1828
Minstrel show performer Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice created blackface routine called "Jumpin Jim Crow"

1845
Alexander Cartwright creates baseball rules for the Knickerbocker Club of New York

1846
First official game of baseball played (New York Nine vs. Knickerbocker Base Ball Club) in Hoboken, New Jersey0escr

1852
White abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes controversial novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", credited by many as sparking the Civil War

1857
U.S. Supreme Court rules against citizenship for blacks in the Dred Scott Case

1859
Last ship to bring slaves to the U.S. (the Clothilde) arrives in Alabama

1860
Abraham Lincoln elected President

1861
Civil War begins

1862
Congress ends slavery in the U.S.

1863
Emancipation Proclamation legally frees slaves

1865
13th Amendment to U.S. Constitution prohibits slavery

1865
Freeman's Bureau established by federal government to aid newly freed slaves

1865
40 acres and a mule said to be issued to black families in South Carolina and Florida - most never see the land because President Andrew Johnson reverses the policy

1866
Civil Rights Act passed, giving citizenship to black Americans and guaranteeing equal rights with whites

1866
14th Amendment approved, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all citizens and granting citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the U.S.

1866
Ku Klux Klan forms

1867
First professional baseball league formed- the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players

1867
Uniques of Brooklyn host the Excelsiors of Philadelphia in a "championship of colored base ball teams"

1867
Reconstruction Act passed, calling for federal protection of civil rights of former slaves in the South

1869
Cincinnati Red Stockings organize, considered first professional baseball team

1869
15th Amendment approved, guaranteeing black Americans the right to vote

1873
Slavery abolished in Puerto Rico

1875
Civil Rights Act of 1875 approved, guaranteeing equal rights to black Americans in public accomodations and jury duty

1876
First major league, National League, formed by William Hulbert, owner of the Chicago White Stockings

1877
Reconstruction ends

1878
John "Bud" Fowler becomes first black professional baseball player, pitching the Chelsea, MA team to victory over the Boston Nationals

1879
Andrew "Rube" Foster, also known as "Father of the Negro Leagues" born in Calvert, Texas

1881
Southern states start segregation of public transportation

1881
Tuskegee Institute opens in Tuskegee, Alabama, with Booker T. Washington as President

1883
Civil Rights Act of 1875 overturned

1884
Moses "Fleetwood" Walker becomes first African-American major league player with the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association

1885
First black professional team, the Cuban Giants, organize

1887
The International League sets first official "color line", banning future contracts with black players

1890
Mississippi Plan approved, disenfranchising black Americans using literacy tests, and quickly adopted by other states

1896
Plessy v. Ferguson ruling establishes "separate but equal" laws; later the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the ruling, a major setback for integration, marking the beginning of Jim Crow laws

1899
W.E.B. DuBois publishes "Philadelphia Negro", the first ever sociological study in America

1901
John "Muggsy" McGraw tries to get Charlie Grant, an African-American, on his Baltimore team as "Chief Tokohama", an American Indian

1909
NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) formed to promote use of the courts to restore legal rights of black Americans

1911
Rube Foster forms the Chicago American Giants

1911
National Urban League organized to help African Americans get equal employment

1914
World War I begins, starting a northern migration of African Americans

1915
Major league teams play eight exhibition games against black teams

1916
J.L. Wilkinson of Kansas City tours a team of black, white and foreign players around the country in a railroad car

1917
W.E.B. DuBois and more than 10,000 blacks march down Fifth Avenue in New York City, beating muffled drums in silent protest of lynchings and other U.S. racial indignities

1919
Major league Chicago White Sox "throw" the World Series

1919
Jackie Robinson is born