African American History Timelines:

• Before 1601
• 1601 - 1700
• 1701 - 1800
• 1801 - 1900
• 1901 - 2000
• 2001 -
• African Americans in the West Timeline

1600 - 1700

1602—By Spanish law, mulattoes (people of combined African and European ethnicity), convicts, and "idle" Africans may be shipped to Latin America and forced to work in the mines there.

1607—Jamestown is founded in Virginia.

1609—Fugitive slaves in Mexico, led by Yanga, sign a truce with Spanish colonial authorities and obtain their freedom and a town of their own.

1617—The town of San Lorenzo de los Negros receives a charter from Spanish colonial officials in Mexico and becomes the first officially recognized free settlement for blacks in the New World.

1619—Approximately 20 blacks from a Dutch slaver are purchased as indentured workers for the English settlement of Jamestown. These are the first Africans in the English North American colonies.

1620—The Pilgrims reach New England.

1624—The first African American child born free in the English colonies, William Tucker, is baptized in Virginia.

1626—The first enslaved Africans arrive in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City).

1629—The first enslaved Africans arrive in what is now Connecticut.

1634—Slavery is introduced in Maryland.

1638—France's North American colonies open to trade in enslaved Africans.

1641—Massachusetts explicitly permits slavery of Indians, whites, and Negroes in its "Body of Liberties."

1641—Mathias De Sousa, an African indentured servant who came from England with Lord Baltimore, is elected to Maryland's General Assembly.

1642—Virginia passes a fugitive slave law. Offenders helping runaway slaves are fined in pounds of tobacco. An enslaved person is to be branded with a large "R" after a second escape attempt.

When a French privateer brings to New Netherlands some Africans taken from a Spanish ship, they are sold as slaves because of their race, despite their claims to be free.

1643—The New England Confederation reaches an agreement that makes the signature of a magistrate sufficient evidence to reenslave a suspected fugitive slave.

1645—Merchant ships from Barbados arrive in Boston where they trade their cargoes of enslaved Africans for sugar and tobacco. The profitability of this exchange encourages the slave trade in New England.

c. 1645—Dutch colonists transfer some of their landholdings in New Amsterdam to their former enslaved Africans as compensation for their support in battles with Native Americans. A condition of the land transfer, however, is the guarantee of a specified amount of food from those lands to their former owners.

1646—New Spain’s (Colonial Mexico) population includes 35,089 blacks and 116,529 mulattoes.

1650—Connecticut legalizes slavery. Rhode Island by this date has large plantations worked by enslaved Africans.

The Dutch West India Company introduces new rules concerning slavery in New Netherlands. After gaining freedom, former slaves, for example, are required to give fixed amounts of their crops to the company. After the English capture of the colony, greater restrictions are imposed on free blacks and enslaved people.

1651—Anthony Johnson, a free African American, imports several enslaved Africans and is given a grant of land on Virginia's Puwgoteague River Other free African Americans follow this pattern.

1652—Massachusetts enacts a law requiring all African American and Native American servants to undergo military training so as to be able to help defend the colony.

1655—Anthony Johnson successfully sues for the return of his slave John Casor, whom the court had earlier treated as an indentured servant.

1656—Fearing the potential for slave uprisings, Massachusetts reverses its 1652 statute and prohibits blacks from arming or training as militia. New Hampshire, and New York soon follow.

1660—A Connecticut law prohibits African Americans from serving in the militia.

1662—Virginia reverses the presumption of English law that the child follows the status of his father, and enacts a law that makes the free or enslaved status of children dependent on the status of the mother.

1663—Black and white indentured servants plan a rebellion in Gloucester County, Virginia. Their plans are discovered and the leaders are executed.

Maryland slave laws rules that all Africans arriving in the colony are presumed to be slaves. Free European American women who marry enslaved men lose their freedom. Children of European American women and enslaved men are enslaved. Other North American colonies develop similar laws.

In South Carolina every new white settler is granted twenty acres for each black male slave and ten acres for each black female slave he or she brings into the colony.

A planned revolt of enslaved Africans is uncovered in Virginia.

1664—In Virginia, the enslaved African's status is clearly differentiated from the indentured servant's when colonial laws decree that enslavement is for life and is transferred to the children through the mother. Black and "slave" become synonymous, and enslaved Africans are subject to harsher and more brutal control than other laborers.

Maryland establishes slavery for life for persons of African ancestry.

New York and New Jersey also recognize the legality of slavery.

1667—England enacts strict laws regarding enslaved Africans in its colonies. An enslaved African is forbidden to leave the plantation without a pass, and never on Sunday. An enslaved African may not possess weapons or signaling mechanisms such as horns or whistles. Punishment for an owner who kills an enslaved African is a 15-pound fine.

Virginia declares that baptism does not free a slave from bondage, thereby abandoning the Christian tradition of not enslaving other Christians.

1670—A law is enacted in Virginia that all non-Christians who arrive by ship are to be enslaved.

A French royal decree brings French shippers into the slave trade, with the rationale that the labor of enslaved Africans helps the growth of France's island colonies.

The Massachusetts legislature passes a law that enables its citizens to sell the children of enslaved Africans into bondage, thus separating them from their parents.

1671—A Maryland law states that the conversion of enslaved African Americans to Christianity does not affect their status as enslaved people.

1672—King Charles II of England charters the Royal African Company, which dominates the slave trade to North America for the next half century.

1673—The Massachusetts legislature passes a law that forbids European Americans from engaging in any trade or commerce with an African American.

1675—An estimated 100,000 Africans are enslaved in the West Indies and another 5,000 are in British North America.

1676—Nathaniel Bacon leads an unsuccessful rebellion of whites and blacks against the English colonial government in Virginia.

1681—Maryland laws mandate that children of European servant women and African men are free.

1682—A new slave code in Virginia prohibits weapons for slaves, requires passes beyond the limits of the plantation and forbids self-defense by any African Americans against any European American.

1685—New York law forbids enslaved Africans and Native Americans from having meetings or carrying firearms.

1688—Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania denounce slavery in the first recorded formal protest in North America against the enslavement of Africans.

1690—By this year, all English colonies in America have enslaved Africans.

Enslaved Africans and Native Americans in Massachusetts plan a rebellion.

1692—The Virginia House of Burgesses enacts the Runaway Slave Law making it legal to kill a runaway in the course of apprehension.

1693—All fugitive Africans who have escaped slavery in the British colonies and fled to Florida are granted their freedom by the Spanish monarchy.

1694—The introduction of rice into the Carolina colony, ironically from West Africa, increases the need for labor for emerging plantations. This adds another factor to the economic justification and rationalization for expanding the slave trade.

1696—American Quakers, at their annual meeting, warn members against holding Africans in slavery. Violators who continue to keep slaves are threatened with expulsion.

1700—A census reports more than 27,000 enslaved people, mostly Africans, in the English colonies in North America. The vast majority of these bondspeople live in the Southern colonies.

Boston slave traders are involved in selling enslaved Africans in New England colonies and Virginia.

Massachusetts Chief Justice Samuel Sewall publishes The Selling of Joseph, a book that advances both the economic and moral reasons for the abolition of the trade in enslaved Africans.