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GREAT DATES IN THE HISTORY
OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO
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JAN. 1, 1863 - President Abraham Lincoln frees the slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation, putting an end to slavery in the rebel states.

DEC. 18, 1865 - Thirteenth Amendment to Constitution is ratified, outlawing slavery in the United States and all its territories.

JUNE 16, 1866 - Fourteenth Amendment is added to Constitution, guaranteeing "equal protection of the laws" to all citizens.

MARCH 30, 1870 - Fifteenth Amendment is ratified, stating that the right to vote shall not be denied to anyone on grounds of "race, color or previous condition of servitude."

MAY 31, 1870 - Congress passes Enforcement Act, putting full forces of Federal Government against any effort to disobey the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. (Six years later the Supreme Court ruled this act null and void, saying it went beyond the Federal Government's proper powers.)

MARCH 1, 1875 - Congress, in an act later called null and void by the courts, passes Civil Rights Law guaranteeing all persons, regardless of race, the use of "inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, and other places of amusement."

MAY 18, 1896 - Supreme Court rules in favor of "separate but equal" facilities for Negroes, while deciding that a Louisiana railway segregation law did not violate "equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment."

JUNE 21, 1915 - Supreme Court calls unconstitutional the so-called "grandfather clause," a trick used by Southern states to keep Negroes from voting. The clause said that person who had voted or whose forefathers had voted before 1867 did not have to pass educational tests or property qualifications required of other voters.

MARCH 7, 1927 - Supreme Court unanimously rules against Texas law barring Negroes from voting in Democratic primary elections. (Five years later, Texas Democrats try to bar Negroes from primaries by party resolution, which was also called illegal by Supreme Court.)

NOV. 9, 1935 - C. I. O. adopts constitution in which discrimination in union affairs on grounds of race or color is barred.

DEC. 12, 1938 - Supreme Court rules that a state must admit a Negro to its law school or provide equal separate facilities.

NOV. 25, 1940 - Conviction of a Southern Negro is called illegal by Supreme Court because Negroes had been barred from jury at his trial.

JUNE 25, 1941 -President Roosevelt sets up Federal Fair Employment Practices Commission, with orders to try to stop discrimination in industry.

DEC. 18, 1944 - Supreme Court rules that Railway Brotherhoods cannot act as bargaining agents under Railway Act of 1934 unless they grant equal membership rights to Negroes.

MARCH 12, 1945 - New York passes first state Fair Employment Practices law forbidding "discrimination because of race, creed or national origin" in employment, and sets up a State Commission against discrimination.

JUNE 3, 1946 - Segregation on interstate buses is barred by the Supreme Court.

OCT. 29, 1947 - President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights calls for an end to all forms of segregation.

MAY 3, 1948 - Supreme Court declares that "racial covenants," private real estate agreements to set up race discrimination in home areas, cannot be enforced by the courts. 

JULY 26, 1948 - President Truman issues executive order calling upon armed forces to give "equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons . . . without regard to race, color or national origin."

JAN. 7, 1949 - Federal Court calls illegal an Alabama constitutional provision which gives local registrars power to deny rights of citizenship.

JUNE 5, 1950 - Supreme Court rules against segregation in railroad dining cars.

JUNE 5, 1950 - Supreme Court decides that inequality is present in any form of segregation, and orders University of Oklahoma to stop segregating a Negro student in classrooms, libraries and other facilities.

MAY 17, 1954 - Supreme Court states that the idea of separate facilities is in itself unequal, and outlaws segregation in public schools as "a denial of the equal protection of the laws" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.