Columbus discovered the West Indies, opening markets for slave labor
100 African slaves brought to the North American continent
Jamestown, Virginia colony established with twenty Africans as indentured servants
Sugar introduced into the West Indies, requiring slave labor
Trade in African slaves begins in Boston, later to be known as the triangular trade between North/South America, Europe and Africa
Slave code defines slave status: all Negro, mulatto and Indian non-Christians
Comprehensive “Negro Act” denies slaves basic freedoms, including the right to read
Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, considered the first dictated slave narrative in America
Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, first book published by a black slave in America
First anti-slavery society organized in Philadelphia
Colonies declare independence from Britain; Continental Congress votes against the importation of slaves in all thirteen united colonies
First Fugitive Slave Act
African slave trade officially ended in Britain
American Colonization Society founded in Washington, DC to return freed slaves to Africa
Denmark Vesey organizes slave revolt in Charleston, SC
George Moses Horton, slave poet, publishes poems to purchase freedom; Mexico abolishes slavery and welcomes US fugitives
International slave trade officially ends; illegal traffic in slaves continues
Slave narratives become the most popular form of American literature
Nat Turner leads slave revolt in Southhampton County, VA; Underground Railroad begins operation
Oberlin College founded as first coeducational, racially integrated US college
The Amistad revolt with fifty-three Africans led by Joseph Cinque
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, first novel by an African American woman; Congress passes second Fugitive Slave Act mandating all fugitive slaves be returned to their masters; massive fugitive slave hunts begin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly
William Wells Brown’s Clotel, or the President’s Daughter, first known African American novel
Dred Scott decision; African Americans denied access to federal court system
Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig
Anglo-African Magazine published
American Civil War
Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, originally thought to be a fictitious narrative
Emancipation Proclamation abolishes slavery in states fighting the Civil War
13th Amendment passed, granting freedom to former slaves; Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman’s Bank established; Ku Klux Klan formed in Pulaski, Tennessee; President Lincoln assassinated
Civil Rights Act guarantees citizenship for all Americans
Howard University founded in Washington, DC for former slaves; Reconstruction begins
14th Amendment passed by Congress, granting African American citizenship and civil rights
15th Amendment passed, granting the right to vote to African American male citizens
Reconstruction ends
Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
Supreme Court repeals Civil Rights Act of 1866
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted
Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Exposition Address”
Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case upholds separate but equal doctrine
Alexander Crummell founds the American Negro Academy in Washington
Grandfather clause introduced as voting requirement
Charles Chesnutt’s House Behind the Cedars; Colored American Magazine begins publishing as outlet for African American literature
Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk
Voice of the Negro begins publication
NAACP formed
The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North
National Urban League formed; The Crisis, journal of the NAACP, founded by Du Bois, begins continuous publication; anti-lynching campaign begins
Arthur A. Schomburg, bibliophile, founds Negro Society for Historical Research (later the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)
James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
World War I
Death of Booker T. Washington, considered the end of an era of black accommodation; Association for the Study of Negro Life and History founded by Carter G. Woodson
Journal of Negro History begins continuous publication; Opportunity magazine founded by National Urban League
Messenger magazine founded by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen; Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
Du Bois organizes first Pan African Congress; the “Red Summer,” more than eighty lynchings and twenty-five race riots; Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”; Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
19th Amendment grants women the right to vote; Prohibition begins; Marcus Garvey’s First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World leads to the founding of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to promote racial solidarity and return to Africa; The New Negro (Harlem) Renaissance begins
Shuffle Along, black musical, brings African American culture to Broadway; T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land; James Joyce’s Ulysses; Claude McKay’s Harlem Shadows
Jean Toomer’s Cane
Death of Lenin in Soviet Union; Jessie Fauset’s There Is Confusion
Literary contests sponsored by Opportunity and Crisis magazines
Alain Locke’s The New Negro: An Interpretation, official anthology of the Harlem Renaissance; Josephine Baker’s La Revue Negre (Paris); Theodore Dreiser’s American Tragedy; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; Countee Cullen’s Color; 40,000 KKK parade in Washington, DC
Langston Hughes’s The Weary Blues and “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” considered manifesto for younger artists; Wallace Thurman’s Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists; Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven; Nella Larsen’s Quicksand; Negro History Week established
Al Jolson appears in blackface in first talking movie, The Jazz Singer
Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem; Nella Larsen’s Passing
US stock market crash, Great Depression begins; Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
Langston Hughes’s Not Without Laughter; Nine Scottsboro boys charged with raping two white girls; Black Muslims founded in Detroit
George Schuyler’s Black No More
New Deal legislation; WPA (Works Progress Administration) begins, provides support for writers and artists
Challenge and New Challenge, founded by Dorothy West and Richard Wright
Arna Bontemps’s Black Thunder
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Richard Wright’s “Blueprint for Negro Literature,” groundbreaking critical article represents break with African American writers of the 1920s; Sterling Brown’s The Negro in American Fiction
World War II
J. Saunders Redding’s To Make a Poet Black, first critical study of African American poetry
Richard Wright’s Native Son; bestselling novel and Book-of-the-Month Club selection; era of the “protest novel” begins
Armed Forces and government are desegregated; A. Philip Randolph threatens mass protest march
Negro Digest founded by John H. Johnson, devoted exclusively to African American literature, reprints African American novels (resumes publication 1961–70)
Margaret Walker’s For My People; first black poet to win National Award
Negro Story founded by Alice C. Browning
Richard Wright’s Black Boy; Chester Himes’s If He Hollers, Let Him Go; Ebony magazine founded by John H. Johnson
Anne Petry’s The Street; Frank Yerby’s Foxes of Harrow; Cold War begins
Dorothy West’s The Living Is Easy; Hugh Gloster’s Negro Voices in American Fiction
Korean War
Gwendolyn Brooks, first African American to win Pulitzer Prize, for Annie Allen (1949)
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, represents major break with protest tradition; first African American novel to win National Book Award (1953)
James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain
Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision declares segregated schools unconstitutional
Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to go to the back of the bus; Emmett Till lynched in Mississippi
Montgomery bus boycott; Martin Luther King Jr. emerges as civil rights leader
Gold Coast becomes Ghana, first African state to become independent; Little Rock Nine challenged by Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus
Robert Bone’s The Negro Novel in America
Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones; Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun begins long Broadway run
Four North Carolina A & T students’ first sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded; death of Richard Wright
Freedomways begins continuous publication
John O. Killens’s And Then We Heard the Thunder; James Baldwin’s Another Country; James Meredith faces federal troops as he enrolls at University of Mississippi
Civil Rights March on Washington, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; Civil Rights Movement in full swing; President John F. Kennedy assassinated; death of W. E. B. Du Bois
Three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi, kicking off Freedom Summer; Martin Luther King receives Nobel Peace Prize; Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1964; Organization of Afro-American Unity founded by Malcolm X
Vietnam War
Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Selma to Montgomery March; assassination of Malcolm X; Watts riots; Black Arts Movement begins; Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, recovered and reprinted after thirty years
Black Panther Party founded; “Black Power” slogan adopted by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts becomes first elected black senator since Reconstruction; Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, first neo-slave narrative
Race riots in Newark, Detroit, Chicago; Thurgood Marshall becomes first black US Supreme Court justice; death of Langston Hughes; Harold Cruse’s The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated; Senator Robert F. Kennedy assassinated; Black Fire, by Larry Neal and Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), principal anthology for Black Arts Movement
Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations/peace movement in full swing; Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door
Negro Digest changes to Black World, under editor Hoyt Fuller, becomes a shaping force in the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic Movement
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Toni Cade’s The Black Woman; African American women’s literary renaissance begins; Angela Davis one of FBI’s “most wanted”
Addison Gayle’s The Black Aesthetic presents a nationalist critical approach; Ernest J. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, first African American slave story made into a mini-series; Nathan Huggins’s The Harlem Renaissance, first critical study of the period; Attica prison revolt
Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo defines black modernist tradition in fiction; Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment; George Kent’s Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture
Leon Forrest’s There Is a Tree More Ancient than Eden
Albert Murray’s Train Whistle Guitar
Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf on Broadway; Gayl Jones’s Corregidora
Alex Haley’s Roots, TV mini-series in 1977, attracts largest viewing audience in history
Lawrence Levine’s Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom
James Alan McPherson awarded Pulitzer Prize for Elbow Room (1977)
Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings, kicks off controversy over Thomas Jefferson’s mistress; Octavia Butler’s Kindred
Barbara Christian’s Black Women Novelists, first major study of African American women’s literary tradition
David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident
Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name; Gloria Hull and others, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies
Alice Walker awarded Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (1982); Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place
Houston A. Baker’s Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory, groundbreaking study of a blues-based literary tradition; death of Chester Himes; Trudier Harris’s Exorcizing Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals, first major interdisciplinary study of African American fiction
Barbara Christian’s Black Feminist Criticism
Rita Dove awarded Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah (1986); deaths of John Oliver Killens and James Baldwin; Bernard Bell’s The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition; Hazel Carby’s Reconstructing Black Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist
Toni Morrison awarded Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, represents a major contribution to literary theory and criticism
Charles Johnson wins National Book Award for Middle Passage; death of Sterling Brown; Robert Stepto’s From Behind the Veil proposes influential theory of African American narrative
Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress; New Black Aesthetic era begins
Death of Frank Yerby, bestselling African American author to date
Terri McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale is international bestseller and blockbuster movie; death of Audre Lorde
Yusef Komunyakaa wins Pulitzer Prize for Neon Vernacular; Toni Morrison is first African American to win Nobel Prize for Literature
Death of Ralph Ellison
Nation of Islam organizes Million Man March in Washington, DC; death of Toni Cade Bambara
Death of Leon Forrest
Death of Margaret Walker; Claudia Tate’s Psychoanalysis and Black Novels: Desire and the Protocols of Race; death of Kwame Toure (Stokeley Carmichael), who popularized the term “Black Power”
Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth, published posthumously; Encyclopedia Africana, largest digital encyclopedia of publications from the black world; Rosa Parks awarded Congressional Medal of Honor
Million Women March; death of Gwendolyn Brooks