A Chronological History of Africans
in America, in Africa,
and in the Diaspora,
1600 BCE to AD 1980*

1860
There are 4,441,830 Africans in the United States, 14.1 percent of population; 3,839,000 are slaves. Ninety percent of the African population is born in the United States, and 13.2 percent are of mixed parentage. Ninety–four percent of the African population lives in the South and comprises 36 percent of its population. Southern free Africans live in urban areas and own land valued at $25,000,000. 

Only 2,000,000 of 7,000,000 Southerners own slaves; 5 percent of the South’s total population own 3,204,000 of 3,839,000 slaves. Total value of Southern manufactures and agricultural pro- ducts in 1860 is $238,000,000. 

Abraham Lincoln, Republican Party candidate from Kentucky/Illinois, is elected the 16th U. S. President. 

South Carolina secedes from the Union and declares itself an “independent commonwealth.”  Six other states follow suit and form the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. 

Creoles — the educated elite of Sierra Leone — increase their influence as traders and mis- sionaries along the coast of West Africa. Samuel Crowther becomes the first African bishop of the Niger in 1864, and later another Creole, Samuel Lewis, receives a knighthood from Queen Victoria. 

Indentured labor from India is imported to work in the Natal, South Africa, sugar fields. 

All four of the African men doing business in Seattle, Washington, are born in the South. A small number of African women arrive with family groups up to 1890, when a noticeable in- crease occurs. Most residents have spent time elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest or western Canada before settling in Seattle. 

In the states and territories of the U.S., 32,629 African Americans attend schools. 

Most of Cleveland, Ohio’s African population resides on the East Side; the center of the black community is the Old Haymarket district on Central Avenue, where Blacks are concentrated in Wards 1, 4 and 6. 

Louisiana State University is founded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

The Crittenden Compromise, which is killed in Congressional committee, proposes constitu- tional amendments that (1) guarantee slavery forever in the states where it already exists and (2) divides the territories into slave and free. Lincoln is unalterably opposed to the amendments, fearing that the planter imperialists would seek new slave territory south of the border and “put us again on the highroad to a slave empire.” 

Five Points, formally the African district of New York City is now an overwhelmingly Irish dis- trict, Africans having moved North and West into Greenwich Village. 

African laborers revolt in Jamaica. 

1861 
Emancipation of the serfs occurs in Russia. 

African population of upper, i.e. southern, Canada is 11,223; 190 Africans live in lower Canada.

Victor Emmanuel becomes the first King of Italy. 

On January 11, Benito Juárez enters Mexico City and becomes the constitutionally elected President of Mexico.

Lincoln is inaugurated as sixteenth President of the United States. In his inaugural address he states his Fort Sumter, South Carolina policy. This Fort, still under construction and garrison- ed by U.S. troops under Major Robert Anderson, is claimed by the Confederacy. Lincoln says, “The power confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the duties and impost; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion — no using of force against, or among the people anywhere.” 

Confederates attack Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. 

The American Civil War begins. 

Five African American girls help Clara Barton tend the wounded in Baltimore when Fort Sumter is attacked. During the Civil War 50,000 African men and women volunteer as nurses. 

Jefferson Davis becomes President of the Confederate States of America. 

President Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops. Loyal American Africans volunteer but are rebuffed.  For almost two years, U.S. Africans fight for the right, as one humorist put it, “to be kilt!” 

The average price in gold for a 20–year–old male African falls from a high of $1,050 in 1861 to $100 in 1865. 

The First Battle of Bull Run, near Manassas, Virginia, is a Union disaster. 

[You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the map of the Bull Run Battlefield. Click here Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ to download and  install a free copy on your PC.]

Police disband Military Drill Club formed by New York’s African community. 

The Confiscation Act passes, declaring African slaves “contrabands of war.”

A school for the “contrabands of war” is opened at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, with a black teacher, Mary Peake. This school lays the foundation for Hampton Institute. 

Lincoln authorizes use of non–enlisted Africans in service to army as pioneers, scouts, laborers, hostelers, teamsters, wagoners, carpenters, masons, laundresses, hospital attendents, fortification, highway and railroad builders, longshoremen, and blacksmiths. 

General Sherman is authorized to use “any persons, whether fugitives from labor or not, who may offer [their services] to the government.” 

The Secretary of the Navy authorizes the enlistment of slaves. 

The population of Cuba is 43.2% African, of whom 232,493 are free. 

The Confederacy uses Africans as teamsters, hospital attendents, railroad, bridge and road repair men, in arms factories, in iron mines, and for building and repairing fortifications. Tennes- see authorizes the use in the army of all free African men between ages 15 and 50. African women are forced into camp and hospital service. Labor shortage is so acute, most Confeder- ate states authorize impressing black people into service. 

1862 
The Morrill Land Grant College Act passes. This law provides federal funds for the creation of state universities which would concentrate on the agricultural and mechanical arts. The funds are allocated primarily for construction of white schools; however, with the passage of the Second Morrill Act in 1890, Hampton Institute receives one third of the Virginia Grant. Claflin College in South Carolina and Alcorn College in Mississippi also receive funds. Indeed, most of those colleges and universities — black and white — with the initials A&M, AM&N or A&I affixed to their names are chartered as land grant colleges, e.g., Florida A&M, Alabama AM&N, Tennessee A&I. Some land grant colleges do not bear these initials; however, they, too, have to provide instruction in the agricultural and mechanical arts.

Congress appropriates $500,000 for the repatriation of African Americans to Africa and authorizes the exchange of diplomats with Haiti and Liberia. 

Gradual abolition of slavery in Paraguay is completed. 

Union and rebel forces fight bloody battle at Shiloh, Tennessee. 

General David Hunter issues proclamation freeing slaves of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina rebels. Lincoln revokes the proclamation. 

L’Union, a French and English weekly, is founded in New Orleans. 

Congress passes a bill which ends slavery in Washington, DC. 

In an act of Congress, June 7, 1862, “Statutes–at–Large 12,” it is declared that one–fourth of all the proceeds from the sale of abandoned lands in the rebellious southern states must revert to the Federal Government to be used in aiding African emigration from the United States. 

President Lincoln, in a message to Congress, recommends gradual, compensated emancipation. 

Congress forbids Union officers and soldiers to aid in capture and return of fugitive slaves, thereby ending what one historian calls the “military slave hunt.” 

Three generals jump the gun and organize African American regiments without official approval. David “Black David” Hunter begins organizing the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first African regiment, on May 9; Jim Lane begins organizing First Kansas Colored Volunteers during first part of August and Ben Butler issues call to free Africans of New Orleans. The First Louisiana Native Guards, the first African regiment to receive offical recognition, is mustered into Army. First Kansas Colored Volunteers repulse and drive off superior force of white rebels at Island Mound, Missouri. This is the first engagement of African troops. 

Robert Smalls, an African ship pilot, sails armed Confederate steamer, The Planter, out of Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and presents it to the U.S. Navy. 

The U.S. Congress passes a bill freeing slaves of rebels and authorizes the President to accept Africans in the military services. 

President Lincoln submits a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet. 

President Lincoln receives the first group of Africans to confer with a U.S. President on a matter of policy. During the meeting he urges all Africans to emigrate to Africa or Central America. He is bitterly criticized for this racist assertion. 

The U.S. Secretary of War authorizes General Rufus Saxton to arm up to 5,000 slaves. 

The Second Battle of Bull Run is another Union disaster.
 

The Battle of Bull Run, fully developed, becomes a contest for the plateau holding the Henry and Robinson         houses. Confederate lines are shown at bottom of map. Federal units are shown as white rectangles. From:         Richard Wheeler. Voices of the Civil War (New York: Penguin Books, 1990),  p. 39.

General George B. McClellan checks Robert E. Lee’s advance at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. 

President Lincoln warns the South, in a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, that he will free the slaves in those states in rebellion on 1 January 1863. 

Ida B. Wells is born a slave on July 16 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, to James and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bell (Warrenton) Wells, the daughter of a Native American father and slave mother.  The life of Ida B. Wells covers several epochs of the African American saga. Born six months before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and reared during Reconstruction, she came of age during the post-Reconstruction period and spent her adult life fighting to redress the inequities brought about by Jim Crow. One of the first African American women to serve as an investigative reporter, Wells began her fight at the age of twenty-two when she brought legal action against the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad Company. Through written and spoken communication she made known the stark atrocities of lynching in America and conveyed her struggles against all the acts of inhumanity to the African American in her travels abroad.

Lincoln discusses with his Cabinet the acquisition of territory for the deportation of free American Africans. 

The Freedmen’s Relief Association is organized. Congress abolishes slavery in the territories of the United States, and approves enlisting freed Africans in the Army. General Hunter’s First South Carolina Volunteers, chiefly ex–slaves, is commissioned. 

John Speke reaches the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria in Uganda. 

1863
On January 1 President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation which frees slaves in rebel states with exception of 13 parishes (including New Orleans) in Louisiana, 48 counties in West Virginia, and 7 counties (including Norfolk) in eastern Virginia. The Proclamation does not apply to slaves in border states, for it states that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” W.E.B. DuBois argues that “there are two theories . . . : The one that the Negro did nothing but faithfullly serve his master until Emancipation was thrust upon him; the other that the Negro immediately, just as quickly as the presence of Northern soldiers made it possible, left serfdom and took his stand with the army of freedom. . . . As soon . . . as it became clear that the Union armies would not or could not return fugitive slaves, and that the masters with all their fume and fury were uncertain of victory, the slave entered upon a General Strike against slavery by the same methods that he had used during the period of the fugitive slave. He ran away to the first place of safety and offered his services to the Federal Army. So that in this way it was really true that he served his former master and served the emancipating army; and it was also true that this withdrawal and bestowal of his labor decided the War” (W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 [1935]. See Leronne Bennett's Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream for a no holds barred discussion of Lincoln's mythological role in the emancipation of enslaved Africans.) 

The British bombard a Japanese city when a British citizen is killed in a street fight. 

Mexico is occupied by the French. 

The Battle of Lookout Mountain is fought in Tennessee. 

H.C. Smith, editor of the Cleveland, Ohio, Gazette, and legislator, is born. 

Two black infantry regiments, the First and Second South Carolina, capture and occupy Jacksonville, Florida, causing panic along the southern seaboard. 

The Confederate Congress passes a resolution which brands African troops and their officers as criminals. The resolution, in effect, dooms captured African soldiers to death or slavery. 

President Lincoln issues an “eye–for–an–eye” order, which warns the Confederacy that the U.S. will shoot a rebel POW for every African POW shot, and will condemn a rebel POW to a life of hard labor for every African POW sold into slavery. This order has a restraining influence on the Confederate government, though individual commanders and soldiers continue to murder captured African soldiers. 

The War Department’s General Order No. 143 establishes the Bureau of United States Colored Troops (USCT) and launches an aggressive campaign for the recruitment of African soldiers. The Fifty–fourth and Fifty–fifth Massachusetts Volunteers, which are never federalized as part of USCT, are the first African regiments raised in the North. Since white soldiers are paid thirteen dollars a month and African soldiers only seven, the African regiments serve for a full year without pay rather than accept this injustice. 

Mary Church Terrell, a champion for women’s rights, is born to well–to–do parents in Memphis, Tennessee. She attends private schools in Ohio and later enrolls at Oberlin College, graduating with a major in classical languages. While at Oberlin, she becomes the class poet, a member of the literary society and editor of the Oberlin Review. Fighting what she called the “righteous war,” she uses her complexion to advantage against racial bigotry and injustice by entering restaurants and, after being served as a “white woman,” demanding to know why other Africans are refused service. Mary Church Terrell dies in 1954 at the age of 91. 

In ill–conceived assaults on Port Hudson, Louisiana, two Louisiana African regiments (the First and Third Native Guards) make six gallant but unsuccessful charges on rebel fortifications. An African captain, André Cailloux, is the hero of the day. 

Three African regiments and a small detachment of white troops repulse a division of Texans in a bitter hand–to–hand battle at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana. 

Union and rebel troops fight the bloodiest battle of the war at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. President Lincoln eulogizes the troops who died in this battle with a short but eloquent address. Notice in this address that Lincoln makes no mention of the fact that many of those who were formerly enslaved fought in this battle and that the words "We are here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" did not mean their freedom nor their right to be self governing. Indeed, the freedom of which Lincoln spoke referred to the freedom to govern for white people alone. As these words were delivered Lincoln was busy trying to formulate a plan to have enslaved and freed Africans deported to any place outside of the United States.

The Colored Citizen is published in Cincinnati until 1869. 

Union troops enter Port Hudson, Mississippi. With the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the Union army controls the Mississippi River, and the Confederacy is cut into two sections. Eight African regiments play important roles in siege of Port Hudson. 

Conditions in federal refugee camps are atrocious with a mortality rate of 25%. 

Hostility to the draft and fear of American Africans, “the cause” of the war and potential com- petitors in the labor market, lead to the “New York Draft Riots,” the bloodiest race riots in American history. Mobs sweep through the streets, murder black people and hang them on lamp posts. The homes and businesses of Africans are burned, including an orphanage. 

All African prisoners of war captured in Jackson, Louisiana, are shot. 

Union troops, with the First Kansas Colored Volunteers playing an important part, rout a rebel force after a sharp encounter at Honey Springs in Indian Territory. African troops capture the colors of a Texas regiment. 

The Fifty–fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, a  regiment led by Colonel Robert Shaw and composed of free Africans from the North makes its famous charge on Fort Wagner in the Charles- ton, South Carolina, harbor. William H. Carney, a sergeant, becomes the first African to win the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in the charge. The honor is not conferred on him until May 25, 1900! 

Some 500 Africans are sent to Cow Island, Haiti, as an experiment in colonization. The experiment fails miserably, however. 

The recruitment of African troops is finally authorized in Ohio; these troopers serve in the Fifth U.S. Colored Troops. 

The use of Africans to replace striking longshoremen in Cleveland, Ohio, provokes a “minor” riot. Intermittent racial violence plagues city’s labor relations for the next 50 years. 

1864
The Fugitive Slave Laws are repealed. 

Confederate troops decisively defeat three African and six white regiments and units of cavalry and artillery at the Battle of Olustee, about 50 miles from Jacksonville, Florida.

The Sand Creek Massacre occurs when nine hundred U.S. cavelrymen attack Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians and kill 100–500 men, women and children. The Indians were awaiting sur- render terms, when they were attacked. 

The U.S. Army Appropriations Bill authorizes the same enlistment bounty for Africans and whites. Equal pay is made retroactive to Jan. 1, 1864, for “all persons of color who were free on the 19th day of April, 1861.” 

Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general, captures Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and brutally massacres the inhabitants, sparing, the official report says, neither soldier nor civilian, African or white, male or female. The Fort was held by a predominantly African force. A park with a statue memorializing General Forrest's brutality still stands in Memphis today. 

La Tribune de la Nouvelle–Orleans, a French and English daily, is edited by C.J. Dalloz until 1870. 

Surrounded by a superior rebel force, First Kansas Colored Volunteers smash through rebel lines and sustain heavy casaulties at Poison Spring, Arkansas. Wounded African prisoners of war are massacred by Confederate troops. 

Maximilian is proclaimed the Emperor of Mexico. 

Mt. Zion Congressional Church is established in Cleveland, Ohio. It is an offshoot of the white Plymouth Church. Other black churches established in Cleveland during the 1860s are Shiloh Baptist, Cory Methodist Episcopal and St. James AME. By 1915 there are 17 black congregations in the city. Between 1890 and 1915 seven new Baptist churches (Antioch, Emmanuel, Gethsemane, Sterling, Avery, Mt. Haven and Triedstone), one AME congregation (Harris AME), one AME Zion Church (St. Paul’s) and one black Methodist Episcopal Church (Lane Memorial) are founded. See Leon Litwack, North of Slavery (1961), and Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters (1974). 

A National Convention of Colored Men meets in Syracuse, New York, to discuss the prospects of freedom and the vote. 

Karl Marx writes to President Lincoln and assures him of the solidarity of European workers in the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States. 

Fighting a rearguard action, six infantry regiments check rebel troops at Jenkins’ Ferry, Saline River, Arkansas. Enraged by atrocities committed at Poison Spring, the Second Kansas Colored Volunteers go into battle shouting, “Remember Poison Spring!” This regiment captures rebel battery. 

Ulysses S. Grant crosses the Rapidan and begins his bloody duel with Robert E. Lee. At same time, Ben Butler’s Army of the James moves on Lee’s forces. The African division in Grant’s Army does not play a prominent role in the Wilderness Campaign in Maryland, but Ben Butler gives his African infantrymen and his 1,800 African cavalrymen highly visible assignments. African troops of the Army of the James are first Union soldiers to take possession of James River at Wilson’s Wharf Landing, Fort Powhatan and City Point. Also participating in the battle at Wilson’s Wharf Landing, on bank of James River, are a small detachment of white Union troops and a battery of light artillery. 

Western University (now defunct) is founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas. 

Two regiments of black soldiers, the First and Tenth USCT, repulse an attack by the famous rebel general, Fitzhugh Lee. 

Nathan Bedford Forrest routs Union forces at Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, near Guntown, Mississippi. A brigade of African troops checks the  rebel advance and covers the retreat. 

George Washington Carver, famous agricultural scientist and educator, is born in Diamond Grove, Missouri. He and his mother are kidnapped when he is but six weeks old. The boy is ransomed for a horse valued at $300, but his mother is never heard of again. 

Grant outwits Lee by shifting campaign from Cold Harbor to Petersburg, Virginia. A surprise attack by General W.F. “Baldy” Smith succeeds, but Smith hesitates and permits rebels to reinforce their lines. General Charles J. Paine’s all–African division spearheads the attack, knocks a mile–wide hole in the Petersburg defenses, and captures 200 or 300 rebels. 

Congress passes a bill equalizing pay, arms, equipment and medical services of American African troops. 

The U.S. recognizes Haitian sovereignty. General Fabre Geffrard announces his plans to import “industrious men of African descent from the U.S.” 

The Siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, takes place between June 1864 and April 1865. Thirty–two African infantry regiments and two African cavalry regiments are involved in the siege. 

African troops are especially prominent in the following engagements: Deep Bottom, August 14–16; Darbytown Road, October 13; Fair Oaks, October 27–28; Hatchers Run, October 27–28. 

In the famous duel between the USS Kearsage and CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France, an African sailor, Joachim Pease, displays “marked coolness” and wins the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Alabama surrenders and sinks. 

General A.J. Smith, with about 14,000 men, including a brigade of African troops, defeats Nathan B. Forrest at Harrisburg, near Tupelo, Mississippi. 

The Union Army ill–advisedly explodes a massive mine under rebel lines near Petersburg, Virginia, killing many of its own men, commits three white divisions and one African division, and is soundly defeated. The African division of the Ninth Corps sustains heaviest casualties in this ill–planned attack. The only Union success of day is scored by the Forty–third USCT which captures about 200 rebels and two stands of colors. African American sergeant, Decatur Dorsey of the Thirty–ninth USCT wins the Congressional Medal of Honor. 

James Mifflin and John Lawson, loaders on the Hartford and Brooklyn respectively, exhibit marked courage in the Battle of Mobile Bay and win Congressional Medal of Honor. 

General William Tecumseh Sherman occupies Atlanta. 

In a series of battles around Chaffin’s Farm in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, African troops capture entrenchments at New Market Heights, make gallant but unsuccessful assault on Fort Gilmer, and help repulse a Confederate counter–attack on Fort Harrison. Twelve African Americans win Congressional Medals of Honor on the first day and one on the second day. 

Operating in support of General Sherman, who is moving north after his destructive “march through Georgia,” a mixed force of seven African and five white infantry regiments attempts to establish a foothold near Grahamsville, South Carolina, and is repulsed. 

With a mixed cavalry force which includes the Fifth and Sixth Colored Cavalry regiments, Major General George Stoneman invades southwest Virginia and destroys salt mines at Saltville. The Sixth Cavalry is particularly brilliant in an engagement near Marion, Virginia. 

In one of the decisive battles of the Civil War, two brigades of African troops help crush one of the South’s finest armies at the Battle of Nashville. African troops open the battle on the first day and successfully engage the right side of the rebel line. On the second day, Colonel Charles R. Thompson’s African brigade makes a brilliant charge up Overton Hill. The Thirteenth USCT sustains more casualties than any other regiment involved in the battle. 

1865
General Robert E. Lee, with his back against the wall, recommends arming the slaves, saying it is “not only expedient but necessary.” 

Japan opens its doors to the world for the first time since 1638. 

The New Orleans Black Republican starts publishing as a weekly. 

General Paine’s African American division participates in the brilliant Fort Fisher, North Caro- lina, expedition which closes the Confederacy’s last major port. 

This year marks the beginning of the wide–spread establishment of independent black churches in the South. 

The San Francisco Elevator is published. 

The first all–black minstrel group to receive international acclaim, the Georgia Minstrels, is organized under the leadership of George Hicks, an American African. In 1882 they become part of “Callender’s Consolidated Spectacular Colored Minstrels.” 

The Boers aggressively occupy part of Basutoland (now Lesotho) and launch further attacks on Thaba Bosigu, but are driven off again. 

Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Virginia Union University in Richmond are founded by the American Baptist Home Mission. 

West A. Hamilton edits the Sentinel, a weekly, in Washington, DC. 

Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery, ending 250 years of uncompensated blood, sweat and toil by Africans throughout the U.S. and makes the tenuous freedom granted under the Emancipation Proclamation universal and binding. 

Chicago allows African children to attend white public schools. In 1874 the state legislature finally does away with caste distinctions in public education. 

Only 44 New York City Africans in a population of 9,943 own enough property — a $250 freehold — to vote. 

General Granger arrives in Galvaston, Texas, on June 19th to announce that the “slaves are free!”  This day, “June ‘teenth,” is currently celebrated by African people living in the Southwest, particularly those living in the Texas–Louisiana area, as Emancipation Day. Because of African migration out of the South, “June ‘teenth” celebrations are held throughout the United States. 

Approximately one of every 20 Africans could read and write. By 1910, 66% of Africans in America are literate. This great 35–year educational labor is primarily attributed to the strivings of African people themselves and their institutions, particularly the Black Church. The U.S. does precious little to aid their endeavors. Edward Wilmot Blyden, the Liberian educator, is quite right when he says, 

“As time rolls on, the romance which clings to those heroes who fought to unfetter the body of the slave will fade beside the halo which will surround those who have laboured to liberate his mind.”

George W. Gordon, an African revolutionary in Jamaica, is executed for high treason. 

Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music is established and attracts African American students for 118 years. 

John S. Rock becomes the first African admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

African Americans in Cincinnati, Ohio, own $500,000 in taxable property. In New York City they invest $755,000 in businesses. In Brooklyn, not part of New York City at this time, Africans invest $76,000. 

Henry Highland Garnet, the first African to preach in the Capitol, delivers a memorial sermon on the abolition of slavery. 

Rebel troops abandon Charleston, South Carolina. The First Union troops in the city include the Twenty–first USCT, followed by two companies of the Fifty–fourth Massachusetts Volunteers. 

By this year there are 40,000 African people living in Canada. In 1861 there were only 11,413.  The increase is attributed to refugees escaping the Civil War. See Victor Ullman’s Look to the North Star (1969) and Crawford Killian’s Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia (1978) for informative accounts of the pioneering experiences of Africans in Canada. 

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (called Freedmen’s Bureau) is established to aid the newly freed slaves and create schools for them. 

The Federal government charters the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank with business con- fined to Africans. 

Jefferson Davis signs a bill authorizing the use of slaves as soldiers in the Confederate Army.  The Civil War ends, however, before an African regiment can be moved onto the field. 

The Second Brigade of the Second Division of the all–African Twenty–fifth Corps is in the van- guard of Union troops entering Richmond, Virginia. 

Nine African regiments in three brigades of General John Hawkins’ division help smash defenses of Fort Blakely, Alabama. Capture of the Fort leads to the fall of Mobile. The Sixty–eighth USCT suffers the highest number of casualties in this engagement. 

Crown Colony Government is established in Jamaica to prevent the participation of the masses in the political process. Similar governments are instituted in the British Virgin Islands in 1867; in Antigua and Grenada in 1898; in British Guyana in 1928. 

At Davis Bend, Mississippi, not far from Vicksburg, 181 African companies, i.e. partners, settle on three contiguous plantations — Ursino, Hurricane and Brierfield. By the end of the year, 1,750 individuals (1,300 adults) finish the year with a cash profit of $159,200, which affords each company a net profit of $879.56. (See also 1835 and 1914.) 

The Second Division of the all–African Twenty–fifth Corps is one of units which chases Lee’s tattered army from Petersburg to Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. The Division along with white troops moves on Lee’s trapped army with fixed bayonets. Their advance is halted when Confederates surrender. 

President Lincoln recommends the suffrage for African veterans and others of their race who are “very intelligent.” 

Two white regiments and an African regiment, the Sixty–second USCT, fight the last action of the war at White’s Ranch, Texas. 

Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., is born in Franklin County, Virginia. 

The Civil War comes to an end. 

During the war, 178,000 Africans are inducted into the Union Army, representing 9–10% of the total forces. Approximately 3,000 are killed in battle; more than 26,000 die from disease; 14,887 desert, representing 7% of the total desertions. Between November 1864 and April 1865 approximately 49,000 Africans enlist, and 4,244 join from the Confederate states. On July 15, 1865, the 123,156 Africans serving in the Union Army are assigned as follows: 120 Infantry Regiments, total 98,938; 12 heavy Artillery Regiments, total 15,662; ten batteries of Light Artillery, total 1,311; and 7 Calvary Regiments, total 7,245. 

African residents of Norfolk, Virginia, hold a mass meeting and demand equal rights and the ballot. Other equal rights mass meetings are held in Petersburg, Virginia, June 6; Vicksburg, Mississippi, June 19; Nashville, Tennessee, August 7–11; Raleigh, North Carolina, September 29–October 3; Richmond, Virginia, September 18; Jackson, Mississippi, October 7; Charleston, South Carolina, November 20–25. 

According to the Chicago Tribune on December 31, 1914, some 184 Africans are lynched during this year. 

Atlanta University is founded by American Missionary Association. 

Patrick Francis Healy, brother of Bishop Healy, first African to win the Ph.D. degree, passes his final exams at Louvain in Belgium. 

Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Washington, DC. Vice President Andrew Johnson, a North Carolina/Tennesee Democrat, nominated for the vice presidency by the Republicans, succeeds him as the 17th President of the U.S. Johnson despairingly says to an interviewer . . . 

“The aristocracy based on $3,000,000,000 of property in slaves south of Mason’s and Dixon’s Line has disappeared, but an aristocracy, based on over $2,500,000,000 of national securities, has arisen in the Northern States to assume that political control which the consolidation of great financial and political interests formerly gave the slave oligarchy. . . . The aristocracy based on Negro property disappears at the Southern end of the line only to reappear in an oligarchy of bonds and national securities in the states which repressed the rebellion” (Henrietta Buckmaster, Let My People Go, 1951).

White legislatures in former slave states enact Black Codes which restrict the rights and free- dom of movement of the freed men and women. These Codes are used to maintain the suppression of Black Power by restricting due process in courts of law, access to land, right to bear arms, freedom of assembly, etc. These Codes also restore African people to virtual slavery and are particularly severe in Louisiana: “I tell you, Sah, we ain’t noways safe ‘long as dem people make de laws. We’s got to hab a voice in de ‘pinting ob de law makers. Den we know our frens and whose hans we’s safe in.” 

The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Pulaski, Tennessee. The Knights of the White Camelia have already been formed in Louisiana. Other terrorist organizations of the period are the Constitutional Union Guards, the Pale Faces, the White Brotherhood, the Council of Safety, the ‘76 Association and the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina. 

The Morant Bay uprising, a peasant revolt, is led by Paule Bogle. In itself the revolt is unimportant but leads to a virtual political revolution in Jamaica. 

The Colored American begins publishing in Augustus, Georgia.

1866
The Nashville Colored Tennessean starts publication as a weekly. 

Thaddeus Stevens, powerful U.S. congressman, proposes a measure authorizing the President to confiscate the estates of Confederate leaders and to set this land aside to be distributed to freedmen in 40 acre lots. Measure is defeated by vote of 126–37. . . . The sanctity of private property is restored.

Lincoln University, founded by the Sixty–second U.S. Colored Infantry, opens in a two–room building, twenty–two feet square, in Jefferson City, Missouri, the state capitol. After their dis- charge these foot soldiers contribute approximately $5,000 and raise another $1324.50 among the men of the Sixty–fifth U.S. Colored Infantry to support the school. 

The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill pass over the President’s veto. The Civil Rights Bill declares that all persons born in the U.S., except untaxed Indians, are citizens of the United States, any statute to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Cotton sells at 30 cents a pound. The annual crop amounts to only 1,900,000 bales compared to over 5,000,000 bales in 1861. The general agricultural strike continues.

B.F. Randolph and E.S. Adams Sones become the first editors of the Charlestown Journal in South Carolina. 

The Seven Weeks’ War breaks out with Prussia on one side and Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and other minor German states on the other. This campaign is a carefully planned stage in the unification of Germany under the direction of Otto von Bismarck. 

A race riot breaks out in Memphis, Tennessee. Forty–six African Americans and two white liberals are killed; about 75 are wounded. Ninety homes, twelve schools, and four children are burned. 

Rhode Island abolishes de jure separate public schools for American Africans.

Oil is discovered in Aripero, Trinidad. 

A race riot erupts in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thirty–five Africans are killed; more than one hundred are wounded. 

The Loyal Georgian begins publication in Augusta. 

Edward G. Walker, son of the abolitionist David Walker, and Charles L. Mitchell are elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the first Africans to be elected to an American legislative assembly. 

Matthew Alexander Henson is born in Charles County, Maryland. 

Fisk Academy and Normal School in Nashville, Tennessee, is founded by the American Missionary Association and the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission: “. . . The academic department will be so arranged as to be preparatory for the normal or training school depart- ment, and thus especial attention will be given to the work of preparation for teaching.”  The Association also establishes Trinity in Athens, Georgia, and Gregory in Wilmington, North Carolina. 

1867
The U.S. buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. 

Emperor Maximilian is tried and shot in Mexico. 

The first African American woman bank president in the U.S., Maggie Lena Walker is born in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother and father, Elizabeth and William Mitchell Draper, had been slaves, belonging to the well–known Van Lew family. Soon after finishing high school, she takes the position of Executive Secretary  of the Independent Order of St. Luke Society. In 1890, she marries Armistead Walker, a well–to–do African businessman. A few years later, in 1899, she assumes the office of Grand  Secretary–Trea- surer, which position she holds for the next 35 years. The Order of St. Luke was founded to assist its sick and aged members and to provide funeral and burial services. Mrs. Maggie Walker added the idea of teaching members to save and invest their money. This notion grew into her plan for founding the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond; she became its President. When Maggie Walker became Grand Secretary–Treasurer, the St. Luke Society had approximately 3,400 members and no reserve funds, no property, and insufficient staff. By 1924, under her leadership, the membership increased to 100,000, the Society had purchased a $100,000 office building, had a cash reserve fund of $70,000, a full–time staff of 55, and 145 field workers. She also established the St. Luke Herald newspaper. In 1903, Mrs. Walker instigated changing the name of the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank to the St. Luke Bank and Trust Company. Later it became the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company with Mrs. Walker as its Chair. She dies in 1934. 

African suffrage in the District of Columbia is established by an Act of Congress. 

An African delegation led by Frederick Douglass calls on President Johnson and urges the ballot for ex–slaves. 

The first national meeting of Ku Klux Klan is held at Maxwell House in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Howard University in Washington, DC, is chartered by the U.S. government under auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The university is named after its founder and first president, General Oliver Otis Howard (1869–1873). 

Talladega College opens in Alabama. In addition to Talladega, the American Missionary Association founds Emerson in Mobile, Alabama, Storrs in Atlanta, and Beach in Savannah, Georgia. 

The discovery of diamonds near the confluence of the Orange and Vaal Rivers, on the land of the people led by Griqua Chief Waterboer, forces the subsequent removal of these people from their land and “resettlement” in what is known as Griqualand East. This resettlement Griqua people attests to the phenomenal mineral wealth of Africa which fact explains in part the scramble for Africa twenty-seven years later, in 1884. 

Morgan State College opens in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Ohio votes against African suffrage by a margin of 50,629 votes. 

The Reconstruction Bill is adopted; it divides ten former Confedereate states into five military districts and permits their restoration into the Union upon reorganization on the basis of Afri- can suffrage, disfranchisement of rebels, and ratification of the Fourteeth Amendment. It is overlooked that Africans in the North cannot vote, too. See John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction after the Civil War (1961). 

In Concord, North Carolina, Barber–Scotia College for “women of color” is founded. 

Charles Sumner tries three times unsuccessfully to include in the Reconstruction Acts provi- sions for the Freedmen’s Bureau to provide homes and schools for former slaves. 

Sarah Breedlove Walker (Madam C.J.), America’s first African millionaire businesswoman, is born in Delta, Louisiana to ex–slave parents who die when she is six years old. She marries at age 14 and gives birth to a daughter, A’Lelia. In 1887, she moves to St. Louis and takes in washing for 18 years, earning $1.50 a day. With bruised knuckles and a tired back, she experiments with one concoction after another and discovers the “Walker Method,” a hairdressing formula that will revolutionize the haircare industry and improve the looks of African women. In 1906, she marries Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaperman, and is known from then on as “Madame C.J. Walker.” The Walker Method is so successful as a door–to–door and mail order business that she opens an office in Denver, Colorado. A second office is opened in Philadelphia in 1908 and managed by Madame C.J.’s daughter. Later both offices are consolidated in Indianapolis, Indiana where she  has a plant built to manufacture her haircare and beauty products. By 1919, Madame C.J. Walker’s headquarters expands to cover an entire city block and employed more than 3,000 people. An indefatigable saleswoman, Madame C.J. is a generous philanthropist in the African community. She sponsors artists, writers and educational institutions. She contributes to the impoverished, the NAACP, homes for senior citizens and the YMCA. She awards scholarships to women attending Tuskegee and Palmer Memorial Institutes. Just before her death, she wills $100,000 for the construction of an academy for women in Liberia. Among her real estate holdings is her $250,000, 30–room mansion, Villa Lewaro, built in New York in 1917. Madame C.J. Walker dies on May 25, 1919. See Leroy Davis, “Madam C.J. Walker,” in E.W. Crosby, L. Davis, and A. Adams Graves, eds., The African Experience in Community Development, Vol. II (1983). 

St. Augustine’s College is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

The people of Venda defeat the Boers, forcing them to retreat from the Southpansberg. 

Morehouse College, currently in Atlanta, is founded by American Baptist Home Mission Society as Augusta Institute in Augusta, Georgia. 

The Union Leagues (forerunners to the NAACP) are formed. 

“No single element presented such a challenge to the chauvinists nor such posi- tive action to the Negroes as these Union Leagues. Their work of organizing and directing action along the lines of radical Republicanism made them concentrated and powerful. All Negro leaders were members; branches and women’s auxiliaries had appeared in all Negro communities. Although white men belonged to the Leagues, freedmen regarded them as a special dispensation of their own, for they were perfectly aware that without the strong unifying effect of the Leagues, without the rifle clubs, the drilling, and the Negro militia which supplemented their meetings, the very hope of voting would have been bludgeoned out of them by their hooded enemies” (Henrietta Buckmaster, Let My People Go (1951). 

The Cherokee Nation Council meets and sets toll of ten cents per head for all cattle driven through their territory. 

Nebraska becomes the 37th state. Unlike Colorado, Nebraska accepts the principle of equal suffrage for African people. Fewer than 1,000 Africans reside in the state, mostly in the Omaha area. 

1868
The Ten Years’ War breaks out in Cuba. In the early 19th century, most of Latin America wins independence from Spain. Cuba remains in the Empire, however. This results in intermittent revolts and filibustering expeditions until the outbreak of the war. 

The South Carolina Free Press, with C.V. Duvall as editor, is published in Charleston. 

Moshoeshoe agrees to annexation of Basutoland rather than suffer defeat by the Boers. Although Basutoland becomes part of the British Empire, the people determinedly fight to retain their arms. 

The Chisholm Trail from Texas to Abilene, Kansas, is established. From 1868 to 1895, 35,000 men drive cattle up the Chisholm Trail; of this number approximately 29% are Africans and Mexicans. According to some reports more Africans than Mexicans participate, however.  “The media image of the cowboy as a white, native–born hero is not accurate. In the heyday of the cowboys, one in seven [14%] was black and one in seven was Mexican. Some were Indians, and others were English. Many blacks worked as cowboys on Texas ranches before the Civil War, mostly as slaves. In the first 30 years after the war, about 5,000 of them rode out of Texas and up the Chisholm Trail with the cattle drives to escape the faltering economy and backlash of Reconstruction politics. Among those who made their mark were: Isom Dart,

Isom Dart

Nat "Deadwood Dick" Love

who was born into slavery in Arkansas and later led a checkered career as a rodeo clown, cattle–rustler, prospector and bronco–buster; Bill Pickett, a black rodeo star who invented bull–dogging (wrestling a bull to the ground by its horns) and became famous for it; Nat Love (‘Deadwood Dick’), who was born in a Tennessee slave cabin, went to Dodge City at age 15, worked as a cowboy and ended up in the rodeo. A colorful character, he ordered drinks for his horse in a Mexican bar and boasted of having 14 bullet wounds. In his autobiography, he wrote of the West: ‘There a man’s work was to be done, and a man’s life to be lived, and when death was to be met, he met it like a man.’ This was a perfect expression of the Western myth that later excluded Nat Love and other blacks, Mexicans, Indians and Englishmen” (Irving Wallace et al., Significa, 1982). 

The first typewriter to work successfully is patented. 

The University of Illinois opens as a land grant Institution. 

The University of California at Berkeley is chartered. UCLA is chartered in 1881. 

Sissieretta Jones is born Matilda S. Joyner in Portsmouth, Virginia. She is first African opera singer to appear at Wallach’s Theatre in Boston. She makes frequent concert tours in U.S., South America, and the West Indies. 

The South Carolina Constitutional Convention meets in Charleston. This is the first assembly of its kind in the Western world with a majority of African delegates: seventy–six of the 124 delegates are Africans. 

William Edward Burghardt DuBois, scholar, activist, and Pan–Africanist, is born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. 

Oscar J. Dunn, an ex–slave, is formally installed as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, the highest elective office held by an American African. Africans are later elected lieutenant governors of Mississippi and South Carolina. 

Pamela A. Hand, a teacher for the American Missionary Association in Batesville, Arkansas, writes that . . . 

“I was unprepared for the amount of zeal manifested by most of the [forty–two scholars] for an education. 
. . . Nearly all ages, colors, conditions and capacities are represented in my school. Ages ranging from five to sixty–five; Colors from jet–black with tight curling hair to pale brunette with waving brown hair.” 

Thaddeus Stevens, architect of the radical Reconstruction program, dies in Washington, DC. 

A race riot occurs in New Orleans. Other race riots in Louisiana in 1868 occur at Opelousas and St. Bernard Parish. 

The Cuban Carlos Manuel de Céspedes frees his slaves and advocates and agitates for a revolution against Spain. 

A “Big African” leads a party of 35 Indians. They kill rancher George Hazelwood and battle his ranch hands. 

Bauxite deposits are found along the Demerara River in Guyana by government geologists. 

The Fourteenth Amendment is adopted. It defines national citizenship to include African people, extends federal protection to rights that might be invaded by the states, and provides proportionate reduction in representation to states denying suffrage. The African is declared a citizen, but no mention is made of the right to vote and what is actually meant by the ambiguous phrase “due process of law.” 

The American Missionary Association founds Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia. The Association also founds Knox College in Athens, Georgia, and Burwell College in Selma, Alabama. 

1869
Jefferson P. Long is the first African American in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Over the three years of its existence, the Freedmen’s Bureau spends $13,579,816 on African relief. 

The Little Rock Arkansas Freeman starts publishing as a weekly. 

White rule is restored in Tennessee. 

A serious uprising among indentured East Indians in the West Indies occurs on the Lenora Estate in Guyana in August. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church founds Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Morehouse College, formerly Augusta Institute, moves to Atlanta. 

Clafin College opens in Orangeburg, South Carolina. 

Completion of the first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific. Even though the African’s demand for “forty acres and a mule” struck at the Northern capitalist’s concept of the sancitity of private property and small white farmers who staked their homes under the Homestead Act are being dispossessed, public land, by the millions of acres is handed over to the railroads. Freed slaves and poor whites are obviously not as deserving of land as are railroads in the eyes of Northern capital.

The American Missionary Association founds Lemoyne College in Memphis, Tennessee, and Tougaloo University in Mississippi. 

Fifteenth Amendment, which grants the right to vote to African American men, is passed by Congress and sent on to the states for ratification. 

Ulysses Simpson Grant, an Ohio Republican, is inaugurated the18th U.S. President. 

The first national black labor union is formed at a convention in Washington, DC. In the North, Africans listened to the words of William Sylvis who said in 1868 . . . 

“Whatever our opinions may be as to the immediate causes of the war, we can all agree that human slavery was the first great cause; and from the day that the first gun was fired, it was my earnest hope that the war might not end until slavery ended it . . . But when the shackles fell from the limbs of those four millions of Blacks, it did not make them free men; it simply transferred them from one condition of slavery to another; it placed them upon the platform of the white working man, and made all slaves together. The center of the slave power has been transferred to Wall Street . . . This movement we are now engaged in is the great anti–slavery movement, and we must push on the work of emancipation until slavery is abolished in every corner of our country. Then will come such a social revolution as the world has never witnessed” (Henrietta Buckmaster, Let My People Go, 1951).

Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett becomes United States minister to Haiti. Bassett is probably the first African after James Milton Turner, minister to the Republic of Liberia, to receive an appoint- ment in the U.S. diplomatic service. 

The Suez Canal opens in Egypt allowing Europeans ease of access to the Middle East and the Orient in general. 

Will Marian Cook, an African composer,  is born in Detroit. 

Lewis H. Douglass and J. Seall Martin edit the New National Era in Washington, DC, until 1874. 

1870 
There are 4,880,009 American Africans residing in the U.S., which is 12.7% of the population. Of this, 584,049 are mulattoes. The African literacy rate is 18.6%; in 1880 it increases to 30%, and in 1890 it reaches 39%. The numbers of African throughout urban America increases markedly.

The Louisianian Daily (or the New Orelans Semi–Weekly Louisiana or The New Orleans Weekly Louisianian) is edited by John Sella and P.B.S. Pinchback. 
 

From J. A. Rogers. Your History from the Beginning of Time to the Present (The Pittsburgh Courier Publish- ing Co., 1940). Reprinted from the original collection of Heru-Ka Anu, 1983.

Allen University is chartered in Columbia, South Carolina, by A.M.E. Church. 

The Echo is published in Savannah, Georgia. 

Hiram R. Revels, from Mississippi, succeeds Jefferson Davis, becoming the first African American U.S. senator in the nation. 

Robert Sengstake Abbott, editor of the Chicago Defender, is born on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. 

The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified by three–fourths of the states and forbids any state from depriving a citizen of his vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 

Thomas Peterson is the first African to vote in the U.S. on the day after the 15th Amendment is ratified. 

J.W.C. Pennington dies. 

The Franco–Prussian War begins when Napoleon III declares war on Prussia. 

Jonathan Jasper Wright becomes an associate justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. 

The A.M.E. Zion Church has 200,000 members. In 1860 it had only 26,746. 

The American Anti–Slavery Society is dissolved. 

The first of a series of Enforcement Acts (aimed at the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist viola- tors of African civil rights) puts federal elections in the hands of federal officials and guarantees the civil and political rights of freedmen in the federal courts. The President is authorized to use the military to enforce the 15th Amendment. 

Akron University is chartered in Ohio as Buchtel College, a municipal institution; it becomes a state–supported university in 1967. In 1990 it changes its name officially to "The University of Akron."

Two “Manifest Destiny” issues fail: a treaty to purchase the Danish Virgin Islands of St. Thomas and St. John; and a U.S. Senate bill to annex the Island of Santo Domingo. 

After thirteen known murders are committed by the Klan, Governor Holden declares a state of insurrection in two North Carolina counties. 

Segregation is required in West Virginia. 

The African Baptist Church has 500,000 members compared with 150,000 in 1850. 

James W. Smith of South Carolina enters West Point Military Academy. Smith, the first African American to attend the Academy, does not graduate; he is separated on June 26, 1874. 

In schools administered by the Freedmen’s Bureau, there are 3,000 teachers and 149,581 African students. 

Governor Reed asks for federal troops to quell Klan violence in Florida. His requests are refused. 

Joseph H. Rainey, first African in the U.S. House of Representatives, is sworn in as congressman from South Carolina. 

The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church is organized in Jackson, Tennessee. 

White power is restored in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. 

Robert H. Wood is elected mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. 

Africans are denied membership in the Knights of the Pythias. Those who could pass for white join lodge, learn its rituals, and found the Colored Knights of the Pythias, and organize a lodge in Vicksburg, Mississippi. By 1905, the Colored Knights has 1,628 lodges and 70,000 members. 

Benedict College is established by the American Baptist Home Mission in Columbia, South Carolina. 

In Cleveland, Ohio, 31.7 percent of all African males are employed in skilled trades; by 1910 this figure drops sharply to 11.1 percent. Forty-three percent of Cleveland, Ohio’s barbers are African; by 1890 this figure slips to 18 percent. In 1910 fewer than 1 of every 10 barbers in the city is African. 

1871
The second meeting of the Colored National Labour Union convenes. 

Paris surrenders, the Franco–Prussian war comes to an end, and the victorious King of Prussia becomes William I, “German Emperor,” when the peace of Frankfort–am–Main is signed. 

An Ohio court upholds school segregation in the State ex rel. Garnes v. McCann, et al., 21 Ohio 198, stating that “. . . Equality of rights does not involve the necessity of educating white and colored persons in the same school, any more than it does that of educating children of both sexes in the same school.” 

Race riots erupt in Meridian, Mississippi. 

President Grant issues a proclamation against KKK in South Carolina and suspends writ of habeas corpus in nine of the state’s counties. 

The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, an African–owned bank, has 34 branches and $20,000,000 in deposits. 

Rome becomes the capital of Italy. 

Feudalism is abolished in Japan. 

Alcorn A & M College opens in Lorman, Mississippi. 

James Garfield proposes in the U.S. House of Representatives a resolution to reduce representation of Southern states for denying vote to Africans. 

The African Sabbath School Association is incorporated in New York City as the New York Colored Mission. “Between the Civil War and the 1890s, with this one modest exception, no organizations in New York City were concerned with welfare of [Africans]. By 1915 there were more than a dozen.” 

The Charleston, South Carolina, Missionary Record begins publishing with R.H. Cain as its editor. 

Rio Branco Law is introduced in Brazil and states that children of slaves shall be considered free. 

A Congressional Investigating Committee on the KKK reports that in a six–month period in South Carolina, the Klan lynched and murdered 35 men and whipped 262 men and women; shot, mutilated or burned property of 101 people, and committed two rapes. The Committee also reports that the Klan has murdered 74 men in Georgia and 109 in Alabama over past three years. 

The Ku Klux Klan Act (or the third Enforcement Act) passes. This Act expires in 1872 and is not renewed. 

Governor Reed of Florida makes his third request for federal troops to quell Klan terrorism. Since 1868, 153 Africans are murdered in Jackson County, Florida, alone. 

Howard University opens its law school. 

Oscar de Priest is born in Florence, Alabama. He is elected Cook County (Illinois) Commissioner in 1904 and 1906. 

James Weldon Johnson is born in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Brazilian abolitionists force through a law making owners free all slaves who can pay their market value. 

Cleveland, Ohio’s notorious African prostitution and gambling lord, Albert D. “Starlight” Boyd, is born in Mississippi. 

1872
The first Africans chosen as delegates to a major party convention participate in the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, which renominates President U.S. Grant. 

North Carolina grants amnesty for crimes committed on the behalf of any white secret society. 

The South African Cape Colony is granted responsible cabinet government. 

Benito Juárez, Mexican national hero, dies in El Paso del Norte (currently La Ciudad Juárez), Mexico. 

The New Orleans Negro Gazette begins publishing with R.I. Cromwell as editor. 

A great fire occurs in Boston. It spreads over 67 acres, on which stands 76 buildings filled with merchandise. Property, real and personal, estimated at over $75,000,000, is destroyed in less than 24 hours. Fourteen lives are lost. 

The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company has 70,000 depositors. 

Georgia begins to segregate its schools. 

The “World Peace Jubilee”  is produced by Patrick S. Gilmore in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Paul Laurence Dunbar is born in Dayton, Ohio. 

The Huntsville Gazette, edited by Philip Joseph, begins publishing in Alabama in November. It continues to be published until 1894. 

Charlotte E. Ray, the first black woman lawyer, graduates from Howard University Law School. Attorney Ray is also the first American woman to graduate from a university law school. 

The Amnesty Act allows officials of the Confederacy to re–enter politics. 

John Henry Conyers, an American African from South Carolina, enters Annapolis. He later resigns. 

The Freedmen’s Bureau ceases its social service activities, leaving African people to survive on their own meagre resources. 

P.B.S. Pinchback becomes the acting governor of Louisiana upon the impeachment of the governor. 

William Still’s 780–page, fact–crammed, semi–documentary work, The Underground Railroad, is published. 

Booker T. Washington enters Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute at age 14. 

University of Toledo opens in Ohio. It becomes a state–supported university in 1967. 

1873
Arkansas A M & N College is established in Pine Bluff. The school was first named Brance Normal School. 

The Freeman’s Chronicle is published in Hartford, Connecticut. 

The Freedmen’s Bank of Charleston, South Carolina, has $350,000 in deposits and 5,500 depositors. 

Bennett College opens in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

The Georgetown Planet Weekly is published in South Carolina with James A. Bowley and R.O. Bush as its editors. 

Britain wages a savage war against the Hlubi people under the leadership of Chief Langalibalele in Natal, South Africa. Chief Langalibalele leads his people in resisting the Natives Disarmament Act which requires Africans to surrender their guns to the British. He is captured and charged with high treason and rebellion and imprisoned on Robben Island until 1887. 

A South Carolina Superintendent of Education attempts to enforce a South Carolina law requiring that all public schools be open to all citizens, black and white. 

Puerto Rico abolishes slavery. 

P.B.S. Pinchback is elected to the U.S. Senate. 

The Colfax Massacre takes place on Easter Sunday morning in Grant Parish, Louisiana. More than 60 American Africans are killed. The following piece sheds some critical information on this massacre of African people.

In American history the truth is often buried. Take for instance the stories about Reconstruction. There are no monuments to the people who tried to change the landscape of the south. Instead they are called carpetbaggers or worse. History texts have written out this amazing story about how for a brief period an interracial society was possible and that those who opposed reconstruction were, for the most part, terrorists.

The many who came to the south after the civil war included those who came to make it a better place. During this glorious era blacks for the first time voted and along with Republicans were able to achieve a majority in many cases. In the election of 1872 the Republicans won but knew that the democrats were ready to oust them and were prepared to use force to do it.
  
At least 150 black farmers gathered in Colfax determined to protect their gains. They were attacked and while they ran for the river they were gunned down in cold blood. Some tried to take refuge in a courthouse but the Democrats burnt the building down killing 40 of them. The angry whites that showed no mercy shot those who survived.

The carnage in the south was truly despicable. During the summer of 1868 over 1,081 people were murdered. Throughout the entire south democrats launched a campaign of terror. When the afflicted turned to the courts the racist Supreme Court ruled that the 14th and 15th amendments did not provide for protection of individuals. The cowardly court decision set the tone for newly freed slaves. They would get no justice from the law. 

Democrats quickly founded what was called the "White League" whose main purpose was to assassinate republican office seekers. In New Orleans they sought out to overthrow the duly elected government but were defeated by federal forces. By 1880 Reconstruction was over and the south soon began to pass laws denying the rights of black people. Those who attempted to whitewash activities of the terrorists derided those who opposed them.

One of the staunchest supporters was [President] Woodrow Wilson. Wilson gave his approval to the racist film "Birth of a Nation." Historians went along with this false retelling of the facts and outright lies and for nearly 100 years the truth was buried. Even now it comes out little by little. There will soon be a major PBS series on Reconstruction and that may help to square the picture. But in truth what was lost was an attempt to create a non-racist society. 

We have never recovered from that loss. The courts went along with the terrorists concerning themselves more with establishing rights for corporations rather than for human beings. 

Every student should be taught about the Colfax Massacre. They would then begin to understand that there were people who tried to create a just society. Without their examples, then, American History becomes a sophisticated set of lies. Our history, although bleak at times, is much more interesting than that.

By Denis Mueller 

Based on information contained in: James W. Loewen. (November 2000). Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. (Carmich