The following includes some key moments in the history of African Americans/Black Americans in the U.S., but it is in no way comprehensive. 

 

October 12, 1492: Columbus makes the first of four voyages to the “New World.” Black men arrive with Columbus as sailors, and other Africans come as soldiers with the Spanish explorers who later conquer and colonize the Caribbean islands and the Americas.

August 20, 1619: Twenty Africans are brought to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Sold as indentured servants, these African captives must work for a period of time but are promised their freedom. 

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December 1662: A Virginia law passed states that the status of the mother determined if a black child would be enslaved. Increasingly harsh and restrictive laws were passed over the next 40 years, culminating in the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705.

July 1676-1677: Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia included poor white and black people fighting together, with the government's response hastening the transition to black enslavement.

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January 1, 1808: Laws banning the African slave trade went into effect in the United States and in all British colonies.

April 9, 1816: The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first all-black religious denomination in the United States, was formally organized, and Richard Allen was named its first bishop.

December 28, 1816: The American Colonization Society was founded to transport freeborn black people and emancipated enslaved people to Africa, leading to the creation of a colony that became the Republic of Liberia in 1847.

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August 21-23, 1831: Nat Turner led the most brutal enslavement rebellion in United States history, attracting up to 75 enslaved people and killing 60 white people. 

1849: Calls for abolition expanded, and the underground railroad, with “conductor” Harriet Tubman and many other people supporting the effort, helped many enslaved people escape to the North. 

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February 25, 1837: Cheyney University of Pennsylvania became the nation’s first Historically Black College and University (HBCU). From the late 1800s to the late 1900s, HBCUs thrived and provided refuge from laws and public policy that prohibited Black Americans from attending most colleges and universities. Today, all 100+ HBCUs across the United States continue to play a vital role in America's prosperity — academically, socially, and economically.

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October 16, 1859: After assisting in the Underground Railroad out of Missouri and engaging in the bloody struggle between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas in the 1850s, John Brown led a raid against the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. They aimed to capture enough ammunition to lead a large operation against Virginia’s slaveholders. Brown’s men, including several Black people, captured and held the arsenal until federal and state governments sent troops and were able to overpower them.

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January 1, 1863: President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made it clear that a Union victory in the Civil War would mean the end of slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution included the exception, “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” so that a new form of slavery developed in the 20th century through prisons. Five states continue to use slave labor in prisons, making the current number of officially enslaved people in the U.S. around two million.

June 19, 1865: The Emancipation Proclamation fully took effect when around 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. The day is now commemorated/celebrated as “Juneteenth.”

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1865-1876: The Reconstruction offered great promise and could have radically changed the history of this country. By 1868, over 80 percent of Black men who were eligible to vote had registered, schools for Black children became a priority, and courageous Black leaders overcame enormous obstacles to win elections to public office. However, it quickly became clear that emancipation in the United States did not mean equality for Black people.

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February 12, 1909: A group led by the prominent Black educator W.E.B. Du Bois, founded the NAACP. One of its earliest programs was a crusade against lynching and other lawless acts. 

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1914-1919: Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born civil rights leader, Black nationalist, and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement, founded the Negro World newspaper, the Black Star Line shipping company, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), a fraternal organization of Black nationalists. He sought to unify and connect people of African descent worldwide. 

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May 17, 1954: The Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of “separate-but-equal” education.

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December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott. 

February 1, 1960: Four Black students launched the Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins that sparked a movement of protest against segregation in libraries, on beaches, in hotels and other establishments. To capitalize on the sit-in movement’s increasing momentum, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina in

 

April 1960: Over the next few years, SNCC broadened its influence, organizing so-called “Freedom Rides” through the South in 1961 and the historic March on Washington in 1963; it also joined the NAACP in pushing for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

 

August 28, 1963: 250,000 people—both Black and white—participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the largest demonstration in the history of the nation’s capital and the most significant display of the civil rights movement’s growing strength. After marching from the Washington Monument, the demonstrators gathered near the Lincoln Memorial, where a number of civil rights leaders addressed the crowd, calling for voting rights, equal employment opportunities for Black Americans and an end to racial segregation. The last leader to appear was the Baptist preacher Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who spoke eloquently of the struggle facing Black Americans and the need for continued action and nonviolent resistance.

July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

August 6, 1965: The Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

Late 1960s to early 1970s: frustration from too-slow progress fueled the rise of the Black Power movement. According to then–SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael, who first popularized the term “Black Power” in 1966, the traditional civil rights movement and its emphasis on nonviolence, did not go far enough, and the federal legislation it had achieved failed to address the economic and social disadvantages facing Black Americans.
 

October 15, 1966: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, college students in Oakland, California, founded the Black Panther Party.

October 16, 1995: hundreds of thousands of Black men gathered in Washington, D.C. for the Million Man March, one of the largest demonstrations of its kind in the capital’s history.

July 13, 2013: The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter spread widely and sparked a movement of uprisings as high-profile cases involving the deaths of Black civilians provoked renewed outrage.

May 25, 2020: After George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, protests erupted across the country and around the world, further expanding the movement for civil rights. ​​​​