How to Be an Antiracist is almost a history of Black and White race relations in America, with innumerable references to historical events, texts, and works of culture. Below is a timeline—not comprehensive, obviously—of some of the most consequential moments in Black history in America.
1619: Twenty Africans are brought to Jamestown, Virginia, and purchased by American slaveholders
1775-1783: During the Revolutionary War, Black soldiers fight for the British and the Americans, hoping for manumission at the war’s end
1789: The Constitution does not eradicate slavery, but instead enshrines it via extradition and especially the 3/5 Compromise, which elevated Southern political power by counting slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of representation in the House
1800s-1830s: Northern states abolish slavery
1830s-1861: Abolitionism spreads; Nat Turner’s rebellion; Harriet Tubman and others use the Underground Railroad to move the enslaved to freedom; Congress fights over the expansion of slavery into the territories; the Supreme Court says Blacks are not citizens in Dred Scott v. Sanford; John Brown and militant abolitionists murder Whites at Pottawatomie Creek and try to begin an uprising at Harper’s Ferry; Lincoln is elected on a platform of trying to preserve the Union, not getting rid of slavery
1861-1865: The Civil War, fought over slavery, ends with Union victory and slavery’s abolition
1865-1877: Reconstruction, which features both setbacks (the Black Codes, President Johnson’s vetoing of civil rights legislation, the rise of the KKK) and gains (the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments; the Freedmen’s Bureau; Black politicians at the local, state, and federal level; the formation of Black societies, clubs, and churches); ultimately ends with a recrudescence of racist policymakers in power and a betrayal of the emancipated slaves
1877-1964: Jim Crow laws in the South implement de jure segregation
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson, a Supreme Court case that said the doctrine of “separate but equal” services for Blacks and Whites was constitutional, thereby legitimating Jim Crow
1900-1920s: National Urban League founded; W.E.B. Du Bois and others found the NAACP; Marcus Garvey founds the United Negro Improvement Association and begins advocating for “Back to Africa” for American Blacks
1920s: Harlem Renaissance, the “New Negro,” and “Talented Tenth” focus on Black uplift and produce tremendous literary, artistic, and musical work; the decade also sees a resurgence of the KKK, racial violence, and race riots
1930s: The Great Depression affects Black Americans more deleteriously than Whites, with their unemployment rate at 50%
1941-1945: Black men join the war effort but still fight in segregated units; the distinguished Tuskegee Airmen capture the nation’s attention
1947: Jackie Robinson plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers
1948: President Truman integrates the military via executive order
1955-1965: First phase of the Civil Rights Movement, characterized by nonviolence and civil disobedience; Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott; the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader; the Greensboro sit-in; marches on Birmingham and Selma; the March on Washington; Brown vs. Board of Education and school integration; the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the 24th amendment; the end of the poll tax
1965-1970ish: Second phase of the Civil Rights Movement, characterized by more militancy and aggressive rhetoric, impatience with prevailing racism, discrimination, racial profiling, underfunded neighborhoods and schools, unemployment, etc.; the speeches and assassination of Malcolm X; the Watts riot; the assassination of King and subsequent riots; Black Power and the Black Panthers; the Chicago Seven Trial; the hunt for Angela Davis; the 1968 Olympics
1970s: Affirmative action policies are initiated and face backlash; conflicts over busing
1980s: AIDs ravages the gay population, with higher rates of infection and death found in communities of color; Reagan begins the War on Drugs; Jesse Jackson runs for the presidency; Oprah begins her talk show
1990s: Clinton continues the War on Drugs and ends welfare; L.A. riots break out after the policemen who beat up Rodney King are acquitted
2001: Colin Powell becomes Secretary of State under President George W. Bush
2008: Barack Obama is elected president
2013: The Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act and voter discrimination laws ensue; George Zimmerman is acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin; #BlackLivesMatter movement is initiated
2020: Protests erupt across the nation over the murder of George Floyd by a White policeman
