What is Transatlantic Reconnection?

An interactive learning platform connecting continental African students with the history, culture, and diaspora narratives of the African American experience.

Historical Events

Explore 406 key moments in African American history.

Ancestral Foundations

18 events

Aksumite Empire at its height (4th century CE)

Battle of Kirina — Sundiata defeats Sumanguru (1235)

Construction of Lalibela rock-hewn churches (12th century)

Fall of Songhai to Moroccan forces (1591)

Founding of Al-Qarawiyyeen University (859 CE)

Ghana Empire rises (c. 300 CE)

Great Zimbabwe built (11th–15th century)

Griot tradition established as oral archive of West Africa

Kouroukan Fouga — Charter of Kurukan Fuga (1236)

Mali Empire founded by Sundiata Keita

Mansa Musa's gold floods Egyptian markets (1324)

Mansa Musa's Pilgrimage to Mecca (1324)

Queen Nzinga leads resistance in Angola (1620s–1650s)

Songhai Empire under Askia Mohammed

Timbuktu as center of Islamic scholarship

Trans-Saharan Trade Routes flourish

Yaa Asantewaa War of the Golden Stool (1900)

Zera Yacob's philosophical retreat (c. 1630s)

Colonial America

18 events

African reinterment ceremony 2003

American Revolution

Arrival of the first enslaved Africans

Battle of Bloody Mose (1740)

Battle of Fort Necessity

Burial Ground rediscovery 1991

Colonial African slavery in New York

Danish Colonial Rule

Discovery of Mammoth Fossils

Emancipation in the Danish West Indies

European colonization of Florida

First permanent English settlement in North America

Founding of Fort Mose (1738)

French and Indian War

History of slavery in Florida

Pleistocene Era

Royal Decree of 1693

Spanish colonization of Puerto Rico

Slavery

134 events

"Contraband of War" decision

150th anniversary of French abolition and initial memorial proposal (1998)

1712 New York Slave Revolt (nearby)

1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation

54th Massachusetts Regiment formation

Abolition of D.C. Slave Trade

African cultural retention under slavery

African drumming and cultural gatherings

AME Church founding

American Civil War

Annual Keti Koti commemoration (1 July)

Antebellum cotton economy

Approval in Lisbon Participatory Budget (2017-2018)

Assault on Fort Wagner 1863

Atlanta Campaign

Battle of Antietam

Battle of Cedar Creek

Battle of Monocacy

Battle of Pea Ridge

Battle of Shiloh

Battle of the Crater

Battle of Vertières (November 18, 1803)

Bleeding Kansas

Bois Caïman Ceremony (August 14, 1791)

Brom and Bett v. Ashley Verdict (August 22, 1781)

Cameron Family Plantation Expansion (1776-1860)

Cape Coast Castle as a slave trade departure point

Charleston Slave Trade

Civil War and Emancipation

Civil War Union scouting missions

Coastwise Slave Trade to New Orleans

Combahee River Raid 1863

Compromise of 1850

Construction of Horton Grove Quarters (c. 1851)

Construction of the Citadelle Laferrière (1805-1820)

Construction of the Lakeport House (1859)

Crenshaw's Kidnapping Indictments (1820s, 1842)

Dawes Commission Freedmen Enrollment

Denmark Vesey Conspiracy 1822

Design selected via international competition (2002)

Development of American music

Development of Creole culture

DeWolf Family Slave Trading Operations (1769-1820)

Discovery and exploration of Mammoth Cave

Discovery of enslaved-persons burial pit (2009)

Discovery of the African Burial Ground (2021)

Discovery of the Clotilda Wreck (2019)

Domestic Slave Trade

Domestic Slave Trade Expansion

Drafting of the Sheffield Resolves (1773)

Dred and Harriet Scott File Suit (April 1846)

Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court Decision (March 6, 1857)

Eliza Harris's Escape Across the Ohio River (February 1838)

Emancipation

Emancipation Proclamation (issued after Battle of Antietam)

Emanuel Nine Massacre 2015

Enslaved labor in cave tourism

Establishment of the Archivo General de Indias (1785)

Fall of Palmares and Death of Zumbi (1694-1695)

Federal Ban on the Slave Trade (1808)

Federal Prosecution of John Brown Under the Slave Trade Act (1797)

First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)

First Maroon War (1728-1739)

First Observance of Black Consciousness Day

First recorded sale of enslaved West Africans in Europe (c. 1444)

First Ship Carrying Enslaved Africans Arrives in Newport (1696)

Formation of Franklin and Armfield Trading Firm

Formation of Montgomery (1819)

Founding of Africatown (Mid-1860s)

Founding of Brown University (1764)

Founding of Cahawba as State Capital (1820)

Founding of First AME Church, Los Angeles (1872)

Founding of Franklin and Armfield

Founding of Palenque de San Basilio by Benkos Biohó (early 1600s)

Founding of Palmares (Early 1600s)

Founding of the Casa de Contratación (1503)

Founding of the Free African Union Society (1780)

Founding of the Free Presbytery of Ripley (1846)

Founding of the Museum (2007)

Founding of the Plantation (1831)

Founding of Virginia Union University

Fugitive Slave Act resistance

Georgetown Slave Trade

German Coast Uprising 1811

Getting Word oral history project

Grant manumission of William Jones

Haitian Declaration of Independence (January 1, 1804)

Hermitage Enslaved project

Illegal Voyage of the Clotilda (1860)

Installation of Lisbon African-history plaques (January 2024)

John Brown's Raid

John Dickinson’s Manumission of Enslaved People (1786)

Leeward Maroon Treaty of 1739

Louisiana Purchase Aftermath

Louisiana Slave Trade

Mason v. Smith Freedom Ruling (January 1856)

Memorial opens to the public (25 March 2012)

Montgomery Bus Boycott (nearby, 1955-56)

Montpelier Descendants Committee advocacy

Municipal Slave Market Ordinance (1711)

Museum opening (2016)

New York State Emancipation (1827)

NPS Network to Freedom Listing (2004)

Opening of NiNsee (1 July 2003)

Ouidah as a major slave trade port

Outdoor Auction Ban of 1856

Overland Coffles to Natchez and New Orleans

Penn Center founding 1862

Plantation system

Presidential enslavement

Public vote selecting Kiluanji Kia Henda's design (2019-2020)

Radar Survey of the Enslaved Burial Ground (2019)

Reconstruction labor negotiations

Reconstruction Treaties of 1866

Redevelopment and Planned 2028 Reopening

Relocation of the Casa de Contratación to Cádiz (1717)

Sea Island communities post-Civil War

Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)

Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park

Siege of Petersburg

Siege of Vicksburg

Sojourner Truth’s Self-Emancipation (1826)

Surrender of Confederate forces

The Weeping Time Sale (March 1859)

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Transition to Sharecropping (1865)

Treatment of African American prisoners of war

Underground Railroad 1825-1865

Underground Railroad escapes 1849-1860

Union Occupation of Natchez (1863)

Unveiling by Queen Beatrix (1 July 2002)

Vicksburg Campaign

WPA Slave Narrative Project

Yanga's Rebellion and the Founding of San Lorenzo de los Negros (1609-1618)

Early Republic

25 events

Reconstruction

50 events

Bass Reeves deputy marshal service 1875-1907

Bill Pickett rodeo touring 1890s-1930s

Black cowboys on the open range

Black Hills Gold Rush 1876

Black Kansas homesteading

Black vaquero tradition

Brown v. Board of Education preparation

Buffalo Soldier frontier service 1867-1885

Buffalo Soldier frontier service 1867-1889

Chisholm Trail cattle drives 1867-1884

Civil Rights movement legal strategy

Construction of Ashton Villa (1859)

Emancipation 1865

Emancipation of enslaved people in Tennessee

Exoduster Migration 1879-1880

First Annual Juneteenth Celebration at Ashton Villa (1979)

Fisk Jubilee Singers world tour 1871

Fisk University founding 1866

Fort Concho establishment 1867

Fort Smith federal court era

Founding of Lyles Station (Late 1840s)

Founding of the Congregation (1848)

Freedmen's Bureau Education Programs

Great Exoduster Migration 1877

Great Flood of 1913

Harlem Renaissance cultural contributions

Homestead Act Black settlement

Howard University founding 1867

Independent AME Reorganization (1867)

Indian Territory law enforcement

Indian Wars

Issuance of General Order No. 3 (June 19, 1865)

Juneteenth

Lieutenant Flipper court martial 1881

Nat Love rodeo victory July 4 1876

None specifically, but broadly related to frontier defense

Port Royal Experiment

Port Royal Experiment 1861

Post-Civil War Denominational Formation

Post-Reconstruction racial terror in the South

Reading of General Order No. 3 (June 19, 1865)

Reconstruction

Reconstruction Amendments

Reconstruction Era

Reconstruction Era 1865-1877

Reconstruction Era community building

Reconstruction-era Black land settlement

Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15

Unveiling of the Absolute Equality Mural (2021)

West Texas Indian Wars

Jim Crow

47 events

All-Black Oklahoma town movement

Allensworth founding 1908

Appalachian settlement and resource use

Atlanta student sit-in movement

Atlanta University Center founding

Azusa Street Revival 1906

Birth of Paul Robeson (April 9, 1898)

Black Wall Street

Boley founding 1903

Buffalo Soldiers service

California Black land settlement

Carver's Agricultural Discoveries

Civil Rights Movement (through military desegregation)

Civil Rights Movement student organizing

Civil Rights student sit-ins

COGIC Founding 1907

Development of Black Wall Street

Emmett Till's Lynching

Establishment of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

Founding of NBC 1880

Founding of Tuskegee Institute 1881

Founding of Walker Manufacturing Company (1910)

Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) isolation

Indian Wars 1866-1891

Jackie Robinson integration of MLB 1947

Jim Crow Era

King's 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' Speech 1968

NBC Publishing Board Split 1915

Negro Leagues era 1920-1960

Negro National League founding 1920

Oklahoma statehood and racial legislation 1907

Opening of the Walker Building (1927)

Port Chicago Disaster

Pullman Strike

Racial Terror Lynchings

Reconstruction Backlash

Robeson’s Passport Revocation (1950)

SNCC formation in Atlanta

SNCC founding 1960

Spanish-American War

Tulsa Race Massacre

Tulsa Race Massacre 1921

Tuskegee Airmen Program

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Water rights destruction of Allensworth 1920s

World War I

World War II

Great Migration

22 events

Civil Rights Movement

53 events

16th Street Baptist Church bombing

1921 Tulsa Race Massacre commemoration

Adam Clayton Powell Jr.’s Congressional Career

Anniston bus attack

Assassination of Malcolm X (February 21, 1965)

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)

Assassination of Medgar Evers 1963

Assassination of MLK

Belton v. Gebhart (1951-52)

Belton v. Gebhart Ruling (April 1952)

Birmingham Campaign

Black Panther Party founding 1966

Bloody Sunday

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Brown v. Board of Education enforcement

Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case

Bulah v. Gebhart (1951-52)

Children's Crusade

Children's Crusade 1963

Civil Rights Act 1964

Civil Rights Act of 1964

COINTELPRO

Desegregation of Central High School

Desegregation of Hotel Theresa (1940)

Fidel Castro’s 1960 UN Visit

First Legal Integration Among Segregated States (September 1952)

Founding of Abyssinian Baptist Church (1808)

Free Breakfast Program

Freedom Rides

Freedom Rides (1961)

Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer 1964

Greenwood Renaissance

Little Rock Crisis 1957

March on Washington 1963

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Memphis Sanitation Strike

MIA founding

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Montgomery Bus Boycott 1955-1956

NAACP Mississippi campaigns

Nobel Peace Prize 1964

Organization of Afro-American Unity

PNBC Founding 1961

Poor People's Campaign

Premiere of Revelations (1960)

Selma to Montgomery March

SNCC Voter Registration Campaigns

Southern Christian Leadership Conference formation

Voting Rights Act

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Voting Rights March 1965

Contemporary

10 events

2005 Clichy-sous-Bois uprising

2008 Presidential Election

Black Arts Movement

Cape Verdean settlement of Cova da Moura

Congolese migration to Belgium and the formation of Matonge

First African American Presidency

Founding of the Studio Museum in Harlem (1968)

Mass Incarceration Era

Pittsburgh Cycle

Surinamese independence-era migration and the Bijlmermeer