Black History Month

Timeline

1619 The First African Slaves

1641 Massachusetts Colony Legalizes Slavery

1660 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Begins

1700 Crispus Attucks 1st Casualty of American Revolution

1754 Benjamin Banneker Builds 1st Clock in U.S.

1773 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Published

1791 Thomas L. Jennings 1st African-American to Hold a U.S. Patent

1808 U.S. Bans Import of Slaves

1822 Denmark Vesy Implicated in Uprising Plan

1827 The Freedom's Journal is Published in New York

1831 Nat Turner Slave Revolt

1837 The Institute for Colored Youth is Founded

1839 Amistad Slave Ship Revolt

1846 Fredrick Douglass Begins Publishing The North Star

1849 Harriet Tubman Esacpes from Slavery

1850 The Underground Railroad

1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin is Published

1856 Wilberforce University is Founded

1857 Dred Scott Decision

1859 John Brown led Raid on Harper's Ferry

1861 Civil War Begins

1863 Emancipation Proclamation

1864 New Orleans Tribune (1st Black Daily Paper) Published

1865 Civil War Ends/ Lincoln Assassinated

1866-1875 Civil Rights Act Passed

1868 Opelousas Massacre

1869 Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett Appointed Minister to Haiti

1870 Hiram R. Revels(R) becomes 1st Black Senator

1877 Federal Troops Withdraw from South

1881 Tuskegee Institute is Founded

1885 Argyle Athletes Baseball Team Formed

1889 Ida B. Wells & Partners Publish Memphis Free Speech

1890 National Afro-American League Formed

1895 Booker T. Washington delivers his "Atlanta Compromise"

1896 Segregation Legalized

1897 The American Negro Academy is Established

1898 Spanish-American War Begins

1901 George H. White Gives up His Seat in Congress

1903 W.E.B. DuBois' "The Souls of Black Folk" Published

1904 Bethune-Cookman College Founded

1905 Niagara Movement Begins

1909 NAACP Founded

1911 National Urban League Organized

1917 World War I

1919 Harlem Renaissance Begins

1928 "Home to Harlem" Published

1930 Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. Becomes 1st Black Colonel in the Army

1932 Tuskegee Experiment Begins

1934 Wallace D. Fard Disappears

1936 Jesse Owens Wins 4 Gold Medals

1941 Dorie Miller Receives Navy Cross for Shooting Down 4 Japanese Planes in the Attack on Pearl Harbor

1942 CORE is Founded

1944 United Negro College Fund Established

1945 Ebony Magazine is Founded

1947 Jackie Robinson Joins the Dodgers

1948 Truman Abolished Segregation in the Armed Forces

1954 Brown vs Board of Education

1955 Rosa Parks Arrested

1957 Central High Crisis

1959 Motown Records is Founded

1960 SNCC Founded / Freedom Riders

1962 James Meredith Enrolls at University of Mississippi

1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. Awarded Nobel Prize for Peace

1965 Malcolm X Assassinated

1966-1967 Thurgood Marshall Appointed to Supreme Court

1968 Martin Luther King Assassinated

1974 Hank Aaron Hits 715th Home Run

1975 National Association of Black Journalists is Founded

1977 Alex Haley's "Roots: The Saga of an American Family" is Adapted for Television

1978 Supreme Court Outlaws Inflexible Quota Systems

1980 Robert Johnson Launches BET

1981 Andrew Young Elected Mayor of Atlanta

1983 Jesse Jackson Runs for President

1986 "Oprah" Debuts

1989 General Colin Powell Appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

1991 Clarence Thomas Appointed to the Supreme Court

1992 Mae Jemison 1st African-American Woman Astronaut

1993 Toni Morrison Awarded Nobel Prize

1995 Million Man March

1997 Tiger Woods Wins the Masters

1999 Little Rock Nine Receive Congressional Gold Medal

2001 Colin Powell Appointed Secretary of State

2002 Academy Awards won by Halle Berry and Denzel Washington

2004 Barack Obama Elected Senator

2005 Condoleezza Rice Appointed Secretary of State

2006 Coretta Scott King Dies

2008 Barack Obama Elected First Black President of the United States

Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished African American institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great African American nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, African Americans and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as an African American leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience, and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," a manifesto of the African American revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African Americans as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream," he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963, and became not only the symbolic leader of African Americans but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

ArkansasMatters.com and KARK salute Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for his dedication to the equality for African Americans and his incredible contributions to the civil rights movement so that all people would someday be sisters and brothers in a world governed by equality, justice, and peace.

Source: nobelprize.org

Central High

The Crisis at Central High

On the morning of September 23, 1957 nine African-American teenagers stood up to an angry crowd protesting integration in front of Little Rock's Central High as they entered the school for the first time. This event, broadcast around the world, made Little Rock the site of the first important test of the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision.

The Little Rock 9

Ernest Green

In 1958, he became the first black student to graduate from Central High School. He graduated from Michigan State University and served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs under President Jimmy Carter. He currently is a managing partner and vice president of Lehman Brothers in Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Eckford

The only one of the nine still living in Little Rock, Elizabeth made a career of the U.S. Army that included work as a journalist. In 1974, she returned to the home in which she grew up and is now a part-time social worker and mother of two sons.

Jefferson Thomas (1942 - 2010)

He graduated from Central in 1960, following a year in which Little Rock's public high schools were ordered closed by the legislature to prevent desegregation. Today, he is an accountant with the U.S. Department of Defense and lives in Anaheim, Calif.

Dr. Terrence Roberts

Following the historic year at Central, his family moved to Los Angeles where he completed high school. He earned a doctorate degree and teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles and Antioc College. He also is a clinical psychologist.

Carlotta Walls Lanier

One of only three of the nine who eventually graduated from Central, she and Jefferson Thomas returned for their senior year in 1959. She graduated from Michigan State University and presently lives in Englewood, Colorado, where she is in real estate.

Minnijean Brown Trickey

She was expelled from Central High in February, 1958, after several incidents, including her dumping a bowl of chili on one of her antagonists in the school cafeteria. She moved with her husband to Canada during the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and today is a writer and social worker in Ontario. Winterstar Productions is presently filming a documentary on her life.

Gloria Ray Karlmark

She graduated from Illinois Technical College and received a post-graduate degree in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a prolific computer science writer and at one time successfully published magazines in 39 countries. Now retired, she divides her time between homes in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Stockholm, where her husband's family lives.

Thelma Mothershed-Wair

She graduated from college, then made a career of teaching. She lives in Belleville, Illinois, where she is a volunteer in a program for abused women.

Melba Pattillo Beals

She is an author and former journalist for People magazine and NBC and lives in San Francisco.

Activists

Politicatians Military Lawyers

Scientists Educators

Writers Artists

Musicians

Actors Entertainers

Athletes