Dates

African American History

TimeLine ~ Fugitive Slave Act Amendment ~ Document Analysis

1816

Freetown, Sierra Leone. Paul Cuffee, a successful shipowner (son of a former African-American slave) brought 38 free African-Americans to settle in this British colony on Africa’s west Coast.

1816

The American Colonization Society (ACS) founded. Formed to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States.

1822

Colony for African-American emigrants established by the American Colonization Society in West Africa. In 1847 this became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, The American Colonization Society had sent 13,000 African-American freed slaves to this migrant colony.

1829

Race riot, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 10. White mobs looted and attacked residents of Africa town, a Cincinnati neighborhood of African-American freedmen. More than 1,000 Negroes left the city for Canada.

1838

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Sept. 3.

1841

Slave revolt on slave trader 'Creole' which was en route from Hampton, Va., to New Orleans, La., Nov 7. Slaves overpowered crew and sailed vessel to Bahamas where they were granted asylum and freedom.

1849

Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland, summer. She returned to South 19 times and brought out more than 300 slaves.

1850

Fugitive Slave Act - Compromise of 1850 - allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from helping escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. The act also required government officials in Northern states to help in the recapture of runaway slaves. Freedmen without adequate identification feared legally sanctioned kidnapping and enslavement.

1852

Daniel A. P. Murray born. Born in Baltimore on March 3. Murray, an African-American, was assistant librarian of Congress, and a collector of books and pamphlets by and about black Americans.

Publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, published on March 20, focused national attention on the cruelties of slavery.

1856

Booker Taliaferro Washington born. Born in Franklin County, Virginia, on April 5, Washington was the first principal of Tuskegee Institute (1881), and was the individual most responsible for its early development. Washington was considered the leading African-American spokesman of his day.

1857

Supreme Court rules on the Dred Scott case. On March 6, the Supreme Court decided that an African-American could not be a citizen of the U.S., and thus had no rights of citizenship. The decision sharpened the national debate over slavery.

1859

John Brown's raid. On October 16-17, John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (today located in West Virginia). Brown's unsuccessful mission to obtain arms for a slave insurrection stirred and divided the nation. Brown was hanged for treason on December 2.

The last slave ship arrives. During this year, the last ship to bring slaves to the United States, the Clothilde, arrived in Mobile Bay, Alabama.

1860

Abraham Lincoln elected president. Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860.

1860 Census: U.S. population: 31,443,790 Black population: 4,441,790 (14.1%)

1863

The Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, legally freeing slaves in areas of the South in rebellion.

New York City draft riots. Anti-conscription riots started on July 13 and lasted four days, during which hundreds of black Americans were killed or wounded.

1864

Equal pay. On June 15, Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay, equipment, arms, and health care for African-American Union troops.

The New Orleans Tribune. On October 4, the New Orleans Tribune began publication. The Tribune was one of the first daily newspapers produced by blacks.

1865

Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment. Slavery would be outlawed in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment, which Congress approved and sent on to the states for ratification on January 31.

The Freedmen's Bureau. On March 3, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to provide health care, education, and technical assistance to emancipated slaves.

Death of Lincoln. On April 15, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, succeeded him as president.

Ratification of Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was ratified on December 18.

1866

Presidential meeting for black suffrage. On February 2, a black delegation led by Frederick Douglass met with President Andrew Johnson at the White House to advocate black suffrage. The president expressed his opposition, and the meeting ended in controversy.

Civil Rights Act. Congress overrode President Johnson's veto on April 9 and passed the Civil Rights Act, conferring citizenship upon black Americans and guaranteeing equal rights with whites.

The Fourteenth Amendment. On June 13, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all citizens. The amendment would also grant citizenship to blacks.

Founding of the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, an organization formed to intimidate blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities, first met in Maxwell House, Memphis. The Klan was the first of many secret terrorist organizations organized in the South for the purpose of reestablishing white authority.

1867

Black suffrage. On January 8, overriding President Johnson's veto, Congress granted the black citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote.

Reconstruction begins. Reconstruction Acts were passed by Congress on March 2. These acts called for the enfranchisement of former slaves in the South.

1868

Fourteenth Amendment ratified. On July 21, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.

Application to Allen Light 8^th grade module

Compare these historical events to parallel events in Light’s life:

Allen Light’s applied for and received U.S. citizenship in 1827, nationwide citizenship for all African-Americans in the U.S. was ratified 41 years later, in 1868.
Light served in the Mexican army as a salaried soldier in 1836, the U.S. Congress authorized equal pay, arms and health care for African-American troops 28 years later in 1864.
Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Maryland with the help of the same "sailor’s protection paper" that Allen Light carried. Douglas wrote in his autobiography that he had borrowed the document from a friend and used it as a substitute for the free papers that African-Americans were required to carry.
In 1841, the year that slaves mutinied on a slave trader ship to gain freedom and asylum in the Bahamas, Allen Light was a self-employed, licensed otter hunter and principal arbiter of Mexico’s national Armada.

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