Reconstruction 1865 – 1877 

1865: Between September and November, several ex-Confederate states pass so called Black Codes.

1865: The Ku Klux Klan is formed on December 24th in Pulaski, Tennessee by six educated, middle class former Confederate veterans. The Klan soon adopts terror tactics to thwart the aspirations of the formerly enslaved and their supporters. Former Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest, perpetrator of the massacre at Fort Pillow, is among the early leaders of the terrorist organization.

1865: Twenty thousand African American troops are among the 32,000 U.S. soldiers sent to the Rio Grande as a show of force against Emperor Maximilian's French troops occupying Mexico. Some discharged black soldiers join the forces of Mexican resistance leader Benito Juárez.

1865: John S. Rock is the first African American to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

1866: Fisk University is founded in Nashville, Tennessee on January 9.

1866: On April 9, Congress overrides President Andrew Johnson's veto to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The act guarantees equal rights to blacks and whites.

1866: On May 1-3, white civilians and police in Memphis, Tennessee kill forty-six African Americans and injure many more, burning ninety houses, twelve schools, and four churches in what will be known as the Memphis Massacre.

1866: On June 13, Congress approves the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all citizens. The amendment also grants citizenship to black Americans.

1866: Congress authorizes the creation of four all black regiments in the United States Army. Two cavalry regiments, the 9th and 10th and two infantry regiments, the 24th and 25th will become the first and only units in which black soldiers can serve at the time.

1866: Police in New Orleans supporting the Democratic Mayor storm a Republican meeting of blacks and whites on July 30, killing 34 black and 3 white Republicans. Over 150 people were injured in the attack.

1867: On January 8, overriding President Andrew Johnson's veto, Congress grants the black citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote. Two days later it passes the Territorial Suffrage Act which allows black Americans in the western territories to vote as well.

1867: Morehouse College is founded in Atlanta on February 14.

1867: The Reconstruction Acts are passed by Congress on March 2. Congress divides ten of the eleven ex-Confederate states into military districts. These acts also reorganize post-war Southern governments, disfranchising former high-ranking Confederates and enfranchising black citizens.

1867: On March 2, Howard University is chartered by Congress in Washington, D.C. The institution is named after General Oliver O. Howard who heads the Freedman's Bureau.

1868: Opelousas, Louisiana is the site of the Opelousas Massacre on September 28, in which an estimated 200 to 300 black Americans are killed by whites opposed to Reconstruction and African American voting.

1868: On November 3, Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) is elected president.

1868: On November 3, John Willis Menard is elected to Congress from Louisiana's Second Congressional District. Menard is the first African American elected to Congress. However, neither he nor his opponent will be seated due to disputed election results.

1868: Howard University Medical School opens on November 9. It is the first medical school in the United States established for the training of African American doctors.

1869: On February 26, Congress sends the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution to the states for approval. The amendment guarantees black American males the right to vote.

1869: George Lewis Ruffin is the first black American to receive a law degree from any institution when he graduates from Harvard Law School.

1870: Census of 1870, U.S. population: 39,818,449, Black population: 4,880,009 (12.7 percent)

1870: Hiram R. Revels (Republican) of Mississippi takes his seat in the U.S. Senate on February 25. He is the first black United States senator, though he serves only one year, completing the unexpired term of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1870: In June Richard T. Greener becomes the first black American undergraduate to graduate from Harvard University

1870: The Preparatory High School for Colored Youth opens in Washington, D.C. It is the first public high school for black Americans in the nation. The institution was later named the M Street High School and finally Dunbar High School in honor of Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

1871: In February Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1871 popularly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act.

1871: On October 6, Fisk University's Jubilee Singers begin their first national tour. The Jubilee Singers become world-famous singers of black spirituals, performing before the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan.

1872: Lt. Governor Pinckney Benton Stewart (P.B.S.) Pinchback of Louisiana serves as governor of the state for one month from December 1872 to January 1873. He is the first African American to hold that position.

1872: Charlotte Ray of Washington, D.C. is the first black American woman and only the third woman admitted to the bar to practice law in the U.S.

1873: The 43rd Congress has seven black members.

1873: On April 14, the U.S Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases rules that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protects national, not state, citizenship.

1873: Bishop Patrick Healy serves as President of Georgetown University from 1873 to 1881. He is the first African American to preside over a predominately white university

1873: On Easter Sunday more than 100 black Americans were killed in northwest Louisiana while defending Republicans in local office against white militia. The incident became known as the Colfax Massacre.

1874: The Freedman's Bank closes after black American depositors and investors lose more than one million dollars.

1875: Federal troops are sent to Vicksburg, Mississippi in January to protect black Americans attempting to vote and to allow the safe return of the black American sheriff who had been forced to flee the city.

1875: On February 23rd Jim Crow laws are enacted in Tennessee. Similar statutes had existed in the North before the Civil War.

1875: Congress enacts the Civil Rights Act of 1875 on March 1, guaranteeing equal rights to black Americans in public accommodations and jury duty.

1875: Blanche Kelso Bruce (Republican) of Mississippi becomes the first African American to serve a full six-year term as senator when he takes his seat in the United States Senate on March 3.

1875: The 44th Congress has eight black members.

1875: Jockey Oliver Lewis wins the first Kentucky Derby race. Over the next 27 years fourteen black jockeys would ride the winning horse at the Derby.

1876: Lewis H. Latimer, while working for the Boston patent attorney office of Crosby and Gould, assists Alexander Graham Bell in obtaining a patent for the telephone on March 7.

1876: In May, Edward Alexander Bouchet receives a Ph.D. from Yale University. He is the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from an American university and only the sixth American to earn a Ph.D. in physics.

1876: Race riots and other forms of terrorism against black voters in South Carolina over the summer including the infamous Hamburg Massacre where blacks are killed while celebrating the Fourth of July, prompt President Grant to send federal troops to restore order.

1876: The presidential election of 1876, pitting Samuel Tilden (Democrat) against Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican), is inconclusive when the votes in the Electoral College are disputed.4

1877: The Compromise of 1877 (also known as the Wormley House Compromise because the meeting takes place in a black-owned hotel in Washington, D.C.)