1607

Jamestown, Virginia, established as the first permanent English colony in the New World.

1613

Contrary to the Disney myth of romantic love, John Rolfe married Pocahontas for land she owned from her father, Powhattan, chief of communities in Tsenacommacah.

1619

First Africans kidnapped and brought to the North American colonies. A Dutch ship intercepted a Spanish ship carrying kidnapped Africans. The Dutch decided to bring them to sell to the North American colonies to fill their labor shortage.

1640

In re Negro John Punch was a court case that legalized the disparate sentences defendants may receive along racial lines. The case centered on three indentured servants (African, Dutch, and Scottish) who ran away and were eventually caught. The African, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime servitude, while the others received four additional years of indentured servitude.

1676

Bacon’s Rebellion was a populist rebellion by poor whites, Africans, and Native Americans against the Virginia colonial elites. After the rebels won three battles, colonial reinforcements from England arrived and put down the rebellion.

1691

House of Burgesses of the Virginia colony debated “What Is a White Man?” and the notion of a “white race” that would control power and access to land and wealth. White men were defined as not having African or Native American blood, except for Rolfe and Pocahontas’s male descendants (“the Pocahontas Exception”). This social construct became foundational for the colonization of land that would become the United States.

1705

The House of Burgesses passed legislation that provided “freedom dues” to all white indentured servants at the end of their indentured tenure. To a man: ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings (or equivalent in goods), and one musket; to a woman: fifteen bushels of corn and forty shillings (or equivalent in goods). It also provided the court’s protection of legal rights. This would increase the cost of indentured servants and make slavery more economical.

1776

The Declaration of Independence excluded enslaved Blacks, Native Americans, indentured white servants, and women when it stated that “all men are created equal . . . with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

1785

The Land Ordinance Act allowed sale of lots of one square mile (640 acres) for $1/acre to white people.

1787

The US Constitution included a compromise between representation by population and representation by taxes: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to the respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons” (emphasis added).

1790

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, used the study of human skulls to develop a false science that divided the human species into a hierarchy:

• “Caucasoid” → Caucasus Mountains → White

• “Mongoloid” → Mongolia → Asian/Yellow

• “Australoid” → Australia → Aborigine/Red/Brown

• “Negroid” → no geographic basis → Black

1790

The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that “free white persons” (i.e., free of any debts) of “good moral character” (i.e., Christian) are eligible to become US citizens but “the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”

1800

The Land Ordinance Act cut lots in half (320 acres) at $1/acre.

1830

The Indian Removal Act authorized the president to “negotiate” (seize) and “exchange” (remove) Native Americans from their traditional and sacred lands to “Indian Territory” (now Oklahoma).

1848

To end the Mexican–American War, the United States and the Mexican Republic signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It promised to protect the land and culture of Mexicans living in the ceded territory (Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming). Congress required Mexicans to submit in US courts that they legally own the ceded land.

1862

The Homestead Act sold—to citizens only (see 1790 entry)—quarter-section lots (160 acres) of western land (formerly Indian land) at $1.25/acre with the provision that homesteaders tend the land for five years within ten years. The last person to pay for land was in 1988; 85 million acres was sold to European homesteaders.

1863

The Emancipation Proclamation declared that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government . . . will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons . . . in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom . . . all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive Government . . . will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages . . . that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. . . .”

1865

The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress and ratified by the states. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” “Black codes,” laws that were specifically targeted at former slaves (e.g., being unemployed, loitering), began to appear and enabled former owners to have access to free labor through convict leasing.

1868

The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

1870

The Fifteenth Amendment stated 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.”

1882

Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act forbidding all Chinese immigration to the United States; this was the first immigration legislation that named a specific nationality.

1887

The Dawes Severalty Act allowed the US government to take and divide traditional Native American lands held in traditional communal manner into lots for individual Native Americans to own as private property.

1896

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court upheld the ruling of a New ­Orleans judge and the Louisiana Supreme Court that the Louisiana law requiring “separate-but-equal” railcars for Blacks and whites was constitutional. The equal protection clause did not mean to discount difference in color or to force social (rather than political) equality.

1910

The Flexner Report—written by a nondoctor and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation—standardized medical school curriculum and closed five of the seven Black medical schools.

1922

In Takao Ozawa v. the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that, while Ozawa might be assimilated and have white skin, he was not Caucasian and therefore not eligible for citizenship.

1923

In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court revoked Thind’s US citizenship on the basis that, although Indians might be considered Caucasian by some anthropologists, Indians were not considered Caucasian in the “common understanding, by unscientific men.”

1933

New Deal legislation created work programs to end unemployment and provided loans ($120 billion). Southern states insisted that local officials control the distribution. The Home Owners Loan Corporation (holc), to help homeowners and stabilize banks, created maps of neighborhoods based on racial population. Predominantly Black neighborhoods were colored red and coded as “undesirable,” which limited investment. In addition, holc lent none of its roughly $1 million in loans to Black homeowners (leading to higher proportions of Black homeowners losing their homes during the remainder of the Depression).

1934

Part of New Deal legislation, the National Housing Act of 1934 aimed to make housing and mortgages more affordable, stop bank foreclosures on homes, and created the Federal Housing Administration (fha) which condoned holc’s redlined maps of neighborhoods; redlining continued the systemic denial of financial services (e.g., housing loans, public funds for infrastructure) to these neighborhoods despite similarities in income, education, etc. fha’s manuals and practices encouraged planners, builders, and lenders to promote homogenous (race and class) neighborhoods, disproportionately concentrating Blacks into substandard housing.

1935

The Social Security Act provided pensions for old age and benefits and assistance for the poor, survivors, and the unemployed but excluded agricultural and domestic service workers, predominantly Black occupations.

1938

The Fair Labor Standards Act established a minimum wage and maximum work hours and abolished child labor but excluded agricultural and domestic service workers, predominantly Black occupations.

1944

The GI Bill of Rights (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act)—whose benefits were reduced or denied to Black veterans—made education and housing loans available to returning veterans. This was the main creator of the white middle class.

1946

The Hill-Burton Act (Hospital Survey and Construction Act), a federal law to improve the physical plants of the nation’s hospital systems, provided federal grants and guaranteed loans to states to build hospitals and other medical facilities. There was a “separate-but-equal” provision in the law.

1974

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited racial discrimination in lending and required banks to collect the racial data of applicants approved and denied for home loans. Despite the appearance of racial equity, banks refused to collect racial data (leading to a court case in 1976 to force the Home Loan Bank Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to collect racial data, which it stopped doing when the court order ran out in 1981).