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African Americans

Americans with sub-Saharan African ancestry

50 dated entries naming African Americans, drawn from 38 separate years between 1711 CE and 2014 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

Also written as African American, African-American, African-Americans, Afro American, Black American, Black Americans in the source articles; Wikipedia redirects those to the same subject, so their entries are on this page.

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18th century

  • 1711September 10 (also dated September 12) – John Lawson, Christoph von Graffenried, two African American slaves and two Native Americans leave on an exploration expedition from New Bern, North Carolina, and travel north by canoe up the Neuse River.source
  • 1711September 16 (approximate date) – Tuscarora natives kill Lawson. Von Graffenried and one African American slave are known to have been set free.source
  • 1731November 9 – Benjamin Banneker, African-American astronomer, surveyor of the District of Columbia (died 1806)source

19th century

  • 1816December 9–21 – The American Colonization Society is established, to support the emigration of free African Americans to Africa.source
  • 1820February 6 – A group of 86 free African American colonists sail from New York City to Freetown, Sierra Leone, with a goal of creating a home for freed American slaves, to be called "Liberia".source
  • 1820February 6 – 86 free African American colonists sail from New York City to Freetown, Sierra Leone.source
  • 1831African American actor Ira Aldridge tours Ireland.source
  • 1858About 600 African-Americans from California move to Victoria, British Columbia by invitation of Governor James Douglas as part of the gold rush migration. One of them, Mifflin Gibbs, later plays a key role in persuading British Columbia to become part of Canada. Douglas declares Emancipation Day, August 1, the anniversary of the end of slavery in the British Empire, as the colonies' first official holiday August 1, to the chagrin of the white American element in the colony, though Victoria's West Indian police force, recruited by Douglas, was necessarily disbanded because of the hostility from the numerous Americans in the emerging city. Also among the African-Americans who came with the gold rush was Isaac "Ikey" Dixon, whose brawl in his Yale barbershop and subsequent safe-custody arrest triggered off the events known as McGowan's War, and who soon after became a noted and popular columnist for the Barkerville newspaper The Cariboo Sentinel.source
  • 1863May 28 – American Civil War: The 54th Massachusetts, the first African-American regiment, leaves Boston to fight for the Union.source
  • 1864April 12 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Pillow – Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers who surrender at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.source
  • 1867January 8 – African-American men are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.source
  • 1868July 28 – The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is adopted, including the Citizenship Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, legally, if not actually, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and equal protection, and all persons in the United States due process of law.source
  • 1870February 3 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing African American men the right to vote, is passed.source
  • 1870February 26 – Wyatt Outlaw, the first African American town commissioner in Graham, North Carolina, is lynched by mob of Ku Klux Klan on Alamance County courthouse square.source
  • 1872December 9 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American to govern a U.S. state.source
  • 1877June 15 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy.source
  • 1879June 21 – Infielder William White plays in one game for the Providence Grays and in conjecture becomes the first African American to play MLB.source
  • 1886March 17 – A white mob storms a courthouse in Carroll County, Mississippi, killing 23 African Americans.source
  • 1886April 24 – Father Augustine Tolton, the first Roman Catholic priest from the United States to identify himself publicly as African American, is ordained in Rome.source
  • 1886April 24 – Father Augustine Tolton, the first Roman Catholic priest from the U.S. to identify himself publicly as African American, is ordained in Rome.source
  • 1893Booker T. Washington High School (Houston) is founded as "Colored High", the first African-American high school in Houston, Texas.source
  • 1895W. E. B. Du Bois becomes the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University.source
  • 1899August 10 – Marshall "Major" Taylor wins the world 1 mi professional cycling championship in Montreal, securing his place as the first African American world champion in any sport.source

20th century

  • 1919September 30 – Elaine massacre: An estimated 100 to 800 African Americans are killed in Elaine, Arkansas, by white mobs and vigilante militias assisted by federal troops in "the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States".source
  • 1930August 7 – Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. They are hanged; James Cameron survives. This will be the last recorded lynching of African Americans in the Northern United States.source
  • 1931March 25 – Ida B. Wells, African-American anti-lynching crusader (born 1862)source
  • 1936August 3 – 1936 Summer Olympics: African-American athlete Jesse Owens wins the 100-meter dash.source
  • 1940April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.source
  • 1944June 16 – At age 14, African-American teenage boy George Stinney Jr. becomes the youngest person ever executed by electric chair in the United States. His conviction was vacated 70 years later, in 2014, due to him not receiving a fair trial.source
  • 1946July 25 – In the last mass lynching in the United States, a mob of white men shoot and kill two African-American couples, near Moore's Ford Bridge in Georgia.source
  • 1947February 3 – P.L. Prattis becomes the first African American news correspondent allowed in the United States House of Representatives and Senate press galleries.source
  • 1947April 1 – Jackie Robinson, the first African American in Major League Baseball since the 1880s, signs a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers.source
  • 1947April 1 – Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American Major League Baseball player since the 1880s.source
  • 1951December 17 – We Charge Genocide, a petition describing genocide against African Americans, is delivered to the United Nations.source
  • 1955January 7 – Marian Anderson is the first African-American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.source
  • 1955March 2 – Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African-American girl, refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards, while being kicked, handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station. She becomes a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956), which rules bus segregation to be unconstitutional.source
  • 1964June 14 – Freedom Summer, a volunteer Civil Rights project in the United States intended to promote voter registration for as many African Americans as possible in Mississippi, begins with orientation sessions for the 300 volunteers at Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio.source
  • 1965August 6 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices that have been responsible for widespread disfranchisement of African Americans.source
  • 1967June 13 – Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall is nominated as the first African American justice of the United States Supreme Court.source
  • 1967July 23–31 – 12th Street Riot: In Detroit, one of the worst riots in United States history begins on 12th Street in the predominantly African American inner city: 43 are killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned.source
  • 1967August 30 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He is the first African American to hold the position.source
  • 1967November 7 – Carl B. Stokes is elected Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the first African American elected mayor of a major United States city.source
  • 1984December 22 – Four African-American youths (Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey) board an express train in the Bronx borough of New York City. They demand five dollars from Bernhard Goetz, who shoots them. The event starts a national debate about urban crime in the United States.source
  • 1986December 20 – Three African Americans are assaulted by a group of white teens in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, New York. One of the victims, Michael Griffith, is run over and killed by a motorist while attempting to flee the attackers.source
  • 1989August 23 – Murder of Yusef Hawkins in a shooting in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, sparking racial tensions between African Americans and Italian Americans.source
  • 1989November 7 – David Dinkins becomes the first African-American mayor of New York City.source

21st century

  • 2005October 24 – African-American civil rights activist Rosa Parks dies of natural causes.source
  • 2008November 4 – 2008 United States presidential election: Democratic U.S. Senator Barack Obama defeats Republican candidate John McCain and is elected the 44th President of the United States, making him the first African-American to be elected to the office.source
  • 2009January 20 – Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, becoming the first African-American to hold the office.source
  • 2014African-American teenage boy George Stinney Jr.'s conviction of murdering two white girls back in 1944 is vacated due to him having received an unfair trial.source

Named in the same entries