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Black history is the story of African Americans in the United States and elsewhere. Learn about Black History Month, Black leaders, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement and more.
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in...
- 13th Amendment
Together with the 14th and 15th Amendments, also ratified...
- Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African...
- Black History Facts
Black History Month honors the contributions of African...
- Mlk's I Have a Dream Speech Video & Text
By the early 1960s, African Americans had seen gains made...
- Abolitionist Movement
By 1860, nearly 12,000 African Americans had returned to...
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks' Bus . In 1955, African Americans were still...
- Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights...
- Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, Ruling & Impact
- Civil Rights Movement Timeline - Timeline & Events
- March on Washington - Date, Facts & Significance
- Little Rock Nine - Definition, Names & Facts
- Segregation in the United States - Meaning, Facts. & Legacy
- Black History Milestones: Timeline
- Black Panthers - History, Definition & Timeline
- Black Codes - Definition, Dates & Jim Crow Laws
- Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination - Facts, Reaction & Impact
- Emmett Till: Body, Death, Funeral & Face - HISTORY
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Slavery Comes to North America, 1619
- Rise of The Cotton Industry, 1793
- Nat Turner’s Revolt, August 1831
- Abolitionism and The Underground Railroad, 1831
- Dred Scott Case, March 6, 1857
- John Brown's Raid, October 16, 1859
- Civil War and Emancipation, 1861
- The Post-Slavery South, 1865
- 'Separate But Equal,' 1896
- Washington, Carver & Du Bois, 1900
To satisfy the labor needs of the rapidly growing North American colonies, white European settlers turned in the early 17th century from indentured servants (mostly poorer Europeans) to a cheaper, more plentiful labor source: enslaved Africans. After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, sl...
In the years immediately following the Revolutionary War, the rural South—the region where slavery had taken the strongest hold in North America—faced an economic crisis. The soil used to grow tobacco, then the leading cash crop, was exhausted, while products such as rice and indigo failed to generate much profit. As a result, the price of enslaved...
In August 1831, Nat Turnerstruck fear into the hearts of white Southerners by leading the only effective slave rebellion in U.S. history. Born on a small plantation in Southampton County, Virginia, Turner inherited a passionate hatred of slavery from his African–born mother and came to see himself as anointed by God to lead his people out of bondag...
The early abolition movement in North America was fueled both by enslaved people's efforts to liberate themselves and by groups of white settlers, such as the Quakers, who opposed slavery on religious or moral grounds. Though the lofty ideals of the Revolutionary era invigorated the movement, by the late 1780s it was in decline, as the growing sout...
On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Scott v. Sanford, delivering a resounding victory to southern supporters of slavery and arousing the ire of northern abolitionists. During the 1830s, the owner of an enslaved man named Dred Scott had taken him from the slave state of Missouri to the Wisconsin territory and Illinoi...
A native of Connecticut, John Brown struggled to support his large family and moved restlessly from state to state throughout his life, becoming a passionate opponent of slavery along the way. After assisting in the Underground Railroad out of Missouri and engaging in the bloody struggle between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansasin the 1850s, B...
In the spring of 1861, the bitter sectional conflicts that had been intensifying between North and South over the course of four decades erupted into civil war, with 11 southern states seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America. Though President Abraham Lincoln’s antislavery views were well established, and his election a...
Though the Union victory in the Civil War gave some 4 million enslaved people their freedom, significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period. The 13th Amendment, adopted late in 1865, officially abolished slavery, but the question of freed Black peoples’ status in the post–war South remained. As white southerners gradually reestabli...
As Reconstruction drew to a close and the forces of white supremacy regained control from carpetbaggers (northerners who moved South) and freed Black people, Southern state legislatures began enacting the first segregation laws, known as the “Jim Crow” laws. Taken from a much-copied minstrel routine written by a white actor who performed often in b...
As the 19th century came to an end and segregation took ever stronger hold in the South, many African Americans saw self-improvement, especially through education, as the single greatest opportunity to escape the indignities they suffered. Many Black people looked to Booker T. Washington, the author of the bestselling Up From Slavery (1900), as an ...
- 4 min
May 1, 2024 · African Americans are largely the descendants of enslaved people who were brought from their African homelands by force to work in the New World. Their rights were severely limited, and they were long denied a rightful share in the economic, social, and political progress of the United States.
- Hollis Lynch
Explore the digital resources on this page to learn more about African American history at the National Museum of American History.
Jan 30, 2024 · They dared to break racial barriers in roles never held by Black Americans. Yet, these icons have been largely overlooked, their stories untold in many history books, classrooms and...
Oct 27, 2009 · The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its leaders were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X,...
African-American history started with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. [1]
