The following are short descriptions of major events which have contributed to the shaping of African American history. These encyclopedia entries serve as a starting point for much more inclusive descriptions and discussions that appear in other sources. For additional information please consult the print or website sources cited in the entry.
On July 14, 1946, four African American sharecroppers were lynched at Moore’s Ford in northeast Georgia in an event now described as the “last mass lynching in America.” Yet the killers of George Dorsey, Mae Murray Dorsey, Roger Malcolm, and Dorothy Malcolm were never brought … Read MoreThe Moore’s Ford Lynching (July 1946)
Often misinterpreted to mean that African Americans as individuals are considered three-fifths of a person or that they are three-fifths of a citizen of the U.S., the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution of 1787) in fact declared that for purposes … Read MoreThe Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution (1787)
On Christmas Day, 1837, during the Second Seminole War, the Africans and Native Americans comprising Florida’s Seminole Nation defeated a superior U.S. fighting force. In more than half a century of Florida invasions, this was the worst defeat the Seminole Nation inflicted on the American … Read MoreBattle of Lake Okeechobee (1837)
After the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, open skirmishes took place between Southern slave catchers and Northern abolitionists who despised slavery and what they saw as its encroachments on the liberty and freedom of residents of the free states. Armed altercations and confrontations … Read MoreChristiana Riot of 1851
In the following article historians Bruce Glasrud and Cary Wintz discuss their new book, The Harlem Renaissance in the American West which argues that the literary and artistic outpouring by African Americans during the third decade of the 20th Century was a national phenomenon which … Read MoreThe Harlem Renaissance in the American West
The desegregation of public schools in Mansfield, Texas was one of the most contentious in the state and eventually garnered national attention as the evolving civil rights struggles moved to the forefront of the country’s conscience. In Mansfield, African Americans campaigning for civil rights in … Read MoreMansfield (Texas) School Desegregation Incident (1955-1965)
On June 2, 1863, Harriet Tubman led 150 black Union soldiers, who were part of the U.S. 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, in the Combahee River Raid and liberated more than 700 enslaved people. Tubman, often referred to as “the Moses of her people,” was a … Read MoreCombahee River Raid (June 2, 1863)
Guinn v. United States (1915) held the “grandfather clause” enacted by the Oklahoma State Legislature invalid because it violated the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment, the last of three post-Civil War Amendments ratified to end slavery, endowed the rights of … Read MoreGuinn v. United States (1915)
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (hereinafter “Dyer Bill”) refers to a 1922 Congressional effort to pass federal legislation to address and otherwise provide federal prosecution of nationwide lynchings, particularly those in the southern states. The bill was first introduced by Missouri Congressman Leonidas C. Dyer in … Read MoreDyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1922)
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was the seminal post-Reconstruction Supreme Court decision that judicially validated state sponsored segregation in public facilities by its creation and endorsement of the “separate but equal” doctrine as satisfying the Constitutional requirements provided in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States … Read More(1896) The Plessy v. Ferguson Decision
