Harmony…

We ain’t there yet. I thought perhaps fit to use this day to look at the plight, the blight and the flight……… thanks for being here.

1517 trans-Atlantic slave trade begins

1619 Twenty African slaves arrive in Jamestown, VA

1641 Massachusetts becomes the first colony to legalize slavery.

1641 Maryland legally prohibits marriage between white women and black men.

1688 Pennsylvania Quakers pass an anti-slavery resolution.

1700 Slavery is legalized in Pennsylvania

1740 The Negro Act is passed in South Carolina. The act makes it illegal for slaves to gather in groups, earn money, learn to read, and raise food. The act permits owners to kill rebellious slaves.

1775 The first abolitionist society is organized.

1776 Vermont becomes the first colony to abolish slavery.

1780 Pennsylvania adopts a law that gradually emancipates slaves that are born after 1780 when they turn 28.

1793 The cotton gin is invented, which leads to expansion of slavery in the South.

1794 The slave trade between the US and other countries is prohibited by Congress.

1819 Slave trading is declared a capital offense by the US.
Same year: Blacks are prohibited from learning to read in Virginia.

1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published.

1857 The Dred Scott decision denies citizenship to all slaves, ex-slaves, and slave descendants.

1861 The Civil War begins.

1863 Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation which frees all saves in the rebellion area.

1865 Slavery is abolished in all of the states by the 13th Amendment.
Confederate General Lee surrenders to General Grant in Virginia at the Appomattox Court House.

1865 Lincoln assassinated.
Various states inact Black Codes

1866 The Civil Rights Bill is enacted by Congress. Johnson vetoes the bill, but Congress overrides his veto. The Act gives blacks the rights and privileges of full citizenship. It counteracts Black Codes.
Emancipation is celebrated at the US capitol by 15,000 people.

1870 The 15th Amendment is enacted. It gives black males the right to vote. Despite this right, some Southern states add grandfather clauses to their state Constitutions to counter this new right.
Hiram Rhoades is the first black elected to the US Senate.

1881 The Tuskegee Institute is founded by former slaves Lewis Adams and George W. Campbell under the leadership of Booker T. Washington.

1896 The Supreme Court decides in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case that “separate but equal” satisfies the 14th Amendment which gives legal sanction to “Jim Crow” segregation laws.

1909 The NAACP is founded.

1919 “The Harlem Renaissance” a period of fifteen years when some of the most important and prolific writers, artists and musicians such as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Eugene O’Neill emerged in the African-American Community and took up residence in New York’s Harlem District.

1932 The Tuskegee Experiment, a forty year-long experiment in which 399 African-American men infected with Syphilis, near Tuskegee, Alabama are denied treatment in order to study the effects of the disease begins. The experiment is leaked to the press and is subsequently ended, but not until 1972.

1936 Track and Field star Jesse Owens becomes the first athlete to win four gold medals in the Olympic games (Held in Berlin).

1954 The US Supreme Court overturns the doctrine of “Separate but equal” in Brown v Board of Education, ruling that segregation is public schools is impermissible.

1955 Rosa Parks is arrested after she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger o n the city bus. The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr organizes the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasts for over a year.

1956 After the U.S. Supreme Court affirms the District Court’s decision that segregation on buses is unconstitutional, the Montgomery buses are desegregated.

1960 Four black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College students sit down at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina and wait to be served. This sparks sit-ins throughout numerous other southern cities.

1963 250,000 people gather at the Lincoln Memorial to participate in the March on Washington. Martin Luther Kind delivers his famous “I have a dream” speech.

1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed by President Johnson. The Act makes it illegal to discriminate in employment and illegal to segregate public facilities. (Unfortunately, I remember bathrooms in the Fulton Courthouse that were labeled “White men”, “Colored Men”, “White women’ and “Colored women.”)

1967 Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court Justice.

1968 (April 4) Martin Luther King is shot and killed by James Earl Ray while standing on the balcony outside of his motel room.
(April 11) The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is passed, which makes it illegal to discriminate in the sale, rental and financing of housing.

1980 BET launched.

1986 Oprah Winfrey becomes the first African-American woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show…. Also, Martin Luther King Jr day is celebrated as a national federal holiday.

1989 General Colin Powell is appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.. Becoming the first African-American to achieve the highest military ranking in the US Armed Forces.

1995 The Million Man March, organized by Louis Farrakhan, brings together thousands of African-Americans to the National Mall in Washington, DC. Despite the name, women are present in both the crowd and on the podium, including civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

I don’t know if ever in my lifetime I will see a world without discrimination. I am a child born in the 50’s. I am a lucky one. My parents detested inequality. Many aren’t so lucky, and unfortunately, some born in my era are even passing this down to their children. It’s incredulous to me people thought what they thought then. Above doesn’t begin to go into detail the atrocities that occurred…

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Love, Victurd