Timeline of the Civil Rights Movement: 1789 to 1920

Timeline of the Civil Rights Movement: 1789 to 1920 [The editors of Americans All Maryland ] (January 1, 1789 - December 31, 1920) American History, Assassination, Boycott, Constitutional Amendments, Desegregation, Discrimination, Education, Equality, Freedom Marches, Jim Crow, Lunch Counter Protests, Plessy, Public Laws, Riots, Segregation, Slavery, Voting Rights, Women's Rights

1789: Constitution of the United States of America
This acted like a colossal merger, uniting a group of states with different interests, laws, and cultures. Under the first national government, the Articles of Confederation, the states acted together only for specific purposes. The Constitution united its citizens as members of a whole, vesting the power of the union in the people. The first 10 Amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.[Source: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution]

1793: First Fugitive Slave Act
Congress authorized local governments to seize and return escapees to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight. [Source: https://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/slaveact1793.php]

1808: U.S. Bans the Importing of African Slaves
This Act “prohibits the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States…from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.” [Source: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/slave-trade.html]

1820: Missouri Compromise
To preserve the balance in Congress between slave and free states, the Compromise was passed in 1820, admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Furthermore this law prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude line. The Compromise was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. [Source: https://guides.loc.gov/missouri-compromise]

1850: Fugitive Slave Act (Part of the Compromise of 1850)
This consists of five laws passed in September that dealt with the issue of slavery and territorial expansion. As part of the Compromise, the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished and the Fugitive Slave Act was amended to require slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. The act also made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves, and it levied harsh punishments for anyone interfering with the capture of slaves. [Source: https://guides.loc.gov/compromise-1850]

1854: Kansas-Nebraska Act (10 Stat. 277)
This Act, passed May 30, repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as pro- and anti-slavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote. Political turmoil followed, destroying the remnants of the old Whig coalition and leading to the creation of the new Republican Party. [Source: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory]

1857: Scott v. Sanford (60 U.S. 393)
The decision was issued on March 6. Delivered by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, this opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the U.S. and could not sue in Federal courts. In addition, the Missouri Compromise was declared unconstitutional, and Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. [Source: https://www.keepandshare.com/doc9/24658/dred-scott-24658-pdf-132k?da=y]

1861: The Civil War
To achieve separation, a convention of delegates from six of the cotton-growing states met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861, and established a government under the title of "The Confederate States of America." On March 21,1861, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy declared: “The Confederacy's foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." Source: https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/civil-war/cornerstone-speech-alexander]

1863: The Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. It declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Moreover, Black men were now accepted into the Union military and almost 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought for freedom and the Union. [Source: "https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation]

1864: Fugitive Slave Act Repealed
In repealing the Act, Congress notified slaveholders they would no longer enjoy the police power of the federal government in this endeavor; thus removing an important pillar of the legitimacy of the "Peculiar Institution." [Source: https://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Listing/pm_020]

1865: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau)
Established on March 3, this Act's mission was to provide relief and help freedmen become self-sufficient in all areas of life. The first Black schools were set up under their direction. [Source: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/FreedmensBureau.htm#]

1865: Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
This Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It ratified on December 6. [Source: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=40]

1865-66: Black Codes
Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by southern governments established during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freedmen, such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, and limiting their right to testify against white men. They were also forbidden from carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations. [Source: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Black+Codes]

1866: Civil Rights Act (14 Stat. 27-30)
During Reconstruction, Congress passed several statutes to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves, many over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. This Act declared that all people born in the United States were U.S. citizens and had certain inalienable rights, including the right to make contracts, to own property, to sue in court, and to enjoy the full protection of federal law. It began transforming the federal courts into the primary forums for individuals to enforce their constitutional and statutory rights. It was passed by Congress in 1865 and vetoed by United States President Andrew Johnson. In April 1866 Congress again passed the bill to support the Thirteenth Amendment, and Johnson again vetoed it, but Congress overrode the veto and it to become law without presidential signature. [Source: https://www.fjc.gov/history/timeline/civil-rights-act-1866]

1868: Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Adopted on July 9. Section One: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of born or naturalized citizens of the U.S.; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section Two deals with the apportionment of representatives to Congress. Section Three forbids anyone who participates in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding federal office. Section Four addresses federal debt and repudiates debts accrued by the Confederacy. Section Five

expressly authorizes Congress to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment “by appropriate legislation.” [Sources: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=43; https://guides.loc.gov/14th-amendment; https://www.law.cornell.ed/wex/fourteenth_amendment_0]

1870: Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
This prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. [Source: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=44]

1873: Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S.36
The Supreme Court ruled that a citizen's "privileges and immunities," as protected by the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment against the states, were limited to those spelled out in the Constitution and did not include many rights given by the individual states. [Source: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-slaughterhouse-cases]

1875: Civil Rights Act (18 Stat. 335-337)
Introduced in 1870, it amended a general amnesty bill for former Confederates, guaranteeing all citizens, regardless of color, access to accommodations, theatres, public schools, churches, and cemeteries. The bill also forbid the barring of any person from jury service on account of race, and provided that all lawsuits brought under the new law would be tried in federal, not state, courts. Although the bill became law on March 1, 1875, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1883. In a consolidated case, known as the Civil Rights Cases, the court found that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted Congress the right to regulate the behavior of states, not individuals. [Source: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilRightsAct1875.htm]

1876: Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, many states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (named after a Black character in minstrel shows). Cities and states imposed legal punishments for intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their Black and white clientele separated. Laws also mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, public transportation, restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains between white and Black people. The U.S. military was already segregated. [Source: https://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/education/jim_crow_laws.htm]

1883: Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3
The Civil Rights Cases of 1883 were a group of five cases consolidated by the Supreme Court because of their similarity. Each case involved Black Americans being denied entrance to a public area that was privately owned. The Supreme Court ruled this act unconstitutional and proclaimed that private business owners should have the right to regulate who has access to their business. Their reasoning was that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was not backed by the 13th or 14th amendments and therefore could not be enforced. [Source: http://sites.gsu.edu/us-constipedia/civil-rights-cases-1883]

1884: Elk v. Wilkins (112 U.S. 94)
The Supreme Court held that children born to members of Native American tribes governed by local tribal governments were not automatically granted citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress, however, granted citizenship to Native Americans in 1924 when it passed the Indian Citizenship Act. [Source: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1372&context=law_papers]

1896: Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537)
This decision upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities if the segregated facilities were equal in quality—a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal.” This decision legitimized the many state laws that re-establishing racial segregation after the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase “separate but equal,” it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). It is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court; but despite its infamy, the decision itself has never been explicitly overruled. [Sources: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/plessy.html]

1896: First Non-White American Tour Golfer
John Shippen, an African American/Native American golfer who competed in several of the early U.S. Opens, was believed to be the first American-born Black golf professional. At the age of 16, Shippen earned an assistant professional post at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, New York, where he began giving lessons to some of the club members while he became an accomplished player in his own right. With the 1896 U.S. Open to be contested at Shinnecock, Shippen entered the championship over the protests of several English and Scottish professionals in the field. He finished fifth in the championship and went on to compete in five more U.S. Opens, the last in 1913. [Source: https://www.njsga.org/hall-of-fame/john-shippen-1879-1968]

1898: United States v. Wong Kim Ark (169 U.S. 649)
The Supreme Court held that when a child is born in America to non-citizen Chinese parents, that child is a United States citizen. The Court in Wong Kim also applied that ruling "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States," finding that those persons "are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." [Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649]

1909: Founding of the NAACP
In response to the Springfield, Illinois race riot of 1908, a group of activists with diverse backgrounds met in New York City to address the deteriorating status of African Americans. They proposed to fight the new color-caste system with a “new abolition movement”—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They pledged “to promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of Black citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before the law.” They pursued this mission through a variety of tactics including legal action, lobbying, peaceful protest, and publicity. Source: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html

1920: Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change. [Source: ttps://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/amendment-19]

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Photograph credits: Portrait image: AdobeStock,926382516; 1. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-984; 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homerplessy02.jpg; 3. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-107588; 4. Americans All; 5. Americans All, Public Domain; 6. SlidePlayer, slide/6352568, Abraham Lincoln Museum; 7. Public Domain; 8. Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-2399; 9. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mnwp.276016;10. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/WongKimArk.gif; 11. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-22395.

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