

Andrew J. Beard invents the “Jenny Coupler,” an automatic system for coupling railroad cars. Read more...

Matilda Arabelle Evans becomes the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in South Carolina. Read more...

One hundred and twenty-three lynchings of African Americans are reported. Read more...

African American businesspeople and professionals in Montgomery, Alabama, form the Citizens' Commercial Union.

Anita Florence Hemmings becomes the first African American graduate from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Spelman Seminary begins a College Department, with collegiate courses offered on Atlanta Baptist (Morehouse) campus.

Death of John Mercer Langston, Ohio lawyer, antebellum black officeholder, Congressman, and first dean of Howard Law School. Read more...

Although excluded from the League of American Wheelmen, “Major” Taylor competes as a non-member and wins enough races to gain the title "American National Cyclist Champion. Read more...

One hundred and one lynchings of African Americans are reported. Read more...

President William McKinley visits Tuskegee Institute, underscoring the growing political influence of Booker T. Washington. Read more...

A Slave Girl's Story, Kate Drumgoold's autobiographical narrative, is published. Read more...

Robert (Bob) Cole produces Trip to Coontown on Broadway; it is the first full-length musical comedy written, directed, performed, and produced by African Americans. The play departs from minstrel tradition by offering a story with musical numbers. It runs in New York for three years. Read more...

George Dixon regains the boxing title. Read more...

Alton Washington plays halfback and quarterback for Northwestern University's football team. Read more...

John Merrick and six black investors found the North Carolina Mutual Life and Provident Association (renamed North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company). It will become the leading African American insurance company and the largest black-owned business in the country . Read more...

Willie Simms wins his second Kentucky Derby. Read more...

About twenty black regiments serve in the Spanish-American War, including the Tenth Cavalry which provides vital support to Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders in their famous charge up San Juan Hill. Four members of the Tenth and one other black soldier win the Medal of Honor for their service. The war leads to the commissioning of more than one hundred black officers with Charles Young becoming a Brevet Major. Read more...

A race riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, results in the death of eight African Americans as white violence effectively reverses election results. While most blacks lose their offices to fraud and violence, George H. White is elected to Congress from Wilmington and serves his term, becoming the last black in Congress from the South until the 1970s. Read more...

Eliza Ann Grier becomes the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state of Georgia. Read more...

In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that under the Fourteenth Amendment the American-born children of Chinese immigrants are citizens of the United States. Read more...

A Hampton Conference report indicates that African Americans own a total of seventeen building and loan associations in the following states: Arkansas, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

At the Atlanta University Conference, W. E. B. Du Bois proposes five strategies to advance African American entrepreneurship: (1) the establishment of a formal business curriculum at African American colleges; (2) the creation of consumer loyalty and increased consumer confidence through fair, courteous service and meticulous business methods; (3) the insistence that regardless of price, African Americans should patronize African American businesses in their communities; (4) promotion of African American businesses through community institutions, such as churches, schools, and newspapers; and (5) personal thrift and wealth-building.

Reverend Thomas W. Walker organizes the Birmingham Grate Coal Mining Company in Alabama with an initial capitalization of $10,000.

Using $2000 from his personal savings, Anthony Overton founds the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company in Kansas City, Missouri. The company manufactures health and beauty aids for African Americans; his first product is Hygienic Pet Baking Powder, but he is best-known for his patented line of cosmetics and perfumes marketed under the name “High Brown” in the early 1900s.

Addition of a “grandfather clause” to the Louisiana state constitution enables poor whites to vote while preventing black voter registration.

In Williams v. Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Mississippi's law which ties jury service to voting. In the process the court upholds Mississippi's disfranchisement of most blacks on the basis of literacy.

The National Benefit Life Insurance Company is founded in Washington, D.C.

Blanche K. Bruce, senator from Mississippi, dies. Read more...

Paul Robeson is born in Princeton, New Jersey. Read more...

W. E. B. Du Bois organizes the "Negro in Business” conference at Atlanta University. Du Bois chairs a committee that suggests the formation of “local Negro business men's leagues.” Read more...

British defeat the Afrikaners in the Second Boer War. Read more...

Scott Joplin publishes his “Maple Leaf Rag,” bringing ragtime to the general public. Read more...

George F. Grant, a black dentist in Boston, invents and patents the golf tee (patent number 638,920). He never markets the tee, but uses it himself and gives tees to his fellow golfers. Read more...

L. C. Bailey earns a patent for inventing a folding bed. Read more...

In Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court refuses the request of blacks to close the white high school in Augusta, Georgia, until county officials open a high school for blacks. Read more...

Eighty-five blacks are reported lynched, including at least four women. Read more...

Charles W. Chesnutt publishes his first two books of short stories, Conjure Woman and Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. Conjure Woman will later be considered his finest book, reaching a broad audience, including whites. Chestnutt's use of black dialect demonstrated how black vernacular can be used in fictionwriting without belittling the subject. Read more...

The Invincible Sons and Daughters of Commerce (a secret society) reports that it has grown to 509 lodges in more than thirteen states.

Michigan reaffirms its law allowing interracial marriage.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington is born in Washington, D.C. Read more...

The Afro-American Council calls for a national day of fasting to protest lynchings and racial violence. Read more...