1619–1898
1900–2004

1619
Seventeen black men and three black women land at Jamestown, Virginia, on August 20th. Possibly the first Africans to arrive in what will later be the U.S., they are accorded the status of indentured servants.

1623 or 1624
The first black person born in America was William, son of Antoney and Isabell, indentured servants.

1644
Eleven blacks petitioned the Council of New Netherlands for freedom—the first black legal protest in America. The Council freed them because they had "served the Company 17 or 18 years" and had "long since been promised their freedom."

1760
Jupiter Hammon, a New York slave, is the first black poet. He writes An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries.

1770
Crispus Attucks dies in the Boston Massacre.

1773
Phillis Wheatley was the first author and first major black poet. She wrote Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. It was the second book published by an American woman.

1775
George Liele, born in slavery in Virginia, becomes a Christian and preaches to blacks and whites on both sides of the Savannah River. His First African Baptist Church in Savannah continues to the present day.

1776
Poet Phillis Wheatley visits President George Washington on her birthday.

1777
Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.

1779
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a prosperous and educated black man from New Orleans, ends up in the Illinois Territory, and is placed in charge of a settlement on the St. Charles River.

1780
Lemuel Haynes of the Congregational Church was the first black minister certified by a predominantly white denomination.

1782
George Liele leaves with the evacuating British forces and ends up in Jamaica—preaching and converting.

1787
James Derham, a former slave, was the first black physician. He bought his freedom and established a large practice among both blacks and whites.

The first general institution organized and managed by blacks was the Free African Society of Philadelphia. The first black Masonic lodge was African Lodge No. 459 in Boston.

1789
Charlotte E. Ray becomes the first black woman lawyer.

1791
American surveyors Benjamin Banneker and Andrew Ellicott help work out the plans for the young country's new capital, Washington, D.C.

1792
The first scientific writing by a black person was produced by astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker, writing in his almanac, which was issued annually after 1792.

1804
Lemuel Haynes was the first black to receive a degree from a U.S. college, an honorary M.A. from Middlebury College.

1810
The first black insurance company was the American Insurance Company of Philadelphia.

1816
Richard Allen was the first black bishop, elected at the general convention of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

1817
Frederick Douglass is born.

1818
Frank Johnson became the first black to publish sheet music in the U.S.

1820s
Jim Beckwourth leaves St. Charles, Missouri, for the West.

The first black drama group was the African Company of New York City.

1821
Thomas L. Jennings was the first African American to receive a patent, issued on March 3rd.

1822
James Hall graduated from the Medical College of Maine, the first black to graduate from a U.S. medical college.

1823
Alexander Lucius Twilight was the first black college graduate, who received a bachelor's degree from Middlebury College.

1827
Hiram Rhodes Revels is born.

John Brown Russworm and the Reverend Samuel E. Cornish publish the first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, in New York City.

1830
The first black national convention met at Philadelphia's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

1832
Maria W. Stewart began an unprecedented public speaking tour at Franklin Hall in Boston. She was the first woman in the U.S. to engage in public political debates.

1834
Henry Blair of Maryland was the first black inventor to receive a patent. He invented a corn planter.

1836
Alexander Lucius Twilight was the first black elected to public office—He was elected to the Vermont legislature.

1837
Cheyney State Training School in Pennsylvania was the first black college established.

Vermont asks Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.

1838
Mirror of Liberty, published in New York, was the first black magazine.

1843
Macon B. Allen of Maine was the first black lawyer.

Blacks participate for the first time in a national convention in Buffalo, New York, on August 30th—the Liberty Party convention.

1853
William Wells Brown, who wrote Clotel: or, The President's Daughter, was the first black novelist.

1854
John V. DeGrasse was the first black to be admitted to a medical society, the Massachusetts Medical Society.

1856
John Brown leads a raid on proslavery sympathizers in a small Kansas settlement on the Pottawatomie Creek. It is the first battle over slavery in the U.S.

1858
William Wells Brown was the first black playwright. He wrote The Escape.

1861
The Civil War begins.

1862
Mary Jane Patterson was the first black woman to graduate from an American college—Oberlin College.

Nashville's black population swells from 4,000 to 10,000 during the Union occupation of the city. African American laborers help Union troops build Fort Negley. They also laid 75 miles of railroad track from Nashville to Johnsonville.

1863
Washington, D.C., repeals its Municipal Black Codes.

The first Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment is the first African American regiment from a northern state to join the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

Sgt. William H. Carney of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers is the first black to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor. He is one of 20 blacks to receive Congressional Medals of Honor during the Civil War, although the honor was not awarded until May 23, 1900.

1864
Rebecca Lee of Boston was the first black woman physician.

The New Orleans Tribune, founded by Dr. Louis C. Roudanez, was the first black daily newspaper.

1865
John S. Rock of Massachusetts was the first black lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Patrick Francis Healy was the first black to receive a Ph.D.

Frederick Douglass becomes the first spiritual leader of the nation's civil rights movement.

John S. Rock becomes the first African-American lawyer to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Civil War ends.

1866
Lucy Hobbs becomes the first African-American woman to graduate from dental school.

1867
On October 5th, Monroe Baker, a well-to-do African-American businessman, is named mayor of St. Martin, Louisiana, becoming probably the first black to serve as mayor of a town in the U.S.

Robert Tanner Freeman of Harvard University was the first black to graduate from an American school of dentistry.

1868
W.E.B. DuBois is born.

On October 6th, an African-American state convention at Macon, Georgia, protest the expulsion of African-American politicians from the Georgia legislature.

1869
The 15th Amendment, concerning African-American suffrage, is passed.

Denied a seat, John Willis Menard of Louisiana becomes the first black U.S. senator when he is elected to fill the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis. He is the first black person in Congress.

1870s--Black immigrants begin to head west, hoping to secure a better life for their children and escape the bigotry and persecution that have followed the Reconstruction. The settlers in the first wave are called Exodusters.

1870
Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi became the first black U.S. senator when he was elected to fill the unexpired term of Jefferson Davis.

Joseph R. Rainey was the first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jonathan Jasper Wright was the first black judge. He was elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court.

James W. Smith of South Carolina was the first black student at West Point Military Academy.

1871
The Fisk University Jubilee Singers begin their tour of the U.S. and Europe, and take the university's entire treasury for traveling expenses.

1872
Charlotte E. Ray becomes the first black woman lawyer in a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

P.B.S. Pinchback became the first black governor (Louisiana).

John Henry Conyers of South Carolina was the first black student at Annapolis Naval Academy.

1875
A statue of the "Great Emancipator" is paid for by subscriptions raised among freedmen and placed in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.

The first black to serve a full term as a U.S. senator was Blanche Kelso Bruce of Mississippi.

Oliver Lewis became the first black jockey and the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby.

James A. Healy was the first black bishop of a predominantly white denomination, the Roman Catholic Church.

1876
Edward A. Bouchet was the first black to receive a Ph.D. degree from an American university, Yale University.

1877
Frederick Douglass became the first black to receive a major government appointment in the U.S.

Henry O. Flipper was the first black to graduate from West Point.

1878
Mary Eliza Mahoney enrolled in the New England Hospital Nursing School on March 26th. She became the first professionally trained African-American nurse in the U.S.

Hiram Rhodes Revels becomes the first African-American U.S. Senator.

1879
Blanche Kelso Bruce became the first black to preside over the U.S. Senate.

1881
Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute.

The first African-American nursing school in the country opened at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.

1884
John R. Lynch was the first black to preside over a national political convention (Republican).

Moses Fleetwood Walker was the first black in major league baseball, a catcher on the Toledo team of the American Association.

1886
Gertrude Pridgett professional career begins at age 14 when she appears in a production of The Bunch of Black Berries.

1888
W.E.B. DuBois graduates from Fisk University.

Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C., was the first black bank.

1890
George Dixon was the first black world champion in boxing, defeating Nunc Wallace in the 18th round.

1891
Provident Hospital and Training School is founded in Chicago by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams as the first training school for black nurses. It is the first hospital in the U.S. for the use of all physicians and patients, without regard to color.

A.C. Richardson invents a churn.

1892
Playing for center Harvard, William H. Lewis was the first black All-American from a major college.

1893
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful operation on the human heart at Chicago's Provident Hospital.

1896
Oriental America was the first Broadway production with an all-black company.

1897
Edwin P. "King" McCabe founds Langston University in Oklahoma, the first African-American A & M College.

1898
A Trip to Coontown was the first black musical comedy produced, directed and managed by blacks. It ran for 3 seasons in New York.