Slavery: Timeline
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Slavery in America
By Liane Hicks
Beginning in 1619, African men, women, and children were kidnapped from their homeland and shipped in brutal conditions to the American colonies to endure a life of hardship in bondage as slaves. While the international slave trade was outlawed in 1808, slavery continued in America, particularly in the southern states, throughout the 1800s. Slavery is an inextricable part of the story of America and it was rooted in racism that still impacts our society today.
Storyboard Description
This timeline focuses on the important events involved in the creation, continuance and abolition of Slavery in America.
Storyboard Text
- 1st ENSLAVED AFRICANS IN JAMESTOWN
- SLAVERY IN AMERICA 1619-1869
- Twenty and odd Africans, probably seized from a Portuguese slave ship, were carried to Jamestown, Virginia, and traded for provisions marking the beginning of institutionalized slavery in America.
- LAW MAKES BEING ENSLAVED INHERITED
- A Virginia law passed in 1662 stated that the status of the mother determined if a child would be enslaved. Many laws would follow with the purpose of maintaining white supremacy and the institution of slavery.
- VIRGINIA SLAVE CODE
- All Men are NOT Created Equal
- The Virginia Slave Codes were the harshest slavery laws. Any non-Christian brought to Virginia would be enslaved even if they converted. Enslavers could punish enslaved people without repercussion and enslaved people who escaped could be captured for a reward.
- AMERICAN REVOLUTION
- 1st FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT
- At the onset of the American Revolution, the Quaker Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery was founded. African Americans were recruited into both Loyalist and Patriot armies.
- U.S. Congress passed the first federal fugitive slave act, making it a crime to harbor an escaped enslaved person or to interfere with the arrest of an enslaved person.
- TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE BANNED
- Laws banning the slave trade went into effect in the U.S. and all British colonies. This was meant to stop the kidnapping and human trafficking of people from Africa into the colonies, but did nothing for the enslaved people already there.
- MISSOURI COMPROMISE
- In an effort to appease Southern enslavers who wanted to hold on to the institution of slavery, the Missouri Compromise was approved by Congress. Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine entered as a free state, and slavery was prohibited in western territories north of Missouri's southern border.
- EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 54th REGIMENT
- all persons held as slaves within any States shall be then forever free.
- KANSAS NEBRASKA ACT
- Jan 1: President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation calling for the end of slavery.July 18: The 54th Massachusetts all-black regiment for the Union army led a heroic attack on Fort Wagner in South Carolina.
- My two sons fought bravely in the famed Massachusetts 54th Regiment in the Civil War! - Frederick Douglass
- The Kansas-Nebraska Act mandated that a popular vote of settlers would determine if territories became free or slave states. The newly-formed Republican Party vowed to prevent new slave states and became the majority party in nearly every Northern state.
- CIVIL WAR ENDS, 13TH AMENDMENT AND JUNETEENTH
- 13th AmendmentNeither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
- The Civil War ended on May 13, 1865. The 13th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, officially abolishing slavery. News of emancipation was purposefully kept from enslaved people in Texas until June 19, 1865 when the Union Army arrived in Galveston marking Juneteenth.
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