The Colonial Period 1500s–1776
African American History
The Colonial Period 1500s–1776
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1526 |
Spanish explorer Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon brings African slaves to coastal South Carolina to establish a settlement | |
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1530s |
Africans take part in numerous Spanish expeditions to the New World, from present-day Florida to California | |
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1542 |
Criticism from humanitarians leads Spanish monarch Charles V to outlaw Native American slavery and the encomienda system on the Caribbean islands and other Spanish-controlled colonies | |
| Charles V grants contracts to import African slaves rather than use Native Americans as slaves | ||
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1565 |
Africans take part in the founding of St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent city in North America built by non-Native Americans |
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c. 1590 |
Portuguese begin to supply Brazil with African slaves from Angola and the Congo | |
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1606 |
First recorded birth of a black child in North America (St. Augustine) | |
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1619 |
First group of twenty African indentured servants arrives in the English settlement of Jamestown, Virginia |
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1623 |
William Tucker is the first recorded birth of a black child in the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia | |
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1624 |
Dutch slavers bring first enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam (present-day New York City) | |
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1634 |
Enslaved Africans arrive in Massachusetts and Maryland | |
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1641 |
Massachusetts becomes the first colony to give slavery statutory recognition; other colonies to follow include Connecticut (1650), Virginia (1661), Maryland (1663), New York and New Jersey (1664), South Carolina (1682), Rhode Island and Pennsylvania (1700), North Carolina (1715), and Georgia (1750) | |
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1644 |
Eleven Africans in New York successfully petition for their freedom | |
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1649 |
Colonial officials report that Virginia is home to ”about fifteene thousand English and of Negroes brought thither, three hundred good servants” | |
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1652 |
Rhode Island enacts the first antislavery law in the colonies, limiting the term of servitude to ten years for both African and European servants | |
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1663 |
House servant foils insurrection attempt between white indentured servants and black slaves of Gloucester County, Virginia | |
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1672 |
King Charles II of England charters the Royal African Company, which monopolizes the transatlantic slave trade for the next 50 years | |
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1688 |
Quakers publish pamphlets condemning slavery in the colonies | |
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1695 |
Reverend Samuel Thomas, a white cleric in Charleston, South Carolina, establishes the first known school for African Americans | |
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1700 |
Enslaved population in North America reaches 28,000 (23,000 of whom live in the South) | |
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1708 |
Number of enslaved Africans in North and South Carolina exceeds that of European colonists in these states | |
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1712 |
Revolt by enslaved Africans in New York City causes nine deaths and destroys buildings; 20 conspirators are killed or commit suicide | |
| South Carolina requires all slaves to carry a pass when traveling to another plantation | ||
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1715 |
North Carolina legally recognizes slavery, passes anti-miscegenation laws (preventing marriage or cohabitation between whites and blacks), and outlaws meetings between slaves |
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1724 |
Louisiana forbids slaves from carrying weapons and sentences slaves to death for striking or killing their owners | |
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1730s |
First Maroon War in Jamaica leads to British treaty that allows maroon communities of runaway enslaved Africans to exist as freed communities |
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1738 |
Fugitive slaves take refuge with the Creek tribe in Georgia and Spanish in Florida | |
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1739 |
Stono Rebellion in South Carolina: 100 enslaved conspirators rebel unsuccessfully and are either killed in battle or hanged |
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1746 |
Lucy Terry’s “Bars Fight” is the first poem written by an African American; it recounts the Deerfield Massacre, a battle between British locals and Native Americans in Massachusetts | |
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1750 |
Enslaved African population in the American colonies reaches 236,000 | |
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1761 |
African American inventor and astronomer Benjamin Banneker constructs the first wooden clock to keep precise time; later, he predicts the solar eclipse of 1789; drafts a survey blueprint of Washington, D.C.; and issues the first of ten almanacs (1791) |
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1770 |
African American seafarer Crispus Attucks is the first colonist killed in the Boston Massacre |
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1773 |
Phyllis Wheatley becomes the first African American to publish a book: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral |
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| First known black Baptist church is founded in Sliver Bluff, South Carolina; other congregations form in Georgia and Virginia over the next several years | ||
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1774 |
Massachusetts becomes the first American colony to ban importation of slaves | |
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1775 |
African American minutemen in the American Revolutionary War fight with distinction in the battles at Lexington, Concord, Ticonderoga, and Bunker Hill | |
| Pennsylvania Quakers organize the first abolition society in the United States | ||
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1776 |
Declaration of Independence is adopted, severing ties between the American colonies and Great Britain |
