Saturday's 50 Year Commemoration at Lincoln Memorial of Martin Luther King's March on Washington

HISTORY IN THE NEWS

Dedicated to the background of contemporary events around the world. 

IN MEMORY OF DR. KING'S MARCH ON WASHINGTON, A TIMELINE OF BLACK HISTORY IN AMERICA.

SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE.



17th-18th centuries - Hundreds of thousands of Africans brought over and sold into slavery to work on  

cotton and tobacco plantations.

1619 - Dutch deliver the fist slaves to Virginia.
1652 - Rhode Island enacts the first law in the colonies declaring slavery illegal.

1664 - Maryland passes a law making lifelong servitude for black slaves mandatory to prevent them from taking advantage of legal precedents established in England which grant freedom under certain conditions, such as conversion to Christianity. Similar laws are later passed in New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas and Virginia. 

1672 - The Royal Africa Company is given a monopoly in the English slave trade.

1688 - Quakers in Pennsylvania issue a formal protest against slavery in America.

1696 - The Royal African Trade Company loses its slave trade monopoly, spurring colonists in New England to engage in slave trading for profit.
1712-  June- the Pennsylvania assembly bans the import of slaves into that colony. 

1716 - The first group of black slaves is brought to the Louisiana territory.
1739- three separate violent uprisings by black slaves occur in South Carolina.

1740 - Fifty black slaves are hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, after plans for another revolt are revealed

1799- March 29- A law is passed to abolish slavery in the state of New York, effective twenty-eight year later, in 1827. 

1807- Congress passes an act that prohibits the importation of slaves into any port within the confines of the
United States from any foreign land.
1808 - Atlantic slave trade abolished
-Presidency of James Monroe  (1817-25) 1820- March 3- The Missouri Compromise bill, sponsored by Henry Clay, is passed in the United States Congress.  This legislation allows slavery in the Missouri territory, but not in any other location west of the Misssissippi River that was north of 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude, the current southern line of the state of Missouri.  The state of Missouri would be admitted to the Union, under this compromise, on August 10, 18.

1831-August 21- A local slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, led by Nat Turner, a black slave,killed fifty-seven white citizens.  Turner would be captured on October 30 of the same year, tried, and hanged on November 11 for his part in the uprising.

1838- September 3- Frederick Douglass, future abolitionist, boards a train in Maryland to freedom from slavery, with borrowed identification and a sailor's uniform from a free Black seaman.

1852- Mar. 20: Harriet BeecherStowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin, which sells 300,000 copies in a year 

and a million copies in 16 months. When Stowe met President Lincoln at the White House, he reportedly asked her: "Is this the little woman whose book made such a great 
war?" 

                             Presidency of Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857

1854 - Opponents of slavery, or abolitionists, set up Republican Party. The Republican party grew out of the conflicts regarding the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. The stimulus for its founding was provided by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. That law repealed earlier compromises that had excluded slavery from the territories. The passage of this act served as the unifying agent for abolitionists and split the Democrats and the Whig party. "Anti-Nebraska" protest meetings spread rapidly through the country. Two such meetings were held in Ripon, Wis., on Feb. 28 and Mar. 20, 1854, and were attended by a group of abolitionist Free Soilers, Democrats, and Whigs. They decided to call themselves Republicans-because they professed to be political descendants of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party. The name was formally adopted by a state convention held in Jackson, Mich., on July 6, 1854.

1855 - Free Soilers establish government banning slavery and blacks from Kansas;

1857 - Dred Scott Supreme Court Decision that a slave did not become free when 

transported into a free state. It also ruled that slavery could not be banned by 

the U.S. Congress in a territory, and that blacks were not eligible to be
awarded citizenship.

Dred Scott

1858- June 23,- With strife between pro-slavery and anti-slavery
partisans escalating to dramatic chaos, the 2nd Infantry and 3rd
Artillery regiments under the command of Captain Nathanial Lyon attempt
to restore order during the "Bleeding Kansas" campaign. 

The Civil War. 

1860-61 - Eleven pro-slavery southern states secede from Union and form Confederate States of America under leadership of Jefferson Davis, triggering civil war with abolitionist northern states.
1863 - Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in Confederate states to be free.

March – Conscription enacted

1865- December 18- The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery is added to the Constitution.
1866- Jun 16 - The 14th Amendment declaring all persons born on American soil, to be citizens (including blacks) is passed by Congress.

 RACE RELATIONS.


1875- March 1 - The Civil Rights Act, giving equal rights to blacks in jury duty and accommodation is passed by the United States Congress.
1870s-1920s- epidemic of white mob lynchings of blacks, mostly in the American South.
1883-  Civil Rights Act overturned in 1883 by the U.S. Supreme Court with adverse effects for black Americans.

1909- May 30- The National Conference of the Negro is conducted,
leading to the formation of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP). 

-Jim Crowe laws reinforce segregation throughout the South.

1937- March 26- William Henry Hastie is appointed to the federal
bench, becoming the first African-American to become a federal judge. 

1943- June 21- Race riots in Detroit and Harlem cause forty deaths and seven hundred injuries.
1948- July 26- Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States military in signed into effect by President Harry S. Truman.
1967 July - Black riots plague U.S. cities.  In Newark, New Jersey, twenty-six are killed, fifteen hundred injured and one thousand arrested from July 12 to 17.  One week later, July 23 to 30, forty are killed, two thousand injured, and five thousand left homeless after rioting in Detroit, known as the 12th Street Riots, decimate a black ghetto.  The riots are eventually stopped by over 12,500 Federal troopers and National Guardsmen.
1968 - April 4, Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King assassinated. Blacks riot throughout eastern US.
1986- January 20- Martin Luther King Day is officially observed for the first time as a federal holiday in the United States.

 
CIVIL RIGHTS.



1791 - Bill of Rights guarantees individual freedom.
1865- December 18- The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery is added to the Constitution.
1866- Jun 16 - The 14th Amendment declaring all persons born on American soil, to be citizens (including blacks) is passed by Congress.

1870 - 15th Amendment Ratified, giving Blacks but not women the right to vote. 

1875- March 1 - The Civil Rights Act, giving equal rights to blacks in jury duty and accommodation is passed by the United States Congress.  It would be overturned in 1883 by the U.S. Supreme Court.


1896- May 18- Plessy versus Ferguson decision by the Supreme Court states that racial segregation is approved under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

1909- May 30- The National Conference of the Negro is conducted, leading to the formation of the 

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP). 

federal relief.
-through the 'Jim Crow Laws' racial segregation is kept legal in the Southern United States. 

1937- March 26- William Henry Hastie is appointed to the federal bench, becoming the first African-American to become a federal judge.
1948- July 26- Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States military in signed into effect by President Harry S. Truman.
1954 - Racial segregation in schools becomes unconstitutional; start of campaign of civil disobedience to secure civil rights for Americans of African descent.
1955- December 1- Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, refuses to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, prompting the boycott and NAACP protect that would lead to the declaration that bus segregation laws were unconstitutional by a federal court.

1956- March 12- One hundred and one congressmen from Southern states call for massive resistance to the Supreme Court ruling on desegregation.
1957- April 29- U.S. Congress approves the first civil rights bill since reconstruction with additional protection of voting rights.

1963- August 28- The Civil Rights march on Washington DC for Jobs and Freedom culminates with Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Over 200,000 people participated in the march for equal rights.  A monument is now planned on the National Mall to commemorate Dr. King, the speech, and his impact on Civil Rights.
1964- June 29- An omnibus legislation in the U.S. Congress on Civil Rights is passed.  It banned discrimination in jobs, voting and accommodations.
1965- August 6 - The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.  Two significant portions of the act; the outlawing of the requirement of potential voters to take a literacy test in order to qualify and the provision of federal registration of voters in areas with less than 50% of all voters registered.
2013- The 'not guilty verdict' in the shooting of an unarmed black man, Trayvon Martin by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman suggest that most young black men in the united states remain guilty until proven innocent.