An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Quintard Taylor
Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History
University of Washington, Seattle
An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Quintard Taylor
Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History
University of Washington, Seattle
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African American History Timelines:
Year | Events | Subject | Country | State | Era | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1603 | Mathieu Da Costa, a free black explorer, guides the French through parts of Canada and the Lake Champlain region of what is now New York state. | 1603 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1607 | Jamestown is founded in Virginia. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1613 | Jan Rodriquez, a free sailor working for a Dutch fur trading company is assigned to live with and trade among the Native Americans on the island of Manhattan. | 1613 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1620 | The Pilgrims reach New England. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1624 | The first African American child born free in the English colonies, William Tucker, is baptized in Virginia. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1625 | The first enslaved Africans arrive in the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City) with the Dutch West India Company. They quickly become the city's first municipal labor force, clearing land of timber, cutting lumber, cultivating crops, and constructing roads and fortifications. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1629 | The first enslaved Africans arrive in what is now Connecticut. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1634 | Slavery is introduced in Maryland. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1636 | Dutch minister Everadus Bogardus summons a teacher from Holland to Manhattan Island to provide religious training to Dutch and African children. This is the first example of educational efforts in Colonial North America which are directed toward persons of African descent. | 1636 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1641 | Massachusetts explicitly permits slavery of Indians, whites, and Negroes in its Body of Liberties. It is the first mainland British colony to legalize slavery. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1641 | Mathias De Sousa, an African indentured servant who came from England with Lord Baltimore, is elected to Maryland's General Assembly. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1643 | The New England Confederation reaches an agreement that makes the signature of a magistrate sufficient evidence to reenslave a suspected fugitive slave. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1645 (ca.) | 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1650 | Connecticut legalizes slavery. Rhode Island by this date has large plantations worked by enslaved Africans. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1650 | 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. | 01-02 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1652 | Rhode Island enacts first anti-slavery law in the British colonies. The law limits slavery to ten years. | 1652 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1653 | Enslaved African and Indian workers bulid wall across Manhattan Island to protect the Dutch colony from British invasion. The site of the wall is now Wall Street. | 1653 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1655 | Anthony Johnson successfully sues for the return of his slave John Casor, whom the court had earlier treated as an indentured servant. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1657 | Virginia amends its fugitive slave law to include the fining of people who harbor runaway slaves. They are fined 30 pounds of tobacco for every night they provide shelter to a runaway slave. | 1657 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1660 | A Connecticut law prohibits African Americans from serving in the militia. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1663 | Black and white indentured servants plan a rebellion in Gloucester County, Virginia. Their plans are discovered and the leaders are executed. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1663 | 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. | 01-02 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1663 | 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. | 01-03 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1663 | A planned revolt of enslaved Africans and indentured servants is uncovered in Gloucester County, Virginia. | 01-04 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1664 | Maryland establishes slavery for life for persons of African ancestry. | 01-02 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1664 | New Jersey and New York also recognize the legality of slavery. | 01-03 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1664 | Maryland enacts the first law in Colonial America banning marriage between white women and black men. | 1664 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1667 | Virginia declares that baptism does not free a slave from bondage, thereby abandoning the Christian tradition of not enslaving other Christians. | 01-02 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1670 | 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. | 01-03 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1670 | The Virginia Assembly enact law that allows all non-Christians who arrive by ship to be enslaved. | 1670 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1670 | Massachusetts permits the separate sale of children of enslaved parents. | 1670 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1671 | A Maryland law states that the conversion of enslaved African Americans to Christianity does not affect their status as enslaved people. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1672 | King Charles II of England charters the Royal African Company, which dominates the slave trade to North America for the next half century. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1672 | Virginia law now bans prosecution for the killing of a slave if the death comes during the course of his his or her apprehension. | 1672 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1673 | The Massachusetts legislature passes a law that forbids European Americans from engaging in any trade or commerce with an African American. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1675 | An estimated 100,000 Africans are enslaved in the West Indies and another 5,000 are in British North America. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1676 | Nathaniel Bacon leads an unsuccessful rebellion of whites and blacks against the English colonial government in Virginia. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1680 | Virginia enacts a law that forbids all blacks from carrying arms and requires enslaved blacks to carry certificates at all times when leaving the slaveowner's plantation. | 1680 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1681 | Maryland laws mandate that children of European servant women and African men are free. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 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. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1682 | New York enacts its first slave codes. They restrict the freedom of movement and the ability to trade of all enslaved people in the colony. | 1682 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1685 | New York law forbids enslaved Africans and Native Americans from having meetings or carrying firearms. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1688 | Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania denounce slavery in the first recorded formal protest in North America against the enslavement of Africans. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1690 | By this year, all English colonies in America have enslaved Africans. | 01-01 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1690 | Enslaved Africans and Native Americans in Massachusetts plan a rebellion. | 01-02 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1690 | South Carolina enacts its first laws regulating slave movement and behavior. | 1690 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1691 | Virginia enacts a new law which punishes white men and women for marrying black or Indians. Children of such interracial liaisons become the property of the church for 30 years. | 1691 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1694 | The success of rice cultivation in South Carolina encourages the importation of larger numbers of enslaved laborers especially from Senegal and other rice producing regions of West Africa. | 1694 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1695 | Rev. Samuel Thomas, a white cleric in Charleston, South Carolina, establishes the first school for African Americans in the British North American colonies. | 1695 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1696 | Quaker religious leaders warn that members who own slaves may be expelled from the demonination. | 1696 | 1601-1700 | |||||
| 1700 | The publication of Samuel Sewall's The Selling of Joseph, is considered the first major condemnation of slavery in print in British North America. | 1700 | 1601-1700 |
BlackPast.org is an independent non-profit corporation 501(c)(3). It has no affiliation with nor is it endorsed by the University of Washington. BlackPast.org is supported in part by a grant from Humanities Washington, a state-wide non-profit organization supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the state of Washington, and contributions from individuals and foundations.
