The life of the African-American did not begin in the United States, but on the continent of Africa. Africans came to the North American colonies as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Through a combination of slave imports and births, African-Americans became a large minority of the American population.

This first migration, beginning in the 17th century, was involuntary; West Africans were transported to North America as enslaved peoples. A second forced migration occurred after the American Revolution, when thousands of African-American slaves were transported from older eastern areas of the United States to newer settlements. First, slaves were sent into the unsettled areas of the existing states of Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia as well as into the then territories of Kentucky and Tennessee. Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana followed as plantation economics developed in those areas.

By 1860, there were almost 4,000,000 slaves in the 15 southern states. In 1861 the Civil War had begun, partly as a result of the South’s effort to defend slavery. Although the war continued until 1865, President Lincoln emancipated slaves in southern states in 1863. Many emancipated slaves were then sent by their masters to areas such as Texas in order to protect their investments until the end of the war. However, in January 1865, the 13th Amendment was added to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. Texas was the last state in the Nation to receive the news, on June 19th, 1865. This date is celebrated by African-Americans as Juneteenth.

For the next 12 years, during a period known as Reconstruction, the nation struggled to rebuild itself. Tens of thousands of African-Americans left the South after the Civil War. This voluntary movement became known as the Great Migration. Reaching its height in 1915, due to the industrial boom in the North, the Great Migration lasted until the onset of the Great Depression.

Important Dates in African American History
1619 The first African-Americans, 20 indentured servants, arrived near Jamestown, Virginia.

1624 Africans were imported as slaves to the Hudson River Valley in New York.

1638 The New England slave trade begins with the shipment of Native American slaves to the West Indies, where they are exchanged for Africans and goods.

1641 Massachusetts was the first colony to make slavery legal, followed by Connecticut (1650), Virginia (1661), Maryland (1663), New York and New Jersey (1664), South Carolina (1682), Rhode Island and Pennsylvania (1700), North Carolina (1715), and Georgia (1750).

1645 New England's triangular trade route was established: a Boston ship brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies, where they were traded for sugar, tobacco, and wine; these in turn were sold for manufactured goods on the ship's return to Massachusetts.

1663 First serious slave conspiracy, Gloucester County, Virginia.

1664 First law prohibiting marriage between English women and black men enacted in Maryland; the other colonies will pass similar laws.

1688 The first white, organized protest against slavery made by Germantown, Pennsylvania Quakers.

1708 Slave revolt, Long Island.

1712 Slave revolt, New York City.

1731 Benjamin Banneker, black inventor and scientist, born in Ellicott's Mills, Maryland.

1739 Slave revolt, Stono, South Carolina.

1750 Crispus Attucks escaped from his owner in Framingham, Massachusetts.

1760 Jupiter Hammon, a New York slave who was probably the first black poet, published "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penetential Cries."

1770 Crispus Attucks, often called the first martyr of the American Revolution, was the first person killed in the Boston Massacre.

1770 Quakers opened a school for blacks in Philadelphia.

1773 Massachusetts slaves petitioned the legislature for freedom.

Phillis Wheatley's book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral , was published, the first book by a black.

Pioneer black church established between 1773-1775 in Silver Bluff, South Carolina.

1775 First abolitionist society in U.S. organized in Philadelphia.

Among the black heroes of the Battle of Bunker Hill were Peter Salem and Salem Poor.

1776 Declaration of Independence adopted on 4 July. A section denouncing the slave trade was deleted.

1777 Vermont became the first American colony to abolish slavery. Other Northern states followed over the next two decades.

1780 Pennsylvania became the first state to abolish slavery.

1781 Los Angeles, California, founded by 44 settlers, at least 26 of whom were descendants of Africans.

1787 Continental Congress excluded slavery from the Northwest Territory.

U.S. Constitution approved with three clauses protecting
slavery.

1791 Beginning of Haitian Revolution.

Benjamin Banneker served on commission which surveyed the District of Columbia.

1793 First fugitive slave law enacted.

1794 Eli Whitney patented cotton gin, making cotton king and increasing the demand for slave labor.

1797 Sojourner Truth born a slave in Hurley, New York.

1800 Gabriel Prosser and 1,000 slaves planned an attack on Richmond, Virginia; Prosser and 15 others were hanged.

Nat Turner born in Southampton County, Virginia.

1804 Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Haiti, which became the second republic in the Western Hemisphere.

The first of a series of Northern Black Laws passed by the Ohio legislature. These restricted the rights and movement of free blacks in the North.

1807 Congress banned the importation of slaves into the US.

1810 First insurance company managed by blacks established in Philadelphia.

1817 Frederick Douglass born in Tuckahoe, Maryland.

1820 "Mayflower of Liberia" sailed from New York City to Sierra Leone with 86 blacks.

Missouri Compromise enacted. It prohibited slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri.

1822 Denmark Vesey's conspiracy, one of the most elaborate slave plots on record, was betrayed by a house slave. The conspiracy involved thousands of blacks in and around Charleston, South Carolina; 37 blacks were hanged.

1827 Freedom's Journal , the first black newspaper, is published in New York City.

Slavery abolished in New York State.

1829 After a race riot in Cincinnati, more than 1,000 blacks left the city for Canada.

Walker's Appeal , a radical antislavery pamphlet, was published in Boston by David Walker.

1830 The first national black convention met in Philadelphia, with 38 delegates from 8 states.

1831 William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of the abolitionist journal, the Liberator .

1831 The Nat Turner Rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Some 60 whites were killed. Turner eluded capture for nearly two months, but was eventually caught and hanged.

1833 American Anti-Slavery Society organized.

1834 Slavery abolished in the British Empire.

1837 Weekly Advocate changed its name to the Colored American , the second major black newspaper. Some 40 black newspapers were published before the Civil War.

1843 Sojourner Truth left New York and began her career as an anti-slavery activist.

1845 Macon B. Allen became the first black lawyer admitted to the bar (in Massachusetts).

1845 Frederick Douglass published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass .

1847 Frederick Douglass published the first issue of his newspaper, the North Star .

1849 Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland. She returned to the South 19 times and brought out more than 300 slaves.

1850 Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress.

1853 William Wells Brown published Clotel , the first novel by a black American.

1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Northern territory to slavery.

1856 Booker T. Washington born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.

1857 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court opened Northern territory to slavery and denies citizenship to American blacks.

1858 William Wells Brown published The Escape , the first play by an American black.

1859 John Brown attacked Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He and two of the black members of his band were hanged.

The last slave ship, Clothilde, arrived in Mobile, Alabama with an illegal shipment of slaves.

1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

1861 Civil War began.

1863 The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in rebel states, not including sections of Louisiana, West Virginia, and Virginia. The Proclamation did not apply to slaves in the Border States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee or to slaves held by Native Americans.

1865 Civil War ended.

Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery in the United States. The amendment was ratified on December 6.

1866 Congress overrode President Johnson’s veto on April 9 and passed the Civil Rights Act, conferring citizenship and equal rights upon African Americans.

1866 On June 13, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all citizens. Ratified on July 21, 1868, granting citizenship to any person who was born or naturalized in the United States.

1867 Congress passed Reconstruction Acts on March 2. These acts called for the enfranchisement of former slaves.

1869 On February 26, Congress approved the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote. Ratified on March 30, 1870.

1870-95 Many blacks gain elective office throughout the Nation, yet there are outbreaks of violence against blacks in the South.

1875 Congress approved the Civil Rights Act on March 1.

1883 The Civil Rights Act was overturned. On October 15, the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The court declared that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids states, but not citizens from practicing discrimination.

1896 In Plessy vs. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court upholds the doctrine of "separate but equal," initiating the age of Jim Crow laws.

1903 W. E. B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk.

1909 The NAACP is formed on January 12. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed to promote use of the courts to restore the legal rights of African-Americans.

1913 The Wilson administration began government-wide segregation of work places, rest rooms and lunch rooms on April 11.

1915 The Great Migration from south to north begins.

1920 Onset of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of creativity for African American writers, poets and artists.

1936 Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Olympics in Berlin, Germany.

1940 President Roosevelt issued a statement that segregation was the policy of the U. S. armed forces.

1943 Race riots in Detroit and Harlem.

1948 President Truman issued an Executive Order directing equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces.

1955 Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus.

1963 March on Washington, DC, the largest civil rights demonstration in history, drew more than 250,000 people.

1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights bill.

1980s onward Increasing numbers of African-Americans migrated from the northern US to the South.