* Local History Facts are Highlighted in red

Post 1865 - Ulysses S. Grant was elected President. Southern states passed black codes to control the newly freed ex-slaves. Based largely on the old black codes that existed prior to the Civil War, the new laws gave the ex-slaves some basic rights, but they also discriminated against them. In no state with such a code could an African American testify in court unless he or she was a party to legal action. In most states they were forbidden to bear arms or meet in unsupervised groups. In many states they were made liable to criminal punishment for breaking labor contracts, instead of being subject to civil penalties as whites were. Usually punishments for crimes were different from those for whites. Stiff discriminatory vagrancy laws were passed, and it was made easy to force African American children into apprenticeships -- virtual slavery -- to whites.

1867 - Howard University, a predominantly black university, was founded in Washington, D.C. It is named for General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the post-Civil War Freemen’s Bureau.

1868 - Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment introduced the word “equal” into the Constitution.

1870 - Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment. The amendment states that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

1871 - Native American Indians, living in the midsection of the United States, were forced to live on reservations.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

1879 - African Americans from throughout the South gathered in Nashville, Tennessee to discuss the continuing violence against their families. In a report adopted by the body at that convention, grievances and proposed remedies were set forth. Indeed, the convention encouraged people to emigrate to the North and West in search of better living conditions.

1881 - Booker T. Washington opened Tuskeegee Institute.

1882 - Local African Americans form political club to support the Congressional candidacy of General Benjamin Butler.

1892 - Ellis Island opened as a new center for receiving immigrants. The decade between 1890 and 1900 was the most dangerous time in the post Civil War era for an African American man to be alive. Nearly 1,700 persons were lynched in that decade as compared to 921 in the decade before.

1896 - Homer Plessy of Louisiana asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a state law that required separate accommodations for white and colored railroad passengers. The court ruled against Plessy, holding that separate but equal accommodations were constitutional.

1898 - The U.S. Tenth Calvary (colored troops) saved Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders from defeat at the Battle of San Juan

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