Black History — the long road
A scrolling slideshow of the moments that shape who we are. Start at 1619. Walk forward. Don't look away.
Arrival at Point Comfort
The first enslaved Africans are brought to the English colony of Virginia, beginning more than two centuries of chattel slavery on American soil.
The full timeline
- 1619
Arrival at Point Comfort
The first enslaved Africans are brought to the English colony of Virginia, beginning more than two centuries of chattel slavery on American soil.
- 1739
Stono Rebellion
Enslaved Africans in South Carolina rise up in one of the earliest organized rebellions — a reminder that resistance is as old as bondage itself.
- 1808
Transatlantic Slave Trade Banned
Congress prohibits the importation of enslaved people. Domestic slavery and the internal slave trade expand violently across the South.
- 1831
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Turner leads an uprising in Virginia. The brutal backlash hardens slave codes, but the rebellion stays in the memory of every generation that follows.
- 1849
Harriet Tubman Escapes
Tubman flees slavery in Maryland and returns again and again to lead others to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
- Jan 1, 1863
Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln declares enslaved people in rebelling states 'forever free' — but enforcement depends on the Union Army's reach.
- June 19, 1865
Juneteenth — Freedom Reaches Galveston
Two and a half years after the Proclamation, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger reads General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas. The last 250,000 enslaved African Americans learn they are free. Freedom delayed is freedom denied — and that delay is exactly why we remember.
- 1865–1870
13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
Slavery is abolished (except as punishment for a crime — a loophole that still echoes). Citizenship and the vote are extended to Black men. Reconstruction begins.
- 1877
End of Reconstruction
Federal troops withdraw from the South. Black political power is dismantled. Jim Crow laws begin codifying a new system of racial caste.
- 1896
Plessy v. Ferguson
The Supreme Court enshrines 'separate but equal.' The 'equal' part was always a lie.
- 1921
Tulsa Race Massacre
A white mob burns Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Oklahoma to the ground. Hundreds killed. Generations of wealth destroyed in a single night.
- 1954
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court strikes down school segregation. Implementation will be slow, contested, and incomplete.
- 1955
Rosa Parks · Montgomery Bus Boycott
Parks refuses to give up her seat. A 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. helps organize a 381-day boycott that changes the country.
- 1963
March on Washington
250,000 people gather. King speaks of a dream still owed to America's children.
- 1964–1965
Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts
Landmark legislation outlaws segregation and federal voter suppression. The fight does not end — it just changes shape.
- 1968
Dr. King Assassinated
King is killed in Memphis. The nation grieves, burns, and keeps going.
- 2008
Barack Obama Elected
The first Black president of the United States. Symbolic and historic — and not the end of the work.
- 2013–Today
Black Lives Matter
After the killing of Trayvon Martin, a movement names what has never stopped: Black lives, taken too often, by systems that were supposed to protect them. The names keep coming. So does the demand for accountability.
- 2021
Juneteenth Becomes a Federal Holiday
156 years after that day in Galveston, the United States formally recognizes it. Recognition is a beginning, not a finish line.