Existing comment:
The Segregation Era Timeline
1900: Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League
1900: James Weldon Johnson and brother J. Rosamond Johnson wrote "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," widely referred to as "the Negro national anthem"
1900–1906: Blacks organized boycotts in every Southern state to protest segregated streetcars
1903: W. E. B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk
1905: Niagara Movement organized by W. E. B. Du Bois and others in opposition to Booker T. Washington's leadership
1906: Three companies of black troops accused of waging a murderous raid in Brownsville, Texas, were denied a fair trial by court martial and dishonorably discharged by President Theodore Roosevelt
1906: A five-day race riot in Atlanta killed at least twenty-seven, injured hundreds, and destroyed black-owned property
1908: Bloody two-day race riot erupted in Springfield, Illinois, and destroyed the city's black section
1909: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed in New York City in response to the Springfield race riot
1909: Nannie Helen Burroughs established the National Training School for Women in Washington, D.C.
1910: The National Urban League founded in New York City
1910: African American inventor and entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker, generally considered the first black woman millionaire, started a hair care company for black women in Indianapolis
1911: El Primer Congreso Mexicanista, the first large Mexican American civil rights conference, met in Laredo, Texas
1914–1918: World War I
1914: NAACP published an open letter to President Woodrow Wilson protesting segregation in federal agencies
1915: Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
1916: Representative Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) became the first woman elected to Congress
1917: Marcus Garvey established the American branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem
1917: Harlem Renaissance began
1917: NAACP led a "Silent March" of 10,000 black New Yorkers down Fifth Avenue to protest the East St. Louis race riot
1919: NAACP published Thirty Years of Lynching, 1889–1918, as part of an antilynching campaign
1919: Summer and early fall race riots erupted in twenty-five cities across the U.S.; later called "Red Summer"
1922: U.S. House of Representatives passed the NAACP-supported Dyer antilynching bill; defeated by Southern Democrats in the Senate
1925: A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union
1926: Carter G. Woodson inaugurated "Negro History Week," later extended to Black History Month
1928: Octaviano Larrazolo (R-NM) became the first Latino U.S. Senator
1929: Oscar DePriest (R-IL) elected as the first black congressman since Reconstruction
1929: NAACP-supported "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" economic boycott movement began with the goal of securing better jobs for African Americans
1931: A filibuster by Southern Democrats defeated the NAACP-supported Costigan-Wagner antilynching bill in the Senate
1931: Nine black men were wrongfully charged and convicted of the rape of two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama; the accused chose the Communist Party-supported International Labor Defense (ILD) rather than the NAACP to represent them
1932: Hattie Wyatt Caraway (D-AR) became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate
1933: Joint Committee on National Recovery formed to represent African Americans during the first 100 days of President Franklin Roosevelt's administration
1934: Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, an interracial organization, formed to advocate for the fair treatment of sharecroppers and tenant farmers under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
1935: National Council of Negro Women founded
1935: National Negro Congress (NNC), led by A. Philip Randolph, called for the unionization of black workers, desegregation, and the protection of migrant workers
1935: Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) formed, espousing racial egalitarian rhetoric but allowing discriminatory practices
1936: Jesse Owens defied Nazi racist propaganda by winning four gold medals at the Olympic games in Berlin
1937: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters signed a collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company, the first such agreement between a black union and a major American company
1938: African American choreographer and dancer Katherine Dunham formed her own dance company
1939: African American contralto Marian Anderson sang in concert at the Lincoln Memorial before an integrated audience of 75,000
1939: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund formed |