Your History Online V

 A Chronological History of Africans
in America, in Africa,
and in the Diaspora,
1600 BCE to AD 1980*

avid Walker’s Appeal to four million or so Africans to throw off the yoke of oppression as a mandate from God epitomizes the rationale that defines the struggles of African and other oppressed Third World peoples throughout this forty–eight–year period, which has been divided into six segments: “Building Self–Confidence,” “Organizing for Struggle,” “The Rising Storm,” “The General Strike,” “Picking up the Pieces, or Reconstructing a People,” and “Revolutions Go Backwards.” Presented here are glimpses of these events that also determine the Black World’s future. The number and ferocity of slave revolts in the Americas increase and strengthen the resolve of the people to terminate their enthrallment and exploitation once and for all time. The black peoples of Tasmania (now a part of Australia), Java, Samoa, Sumatra, etc., are subjected to genocidal colonial practices. All over Africa, the encroachment of the British, French, Portuguese, Belgians and Spanish is fiercely resisted. In Southern Africa, Zulu, KhoiKhoi, Xhosa, Pondo, Hlubi and Ndebele peoples among others wage valiant, protracted and fierce battles with the Boers (Dutch) and the British to prevent the further expropriation of their lands and wealth. In the Caribbean, South and Central America, and the United States, slavery is abolished, but not without African people having to devise diverse strategies for their eventual release from servitude. These strategies range from repatriation to Africa, emigration to Haiti, Mexico and Trinidad, and escaping to the newly opened western territories of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and California, or to the Pacific Northwest and Canada. In addition, large numbers of African people flee to the urban communities of the North where they find scant relief from Southern terrorism in the racist practices of the urban North and, therefore, participate in organizing vigilence committees and forming coalitions and ultimately establishing political parties. In spite of the stridency of these combined efforts in Africa, the Americas and elsewhere in the Third World, colonialism, imperialism and exploitation continue to gain the approval of the industrialized Western world. And then is heard the thunder of the Civil War, which sees black people in the U.S. withhold their labor from the forces of Southern oppression. With the Civil War also comes the African Americans' attempts to reconstruct themselves as a great people. Pennies are saved in freedmen’s banks. Land is purchased and farmed, and a black subsistence economy develops. Schools are built and a whole people is educated. This tremendous expenditure of creative and intellectual energy leads among other things to the discovery that the alliances made earlier with their white benefactors have been dissolved in the interests of Northern capital. The bright star of redemption dims, and the recently emancipated Africans are practically re–enslaved.

1829
David Walker, a free African, publishes a strident Appeal, calling on slaves to struggle militant- ly against bondage . . .

Julian Toumontaine, an African “Santo Dominican,” teaches openly in Savannah, Georgia, up to 1829, when teaching African people is prohibited by law; however, he continues teaching, but clandestinely, until 1844.

Georgia prohibits teaching slaves . . .

African refugees from the revolution in Haiti in 1790 found the St. Francis Academy for Colored Girls in Baltimore. The aim of this institution is to train all who “would become mothers or household servants in such virtues and religious and moral principles as modesty, honesty, and integrity.”

Andrew Jackson, a Democrat–Republican from South Carolina, becomes the seventh Presi- dent of the U.S.

The Mexican Congress legislates the permanent end of slavery throughout its territory except Texas.

A race riot in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 10, causes more than 1,000 African Americans to leave the city for Canada.

Freedom’s Journal becomes Rights of All after its editor, John Russworm leaves for Liberia. Samuel Cornish edits the new publication until 1830.

George Horton, a free black man of North Carolina, publishes Hope ofLiberty.

Slavery is abolished in Mexico. U.S. resorts to pressure to force its reinstitution in Texas which belongs to Mexico at the time.

1830
There are 2,328,642 African Americans in the United States, 18.1 percent of the total popula- tion; 2,009,043 are slaves. Fifty–seven percent of all free African men, women and children live in the South, including Washington, DC. The free population is distributed as follows: 

Juan José Flores, an African, leads Ecuador to independence.

Russian Poland experiences an ineffectual revolt.

According to the U.S. census, 3,777 Blacks own slaves in Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.

North Carolina forbids teaching slaves . . .

Africans from seven states meet in Philadelphia to organize the Convention Movement and to initiate independent political action on the part of African Americans..

Venezuela gains its independence from Spain.

Blacks of Portsmouth, Ohio, are forcibly deported by order of city authorities.

James Augustine Healy, the first African Roman Catholic bishop in America, is born to Irish planter and slave woman on plantation near Macon, Georgia.

The French capture Algiers and begin the struggle to conquer and settle Algeria.

In southern Africa Bantu-speaking groups move northwards across the river Limpopo and into Central Africa where Mzilikazi establishes the Ndebele state in present day Zimbabwe.

Boers trek away from Cape Colony and set up their own republics in Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (South Africa).

In southern Nigeria the Fulani defeat the once powerful Yoruba empire of Oyo. This is followed by a succession of wars in Yorubaland which continue until the 1890’s.

1831–1836
Andres de Santa Cruz, an African, becomes president of Bolivia in 1831. Five years later, he takes control of Peru in a Bolivian–Peruvian Confederation.

1831
William Lloyd Garrison establishes his abolitonist newspaper, The Liberator, in Boston.

Africans are forbidden to preach in North Carolina . . .

“This law, incidentally, hindered the work of John Chavis, an outstanding Negro teacher and preacher. Chavis had been sent to Princeton by some white planters apparently to settle a dispute about the ability of Negroes to take a college education. He subsequently taught both white and Negro children in North Carolina from 1808 until restrictive legislation brought his work to a close.  The best account of Chavis is in Edgar W. Knight, ‘Notes on John Chavis,’ North Carolina Historical Review, 7 (1930), pp. 326–345” (E.H. West, The Black American and Education, 1972).

Africans rebel on the West Indian island of Antigua because of British colonial authority’s sup- pression of Sunday markets.

On August 22 Nat Turner leads a revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, during which 57 whites are executed. Nat is captured on  November 5; before his trial he dictates to Thomas R. Gray what is commonly referred to as the Confession of Nat Turner. Nat is convicted and hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia, on November 11, along with several members of his insurrectionary force. His body is given over to the surgeons for dissection and his skin is boiled down for grease. (See H.I. Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831 [1971] for a thorough review of the revolt). A fear greater than that of black insurrections was that poor whites would find common cause with black people. Poor whites had little to lose and a world to gain by the overthrow of slavery with its devaluation of white labor.

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (AP) -- The University of Alabama apologized Tuesday [August 13, 2004] to the descendants of slaves who were owned by faculty members or who worked on campus in the years before the Civil War.
The apology -- approved overwhelmingly by the Faculty Senate -- was the first at the university and possibly the first of its kind in the nation, officials said. It was also the second move by the school in recent days to acknowledge the university's historical ties to slavery.  Last Thursday, university officials announced the school will erect a marker near the graves of two slaves on the campus and place others on buildings where slaves once worked and lived. Al Brophy, a white law professor who authored the apology, documented years of bondage at the university, which was founded in 1831 and mostly destroyed by Union troops at the close of the Civil War before it was rebuilt. Two university presidents and some faculty members owned slaves during the years before the Civil War, Brophy found, and several of the oldest structures on campus contain bricks made by slaves. The president of the Faculty Senate, John Mason, called the apology "very important symbolism" at the school, scene of Gov. George C. Wallace's "stand in the schoolhouse door" against integration in 1963. Wallace tried to block the admission of two black students to the all-white university. Now, about 15 percent of Alabama's 20,000 students are minorities. "I think this sends a message to people of color that, 'You are  welcome here,"' Mason said of the apology. Marvin Johnson, a music professor, spoke against the apology, saying there was no way faculty members could apologize for something that happened so long ago. "The university as it existed at the time of the war is not representative of the university today," he said. But Robert Turner, a black senior, said the apology would make the university a more inviting place for minorities. "I think it shows the University of Alabama does not shy away from its history, but shows the university making great strides to be more inclusive," he said. Last month, Brown University, in Providence, R.I., began a two-year inquiry into its connections with the New England slave trade (CNN.com).

Cotton is King!  In 1791 the South produced only 9,000 bales of cotton; in 1831 the South produces over 1,038,000 bales. Beneath the pressure of this increase in cotton production, the status of the slave is being decided once and for all.

Samuel Sharpe leads the most serious revolt in Jamaican history.

Louisa Parks Costin, member of one of the oldest black families in Washington, DC, and pioneer in African education dies. Other black women who work to educate black people are:  Marna Becraft, Martha Costin (?), Arabella Jones, Mary Wormley, Sarah Douglass, Nancy Grant, Fannie Hampton, Margaret Thompson, Margaret Hill.

The First Annual Negro Convention is held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Full civil rights are granted to free Africans in the French colonies.

The three Dutch colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice are united as British Guiana (Guyana).

1832
The New England Anti–Slavery Society is formed in Boston.

The Erie Canal, connecting the Ohio River and Lake Erie, is completed. Cleveland becomes northern terminous of this important waterway.

Edward Wilmot Blyden, educator, linguist, Pan–African patriot, gracious Liberian diplomat, and Presbyterian minister, is born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. He dies in 1912. In an article written for the African Repository (Vol. LIV, 1878, pp. 5, 6) entitled "Negro Race Integrity," Blyden wrote . . . 

             "Great stress is being laid — and not without reason — upon the facilities of  education now within
             reach our people in the United States — the book  learning which many of them are now receiving.
             This is certainly a matter for  congratulation. But we must not lose sight of the important fact to be
             gathered  from the very etymology of the word education, viz; that book learning is not the most
             essential part of our educational needs as a people. You do not educate a man when you merely fill
             his mind; but you do educate him when you lead out his powers. You do not educate a man when
             you merely tell him what he knew not; but you do educate him when you make him feel what he ought
             to feel; the one is mental, the other affectional. The one teaches him to lean upon others, the other
             teaches him to "retire upon himself." All this latter lesson is what the Negroes of America need more
             than all the literature of the schools. 

Representative Joseph H. Rainey (1832 -1887), the son of a slave, was drafted by the Confederacy during the Civil War, but escaped to Bermuda, where slavery was illegal. After the war, Rainey moved back to Georgetown, SC, and became a member of the South Carolina Republican Party executive committee. After representing Georgetown at the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, he was elected to the state senate in 1870.Rainey was elected in a special election to represent the First District of South Carolina in the United States House of Representatives. On December 12, 1870, he was sworn in as a member of the forty-first Congress and soon joined the Committee on Freedmen's Affairs. He used his position to advocate an end to racial discrimination and using the military to protect black voters from violence perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan. Rainey remained in office through the forty-third Congress and eventually became a member of the Indian Affairs Committee. During a debate on a related appropriations bill, Rainey replaced then Speaker James Blaine as chair and presided over a House session, becoming the first African-American to do so. Rainey served until 1878. One hundred and thirty-three years after the first African American took his seat in Congress, the Committee on House Administration agreed to honor him with a portrait in the U.S. Capitol. Representative Joseph H. Rainey (R-SC) served in the U.S. Congress for eight years. Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) led the effort for the House Administration Committee to make this decision. 

The political power of the “West India interest” is reduced in the House of Commons and the House of Lords by the reform of Parliament. The West India interest defends plantation agri- culture, i.e., slave labor, and the social structure it promotes.

1833
American Anti-Slavery Society is formed in Philadelphia.

Abolitionists propose a  Manual Labor School for free African youth:

An Anti–Slavery Society for women is formed with Lucretia Mott as president.

John Greenleaf Whittier, a white poet, publishes his anti–slavery tract, Justice and Expedi- ence.

The first anti–slavery book published is Lydia Maria Childs’ Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Ms. Childs is an African American.

Oberlin College, the first co–educational college in the U.S., opens its doors to whites and Africans alike.

Virginia passes a law establishing a colonization board supported by a poll tax on free Afri- cans. This board is to deport free black men and women to Liberia.

Prudence Crandall, a Quaker, is jailed for teaching Africans. She is forced to close her school for black girls in Canterbury, Connecticut. She dies in 1890 in Kansas.

British pass the Emancipation Act which goes into effect one year later. Economic conditions favor the abolitonists and the emancipationists. The victory of the industrialists over the agri- culturalists meant doom for the slave trade and slavery in the West Indies. The British com- pensate slave holders $20,000,000 for their loss of human chattel.

Benjamin McCoy and Fanny Hampton, both Africans, open schools in Washington, DC.  James Enoch Ambush opens a school in this city in the basement of the Israel Bethel Church.

The Phoenix Society is formed by Africans in Philadelphia “to promote the improvement of coloured people in Morals, Literature, and the Mechanic Arts . . .”

1834
An African Free School is established in New York.

Slavery is abolished in the British empire.

Portuguese, coming from the Azores to Trinidad under three–to–five–year contracts, are regarded as the first European indentured laborers in the post–emancipation West Indies.  Between 1835 and 1846 several hundred British, French and German immigrants enter Trinidad.

Lane Seminary students teach freedmen.

Captain Ralph Quarles, a slave owner, provides for the education of his three black sons, one of whom is John Mercer Langston.

Mobs riot against U.S. Africans in New York City and Philadelphia . . .

The black nationalist A.M.E. minister, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, is born free in South Carolina.

The sixth War of Resistance erupts in South Africa. The colonizers succeed in pushing the Xhosa people back across the Kei River and enter the country of the people led by Hintza.

1835
A black convention, meeting in Philadelphia, advises Africans to remove the word African from the names of their institutions and organizations in response to pressures to deport free Africans to Africa.

The word “socialism”  is used for the first time by the Englishman, Robert Owen, who is the inspiration behind African “co-operative communities” in the South after the Civil War.  See Janet Sharp Hermann, The Pursuit of a Dream, the story behind the founding of Davis Bend and Mound Bayou, Mississippi, (1981).

Anti–slavery pamphlets are taken from the mail in Charleston, South Carolina, and publicly burned.

The American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race is organized in Boston. The Union hopes to provide religious and literary instruction to American Africans to ameliorate their economic condition and prepare them for freedom.

Noyes Academy, an integrated school at Canaan, New Hampshire, is closed by mob violence. Henry Highland Garnet and Alexander Crummel attend school here.

New York City Blacks form a vigilance committee to prevent the kidnapping and injury of black people.

1836
Abolitionists petition Congress to end slavery in the District of Columbia. Gag Rule is adopted to table all abolition petitions.

James Birney’s abolitionist newspaper, the Philanthropist, is wrecked by a racist mob in Cin- cinnati.

Resistance by the Tsonga people of the Northeastern Transvaal leads to the defeat of the early expeditions led by Van Rensburg.

Mzilikazi leads his people into battle against the advancing Boers, defeating them at the Battle of Vegkop.

Slavery is outlawed in France. Slaves taken there from the West Indies become free on arrival.

1836–1838
The Great Boer Trek takes place in South Africa.

1837
The Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, a white abolitionist editor, is killed by a pro–slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, while defending his paper, the Alton Observer.

Michigan is admitted as a state.

Mzilikazi and his warriors retreat across the Limpopo River after the Boers are reinforced from the Cape.

A Seminole Indian force is defeated by American troops at Battle of Okeechobee. Chief John Horse, an African shares command responsibilities with Alligator Sam Jones and Wild Cat.

The Colored American (also known as the Weekly Advocate) is published in New York City until 1842.

Martin Van Buren, a Democrat from New York, becomes the eighth U.S. President.

The Reverend Theodore Wright, an African, denounces racism within the abolitionist move- ment. See Benjamin Quarles’ Black Abolitionist (1969).

S.F.B. Morse, a white inventor, patents his improved electro–magnetic recording telegraph.

The invention of the “centrifugal” leads to a large improvement in the drainage of molasses from sugar crystals; a much drier sugar is obtained and bags replace hogsheads as a container at reduced cost. The centrifugal is the most widely adopted improvement in sugar production in the West Indies because it can be easily installed.

Mutiny in the West India Regiment in Trinidad is led by Daag (alias Donald Steward) and other freed slaves who had enlisted in the army.

Victoria becomes Queen of England.

1838
Charles Lenox Remond, free African of Salem, Massachusetts, begins his anti–slavery lectur- ing career.

In South Africa Dingane defends his land and his people against the invading Boers, striking back at Retief and his troops when they come to his headquarters at Mgungundlovo to demand his surrender.

The “emancipation” of the slaves in the Cape Colony in South Africa is finally completed. From now on slavery will be determined by wages, which signals a new kind of slavery, but just as pernicious and exploitative.

Frederick Douglass escapes from America’s “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery.

The Mirror for Liberty, first African American quarterly magazine, is launched by David Ruggles.

Another Philadelphia Vigilance Committee is formed.

Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio is the first abolitionist elected to Congress.

Pro–slavery mob destroys Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia because of anti–slavery meetings held there.

Apprenticeship for all ex–slaves is brought to an end two years before scheduled time in all British West Indian colonies; partial slavery gives way to “full freedom.”

Osceola, Chief of the Seminoles, dies.

Even before the emancipation of slaves, planters in the West Indies resort for labor to immi- gration from Europe, Madeira, Africa and China. Labor immigration from these sources does not last long. Immigration from India is more important and clearly favored. The recruitment of East Indians continues until 1917.

The fierce Battle of Blood River — its Zulu name is “Income” — is fought on December 16 against invading Boers. The day is currently celebrated in South Africa as Heroes Day.

Joseph White, an Afro–Cuban, is born. After studying violin at the Conservatory of Paris, he goes on to receive acclaim throughout Europe and Brazil. He plays before such heads of state as Napoleon III of France, Charles III of Spain and Dom Pedro II of Brazil who gives White the famous Betts Stad violin in appreciation of his superior talent.

The Boer Republic is founded in Natal, South Africa.

1839
Samuel Ringgold Ward, an African becomes an agent for the American Anti–Slavery Society.

Fifty–three Africans, illegally enslaved in Cuba, are led by Sengbe Pieh (popularly known as Joseph Cinque), the son of an Upper Mende African chief, in mutiny aboard the Spanish schooner  La Amistad (i.e., Friendship) and are captured by a United States warship. They are defended by John Quincy Adams before the Supreme Court which declares them free. In 1841 those who are still alive return to their native Sierra Leone. In 1997 Hollywood released a con- troversial and historically inaccurate film version of Sengbe' s mutiny. 

The British fight the Opium War with the Chinese over the “right” to import the dangerous drug for Chinese consumption in ever–increasing quantities.

General Samuel Armstrong, founder of Hampton Institute is born.

Seminoles and their African allies are shipped from Tampa Bay, Florida, to Oklahoma.

Guatemala wins its independence from Spain.

Robert Smalls, the African Civil War hero and Reconstruction Congressman, is born at Beaufort, South Carolina.

The Liberty Party, the first anti–slavery political party, is organized at a convention in Warsaw, New York. Two black abolitionists, Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet, are among earliest supporters of the new political party.

A group of 216 American Africans emigrate to Port–of–Spain, Trinidad. By 1847, 1,307 have come from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. By 1848, all but 148 have either died or returned to the United States.

1840
In the U.S., there are 2,873,648 American Africans, 16.8 percent of population; 386,293 are free. Ninety–three percent of free Africans in the North live in states where they are excluded from voting. This census reports that “mental illness is 11 times higher among free Africans than among slaves.” The report is proven to be notoriously biased and false, but U.S. govern- ment refuses to correct it.

Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe–Coburg–Gotha.

“Manifest Destiny” as a belief causes Americans to think it the will of God that there be an ultimate voluntary union within the United States of all suitable states. Between 1844–1848, Texas, California and Oregon are added to the United States, and questions are raised over the possible acquisition of Cuba, Mexico and other Central American territories, whose popul- ations are “but little removed above the Negro.” See Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny (1963), for a thorough analysis of the influence of this concept on American history.

The National Anti–Slavery Standard is founded in New York City.

James G. Birney, running for President on Liberty Party ticket, gets 7,069 votes.

One hundred sixty Africans emigrate from Philadelphia to Trinidad.

Seyyid Said moves the capital of his Omani Empire from Arabia to Zanzibar. Development of trade routes from the coast of East Africa into the interior results in a large increase in the trade in slaves and ivory.

The public schools in Cleveland, Ohio, are integrated. This is not the case in Cincinnati and Columbus.

1841
Frederick Douglass makes his first anti–slavery speech in Nantucket and becomes an agent for the New England Anti–Slavery Society. Later he is mobbed in Boston for his anti–slavery agitation.

The Cherokees prohibit teaching any black people to read or write who are not of Cherokee blood.

William Henry Harrison, a Whig from Virginia, is inaugurated the ninth U.S. President.

Cuba, which has approximately 436,495 Africans in chains, Puerto Rico and Brazil are the last three colonies in the western hemisphere to continue to permit slavery.

William Alexander Leidesdorff, who has Danish and African parents, passes as white and becomes a businessman in New Orleans. In this same year, Leidesdorff migrates to San Francisco where he operates the first steamship line in the area and starts several public schools in the city. President James K. Polk appoints him as a Vice–Consul in 1846. Later, it is learned that Leidesdorff is African. Today, a street in San Francisco bears his name.

Madison Washington leads 134 slaves aboard the Creole, sailing from Richmond, Virginia, to New Orleans, in a revolt and forces the ship to dock at Nassau in the Bahamas, where a British court frees them.

Horace Greeley of “Go West, young Man, Go West”–fame publishes the New York Tribune.

From the Maderia Islands, off the Northwest coast of Africa, 4,312 Portuguese enter Guyana.  Between 1835 and 1881, 40,971 Madeiran Portuguese enter the West Indies with the largest number, 32,216, going to Guyana.

John Tyler, a Whig from Virginia, becomes the tenth U.S. President upon the death of Presi- dent Harrison.

The first batch of immigrants from Sierra Leone arrives in Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica. The greatest number of African laborers are acquired from slaves liberated off the West African coast and landed directly in the British West Indies. By 1867 Trinidad receives 8,864, Guyana 14,060 and Jamaica 11,391.

The first passenger train starts its run on the Erie Railroad and connects Chicago and New York.

The Reverend James W.C. Pennington, a graduate of the University of Heidelberg, publishes a Textbook on the Origin and History of the Colored People.

Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first African to serve a full term in U.S. Senate, is born a slave in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

Africans in Cuba represent 58.5% of population; 152,838 are free and 436,495 are enslaved.

1842
The New England Freedom Association is founded in Boston with the aim to “extend a helping hand to all who may bid adieu to whips and chains.”  In the same year in Detroit, there is formed the Colored Vigilance Committee headed first by William Lambert and later by George de Baptiste.

Robert Brown Elliott, Reconstruction congressman, is born in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island leads to extension of suffrage to African people.

The Emancipator and Free American is published for two years in Boston.

In Guyana about 15,000 ex–slaves own 4,506 acres of land; in 1848 this increases to 40,000 ex–slaves on 17,000 acres divided into 9,979 small holdings. By 1851 there are 11,152 free- holds in Guyana.

Capture of George Latimer in Boston precipitates first of several famous fugitive slave cases which embitter North and South. Boston abolitionists raise enough money to purchase Latimer from his master.

By this year minstrelsy in black face has become a distinctive form of American entertainment.

Queen’s College is founded by the Anglican Church in Guyana.

Uruguay abolishes slavery.

The New York Philharmonic Society is founded.

Heyday of Dickens’ Place in the “Five Points” area of New York City (Pete Williams is the African American proprietor), where all–African shows are presented.

Violence erupts betweeen Irish and African coal miners in Pennsylvania.

Augustus Wattles, philanthropist, founds Emlen Institute for African youth in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1858 it is moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and later, in 1873, it moves to Warminster in the same county.

1843
At an all–African convention meeting in Buffalo, New York, Henry Highland Garnet calls for armed resistance to slavery in a speech titled “Let Your Motto Be Resistance!”

Martin Robison Delany* starts his newspaper, The Mystery, in Pittsburgh. By 1852 and after the following papers are in existence. The Colored American, The Struggler, The National Watchman (T. Van Rensseleer), The Demonsthenian Shield, TheNational Reformer, The Palladium of Liberty, The Disfranchised American, The Colored Citizen, The Watchman, The Excelsior, The Christian Herald, The Farmer, The Impartial Citizen, The Northern Star, The North Star, The Anglo-African, The Colored man’s Journal, The New York Phalanx. See Index for additional information on these and other African American newspapers and journals. See also Ronald E. Wolseley, The Black Press in the U.S.A. (1971); Frederick Detweiler, The Negro Press in the United States (1968); and Theodore G. Vincent, Voices of a Black Nation: Political Journalism in the Harlem Renaissance (1973).

*NOTE: Delany's middle name is Robison not Robinson as misreported in this link. Watch for other fact and spelling errors.

Teixeira E. Sousa publishes the first Brazilian novel, Filha do Pescador (The Fisherman’s Daughter).

Since many of the first settlers of the Willamette Valley frontier settlements in Oregon are white Southerners, they add to the 1843 provisional constitution an article which expels Afri- cans from the state. George W. Bush, an African, is refused settlement there, so he settles in the Puget Sound area, near Seattle. See E. Mumford, Seattle’s Black Victorians (1980).

William Wells Brown, an African, begins his anti–slavery lecture career.

The U.S. and Great Britain agree to patrol the West Coast of Africa to intercept ships still engaged in the slave trade. Between 1848–1852, the U.S. Navy captures 19 slave ships.

The first organized white minstrel show, the Virginia Minstrels, performs at the Bowery Amphi- theatre in New York City.

The British annex the Natal Republic in South Africa.

Jacob Dodson, an American African, accompanies John C. Frémont on his expedition in search of a new pass through the high Sierras.

Chinese immigration is suggested for the British West Indies to increase its labor force.  Chinese labor has been used in Cuba from the early nineteenth century. In 1853 Chinese labor starts to enter the British West Indies. In 1854 Trinidad receives 988; Guyana, 647; Jamaica, “one shipload from the Chinese ports of Namoa and Whampoa.”  Because of high costs and mortality, this project is abandoned.

Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree in 1797, the first African woman to take the platform as an anti–slavery lecturer, leaves New York after having a divine revelation and begins speak- ing on emancipation and women’s rights.

African men participate in a national political gathering for the first time at the Liberty Party’s Convention in Buffalo, New York. Samuel R. Ward leads Convention in prayer; Henry Highland Garnet is a member of the nominating committee; Charles B. Ray is one of the Convention secretaries.

Because of the ill–treatment, sickness and mortality of the East Indian indentured laborers, many of those Indians who survive their indenture in West Indies return to India. See Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881–1905 (1981).

1844
In this year there are as many as 12,348 African artisans in Barbados; 17,496 in Jamaica; 5,987 in Guyana; 2,521 in Antigua.

The Dominican Republic is independent after this date.

James Knox Polk, a Democrat from North Carolina, is inaugurated the 11th U.S. President.

The Afro–French novelist Alexandre Dumas (père), who is born in 1803, publishes The Three Musketeers. In 1845 he completes The Count of Monte Cristo.

In Haiti, Santiago Basora, who was born in Africa, and other Africans oppose whites who are intent on restoring slavery in the young republic. But, after several weeks of debate, Haitian president Tomás Bobadilla again declares slavery illegal.

The Liberty Party’s candidate for President of the U.S., James Birney, who is running for the second time, polls 60,000 votes.

Placido, an African and one of Cuba’s greatest poets, participates in a revolt and is executed for his involvement.

The Cleveland Herald comes out against Ohio’s Black Laws (see John Malvin's Biography and the account of the incident of two runaway slaves, Alexander Williams and John Houston). 

1845–1875
Sir Theophilus Shepstone, on the behalf of Britain, introduces system of racial separation throughout Natal, South Africa.

1845
To stop the growing economic rivalry between African and white skilled laborers, Georgia makes it a misdemeanor for an African mechanic to contract for the repair or the erection of buildings. The riots against black people during the ‘30s and ‘40s in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, DC. are due mainly to the intense rivalry and ill-feelings between white and African American artisans.

The U.S. Naval Academy opens at Annapolis, Maryland.

The first African formally admitted to the bar, Macon B. Allen, passes examination at Worchester, Massachusetts.

Texas is annexed by the United States, against the vigorous opposition of the abolitionists.

Frederick Douglass lectures in Great Britain and publishes his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Martin Donato, a free African residing in Plaquemine Brule, Louisiana, dies and leaves an estate of 89 slaves, 4,500 arpents of land, and personal property valued at $46,000.

The publication of Les Cenelles, an anthology of French verse by African American poets in New Orleans.

Afrikaners settle on the independent land of the Griquas, which results in open warfare. Again Britain intervenes on the side of the Boers.

Repression of the slave trade to Cuba begins.

1846–1848
The seventh War of Resistance in South Africa (also known as the War of the Axe) erupts.

1846
British Sugar Duties Act sweeps away prohibitory duties on refined sugar from foreign sources, abolishes existing discriminations against slave–grown sugar, and provides for a rapid reduc- tion in the preference given to colonial sugar by the equalization of duties placed on foreign and British colonial produce. In response to the request of British West Indians, this equalization does not in fact take place until 1854. See Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1966).

Norbert Rillieux, an African, makes, while chief engineer of the Louisiana Sugar Refining Company, a most important contribution to the advance of the sugar industry by his invention of an evaporation pan that revolutionized the refining of raw sugar in the 1840’s. Sugar was a major industry in the South. Previous to Rillieux's invention, cane was fed into large presses that crushed the moisture from the stalks. After this slow process of evaporation, sugar was obtained from the juices. Eventually his machine was used throughout the sugar processing industry. He establishes the scientific principles that form the basis of all modern industrial evaporation. Today the Rillieux process is also used in making condensed milk, soap, gelatin and glue.

"The birth record on file in the City Hall of New Orleans describes the birth of a son to an engineer and a slave on his plantation. "Norbert Rillieux, quadroon libre, natural son of Vincent Rillieux and Constance Vivant. Born March 17, 1806. Baptized in St. Louis Cathedral by Pere Antoine." It is not known whether the child was specially freed or whether his mother was already free, but the latter is the more probable. Norbert Rillieux was a free man in New Orleans in the Early 18th century. The term quadroon was commonly used to mean any person who was more than half white. There are indications that Norbert Rillieux was one-eighth colored blood. The fact that the baptism took place in the cathedral and that the father's surname was given him and not the mother's may have been usual for such affiliation between a slave owner and the women at that time.

"The father, Vincent Rillieux, was an engineer and inventor. A steam-operated cotton baling press which was installed in a cotton warehouse on Poudras Street was one of his inventions of sufficient merit to be mentioned in the notes published at the time of his son's death. The father recognized the boy's ability at an early age and sent Norbert to Paris to be educated. This was not unusual as many well-to-do Louisiana quadroons of the time were educated in France."

The Mexican War begins and is denounced by abolitionists as an imperialistic war to extend slavery.

The Oregon Territory is annexed.

The Twelve Knights of Tabor, a secret revolutionary organization of the Underground Railroad, is formed.

1847
De Bow’s Review advocates industrialization of the South and the employment of non–slave- holding whites instead of African Americans, to keep them, the whites, from the danger of becoming “abolitionists.”

William Howard Day, an African American graduates from Oberlin College and settles in Cleveland.

First locomotive west of Chicago beings its run.

The National Era is published in Washington, DC.

Public schools for U.S. Africans have been established in 15 counties of New York State, reporting a combined enrollment of 5,000 pupils and an annual budget of $17,000.

The Free Soil Party, composed of anti–slavery Democrats, Whigs and Liberty Party men, gets 291,263 votes on a “free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men” platform.  Even though the party’s candidate, Martin Van Buren, fails to carry a single state or win any electoral votes, it does manage a “moral triumph”  in Ohio in the repeal of the “Black Laws”  which have lain like a canker on the state’s statute books.

TheRam’s Horn, edited by Willis A. Hodges and Thomas Van Renseelaer, is published in New York City until 1848.

The Constitution of Illinois restricts “the benefits of the School Law to white children, stipul- ating the word white throughout the Act so as to make clear the intention of the legislators.”

Oscar Crosby and the original party of Mormon pioneers settle in the Great Salt Lake Valley in Utah.

Liberia, which currently encompasses an area of 38,250 square miles and has a population of 2,180,000* is declared an independent Republic by President Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a native Virginian.

*These national statistics are based on 1984 estimates given in The World Almanac and  Book of Facts–1986, (Cleveland: Newspaper Enterprise, Inc., 1985). Statistical data on other African and Caribbean nations are taken from the same source.

The North Star newspaper, edited by Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delany, begins publi- cation on December 3 in Rochester, New York. In 1851 it changes its name to Frederick Douglass’ Paper and continues publishing until August 1863.

The Dred Scott case begins in a St. Louis Court.

1848
William and Ellen Craft escape from slavery in Georgia. Ellen impersonates a hard–of–hearing slaveholder and William acts as her servant in one of the most dramatic slave escapes in U.S. history.

In the Mexican Cession, the New Mexico and California Territories are annexed by the U.S.

An African American convention on education is held in Cleveland, Ohio, and issues these resolutions . . .

British government proclaims its sovereignty in South Africa is over all territory between the Orange and Vaal Rivers.

Saunders Jackson joins John C. Frémont’s fourth expedition to find mountain passes for a Pacific Railroad. James P. Beckwourth signs on as Frémont’s chief scout.

Another year of disturbance in Europe: France and Rome become Republics. The Pan–Slavic Conference takes place at Prague. All Germany is united in a parliament at Frankfort. German unity is destroyed, however, by the King of Prussia.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) publishes with Friedrich Engels the Communist Manifesto. In 1867 he publishes Volume I of his Das Kapital; Volumes II and III are published posthumously by Engels between 1885 and 1894. See Herbert W. Vilakazi, “Was Karl Marx a Black Man?”  in the Monthly Review, June 1980; and Carlos Moore, Were Marx and Engels White Racists? (ca. 1970).

1849
The Ohio Legislature finally authorizes the establishment of schools for African American children at public expense.

The “Gold Rush” to California involves several African prospectors.

Avery College for Africans is incorporated at Alleghany City, Pennsylvania. In 1863 George B. Vashon becomes its principal.

Benjamin Roberts files the first school integration suit on behalf of his daughter, Sarah, who had been denied admission to “white” schools in Boston. Massachusetts Supreme Court rejects the suit and establishes the controversial “separate but equal” precedent. The Massachusetts legislature does not abolish separate schools until April 28, 1855.

Charles Sumner publishes his Argument against the Constitutionality of Separate Colored Schools in the Case of Sarah C. Roberts v. the City of Boston.

J.W.C. Pennington publishes The Fugitive Blacksmith in London.

Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland. She later returns nineteeen times to the South to liberate over three hundred slaves.

Writing in his The North Star, Frederick Douglass opposes separate schools for Africans . . .

“It is very clear to us that the only way to remove prejudice, and to command the respect of our white fellow citizens, is to repudiate, in every form, the idea of our inferiority, by main- taining our right to civil, social, and political equality with them. . . . There is no reason, nor can there be any reason why a colored child should not be taught in the same schools with white children. . . . Both are in need of instruc tion, and both possess the capacity for it; and for one class to deny to the other any right of educational privilege, on complexional grounds, is an insult offered to . . . God.”
Britain lays down the “Warden Line” in which a large area of the Orange Free State in South Africa is “presented” to the Boers.

Zachary Taylor, a Whig from Virginia, is inaugurated the 12th President of the United States.

The British Parliament repeals the Navigation Acts which have been in existence since the second half of the seventeenth century.

1850
In the U.S. there are 3,638,808 American Africans, 15.7 percent of population; 434,495 are free.  Of the 3,204,313 slaves, approximately 400,000 live in cities and towns. Approximately 11.2 percent of African population is of mixed blood. During this year a prime field–hand sells for $1,600. Major products of slave labor are valued at $98,603,720 for cotton; $13,982,686 for tobacco; $12,378,850 for rice; $2,540,179 for molassess — a total of $136,505,435.

The Compromise of 1850 is adopted by Congress as a formula to settle differences between the North and South. It provides for no interference with slavery in the District of Columbia, which Henry Clay declares “inexpedient,” or  with the interstate slave trade, and strengthens the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Many fugitives in the North flee to Canada for sanctuary. Mass resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law develops. . . . 

Jenny Lind, the celebrated Swedish soprano, arrives in New York.

California is admitted as the 31st state in the Union.

Parliament House is burned in Montreal, Canada.

Charles L. Reason is named professor of belles lettres and French at Central College, McGrawville, New York. White college has two other African American professors, William G. Allen and George B. Vashon.

Millard Fillmore, a New York Whig, becomes the 13th U.S. President after the death of Zachary Taylor.

An Ohio State Convention of Colored Citizens is held.

Aaron Ashworth, an African living in what are now Orange and Jefferson Counties, Texas, owns 2,570 head of cattle.

The Sentinel, edited by West A. Hamilton, begins publication in Washington, DC.

Wild Cat, a Seminole, and two Africans, Abraham and Louis Pacheo, can no longer tolerate their situation after the Seminole people have been forced to migrate to Oklahoma. The govern- ment promises them protection, peace and land. Wild Cat, the Seminole chief, goes to Wash- ington to accept that promise. He brings back the Fugitive Slave Law. African blood has filled too many Seminole veins to permit them the peace they have been promised. Wild Cat lays his plans with the Africans and continues the exodus into Mexico.

Slave conspiracies spring up like a contagion in the South. Southern newspapers report insur- rections in Missouri, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana and North Carolina.

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave appears with help of Olive Gilbert.

1850–1852
The eigth War of Resistance — the War of Umlanjeni — results in more land conquests by the colonizers in South Africa.

1851
In Boston, Shadrach, a fugitive slave, is rescued from jail, and another fugitive, Thomas Sims, is returned to slavery.

Napoleon III becomes Emperor of France.

“Jerry McHenry” is rescued from jail in Syracuse.

In South Africa, a British attack on Moletsane’s villages on Mt. Vieroet is led by Warden.  With the help of Moshoeshoe the British are crushingly defeated.

At Christiana, Pennsylvania, armed free American Africans resist kidnappers and escape to Canada.

Frederick Douglass turns to political action, joining the Liberty Party.

The first underseas telegraph cable is laid between France and England.

William Howard Day’s The Alienated American starts publishing in Cleveland, Ohio; the paper continues publishing until 1856.

Martin R. Delany enters Harvard Medical School.

Al–Hajj Omar (1794–1864) starts his jihad, or holy war, on the upper Niger. With the use of firearms traded to him by Europeans at the coast, he creates the powerful Tokolor Empire.

Louis M. Putnam publishes The Colored Man’s Journal in New York City until 1856.

At the 18th annual meeting of the American Anti–Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass breaks with Garrison over the issue of moral force vs. political action.

The African abolitionist William C. Nell publishes Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812, which is the first extensive work on the history of the African in America’s wars.

The large–scale East Indian immigration to West Indies resumes.

1852
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, published in previous years as a serial in the anti–slavery newspaper, the National Era, appears in book form. In this novel she writes, in defense of the African’s right to protect his liberation from oppression by any means necessary, that . . .

“If it had been only a Hungarian youth, now, bravely defending in some mountain fastness the retreat of fugitives escaping from Austria into America, this would have been sublime heroism; but as it was a youth of African descent, defending the retreat of fugitives through America into Canada, of course we are too well instructed and patriotic to see any heroism in it; and if any of our readers do, they must do it on their own private responsibility. When despairing Hungarian fugitives make their way, against all the search–warrants and authorities of their lawful government, to America, press and political cabinet ring with applause and welcome. When despairing African fugitives do the same thing, — it is — what is it?” (A little more than 100 years later, in 1954, the same question will be asked repeatedly, but no answer will be forthcoming.) Selling over a million copies in two years, and dramatized for stage, the book has enormous influence. In Italy, the working classes are so stirred by Il zio Tom, that the Vatican places it upon its Index “as subversive of established authority.”

Martin R. Delany publishes The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States. In this book he argues for practical education for African children  . . .