The 1890 Land Grant Act requires states to provide educational training for black youth.
A constitutional convention in Mississippi adopted the literacy and "understanding" tests as devices to disenfranchise black voters. They also had a poll tax of two dollars and a provision excluding voters convicted of certain crimes.
Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay is born on this day in 1890 in Jamaica. McKay, the son of a farmer, would go on to produce some of the seminal works of the Harlem Renaissance.
In the year 1890 there are 85 recorded lynchings. African Americans also own 120,738 farms. There are a recorded 18.7% of African American Americans that attend school in the South. The literacy rate rises to 42.9%.
The Lodge Bill, which aimed to prevent infringements of African American's right to vote, fails in the U.S. Senate.
1891 closes out with 112 reported lynchings.
Plessy, who was 7/8 white and 1/8 white, took a seat on the coach of a train reserved for whites. This leads to his arrest and an ensuing and crucial Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson.
There 160 recorded lynchings in the year 1892.
There are 117 recorded lynchings in 1893.
There are 135 recorded lynchings in 1894.
One of the first respected African American voices against slavery and discrimination passes away in Washington, D.C. Douglass' bold stance against racial slavery and discrimination helped to pave the way for future African American writers before, during, and after the Harlem Renaissance.
In June of 1895, W.E.B. Du Bois becomes the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Washington, the principal of the Tuskegee Institute, delivers a speech to the Cotton States International Exposition in Atlanta asking for economic and educational progress for blacks aided by whites. He also downplayed political power and equality to most likely keep the speech from being to controversial.
There are 112 recorded lynchings in 1895.
Du Bois publishes his Harvard dissertation The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to America. This along with his other works helped to establish Du Bois' scholarly reputation.
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds separate but equal public facilities for blacks. The segregation of the races thus won the sanction of the highest national tribunal.
The National Association of Colored Women was led by Mary Church Terrell and was organized in Washington, DC.
There are 77 recorded lynchings.
The Supreme Court, in Williams v. Mississippi, upheld voting requirements established by the Mississippi state constitution. The court found no violation of the 15th amendment in the law because it applied to both whites and blacks. However, the literacy and comprehension tests were usually (always) evaluated by white registration officials.
There are 123 recorded lynchings this year.
Will Marion Cook directs the musical comedy sketch Clorindy, the Origin of Cakewalk on Broadway. Cook disregards warnings that people will not listen African Americans singing black opera and he assembles a company of 26 black performers. He also composed music for the musical-comedy that were set to lyrics written by famous black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. This is one of the early examples of black art in New York that predates the rapidly approaching Harlem Renaissance.
President McKinley pays tribute to the institution's successes and to its founder, Booker T. Washington.
There are 101 recorded lynchings this year
Boston women meet to protest the lynching of African Americans in the South. The women argue that their is much indifference among northerners concerning the rights of Southern blacks. They also argued that black votes weren't counted and that the idea that lynchings are to protect women is a false pretense as a majority of lynchings didn't concern women at all.
There are 89 recorded lynchings.
Another race riot breaks out in New Orleans. Black schools and homes were destroyed during the disturbance.
There are 115 recorded lynchings. Over 2,000 African Americans hold college degrees and over 21,000 are school teachers. Illiteracy among African Americans is 44.5%. The US Census counts 8,833,994 African Americans. This is 11.6 % of the U.S. population. Close to 90% live in the south and more than 1/4 live in urban areas. Life expectancy is for African American's is 34 compared to 48 for white Americans. Almost 1/4 of the black population are homeowners.
William Monroe Trotter founds the Boston Guardian which was a black newspaper that demanded full equality for blacks and spoke out against Booker T. Washington' s policies on the grounds that they were too accommodating.
Booker T. Washington dines with President Teddy Roosevelt at the White House. The meeting is criticized by many whites, especially Southerners, as a departure from racial etiquette.
There are 130 recorded lynchings.
Lannston Hughes is born on this date in Joplin, Missouri. He will later go on to be one of the leading and most seminal voices of the Harlem Renaissance.
Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk is published and it crystallizes black opposition to the policies of Booker T. Washington which were beginning to viewed by many civil rights activists as being far too flexible.
Zora Neale Hurston is born on this date in Eatonville, Florida. She will later make a name for herself as one of the emerging writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen is born Countee Porter on this date. He was orphaned as a young child and adopted by a Reverend Frederick Cullen.
There are 99 recorded lynchings.
The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the exclusion of African Americans from juries was in direct violation of the equal protection clause.
There are 93 recorded lynchings
Robert S. Abbot begins the publication of the militant Chicago Defender. It soon becomes one of the most widely read, influential newspapers in the country. This newspaper like other African American Publications paved the way for publications crucial to the Harlem Renaissance like The Crisis.
A group of black intellectuals from across the nation meet near Niagara Falls and adopt resolutions demanding full equality for American blacks. This meeting has become known as he beginning of the Niagara Movement. W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter spearheaded the movement.
There are 62 recorded lynchings in this year.
Dunbar was instrumental in making the black dialect an accepted literary form. This acceptance of black dialects and overall cultural was something that was picked up and progressed further during the Harlem Renaissance.
White civilians and black soldiers clashed in Brownsville, Texas. This was apparently caused by soldiers responding to racial slurs and taunting by whites. The riots ended in the deaths of at least three white men. This led to the soldiers being dishonorably discharged by President Theodore Roosevelt. This led many blacks to feel that they could not look to Roosevelt for help in the growing wake of increasing anti-black assaults.
A major race riot in Atlanta, Georgia, leaves twelve dead. This was caused by the local media's disenfranchisement of blacks through reports of four successive assaults on white women by black men. Whites formed mobs and any blacks that tried to arm themselves in defense were promptly arrested by local authorities.
There are 65 recorded lynchings in 1906.
Alain Lock, a prominent African American intellectual, receives a Rhodes Scholarship. No other African American will win this Scholarship for more than half a century.
There are 60 recorded lynchings in 1907.
A racial disturbance occurred in Springfield, Illinois. The shock of the riot prompted concerned whites to call the conference that led to the founding of the NAACP.
There are 97 recorded lynchings in this year.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in New York City. White progressives and black intellectuals were the groups first leaders, among them were Jane Addams, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, and Oswald Garrison Villard. Boston's Moorfield Storey was named president.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close