American Racial History Timeline, 1900-1960 1900

Race riot in New Orleans is sparked by a shoot-out between the police and a negro laborer. Twenty thousand people are drawn into the riot that lasted four days. (Brown and Stentiford, xxiv)

Race riot in New York City. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

South Carolina – Railroads [Statute]

Congress becomes resegregated when George H. White of North Carolina fails in his reelection bid. Negroes would not serve again in Congress until 1929. (Brown and Stentiford, 562)

Alabama – Miscegenation [Constitution]
Declared that the legislature could never pass any law authorizing or legalizing “any marriage between any white person and a Negro, or descendant of a Negro.” (Jim Crow History.org)

Alabama – Education [Constitution]

Assassination of President McKinley.

Booker T. Washington publishes Up From Slavery. (Brown and Stentiford, 598)

Between 1901 and 1947, the California state government enacted laws that created segregated communities for “Asian Americans.” (Brown and Stentiford, 49)

Thomas Dixon, Jr. publishes his response to Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Leopard’s Spots: An Historical Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865-1900, a best-selling novel which introduces readers to the Negro Problem and trauma that the North inflicted upon the South during Reconstruction. (Brown and Stentiford, 237)

Louisiana – Streetcars [Statute]
All streetcars must provide separate but equal accommodations. Penalty: Passengers or conductors not complying could receive a fine of $25 or imprisonment up to 30 days. A railway company that refused to comply could receive a fine of $100, or imprisonment between 60 days and six months. (Jim Crow History.org)

1903

W.E.B. DuBois publishes his landmark polemic, The Souls of Black Folk. It pronounces that the “problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Florida – Miscegenation [Statute]
Intermarriage with a Negro, mulatto, or any person with one-eighth Negro blood shall be punished. Penalty: Imprisonment up to ten years or a fine not more than $1,000. (Jim Crow History.org)

South Carolina – Railroads [Statute]

Arkansas – Streetcars [Statute]

Race riot in Springfield, Ohio. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

Congress bars Chinese immigration with amendments to the Chinese Exclusion Act. (Brown and Stentiford, 53)

Kentucky passes the “Day Law” which requires racial segregation of all public and private schools. (Brown and Stentiford, 438)

Mississippi – Streetcars [Statute]
Streetcars were to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored passengers. Penalties: Passengers could be fined $25 or confined up to 30 days in county jail. Employees liable for a fine of $25 or confinement up to 30 days in jail. A streetcar company could be charged with a misdemeanor for failing to carry out law and be fined $100 and face imprisonment between 60 days and six months. (Jim Crow History.org)

1905

Georgia – Public accommodations [Statute]

Florida – Streetcars [Statute]

South Carolina – Streetcars [Statute]

Thomas Dixon, Jr. publishes The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, the second installment of his Reconstruction trilogy. (Brown and Stentiford, 238)

Founding of American Breeders Association. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

The Niagara Movement forms. An organization of black intellectuals who opposed Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Machine, the Niagara movement promoted negro political equality and voting rights. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

The Burke Act provides citizenship to Indians in certain areas under certain conditions. (Brown and Stentiford, 580)

Founding of U.S. based journal, Eugenics and Social Welfare Bulletin. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

Founding of the Race Betterment Foundation. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

Rumors of negro assaults on white women lead to a race riot in Atlanta. The riot claims the lives of 25 negroes and one white. Hundreds are injured. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Race riot in Brownsville, Texas. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

Race riot in Greensburg, Indiana. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

Mississippi – Railroads [Statute]
Railroad commission to provide separate waiting rooms for white and black passengers. Separate restrooms were to be provided also. (Jim Crow History.org)

Mississippi – Miscegenation [Statute]

South Carolina – Railroads [Statute]

Alabama – Miscegenation [State Code]

Florida – Railroads [Statute]

Texas – Streetcars [Statute]

The “Gentleman’s Agreement” between President Theodore Roosevelt and Japanese leaders restricts Japanese immigration to the United States. (Brown and Stentiford, 53)

First use of “racialism,” as “prejudice based on race difference” (Barkan, 2), in the English language. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Oklahoma admitted to the Union with a constitution modeled on Mississippi’s. (Brown and Stentiford, 563)

Georgia – Penal institutions [Statute]

Race riot in Springfield, Illinois. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

Jack Johnson, a negro, reigns as heavyweight boxing champion until 1915. (Brown and Stentiford, 419)

Louisiana – Public accommodation [Statute]

Louisiana – Miscegenation [Statute]

Federal patronage of negroes sharply curtailed under President Taft. (Brown and Stentiford, 679)

Florida – Railroads [Statute]

Texas – Railroads [Statute]

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded in New York City. Some of the members of the Niagara Movement contribute to the founding of the NAACP. The board of directors of the NAACP includes several white progressives. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

“Great Migration” of 500,000 negroes to the North. (Gilmore, 17)

Founding of the Urban League (NUL). (Schuman et al, 54)

Founding of the Eugenics Record Office. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

The NAACP launches its monthly magazine, The Crisis. (Roberts and Klibanoff, 14)

Louisiana – Miscegenation [Statute]
Restatement of the law passed in 1908, using the words “Persons of the Caucasian and colored races.” (Jim Crow History.org)

1911

Alabama – Jails [Statute]

Franz Boas (Jew) publishes The Mind of Primitive Man, a turning point in anthropological thought, ushering in the notion of cultural relativism and the ethnological method. (Brown and Stentiford, 529)

First International Conference on Eugenics. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

Hispanics in New Mexico finally receive full citizenship after admission to the Union. Texas restricts the right to own land to members of the white race. (Howe, 810)

Jones Act conferes U.S. citizenship on Puerto Ricans. (Brown and Stentiford, 374)

Louisiana – Residential [Statute]
Building permits for building Negro houses in white communities, or any portion of a community inhabited principally by white people, and vice versa prohibited. Penalty: violators fined from $50 to $2,000, “and the municipality shall have the right to cause said building to be removed and destroyed.” (Jim Crow History.org)

Woodrow Wilson Administration, 1913-1921

In the Wilson administration’s first congressional session “there were no less than twenty bills advocating ‘Jim Crow’ cars in the District of Columbia, race segregation of Federal employees, excluding negroes from commissions in the army and navy, forbidding the intermarriage of negroes and whites, and excluding all immigrants of Negro descent. (Gilmore, 18)

President Wilson issues an executive order segregating the federal government’s operations in Washington. (Gilmore, 18) Wilson segregates the federal civil service. (Brown and Stentiford, 679)

President Wilson segregates the U.S. Navy and replaces negroes who hold appointed offices with whites. (Brown and Stentiford, 564)

Florida – Education [Statute]

World War I engulfs Europe, and involves much of the world through colonial empires and alliances. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Louisville, Kentucky enacts a law forbidding whites and negroes from residing in areas where members of another race were the majority. (Brown and Stentiford, 115)

Louisiana – Public accommodation [Statute]
All circuses, shows and tent exhibitions required to provide two ticket offices with individual ticket sellers and two entrances to the performance for each race. (Jim Crow History.org)

Texas – Railroads [Statute]

Alabama – Health Care [Statute]

Texas – Miscegenation [State Code]

The Great Migration begins. Many negroes move first from rural areas to cities in the South, then to Northern cities. The Great Migration peaks in the early 1940s. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia. (Gilmore, 197)

Film director D.W. Griffith adapts several novels by Thomas Dixon, Jr. into the nation’s first modern motion picture, The Birth of a Nation, which depicts the Ku Klux Klan as heroic defenders of white womanhood and civilization. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in Stone Mountain, Georgia. (Brown and Stentiford, 239)

Supreme Court in Guinn v. United States strikes down the grandfather clause in voting. (Brown and Stentiford, 228)

Founding of U.S. based journal, Eugenical News. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

Madison Grant publishes The Passing of the Great Race. (Brown and Stentiford, 562)

1917-1918, First World War (U.S. involvement)

1917

The Immigration Act of 1917 bans “idiots,” “feeble-minded persons,” “criminals” “epileptics,” “insane persons,” alcoholics, “professional beggars,” all persons “mentally or physically defective,” polygamists, and anarchists.

Asiatic Barred Zone Act bans immigration from all of Southwest and South Asia.

June – A race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, erupts over housing and jobs between working-class whites and negroes. Eight whites and about 100 negroes are killed in the riot. Thousands of fleeing residents of the city lose their possessions and homes in the aftermath. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

August – A race riot in Houston erupts between the negro soldiers stationed at Camp Logan and the white residents and police officers in nearby Houston. Over 100 soldiers are arrested, and 63 of them are court-martialed. Twenty are later executed, seven are set free, and the rest are given life sentences. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

U.S. buys the Virgin Islands from Denmark. (Nugent, 281)

U.S. Army officials try to force the French to segregate troops on the basis of race. (Gilmore, 18)

Buchanan v. Warley, Supreme Court invalidates laws requiring racial segregation of neighborhoods. (Brown and Stentiford, 114)

First use of “racialist” in the English language. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

The Asiatic Barred Zone act restricts Asian Indian immigration to the United States. The law deems Asians ineligible for American citizenship. (Brown and Stentiford, 53)

1918

Louisiana – Prisons [Statute]

Texas – Public accommodations [Statute]

Congress passes the Indian Veterans Citizenship Act which gives U.S. citizenship and full civil rights to Indian WW1 veterans. (Brown and Stentiford, 580)

Race riots across the nation claim more than 200 lives. The biggest riot is in Chicago. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv) Race riot in Charleston, South Carolina; in Longview, Texas. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

“Red Summer” – an estimated 25 race riots in the United States. (Brown and Stentiford, 128)

Founding of Commission on Interracial Cooperation. (Gilmore, 19)

1920s

Decline in scientific respectability of racial typology. (Barkan, 4)

Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) gains thousands of followers, until the group’s dissolution in the late 1920s. The popularity of UNIA stems from the Black Star Line, a shipping company, founded in 1919. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Resegregation of Harvard University dorms. (Brown and Stentiford, 563)

North Carolina repeals its poll tax. (Brown and Stentiford, 603)

Mississippi – Miscegenation [Statute]
Persons or corporations who printed, published or circulated written material promoting the acceptance of intermarriage between whites and Negroes would be guilty of a misdemeanor. Penalty: Fine up to $500 or imprisonment up to six months, or both. (Jim Crow History.org)

August – The Nineteenth Amendment passes, granting the right to vote to women. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Lothrop Stoddard publishes The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.

1921-1923, Warren Harding Administration

1921

Second International Conference on Eugenics. (Brown and Stentiford, 530)

A race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, nearly wipes out the entire negro area, including the “Black” Wall Street. (Brown and Stentiford, xxv)

Louisiana – Housing [Statute]

Louisiana – Education [Constitution]

Arkansas – Miscegenation [Statute]

Texas – Voting Rights [Statute]

Dyer anti-lynching bill passes the House with Republican support, but fails in the Senate due to Southern Democratic resistance. (Brown and Stentiford, 256)

Virginia passes a law that makes negro-white intermarriage a crime. (Brown and Stentiford, 503)

1923-1929, Calvin Coolidge Administration

1923

Rosewood Massacre in Florida. (Brown and Stentiford, 304)

Dyer federal anti-lynching bill defeated by Southern opposition in Congress. (Brown and Stentiford, 197)

Supreme Court in Moore v. Dempsy overturns some criminal cases in which negroes had been excluded from juries. (Brown and Stentiford, 228)

Immigration Act of 1924 restricts immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. (Brown and Stentiford, 53)

Asian Exclusion Act, a component of the Immigration Act of 1924, prohibits individuals from Asian nations from immigrating to the United States. The language of the law defined any individual from an Asian nation as ineligible for U.S. citizenship. (Brown and Stentiford, 53)

Virginia passes the Racial Integrity Act. The law requires the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics to record a racial description of every newborn baby. It outlaws marriages between white and nonwhite partners. (Brown and Stentiford, 275)

Virginia passes a eugenic sterilization law. (Brown and Stentiford, 275)

Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 gives U.S. citizenship to all American Indians born in the United States. (Brown and Stentiford, 580)

American Communists alone arguing for complete equality of the races. (Gilmore, 4)

Negro literature, art, and criticism form the Harlem Renaissance, an influential cultural movement. The Harlem Renaissance leads to similar cultural movements in Chicago and Kansas City. (Brown and Stentiford, xxvi)

1925

Georgia – Business licenses [Statute]

Texas – Education [Statute]

Texas – Public accommodations [Statute]

Texas – Miscegenation [Penal Code]

Psychologists begin to attack the concept of inherent mental differences between racial groups. (Barkan, 5)

A. Philip Randolph forms the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. (Brown and Stentiford, xxvi)

1926

Georgia – Race classification [State Code]

Georgia – Education [State Code]

Georgia – Miscegenation [State Code]

Texas – Public carriers [Statute]

Historian Carter G. Woodson founds Negro History Week, later evolving into Black History Month. (Brown and Stentiford, xxvi)

Arthur Estabrook and Evan McDougle publish Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe. (Brown and Stentiford, 275)

Corrigan v. Buckley, Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of racial covenants. (Brown and Stentiford, 720)

Carl Brigham develops the SAT test. (Brown and Stentiford, 562)