War on Drugs/Modern Era 1970s – Present

1970: Census of 1970, U.S. population: 204,765,770, Black population: 22,580,289 (11.1 percent)

1971: On January 12th the Congressional Black Caucus is formed in Washington, D.C.

1971: In June Nixon officially declares a "war on drugs," identifying drug abuse as "public enemy No. 1."

1971: In July Captain Samuel L. Gravely, Jr. is promoted to Rear Admiral. He becomes the first African American to achieve Flag Rank in the U.S. Navy.

1971: On September 9, nearly 1,200 inmates seize control of half of the New York State Prison at Attica in what will be known as the Attica Prison Riot. Four days later 29 inmates and ten hostages are killed when state troopers and correctional officers suppress the uprising

1971: On December 18, Rev. Jesse Jackson founds People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) in Chicago.

1971: Johnson Products, a hair care company, becomes the first black-owned company to be listed on a major U.S. stock exchange (AMEX).

1971: Leroy Satchel Paige becomes the first former Negro Leagues baseball player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York.

1971: Beverly Johnson is the first black woman to appear on the cover of a major fashion magazine (Glamour).

1972: Over the summer New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm makes an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. She is the first African American to campaign for the nomination.

1972: In November Barbara Jordan of Houston and Andrew Young of Atlanta become the first black Congressional representatives elected from the U.S. South since 1898.

1973: On October 16, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr. is elected the first black mayor of Atlanta.

1973: On Nov. 6, Coleman Young is elected the first black mayor of Detroit.

1974: On April 8, Henry (Hank) Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th home run surpassing Babe Ruth to become the all-time leader in home runs in major league baseball.

1974: On June 21, U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity issues a court order in Morgan v. Hennigan that initiates a busing program, involving several thousand students.  The order is designed to desegregate the public schools of Boston.

1975: The Morehouse School of Medicine (Atlanta) becomes the only black medical school established in the United States in the 20th Century. The first dean and president of the Morehouse School of Medicine is Dr. Louis Sullivan.

1975: General Daniel Chappie James of the Air Force becomes the first African American four star general.

1975: On October 12, Frank Robinson becomes the first black Major League Baseball manager when he takes over the Cleveland Indians.

1975: Lee Elder becomes the first African American golfer to compete in the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

1975: William Venoid Banks becomes the first African American to own a television station when he launches WGPR-TV in Detroit.

1975: John Hope Franklin is the first African American elected president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH).  Four years later he will be the fiirst African American elected president of the American Historical Association (AHA).

1976: The United States Naval Academy at Annapolis admits women for the first time in June. Janie L. Mines becomes the first Black American women cadet to enter. She graduates in 1980.

1976: College and university enrollment for African American students rises sharply from 282,000 in 1966 to 1,062,000 in 1976.

1976: Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan becomes the first African American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention which meets that year in New York City.

1976: Clara Stanton Jones of Detroit becomes the first African American elected President of the American Library Association.

1977: In January, Patricia Harris is appointed by President Jimmy Carter to head Housing and Urban Development. She becomes the first African American woman to hold a cabinet position.

1977: In January, Congressman Andrew Young is appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He is the first African American to hold that post.

1977: The eighth and final night for the miniseries based on Alex Haley's Roots is shown on February 3. This final episode achieves the highest ratings to that point for a single television program.

1977: On March 8, Henry L. Marsh III became the first African American mayor of Richmond, Virginia

1978: On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court in Regents of the University of California Regents v. Bakke narrowly uphold affirmative action as a legal strategy for addressing past discrimination.

1978: Max Robinson becomes the first black network anchor when he begins broadcasting for ABC-TV News from Chicago.

1978: Jill Brown becomes the first black female pilot for a commercial passenger airline (Texas International Airlines).

1979: The Sugar Hill Gang records "Rappers Delight" in Harlem.

1979: Frank E. Petersen, Jr. becomes the first African American to earn the rank of General in the United States Marines.

1979: In September Hazel W. Johnson becomes the first African American woman to be promoted to the rank of General in the United States Army.

1979: Richard Arrington, Jr. is elected the first African American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama.

1980: Census of 1980, U.S. population: 226,504,825, Black population: 26,482,349 (11.8 percent)

1980: In January Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. becomes the first African American Speaker in a state legislature when he is selected for the post in the California Assembly. Brown holds the Speakership until 1995 when he is elected Mayor of San Francisco.

1980: On May 17-18 rioting breaks out in Liberty City, Florida (near Miami) after police officers are acquitted for killing an unarmed black man. The riot which generates 15 deaths is the worst in the nation since Detroit in 1967.

1980: Robert L. Johnson begins operation of Black Entertainment Television (BET) out of Washington, D.C.

1982: The struggle of Rev. Ben Chavis and his followers to block a toxic waste dump in Warren County, North Carolina launches a national campaign against environmental racism.

1982: Bryant Gumbel is named anchor of The Today Show, becoming the first African American to hold the post on a major network.

1982: Michael Jackson's album, Thriller, is released. It will eventually sell 45 million copies worldwide, becoming the best selling album in music history.

1983: Vanessa Williams becomes the first African American crowned Miss America on September 18 in Atlantic City. In July 1984 she relinquishes her crown to Suzette Charles when nude photos of her appear in Penthouse magazine.

1983: On April 12, Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.

1983: On August 30, Guion (Guy) S. Bluford, Jr., a crew member on the Challenger, becomes the first African American astronaut to make a space flight.

1983: On November 2, President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing January 20 as a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1983: Alice Walker's The Color Purple wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1984: On January 2, W. Wilson Goode becomes the first African American mayor of Philadelphia.

1984: Rev. Jesse Jackson wins approximately one fourth of the votes cast in the Democratic primaries and caucuses and about one eighth of the convention delegates in a losing bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

1984: In September The Cosby Show starring Bill Cosby makes its television debut. The show runs for eight seasons and will become the most successful series in television history featuring a mostly African American cast.

1984: Russell Simmons forms Def Jam Records in Harlem.

1985: In May, Philadelphia's African American mayor, Wilson Goode, orders the Philadelphia police to bomb the headquarters of MOVE, a local black nationalist organization. The bombing leaves 11 people dead and 250 homeless.

1985: Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago is named U.S. Poet-Laureate. She is the first African American to hold that honor.

1986: On January 20, the first national Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday is celebrated.

1986: On January 28, Dr. Ronald McNair and six other crew members die when the space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

1987: On August 6, Reginald Lewis orchestrates the leveraged buyout of Beatrice Foods to become the first African American CEO of a billion dollar corporation.

1987: Neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson makes medical history when he leads a seventy-member surgical team at Johns Hopkins Hospital in a 22 hour operation separating Siamese twins (the Binder twins) joined at the cranium.

1987: On October 28, Brigadier General Fred A. Gordon is appointed Commandant of the Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

1987: Aretha Franklin becomes the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

1988: In his second try for the Democratic Presidential nomination Jesse L. Jackson receives 1,218 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention on July 20. The number needed for the nomination, which goes to Michael Dukakis, was 2,082.

1988: In September, Temple University offers the first Ph.D. in African American Studies.

1988: On November 4, Comedian Bill Cosby announces his gift of $20 million to Spelman College. This is the largest donation ever made by a black American to a college or university.

1989: On January 29, Barbara C. Harris is installed as the first woman bishop in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church.

1989: On February 7, Ronald H. Brown is elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first African American to head one of the two major political parties.

1989: In March Frederick Drew Gregory becomes the first African American to command a space shuttle when he leads the crew of the Discovery.

1989: On August 10, General Colin L. Powell is named chair of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first African American to hold the post.

1989: On November 7, L. Douglas Wilder wins the governorship of Virginia, making him the first African American to be popularly elected to that office. 

1989: Art Shell becomes the first African American head coach in National Football League (NFL) in the post-World War II era when he is hired to lead the Oakland Raiders.

1989: Mahlon Martin becomes the first African American to head the Rockefeller Foundation.

1990: Census of 1990, U.S. population: 248,709,878, Black population: 29,986,060 (12 percent)

1990: In November when Sharon Pratt Kelly is elected mayor of Washington, D.C., she becomes the first African American woman to lead a large American city.

1990: Marcelite Jordan Harris is the first black woman brigadier general in the U.S. Army and the first woman to command a mostly male battalion.

1990: Walter E. Massey is the first African American to head the National Science Foundation.

1990: Carole Ann-Marie Gist of Detroit, Michigan becomes the first African American to win the Miss USA pageant.

1991: On March 3, Los Angeles police use force to arrest Rodney King after a San Fernando Valley traffic stop. The beating of King is captured on videotape and broadcast widely prompting, an investigation and subsequent trial of three officers.

1991: On October 23, Federal Judge Clarence Thomas, nominated by President George H.W. Bush, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate and takes his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

1991: Julie Dash releases Daughters of the Dust, the first feature film by an African American woman.

1992: On April 29, a Simi Valley, California jury acquits the three officers accused of beating Rodney King. The verdict triggers a three-day uprising in Los Angeles called the Rodney King Riot that results in over 50 people killed, over 2,000 injured and 8,000 arrested

1992: On September 12, Dr. Mae Carol Jemison becomes the first African American woman in space when she travels on board the space shuttle Endeavor.

1992: On November 3, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois becomes the first African American woman elected to the United States Senate.

1992: William "Bill" Pinkney becomes the first African American and only the fourth American to singlehandedly navigate a sailboat around the world.

1993: Joycelyn M. Elders becomes the first African American and the first woman to be named United States Surgeon General on September 7.

1993: On October 7, Toni Morrison becomes the first black American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The work honored is her novel, Beloved.

1995: The Million Man March organized by Minister Louis Farrakhan and other political activists is held in Washington, D.C. on October 17.

1995: Dr. Helene Doris Gayle becomes the first woman and the first African American Director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

1995: Lonnie Bristow is the first African American president of the American Medical Association.

1996: In May, President Bill Clinton signs into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act which replaces Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with state block grants. 

1996: On November 5, California voters pass Proposition 209 which outlaws affirmative action throughout the state.

1997: On April 13, golfer Tiger Woods wins the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. At 21 he is the youngest golfer ever to win the title. He is also the first African American to hold the title.

1997: In June, Harvey Johnson, Jr. was sworn in as the first black mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.

1997: On October 25 African American women participate in the Million Woman March in Philadelphia, focusing on health care, education, and self-help.

1997: In December, Lee Patrick Brown becomes Houston's first African American mayor.

1997: President Bill Clinton makes a formal apology to black men exploited in the U.S. Public Health Service Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

1998: On June 7, churchgoers discover the dismembered body of James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas. It is later determined that three white supremacists chained Byrd, who is black, to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged him to his death.

1998: President Bill Clinton appoints prominent historian John Hope Franklin to lead the President's Commission on Race to promote a national dialogue on issues affecting African Americans in the United States, and to ease racial tensions.

1999: On September 10, Serena Williams wins the U.S. Open Womens Singles Tennis Championship in Flushing Meadows, the first African American woman to do so since Althea Gibson's win in 1958.

1999: Maurice Ashley becomes the world's first black chess grandmasters, the game's highest rank.

2000: Census of 2000, U.S. population: 281,421,906, Black population: 34,658,190 (12.3 percent)

2000: Lillian Elaine Fishbourne is the first black woman admiral in the U.S. Navy.

2001: In January President-elect George W. Bush nominates Colin Powell to be Secretary of State.  Condoleezza Rice is also appointed to the position of National Security Advisor for the Bush Administration.  This is the first time either post has been held by Black Americans

2001: In November Shirley Clarke Franklin becomes the first African American woman to head the government of a major Southern city whe she is elected mayor of Atlanta.

2002: Dennis Archer, former Mayor of Detroit, becomes the first African American to be elected President of the American Bar Association.

2003: On June 23 the U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger upholds the University of Michigan Law School's admission policy which supports affirmative action. In the simultaneously heard Gratz v. Bollinger case, the Supreme Court prohibits a public university from using an undergraduate admissions policy in which race is the sole reason behind awarding 20 percent of the minimum points required for admission

2004: On November 2, State Senator Barack Obama is elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois.  He becomes the second African American elected to the Senate from that state and only the fifth black senator in U.S. history.

2005: In January Condoleezza Rice becomes Secretary of State.  She is the second woman and the first African American woman to hold the post.

2005: On August 30, Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast, taking an estimated 1,700 lives.  The vast majority of the deaths are in Louisiana including heavily African American New Orleans.

2006: On November 7 Deval Patrick is elected Governor of Massachusetts.  He becomes the second African American in the nation, after L. Douglas Wilder in Virginia in 1989, to be popularly elected to this position.

2008: On November 4, Barack Obama of Illinois, the only sitting African American U.S. Senator, is elected President of the United States. Obama wins the election decisively and becomes the first African American elected to this office. Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.

2009: Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael S. Steele becomes Chairman of National Republican Committee and thus effectively heads the Republican Party.

2012: President Barack Obama is re-elected President of the United States.

2012: George Zimmerman fatally shoots Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman was later acquitted of all charges in 2013.

2013: Black Lives Matter hashtag founded by activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi following the non-guilty verdict in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

2014: Tim Scott serves as the first elected senator from South Carolina since Reconstruction

2015: Loretta Lynch sworn in as first African American woman Attorney General.

2015: A mass shooter takes the lives of nine African American people at a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. This would become known as the Charleston Church Shooting. Dylann Roof would be convicted of 33 counts of hate crime and murder charges and sentenced to death.

2015: Misty Copeland becomes the first African American woman principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre.

2016: Smithsonian National African American History Museum opens.

2016: NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneels for the national anthem drawing nationwide attention to police violence and influencing other players throughout the sports world.

2016: Carla Hayden serves as the first African American librarian of Congress.

2017: Amanda Gorman is named the youngest National Youth Poet Laureate.

2020: Breonna Taylor gunned down in her own home by police officers.

2020: Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed while jogging in Brunswick, Georgia.

2020: George Floyd dies at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin sparking international protests. Chauvin was later found guilty and sentenced to 22.5 years in 2021.

2020: Wilton Gregory becomes first African American Catholic cardinal.

2021: Raphael Warnock wins Georgia Special Election and becomes first African American senator from Georgia.

2021: Kamala Harris sworn in as first African American and woman vice-president