TIMELINE: SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES

1619    First Africans arrive in Virginia.

1640   The Beginning of large-scale introduction of  African slave labor in the British

1680     Caribbean for sugar production.

1774    CT and RI prohibit further importation of slaves  (Although RI merchants remain in slave trade to other colonies)

1776    Society of Friends (Quakers) abolishes slavery among members.

1777     Vermont Constitution prohibits slavery.

1780      Massachusetts Constitution adopted with freedom clause interpreted as prohibiting slavery.  PA adopts gradual emancipation, freeing slaves born after 1780 upon their 28th birthday.

1784    CT and RI pass gradual emancipation laws.

1788    CT prohibits residents from participating in slave trade.

1789    US Constitution ratified with clause equating slaves to 3/5ths of a white

            citizen and provision that slave trade would end within 20 years.

1789-   Decade of greatest importance of African slaves into US (about 200,00)

1808               

1799    NY passes gradual emancipation law.

1800    US citizens prohibited from exporting slaves.

1897    Great Britain abolishes slave trade.

1817    The American Colonization Society is founded, espousing the return of African Americans to Africa.

1819    US law equates slave trading with piracy, punishable by death.

1820   Missouri Crisis paralyziz national politics, as southerners and northerners argue over the admission of new slave states to the Union.  Missouri is admitted as a slave state, Maine as a free state, both a balance to the administration.  President James Monroe orders first US Navy patrol against slave ships on West African coast.

1822    First settlers found the colony of Liberia, for freed African American slaves returning to Africa. ( over the 1820’s some 1,400 blacks immigrated from the US to the colony).  South Carolina passes Negro Seamen Act requiring imprisonment of black sailors to prevent inciting slave revolts.  Similar acts later passed in Alabama, Louisiana, and Cuba.

1839    June 121 H.M.S. Buzzard escorts two American slave ships into NY harbor, the brig, the Eagle and the schooner Clara, to be tried in American courts. August 27, the Amistad is taken into New London.

1841    March 9:  The US Supreme Court upholds the freedom of the Amistad Africans.

1848    Slavery entirely prohibited in CT by state law.

1857    Dred Scott decision by Supreme Court denies any possibility of citizenship for African Americans, imperils fugitive slaves, and sets back cause of abolition.

1859    John Brown’s unsuccessful Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, raid to incite slave rebellion heightens tension over slavery.

1860    December 20, South Carolina secedes from the Union, after Lincoln elected president, 10 other states follow through May 1861.

1861    February, seceding states establish government of the Confederate States of America, create constitution endorsing slavery but prohibition slave trade.

1862   President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, granting freedom to slaves in areas of the South in active rebellion on January 12, 1863.

1875    Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on juries and in public accommodations, except schools.

1883   Supreme Court overturns Civil Rights Act and rules the 14th Amendment does not apply to privately owned facilities, includes hotels, restaurants and railroads. This leads to segregated “Jim Crow” laws, especially in the South.

1944    First black officers commissioned in the US Navy.

1964    Congress passes Civil Rights Act.