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Hege Library & Learning Technologies
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General African American Timeline |
Local Quaker & African American Timeline |
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1870 |
Hiram R. Revels becomes the first African American to take a seat in the United States Senate on February 25 and remained for only a year. He was a Republican senator from Mississippi. |
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1870 |
Fifteenth Amendment is ratified by the States on March 30 to grant African Americans the right to vote. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution |
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1871 |
Fisk University Jubilee Singers begin their first national tour and become world famous as African American spiritual singers. They raise funds for Fisk. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisk_University_Jubilee_Singers |
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1873 |
Bennett Colleges commences as a co-ed institution for African-Americans. In 1926, it becomes a college for women only. |
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1874 |
All Republican city officials are defeated in the August elections for Vicksburg, Mississippi when armed white patrols bar blacks from voting. In December, the black sheriff is forced to flee and around 300 blacks are killed by armed gangs when they try to resist these tactics. The sheriff is returned to office when President Ulysses S. Grant sends a company of troops to Vicksburg in January 1875 to quell the fighting. But on June 7 of that same year, Sheriff Crosby is killed by a shot to the head from his white deputy, A. Gilmer. |
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1875 |
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 is approved by Congress on March 1. Equal rights are granted in public accommodations, public transportation, and prohibits exclusion from jury duty for African Americans. This is reversed in 1883 by the Supreme Court. |
Greensboro opens the first African-American grade school in North Carolina. |
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1875 |
Blanche Kelso Bruce begins a six-year term in the Senate and is the first African-American to serve a full term. He is a Republican from Mississippi. |
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1875 |
Mary McLeod Bethune is born on July 10 in Maysville, South Carolina. She would become a noted African American educator, government official, and leader. |
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1875 |
The Clinton Massacre takes place from September 4-6 in Clinton, Mississippi. Over twenty African Americans were killed. |
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1875 |
Carter Godwin Woodson is born on December 19 in New Canton, Virginia. Later, he attends Harvard acquiring a doctorate in history. His efforts in recording and publishing African American historical data leads to him being referred to as "The Father of Black History." |
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1875 |
The Mississippi Plan of 1875 was put in place by the white Democratic Party to reverse recent black Republican wins. As economic coercion against black sharecroppers from planters and landlords had only had limited success, this new plan enlisted white paramilitary groups, such as the "Red Shirts" to threaten and use violence in the fight to suppress black votes. These tactics were successful and whites regained their seats in the legislature and governor's office. Influenced by this, South Carolina's Democrats adopted similar methods and formed their own "Red Shirt" organizations for voter intimidation. |
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1876 |
A series of race riots occur in South Carolina in areas where blacks have a majority and hold political office as Radical Republicans. Groups of fearful whites and white supremacist cause confrontations that lead to riots and killings. President Ulysses S. Grant brings things under control with federal troops. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_civil_disturbances_of_1876 |
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1876 |
The presidential election of 1876 was one of the most contentious in U.S. history. Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) lost the popular vote against Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat), but won the presidency when a Congressional commission assigned twenty of the debated electoral votes to him. The Compromise of 1877 was part of this agreement. The Democrats had bargained to accept Hayes, if federal troops were withdrawn from the South with an end to the federal government's direct role in protecting the civil rights of African American. An end to Reconstruction was the result with rights for African Americans quickly diminished. |
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1877 |
The Compromise of 1877 results in the end of Reconstruction. Federal troops are withdrawn from the South and the federal government ends its direct role to protect the civil rights of African American, as was used with the Freedmen's Bureau. The result is a quick erosion of rights for African Americans. |
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1877 |
Henry O. Flipper is the first African American to graduate from West Point on June 15. |
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1877 |
During Reconstruction, conservative white Democrats formed a political coalition to limit the influence of the Republican coalition that included freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags. With the end of Reconstruction, white Democrats have their political power restored. These Democrats were known as Redeemers. They started passing laws to segregate and disfranchise African Americans--these became known as Jim Crow Laws. |
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1879 |
The Exodus of 1879 (also known as the Black Exodus, the Kansas Exodus, and the Exoduster Movement) occurs as about 40,000 African Americans leave the South and migrate to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. They are escaping post Reconstruction conditions with unfair Jim Crow laws, white supremacist activity, and treatment as second class citizen. |
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1880 |
James A. Garfield (Republican) is elected president on November 2. |
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1881 |
President James A. Garfield is assassinated. He is shot on July2 and dies on September 19. Vice President Chester A. Arthur (Republican) becomes President. |
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1881 |
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Tuskegee Institute) is founded in Alabama by Booker T. Washington on July 4. It becomes a leading institute of higher education and vocational training for African-Americans. |
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1881 |
The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary is founded on April 11 by Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard. When John D. Rockefeller visits the school in 1884, he is impressed at the accomplishments, and thereby pays off the property debt. The school's name is changed to Spelman Seminary to honor Rockefeller's wife, Laura Spelman, who had funded the school prior to this. The new name is also a tribute to her parents who were active in the anti-slavery movement. In 1924, the name changes to Spelman College. |
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1881 |
Public transportation becomes more and more segregated: Railroad cars are segregated in Tennessee in 1881, Florida in 1887; Mississippi in 1888; Texas in 1889; Louisiana in 1890; Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Georgia in 1891; South Carolina in 1898; North Carolina in 1899; Virginia in 1900; Maryland in 1904; and Oklahoma in 1907. |
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1882- |
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1883 |
Civil Rights Act of 1875 is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on October 15. They rule that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to prevent states from discriminating and was not a ruling for citizens. |
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1883 |
Sojourner Truth dies on November 26. She was a noted abolitionist and forceful speaker. |
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1883 |
A political coup takes place in Virginia. White conservatives Democrats seize back control from the locally elected, biracial state government. The Readjuster Party is forced out and four African Americans were killed in a resulting race riot in Danville, Virginia. |
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1884 |
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is published by Mark Twain and introduces us to the African American character, "Jim." |
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1884 |
Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, is elected President of the United States on November 4. |
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1885 |
Samuel David Ferguson is ordained a bishop in the Episcopal church of the United States, the first African American bishop. In his role as Missionary Bishop of Liberia, he is noted for founding Cuttington University College and the Bromley Mission School there. |
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1886 |
The Carrollton Courthouse Massacre occurs on March 17, when over ten African Americans are killed at the courthouse in Carrollton, Mississippi. A trial was in progress that had started over accidentally spilled molasses. |
Harmon A. Unthank becomes the first African-American bank director in the South, as the director of the People's Five Cents Savings Bank in Greensboro. |
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1886 |
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded in Columbus, Ohio and is one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. African Americans were excluded. |
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1888 |
Two of the first African American owned banks are started: the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of the Reformers, in Richmond (Virginia) and the Capital Savings Bank of Washington, DC. |
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1888 |
Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, is elected President of the United States on November 6. |