1619 The first record of African slavery in English Colonial Americ

• 
  October 16 – In Civil Rights Cases, the United States Supreme Court strikes down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional.
  

• 
  Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published, featuring the admirable African-American character Jim.
  
• 
  Judy W. Reed, of Washington, D.C., and Sarah E. Goode, of Chicago, are the first African-American women inventors to receive patents. Signed with an "X", Reed's patent no. 305,474, granted September 23, 1884, is for a dough kneader and roller. Goode's patent for a cabinet bed, patent no. 322,177, is issued on July 14, 1885. Goode, the owner of a Chicago furniture store, invented a folding bed that could be formed into a desk when not in use.
  
• 
  Ida B. Wells sues the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company for its use of segregated "Jim Crow" cars.
  

• 
  Norris Wright Cuney becomes the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, the most powerful role held by any African American in the South during the 19th century.
  

• 
  October 3 – The State Normal School for Colored Students, which would become Florida A&M University, is founded.
  

• 
  Mississippi, with a white Democrat-dominated legislature, passes a new constitution that effectively disfranchises most blacks through voter registration and electoral requirements, e.g., poll taxes, residency tests andliteracy tests. This shuts them out of the political process, including service on juries and in local offices.
  
• 
  By 1900 two-thirds of the farmers in the bottomlands of the Mississippi Deltaare African Americans who cleared and bought land after the Civil War.^[10]
  

• 
  Ida B. Wells publishes her pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.
  

• 
  September 18 – Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromiseaddress at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.
  
• 
  * W. E. B. Du Bois is the first African-American to be awarded a Ph.D byHarvard University.
  

• 
  May 18 – In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upholds de jure racial segregation of "separate but equal" facilities. (see Jim Crow laws for historical discussion).
  
• 
  The National Association of Colored Women is formed by the merger of smaller groups.
  
• 
  As one of the earliest Black Hebrew Israelites in the United States, William Saunders Crowdy re-establishes the Church of God and Saints of Christ.
  
• 
  George Washington Carver is invited by Booker T. Washington to head the Agricultural Department at what would become Tuskegee University. His work would revolutionize farming – he found about 300 uses for peanuts.
  

• 
  Louisiana enacts the first state-wide grandfather clause that provides exemption for illiterate whites to voter registration literacy test requirements.
  
• 
  In Williams v. Mississippi the Supreme Court upholds the voter registration and election provisions of Mississippi's constitution because they applied to all citizens. Effectively, however, they disenfranchise blacks and poor whites. The result is that other southern states copy these provisions in their new constitutions and amendments through 1908, disfranchising most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites until the 1960s.
  

• 
  September 18 – The "Maple Leaf Rag" is an early ragtime composition for piano by Scott Joplin.
  

• 
  Since the Civil War, 30,000 African-American teachers had been trained and put to work in the South. The majority of blacks had become literate.^[11]
  

• 
  Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery is published.
  
• 
  Benjamin Tillman, senator from South Carolina, comments on Theodore Roosevelt's dining with Booker T. Washington: “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.”
  

• 
  September – W. E. B. Du Bois's article The Talented Tenth published.
  
• 
  W. E. B. Du Bois's seminal work The Souls of Black Folk is published.
  

• 
  May 15 – Sigma Pi Phi, the first African-American Greek-letter organization, is founded by African-American men as a professional organization, inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.
  
• 
  Orlando, Florida hires its first black postman.
  

• 
  July 11 – First meeting of the Niagara Movement, an interracial group to work for civil rights.
  

• 
  The Brownsville Affair, which eventually involves President Roosevelt.
  
• 
  December 4 – African-American men found Alpha Phi Alpha at Cornell University, the first intercollegiate fraternity for African-American men.
  

• 
  National Primitive Baptist Convention of the U.S.A. formed.
  

• 
  December 26 – Jack Johnson wins the World Heavyweight Title.
  
• 
  Alpha Kappa Alpha – At Howard University, African-American college women found the first college sorority for African-American women.
  

• 
  February 12 – Planned first meeting of group which would become theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an interracial group devoted to civil rights. The meeting actually occurs on May 31, but February 12 is normally cited as the NAACP's founding date.
  
• 
  May 31 – The National Negro Committee meets and is formed; it will be the precursor to the NAACP.
  

• 
  May 30 – The National Negro Committee chooses "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" as its organization name.
  
• 
  September 29 – Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes formed; the next year it will merge with other groups to form the National Urban League.
  
• 
  The NAACP begins publishing The Crisis.
  

• 
  The Moorish Science Temple of America, a religious organization, is founded by Noble Drew Ali (Timothy Drew).
  

• 
  Newly elected president Woodrow Wilson orders physical re-segregation of federal workplaces and employment after nearly 50 years of integrated facilities.^[12][13][14]
  

• 
  February 8 – The Birth of a Nation is released to film theaters. The NAACPprotests in cities across the country, convincing some not to show the film.
  
• 
  June 21 – In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court rules againstgrandfather clauses used to deny blacks the vote.
  
• 
  September 9 – Professor Carter G. Woodson founds the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in Chicago.
  
• 
  A schism from the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. forms the National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
  

• 
  January – Professor Carter Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History begins publishing the Journal of Negro History, the first academic journal devoted to the study of African-American history.
  
• 
  March 23 – Marcus Garvey arrives in the U.S. (see Garveyism).
  
• 
  Los Angeles hires the country's first black female police officer.^{[citation needed]}
  
• 
  The Great Migration begins and lasts until 1940. Approximately one and a half million African-Americans move from the Southern United States to theNorth and Midwest. More than five million migrate in the Second Great Migration from 1940 to 1970, which includes more destinations in California and the West.
  

• 
  May–June – East St. Louis Riot
  
• 
  In Buchanan v. Warley, the United States Supreme Court upholds that racially segregated housing violates the 14th Amendment.
  

• 
  Orlando's first black doctor opens practice.
  
• 
  Viola Pettus, an African-American nurse in Marathon, Texas, wins attention for her courageous care of victims of the Spanish Influenza, including members of the Ku Klux Klan.
  

• 
  summer – Red Summer of 1919 riots: Chicago, Washington, D.C.; Knoxville,Indianapolis, and elsewhere.
  
• 
  September 28 – Omaha Race Riot of 1919, Nebraska.
  
• 
  October 1–5 – Elaine Race Riot, Phillips County, Arkansas. Numerous blacks are convicted by an all-white jury or plead guilty. In Moore v. Dempsey (1923), the Supreme Court overturns six convictions for denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
  

• 
  February 13 – Negro National League (1920–1931) established.
  
• 
  Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall are the first two African-American players in the National Football League (NFL). Pollard goes on to become the first African-American coach in the NFL.
  

• 
  May 23 – Shuffle Along is the first major African American hit musical on Broadway.
  
• 
  May 31 – Tulsa Race Riot, Oklahoma
  
• 
  Bessie Coleman becomes the first African American to earn a pilot's license.
  

• 
  January 1 – 7 Rosewood massacre: Six African Americans and two whites die in a week of violence when a white woman in Rosewood, Florida, claims she was beaten and raped by a black man.
  
• 
  February 19 – In Moore v. Dempsey, the Supreme Court holds that mob-dominated trials violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  
• 
  Jean Toomer's novel Cane is published.
  

• 
  Spelman Seminary becomes Spelman College.
  

• 
  spring – American Negro Labor Congress founded.
  
• 
  August 8 – 35,000 Ku Klux Klan members march in Washington, D.C. (seeList of protest marches on Washington, D.C.)
  
• 
  Countee Cullen publishes his first collection of poems in Color.
  
• 
  Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organized.
  
• 
  The Harlem Renaissance is named after the anthology The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke (also known as the New Negro Movement).
  

• 
  The Harlem Globetrotters founded.
  
• 
  Historian Carter G. Woodson proposes Negro History Week.
  
• 
  Corrigan v Buckley challenges deed restrictions by which a white seller could not sell to a black buyer. As opposed to Buchanan v. Warley, this is a step in the wrong direction as the US Supreme Court rules in favor of Buckley, stating that the 14th Amendment does not apply because Washington, DC is a city and not a state, thereby rendering the Due Process Clause inapplicable. Also, that the Due Process Clause does not apply to private agreements.
  

• 
  Claude McKay's Home to Harlem wins the Harmon Gold Award for Literature.
  

• 
  The League of United Latin American Citizens, the first organization to fight for the civil rights of Hispanic Americans, is founded in Corpus Christi, Texas.
  
• 
  John Hope becomes president of Atlanta University. Graduate classes are offered in liberal arts subjects, making Atlanta University the first predominantly black university to offer graduate education.
  
• 
  unknown - Hallelujah! is released and is one of the first films to star an all black cast.
  

• 
  The League of Struggle for Negro Rights is founded in New York City.
  
• 
  Jessie Daniel Ames forms the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. She gets 40,000 white women to sign a pledge against lynching and for change in the South.^[15]
  

• 
  March 25 – Scottsboro Boys arrested. The film Heavens Fall was made about the incident.
  
• 
  Walter Francis White becomes the executive secretary of the NAACP.
  

• 
  The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male begins.
  

• 
  Wallace D. Fard, leader of the Nation of Islam, mysteriously disappears. He is succeeded by Elijah Muhammad.
  

• 
  June 18 – In Murray v. Pearson, Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston of the NAACP successfully argue the landmark case in Maryland to open admissions to the University of Maryland School of Law on the basis of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
  

Jesse Owens wins gold medals in front of Hitler.

• 
  August – Sprinter Jesse Owenswins four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
  

• 
  Zora Neale Hurston authors the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God
  
• 
  Southern Negro Youth Congressfounded.
  

• 
  Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada
  

• 
  Easter Sunday – Marian Anderson performs on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial inWashington, D.C. at the instigation of Secretary of InteriorHarold Ickes after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall and the federally controlled District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school.
  
• 
  Billie Holiday first performs "Strange Fruit" in New York City. The song, a protest against lynching written by Abel Meeropol under the pen name Lewis Allan, became a signature song for Holiday.
  
• 
  The Little League is formed, becoming the nation's first non-segregated youth sport.
  
• 
  August 21 – Five African-American men recruited and trained by African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker conduct a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library and are arrested after being refused library cards.^[16]
  
• 
  September 21 – Followers of Father Divine and the International Peace Mission Movement join with workers to protest racially unfair hiring practices by conducting "a kind of customers' nickel sit down strike" in a restaurant.^[17]
  

• 
  Second Great Migration – In multiple acts of resistance, more than 5 million African Americans leave the violence and segregation of the South for jobs, education, and the chance to vote in northern, midwestern and California cities.
  

• 
  February 12 – In Chambers v. Florida, the Supreme Court frees three black men who were coerced into confessing to a murder.
  
• 
  February 29 - Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win anAcademy Award. She wins Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Mammy in Gone with the Wind.
  
• 
  October 25 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is promoted to be the first African-American general in the U.S. Army.
  
• 
  Richard Wright authors Native Son
  
• 
  NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is formed.
  

• 
  January 25 – A. Philip Randolph proposes a March on Washington, effectively beginning the March on Washington Movement.
  
• 
  early 1941 – U.S. Army forms African-American air combat units, theTuskegee Airmen.
  
• 
  June 25 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, the "Fair Employment Act", to require equal treatment and training of all employees by defense contractors.
  
• 
  Mitchell v US – the Interstate Commerce Clause is used to successfully desegregate seating on trains.
  

• 
  Six non-violence activists in the Fellowship of Reconciliation — Bernice Fisher, James Russell Robinson, George Houser, James Farmer, Jr., Joe Guinn and Homer Jack — found the Committee on Racial Equality, which becomes Congress of Racial Equality.
  

• 
  Doctor Charles R. Drew's achievements are recognized when he becomes the first African-American surgeon to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.
  
• 
  The 1943 Detroit race riot erupts in Detroit, Michigan.
  
• 
  Lena Horne stars in the all African-American film Stormy Weather.
  

• 
  April 3 – In Smith vs. Allwright, the Supreme Court rules that the whites-only Democratic Party primary in Texas was unconstitutional.^[18]
  
• 
  April 25 – The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
  
• 
  July 17 – Port Chicago disaster, which led to the Port Chicago mutiny.
  
• 
  August 1–7 - Philadelphia transit strike of 1944 - a strike by white transit workers protesting against job advancement by black workers is broken by the U.S. military under the provisions of the Smith-Connally Act
  
• 
  September 3 - Recy Taylor kidnapped and gang-raped in Abbeville by six white men, who later confessed to the crimes but were never charged. The case was investigated by Rosa Parks and provided an early organizational spark for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.^[19]
  
• 
  November 7 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Harlem, New York.
  
• 
  Miami hires its first black police officers.
  

• 
  August – The first issue of Ebony.
  
• 
  Freeman Field Mutiny, where black officers attempt to desegregate an all-white officers club.
  

• 
  June 3 – In Morgan v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court invalidates provisions of the Virginia Code which require the separation of white and colored passengers where applied to interstate bus transport. The state law is unconstitutional insofar as it is burdening interstate commerce – an area of federal jurisdiction.^[20]
  
• 
  In Florida, Daytona Beach, DeLand, Sanford, Fort Myers, Tampa, andGainesville all have black police officers. So does Little Rock, Arkansas;Louisville, Kentucky; Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio in Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Chattanooga and Knoxville inTennessee
  
• 
  Renowned actor/singer Paul Robeson founds the American Crusade Against Lynching.
  

• 
  April 9 – The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends 16 men on theJourney of Reconciliation.
  
• 
  April 15 – Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in professional baseball in 60 years.
  
• 
  John Hope Franklin authors the non-fiction book From Slavery to Freedom
  

• 
  January 12 – In Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., the Supreme Court rules that the State of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Law School could not deny admission based on race ("color").
  
• 
  May 3 – In Shelley v. Kraemer, and companion case Hurd v Hodge (ACLU) the Supreme Court rules that the government cannot enforce raciallyrestrictive covenants and asserts that they are in conflict with the nation's public policy.
  
• 
  July 12 – Hubert Humphrey makes a controversial speech in favor of American civil rights at the Democratic National Convention.
  
• 
  July 26 – President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 ordering the end of segregation in the Armed Forces.
  
• 
  Atlanta hires its first black police officers
  

• 
  June 5 – In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents the Supreme Court rules that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his race.
  
• 
  June 5 – In Sweatt v. Painter the Supreme Court rules that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal, partly in that it deprived black students from the collegiality of future white lawyers.
  
• 
  June 5 – In Henderson v. United States the Supreme Court abolishes segregation in railroad dining cars.
  
• 
  September 15 - University of Virginia, under a federal court order, admits a black student to its law school.
  
• 
  The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is created in Washington, DC to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective civil rights legislation and policy.
  
• 
  Orlando, Florida, hires its first black police officers.
  
• 
  Dr. Ralph Bunche wins the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize.
  
• 
  Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel Clifton and Earl Lloyd break the barriers into theNBA.