Wall of History

1300

Origin of the word slave: It is thought that the word "slave" derives from "Slav": prisoners from Slavonic tribes of Europe captured by Germans and sold to Arabs during the middle Ages.

1492

Christopher Columbus

1619

Dutch ship sailed in Jamestown, VA with 20 Africans as slaves

1636

The Pequot War: The war was between English colonists and the Pequot Indians; The English developed a tactic: deliberate attack on noncombatants to terrorize the enemy. This war led to the virtual obliteration of the Pequot tribe.

1680

White appears in colonial laws: Early colonial laws refer to Christians or Englishmen, rather than whites. Around the time of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, new laws begin to appear, separating Black slaves from European indentured servants.

1776, July 4

Declaration of Independence: American Revolution was a way of aggressively establishing a new nation on land that had been occupied for thousands of years by various Indian tribes.

1776

“Birth of "Caucasian": Johann Blumenbach, one of many 18th-century naturalists, lays out the scientific template for race in On the Natural Varieties of Mankind. Although he opposes slavery, he maps a hierarchical pyramid of five human types, placing "Caucasians" at the top because he believes a skull found in the Caucasus Mountains is the "most beautiful form...from which...the others diverge." This model is widely embraced, and Blumenbach inadvertently paves the way for scientific claims about white superiority. http://www.pbs.org/race/003_RaceTimeline/003_01-timeline.htm

1777

Vermont, the first American state to abolish slavery.

1790

Naturalization Act: provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were “free white persons of good character”.

1801-1803

Thomas Jefferson: Wrote - it was the destiny of American white men to “cover the whole northern, if not southern, continent with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface”.  Appalachian Mountains to Rockies were bought from France.

1829

David Walker, a freed Black man living in Boston published “Walker’s Appeal”. Excerpts of the appeal could be found here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931t.html 

1830s

Trail of tears - Indian Removal Act: At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk thousands of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

1831

Nat Turner’s uprising to resist slavery and gain freedom: Nat Turner’s rebellion was one of the largest slave rebellions ever to take place in the United States, and it played an important role in the development of antebellum slave society.

Early 19th Century

Underground railroads: There were “conductors” who would help slaves flee northwards. The most famous conductors were Levi Coffin and Harriet Tubman who led more than hundreds of slaves to freedom.

1846-1848

Annexation of Texas - Mexican American War

1848

First Women’s Right Convention, Seneca Falls, NY

1857

African Americans denied citizenship: In the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that "Negroes," whether free or enslaved, are not citizens.

1861-1865

Civil War

1862

38 Native men were hung in Mankato as ordered by Abraham Lincoln

1863

Emancipation Proclamation: President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation stating that all slaves will be free.

1864

Sand Creek Colorado: 700 soldiers of the U.S. Army killed of hundreds of Natives, including children, asleep in their tents.

1868

14th Amendment guarantees equal rights: the amendment extends citizenship to African Americans and attempts to heal Civil War wounds by emphasizing national unity.

1870

Right to vote - Constitution gives Black men right to vote.

1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act

1886

The labor movement - 350,000 workers throughout the nation went to strike for 8-hour workday

1887

Jim Crow segregation begins

1890

Sioux Indian families, camping near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota were attacked by U.S. soldiers; more than 350 people died in the massacre.

1894

Eugene V. Debs led the Pullman Strike

1896

Plessy v. Ferguson

1905

African Americans demand equal rights: W.E.B. Du Bois - The Souls of Black Folk published in 1903: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”

1909

NAACP was established: The nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization

1920

Duluth Lynching: Three African American circus workers were taken out of jail by more than 10,000 people and were lynched in Duluth MN who were accused of gang-raping a white woman.

1924

Immigration Act

1928

The Meriam Report

1940s-1960s

Indian Termination Policy

1941

Pearl Harbor: President Roosevelt signed an executive order for the confinement of 110,000 Japanese Americans to concentration camps, which included people who were born in the United States.

1954

Legal segregation ends: In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, civil rights advocates led by Martin Luther King, Jr. organize a yearlong boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the state's resistance to school integration. What begins as a struggle over schools spreads to public transportation, voting, and all areas of social life.

1955

Rosa Parks arrested: In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to give up her seat for a white man. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the bus boycott which lasted for 381 days protesting the segregation.

1962

United Farm Workers Association was created by Cesar Chavez. This organization was created to demand respect the Chicano culture and their rights.

1963

MLK “I have a dream”

1965

Selma, Alabama: Peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery (54 miles) was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to demand rights to vote for African American citizens.

1967

Loving v. Virginia: The case of interracial marriage between Mildred and Richard loving

1968

Indian Civil Rights Act

1975

After Vietnam War: Thousands of refugees came to the US from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam and often were victims of racial discrimination.