A WHY WE KNEEL, HOW WE RISE BLACK HISTORY TIMELINE

• AD 1–33 Life of Jesus Christ; born in the Middle East and certainly not white as portrayed.
• 193–211 Septimius Severus, the Black emperor, serves the Roman Empire. A military garrison is set up by Severus at Burgh by Sands, near Hadrian’s Wall, with the African auxiliary unit Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum stationed there. One of the first examples of Black people in Britain.
• 440 The Kingdom of Ghana. One of the earliest and most advanced civilisations in history. The kingdom had its own trade networks and its capital, Koumbi Saleh, had a population of more than 30,000.
• 620 The beginnings of African–Indian trade. Chinese coins found on east coast of Africa.
• 668 North African-born scholar Hadrian becomes an abbot in Canterbury Cathedral. He rejected the opportunity to be made Archbishop.
• 711 The Moors conquer Spain and Portugal and rule until 1492. The Moors’ advances in mathematics, astronomy, art and agriculture would help propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.
• 800 African presence in the ‘New World’.
• 890–992 Trade routes in West and East Africa to Indonesia as African kingdoms proliferate.
• 1100 Stone structures are proof of an early civilisation in what would become Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe.
• 1241 Earliest image of a Black person in Britain found in Domesday Book.
• 1400 Bronze statues produced in Benin, West Africa.
• 1460 Slaves are taken from Africa by the Spanish to Europe. Ten years later sugar plantations in Italy emerge with labour done by Africans.
• 1492 Christopher Columbus ‘discovers’ the New World. Two years later he claims Jamaica for the Spanish.
• 1518 First slaves arrive in West Indies.
• 1562 Admiral John Hawkins leads first English slave-trading voyage from West Africa.
• 1619 Slaves arrive in the English colony of Virginia.
• 1623 Britain annexes St Kitts as their domination of the Caribbean begins.
• 1652 The Dutch establish a white colony in South Africa.
• 1660 The British take control of Jamaica.
• 1672 King Charles II gives his Royal African Company exclusive rights to take slaves to the Americas.
• 1721 Black slave Onesimus introduces inoculation to America.
• 1780 132 slaves thrown overboard on the ship Zong.

  Sugar becomes Britain’s dominant import.

• 1781 Los Angeles is founded by fifty-four settlers including twenty-six of African ancestry.
• 1791 The Haitian Revolution begins, the only successful slave uprising.

  140 years of massacres of indigenous population of Australia begin.

• 1804 Haiti becomes first independent Black republic in the Americas. The reparations it must pay to France cripple the country.
• 1807 British slave trade is abolished but not until reparations are paid in 1834 – the equivalent of 40 per cent of Britain’s annual income – does it actually cease.
• 1838 Law enforcement officer Bass Reeves is born. He will be the inspiration for the Lone Ranger character. He was Black but because of white supremacy he could not be portrayed as such.
• 1839 Edmond Berger invents the spark plug.
• 1844 Elijah McCoy is born. The man who coined the term ‘the real McCoy’ because of his invention to stop steam-train wheels sticking. Other companies tried to copy him but the railways only wanted his invention.
• 1849 Harriet Tubman, an escaped enslaved woman, becomes a ‘conductor’ on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War.
• 1852 Frederick Douglass, the most influential civil rights campaigner in the nineteenth century, gives his acclaimed Fourth of July speech.
• 1855 Mary Seacole opens the ‘British Hotel’ in Crimea.
• 1863 Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
• 1864 George Washington Carver is born. He will develop revolutionary farming techniques that help former slaves in Alabama become self-sufficient.
• 1865 The Jim Crow laws era begins. It lasts until 1965.
• 1867 Alexander Miles patents the electric elevator.
• 1870 Bill Pickett is born. He will become one of the most well-known rodeo stars at a time when one in four cowboys was Black.
• 1872 Thomas Marshall patents the fire extinguisher.
• 1877 Charles Joseph Bolden is born. He will be one of the very first jazz musicians.

  Lynchings begin in America.

• 1878 Osbourn Dorsey invents door knob.
• 1882 Lewis Howard Latimer patents the carbon filament for lightbulbs.

  Thomas A. Carrington invents the stethoscope.

• 1885 Africa is carved up by the European powers. Some borders are decided by a ruler. King Leopold of Belgium acquires the Congo as his personal possession. His rule will kill up to 10 million Africans.
• 1887 The Black nationalist and Jamaica icon Marcus Garvey is born.
• 1888 Slavery is abolished in Brazil.
• 1889 W. A. Martin patents the lock.
• 1890 Walter B. Purvis patents his improved fountain pen design.
• 1892 Alice Ball is born. She developed a herbal remedy for the treatment of leprosy and was the first woman to earn a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii.
• 1898 Lydia D. Newman invents a new practical hairbrush.
• 1899 Boer War begins. The British imprison more than 100,000 in concentration camps and up to 30,000 die.

  J. A. Burr patents his rotary-blade lawnmower.

• 1906 A West Indies cricket team includes Black players for the first time.
• 1908 Jack Johnson becomes the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion.
• 1909 Matthew Henson discovers the North Pole.
• 1910 Australian government begins forcibly removing indigenous children from their families. ‘Assimilations’ last another sixty years.
• 1914–18 The First World War. The British West Indies Regiment and the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment of the New York Army National Guard serve with honour.
• 1914 Garrett Morgan patents his ‘breathing device’, predecessor of the gas mask. Later he invents the three-way traffic light.
• 1915 US President Woodrow Wilson screens a Ku Klux Klan film at the White House.
• 1918 Katherine Johnson is born. She will be a mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent US crewed spaceflights.
• 1919 Race riots in Britain with Black sailors and Black businesses targeted.

  British murder at least 400 protestors in Amritsar, India.

  Gandhi begins campaign to end British rule in India. His passive resistance movement inspires Martin Luther King.

  American footballer Fritz Pollard begins his professional career.

• 1920 Inventor Otis Boykin is born.
• 1921 At least thirty-six African-Americans die in white violence in the Tulsa Massacre.
• 1922 Marie Van Brittan Brown is born. She will invent the first home security system and lay the groundwork for the modern closed-circuit television system.
• 1924 James Baldwin, novelist, is born.
• 1928 Learie Constantine makes his West Indies debut. He will become a racial equality activist and the first Black governor of the BBC.

  Poet and writer Maya Angelou is born.

• 1929 Martin Luther King is born.
• 1930 George Headley makes his West Indies debut.

  Betty Boop, the cartoon character, is introduced to the world. She was inspired by African-American jazz singer Esther Jones.

• 1932 Black sharecroppers are used in a medical experiment for syphilis.
• 1936 Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in front of Adolf Hitler.
• 1938 Kofi Annan, who will become secretary general of the UN, is born.
• 1939–45 Soldiers of colour play huge role in the Second World War.
• 1940 Frederick Johnson invents the portable air-conditioning unit. He also patents the thermostat control.
• 1942 Muhammad Ali, the greatest, is born.
• 1943 Winston Churchill diverts food to British soldiers, causing the Bengal famine. Four million die.
• 1945 Bob Marley is born.
• 1947 British partition of India results in religious genocide.
• 1948 Apartheid begins in South Africa.

  The Empire Windrush arrives at Tilbury docks.

• 1950 The Red Cross recognise that all blood is ‘equal’ after Charles Drew, who developed the first large-scale blood banks and blood plasma programmes, resigned from a ‘segregated’ blood policy.
• 1952 Big Mama Thornton records the original ‘Hound Dog’.
• 1954 Philip Emeagwali born. He will be known as ‘the African Bill Gates’ for his innovation in computer processing.
• 1955 Civil rights movement in America begins after the Rosa Parks bus boycott.
• 1956 Sisters Mary and Mildred Davidson invent the sanitary belt.

  Althea Gibson becomes first Black woman to win a tennis Grand Slam at the French Open.

• 1957 Ghana becomes first African nation to be independent.
• 1960 Sixty-nine Black protestors against apartheid are murdered by police in Sharpeville, South Africa.

  Frank Worrell becomes first West Indies Black captain for an entire series.

• 1962 Jamaica gains independence.

  Commonwealth Immigrants Act is passed in Britain to reduce immigration from former colonies.

• 1963 Nelson Mandela is imprisoned.

  Martin Luther King delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

• 1964 America’s Civil Rights Act comes into force.

  Martin Luther King wins Nobel Peace Prize.

• 1965 Racial equality activist Malcolm X is murdered.

  The Voting Rights Act is passed in America.

• 1967 Indigenous people of Australia are formally recognised as human beings.
• 1968 Martin Luther King is assassinated.

  Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise a black-gloved fist at the Mexico Olympics to protest racial inequality in America.

  Enoch Powell delivers his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.

• 1971 Richard Nixon’s ‘war on drugs’ deliberately targets Black people.

  Bernard Coard’s exposé of British school system discriminating against West Indian children is published.

• 1973 Dr Shirley Jackson receives her PhD from Massachusetts University. She helps to invent the touch-tone telephone, the portable fax, caller ID, call waiting, and the fibre-optic cable.
• 1974 Kissinger Report states aim to slow population growth in Africa.
• 1976 Negro History Week, founded in 1926, is replaced by Black History Month in the US.

  The novel Roots, by Alex Haley, is published.

• 1977 Steve Biko, anti-apartheid campaigner, is killed in police custody.
• 1980 White rule ends in Rhodesia, later becoming Zimbabwe.

  Burning Spear releases the song ‘Columbus’.

  West Indies cricket team beat England 4-0. They will not lose a series for fifteen years.

• 1981 Brixton race riots.
• 1982 First English rebel cricket tour to South Africa. Two West Indies teams tour in 1983 and 1984.
• 1990 Nelson Mandela is released from prison.
• 1992 Riots in Los Angeles after four white police officers are acquitted of charges for beating Rodney King.
• 1993 Teenager Stephen Lawrence is murdered in London.
• 1994 Apartheid in South Africa ends. Nelson Mandela is elected president.
• 1998 Makhaya Ntini becomes first Black African to play cricket for South Africa.

  Hope Powell becomes first Black coach of an English national sporting team.

  Christopher Alder dies in police custody in England.

• 2000 Michael Johnson wins his fourth Olympic gold medal in Sydney.
• 2002 Thierry Henry wins first of two Premier League titles.
• 2005 John Sentamu becomes first Black Archbishop of York.
• 2008 Barack Obama is elected first African-American president of the USA.
• 2012 Trayvon Martin is shot dead, aged seventeen.
• 2013 Adam Goodes is racially abused at an Aussie Rules match.
• 2014 Tamir Rice is murdered, aged twelve.

  12 Years a Slave wins Oscar for Best Picture.

  Michael Brown is shot dead, aged eighteen.

• 2015 Nine African-Americans are shot dead by a white supremacist while at church in South Carolina.
• 2016 Donald Trump is elected president of the USA.

  Usain Bolt becomes first sprinter to win 100m and 200m gold at three consecutive Olympics.

  Ibtihaj Muhammad wins bronze medal at Olympics.

  Colin Kaepernick takes a knee for the first time.

• 2018 Windrush scandal. Britain wrongly deports or detains at least eighty-three people of West Indian heritage.
• 2020 Breonna Taylor is murdered, aged twenty-six.

  Ahmaud Arbery is murdered, aged twenty-five.

  Naomi Osaka wins second US Open title.

  Covid-19 spreads, disproportionately killing people of colour.

  George Floyd is murdered, aged forty-six.

  Jacob Blake is shot and paralysed, aged twenty-nine.

  Black Lives Matter protests sweep the world.

  Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump to become the 46th US president.