July 7, 2015
From the Inkwell of: Bartholomew J. Worthington III
  1. 1607 - British settlers arrive and establish the Jamestown colony
  2. 1619 - Slavery introduced to the colonies. Original slaves were indentured servants.
  3. 1652 - Rhode Island becomes the 1st colony to make slavery illegal
  4. 1664 - Maryland legally makes servitude lifelong for Black slaves. New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas and Virginia follow suit
  5. 1667 - The Virginia House of Burgesses passes a law conscripting Blacks to lifelong servitude. Even those who've converted to Christianity
  6. 1674 - The Royal Africa Company monopolizes the British slave trade
  7. 1705 - The Virginia Black Code confers on slaves the status of real estate
    1. NY makes running away as a slave a capital crime
    2. Massachusetts declares marriage between Blacks and whites illegal
  8. 1708 - Blacks outnumber whites in South Carolina
  9. 1712 - New York passes laws forbidding slaves from owning real estate and holding property
  10. 1716 - The first Black slaves are brought to the Louisiana Territory
  11. 1724 - French Louisiana passes a law making it illegal for slaves to marry without their owner's permission
  12. 1725 - The population of Black slaves reaches 75,000
  13. 1738 - Spanish Florida promises runaway slaves land and freedom
  14. 1739 - Series of uprisings by Black slaves occur in South Carolina
  15. 1740 - 50 slaves hung after their plans to fight for freedom are discovered
  16. 1770 - Crispus Attucks, an escaped slave, is the killed by British forces in Boston, the first American to die in the Revolutionary War
  17. 1775 - The slave population in the colonies is nearly 500,00
  18. 1777 - Vermont is the first of the thirteen colonies to abolish slavery and enfranchise all adult
    males
  19. 1777 - New York enfranchises all free propertied men regardless of color or prior servitude
  20. 1780 - A freedom clause in the Massachusetts constitution is interpreted as an abolishment of slavery. Massachusetts enfranchises all men regardless of race
  21. 1784 - Abolition Effort Congress narrowly defeats Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to ban slavery in new territories after 1800
  22. 1790 - First United States Census Nearly 700,000 slaves live and toil in a nation of 3.9 million people
  23. 1793 - Fugitive Slave Act The United States outlaws any efforts to impede the capture of
    runaway slaves
  24. 1808 - United States Bans Slave Trade Importing African slaves is outlawed, but smuggling
    continues
  25. 1820 - Missouri Compromise Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free
    state    . Slavery is forbidden in any subsequent territories north of latitude 36 30
  26. 1822 - Slave Revolt: South Carolina Freed slave Denmark Vesey attempts a rebellion in
    Charleston    . Thirty-five participants in the ill-fated uprising are hanged
  27. 1831 - Slave Revolt: Virginia Slave preacher Nat Turner leads a two-day uprising against whites, killing about 60
  28. 1850 - Compromise of 1850 In exchange for California’s entering the Union as a free state,
    northern congressmen accept a harsher Fugitive Slave Act
  29. 1852 - Uncle Tom’s Cabin Published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about the horrors of slavery
    sells 300,000 copies within a year of publication
  30. 1857 - Dred Scott Decision The United States Supreme Court decides, seven to two, that blacks
    can never be citizens and that Congress has no authority to outlaw slavery in any territory
  31. 1863 - Emancipation Proclamation President Abraham Lincoln decrees that all slaves
    in Rebel territory are free on January 1, 1863
  32. 1865 - Slavery Abolished The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws
    slavery
    1. The Slave Codes were introduced - No sooner had the Civil War ended than former slave owning states set out to establish laws that reinforced the newly "freed" Blacks second class status.
    2. Jim Crow Laws - This mandated racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black American
  33. 1883 - Convict Lease System - Convict leasing was a system of penal labor instituted in the American South after the emancipation of slaves. Convict leasing involved leasing out prisoners to private companies that paid the state a fee
  34. 1896 - In Plessy v. Ferguson, U.S. Supreme Court rules that "separate but equal" treatment for blacks and whites under the law is constitutional
  35. 1904 - The Day Law was passed by the Kentucky legislature, prohibiting any person, group of people, or corporation from the teaching of black and white students in the same school

Sources

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