The first slaves were introduced into the English-American colonies by a Dutch trader, who, in 1619, sold twenty of them to the settlers at Jamestown, Va. After that the trade between North America and Africa was carried on quite vigorously; but some of the colonies remonstrated, and in the Continental Congress, and also in the public mind, there was a strong desire evinced to abolish the slave-trade.
In 1831 Nat Turner, an enslaved African-American preacher, led the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his band of followers launch a short, bloody, rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. The militia quells the rebellion, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.
William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.
The lives of black women in America before the Civil War ended. Slave narratives, notable African American women including Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Sally Hemings and Harriet Tubman, bibliographies, and much more black history.
Most of the people who became slaves in North America were from West Africa. You would be living in a village when outsiders attacked and captured you, and then they would sell you to somebody else, who sold you to somebody else, and in the end somebody would sell you to a white man who would keep you in a slave fort on the coast of Africa. Half of the people captured with you died of hunger or sickness, while you were walking to the coast.
In 1963 Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala. He writes "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which advocated nonviolent civil disobedience.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is attended by about 250,000 people, the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital. Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The march builds momentum for civil rights legislation (Aug. 28).
Despite Governor George Wallace physically blocking their way, Vivian Malone and James Hood register for classes at the University of Alabama. Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. (April 4). President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
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