Resource Hub
The Black past, in order
A timeline of African American history, period by period — from the empires and universities of the African continent to the freedom struggles that shaped America and the story still unfolding today.
to 1600
Ancient & Medieval Africa
The great kingdoms, universities, and cities of the African continent — from Kush and Mali to Timbuktu and Great Zimbabwe.
c. 1300s
The University of Sankore flourishes in Timbuktu
Timbuktu becomes one of the great centers of learning in the world, with scholars, libraries, and manuscript traditions drawing students from across Africa and the Muslim world.
1324
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca
The ruler of Mali travels to Mecca with an entourage so vast and so laden with gold that his journey reshapes how the wider world pictures West African wealth and power.
c. 1400s
Great Zimbabwe at its height
The stone city of Great Zimbabwe anchors a trading empire reaching the Indian Ocean coast, its walls built without mortar and still standing today.
1500s–1800s
Enslavement & the Atlantic World
The transatlantic slave trade, the castles and coasts it left from, and the plantations and ports it built.
August 1619
The first Africans arrive at Point Comfort
A ship lands roughly twenty captive Africans in the Virginia colony, a beginning point for more than two centuries of slavery in what becomes the United States.
1660s onward
Cape Coast Castle becomes a hub of the slave trade
The fortress on the Gold Coast holds thousands of captives in its dungeons before they are forced through the door of no return onto slave ships.
1730s–1880s
Resistance & Abolition
Revolts, maroon communities, the Underground Railroad, and the long fight to end slavery.
August 1791
The Haitian Revolution begins
Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue rise against French rule, launching the revolution that creates the first Black republic in the Americas.
1849–1860
Harriet Tubman escapes and returns
After escaping slavery in Maryland, Tubman goes back again and again as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading dozens of people to freedom.
January 1, 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect
President Lincoln declares enslaved people in rebelling states to be free, turning the Civil War into a war against slavery itself.
1865–1896
Reconstruction
Freedom's first generation: new constitutions, Black officeholders, and the backlash that followed.
February 1870
Hiram Revels takes his seat in the Senate
Revels of Mississippi becomes the first Black member of the United States Senate during the brief flowering of Black political power after the Civil War.
1896–1954
Jim Crow & the Great Migration
Segregation, lynching, Black Wall Street, and the mass movement of millions toward northern and western cities.
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson
The Supreme Court blesses "separate but equal," giving legal cover to segregation for the next half century.
1916–1970
The Great Migration reshapes America
Millions of Black southerners move to northern and western cities in search of work and safety, remaking the nation's culture, politics, and music.
May 31 – June 1, 1921
The Tulsa Race Massacre destroys Black Wall Street
A white mob burns the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing hundreds and wiping out one of the wealthiest Black communities in America.
1954–1968
Civil Rights Movement
Montgomery, Little Rock, Birmingham, Selma, Memphis — the marches and martyrs that changed America.
May 17, 1954
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court rules school segregation unconstitutional, overturning Plessy and opening the legal road for the movement that follows.
August 28, 1963
The March on Washington
A quarter million people gather at the Lincoln Memorial for jobs and freedom, where Dr. King delivers the "I Have a Dream" speech.
March 7, 1965
Bloody Sunday in Selma
Marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge are beaten by state troopers; the televised violence helps force passage of the Voting Rights Act.
1968–today
Present Day
The continuing story: Black political power, culture, scholarship, and community since the movement era.
November 4, 2008
Barack Obama elected president
The nation elects its first Black president, a moment measured against every generation of struggle that came before it.
September 24, 2016
The National Museum of African American History and Culture opens
On the National Mall, the Smithsonian opens a museum devoted to telling the Black American story in full.
June 17, 2021
Juneteenth becomes a federal holiday
June 19 — the day news of freedom reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, in 1865 — is recognized nationally.