President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emanicipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War.

Near the end of the Civil War, this bill created a framework for Reconstruction and the readmittance of the Confederate states to the Union.

Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to former slaves.

In 1868, the same year the state rejected the 15th Amendment giving blacks the right to vote, Dawson Pompey became the first African American to hold elective office in Michigan when Covert residents chose him to oversee local road projects.

Long before Rosa Parks, Mary Ellen Pleasant sued to win the right to ride on cable cars in San Francisco.

Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote.

Tennessee passes the first of the Jim Crow segregation laws, segregating state railroads.

African American physician Daniel Hale Williams performs the world`s first successful open-heart surgery.

That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal and enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places.

On the whole, we are of opinion that no countenance of authority for the passage of the law in question can be found in either the thirteenth or fourteenth amendment of the constitution.

Mississippi enacts a poll tax, which most African Americans cannot afford to pay, to try to keep blacks from voting.

African American journalist Ida B Wells begins a crusade to investigate the lynchings of African Americans after three of her friends are lynched in Tennessee.

The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.

Louisiana passes limits the right to vote to anyone whose fathers and grandfathers were qualified on January 1, 1867.

William Edward Burghardt DuBois, social scientist, critic and public intellectual, was a leading figure in African-American protest for most of his adult life.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, formed in 1909.

On April 6, 1909, Matthew Henson became the first man to reach the North Pole.

Looking for better opportunities, massive numbers of African Americans move north to seek employment in factories.

Started to help the many African Americans who are migrating to the cities find jobs and housing.

Forty African Americans and eight whites are killed in race riots in East St Louis, Ill.

Kept on the sidelines by the US Army, Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts join the Harlem Hellfighters and fight for the French Army.

Escaping the cotton fields of Louisiana, born Sarah Breedlove, Madam C.

Scores of race riots across the country leave at least 100 people dead.

Pioneering director-producer produces his first film, The Homesteader, based on his novel.

The rights of citizens.

Suppored by Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, Coleman travels to France to earn an international pilot`s license

On August 3, 1936, at the Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, Jesse Owens won the 100-meter sprint, capturing his first of four gold medals.

When the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Anderson the opportunity to sing to an integrated audience at Constitution Hall, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and invited her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday.