Time Line: African American History
1619-1900
Tennessee events are marked with the letters “TN” in
teal.
|
1619 --- Nineteen
Africans are shipped to 1624 --- African
slaves are imported to the Hudson River Valley in New York. 1638 Feb. 2 Eight years after the settlement
of Boston, a ship named Desire arrives
in Boston with its first African slaves. --- Although slavery is never technically illegal in the colonies, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay are the first colonies to authorize slavery through
legislation as part of the 1641 Body of Liberties. They will be followed by Connecticut (1650),
Virginia (1661), Maryland (1663), New York and New Jersey (1664), South
Carolina (1682), Rhode Island & Pennsylvania (1700), North Carolina (1715),
and Georgia (1750).
1645 --- The
triangular slave trade begins about this time—a for sugar, tobacco, and liquor; these products are
then taken to New England to be sold for lumber (including masts for the ships)
and manufactured goods. Newport, Rhode
Island, and Salem, Massachusetts, will become major ports during this period,
which marks the beginning of the extensive introduction of African slaves into
the British West Indies to work on the sugar plantations.
In some respects it can be considered the first industrial revolution, in which
profits result directly from the use of cheap labor. [Hunt]
1661 --- The Barbados Slave Code establishes a legal base for slavery in Barbados, denying slaves even the basic rights guaranteed under English common law, including the right to life, and
allows the slaves' owners to treat their slaves as they wish, without fear of
reprisal. Thus the West Indies begins the process of making slavery both African
and brutal by statute. [Hunt]
--- From 1660 to about 1710, slavery converts slowly to the West Indies model. At first the distinction between slavery and
indentured servitude are imprecise. As the planter class develops, though, slavery
is considered essential in establishing such cash crops as rice in South Carolina.
Within 50 years, Charles Town (Charleston), South Carolina, will become the
largest mainland slave market. [Berlin]
1664 --- As the English take control
of
--- King Philip’s
War begins as population growth and new leadership in the 1680 --- By the third
decade of the 18th century, a system of organized agricultural slavery is well established in the 1688 Feb. 18 The first American protest against slavery is organized by Quakers
in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
1696 --- North American colonies.
1710 --- Slaves make up more than 17%
(1/6) of the population of Philadelphia. 1712
Apr. 7 Nine
whites are killed during a New York slave revolt; 21 slaves are executed for murder.
June 20 Oglethorpe,
who intends to create a classless society, wants to reserve the land and the
jobs for English labor. Oglethorpe and the other Trustees interview all potential
colonists, choosing carpenters, farmers, bakers, and other tradesmen who can
build the colony into an efficiently functioning settlement. Despite the founders’ declared intention of
providing a haven for debtors in English prisons, not one such individual is
among the original colonists.
1739 Sept. 9 Slaves revolt in
1741 March A series of suspicious fires and
rumors of slave conspiracies cause a widespread panic in New York: 31 black slaves
and five whites are executed as conspirators.
1749 May 19 The Georgia
Trustees petition King George II to permit them to repeal the colony’s prohibition
against slavery. By October he agrees to
the request.
1751
Jan. 1 Slavery becomes legal in
Georgia. 1752 --- Landon Carter, a isolation, uncertainties, and fears of the
planter class. His journals, written
until his death in 1778, also record the Colonies’ movement toward revolution. [Hunt]
1753 September John Woolman, a New Jersey Quaker, writes
in his Journal that he has embarked on a campaign to convince other
Friends to give up their slaves.
1758 Mar. 15 In order not to discourage the settlement of skilled
laborers in the state, Georgia prohibits slaves from working as carpenters,
masons, bricklayers, plasterers, or joiners.
Dec. 25 Jupiter Hammon, a New York slave,
publishes the poem, “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential
Cries.” 1770 Mar. 5 Runaway
slave Crispus Attucks is the first person killed in the Boston Massacre.
1773 Jan. 6 Sept. 1
1775 --- The first African American
Masonic group is organized. April The first abolitionist society
in the Nov. 16 Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of
Virginia, issues Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation,
the first large-scale emancipation of slaves in
American history (when he offers freedom to Virginia’s slaves if they will
agree to aid the British cause by serving in the Army. Within a month, Dec. 14 In
the Virginia
Declaration the Virginia House of
Burgesses declares Dunmore’s Proclamation “encouragement to a general
insurrection” and threatens all rebelling slaves with a death sentence. July 4 A
section denouncing the slave trade in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence
by the Continental Congress
on July 1, when both Northern and Southern slave-holding delegates object; it does
not appear in the final draft, adopted on this date.
1777 July 8 A Vermont constitution is published. [Although calling itself a state, Vermont will not be admitted to
statehood until March 4, 1791 – it is more of an independent republic at this time],
and becomes the first American colony to abolish slavery; a number of others
will follow over the next ten years. However, many of the state emancipation
laws specify only gradual abolition, beginning with the second or third
generation after the law takes effect.
Slaves are listed in the Pennsylvania census through 1850. [Hunt] 1779 --- Around
5,000 African American soldiers participate in the American Revolutionary War.
Dec. TN Robert, James
Robertson’s black servant, is among the small party of explorers who select the
--- In Commonwealth v. Jennison, slavery is declared unconstitutional in Massachusetts. Chief Justice William Cushing
1787 Sept. 17 Although the Continental Congress excludes slavery from the
Northwest Territory, the U.S. Constitution (with three
clauses recognizing slavery) is sent to the states for ratification. The new Constitution includes the Fugitive Slave
Clause, the three-fifths clause, and a
clause prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade before 1808. [Foner,
Forever Free]
November The
African Methodist Episcopal church is founded in are uncomfortable with the idea of
forming independent (not merely segregated) congre-gations. A.M.E. Founder Richard Allen chooses
Methodism as the basis for his church because it emphasizes “the plain and
simple gospel,” as well as a strong commitment to education and self-help. When
this group unites with churches in other cities in 1816, Richard Allen is
elected the first bishop of the A.M.E. Church. African Americans are creating their own national
institutions long before slavery comes to an end. [Hunt]
--- Benjamin
Franklin and Benjamin Rush join the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and help to write its constitution. The
organization, established in 1784, takes an active roll in
litigation on behalf of free blacks.
1789 Apr. 30 George Washington is inaugurated
President (1789-1797). 1790 --- Thomas Jefferson proposes a Southwest Ordinance similar to the Northwest Ordinance, but the legislation passed by Congress estab Congress establishes no prohibition on slavery in U.S. territory south of the Ohio River.
1791 ---
TN The population of the Tennessee Territory is 35,691; of
those, 3,417 (9.6 percent) residents are black.
March President
George Washington appoints Benjamin Banneker, an African American scientist, to the commission
surveying the District of
Columbia.
Aug. 22 The Haitian war of independence
begins when over 100,000 slaves rise up against the greatly outnumbered French
planters. Revolutionary leader Toussaint
L’Ouverture ultimately forms a strategic alliance with the French but maintains control
of the island, becoming military dictator.
1793 Feb. 12 The first
Fugitive Slave Law requires runaway slaves to be returned to their owners,
wherever they are found. 1794 Jan. 16 TN Robert “Black Bob” Renfro, still a slave, is licensed
by tavern.
(Bob, the slave of Joseph Renfro, had come to Middle Tennessee on John
Donelson’s historic river voyage, leaving the group near present-day Clarksville on 12
April 1780.) Bob will be involved in
several precedent-setting court cases, winning at least three cases before
white juries. [Ellis]
June 20 Eli
Whitney patents the cotton gin, making cotton both easier and faster to process and revitalizing the demand for
slave labor in the cotton fields.
1797 Mar. 4 John
Adams is inaugurated the nation’s second President (1797-1801). 1800 --- TN Of
Nashville’s 345 inhabitants, 154 are black. [Goodstein] Only fourteen of
them are free; by 1810 there are 130 free xxxxxxxxxxxxxxblacks in Nashville. [Lovett]
Aug. 30 Gabriel Prosser, a Virginia slave,
gathers an army of discontented slaves (estimated at 1000-4000 individuals) and
prepares to attack Richmond. They are
foiled by informants and severe weather.
Prosser and others are captured and hanged.
1801 Mar. 4 Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated the
nation’s third President (1801-1809). Nov. 10 TN Nashvillian “Black Bob” Renfro is granted emancipation from his owner Robert Searcy by an act of the Fourth
xxxxxxxxxxxxxTennessee General Assembly. (Early
Tennessee legislatures often sanctioned the voluntary manumission of slaves by
their xxxxxxxxxxxxxowners.) [Ellis]
1803 April Toussaint L’Ouverture, leader of the Haitian slave rebellion, is tricked by Napoleon into leaving Haiti and dies in a French prison. His
lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, carries on the struggle against Napoleon's generals, Leclerc
and Rochambeau. Hundreds of people die in the fighting; shocking
atrocities are committed by both sides.
Apr. 30 Napoleon, understanding that the
loss of Louisiana Territory (which is
no longer useful to him) to the U.S.
Nov. 28 Rochambeau surrenders. Dessalines
declares it will forever after haunt American plantation owners
with the specter of violent overthrow; an early response will be the American
Colonization Society (1816). [Hunt]
1807 Mar. 25 The
British Parliament abolishes the slave trade.
Although Congress will also ban the importation of slaves into the
U.S. after January 1, 1808, slave shipments to
America will continue largely unchallenged until 1859.
1809 Mar. 4 James
Madison is inaugurated the nation’s fourth President (1809-1817). 1811 Jan. 8-10 suppressed by federal troops.
1815 --- About 2,000,000 Africans now
live in color.
1816 July 27 Federal troops
are sent to destroy a Maroon (runaway-slave) settlement in Dec. 21 The American Colonization Society is
established in includes James Monroe,
Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster – consists of
both philanthropists and slave owners who, for reasons ranging from altruism to
fear, want to enable blacks to return to
1817 Mar. 4 James
Monroe is inaugurated the nation’s fifth President (1817-1825). --- Richard Allen’s policies of the American Colonization Society. Three thousand people attend.
1820 Mar. 6 The Missouri Compromise settles the issue of slavery in
the areas obtained by the 1822 --- The May 30 Denmark Vesey, a
carpenter and former slave who bought his own freedom in 1800, designs one of
the most complex slave plots in history, involving thousands of African
Americans in the Aug. 2 Illinois passes a
referendum declaring the state free; nevertheless, a complex series of
indenture and apprenticeship laws along with frequent kidnappings of black workers will maintain
a system not much different from slavery for many years.
1825 Mar. 4 John Quincy
Adams becomes the nation’s 6th President (1825-1829). 1826 --- By this time, 2,638 African
Americans have migrated to 1827 Mar. 16 Freedom’s
Journal is published in before the Civil War.
1829 Mar. 4 Andrew
Jackson is inaugurated the nation’s 7th President (1829-1837). Aug. 10 Following a
race riot in Cincinnati, Ohio, more than 1,000 African Americans leave the city for Canada.
Sept. 20 About
40 delegates from various states meet in Philadelphia for the first national African
American convention to discuss xxxxxxxxxxxxx the abolition of slavery.
1831 Jan. 1 William
Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of the Liberator, a weekly abolitionist journal, signaling the
emergence of a more militant attitude within the
anti-slavery movement.
Aug. 21 Nat Turner, born during Gabriel
Prosser’s slave rebellion (1800), leads a band of 40 slaves from house to house
through Southampton County, Virginia, stabbing, shooting,
or clubbing every white person they find.
They kill at least 55 people before being caught and executed. Virginia and North Carolina courts will
execute more than 50 people charged with participating, and vengeful mobs,
mobilized by panic, kill 200 more.
December The Virginia legislature considers a
petition to emancipate Virginia’s slaves. A motion to reject it outright is defeated.
In the intense debate that follows, one legislator declares
slavery “the greatest curse that God is His wrath ever inflicted upon
a people.” In the climate of fear created
by the Nat Turner rebellion, and facing the growing belief that slavery may be a hindrance to economic development,
the legislature earnestly
debates a gradual emancipation statute. xxxxxxxxxxxxx [Hunt] “The arguments expressed during the Virginia
slavery debate...profoundly [shape] the development of future justifications for slavery. Faced with an opportunity tto abolish slavery in Virginia,
what [results] instead [is] the xxxxxxxxxxxxx ideological cornerstone
of the Southern Confederacy.” [Curtis]
1832 --- The Nullification
Controversy pits President Jackson against South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun in a debate
about the rights of a state to nullify federal law. The first state to have over-planted its soil
to the point where its productivity has diminished, South Carolina (concerned
that Congress might also claim the power to terminate slavery) declares the increasing
federal tariffs null and void and threatens to secede.
Dec. 10 justify neither nullification nor secession, is his confrontational
response to South Carolina’s action. The
President’s tough stand on the issue demonstrates his confidence in his strong
bipartisan support from both sides of the North-South divide. [Hunt] 1833 May 18 TN Birth of Davidson County Representative Sampson W. Keeble. The first African
American elected to the Tennessee xxxxxxxxxxxxxxGeneral Assembly, Keeble was born a slave
in Rutherford County, Tennessee.
--- John C. Calhoun and Henry
Clay persuade Congress to pass the Compromise Tariff, which slowly lowers the duties
on cotton. Dec. 3 The first
classes are held at Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the earliest colleges to
admit African American students. The first black students are admitted in the
fall of 1835; by 1860 one-third of its students are black. Oberlin also pioneers “the joint education of
the sexes,” enrolling both males and females from the beginning. In 1862 Oberlin graduate Mary Jane Patterson is
the first black woman to earn a college degree. 1834 May
19 TN --- Black Baptists in River Baptist Association.
1835 --- TN Approximate
birth year of Davidson County Representative Thomas A. Sykes, born a slave in North
Carolina to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxunknown parents.
---
TN The Cherokee census of 1836 --- “Free Frank”
McWorter becomes the first African American to found a town when he records the
plat of June 15 Arkansas is
admitted to the Union as a slave state.
It is positioned to balance Michigan, which enters as a free state on
January 26, 1837. 1837 Mar. 4 Martin Van Buren, a Democrat, defeats
Whig candidate William Henry Harrison to become the nation's 8th
1838 Sept. 3 Twenty-year-old Frederick
Douglass escapes from slavery in Baltimore.
1839 July 2 Slaves, led by Joseph Cinqué,
revolt against the crew of the slave ship Amistad.
When they are captured by the U.S.
Navy two months later, they are
jailed in Connecticut, a state in which slavery is legal.
1840 --- TN Sarah
Estell, a free black businesswoman, opens a successful ice cream parlor and catering business in Nashville,
where she provides banquets for “firemen, church
socials, and political parties.” Sally
Thomas, although still technically a slave, has been permitted to run a laundry
business since 1817. She has used the profits to buy her children’s freedom.
1841 Mar. 4 William Henry Harrison is
inaugurated the nation’s ninth President.
He develops pneumonia during his inauguration and dies a month later. Apr. 6 Although the Constitution does not
provide for the Vice President to succeed to the Presidency in the event of the
President’s death, John Tyler defies a power grab by the cabinet and has
himself sworn in as President (1841-1845).
[Winik] --- The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a lower court’s decision that the Amistad mutineers are the victims of
kidnapping and thus within their rights to secure their freedom in any way
possible. Through private donations, the
35 surviving Africans are able to secure passage back to Africa. --- Captured
Africans on the slave ship Creole,
traveling from to the Bahamas, where the government grants them
asylum and freedom.
1842 --- Joseph Jenkins Roberts
becomes the first non-white governor of 1843 --- Members and clergy of the
Methodist Episcopal Church split from the church over its failure to pass a promised edict
forbidding members to own slaves. The new organization is named the Wesleyan
Methodist Church in America.
--- Although its rules are not
as strict as some members would wish, from its 1784 founding in the United States, the
Methodist Episcopal Church has opposed slavery. When a Georgia bishop becomes a slave owner by marriage, the church splits a second time over the slavery issue, and the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, becomes a separate entity.
1845 --- TN Probable birth year of Shelby County
Representative Thomas F.
Cassels, born in Jackson County,
Ohio. His parents xxxxxxxxxxxxxxare “free persons of
color” in a community that is a busy hub of Underground Railroad activity.
Mar. 3 Florida is admitted to the Union
as a slave state, paired with Iowa, which will enter as a free state on
December 28, 1846. Mar. 4 TN Tennessean
James K. Polk is inaugurated as the nation’s 11th President
(1845-1849). May 3 Macon
B. Allen of Massachusetts becomes the first African American lawyer admitted to the bar.
May 8 The Baptist movement has worked to
maintain an uneasy peace among its members by simply avoiding discussion of the
topic of slavery. However, when an 1840
American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention brings the issue into the open, the
Mission Board is forced to take a stand. When the Board
refuses to accept Georgia’s nomination of a slave-owner to be sent out as a
missionary, 293 Southern leaders representing 365,000 members, meet in Augusta,
Georgia, and agree regretfully to withdraw. This group will form the
Southern Baptist Convention, which eventually grows to be the largest
Protestant denomination in the country. May 23 Frederick
Douglass publishes his biography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. He is 27 years old.
Dec. 11 TN The Tennessee
General Assembly charters the Nashville & Chattanooga Railway. BY 1857-58 Chattanooga is a major
railway hub in the South.
Dec. 29 on the
terms of the Missouri Compromise.
Wisconsin’s admission as a free state on May 29, 1848, is seen as the balance
for Texas. Mexico, never having recognized
Texas independence, declares war on the United States.
1846 --- TN Approximate
birth year of Hamilton County Representative William C. Hodge, born in North Carolina.
Apr. 24 Mexican forces attack American
troops near the Rio Grande, beginning the Mexican War. May 13 The U.S. Congress declares war on --- The Wilmot Proviso is amended to a bill providing
for negotiation of a settlement with Mexico.
A challenge to pro-slavery groups, the Proviso bans slavery in any of
the territory acquired in the Mexican war.
Although the amended bill is passed by the House in 1846 and 1847, the Southern-dominated
Senate blocks it. The effect of the debate
over the Proviso is to intensify the conflict between the North and the South
over slavery. The escalating controversy will lead to Southern secession. The political
debate has shifted subtly from abolitionism to free soil. [Hunt] 1847 July 26 The legislature of Liberia declares itself an independent state. Joseph Jenkins Roberts is elected its first president.
--- The
Free Soil Movement is organized in the abolitionists who are extremely antagonistic toward the extension of slavery
into the territories. Fairly successful
as a third party, it sends two Senators and 14 Representatives to the 31st
Congress. Its membership includes many
northern Whigs and Democrats who are opposed to slavery. By about 1854 most Free-Soilers have merged
with the Republican party.
Feb. 2 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
ends the Mexican War. 1848 May 10 TN Birth of Fayette
County Representative Monroe
W. Gooden near Somerville, Tennessee, to slave Monroe Gooden Sr. and an
unknown mother.
Sept. 19 TN Birth of plantation of BoswelL Baker Degraffenreid in the northern part of the county.
1849 Mar. 5 Zachary Taylor, a Whig, a cousin
of James Madison, and a hero of the Mexican War, is elected 12th President
of the U.S.
--- TN Approximate birth year of Shelby County Representative Leon Howard. Autumn xxxxxxKnowing she will be sold after her owner’s death, Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland. However, she will
return to the South nineteen times, bringing out more than 300 slaves.
1850 --- As Congress
debates the status of slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico, a number
of proposals remain on the table: one is the Wilmot Proviso, which would ban all slavery in that
territory; another is a measure, sanctioned by President Zachary Taylor, to
extend the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific. Senator Stephen A. Douglas is identified with
“Popular Sovereignty,” which eventually emerges as part of the Compromise of
1850. This plan will permit territorial
governments to make their own determinations about slavery. [Hunt] June 3 TN Delegates from nine Southern states meet in
Nashville to discuss their concerns about Northern attitudes relating to
slavery. The Tennessee General Assembly,
opposed to disunion, refuses to send delegates, but individual counties send
101 delegates to the Nashville Convention (sometimes called the Southern
Convention), thus becoming the largest group from any state to participate. The delegates resist the “Fire-Eaters’”
demands for secession but adopt resolutions “asserting the South’s
constitutional rights in the territories and the rights and interests of Texas
in the boundary dispute.” Although the Convention fails to unite the South, it does
call attention to Southern grievances and almost certainly influences the
passage of the Compromise of 1850. [Goodstein]
July 4 Falling ill with gastroenteritis after a 4th of
July celebration, President Zachary Taylor becomes the second President to die
in office. July 10 Millard Fillmore
is inaugurated the nation’s 13th President (1850-1853). Sept. 9-20 President Fillmore
signs the five bills making up the Compromise of 1850, the passage of which is
orchestrated by Stephen Douglas. The
plan will ·
force ·
organize New
Mexico/Arizona and Utah under the rule of “popular sovereignty,” by which each
territory can choose its own response to slavery. Critics protest that it undermines the
Missouri Compromise; ·
admit California to the Union as a free state, despite
the fact that it upsets the 15-15 balance of free and slave states; ·
abolish the sale of slaves (although not the
institution of slavery) in the ·
enact a harsh new
Fugitive Slave Law that penalizes law enforcement officials for failing to
arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave, and that requires fines and
jail terms for anyone providing food or shelter to runaway slaves. Nov. TN Although the Compromise of 1850 reduces the Southern passion for establishing regional unity against the North, fifty delegates from seven southern states meet for a second
Nashville Convention and affirm the right to secede.
1851 June 5 Harriet Beecher Stowe sells Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the National Era for $300. Despite the paper's small circulation,
the story is widely read as copies pass from hand to
hand. After the last (40th) installment
(April 1852), it appears in book form, selling half a million copies by 1857. Neither slavery nor the Fugitive Slave Law ever
recovers its legitimacy.
Oct. 15 Shelby
County Representative Isham
(Isaac) Franklin Norris is born in Tennessee, probably to slave parents.
1852 ---
TN Approximate birth
year of Tipton County Representative John W. Boyd, born in Covington,
Tennessee, to Philip and Sophia Fields Boyd.
--- TN Birth
year of Shelby County Representative William A. Feilds, born near Fisherville, Tennessee. His mother, who was
born in Virginia, is
the slave
of Jean Field Sanford. Researchers are certain William Feilds and John
W. Boyd (above) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxwere
cousins, perhaps even first cousins.
Nov. The
defeat of the Whig candidate, Mexican War hero Winfield Scott, by Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire,
marks the end of Whig party influence in the country. The emerging Republican party, which will take shape over the
next two or three years, will fill its ranks
with Whigs, Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, and disgruntled Northern Democrats Nov. 21 TN Birth date of Hamilton
County Representative Styles
L. Hutchins, born in Lawrenceville, Georgia. His father,
William Dougherty Hutchins, is a free man, who owns his
own Atlanta barbershop. 1853 Mar. 4 Franklin Pierce is inaugurated the
nation’s 14th President (1853-1857). --- William Wells Brown publishes Clotel,
the first novel by a black author. The book is published in London while Brown
is still technically a slave. He
will later write The Escape, the first African American play.
Nov. TN Nelson G. Merry, a former slave, becomes the first Tennessee African American to be ordained and placed over a congregation. He is named moderator (pastor) of the first Colored Baptist Mission on Pearl Street in Nashville, where he has preached since 1848. 1854 May 30 Congress
passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, introduced by Stephen Douglas, although it has been condemned
by xxxxxxxxxxxxxxFrederick Douglass and others in the anti-slavery movement. By permitting residents of Kansas and Nebrasks to
decide for themselves whether to allow
slavery in their territories,
the bill essentially repeals the 1820 Missouri xxxxxxxxxxxxxxCompromise
solutions to many issues (overpopulation, mass production
manufacturing, dreams of
expansion and adventure) lie in the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxWest (which historian
however, the West is dissolving in terrorism (from violent acts by Border Ruffians, John Brown, and others) and
electoral fraud (see 1857 timeline entries on the Lecompton Constitution), and the dream of Jacksonian America is
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxcrumbling. [Hunt]
July 6 The
first official Republican party meeting takes place in
Jackson, Mich., impelled by the feeling of betrayal among
Northern and Northwestern
states after the Kansas-Nebraska Act is approved by Congress. Loyal to the precepts of the Missouri
Compromise, it attracts Free-Soilers and others opposed to slavery and becomes powerful nationally when John C. Frémont (“Free
soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont!”) is nominated for President
in 1856. Four years later Abraham Lincoln
will become the first Republican elected to that office. The power of the new party is not so much in
an anti-slavery agenda (the party never moves beyond the idea of preventing
slavery’s expansion into the west) as in its effectiveness in creating a
cross-sectional alliance between New England, the mid-Atlantic
states, and the old Northwest.
For the first time in American politics, there is a “politicized
North.” [Hunt] 1855 Feb. 26 TN Aug. 25 TN The first train carries passengers (8 miles at 15 mph!) on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad line. 1856 November Although
Democrat James Buchanan wins the popular Presidential voteand survives the electoral college tally, Republican xxxxxxxxxxxxxxcandidate John C. Frémont
comes within two states of defeating him.
It is clear that the Republican
party has become a xxxxxxxxxxxxxxpolitical force to contend
with.
Dec. TN A race riot takes
place in are well-educated and prosperous, tightening
the controls on local African American citizens and forcing free black schools
to close until after the city’s occupation by Union forces in February 1862. --- TN African
American education in Memphis is likewise shut down when local whites forbid
black residents to learn to read. 1857 Mar. 4 James Buchanan is inaugurated the
nation’s 15th President (1857-1861). March The
Supreme Court rules, in Dred Scott v United States and thus has no right to sue or to
claim other rights of citizenship. The decision is a focal point of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1858 Illinois Senate campaign. Although Lincoln loses the election, his
“house divided” speech and the exposure he receives in the debates catapult him
into national prominence. Oct. 19 A Constitutional
Convention meets in Lecompton, capital city of the Kansas Territory, to draft a
state constitution. Pro-slave delegates
push through the Lecompton Constitution protecting
slavery. December away from the polls in protest. News reports of the election stir up the
North against the slave system, and many northern Democrats, including Stephen
A. Douglas, break with the party, voting against President Buchanan’s endorsement
of the document and his recommendation to admit Kansas as a slave state. 1858 --- TN Approximate
birth year of Haywood County Representative Samuel A. McElwee, born into slavery in Madison
County. Jan. 4 Kansas voters,
given an opportunity to reconsider the Lecompton Constitution after voting irregularities are charged in the
earlier referendum, decisively reject it by a vote of 10,226 to 138!
1859 --- The
Clothilde, the last ship to carry slaves to the shipment of slaves. Its captain, Tim Meaher, has made a bet that
he can sneak in a shipload of slaves under cover of darkness. --- TN A
group of African Americans in independent black congregation that is not
organized under the patronage and control of a white church. July 18 TN Birth of Fayette County Representative David F. Rivers, born in Montgomery, Alabama, to Edmonia Rivers, a free
woman of color, and
an unknown father. Oct. 16 John
Brown and his followers (five of the 13 are African American) attack Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia),
in an attempt to free and arm the local
slaves. Brown
becomes a martyr for abolition. Oct. 27 TN The
Louisville & Nashville Railroad line, chartered in 1850, is completed between its two namesake cities, 180 miles
apart. By the
time the Civil War
begins in 1861, the L&N will have laid 269 miles of track. Spanning the Union and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxConfederate lines, it will be of use to both armies. Because of Nashville's early occupation by Union forces, it will
suffer less damage than other railroads and will be positioned to expand quickly after the war. 1860 --- TN Slaves
now constitute one-fourth of Tennessee’s population and about 15% of the national population. Tennessee’s
slaves are valued at $114 million. [Hunt] --- Approximately 300,000 free blacks are living in Southern states, primarily in Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. primarily
in Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina. --- TN Fewer
than 20% of 15.1 slaves.
--- In
this year “only five Northern states, all with tiny black populations, [allow] black men to vote on the same terms as
white.” [Foner] May 16 Abraham
Lincoln receives the Republican party’s nomination for President on the third ballot.
November A
four-way party split causes a messy and complicated election: the Democrats have split into two factions,
represented by John C. Breckinridge and Stephen A.
Douglas; the Whig candidate, John Bell, carries
Dec. 2 In his final speech to Congress, President Buchanan
anticipates the impending Southern Secession, arguing that
secession is clearly unconstitutional (as
opposed to the right of revolution), but that a Union of consent cannot rest on
force. In other words, no state has the
right to oppress another state – if a state secedes, the Union is dead. [Hunt] Dec. 20 In a convention called by John C. Calhoun to consider
secession, South Carolina's delegates vote unanimously to
secede from the Union. This
move, foreshadowed by the demands of the Fire-Eaters (led by Edmund Ruffin,
William Yancey, and others) during the Nashville Convention of 1850, has
intensified in the face of growing Southern opposition to Jacksonian politics
and to Northern abolition and feminist movements. But the issue comes to a head with the Lincoln’s
election, which, to the South, represents a complete breakdown of the political
system. [Hunt] 1861 Jan. 29 Feb. 4 Seven states secede to form the Confederate States of
America. Feb 18 Jefferson
Davis is inaugurated President of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama, two weeks before Lincoln's
inauguration. Mar. 4
Abraham Lincoln is
inaugurated President, with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as Vice President.
Mar. 11 The Confederate States of America – at this time consisting
of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
South Carolina, and Texas – adopts a
Constitution. Apr. 12 Confederate
batteries fire on Unified by their response to this attack on their flag, Republicans and
Democrats in the Northern tier of states suddenly form what would previously have
been an unattainable coalition and come together as Unionists, instantly
uniting against this “treason by force.” [Hunt] Apr. 15 earnest, but nobody expects the conflict to last more than a
few months.
May 24 General
Benjamin F. Butler, in command of and proclaims they can no longer be
returned to their owners. [Foner, Forever
Free] June 8 TN The
Tennessee General Assembly votes to secede from the Union, despite evidence
that many Tennesseans (possibly a majority) are opposed to secession. June 28 TN The Tennessee General Assembly authorizes a draft of free black men into the Confederate army. Most free black men will manage to evade both the Confederate draft and the local sheriffs compelled to enforce it.
Aug. 6 return escaped or confiscated slaves who are working or fighting for the rebel forces.
1862 Feb. 16 TN General Grant accepts the
surrender of Fort Donelson as Union forces breach the Southern defenses and open
a corridor to Nashville. Feb. 21 Nathaniel
Gordon, a slave trader from comments, “For
forty years the slave-trade has been pronounced piracy by law, and to engage in it has been a capital
offense. But the sympathy of the Government and its
officials has been so often on the side of the criminal, and it seemed so
absurd to hang a man for doing at sea that which, in half the
Feb. 23 TN The Confederate flag is lowered from the
Tennessee Capitol as William Driver, a native of Salem, Massachusetts,
and a proud Union supporter, offers his personal flag, which he calls “Old
Glory,” to be flown from the Capitol. March TN Tennessee
Senator Andrew Johnson is appointed military governor and arrives in Nashville
to head the occupation forces. Mar. Congress adopts an article of war forbidding members of the army and navy to return fugitive slaves to their owners. [Berlin] Apr. 16 The
Confederacy issues a draft order, making all healthy white men between the ages of 18 and 35 liable for a three-
year term of military service. By September the upper age limit will be
raised to 45; by October 11, a man owning 20 or more slaves becomes exempt; by
February 1864, the age range will include men between the ages of 17 and 50. --- Congress
abolishes slavery in the “colonization” of freed slaves outside the U.S. [Foner, Forever Free] June 6 TN July 2 TN The Morrill Act allocates
federal land or its monetary value to various states for the teaching of
“agricultural and mechanical” subjects and military training to students. After the Civil War Tennessee will designate
East Tennessee University (renamed the University of Tennessee in 1879) as a
land-grant institution. July 17 Congress passes two acts that change the status of
slaves and anticipate the Emancipation Proclamation.
·
The Second
Confiscation Act frees the slaves of owners who are actively engaged in
rebellion and authorizes military commanders to appropriate those former slaves
as military personnel “in any capacity to suppress the rebellion.” ·
The Militia Act
authorizes the employment of “persons of African descent” in “any military or
naval service for which they may be found competent,” and grants freedom to
those slaves and their families. In
other words, Lincoln can now use black soldiers in the Union Army. Sept. 23 Lincoln’s
preliminary publication of the Emancipation Proclamation is released. While it does not immediately free
all slaves, it provides a forewarning to owners that the
rebellion must end by January 1 or the Proclamation will be signed. It takes a surprisingly
conciliatory tone, offering
aid to states that make provisions for gradual emancipation and referring once
again to Congress’s April 16 appropriation for colonizing freed slaves
somewhere outside the borders of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxthe United States.
Dec. 7 TN Work on over a
three-month period by Union soldiers and hundreds of black workers – free and
slave – who have been conscripted into service in what is probably the first large-scale use of contraband labor in
Tennessee during the war. With insufficient
food, shelter, and clothing, many of these workers will die; most are never
paid. Regrettably, the construction of
Fort Negley becomes a model for future projects, as Union officers, lacking
laborers, impress black men into service and work them in merciless conditions.
[Hunt] Dec. 31 TN On the last day of 1862 Union General William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland challenges General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee at Murfreesboro.
1863 Jan. 1 President
Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
It frees all slaves in regions under Confederate
control and
authorizes the enlistment of black soldiers.
It is important to recognize that it does not outlaw slavery in all
areas of the country. Tennessee, which is
under Union control (and whose constitution will be among the first to ban slavery);
Southern Louisiana, which has remained loyal to the Union; and the border
states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri are exempt from the
Emancipation Proclamation, even though slavery exists in its cruelest forms in
all six states. [See Jan. 2 The Battle of Stones River ends. With 23,000 casualties, it is the second bloodiest battle fought west of the Appalachians during the Civil War with the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. Rosecrans' repulse of two
Confederate attacks and the subsequent
Confederate withdrawal as Union
reinforcements arrive goes a long way toward xxxxxxxrestoring Union morale: Lincoln later writes: "I
can never forget you gave us a hard-earned
victory, which had there been xxxxxxxa defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over."
Mar. 3 The Conscription Act/Enrollment Act
is passed, requiring enrollment of all able-bodied men in the Union Army,
although they can purchase their exemption
by paying $300 or by sending a substitute. Only 46,347 of the 776,892 men receiving
draft notices will actually don a uniform. [Lapham]
May Authority is granted for the
formation of a U.S. Bureau of Colored Troops.
Andrew Johnson, military governor of the occupation forces, drags his
feet about initiating the troops, feeling, among other things, that contraband
labor is too essential to pillage for soldiers. [Hunt] June 20 West Virginia separates itself from
Virginia to become a new Unionist state.
Its constitution bans the introduction of slaves into the state but does
not address the issue of emancipating the slaves already there. Summer TN Nashville has
become a surprisingly dynamic city: it provides medical care, maintenance, and
supplies for the war effort and the railroads; it attracts refugees, both black
and white (including multitudes fleeing Confederate occupation in East
Tennessee, and a huge number of contraband workers and their families); and it supplies
food, rest, and recreation for military personnel, including “a licensed and
medically regulated prostitution district.”
[Hunt] July 4 The
Confederacy is reeling from three major losses: battles at Tullahoma, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg have taken a huge
toll on Southern forces. Many people mistakenly assume the war is nearly over. However, the South is more resilient
and the
July 11-13 A
week after the Battle of Gettysburg, opposition to the draft and its “rich man's exemptions" sparks a riot in New
York City. July 18 The 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, an all-black
unit, attack Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina. Nearly half
the men in
the regiment are killed, wounded, or captured.
Sgt. William H. Carney will become the first African American to receive
the Congressional Medal of Honor for courage under fire. July 30 Confederate
President Davis announces that black soldiers of the USCT will be treated as escaped slaves and returned
to their
owners. war, and not as escaped slaves. [Foner, Forever Free]
Sept. 10 TN The Bureau of U.S. Colored
Troops opens in Tennessee, and the state will see more than 5,000 casualties.
George Luther Stearns, Assistant Adjutant General for the Recruitment of
Colored Troops, is put in charge of recruiting in Tennessee. A fervent abolitionist, Stearns, John Brown’s
largest financial backer, even owned the rifles Brown used at Harper’s Ferry. He recruited the Union’s first African
American regiment, the 54th Massachusetts, and will later be a
leader in establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau. Nov. 19 Dec. 2 The statue “Freedom” is placed on top of the U.S. Capitol. Sculptor
Philip Reid was a slave in a Maryland foundry when
the statue was cast. Dec. 8 President
Lincoln announces the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, pardoning Confederates who
pledge
loyalty to the Union and
agree to accept emancipation. A state can begin
the process of rejoining the Union as soon as 10% of a Confederate state’s voters make the pledge. This
fairly loose oath, pledging Union loyalty from the moment
the oath is taken, angers black leaders, Southern Unionists, and Congressional
Republicans. Lincoln seems xxxxxxxxxxxxxxmore interested in disrupting the Confederacy than
actually implementing Reconstruction. [Hunt]
1864 --- The black Baptists of the
West and South organize the Northwestern Baptist Convention and the Southern
Baptist Convention. In 1866 they will
merge with the American Baptist Convention to form the Consolidated Baptist
Convention, which will support the efforts of black Baptists in several
Southern states to form their own conventions.
January Radical Republicans are hostile to Feb. 8 TN Birth date of Jesse M.H. Graham in Clarksville or Nashville, Tennessee. Mar. 1 Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the
first black woman to receive a medical degree, graduating from the March TN Military Governor Andrew
Johnson, speaking at the dedication of the Northwestern Military Railroad at Johnsonville,
urges Unionists to “go to the ballot box”
and vote slavery out of the state. The
railroad, strategic to the success of the Union army’s attack on Atlanta, has
been built by thousands of black contraband workers and U.S. Colored
Troops. June 15 Congress
passes a bill authorizing equal pay, equipment, arms, and health care for African American troops in the
Union Army.
July Congress
passes the Wade-Davis Bill, which requires a majority vote of state voters to gain readmission to the
Union, restricts many former Confederates
from political participation in Reconstruction, and demands that blacks receive
not only their freedom but also equality before the law; Lincoln’s July 4 pocket
veto of the bill kills it. Sept. 2 Sherman
takes Atlanta. That victory will give an
enormous boost to Lincoln's Presidential hopes, which have been
damaged by the length of the war and the
sense of stalemate the country now feels. Sept. 5 The new Louisiana constitution abolishes slavery; Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee will do the same in the next few months. Note that these are four of the six states
that were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation. [See Autumn TN the application of the Emancipation Proclamation to Tennessee. Oct. 4 The
National Colored Men’s Convention meets in Syracuse, New York, chaired by Frederick Douglass.
--- Beginning of the New
Orleans Tribune, in all probability the first African American daily
newspaper. Nov. 8 President
Abraham Lincoln is re-elected, defeating Democratic candidate George McClellan. Andrew Johnson becomes
Vice President, but he and Lincoln barely
know each other.
Nov. 30 Terrible Confederate losses in the
Battle of Franklin (6,252 casualties in about five hours) all but destroy the
Army of Tennessee and completely end its effectiveness. Dec. 22 Sherman occupies Savannah,
completing his march to the sea. 1865 --- By
this point about 180,000 African American men (over 20% of the adult male black population between 20 and 45)
have served in the Union Army, and many
more in the Navy. --- African-American
soldiers comprise 10% of the entire Union Army. These troops suffer extremely high losses:
approximately one-third of all black soldiers enrolled in the military will lose their lives in the Civil War.
--- TN Four
Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company Bank branches will operate in Tennessee
(in Chattanooga, Columbia, Memphis, and Nashville) between 1865 and 1874. A
significant resource for the black community, the bank will fail in 1874 following the economic depression of the 1870s, largely
through mismanagement and fraud by the white managers of an important
Washington, D.C. branch. Jan. TN William Scott begins publication of The Colored Tennessean, the first black newspaper in Nashville. Jan. 2 TN John Mercer Langston, founder and dean
of the Howard University Law School, speaks at Nashville's second annual
Emancipation Day celebration. Jan. TN The Tennessee General Assembly amends
the state constitution to prohibit slavery; voters will ratify the amendment in
March. Jan. 9 TN Fisk Free Colored School opens in the
buildings of a former U. S. Army hospital. Tennessee Governor W. G.
“Parson” Brownlow
advises students to be “mild and temperate” in their behavior toward white
people, and warns teachers to be “exceedingly prudent and cautious.” The school will number 600 students by
February and will continue to expand for some time. Jan. 16 Under
Union Gen. Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, 40-acre plots of land are set aside in coastal South Carolina,
Georgia, and Florida for the exclusive use of freed blacks, who
can claim “possessory title” with option to purchase. Sherman’s
primary motive is to get rid of the multitudes of refugees following his army –
not only are they impeding his military operations, but they are also consuming
rations he needs for his troops. [Hunt]
Jan. 31 U.S.
Congress approves the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude, sending the 13th Amendment to the states
for ratification.
Feb. 1 J.
S. Rock, who will be the first black lawyer to practice in the Supreme Court, is admitted to the bar of the Supreme
Court.
--- General
Sherman’s army turns north toward the Carolinas and Virginia. Feb. 8 Martin
Robinson Delany, a writer, publisher, and physician, becomes the first African American to receive a regular
army commission when President Lincoln
promotes him to the rank of major in the U. S. Army. Mar. 3 A
joint resolution of Congress frees the wives and children of soldiers, regardless of their owners' loyalty, [Berlin]
--- The U.S. Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (to be known as the Freedmen’s Bureau); its function is to ease the transition
from slavery, offering shelter, medical care, legal services, and educational
facilities to former slaves. Authorized to function for only one year, the bureau will operate until
1868.
Mar. 4 TN Abraham Lincoln is
inaugurated for a second term, with Tennessean Andrew Johnson as Vice President. Lincoln
pledges “malice toward none and
charity for all.” Mar. 13 TN The Confederate States Congress authorizes
the recruitment of black soldiers -- slave or free -- to serve in the
Confederate Army; however, this uncharacteristic move by the Confederate Congress comes too late to prepare any
black troops for battle. Some scholars
believe that as many as 65,000 African Americans may have served the
Confederate Army in some fashion: the Confederacy impressed and leased slaves
extensively to work on fortifications and other projects; individual slaves sometimes
accompanied their masters (usually officers) into war as personal servants; and
a few (perhaps including Tennessee legislator Sampson W. Keeble) actually fought, generally to protect their own
farms or neighborhoods. Mar. 26 TN Tennessee voters ratify the new state constitution, which includes an anti-slavery amendment. Apr. 5 TN The
Tennessee General Assembly ratifies the 13th
Amendment. Apr. 9 Gen.
Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. President Lincoln and General Grant give USCT
regiments the honor of being the first
troops to occupy the Confederate capital at Richmond. Apr. 11 In the last speech he will deliver, President Lincoln makes
a rare public endorsement of limited voting rights for black
voters. Apr. 14 TN Lincoln is assassinated. Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, becomes President (1865-1869).
Apr. 26 Confederate General Joe Johnston meets with General William T. Sherman in North Carolina to negotiate a surrender. Although CSA President Davis is firmly set against surrender, and many commanders (including Forrest in
May 29 TN President Johnson issues his Amnesty
Proclamation; Johnson's Reconstruction strategy disfranchises large land owners
owners (anyone with taxable property over
$20,000) and former Confederate military leaders until their individual
petitions for amnesty are approved; the federal government also now requires
all states to ratify the 13th Amendment. The most surprising edict among the otherwise
strict requirements is that only 10% of the voting population of any Southern
state must take a loyalty oath in order for readmission to the Union. Johnson also intends that each state
convention declare secession null and void and repudiate the debt each
Confederate state has acquired in the war.
Unfortunately, the state conventions and leadership will openly defy or
circumvent him, thus cutting off their best ally in Washington, since Johnson might
have been a useful mediator between the former Confederate states and the
congressional Republicans. As a Democrat
in a Republican administration that has no respect for him, he is ineffectual
against the political realities of 1865-66, even though he has proved himself
an anti-secessionist and a convert to the cause of emancipation in Tennessee. [Hunt]
June Southern white men excluded from the general amnesty may begin their appeals for individual pardons on this date. June 19 “Juneteenth,”
the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery -- word of Emancipation finally reaches
slaves in isolated areas of Texas.
August Southern states open Constitutional Conventions to renounce secession, disavow the Southern debt, and ratify the Aug. TN The first
State Colored Men’s Convention meets at St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Nashville.
Delegates call for the final ratification of the 13the Amendment, as well as full citizenship and black
suffrage. There is no apposite response
from the Tennessee General Assembly.
Aug. TN Night riders expand
their terrorist activities throughout Tennessee, causing General George H. Thomas to increase the
Union presence in the
state. September President
Johnson demonstrates a greater tendency to align himself with white Southern land owners, declaring "white
men alone must manage the South.”
He issues a controversial order to return appropriated land to its
former owners, even lands granted to freedmen by Sherman’s January 16 Field
Order No. 15. Because many freedmen have already settled in
and begun farming the land, some are stubbornly resistant to leaving. October Southern
states put local, state, and congressional elections in process, anticipating full restoration to the Union as soon
as they comply with
Johnson’s order Nov. 25 Issuance
of Mississippi’s first “Black Codes.”
Other states also pass laws imposing restrictions on black citizens:
freedmen can work only as field hands;
unemployed black men can be auctioned to planters as laborers; black children
can be taken from their families and made to work; blacks refusing to sign
labor contracts can be penalized; strict laws control vagrancy, apprenticeship,
and public transportation. In addition, blacks are forbidden to testify against whites
in court, and they cannot serve on
juries, bear arms, or hold large meetings.
December Ulysses
S. Grant makes a victory tour of an unexpectedly friendly South and recommends lenient Reconstruction
policies. Dec. 4 The
U.S. Senate and House form a Joint Committee on Reconstruction. More than sixty newly-elected Senators and
Representatives from Southern states (all but
Mississippi have consented to the presidential requirements for readmission to
the Union) are denied their seats in the 39th Congress when the Clerk refuses to
include their names in the roll call. Dec. 6 The 13th
Amendment,
abolishing slavery, is ratified. Winter Nashville, Memphis, and other Southern
cities begin to experience an influx of freedmen from rural areas that will
double the black population of the South’s ten largest cities within five
years. 1866 --- TN Nashville
Normal and Theological Institute opens under the
guidance of the American Baptist Home Mission Society.
(Its predecessor, the “Baptist College,” originally a seminary for
African American preachers, began in a private home in 1864.) The school is renamed Roger Williams
University in 1883. Its major buildings will
be destroyed by fires of suspicious origin in 1905. Jan. 1 By the beginning of 1866 President Johnson has issued individual pardond to more than 7,000 Southern men denied amnesty under the $20,000 property clause. Feb. 2 An African American delegation led
by Frederick Douglass meets with President Johnson to advocate black suffrage. Johnson says he will continue to support the
interests of Southern whites and vows to oppose black voting rights. Feb. 19 President Johnson vetoes the bill renewing the Freedmen’s
Bureau. Mar. 27 President
Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Civil Rights Bill is designed to put an end to the
Black Codes, which will survive in spite of Congressional
efforts and will create a deliberately unequal application of civil law. Apr. 9 By
overwhelming majorities, both houses of Congress overturn Johnson’s vetoes of both
the Freedmen’s Bureau bill and the Civil Rights Act (which prohibits state governments from
discrimination on the basis of race).
These are the first major bills to supersede a Presidential veto; the
rift between Congress and the President deepens.
Apr. 16 Virginia
Freedmen parading to celebrate the Civil Rights Act are attacked by whites; five people die in the ensuing
race riot. May 1-3 TN A
race riot in Memphis results in 48 deaths, five rapes, many injuries, and the destruction of 90 black homes, 12
schools, and four churches.
May 26 TN The Tennessee General
Assembly passes legislation giving persons of color the right to make contracts, to sue, to
inherit property, and to have equal
benefits with whites under the laws and regarding protection of life and
property. June TN The
Ku Klux Klan is founded in Pulaski, TN, by a group of Confederate veterans. June 13 Congress approves the 14th
Amendment and sends it to the states for
ratification. The moderate Republican
response to the Black Codes and to Johnson’s failure to make
self-Reconstruction work, it becomes the core of moderate Congressional
Reconstruction. It characterizes
citizenship as the entitlement of all people born or naturalized in the United
States and increases federal power over the states to protect individual rights,
while the daily affairs of the states are left in their own hands. Unpopular with the Congressional Radicals, this
amendment will require more than two years to be ratified by the states.
July Congress
again overrides a Presidential veto to pass the supplemental Freedmen's Bureau Bill.
July 2 TN Governor (“Parson”) Brownlow,
a slave-owner but also a dedicated Unionist, moves to return Tennessee to the Union.
July 19 TN Tennessee, recognizing
that the14th Amendment gives the states broader autonomy to manage Constitutionsl issues
than they expected, becomes the third
state – and the first former Confederate state – to ratify the amendment. July 24 TN Tennessee is the first
former Confederate state readmitted to the Union. Thus the state will be
exempt from the intensifying conflict between Congress and other former Confederate
states. July 30 A
mob of whites attacks a black suffrage meeting in New Orleans; 38 die, 150 are injured.
August President
Johnson undertakes a disastrous speaking tour of the Northern states, accompanied by Ulysses S. Grant;
Johnson’s undignified and spiteful responses to the hostile crowds cost him the support of many Northerners, as well as the
respect of Grant.
Aug. 6 TN The second
Tennessee State Colored Men’s Convention meets in Nashville to advocate black suffrage and to
organize
demonstrations at the General Assembly. Leaders of the
movement include Sampson W.
Keeble, Nelson G. Merry, Samuel
and Peter Lowery, and others. November Republicans take more than a 2/3 majority
in Congressional elections; they are now guaranteed to override any
Presidential vetoes in the coming legislative session. Dec. 6 President Johnson announces to
Congress that the Union has been restored.
--- TN Most of
the 356,000 acres confiscated from white Confederate loyalists in Tennessee are
returned after 1866. Most former slaves are
no more than gang laborers or, at best, share-croppers, working white farms for
shares of produce or extremely low wages.
Only about 400 black Tennessee farmers own their own land by the end of
this year. In Wilson County, for
example, blacks own only 30 of the 10,997 acres of farmland. 1867 Jan. 8 Overriding
President Johnson’s veto, Congress grants the black citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote.
Feb. 25 TN The Tennessee General
Assembly grants African Americans the right to vote and to hold political office; Governor
Brownlow signs the bill into law the
following day. Mar. TN Tennessee’s African American leaders hold their first political meetings to organize the black vote. By the end of 1867 around 40,000 African American men will have registered to vote.
Mar. TN The
Tennessee General Assembly passes an act to reorganize public schools in the
state, with provisions for black and white children to be taught in separate
schools. The act reestablishes the office of state superintendent of education,
and specifies funding and county supervision of the system. Mar. 2 TN Beginning of
“Congressional Reconstruction” – Congress, challenging the ex-Confederate states, Tennessee excepted,
who have refused to ratify the 14th
Amendment, passes four Military Reconstruction Acts dividing the South into
five military districts – existing state and local governments are placed under
authority of military commanders until they meet and adopt new state constitutions,
ratify the 14th Amendment, and permit black adult males to participate
in the process for the first time. [Hunt] Mar. 2 Howard
University is officially incorporated by Congress. Named for Major General Oliver O. Howard,
Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, it is originally conceived as a
theological seminary for freedmen, then incorporated
as a liberal arts college, primarily for the training of black teachers and
preachers, but open to men and women of all races. It is the third university established in
Washington, D.C., after Georgetown University (1789) and George Washington University
(1821). Mar. 23 The Second Reconstruction Act (also passed over Johnson’s veto) instructs military commanders to register voters and call for constitutional conventions,
barring from participation anyone in office prior to the war who “gave aid or
support to the rebellion.” April TN Formal
political restructuring of the Ku Klux Klan in Nashville, to oppose black
equality and Republican leadership. It lists its purposes as ·
To
protect the weak, the innocent, & the defenseless from the indig-nities,
wrongs & outrages of the lawless, the violent & the brutal; ·
to
relieve the injured & oppressed; ·
to succor
the suffering & unfortunate, & especially the widows & orphans of
the Confederate soldiers. ·
Second:
To protect & defend the Constitution of the ·
Third:
To aid & assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, & to
protect the people from unlawful seizure, & from trial except by their
peers in conformity with the laws of the land.
May TN Induction
of Nathan Bedford Forrest into the KKK and his subsequent election as Grand Wizard of the Klan.
June TN The KKK holds its first anniversary
parade in Pulaski, Tennessee. Aug. TN Tennessee holds the
South’s first statewide elections to include black voters, electing Republicans in nearly all
positions –
governor, congressional seats, and most state
legislative posts.
August President Johnson attempts
unsuccessfully to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, triggering a deeper
conflict with Congress and causing a final breach with Ulysses S. Grant. Aug. 22 TN at Vanderbilt University until Joseph A.
Johnson is admitted to the Divinity School in 1953.] Sept. TN Black
Nashvillians vote for the first time in city elections, electing two black councilmen; one of the two is not seated,
and a white councilman is appointed
to the seat. Sept. TN will become part
of
October Voter
registration is completed in the ten Southern states subject to the Reconstruction Acts.
November Diminishing Republican strength in the
Northern states convinces the party to win the South over before the next
Presidential election. The party
platform is set up to include equality for African Americans. --- TN Thomas A. Sykes is elected to the first of five one-year terms in the North
Carolina legislature, serving from 1868-1871.
Dec. TN First reports of Ku Klux Klan
night-riding surface in Middle Tennessee. Dec. 10 TN Murfreesboro Road near
Nashville by leaders of the Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association. Its annual fair each fall serves to build a
strong voting base among area freedmen and brings to Nashville such nationally
important black political leaders as Frederick Douglass and John Mercer
Langston. 1868 --- Every legislator pictured in
a photograph of the 1868 Louisiana State Legislature is black. Jan.-Feb.
Southern lawmakers, both black
and white, begin to work together in the constitutional conventions, the first
political meetings in April Hampton Normal &
Agricultural Institute opens in Hampton, Virginia. Like Fisk, May 16 Andrew Johnson is the first
President to be impeached by a house of Congress; he avoids conviction and
retains his office after being acquitted in the Senate by a single vote on May
26. May 20 James J. Harris and P. B. S.
Pinchback are the first African American delegates to a Republican National
Convention. They support the nomination
of U. S. Grant for President. Grant is
nominated unopposed on the first ballot.
June 13 Oscar
J. Dunn, a former slave, is elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana. June 22 Arkansas is the 2nd state
readmitted to the Union, 2 years after Tennessee. June 25 Florida,
Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina rejoin the Union. July 4 TN Ku Klux Klan members make a public show of
their organization’s strength with parades and confrontations throughout July 9 Rev. Francis L. Cardozo
(1837-1903) is elected Secretary of State in July 14 Alabama is readmitted to the Union. July 27 TN Governor
Brownlow calls the TN Legislature into special session to demand that any further Ku Klux Klan activity be
punished with death. July 28 TN The Fourteenth
Amendment is finally
ratified by enough states to become law.
[ Aug. 28 TN Nathan
Bedford Forrest, who claims 40,000 KKK members in Tennessee and a total of 550,000 that he can
September The
Georgia State Legislature expels its newly elected black legislators. The Atlanta Constitution supports the move,
saying, “The Negro is unfit to rule the
State.” President Grant immediately
imposes military rule on the state, but it will be a full year before the
legislators are readmitted. Sept. TN Between
1868 and 1870, Greene
E Evans is admitted to Fisk University, where he pays his way by hauling gravel,
laying sod, and
teaching school in
the summertime in a schoolhouse he built himself. [Marsh]
Sept. TN Five African
Americans are elected to the Sept. 10
TN Tennessee
enacts an “anti-Klan” law with penalties for “prowling” by night, in or out of
disguise, “for the purpose of disturbing the peace, or alarming the peaceable
citizens”; for advising resistance to the law; or for threatening or
intimidating a voter. Sept. 11
TN President Johnson meets with a group of TN
legislators, who assure him that the new militia law will be used only in
extreme circumstances, or when federal troops are unavailable. Sept. 16
TN Governor
Brownlow issues a call for militia companies to form throughout the state and
assemble in Nashville. Sept. 28 The
Opelousas Massacre in Louisiana results in the death of 200-300 blacks at the hands of violent whites, many of
them Confederate veterans and prominent citizens.
Nov. 3 TN U. S. Grant is elected President. Southern black men, voting in their first
national election, cast 700,000 votes for the Republican ticket. Many of the less wealthy white voters also
vote Republican, reflecting the growing class conflict between poor farmers and
wealthy plantation owners. East
Tennessee, a stronghold of Unionism during the war, is already strongly
Republican; the high Republican vote in West Tennessee, where most black voters
live, reflects a combination of black & white voting power. 1869 --- TN Tennessee
is the first state to replace a bi-racial Republican state government with an
all-white Democratic government, followed by --- Massachusetts elects two
African Americans to its State House of Representatives: Edward G. Walker and
Charles L. Mitchell become the first African Americans to serve in a
legislative assembly. Winter TN The Freedmen’s Bureau reports that there are now nearly 3,000 schools in the South, serving over 150,000 black students. [Integration of schools will come much more slowly: it is not until May 1957 that Bobby Cain, a student at Clinton High School, Clinton, Anderson
County, Tennessee, will become the first African American to graduate from a
state-supported integrated public high school in the South.] Feb. 26 Congress approves the 15th
Amendment, stating that
“race, color, or previous condition of servitude” will not be used to bar U.S.
male citizens from voting; they send it to the states for
ratification. Feb. 27 John W. Menard, elected as a
Republican from Louisiana to the House or Representatives, is barred from his
seat by white Congressmen and pleads his case to be seated, becoming the first
African American representative to speak on the floor of the House. Congress still refuses to seat Menard. Mar. 4 U.S. Grant is inaugurated the nation’s eighteenth President (1869-1877). --- By the end of the 41st
U.S. Congress, two African
Americans will have been seated: Robert Brown Elliott and Joseph
H. Rainey, both of South Carolina. --- TN Following a private meeting with
President Grant, Nathan Bedford Forrest issues a document
disbanding the Ku Klux Klan, stating that it is "being perverted from its
original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of
subservient to the public peace."
Forrest’s actions may be motivated, at least in part, by hopes of
avoiding punish-ment for the illegal activities of an organization that is
largely out of control. The Klan has
been extremely violent for years under his leadership, and he disbands it only when
it comes under intense criticism (and when its work is essentially done — many
blacks and Republicans have already been frightened away from the polls). Whatever Forrest’s motives, Klan violence
most assuredly does not end with his declaration. Apr. 6 President Grant appoints Ebenezer
Don Carlos Bassett minister to May 10 The first
rail line to cross the continent is completed.
The railroad network that will now develop is the major factor in the
emergence of a new industrial age, which will dramatically change the nation’s
labor and employment patterns. Sept. 11
TN African
American city councilman Randal Brown urges Nashville blacks to join the Black
Exodus and homestead movement westward; other leaders express concern about the
Chinese laborers being brought in to replace black workers. October As brutal attacks on African
Americans continue throughout the South, Georgia legislator Abram Colby, the
black son of a white planter, is kidnapped and whipped by the Klan. Although his back is permanently injured and
he loses the use of his left hand, he returns to the legislature and continues
to campaign against Klan violence. Nov. 16 TN Tennessee rejects the 15th
Amendment, and does not join other states in post-ratifying it until 1997. It will be the last state to ratify. 1870 --- The 1870 Census shows that
African Americans make up 12.7% of the --- TN Although blacks comprise one-third
of Middle Tennessee’s population, only six percent of black families own their
own land. In --- Most of the black
members remaining in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, leave (with the
denomination's blessing) to form the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
(today’s Christian Methodist Episcopal Church). --- TN Due to the political skills of
African American leader Edward Shaw, who holds the post of wharf master in
Memphis, Shelby County elects as many as six black city councilmen during the
1870s and 1880s. --- TN A series of
yellow fever epidemics will devastate Memphis for the next decade, killing hundreds of people, and even
causing the State of Tennessee to revoke the
city’s charter in 1879 because of the collapse of the city’s financial base. --- TN A large number of convicts are
leased from the main prison in Nashville to three separate railroad companies in
Tennessee.
Jan. 10 Grant proposes a treaty to annex
what is now the Dominican Republic in an effort to find land where freed slaves can
settle.
The Senate Foreign Relations committee opposes the plan, and the treaty
is never approved. Jan. 10 TN The Tennessee Constitutional Convention
begins. Jan. 26 Virginia is readmitted to the Union.
Feb. 3 Jasper J. Wright, an African
American judge, is elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court. Feb. 17 TN The 15th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified by 29 of
the 37 states, guaranteeing the right of African American
men to vote.
1869: Nevada, West Virginia,
North Carolina, Louisiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine,
Massachusetts, Arkansas, South Carolina, Penn-sylvania, New York (which then
rescinds its approval), Indiana, Connec-ticut, Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia,
Vermont, and Alabama. 1870: Missouri,
Minnesota, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Kansas, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, and
(satisfying the 29-state requirement, in case NY’s withdrawal is effective)
Nebraska. The amendment is rejected by
Maryland, Kentucky, & Tennessee. Eventually
all the remaining states post-ratify the amendment: Texas (2-18-1870), New
Jersey (2-15-1871), Delaware (2-12-1901), Oregon (2-24-1959), California (4-3-1962),
Maryland (5-7-1973), Kentucky (3-18-1976), and Tennessee (April 3,
1997).
Feb. 23 TN The Tennessee
Constitutional Convention ends, having adopted the Constitution that is still
in effect today. It outlaws slavery and
ensures universal suffrage. The Supreme
Court will later strike down provisions forbidding interracial marriage,
blocking integrated schools, and allowing a poll tax. Feb. 23 Mississippi is readmitted to the
Union. Feb. 25 Hiram Revels, a Republican from
Mississippi, is sworn in as the first black member of the United States
Senate. Ironically, Revels is elected to
fill the position vacated by Jefferson Davis nearly 10 years earlier. Revels serves only through Mar. 17 North Carolina Governor Holden sends
for federal troops to help control the Ku Klux Klan. Public backlash will cost him the next
election. Mar. 30 Texas is readmitted to the Union. May 31 President Grant signs the First
Enforcement Act. These “Force
Acts” make the bribing, intimidation, or racial discrimination of voters federal
crimes. They also authorize the use of
federal troops against the KKK, outlawing conspiracies to prevent the exercise
of constitutional rights. Three such
laws are passed between May 1870 and April 1871. All are declared unconstitutional in United
States v. Cruikshank (1876) July 15 Georgia is readmitted to the Union
– the last of the Confederacy to return. Dec. 12 Joseph
Hayne Rainey, born a slave in 1832, is sworn in to fill an unexpired term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A South Carolina Republican, he will be re-elected four
times, serving until 1879, thus becoming
the longest-serving xxxxxxxxxxxxxxblack Congressman until the 1950s.
1871 --- The
General Assembly establishes branch penitentiaries in the East Tennessee coal
fields and begins the practice of leasing prisoners to work in the mines. By 1884 the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railway
Company has taken complete control and leases the entire prison population. Mar. 4 During the
42nd U.S. Congress, there are five black members in the House of Representatives: Benjamin S. Turner of
Alabama; Josiah T. Walls of Florida; and
Robert Brown Elliot, Joseph H. Rainey, and Robert Carlos DeLarge of South
Carolina. Apr. 20 The
Ku Klux Klan Act becomes law, allowing President Grant to suspend habeas corpus in enforcing the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Autumn TN active departments: normal, commercial, and
music. Oct. 6 TN The
Fisk Jubilee Singers leave Nashville on their first American concert tour to raise money for the college. Among
the
eleven students on the tour is baritone Greene Evans,
who will be elected to the General Assembly ten years later. Director George White has planned
a route in keeping with the Underground Railroad: over the next eighteen
months, beginning in Cincinnati, the group will visit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New
York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington,
D.C., giving hundreds of performances, and raising $40,000 for Fisk
University. Although the Singers perform
many types of music, it is their performance of Negro spirituals that awakens
an interest in this genre of music and becomes the distinctive signature of the
group. Oct. 12 Congress
listens to testimony from victims of Klan violence in the South. Grant takes action: having ordered the Ku
Klux Klan in SC to disperse and surrender arms,
he quickly sends in federal troops to suppress the Klan.
Oct. 17 The last of a series of anti-Klan enforcement acts is passed, providing protection to African Americans voting in
federal elections. Nonetheless, both black and poor white voters
will increasingly be kept from voting by locally enforced poll taxes as well as
literacy tests and property ownership requirements. However,
blacks do represent a considerable voting force in the South for some time,
sometimes combining with various groups of “populist” white voting blocs.
African American political disfranchisement will not be complete until after
the enactment of the Mississippi state constitution in 1890. 1872 --- TN The Memphis Weekly Planet
becomes West Tennessee’s first African American newspaper.
--- Vanderbilt University is chartered under the name of Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Feb. 27 Charlotte
Ray (daughter of Charles Bennett Ray, who has been editor of the Colored American, an important early
New
York newspaper, and is also pastor of the Bethesda Congregation Church) graduates from Harvard University.
She is the first African American woman lawyer in the United States and the first woman admitted to the bar in the District of
Columbia, which has removed the term “male” from the requirements for the bar. Mar. 4 TN The Fisk Jubilee Singers perform for Vice
President Colfax and members of Congress but are forced to leave their
Washington, D.C., hotel because of their
race. Mar. 5 TN The
Fisk Jubilee Singers perform for President Grant at the White House. May 1 At
the Liberal Republican Convention in Cincinnati, party leaders, displeased with vindictive Reconstruction policies
and corruption (which they call
“Grantism”) nominate newspaperman Horace Greeley. May 6 TN The Fisk Jubilee Singers embark on a year-long concert tour of Great Britain that will earn $50,000 for the university and earn them
invitations to sing for Queen Victoria and other European monarchs. May 22 President Grant signs the Amnesty Act, restoring full civil rights to all white Southern men except about 500 former Confederate leaders . June 5 At the Republican Convention in
Philadelphia, the party re-nominates Ulysses S. Grant on the first ballot. July 1 Congress terminates the Freedmen’s
Bureau July 9 The
Democratic party joins the Liberal Republicans in nominating Horace Greeley for
President. [See entry for May 1, 1872] Sept. 21 John
Henry Conyers of South Carolina becomes the first black student at the Annapolis Naval Academy.
Nov. 5 Ulysses
S. Grant is re-elected
with a popular majority of 763,000 and an electoral college majority of 286-66 over
opponent Horace Greeley.
Dec. 9 Pinckney
Benton Stewart Pinchback of Louisiana becomes the nation’s first African American governor; however,
because of white antipathy he serves only
very briefly, leaving office on 13 January 1873. 1873 --- TN James T. Rapier, educated in
Nashville’s free black schools, becomes the first black congressman from Alabama.
Jan. 6 TN Samson W. Keeble takes his
seat as the first African American member of
the Tennessee State Legislature in the 38th xxxxxxxxxxxxxxGeneral Assembly, 1873-1875. He is appointed to the committees on Immigration, Military Affairs, and Tippling
and Tippling Houses, and is later added to the committee on Charitable
Institutions. He introduces three bills,
none of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxthem successful, and
frequently speaks in favor of protecting the wages of laborers.
Winter The
New York Tribune publishes a series of articles accusing black lawmakers in South Carolina of corruption.
Mar. 18 TN Samson W. Keeble introduces House Bill No. 506, to protect laborers and to secure their wages; it passes the first reading but does not receive a
second – the legislature adjourns one week later.
Apr. 13 The Colfax Massacre—a paramilitary group known as the White League, part of a "shadow government" in Louisiana
(and similar in many respects to the Ku Klux
Klan), clashes with the state militia, which is largely black. Three members of the White League die in the
attack, but about 100 black men are killed, nearly half of them slaughtered in
cold blood after their surrender. Similar
incidents occur about the same time in Coushatta and New Orleans. President Grant sends federal troops to
restore order. --- TN Frederick
Douglass, speaking in Nashville, urges black Tennesseans to stay and fight for racial justice rather than to
join the Black Exodus west. Sept. 18 The Panic of 1873 plunges the nation
into a depression. 1874 --- Democrats
control both Houses of Congress for the first time since before the Civil War.
June 29 The Freedmen’s Bank closes. Originally created to provide a safe place
for black soldiers to deposit their pay, the bank rapidly becomes the financial
base of many in the African American community, devastating them when it closes. Contrary to what depositors have been led to
believe, the bank’s assets are not protected by the federal government. In spite of desperate attempts to revive the
bank (Frederick Douglass pours thousands of dollars of his own money into an
effort to save it), half the depositors will eventually get back only about 60%
of their money; others receive nothing.
Some depositors and their descendants spend as many as thirty years petitioning
Congress for reparation. Fall As
the fall elections approach, reports of Southern violence, political corruption, and economic depression give a
considerable advantage to the Democrats, who
will take control of Congress when it convenes in 1875. 1875 ---
TN Knoxville College opens during this year as a normal
school sponsored by the United Presbyterian Church of North
America. Designated a college in 1877, it offers
teacher training; college courses in classics, science, and theology; classes
in agriculture, industrial arts, and medicine.
Because, in these early years, so few blacks are prepared for higher
education, the college initially offers classes from first grade through
college level. The elementary department
will be discontinued in 1926 and the academy (high school) in 1931. Jan. 26 Andrew Johnson is elected to the U.S. Senate as a
Democrat from Tennessee. Mar. 1 The Forty-Fourth Congress, which
has six black members and is still under the control of the Republicans, passes
the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlaws racial segregation in public facilities and housing
and prevents the exclusion of African Americans from jury service. (Not enforced in the South,
the law will be struck down by the Supreme Court in 1883.) Mar. 5 Blanche
Kelso Bruce takes his seat as the United States Senator from Mississippi. He will be the first African American
Senator
to serve a full six-year term.
Mar. 11 TN The Tennessee Legislature passes House Bill
No. 527 permitting racial discrimination in transportation, lodging, and
places of entertainment. The Bill receives Senate approval before the
end of the month and is signed into law (Chapter 130).
Mar. 23 TN Chapter
90 of the Acts of
Tennessee 1875 orders the establishment of a state normal school or schools,
the creation of a State Board of Education, and the requirement that separate
schools “for white and colored pupils” should be established. May 5 TN The Fisk
Jubilee Singers return to the U.S., having raised $50,000 for the University
during a year-long British tour. July 5 TN African American preacher Hezekiah Hanley holds a celebration of racial unity in Memphis. Among the invited guests are Nathan Bedford Forrest and other former Confederate generals. July 31 TN Andrew Johnson dies of a stroke and is
buried in Greeneville, Tennessee. Dec. 1 TN The Inaugural Exercises of the State Normal College, known
as “The Peabody State Normal School of the
University of Nashville,” are
held in the House of Representatives.
This particular institution accepts white students only.
1876 --- TN Styles L. Hutchins graduates from University of South Carolina Law
School and is admitted to the South Carolina bar.
--- TN William
F. Yardley, a Knoxville politician, becomes the first African American to
campaign for governor of Tennessee. Apr. 5 TN The Colored National Convention meets in
the House Chamber of the Tennessee General Assembly. Eighteen states and the
District of Columbia are represented. Tennessee delegates are W. Sumner, Abram
Smith, Edward Shaw, and James C. Napier. Former Louisiana Governor Pinckney
Benton Stewart Pinchback and Senator H.S. Smith of Alabama deliver speeches
considered the “high point of the convention.” The Convention’s efforts to
choose and endorse a Presidential candidate are unsuccessful, although Edward
Shaw, Memphis wharf master, speaks out strongly against the Grant
administration. [Walker] Oct. 13 TN Meharry Medical
College, the first American college for the training of African American
physicians, opens in Nashville. The Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church helps establish Meharry as a department of Central Tennessee
College. Nov. 7 Edward Bouchet becomes the first
African American to receive a Ph.D. from an American institution (Yale
University). Nov. 8 The bitterly disputed Presidential election takes place
between candidates Samuel J. Tilden (D) and Rutherford B. Hayes (R). Nov. 9 Because
of allegations of voting fraud in four states, there is no certain victor in the Presidential election. Tilden
receives 184 electoral votes and Hayes, 165;
21 votes are uncertain. Both candidates claim victory. --- TN John W. Boyd is
elected as magistrate of the Ninth Civil District, Tipton County. 1877 --- By this year about 2,000 African American men have held/are holding public office, "ranging from member of Congress to justice of the peace.” In spite of prohibitions against educating
slaves, “83 percent of the black officials [are] able to read and write.” Twelve percent of them are lawyers or school teachers. [Foner] --- TN From an African American prison
population of 33 percent at the main prison in Nashville, the number has now risen to
67%.
Other Southern states also have predominantly black prison populations, far out of proportion to the percentage
of blacks in the general population.
--- TN Sampson W. Keeble is elected a magistrate in Davidson County. He will servie until 1882. Jan. 24 Congress
appoints a 15-member electoral commission to resolve the disputed election. In what is little more than a back-
room deal, the Republicans agree to abandon Reconstruction policies in
exchange for the Presidency. The
so-called “Compromise of 1877” results in an end to military intervention in
the South and restores “home rule.” Mar. 5 TN Rutherford B.
Hayes is inaugurated the nation’s nineteenth President (1877-1881). He quickly withdraws federal troops from the
South, and ends federal support for the remaining Reconstruction
governments. This agreement officially ends Reconstruction. The South begins the process of codifying and
enforcing segregation. Although
Tennessee will elect a number of black politicians over the next few years, the
last African American state legislator will end his term in 1893, and no other
will be seated until 1964. Violations of
black civil rights will not again be addressed on a national scale until after
World War II. Mar. 15 The Nation reports that “the
great body of the Republican party is ... opposed to the continuance at the
South of the policy of military interference and coercion as pursued by General
Grant.” June 14 Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from West Point. 1878 --- TN James
Carroll Napier, an 1872 graduate of the Howard University Law School, is
elected the first black city councilman in Nashville, serving five terms. He will later serve as Register of the United
States Treasury under President William Howard Taft (1911-1913). --- TN Thomas F. Cassels
is appointed assistant attorney general of
Memphis.
1879 --- TN East Tennessee University, one of the earliest land-grant colleges, is renamed the University of Tennessee. 1880 --- The 1880 Census shows that
African Americans make up 13.1% of the U.S. population (6,580,793 of
50,155,783). --- Styles
L. Hutchins becomes the first black
attorney admitted to the Georgia bar, despite legal efforts to block him
from taking the test.
--- The
National Baptist Convention, USA, has its beginnings in a meeting of 150 Baptist pastors in Montgomery, Alabama. --- TN Even at this late date, 50%-60% of rural freedmen continue to work as wage laborers, many on the same farms on which they were once slaves. --- TN Four African Americans are elected to the Tennessee General Assembly: John W. Boyd of Tipton County, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxThomas
Frank Cassels and Isaac Norris of Shelby County, and Thomas
A. Sykes of Davidson
County.
1881 --- TN The
Black Exodus to Kansas and other Western states, which began about 1872, comes
gradually to an end. More than 2,400
people have migrated from Nashville alone.
--- TN During 1881,
despite the black representatives in the House, the 42nd Tennessee
Legislature passes the first “Jim Crow” law in the South, requiring the
segregation of the races on railroad cars.
By 1900 all Southern states will have segregated their transportation
systems, a move sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 with the Plessy
v. Ferguson decision. Future laws
will be passed that discriminate against African Americans regarding public
school attendance, housing, and the use of public facilities such as
restaurants, theaters, and hotels. In
1967, when the Court rules miscegenation laws unconstitutional, 16 states will still
have laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
It will be November 2000 before Alabama, the last hold-out, repeals its
law – although 40% of the electorate votes to keep it! --- TN John W. Boyd, a Republican, represents Tipton County in the 42nd and
43rd General Assemblies, 1881-1885. He is appointed to the
committees on Immigration, New Counties and County Lines, and Tippling and
Tippling Houses. --- TN Thomas Frank Cassels is a Republican from Shelby County, serving in the 42nd General
Assembly from 1881 to xxxxxxxxxxxxxx1883. He is appointed
to the committees on
Education and Common Schools, Judiciary, Privileges and Elections, and Public
Roads.
--- TN Isaac F. Norris is a Republican from Shelby County, to serve in the 42nd
General
Assembly from 1881-1883. He is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxappointed
to the committees on Banks,
Claims, Immigration, and Public Grounds and Buildings.
--- TN Thomas A. Sykes represents
Davidson County in the legislature, in spite of
decreased black voting strength brought on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxby a new poll tax and acts of violence
against blacks. A Republican, he is
appointed to the committees on Claims and Penitentiary.
--- TN Styles L. Hutchins opens a law office in Chattanooga and becomes a partner in a newspaper, The Independent Age, of which he is editor. Jan. 11 TN Isaac F. Norris introduces House
Bill No. 33, relating to
labor contracts between employer and employee. It passes
its first reading and is referred to the Judiciary
Committee. It passes its second reading
February 22.
Jan. 12 TN Thomas A. Sykes introduces House Bill No. 70, proposing to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875 and end
racial discrimination in the use of public
facilities and transportation. It passes
first and second readings. Jan. 12 TN Thomas F. Cassels introduces House
Bill No. 73, “to prohibit unlawful carnal intercourse of white persons with
negroes, mulattoes and persons of
mixed blood descended from the negro race, and to proscribe the punishment for
violation thereof.” It passes first and
second readings. Feb. 15 TN Isaac F. Norris introduces House Bill No. 276, “An Act instructing the Trustees of the Tennessee University, to make
arrangements for persons of color who may be entitles to admission." It passes its first reading and is referred to the Judiciary Committee; after passing its second reading, it is referred to
the Committee on Education and Common Schools, where it is tabled.
Feb. 16 TN Thomas A. Sykes
introduces House Bill No.
289, to admit African American
students “into the school for the blind at Nashville and the school for the
deaf and dumb at Knoxville, in separate accommodations provided for them.” The bill passes its first reading and is
referred to the Judiciary Committee. A
week later it passes its second reading.
Feb. 17 TN Thomas F. Cassels introduces House Bill No.
312, “An Act to
repeal
Chapter 131 of an act passed Feb. 24 TN After two vicious lynchings in Springfield,
the General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning “this violation of law
as tending to subvert all government, and as deserving prompt punishment”;
legislators have also passed a bill to punish any sheriff whose negligence
allows a prisoner to be taken from his custody “and put to death by violence.” Hoping to take advantage of the legislature’s
unanticipated disposition toward justice, Thomas F. Cassels introduces House Bill No.
478 to compensate families of the victims of mob
violence. His bill passes the first
reading but dies in committee.
Feb. 25 TN House Bill No. 33 (by Isaac F. Norris),
relating to labor contracts, passes its
third reading by a vote of 38-25.
Feb. 26 TN Isaac F. Norris introduces House Bill No.
510, concerning the
payment of wages of laborers. It passes
its first reading and is referred to the Judiciary Committee. It passes its second reading 29 March; there
are no further references.
Mar. 4 James A. Garfield is inaugurated
the nation’s twentieth President (1881). Mar. 10 TN Thomas A. Sykes introduces House Bill No. 560, to eliminate discrimination against blacks in jury selection
for circuit and criminal courts. The bill passes its second reading March 29 but is apparently tabled before being
brought to a vote.
Mar. 10 TN On its third reading, Sykes’ House Bill No. 70 (to repeal Chapter 130) is rejected by a vote of 31-29 when five Republicans join Democrats in voting
against it.
Mar. 24 TN House Bill No. 73 is taken up as a special order. A number of amendments are offered; Cassels' attempt to call the previous question on the passage of the bill fails for lack
of a second; a motion to table the bill and all amendments prevails.
Mar. 30 TN The four black legislators [Boyd, Cassels, Norris, and Sykes] file a protest against the
rejection of House Bill No.
70, saying that Chapter 130 “authorizes railroad companies and their employes, unjustly,
cruelly, wantonly, without just cause of provocation, and in violation of the
common law and the laws of the general government, to oppress and discriminate
against more than four hundred thousand citizens of the State of Tennessee, and
the colored people of all other States who may desire to travel in Tennessee,”
and that it “wickedly, cruelly, and inhumanly attempts to deny to persons
aggrieved by the provisions of the said act any remedy or redress of grievances
in the State courts of Tennessee.” Mar. 30 TN Isaac F. Norris introduces House Bill No.
682, concerning
discrimination against railroad passengers (referring to Chapter
130, Acts of Tennessee,
1875). The bill passes its first and
second readings (March 30 and March 31), but is subsequently tabled.
Mar. 30 House Bill No. 289, admitting black students into the school
for the blind and the school for the deaf and dumb, passes
by a vote of 59-1 and becomes law.
Apr. 7 TN The Tennessee
House of Representatives passes a “compromise” bill, Senate Bill No. 342, permitting “separate but equal”
facilities for African Americans on trains.
This bill requires railroad companies either to partition off a portion
of a first-class car for black passengers who have paid first-class fare, or to
provide separate cars for blacks. Having
passed the Senate 18-1, it passes the House 50-2. Norris and Sykes vote against
the bill; Boyd is absent; Cassels abstains. Thirteen other Southern states will follow
Tennessee’s lead and segregate public carriers over the next few years.
Apr. 14 TN The General Assembly passes a $10,000 appropriations bill for the State Normal College, which will be augmented by a $6,000-9,000 grant
from the Peabody Education Fund for student scholarships. Apr. 14 TN The State Board of Education reports that it is authorized by the General Assembly to spend "$10,000 annually for Normal School purposes,”
$2,500 of which is reserved “for the normal education of colored teachers.”
The Board meanwhile invites the state’s black colleges to submit
proposals “to educate the colored candidates for teachers.” June 3 TN The State Board of Education asks the
governor to notify the legislature “that only $2,500 in gross is appropriated
for the Colored Normal School.” June 15 TN The
State Board of Education appropriates $50 per year for the education of each African American scholarship
student.
That gives each Senatorial district two black students, who will be appointed
by the Senator from that district from among those receiving the highest scores
on a standard examination. The schools
approved for the education of normal students are Knoxville College, Knoxville;
Freedmen’s Normal Institute, Maryville; Fisk University, Nashville Theological
and Normal Institute, and Central Tennessee College, Nashville; and LeMoyne
Normal Institute, Memphis. July 2 President
James Garfield is shot by assassin Charles Guiteau. Garfield will lie in the White House for weeks, mortally
wounded but clinging to life as doctors
attempt to save him.
July 4 The
first president of Tuskegee Institute, Dr. Booker T. Washington, who was born a slave, officially opens the Normal
School for Colored Teachers in Macon
County, Alabama. Washington is a
champion of vocational education as a means to African American self reliance. Sept. 19 President Garfield dies, more than
eleven weeks after he was shot. Chester
A. Arthur, a Republican from Vermont, becomes the twenty-first President (1881-1885). Nov. 30 TN Jessee [sic] Graham is listed in the State School Board minutes as a recipient of a Peabody Scholarship to attend
Fisk University.
1882 --- TN More than half the convicts in the
Tennessee State Prison at Nashville are now being leased out as laborers. --- TN Between 1882 and 1930 Tennessee has
214 confirmed lynching victims: most in middle and west Tennessee, most
(83%) African Americans. ---
TN Charles Spencer Smith founds the Sunday School Union
of the A.M.E. Church at 206 Public Square, Nashville. The
publishing house is the first and only steam printing establishment owned and managed by an African American.
Smith, elected
in 1874 to a term in the Alabama House of Representatives, received a medical
degree from Central xxxxxxxTennessee College in 1880, In 1900 he will become a bishop of the
A.M.E. Church and in 1911 will be the first black xxxxxxxto receive a Doctor of
Divinity degree from Victoria College in Toronto. [Roseman]
--- The Supreme Court rules in United
States vs. Harris that the Klan Act (see May 31, 1870) is partially unconstitutional,
asserting
that Congress’s power under the 14th Amendment does not apply to
private conspiracies. Apr. 6 TN In the second extra House
Session, Thomas A. Sykes
introduces House Bill No. 3,
“To exempt educational institutions from taxation.” It passes the first and second readings and
is referred to the Committee on Education and Common Schools. It is eventually tabled.
1883 --- A flood of civil rights cases strikes down the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875. Congress may no longer legislate on civil
rights issues unless states pass discriminatory laws. --- TN Leonidas (Leon) Howard is
elected to represent Shelby County in the 43rd General Assembly from
1883 to 1884. A xxxxxxxxxxxxxxRepublican, he helps
defeat two
blacks (one is Isaac Norris) running on the Democratic ticket. He is appointed to the committee on Military Affairs.
--- TN Samuel Allen McElwee, a Republican, is elected to the 43rd (as well as, later, the 44th and 45th) General Assembly, xrepresenting Haywood County from
1883-1888. He is appointed to the
committees on Military Affairs and Public Printing.
--- TN David F. Rivers is elected to represent Fayette County as
a Republican in the 43rd and 44th General Assemblies,
1883-1886, although he is
not able to serve his second term. He is appointed to the committees on Education and
Common Schools, Federal Relations, and Public Printing. Although there are
twice as many black residents in Fayette xxxxxxxxxxxxxxCounty as white, the county will send
only two African American representatives to Nashville: Rivers (1883-1884) --- TN John W. Boyd serves a second House term representing Tipton
County. He is appointed to the committee on
Federal Relations.
Jan. 5 TN Samuel A. McElwee
introduces House Bill No. 12, To amend the law establishing a State Normal School. The bill
passes its first reading and is referred to the Committee on Education and
Common Schools. It passes its second
reading on 16 January.
Jan. 5 TN Leon Howard introduces House Bill No. 34, to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875. The bill is referred to the
Judiciary Committee, where it is tabled.
Jan. 10 TN Leon Howard introduces House Bill No. 129, To repeal sections 2437a and 2437b of the Code, in regard to illicit
intercourse.
It passes first reading and is sent to the Judiciary Committee, where it
dies.
Jan. 10 TN Saml. A. McAlwee [sic] and Jesse M. H. Graham are listed as recipients of Peabody Scholarships to attend Fisk
University.
Feb. 8 TN In
his annual report to the General Assembly, Governor William Brimage Bate (1826-1905) recommends legislation
authorizing the appointment of an Assistant
Superintendent of Public Instruction, who will be responsible for the education
of African American students.
Feb. 15 TN House Bill No. 12 has been made the special order for the
session, having been passed over three times earlier.
McElwee
reduces the appropriation to
black students, but the House votes to table the bill; however, they prove willing
to approve the committee’s bill on the same subject and appropriate $3,300 per year for normal
school xxxxxxxxxxxxxxscholarships for African American
students, making each scholarship worth $50.
Feb. 15 TN Leon Howard introduces House
Bill No. 493, Providing
for the appointment of an Assistant Superitendent of
Public Schools. It passes its first and second reading and is
referred to the Committee on Education and Common Schools, where it is tabled.
Feb. 19 TN Samuel A. McElwee introduces House
Bill No. 526, “to amend
section 4000 of the Code, in regard to selecting
jurors.”
The bill passes its first and second readings, but there are no further
references to it after that.
Feb. 20 TN Leon Howard introduces House Bill No.556, To repeal part of the Act relating to inn-keepers, common carriers, etc.
The bill passes its first and second readings but is tabled by the
Judiciary Committee.
Feb. 27 TN John W. Boyd introduces House
Bill No. 663, To prevent discrimination by railroad companies in passenger rates
paying first-class fare. This bill is one
of several representing the black legislators’ more tightly focused effort to weaken
the power of Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875.
It passes its first and second readings and is referred to the Judiciary
Committee.
Mar. 21 TN After hours of debate, Leon Howard offers an amendment repealing only the provision of the Act of
1875 that pertains to railroads; it is defeated by a vote of 64-27.
Mar. 24 TN W. A. Milliken offers an amendment to Boyd's House Bill No. 663, requiring railroad companies to provide separate cars for different
passengers. It passes by a vote of
56-19, with Boyd voting against it, and Howard and McElwee (both
deeply opposed to the separate-but-equal provision) abstaining.
Apr. 24 TN David F. Rivers is listed
as the recipient of a Peabody Scholarship in the minutes of the State Board of
Education. Appointed by Senator Cason,
District 12, he attends Roger Williams University. May 1 TN Eben
S. Stearns, President of the Peabody Normal College, lists the "Requirements for Obtaining and Holding Peabody
Scholarships at
the Normal College at Nashville, Tenn.” Students meeting
all the scholarship requirements can receive up to $200 per year for board and
other college expenses.
Oct. 15 The Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, finding that the 14th Amendment forbids states, but not individual citizens,
from discriminating.
Nov. 26 Death
of Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree, born 1797), ardent abolitionist and powerful public speaker.
1884 --- TN Ida B. Wells files a lawsuit against
the Chesapeake & Ohio & South-western Railroad Company for segregation
on the company’s railroad cars. Thomas F. Cassels is her first lawyer. [Goings]
Wells will soon replace him for being too accommodating to the railroad
lawyers. Feb. 28 TN More than 300 black leaders from 17 Tennessee counties meet in Nashville to discuss the role of African Americans in
local and
national elections.
The largest delegations are from Shelby County, with 62 delegates; Davidson, 52;
and Haywood, 48. Thomas F. Cassels, serving as chairman, shares his concerns
that many current state laws violate the constitutional rights of black
Tennesseans. James C. Napier, the
keynote speaker, stresses the need for political unity among black voters. Samuel A. McElwee’s demand that black unity occur within
the Republican party stirs up enormous
controversy. The convention ends by
warning that failure to support black causes will erode black commitment to the
party.
--- TN At the State Republican Conventiom Samuel A McElwee is elected temporary chairman and is chosen as one of two
delegates (the other is General George Maney)
to the Chicago Presidential Convention, which nominates James G. Blaine.
June 24 John Lynch is the first black to be
elected chairman of the Republican National Convention. Nov. 4 Grover Cleveland, a Democrat from
New York, is elected president. --- TN John W. Boyd challenges his loss in the Senate election for Tipton and Fayette counties, claiming fraud when the
District 4 ballot box mysteriously disappears. Although he carries his challenge to the State Senate, members vote
mysteriously
disappears. Although he carries his challenge to the State to
seat his opponent.
1885 --- TN Greene E. Evans is elected
Republican representative from Shelby County to the 44th General
Assembly, 1885-1886. He is on the
committee on Education & Common Schools. --- TN William A. Feilds is elected to represent Shelby County in the 44th General
Assembly from 1885-1886. A Republican, Feilds
is a school teacher and principal in the 5th Civil District of Shelby County. He is appointed to the committees on Federal
Relations, Internal Improvement, and Public Roads. --- TN William C. Hodge is the
first black legislator elected from Hamilton County, serving as a Republican in
the 44th General Assembly from 1885-1886. He is appointed to the committees on
Education and Common Schools, Military Affairs, and Penitentiary. --- TN Samuel A. McElwee, serving a second term in the legislature representing Haywood
County, receives the Republican nomination for Speaker of the House. Though the nomination is largely symbolic in
the Democratic-controlled legislature, McElwee receives 32 votes. He serves on the committee on Banks. During this year his wife dies, leaving him with two
small children. Placing the children
with relatives, he enters Central Tennessee College, earning a law degree the following
year. --- TN David F. Rivers is listed in the Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly, Volume II, 1861-
1901, as a member of the 1885 General Assembly, but does not appear in
any records in the House Journal for that year. According to family members, Rivers, having been
driven out of Fayette County by racial violence, does not serve out the
legislative term to which he has been elected but moves to Nashville and takes
a position teaching theology at Roger Williams University.
Jan. 15 TN William A. Feilds introduces House
Bill No. 119, To make school
attendance compulsory. It passes its
first reading and is referred to the Committee on Education and Common Schools. Jan. 19 TN William C. Hodge introduces House Bill No. 139, To amend the
road law of 1883. It passes first
reading and is referred to the Committee on Public Roads. It is tabled on its second reading on
February 27.
Jan. 19 TN William C. Hodge introduces House Bill No. 140, To amend the
road law. It passes first reading and is
referred to the Committee on Public Roads.
On its second reading on February 27, it is tabled.
Jan. 19 TN William C. Hodge ntroduces House Bill No. 141, to repeal Chapter
130 of the Acts of 1875.
It passes its first reading, and then, on 29 January, its second
reading.
Jan. 19 TN William A. Feilds introduces House Bill No. 151, requiring employers to pay employees the amount promised in their
advertisements. The bill passes its first reading and is
referred to the Judiciary committee. It
will pass its second reading on January 24.
Jan. 19 TN Greene E. Evans introduces House Bill No. 156, To amend the road law. It passes first reading and is referred to the
Committee on Public Roads. Returned to the House on March 2, it will be
tabled.
Feb. TN In
his annual report to the General Assembly, Governor William Brimage Bate (1826-1905), for the second time, urges
legislation authorizing the appointment
of an Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction, responsible for the
education of African American students.
Feb. 14 TN Greene E. Evans presents House
Bill No. 447, to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875. The bill passes first and
second readings, but then is referred to the Judiciary Committee, where it
dies.
Feb. 18 TN Samuel A. McElwee introduces House
Bill No. 495, To protect
married women and their children." It passes its
first and
second readings and is referred to the Judiciary Committee. On February 28 it is withdrawn without
explanation.
Feb. 19 TN Greene E. Evans presents House Bill No. 514, at the request of Governor Bate, providing for the
appointment of an xxxxxxxxxxxxxxAssistant State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The bill passes its first and second
readings, and is then sent to the Committee on Education and Common Schools, of which Evans is a member,
where it is tabled.
Feb. 27 TN House Bill No. 141, on third reading, is defeated by a vote
of 49-20. Mar. 2 TN House Bill No. 151
is
rejected.
Mar. 3 TN House Bill No. 119 is tabled. Mar. 4 Grover Cleveland becomes the
nation’s 21st President (1885-1889). May 20 TN The State School Board asks the General
Assembly to repeal the act reducing the salary of the State
Superintendent. May 25 TN The General Assembly meets in extraordinary
session. They will meet through June 12. May 27 TN Greene E. Evans introduces House Bill No. 29, To provide for the appointment of an Assistant Superintendent
of Public Instruction. It passes first
and second readings and is referred to the Committee on Education and Common
Schools, where it is tabled. May 27 TN William A. Feilds introduces House Bill No. 34, To empower
Managers of Teachers’ Institutes to examine and issue certificates, to be
approved by the County Superintendent.
It passes first and second readings and is referred to the Committee on
Education and Common Schools, where it is tabled. June 3 TN William C. Hodge introduces House Bill No. 63, To provide for
the protection of the ballot box. It
passes first and second readings and is referred to the Committee on Elections,
where it dies. June 25 African American priest Samuel David
Ferguson is ordained a bishop of the Episcopal church;
he will serve until his death in 1916.
1886 --- TN The
Sunday School Union, where the first Sunday school literature by African
Americans is published, moves from Bloomington, Indiana, to a five-story brick
and stone building at 206 Public Square in Nashville. --- TN This
year will see the establishment of the first African American-owned drug store
in Nashville.
Feb. 20 TN The State Board of Education submits
payment for sixty-one African American students who have received State
Normal (Peabody) Scholar-ships to attend
Central Tennessee College, Fisk University, Knoxville College, and Roger
Williams University
--- TN Samuel A. McElwee receives a
law degree from Central Tennessee College in Nashville.
Sept. 20 TN Nashville’s
first public high school for African American students opens: Meigs Public School offers the first classes for
9th and 10th graders;
new courses for 11th graders will be added in the 1887-1888
school year. Ten years later (1897-1898
school year) the high school department at Meigs is
transferred to Pearl High School, from which the first class will graduate on 2
June 1898.
Dec. 8 The American Federation of Labor
is organized, signaling the rise of the labor movement. Black Americans are excluded from all major
unions of the period. 1887 --- TN Monroe W. Gooden, the only Democrat among the African American legislators, is elected to represent Fayette
county in the 45th General Assembly
from 1887-1888. He is appointed to the
committees on Agriculture and Federal Relations.
--- TN Styles Linton Hutchins, a Republican, begins his legislative term, representing Hamilton
County in the 45th
General Assembly from 1887-1888.
He is appointed to the committees on Education and Common Schools, and
New Counties and County Lines. --- TN Samuel A. McElwee, a Republican, is elected to a
third term representing Haywood County. He is appointed to the
committees on Charitable Institutions, Elections, and
Judiciary. Gooden, Hutchins, and McElwee
are the last African Americans elected to serve in the Tennessee General
Assembly until Memphis voters elect A. W. Willis in 1964, more than 75 years
later.
--- TN Booker
T. Washington invites Samuel
A. McElwee to be commencement speaker at the 1887 graduation exercises of
Tuskegee Institute.
Jan. 7 TN In
the wake of a brutal lynching in West Tennessee, Samuel A. McElwee introduces House
Bill No. 5, to prevent
mob xxxxxxxxxxxxxxviolence. The bill passes its first and
second readings and is referred to the Judiciary committee. McElwee makes xxxxxxxxxxxxxxseveral attempts to have the bill declared the
special order
for the session (Feb. 16, 21, and 22).
Jan. 12 TN Styles L. Hutchins introduces House
Bill No. 136, to repeal a
section of the Chattanooga charter making poll taxes a requirement for voting
in city elections. It passes its second
reading a week later. Feb. 9 TN Styles L. Hutchins introduces House
Bill No. 447 to regulate convict labor, a system that has replaced slave labor in
the South: new laws are sending many
African Americans to prison for minor offenses, and convicts are being forced
to do jobs that are now unavailable to free laborers. The bill passes its first and second readings
and is referred to the Committee on Penitentiary, where it is tabled.
Feb. 22 TN House Bill No. 5, to prevent mob violence, having been delayed for several days, is at last made the special order for for the afternoon session. Samuel A. McElwee makes a
powerful speech in
its support, demanding reform: “I stand here today and enter my most solemn
protest against mob violence in Tennessee . . . .Great
God, when will this Nation treat the Negro as an American citizen? . . . As a
humble representative of the Negro race, and as a member of this body, I stand
here today and wave the flag of truce between the races and demand a
reformation in Southern society.” The
Judiciary Committee offers a substitute bill.
By a 41-36 vote, both bills are tabled.
Mar. 5 TN Morristown
Seminary and Normal Institute, Morristown, Tennessee, is designated as one of the colleges eligible for
Peabody Scholarship students “of African
descent.”
Mar. 23 TN House Bill No. 136, to amend
the charter of Chattanooga to eliminate poll taxes, passes on third
reading. The ease of the bill’s passage
suggests that whites have not yet realized the effectiveness of the poll tax as
a method of restricting black voters from exercising their rights. Jun. 19 TN Sampson
W. Keeble dies of “a congestive
chill” (probably malaria) in Richmond, Texas, and may have been buried
there. He is listed with his daughter and son-in-law on a gravestone in Greenwood Cemetery on Elm Hill Pike in
Nashville, near the graves of James C. Napier and publisher R. H. Boyd.
Aug. 15 Eatonville, Florida, becomes the
first African American township to be incorporated into the United
States. Dec. 7 TN Central Tennessee College, Fisk University, and Roger Williams University ask the State Board of Education to urge the General Assembly “to
restore the former appropriations for colored scholarships to $3300.”
1888 --- TN Samuel A. McElwee attends the
Republican National Convention in Chicago as one of two delegates representing
Tennessee. Thomas F. Cassels serves as a Republican Presidential elector.
--- Two large
African-American-owned banks open during the year: the Savings Bank of the
Grand Fountain United Order of the Reformers (Richmond, Virginia) and Capital
Savings Bank (Washington, D.C.). 1889 --- TN With more than a 2/3 majority in both Houses of the General Assembly, Tennessee Democrats disfranchise black voters in the state by passing four restrictive bills sponsored by
Senators Myers, Dortch, and Lea, as well as reinstating a poll tax urged by
Governor Robert L. Taylor. [See entry titled “Disfranchising Laws” in Tennessee Encyclopedia of History &
Culture: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=380
.] This is the first legislative session
in nearly ten years in which no African American representative is seated.
--- TN The General Assembly, for reasons
that are unspecified but probably related to the same political climate that permitted
the passage of laws limiting black
suffrage, cuts the appropriation for “colored normal scholarships” from $3,300
to $1,500 per year, making each individual scholarship worth only $22.70. In his 1889 Annual Report of the State School
Board to the Legislature, Board Secretary Frank Goodman protests the cuts and
requests that the original appropriation be restored. [Lauder]
Mar. 4 Benjamin
Harrison becomes the nation’s 22nd President (1889-1893). Mar. 30 TN Cabell Rives Berry, Senator from Williamson and Marshal Counties, introduces an amendment to Senate Appropriations Bill No. 456, making the item"Colored Normal Department" call for "$3,300 per annum instead of $2,500 per annum, as the bill now provides.”
--- TN Senate Appropriations Bill No. 456,
with amendments added by the Senate Committee of Finance, Ways & Means
(none of which change the scholarship
appropriation in any way) will pass both the Senate and the House before the
end of the 1889 session. This vote is
particularly surprising in light of the disfranchising bills passed during the
session.
1890 --- According
to the 1890 census, African Americans make up 11.9% of the U.S. population (7,488,676 of 62, 947,714).
--- TN The Black Northern Migration draws thousands of black Tennesseans to the industrial cities of the North. Between 1870 and 1930 Tennessee’s black population declines to 18.3% from an earlier
figure of 25.6%.
--- The American Baptist Publication Society no longer publishes the writings of African American ministers because Southern white readers have objected to them.
--- “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman is elected governor of South Carolina. An apologist for violence against blacks, Tillman calls his victory “a triumph of ... white supremacy." His words are generally more inflammatory than his policies -- he makes
an effort to curb
lynching in his state, while also advocating segregation and disfranchisement
of black voters.
Nov. 1 The Mississippi Plan becomes law on this date. It uses literacy and "understanding" tests to disfranchise minority voters. Similar statutes will be adopted by South
Carolina (1895), Louisiana (1898), North Carolina (1900), Alabama (1901),
Virginia (1901), Georgia (1908), and Oklahoma (1910)
1891 --- TN The
Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company (TCI) uses
convicts as strikebreakers when coal miners strike.
Violent uprisings continue until 1895, when the General Assembly ends the practice of convict leasing.
--- TN Vigilante groups produce havoc throughout Tennessee. A Sevier County groups known as the White Caps begins a reign of terror, beating and occasionally
killing people (primarily women) they believed to be “lewd or adulterous.” Their activities continue nearly unchecked
until 1896.
--- TN Approximately 235
African Americans will lose their lives to lynchings this year; 204 black Tennesseans will be lynched
during the years between 1890 and
1950.
March TN After Ida B. Wells speaks out in The Memphis Free Speech
against a recent lynching, a white mob burns the
newspaper office. Wells is forced to move out of the state to
guarantee her safety,
May 20 TN Frederick
Douglass speaks at the First Colored Baptist Church in response to recent lynchings in Nashville and
Goodlettsville.
Dec. 1 TN Dr.
Miles V. Lynk, a graduate of Meharry Medical School and the first African American physician in Madison County,
publishes the first national medical
journal for black physicians, The Medical and Surgical Observer. He is 21 years old. He will later found the University of West
Tennessee, earn a law degree, serve as Dean of the School of Nurse Training of
Terrill Memorial Hospital in Memphis, and become the ninth recipient of the
Distinguished Service Award from the National Medical Association.
Dec. 27 Biddle
University (NC) defeats Livingstone College (NC) 5-0 in the first footabll game between teams from black
colleges.
1892 --- TN Working as an emigration agent for a railroad company, Isaac F. Norris moves his family to the newly opened xxxxxxxxxxxxxOklahoma Territory, where he will continue to be active in politics..
1893 Mar. 4 Grover
Cleveland is sworn in to his second term as President, the first covering the years 1885-1889, and the second
running from 1893-1897.
--- TN After about 50 years of the practice known as convict leasing, the Tennessee General Assembly finally addresses the issue and passes legislation to construct a new
state penitentiary and abolish convict leasing at the expiration of the lease
contract in 1896.
--- TN David F. Rivers takes a position as pastor
of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas. By 1900 he
will be serving as pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Washington, D.
C.
1894 --- African
American workers are hired by the Pullman Company as strike breakers after a costly strike by employees.
1895 --- xx Jesse M. H. Graham becomes
editor of the Clarksville Enterprise.
Feb. 20 Death of Frederick Douglass. Sept. 18 Booker T. Washington delivers the “Atlanta Compromise” address at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition. He asserts that the “Negro problem" will be resolved if the South abides by a policy of gradualism and accommodation. Much of
what Washington
proposes is black self-help: African Americans will rise socially and
politically if they work, save, and xxxxxxxgain an education, but whites must be
willing to accept and encourage this effort.
Sept. 24 The National
Baptist Convention of the United States is created by the union of several smaller Baptist
organizations. The Baptist church becomes
the nation’s largest African American religious denomination. Dec. 4 In the
state Constitutional Convention, South Carolina adopts a new constitution containing an "understanding" clause
designed to eliminate black voters.
1896 --- TN xxx Samuel L. McElwee and James Napier are named to the original committee of the Negro Department of the
Tennessee Centennial. Both will withdraw before the Exposition
opens on
--- TN Richard H. Boyd establishes the National Baptist Publishing Board, which is reportedly the oldest extant African- American-owned publishing company.
May The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholds Louisiana statute requiring "separate but equal" accommodations on railroads, saying segregation
is not necessarily discrimination.
Justice Harlan’s dissent (“The Constitution is color-blind!”) insists
that all segregation is
inherently discrimination, that states cannot impose criminal
penalties upon a citizen who merely wants to use public highways and
carriers. It is this very argument that
will eventually be used to win Brown v. Board of Education (1954). July 21 The
National Association of Colored Women is established, with Mary Church Terrell as its first president.
Nov. 3 William
McKinley, an Ohio Republican, is elected President. 1897 ---TN xxxx Jesse M. H. Graham is elected
as a Republican representing Montgomery County in the 50th General Assembly.
He arrives in Nashville to
find his seat contested on the first day of session. Although he is provisionally seated on Mar. 4 William
McKinley is inaugurated as President (1897-1901). May 1 TN The
Tennessee Centennial Exposition opens in Nashville, to run until October 31. It was a successful effort to stimulate
the
economy after a 20- year period of economic depression.
--- TN During 1897 Tennessee Coal (TCI) pays
Louisiana $18.50 a month for a "first-class" state convict.
1898 Apr. 21 The Spanish-American War begins. Black volunteers make up sixteen regiments, four of which will see combat. Five
African Americans win Congressional Medals of Honor for their valor.
Apr. 25 Announcing their judgment in the case of Williams v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Mississippi Constitution, which requires voters to pass a literacy test in order to receive a ballot. This law, clearly aimed at disfranchising
black voters, places the power of interpretation in the hands of local,
politically appointed registrars.
June 2 TN The first class graduates from Pearl High School,
Nashville’s African American high school.
Sept 9 TN Death of former Representative William A. Feilds, a member of the Shelby County Court, whose surviving members
publish a resolution honoring his
service..
Link to Timeline Sources. |
