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African American History in the 20th Century

1905 July 11-13

W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter were among the leaders of the meeting from which sprung the Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

1910 April

The National Urban League was established.

1912 September 27

W. C. Handy published "Memphis Blues."

1915 September 9

Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

1918 February 19-21

The First Pan-African Congress met in Paris, France, under the guidance of W. E. B. Du Bois.

1920 August 1-2

The national convention of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Society met in New York City. Garvey would be charged with mail fraud in 1923. He was convicted in 1925 and deported in 1927 after serving time in prison.

1922-1929

These are the years usually assigned to the Harlem Renaissance, which marks an epoch in black literature and art.

1925 May 8

A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

1931 April 6

Nine young blacks were accused of raping two white women in a boxcar. They were tried for their lives in Scottsboro, Alabama, and hastily convicted. The case attracted national attention.

1936 August 9

Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin.

1937 June 22

Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

1940 October 16

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., became the first black general in the United States Army.

1941 June 25

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries after pressure from blacks led by A. Philip Randolph.

1942 June

Some blacks and whites organized the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago. They led a sit-in at a Chicago restaurant.

1944 April 24

The United Negro College Fund was founded. On October 2, the first working, production-ready model of a mechanical cotton picker was demonstrated on a farm near Clarksdate, Mississippi.

1947 April 19

Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball.

1950 September 22

Ralph J. Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator in Palestine.

1952

After keeping statistics kept for 71 years, Tuskegee reported that this was first year with no lynchings.

1954 May 17

In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court completed overturning legal school segregation at all levels.

1955 December 1

Rosa Parks refused to change seats in a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. On December 5 blacks began a boycott of the bus system which continued until shortly after December 13, 1956, when the United States Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation in the city.

1957 February 14

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed with Martin Luther King, Jr., as president. August 29, Congress passed the Voting Rights Bill of 1957, the first major civil rights legislation in more than 75 years.

1960 February 1

Sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, initiated a wave of similar protests throughout the South. During April 15-17, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina.

1963 April 3

Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., blacks began a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham. From June-August, Civil rights protests took place in most major urban areas. On August 28, The March on Washington was the largest civil rights demonstration ever. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

1964 January 23

The Twenty-fourth Amendment forbade the use of the poll tax to prevent voting. On March 12, Malcolm X announced his split from Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. He would be assassinated on February 21, 1965. From July 18-August 30, beginning in Harlem, serious racial disturbances occurred in more than six major cities.

1965 January 2

The SCLC launched a voter drive in Selma, Alabama. which escalated into a nationwide protest movement. On February 21, Malcolm X assassinated in Harlem by members of the Nation of Islam. During August 11-21, the Watts riots left 34 dead, more than 3,500 arrested, and property damage of about 225 million dollars.

1966 July 1-9

CORE endorsed the concept "Black Power." SNCC also adopted it. SCLC did not and the NAACP emphatically did not. In October, The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.

1967 May 1-October 1

This was the worst summer for racial disturbances in United States history. More than 40 riots and 100 other disturbances occurred.

1968 April 4

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. In the following week riots occurred in at least 125 places throughout the country.

1969 October 29

The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools had to end at once and that unitary school systems were required.

1970 July 1

Kenneth Gibson became the first black mayor of an Eastern city when he assumed the post in Newark, New Jersey.
August 7, there was a shootout during an attempted escape in a San Rafael, California, courthouse. Implicated in the incident, Angela Davis went into hiding to avoid arrest. Davis would be acquitted of all charges on June 4, 1972.

1971 March 24

The Southern Regional Council reported that desegregation in Southern schools was the rule, not the exception. The report also pointed out that the dual school system was far from dismantled.

1973 May 29

Thomas Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
October 16, Maynard H. Jackson was elected the first black mayor of Atlanta.

1974 April 8

Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to become the all-time leading hitter of home runs.
On July 1, The largest single gift to date from a black organization was the $132,000 given by the Links, Inc., to the United Negro College Fund.

1977 February 3

This was the eighth and final night for the miniseries based on Alex Haley's Roots. This final episode achieved the highest ratings ever for a single program.

1980 May 18

Racial disturbances beginning on May 17 resulted in 15 deaths in Miami, Florida. This was the worst riot since those in Watts and Detroit in the 1960s.

1982 May 23

Lee P. Brown was named the first black police commissioner of Houston, Texas.

1983 February 23

Harold Washington won the Democratic party nomination for mayor of Chicago. On April 12 he would win the election for mayor.
On June 22, the state legislature of Louisiana repealed the last racial classification law in the United States. The criterion for being classified as black was having 1/32nd Negro blood.
November 2, President Ronald Reagan signed the bill establishing January 20 a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 30, Guion (Guy) S. Bluford, Jr. was the first black American astronaut to make a space flight on board the space shuttle Challenger.

1986 January 16

A bronze bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first of any black American in the halls of Congress.
On January 20, the first national Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday was celebrated.

1987

Frederick Drew Gregory was the first black to command a space shuttle.

1988 July 20

Jesse L. Jackson received 1,218 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention. The number needed for the nomination, which went to Michael Dukakis, was 2,082.
November 4, Bill Cosby announced his gift of $20,000,000 to Spelman College. This is the largest donation ever made by a black American.

1989 January 29

Barbara Harris was elected the first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church.
On August 10, General Colin L. Powell was named chair of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.
November 7, David Dinkins was elected mayor of New York, and L. Douglas Wilder, governor of Virginia.

1990 February 11

Nelson Mandela, South African Black Nationalist, was freed after 27 years in prison.
May 13, George Augustus Stallings became the first bishop of the African-American Catholic Church, a breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church.
November 1, Ebony magazine celebrated its 45th anniversary.

1991 January 15

Roland Burris became the first black attorney general of Illinois.
June 18, Wellington Webb was elected mayor of Denver, Colorado.

1992 April 30

"The Cosby Show" broadcast the final original episode of its highly successful eight season run.
August 3, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the first woman to repeat as Olympic heptathlon champion.
September 12, Mae C. Jemison was first black American woman in space on board the space shuttle Endeavor.
November 3, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois was the first black woman ever elected to the United States Senate.

1993 September 7

M. Joycelyn Elders became the first black and the first woman United States Surgeon General.
October 7, Toni Morrison was the first black American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1994 October 21

Dexter Scott King, the youngest son of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, is named chief executive and chairman of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.

1995 October 16

The Million Man March was held in Washington D.C. The march was the idea of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who called the event, "A Day of Atonement and Reconciliation." The march was described as a call to black men to take charge in rebuilding their communities and show more respect for themselves and devotion to their families.
November 8, Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, ends months of speculation by announcing that he will not run for the U.S. presidency in 1996. December 9, Kweisi Mfume is unanimously elected as president and chief executive officer of the NAACP.

1996 April 3

Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and distinguished business leaders are killed in a plane crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

1997 June 23

Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X and a champion of civil rights, died in New York of burns suffered in a June 1 fire in her apartment, allegedly set by her 12-year-old grandson, Malcolm.
October 25, Black American women participated in the Million Woman March in Philadelphia, focusing on health care, education, and self-help.

1998 January 15

Civil rights veteran James Farmer was one of 15 men and women awarded the Medal of Freedom from President Clinton. Born in Marshall, Texas, he was the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality during the 1960s and was one of the most influential leaders of the civil rights movement throughout its most turbulent decade.
January 18, now an annual observance, the New York Stock Exchange closed, for the first time, in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
September 21, Track star Florence Griffith Joyner died at the age of 38. In the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, Griffith became the first American woman to win four track and field medals — three gold and one silver — in one Olympic competition.

1999

Alan Keyes announces his candidacy in the Republican presidential primaries for election 2000. Keyes, a radio talk show host and a leader of the conservative movement also ran in the 1996 presidential elections.
On January 13, after 13 seasons and six NBA championships, professional basketball star Michael Jordan retired from the game.
During August, the NAACP calls for a national boycott of vacation spots in South Carolina in an attempt to force the state government to remove the Confederate flag from the dome of its statehouse. Controversy on this issue grows, involving the flying of the Confederate flag in other southern states as well.
On December 2, a location for a national monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., on the mall in Washington D.C. between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument was approved by the National Capital Planning Commission. The architectural design will be determined in an international competition to be completed by November 12, 2003.