1. Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by
Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War
using his war powers. The Proclamation freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly
all the rest (of the 3.1 million) freed as Union armies advanced. The
Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not itself outlaw
slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves (called freedmen) citizens.
Man reading a newspaper with headline, "Presidential
Proclamation, Slavery," which refers to the Jan. 1863
Emancipation Proclamation.
Henry Louis Stephens (1824–1882)
2. Emancipation Proclamation
The Proclamation applied only in ten states
that were still in rebellion in 1863, it did not
cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slave-
holding border states (Missouri, Kentucky,
Maryland or Delaware) — those slaves were
freed by separate state and federal actions.
3. 13th Amendment
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and
ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th
amendment abolished slavery in the United
States and provides that "Neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.".
4. Reparations for slavery
Reparations for slavery are proposals that
compensation should be provided to
descendants of enslaved people in the
United States. In 1865 a temporary plan
granting each freed family forty acres and
unneeded mules where giving to settles of
South Carolina- around 40000 freed slaves.
However, President Andrew Johnson reverse
the order after Lincoln was assassination and
the land was returned to its previous
owners.
6. 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson: This landmark Supreme
Court decision holds that racial segregation is
constitutional, paving the way for the repressive Jim
Crow laws in the South.
1909: The National Association for the Advancement
of Coloured People is founded in New York by
prominent black and white intellectuals. For the next
half century, it would serve as the country's most
influential African-American civil rights organization,
dedicated to political equality and social justice in 1910.
7. 1914: Marcus Garvey establishes the Universal Negro
Improvement Association, an influential Black
Nationalist organization "to promote the spirit of race
pride" and create a sense of worldwide unity among
blacks.
1920s: The Harlem Renaissance flourishes in the
1920s and 1930s. This literary, artistic, and intellectual
movement fosters a new black cultural identity.
8. 1947: Jackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball's
colour barrier when he is signed to the Brooklyn
Dodgers by Branch Rickey.
1948: President Harry S. Truman issues an executive
order integrating the U.S. armed forces.
9. 1952: Malcolm X becomes a minister of the Nation of
Islam. Over the next several years his influence
increases until he is one of the two most powerful
members of the Black Muslims (the other was its
leader, Elijah Muhammad). A Black Nationalist and
separatist movement, the Nation of Islam contends
that only blacks can resolve the problems of blacks.
1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.
declares that racial segregation in schools is
unconstitutional (May 17).
10. 1955: A young black boy, Emmett Till, is brutally
murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in
Mississippi.
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the
"coloured section" of a bus to a white passenger.
1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), a civil rights group, is established by Martin
Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L.
Shuttlesworth (Jan.-Feb.)
11. 1960: Four black students in Greensboro, North
Carolina, begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's
lunch counter (Feb. 1). Six months later the
"Greensboro Four" are served lunch at the same
Woolworth's counter. The event triggers many similar
nonviolent protests throughout the South.
1962: James Meredith becomes the first black student
to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
12. 1963: Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during
anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama.
1964: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights
Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since
Reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination of all kinds
based on race, colour, religion, or national origin.
Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
13. 1965: Malcolm X, Black Nationalist and founder of
the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is
assassinated.
1966: The Black Panthers are founded by Huey
Newton and Bobby Seale.
14. Mildred Jeter and
Richard Loving
appealed against
the Supreme court
to overrule the
interracial
marriage ban.
1967: Major race riots take place in Newark (July 12-
16) and Detroit (July 23-30).
President Johnson appoints Thurgood Marshall to the
Supreme Court. He becomes the first black Supreme
Court Justice.
The Supreme Court rules in Loving v. Virginia that
prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional.
15. 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in
Memphis, Tenn. (April 4).
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of
1968, prohibiting discrimination in the
sale, rental, and financing of housing.
17. Black Americans had to 'fight' for their right to equality. In the 1950s a Baptist
preacher named Martin Luther King became the leader of the Civil Rights
Movement. He believed that peaceful protest was the way forward
In 1952, the Supreme Court heard a number of school-segregation
cases, including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In 1954 the
court decreed that segregation was unconstitutional.
In Minnesota, the struggle was headed by leaders of the African-
American communities, including, among others, Fredrick L.
McGhee, the Reverend Denzil A. Carty, Nellie Stone Johnson, and
Harry Davis; by ministers and congregations of black churches; by
editors and publishers of black newspapers; by racial, interracial, and
interdenominational organizations; and by orchestrated legal
challenges in the courts
18. technological inno- vations in portable cameras and
electronic news gathering (ENG) equipment increasingly
enabled television to bring the non-violent civil
disobedience campaign of the Civil Rights Movement and
the violent reprisals of Southern law enforcement agents to a
new mass audience.