Jim Crow 1870s – 1960s

1877: The 45th Congress has three black members.

1877: On June 15, Henry O. Flipper became the first African American to graduate from West Point

1877: In July, 30 African American settlers from Kentucky establish the town of Nicodemus in western Kansas. This is the first of hundreds of all or mostly black towns created in the West.

1877: President Rutherford B. Hayes appoints Frederick Douglass as the first black U.S. Marshal. His jurisdiction is the District of Columbia.

1878: Marie Selika Williams becomes the first African American woman entertainer to perform at the White House when she presents a musical program to President Rutherford B. Hayes and assembled guests.

1879: Mary Eliza Mahoney becomes the first African American professional nurse, graduating from the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.

1879: Approximately six thousand African Americans leave Louisiana and Mississippi counties along the Mississippi River for Kansas in what will be known as the Exodus. Henry Adams and Benjamin "Pap" Singleton were two of the major leaders of the Exodus.

1880: Census of 1880, U.S. population: 50,155,783, Black population: 6,580,793 (13.1 percent)

1880: The U.S. Supreme Court in Strauder v. West Virginia rules that African Americans cannot be excluded from juries solely based on race.

1881: In January the Tennessee State Legislature votes to segregate railroad passenger cars. Tennessee's action is followed by Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889), Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Georgia (1891), South Carolina (1892)

1881: Spelman College, the first college for black women in the U.S., is founded on April 11 by Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles.

1881: On 4 July 25-year-old Booker T. Washington opens Tuskegee Institute in central Alabama.

1882: The Virginia State Assembly established the first state mental hospital for African Americans and locates it near Petersburg.

1882: George Washington Williams's History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 is considered the first history of African Americans that met the standards of professionally written history of that era.

1883: The 50th Congress has no black members. Intimidation keeps most black voters from the polls.

1883: On October 16, U. S. Supreme Court in a decision known as the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 declares invalid the Civil Rights Act of 1875, stating the Federal Government cannot bar corporations or individuals from discriminating based on race.

1883: On November 3, white citizens in Danville, Virginia, seize control of the local racially integrated and popularly elected government, killing four African Americans in the process.

1884: Judy W. Reed of Washington D.C. becomes the first African American woman to receive a patent. She is granted patent number 305,474 on September 23 for her creation of a dough kneader and roller.

1884: Granville T. Woods founds the Woods Railway Telegraph Company in Columbus, Ohio. The company manufactured and sold telephone and telegraph equipment.

1886: The American Federation of Labor is organized on December 8 in Columbus, Ohio. The AFL required all affiliates to pledge that their members would never “discriminate against a fellow worker on account of color, creed or nationality.” However, by 1895, the AFL reversed this position and allowed new affiliates to prohibit Blacks from joining their ranks. 

1886: Norris Wright Cuney becomes chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He is the first African American to head a major political party at the state level in U.S. history

1887: On July 14, 1887, the directors of the International League (Major League Baseball) voted to prohibit the signing of additional black players while allowing those under contract such as Frank Grant and Moses Fleetwood Walker to finish their contracts, creating the color barrier in professional baseball.

1888: On April 11, Edward Park Duplex is elected mayor of Wheatland, California. He is believed to be the first African American mayor of a predominantly white town in the United States.

1888: Two of America's first black-owned banks, the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of the Reformers, in Richmond, Virginia, and Capital Savings Bank of Washington, D.C, open their doors.

1889: Florida becomes the first state to use the poll tax to disenfranchise black voters.

1889: Frederick Douglass is appointed Minister to Haiti.

1890: Census of 1890, U.S. population: 62,947,714, Black population: 7,488,676 (11.9 percent)

1890: On November 1, the Mississippi Legislature approves a new state Constitution that disenfranchises virtually all of the state's African American voters. The Mississippi Plan used literacy and understanding tests to prevent African Americans from casting ballots

1891: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams founds Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first African American-owned hospital in the nation.

1892: On June 15 operatic soprano Sissieretta Jones becomes the first African American to perform at Carnegie Hall.

1892: In October activist Ida B. Wells begins her anti-lynching campaign with the publication of Southern Horrors: Lynch Law and in All Its Phases and a speech in New York City's Lyric Hall

1892: The National Medical Association is formed in Atlanta by African American physicians because they are barred from the American Medical Association.

1892: A record 230 people are lynched in the United States this year, 161 are black and 69 white. In the period between 1882 and 1951, Tuskegee Institute compiled nationwide lynching statistics. In that 69 year period, 4,730 people were lynched including 3,437 black people

1892: The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper is founded by former slave John H. Murphy, Sr.

1893: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs the first successful operation on a human heart in his Chicago hospital. The patient, a victim of a chest stab wound, survives and lives for twenty years after the operation.

1894: The Church of God in Christ is founded in Memphis by Bishop Charles Harrison Mason.

1895: White terrorists attack black workers in New Orleans on March 11-12. Six blacks are killed.

1895: In June, W.E.B. Du Bois becomes the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

1895: Booker T. Washington delivers his famous Atlanta Compromise address on September 18 at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition. He says the Negro problem would be solved by a policy of gradualism and accommodation.

1896: Plessey v. Ferguson is decided on May 18 when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Southern segregation laws and practices (Jim Crow) do not conflict with the 13th and 14th Amendments. The Court defends its ruling by articulating the separate but equal doctrine

1896: On July 21 the National Association of Colored Women is formed in Washington, D.C. Mary Church Terrell is chosen as its first president.

1896: In September George Washington Carver is appointed director of agricultural research at Tuskegee Institute. His work advances peanut, sweet potato, and soybean farming.

1897: The American Negro Academy is established on March 5 in Washington, D.C. to encourage African American participation in art, literature and philosophy.

1897: The first Phillis Wheatley Home is founded in Detroit. These homes, established in most cities with large African American populations, provide temporary accommodations and social services for single African American women.

1898: In January the Louisiana Legislature introduces the Grandfather Clause into the state's constitution. Only males whose fathers or grandfathers were qualified to vote on January 1, 1867, are automatically registered. Others (blacks) must comply with the literacy and property requirements. 

1898: The Spanish-American War begins on April 21. Sixteen regiments of black volunteers are recruited; four see combat in Cuba and the Philippines Five African Americans win Congressional Medals of Honor during the war. 

1898: On November 10, in Wilmington, North Carolina, eight black Americans were killed as white conservative Democrats forcibly removed from power black and white Republican officeholders in the city.  The episode would be known as the Wilmington Riot.

1898: The U.S. Supreme Court in Williams v. Mississippi upholds the provisions of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 which effectively disfranchises virtually all of the black voters in the state.

1899: The Afro-American Council designates June 4 as a national day of fasting to protest lynching and massacres.

1900: Census of 1900, U.S. population: 75,994,575, Black population: 8,833,994 (11.6 percent)

1900: In January James Weldon Johnson writes the lyrics and his brother John Rosamond Johnson composes the music for Lift Every Voice and Sing in their hometown of Jacksonville, Florida in celebration of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. The song is eventually adopted as the “Black National Anthem”

1900: The New Orleans Race Riot (also known as the Robert Charles Riot) erupts on July 23 and lasts four days. Twelve African Americans and seven whites were killed.

1900: On August 23, the National Negro Business League is founded in Boston by Booker T. Washington to promote black business enterprise.

1900: An estimated 30,000 black teachers have been trained since the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865. They are a major factor in helping more than half the black population achieve literacy by this date.

1901: The last African American congressman elected in the 19th Century, George H. White, Republican of North Carolina, leaves office. No African American will serve in Congress for the next 28 years.

1901: On October 11, when Bert Williams and George Walker record their music for the Victor Talking Machine Company, they become the first African American recording artists.

1901: Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery is published.

1903: W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folks is published on April 27. In it Du Bois rejects the gradualism of Booker T. Washington, calling for agitation on behalf of African American rights.

1904: Educator Mary McLeod Bethune founds a college in Daytona Beach, Florida that today is known as Bethune-Cookman University.

1904: Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, who trains at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Munich with Dr. Alois Alzheimer, becomes a widely published pioneer in Alzheimer’s disease research. Fuller also becomes the nation’s first black psychiatrist.

1905: The black weekly newspaper, The Chicago Defender, is founded by Robert Abbotton May 5.

1905: The Niagara Movement is created on July 11-13, by African American intellectuals and activists, led by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter.

1905: Nashville African Americans boycott streetcars to protest racial segregation.

1906: The Azusa Street Revival begins in the former African Methodist Episcopal Church building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles in April. The revival, led by black evangelist William J. Seymour, is considered the beginning of the worldwide Pentecostal Movement

1906: On August 13 in Brownsville, Texas, approximately a dozen black troops riot against segregation and in the process kill a local citizen. When the identity of the killer cannot be determined, President Theodore Roosevelt discharges three companies of black soldiers

1906: The Atlanta Race Riot on September 22-24 produces twelve deaths; ten blacks and two whites.

1906: On December 4, seven students at Cornell University form Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first college fraternity for black men.

1907: Alain Locke of Philadelphia, a Harvard graduate, becomes the first African American Rhodes Scholar.

1907: The Pittsburgh Courier is established by Edwin Harleston, a security guard and aspiring writer. Three years later attorney Robert Vann takes control of the paper as its editor-publisher.

1907: Madam C.J. Walker of Denver develops and markets her hair straightening method and creates one of the most successful cosmetics firms in the nation.

1908: On January 15, Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first black sorority, is founded on the campus of Howard University.

1908: On August 14, the Springfield Race Riot breaks out in Springfield, Illinois, the home town of Abraham Lincoln. Two blacks and four whites are killed. This is the first major riot in a Northern city in nearly half a century.

1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is formed on February 12 in New York City, partly in response to the Springfield Riot.

1909: On April 6, Admiral Robert E. Peary and African American Matthew Henson, accompanied by four Eskimos, become the first men known to have reached the North Pole.

1909: The Knights of Peter Claver, the first permanent national black Catholic fraternal order, is founded in Mobile, Alabama.

1910: Census of 1910: U.S. population: 93,402,151, Black population: 9,827,763 (10.7 percent)

1910: The National Urban League is founded in New York City on September 29. The League is organized to help African Americans secure employment and to adjust to urban life.

1910: The first issue of Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP, appears on 1 November. W.E.B. Du Bois is the first editor.

1910: On December 19, the City Council of Baltimore approves an ordinance segregating black and white neighborhoods. This ordinance is followed by similar statutes in Dallas, Texas, Greensboro, North Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Norfolk, Virginia, Oklahoma C

1911: Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity is founded at Indiana University on January 5.

1911: Omega Psi Phi Fraternity is founded at Howard University on November 17.

1913: The Jubilee year, the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, is celebrated throughout the nation over the entire year.

1913: Delta Sigma Theta Sorority is founded at Howard University on January 13.

1913: On April 11, the Woodrow Wilson administration initiates the racial segregation of workplaces, rest rooms and lunchrooms in all federal offices across the nation.

1913: Bert Williams plays the lead role in Darktown Jubilee, making him the first African American actor to star in a motion picture.

1913: Noble Drew Ali founds the Moorish Science Temple in Newark, New Jersey.

1914: Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity is founded at Howard University on January 9.

1914: Cleveland inventor Garrett A. Morgan patents a gas mask called the Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. The mask, initially used to rescue trapped miners, is eventually adopted by the U.S. Army.

1914: On August 1, World War I began in Europe.

1915: The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to Northern cities begins.

1915: On June 21, the Oklahoma Grandfather Clause is overturned in Guinn v. United States.

1915: In September, Carter G. Woodson founds the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in Chicago.

1916: Marcus Garvey founds the New York Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association with sixteen members. Four years later the UNIA holds its national convention in Harlem. At its height the organization claims nearly two million members.

1916: On July 25, Garrett Morgan uses his newly invented gas mask to rescue men trapped after an explosion in a tunnel 250 feet beneath Lake Erie.

1916: In January the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) begins publishing the Journal of Negro History which becomes the first scholarly journal devoted to the study of African American history.

1917: The United States enters World War I on April 6. Some 370,000 African-Americans join the armed forces with more than half serving in the French war zone. Over 1,000 black officers command these troops. The French government awards the Croix de Guerre to many of the black troops.

1917: The East St. Louis Race Riot begins on July 1 and continues to July 3. Forty people are killed, hundreds more injured, and 6,000 driven from their homes.

1917: Nearly 10,000 African Americans and their supporters march down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on July 28 as part of a silent parade, an NAACP-organized protest lynchings, race riots, and the denial of rights. This is the first major civil rights demonstration

1917: In August, A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen found The Messenger, a black socialist magazine, in New York City.

1917: On August 23, the Houston Mutiny and subsequent riot erupts between black soldiers and white citizens; two blacks and 11 whites are killed. Twenty-nine black soldiers are executed for participation in the riot.

1917: On November 5, the Supreme Court in Buchanan v. Warley strikes down the Louisville, Kentucky ordinance mandating segregated neighborhoods.

1918: On July 25-28, a race riot in Chester, Pennsylvania claims five lives, three blacks and two whites.

1918: On July 26-29, in nearby Philadelphia, another race riot breaks out killing four, three blacks and one white.

1918: The Armistice on November 11 ends World War I. However, the northern migration of African Americans continues. By 1930 there were 1,035,000 more black Americans in the North than in 1910.

1919: The Ku Klux Klan is revived in 1915 at Stone Mountain, Georgia, and by the beginning of 1919 operates in 27 states. Eighty-three African Americans are lynched during the year, among them a number of returning soldiers still in uniform.

1919: The West Virginia State Supreme Court rules that an African American is denied equal protection under the law if his jury has no black members.

1919: The twenty five race riots that take place throughout the nation prompt the term, Red Summer. The largest clashes take place on May 10 in Charleston, South Carolina, July 13 in Longview, Texas, July 19-23 in Washington, D. C, July 27-Aug. 1 in Chicago, Se

1919: Claude McKay publishes "If We Must Die," considered one of the first major examples of Harlem Renaissance writing.

1919: South Dakota resident Oscar Micheaux releases his first film, The Homesteader, in Chicago. Over the next four decades Micheaux will produce and direct 24 silent films and 19 sound films, making him the most prolific black filmmaker of the 20th Century.

1920: Census of 1920, Black population: 10,463,131 (9.9 percent), U.S. population: 105,710,620

1920: The decade of the 1920s witnesses the Harlem Renaissance, a remarkable period of creativity for black writers, poets, and artists, including among others Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

1920: On January 16, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority is founded at Howard University.

1920: Andrew Rube Foster leads the effort to establish the Negro National (Baseball) League on February 14 in Kansas City. Eight teams are part of the league.

1920: On August 26, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified giving all women the right to vote. Nonetheless, African American women, like African American men, are denied the franchise in most Southern states.

1920: Former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson opens the Club Deluxe in Harlem. Two years later gangster Owney Madden buys the club and changes its name to the Cotton Club.

1920: Marcus Garvey leads the first international convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which he calls the International Convention of Negro Peoples of the World. The meeting is held at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1921: On May 31-June 1, at least 60 blacks and 21 whites are killed in the Tulsa Race Riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The violence destroys a thriving African American neighborhood and business district called Deep Greenwood.

1921: In June Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander of the University of Pennsylvania, Eva B. Dykes of Radcliff and Georgiana R. Simpson of the University of Chicago become the first African American women to earn Ph.D. degrees.

1921: Harry Pace forms Black Swan Phonograph Corporation, the first African American-owned record company in Harlem. His artists will include Mamie and Bessie Smith.

1921: Jesse Binga founds the Binga State Bank in Chicago. It will become the largest African American bank in the nation before it collapses during the 1929 Stock Market Crash.

1922: In September William Leo Hansberry of Howard University teaches the first course in African history and civilization at an American university.

1922: Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority is founded on November 12 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1923: On January 4, the small, predominately black town of Rosewood, Florida is destroyed by a mob of white residents from nearby communities.  The attack would be known as the Rosewood Massacre.

1923: Marcus Garvey is imprisoned for mail fraud. He is sent to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta in 1925.

1923: Bessie Smith signs with Columbia Records to produce race records. Her recording, "Down-Hearted Blues," becomes the first million-selling record by an African American artist. Two years later she records "St. Louis Blues" with Louis Armstrong.

1923: On November 20, Garrett A. Morgan patents a caution light which improves the traffic signal.

1923: The National Urban League publishes its first issue of Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life. The magazine, edited by Charles S. Johnson, quickly becomes a forum for artists and authors of the Harlem Renaissance.

1923: Rojo Jack is the first African American to particiapte in professional car racing when he competes in a race in Honolulu Hawaii.

1924: Photographer James Van Der Zee begins his career by capturing images of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA.

1925: The New Negro by Alain Locke is published in New York City.

1925: The National Bar Association, an organization of black attorneys, is established on August 1 in Des Moines, Iowa.

1925: On August 2, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids is organized with A. Philip Randolph as its first president.

1925: On September 9, Ossian Sweet, a Detroit physician, is arrested for murder after he and his family kill a member of a white mob while defending their home. The Sweet family is represented at their trial by Clarence Darrow and acquitted of the charge.

1925: The American Negro Labor Congress is founded in Chicago in October.

1926: Carter G. Woodson establishes Negro History Week in February between the Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass Birthdays.

1926: Dr. Mordecai Johnson becomes the first African American president of Howard University in September.

1926: The Carnegie Corporation purchases Arturo Schomburg's collection of books and artifacts on African American life. The collection becomes the basis for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

1927: Chicago businessman Abe Saperstein forms the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team in Chicago on January 30.

1927: On December 2, Marcus Garvey is deported from the United States.

1927: Floyd Joseph Calvin, a Pittsburgh Courier journalist, becomes the first black radio talk show host when he begins broadcasting from WGBS in Pittsburgh.

1928: On November 6, Oscar DePriest, a Republican, is elected to Congress from Chicago’s South Side. He is the first African American to represent a northern, urban district.

1930: Census of 1930, Black population: 11,891,143 (9.7 percent), U.S. population: 122,775,046

1930: James V. Herring establishes the Howard University Gallery of Art, the first gallery in the United States directed and controlled by African Americans. It is also one of the earliest galleries to highlight African American art.

1930: Wallace Fard Muhammad founds Black Muslim movement in Detroit in 1930. Four years later Elijah Muhammad assumes control of the movement and transfers the headquarters to Chicago.

1931: Walter White is named NAACP executive secretary. Soon afterwards the NAACP mounts a new strategy primarily using lawsuits to end racial discrimination.

1931: The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama. Their trial begins on April 6.

1932: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment begins under the direction of the U.S. Public Health Service. The experiment ends in 1972.

1932: Gospel Composer Thomas Dorsey writes "Take My Hand, Precious Lord."

1934: W.E.B. Du Bois resigns from the NAACP in a dispute over the strategy of the organization in its campaign against racial discrimination. Roy Wilkins becomes the new editor of Crisis magazine.

1934: After operating under a number of names, the Apollo Theater opens under its current name in Harlem.

1935: On March 20, the Harlem Race Riot, a one day riot erupts leaving two people dead.

1935: On April 1, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Norris v. Alabama that the systematic exclusion of African Americans from jury service violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

1935: The Michigan Chronicle is founded in Detroit by Louis E. Martin.

1935: On November 5, the Maryland Supreme Court rules in Murray v. Pearson that the University of Maryland must admit African Americans to its law school or establish a separate school for blacks. The University of Maryland chooses to admit its first black students

1935: On December 24, Mary McLeod Bethune calls together the leaders of 28 national women’s organizations to found the National Council of Negro Women in New York City.

1936: The first meeting of the National Negro Congress takes place in Chicago on February 14, 1936. Nearly 600 black organizations are represented.

1936: On June 24, Mary McLeod Bethune is named Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, the National Youth Administration. She is the highest-ranking black official in the Roosevelt Administration and leads the Black Cabinet. She is also the first black woman to lead a federal agency division.

1936: Track star Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics between August 3 and August 9. His success infuriates German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

1936: Dr. William Augustus Hinton's book, Syphilis and Its Treatment, is the first published medical textbook written by an African American.

1937: William H. Hastie, former advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, is confirmed on March 26 as the first black federal judge after his appointment by Roosevelt to the federal bench in the Virgin Islands.

1937: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids is recognized by the Pullman Company.

1937: In October, Katherine Dunham forms the Negro Dance Group, a company of black artists dedicated to presenting aspects of African American and African-Caribbean Dance. The company eventually becomes the Katherine Dunham Group.

1938: On June 22, Joe Louis beats Max Schmeling in a rematch of his 1936 defeat by the German boxer.

1938: In November Crystal Bird Fauset of Philadelphia becomes the first African American woman elected to a state legislature when she is chosen to serve in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

1938: On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada rules that a state that provides in-state education for whites must provide comparable in-state education for blacks.

1939: Popular contralto Marian Anderson sings at Lincoln Memorial before 75,000 people on Easter Sunday after the Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall.

1939: Bill Bojangles Robinson organizes the Black Actors Guild.

1939: World War II begins in Europe on September 1 when Germany invades Poland

1939: Jane M. Bolin becomes the first African American woman judge in the United States when she is appointed to the domestic relations court of New York City.

1940: Census of 1940, U.S. population 131,669,275, Black population: 12,865,518 (9.8 percent)

1940: On February 29, Hattie McDaniel receives an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in her role in Gone With the Wind. She becomes the first black actor to win an academy award.

1940: Richard Wright publishes his first novel, Native Son.

1940: Dr. Charles R. Drew presents his thesis, Banked Blood at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. The thesis includes his research which discovers that plasma can replace whole blood transfusions.

1940: In October, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr., is named the first African American general in the regular army.

1940: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is established in New York City.

1941: The U.S. Army creates the Tuskegee Air Squadron who will soon be known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

1941: On June 25, President Franklin Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, desegregating war production plants and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC).

1941: On December 8, the United States enters World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Dorris "Dorie" Miller is later awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism during that battle.

1941: The desperate need for factory labor to build the war machine needed to win World War II leads to an unprecedented migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West. T

1942: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is founded in Chicago by James Farmer, Jr., George Houser, Bernice Fisher, James Russell Robinson, Joe Guinn, and Homer Jack.

1942: The U.S. Marine Corps accepts African American men for the first time at a segregated training facility at Camp Montford Point, North Carolina.  They will be known as the Montford Point Marines.

1942: Charity Adams Earley becomes the first black woman commissioned officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs) while serving at Fort Des Moines.

1942: Hugh Mulzac becomes the first African American captain in the American Merchant Marine.

1943: The Naval Academy at Annapolis and other naval officer schools accept African American men for the first time.

1943: The Detroit Race Riot, June 20-21, claims 34 lives including 25 African Americans. Other riots occur in Harlem, Mobile, Alabama, and Beaumont, Texas.

1943: The first black cadets graduate from the Army Flight School at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.

1943: Two American Navy Destroyer ships, the USS Mason, and the submarine chaser, PC1264, are staffed entirely by African American crews.

1943: The black 99th Pursuit Squadron (Tuskegee Airmen) flies its first combat mission in Italy.

1944: On April 3, the U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright declares white only political primaries unconstitutional.

1944: Frederick Douglass Patterson establishes the United Negro College Fund on April 25 to help support black colleges and black students. The fund is incorporated in New York.

1944: Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, is elected to Congress from Harlem in November.

1944: Swedish Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal publishes An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy after being commissioned in 1938 by the Carnegie Corporation to study African American issues.

1945: On May 8, Germany surrenders on Victory in Europe (VE) day.

1945: Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. is named commander of Goodman Field, Kentucky. He is the first African American to command a military base.

1945: Japan surrenders on Victory over Japan (VJ) day ending World War II on September 2. By the end of the war one million African American men and women have served in the U.S. military.

1945: Nat King Cole becomes the first African American to have a radio variety show. The show airs on NBC.

1945: Ebony magazine, created by Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Company, published its first issue on November 1.

1946: Dr. Charles Spurgeon Johnson becomes the first African American president of Fisk University in Nashville.

1946: The U.S. Supreme Court in Morgan v. Virginia rules that segregation in interstate bus travel is unconstitutional.

1947: On April 10, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers becomes the first African American to play major league baseball in the 20th Century. Breaking the color barrier established at the end of the 19th century

1947: The NAACP petition on racism, An Appeal to the World, is presented to the United Nations.

1947: John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom is published. The work will become the most popular textbook on African American history published in the 20th Century.

1948: On July 26, President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 directing the desegregation of the armed forces.

1948: Alice Coachman becomes the first African American woman to win an Olympic Gold Medal. She wins the high jump competition in the London Olympics.

1948: On October 1, the California Supreme Court voids the law banning interracial marriages in the state.

1948: On May 3, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that state and local governments cannot enforce racially restrictive housing covenants.

1948: Timmie Rogers, comedian, dancer, and singer, launches the first all-black variety show, Sugar Hill Times, on CBS Television.

1949: In June Wesley Brown becomes the first African American to graduate from the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

1949: Businessman Jesse Blayton, Sr., establishes WERD-AM, the first black owned radio station. It begins broadcasting in Atlanta on October 3.

1949: William A. Hinton is the first black professor at the Harvard University Medical School.

1950: U.S. Census, U.S. population: 150,697,361, Black population: 15,044,937 (10 percent)

1950: On May 1, Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago becomes the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. She wins the prize in Poetry.

1950: Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel Clifton, and Earl Lloyd become the first African Americans to play professional basketball in the modern National Basketball Association (NBA). Cooper played for the Boston Celtics; Clifton played for the New York Knicks, and Lloyd

1950: Juanita Hall became the first African American to win a Tony award. She was honored for her role in the Broadway play, South Pacific.

1951: On May 24, the U.S. Supreme Court rules racial segregation in District of Columbia restaurants is unconstitutional.

1951: On May 24, a mob of 3,500 whites attempt to prevent a black family from moving into a Cicero, Illinois apartment. Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson calls out the Illinois National Guard to protect the family and restore order.

1951: Harry T. Moore, a Florida NAACP official, is killed by a bomb in Mims, Florida, on December 25.

1951: Johnson Publishing Company publishes the first issue of Jet, a weekly news magazine for an African American audience.

1952: Tuskegee Institute reported no lynchings in the United States for the first time in 71 years of tabulation.

1952: Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. is appointed commander of the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing in Korea.

1952: Ralph Ellison publishes Invisible Man.

1953: On June 19, Baton Rouge, Louisiana African Americans begin a boycott of their city's segregated municipal bus line.

1953: James Baldwin publishes his first novel, the semi-autobiographical Go Tell It On The Mountain.

1953: When he joins the Chicago Bears Willie Thrower becomes the first black NFL quarterback in the modern era.

1953: Ralph Bunche becomes the first African American president of the American Political Science Association.

1954: On May 17, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education declares segregation in all public schools in the United States unconstitutional, nullifying the earlier judicial doctrine of separate but equal.

1954: On October 27, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., becomes the first black Air Force general after serving in the Korean War, appointed to brigadier general by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He also is the first African American to command an airbase.

1954: Malcolm X becomes Minister of the Nation of Islam's Harlem Temple 7.

1954: On May 3 in Hernandez v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the U.S. are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.