African American World . Timeline

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Freedwoman Sojourner Truth, a compelling speaker for abolitionism, gives her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech in Akron, Ohio.

Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is an immediate bestseller and helps turn public opinion against the Fugitive Slave Act and slavery itself.

	Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered From The Tavis Smiley Show
	Slave Narratives and Uncle Tom's Cabin From Africans in America

In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court decides that African Americans are not citizens of the U.S., and that Congress has no power to restrict slavery in any federal territory. This meant that a slave who made it to a free state would still be considered a slave.

	What Dred Scott Meant for African Americans From The Tavis Smiley Show
	Dred Scott's fight for freedom From Africans in America

Harriet Wilson publishes Our Nig; Or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, the first novel by an African American woman. The novel will be republished over a century later by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Civil War begins when the Confederates attack Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina. The war, fought over the issue of slavery, will rage for another four years. The Union's victory will mean the end of slavery in the U.S.

The Civil War
From Africans in America

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation legally frees all slaves in the Confederacy.

	June-teenth Declared "African American Independence Day" From Morning Edition
	The Emancipation Proclamation From Africans in America

The Union's 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African American regular army regiment, assaults Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, losing half its men. The event is memorialized in the 1989 movie Glory. By the war's end, nearly 180,000 African American men will have served in the Union army. Some also served in the Confederate army - both freedmen and conscripted slaves.

	Morgan Freeman Discusses the 54th Mass. Regiment From The Tavis Smiley Show
	African American Soldiers From The Time of the Lincolns

Eight African American infantry regiments fight on the Union side in the Battle of Port Hudson, attacking heroically despite heavy losses to withering Confederate fire.

African American Soldiers
From The Time of the Lincolns

Captured African American Union troops are massacred in cold blood after Confederates take the Union-held Fort Pillow in Tennessee.

	Discussion of Like Men of War From Weekend Edition
	African American Soldiers From The Time of the Lincolns

Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, and establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to assist former slaves. This is the beginning of the Reconstruction era.

The Civil War and Emancipation
From Africans in America

Union Gen. William T. Sherman issues a field order setting aside 40-acre plots of land --"40 acres and a mule" --in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida for African Americans to settle.

All-white legislatures in the former Confederate states pass the so-called "Black Codes," sharply curtailing African Americans' freedom and virtually re-enslaving them.

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