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Dean Rowley, Historian
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site
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BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
1663 (September 13)- First serious slave conspiracy in colonial America in Gloucester County, Virginia.
1712 (April 7)- Slave revolt in New York.
1739 (September 9)- Slave revolt in Stono, South Carolina.
1770 (March 5)- Cripus Attucks, the first black, and one of the first five people killed in Revolutionary cause.
1775 (April 14)-First abolition society in the United States organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
First black Baptist Church is founded by Daivd George, a runnaway slave. 1776 (January 16)- Continental Congress approves General George Washington's order to enlist free Negroes.
1777 (July 2)- Vermont is the American state to abolish slavery.
1781 James Forten, a black crewman on the privateer Royal Louis is taken prisoner.
1787 (September 12)- Prince Hall receives a charter from the Grand Lodge of England for the first Negro Masonic lodge in America.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones dound the Free African Society.
1794 Richard Allen organizes Bethel African Methodiat Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
1796 Zion Methodist Church orgaized in New York.
1800 In New York Peter Williams aand James Varick form their own Zion Church.
1820 (March 3)- Missouri Compromise enacted, banning slavery to the north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
1822 (May 30)- Denmark Vesey's conspiracy uncovered; Vessy and others hanged on July 2.
1827 (March 16)- Freedom's Journal, first black newspaper, published in New York City by John B. Russwurm.
1829 (September 28)- David Walker publishes Walker's Appeal in Boston.
1830 (September 20)- First national black convention meets at Philadelphia's Bethel Church, presided over by Richard Allen.
1831 (January 1)- Williams Lloyd Garrison publishes the abolitionist newspaper, Liberator.
(August 21-22)- Nat Turner revolt, Southhampton County, Virginia; Turner is hanged in November.
1839 Joseph Cinque leads a slave revolt aboard the Amistad. Atlantic slave trade outlawed in the United States.
1843 (June 1)- Sojourner Truth begins her work as an abolitionist.
1847 (December 3)- Frederick Douglass publishes the first issue of his newspaper, North Star.
1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland; will return to South ninteen times to help other slaves escape.
1854 (May 30)- Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals Missouri Compromise and opens the Northern Territory to slavery.
1857 (March 6)- Dred Scott decision by U.S. Supreme Court opens federal territory to slavery and denies citizenship to American blacks.
1859 (October 16-17)- John Brown attacks U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown is hanged on December 2.
1861 (April 12)- Confederates attack Fort Sumter, South Carolina; Civil War begins.
1862 (May 13)- Robert Smalls sails out the armed Confederate steamer Planter out of Charleston Harbor and presents it to the U.S. Navy.
(July 17)- Congress authorizes President Lincoln to accept blacks for military service.
1863 (January 1)- Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, issued by President Abraham Lincoln, freeing three million slaves.
(January 26)- War Department authorizes Massachusetts governor to recruit the first black troops, the Fifty-fourth Massachuetts Volunteers, which makes its famous charge on Fort Wagner on July 18.
(July 13-17)- New York City Draft Riots by white workers who blame blacks for the Civil War.
1864-1867- Eight Southern States passed what became known as the "Black Codes" requiring that every Black man be in the service of a White, have both a lawful residence and a job, and carry an official certificate to show both.
1865 (January 11)- Conferedate General Robet E. Lee recommends the arming of slaves.
1865 (Januaru 31)- Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery; it becomes part of the Constitution on December 18.
(February-March)- Congressional Reconstruction Acts passed including the establishment of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedman and Abandoned Lands (Freedman's Bureau), maintaining Federal Troops in ex-Confederate States, under the War Department to protect and enfrancise ex-slaves.
(April 9)- General Robert E. Lee surrenders.
(April 15)- President Lincoln is assassinated.
1866 (April 9)- Civil Rights Bill passed over President Johnson's veto.
1867 (March 2)- Congress passes first Reconstruction Acts.
(April)- First meeting of Ku Klux Klan in Nashville, Tennessee.
1868 (January 14)- Constitutional convention meets in Charleston, South Carolina, witha majority of black delegates.