- Pre-Contact: (Between Eastern and Western Hemispheres)
- c. 400 BCE
- Hanno, a navigator from the Phoenician colony of Carthage (in presentday Tunisia), records his voyage along the coast of west Africa. Today he is thought to have reached at least as far as Sierra Leone.
Scanty and suspect claims have been made that Carthaginians blown off course reached Brazil. They are known to have reached the Azores and other Atlantic islands. If they did make landfall in Brazil (the closest point on the American mainland to Africa), then these Carthaginians would be if the first Africans (although likely more Semitic than black) to reach the Americas.
- 1450 CE
- Pope Nicholas V sanctions the enslavement of "Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ" south of Portugal.
- 1491
- Prior to the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas, archealogical evidence shows that Kentucky was settled by various Native American nations. Each nation had slightly different political structures, different languages, and different religious customs. Much of Kentucky, however, was influenced by the waning Mississippian cultures that built mounds as burial, ritual, and defensive positions. This Mississippian culture linked together tribal groups along most of central North America's major rivers. Drought and inter-tribal warfare had apparently weakened many groups prior to the arrival of people from the Eastern hemisphere.
An earlier Adena culture mound can be found in northern Fayette County. Another mound and sacred burial ground existed near or even under the current Upper Street where it reaches the top of the hill and crosses High Street. Early white settlers' account mention this site and their own use of it as a burial ground.
- 1492-1500s
The 16th century witnesses the exploration of the presentday southeastern United States and the first attempts at colonization by European governments. These attempts often include free and enslaved people of African and Afro-European backgrounds. Penetration of the Americas by individuals from the eastern hemisphere introduces new diseases that kill off the majority of Native Americans, groups who do not have immunity to many of these diseases.
- 1492
- Pedro Alonzo Niño is a black crewman on Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas.
- 1501
- The Spanish import the first African slaves to Santo Domingo. Although slavery had existed prior to European arrival among various Native American groups and subsequently as Europeans enslaved the Indians, these African people were the first Africans slaves imported into the Americas.
- 1522
- African, Indian, and mixed race slaves revolt on Hispaniola. First known slave revolt in the Americas.
- 1526
- Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón founds the colony of San Miguel de Gualdape in presentday Georgia using African slave labor. These slaves revolt and flee into the North American interior where they are apparently adopted into Native American communities. The colony eventually fails.
- 1540s
- Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto leads a bloody expedition of pillage and reconnaissance through what is today the southern US (including eastern Tennessee). He and his party introduce "Old World" diseases such as smallpox that decimate whole villages.
Historians estimate that 80-90% or more of Native Americans died out from diseases introduced from Europe and Africa by colonists and explorers. By 1700 disease, warfare between surviving tribes, and social disintegration of older nations have led to the demise of the Mississippian culture. The last surviving remnant, the Natchez of Mississippi/Louisiana, are subsequently massacred by the French in retalition for an attack and slaughter of Ft. Rosalie on the current site of Natchez, MS.
The Cherokee and other groups, however, carry on certain Mississippian myths and customs.
- 1565
- St. Augustine, the first permanent European colony in the presentday USA, is founded by the Spanish in Florida. Its founding population includes Africans.
- 1566
- Santa Elena, a Spanish colony and provincial capital of La Florida (southeastern US), is established on Parris Island, SC. It later fails in 1587. It likely included African slave laborers, a common Spanish colonial practice when establishing a colony.
- 1600s
The 17th century begins with the first English colonies in Virginia and the initial claim to presentday Kentucky under Virginia's royal charter. Native American rights, occupation, and political control of the area is largely ignored under British plans. Initially Africans coming to Virginia are legally indentured servants whose bondage expires after a set period of work. Blacks and whites live side-by-side with free blacks even holding the contracts on other black servants. By the 1660s, however, the legal and social status of blacks in Virginia and Maryland are undergoing drastic change with the passage of laws legalizing slavery, limiting a slave's freedoms, and restricting the manumission of those enslaved. These laws become the foundation for the legal status of African-Americans two and half centuries! At the same time, the mid-Atlantic and New England colonies are beginning to face agitation by Quakers and other religious groups to ban slavery.
- 1606
- King James I of England grants a royal charter to the Virginia Company for a colony stretching from the present Virginia-Carolinas coast to the Pacific Ocean. Kentucky is thus originally part of the Virginia Colony.
- 1607
- The English establish the first permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown, Virginia.
- 1618
- The English government sanctions the slave trade by British trading companies.
- March 1619
- A census of Jamestown resident carried out in March 1619 and recently found among the papers of John and Nicholas Ferrar, brothers and officers of the Virginia Company in London, list 32 "Negroes in the service of planters." This recent find pushes back by several years the date of slavery in English North America.
Initially both blacks and whites came to the colony as indentured servants, workers contracted to serve particular people for a stated number of years. For the first 40-50 years, both black and white indentured servants gained their freedom at the end of their contracts.
- August 1619
- Dutch traders bring 20 Africans to Jamestown, Virginia. Initially this was thought to be the first group of Africans in English North America.
- 1620
- Puritans fleeing religious persecution in Great Britain sail on the Mayflower and establish a colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
- 1624
- William Tucker, the first known black person born in a North American British colony, is born in Virginia.
- 1624
- John Phillip, a black man, testifies against a white man in a Jamestown court case.
- 1641
- Massachusetts becomes the first British colony in North America to legally recognize slavery.
- 1648
- The English Governor of Virginia orders the planting of rice in the colony based on the advice of black residents who point out that the climate in coastal Virginia is similar to their west African, rice-growing homelands.
- 1652
- The English colony of Rhode Island passes the first law limiting slavery by putting a ten year limit on bondage as slave or indentured servant.
- 1661
- Virginia passes its first fugitive slave law. This law is the first (in Virginia) to give legal recognition to slavery in Virginia (and its western areas which will become Kentucky).
- 1662
- Under English Common Law, the status of a child follows the status of its father. Faced with a number of inter-racial children born of black slave women and white planter men, Virginia in 1662 reverses centuries of English Common Law to define a child's status as free or slave based on the status of the mother.
- 1663
- The colony of Maryland passes a law that any white woman marrying a black man is a slave as long as her husband lives. The following year Maryland outright bans marriages between white women and black men.
- 1664
- The early rationale for slavery was based upon the idea that Native Americans and Africans were not Christian. Faced with blacks who had converted to Christianity, Maryland in 1664 passed a law that baptism into Christianity did not free a slave.
- 1667
- The British government passes the "Act to Regulate the Negroes on the British Plantations." This law forbids slaves from leaving a plantation without a pass, leaving a plantation on Sundays, carrying guns, or possessing signaling devices. Slaves who hit a Christian may be whipped for a first offense and branded for second offenses.
The restrictions on leaving a plantation on Sundays in British colonies differs considerably from Catholic French colonies such as New Orleans where Sundays are free days. On these days slaves are able to sing, dance, and pass on similar worship traditions from Africa. In time these traditions are hidden from white Christian eyes under a facade of Catholicism so that blacks can retain their original African faiths. This collection of loosely related hybrid religions come to be known as voodoo in North America and Haiti, santaria in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, and caramdobole in Brazil.
- 1670
- A Virginian law makes any non-Christian entering Virginia by sea a slave for life. In 1682 this statute is widened to include entry by any means (sea or land).
- 1672
- Virginia passes a law encouraging the capture or killing of Maroons. Coming from the Spanish word cimarrones, "runaways", Maroons often escaped by heading further inland and living with Native American groups. The subsequent intermarriage of Maroons, Native Americans, and frontier whites have led to a number of distinctive American ethnic groups. The Melungeons of eastern Kentucky are thought by some researchers to have developed in this manner. (Other researchers, however, make some claims that Melungeons are the descendents of Portuguese or Spanish sailors/colonists fleeing disasterous early colonial failures and Native Americans.) The Ishmaelites, a nomadic group that would annually travel between Kentucky and southern Ohio in the 1800s, are also traced back to interracial marriages involving Maroons.
- 1681
- The British monarchy grants William Penn, a Quaker (Religious Society of Friends) Christian, a charter for the colony of Pennsylvania. Beginning with Philadelphia, a large number of Quakers settle in the colony. Initially land is bought from Native Americans rather than simply invaded. Slavery in Pennsylvania becomes increasingly discouraged. By 1696 any Quaker/Friend who imports a slave can be kicked out of the Society.
- 1685
- The Virginia House of Burgesses makes it illegal for slaves to attend Quaker Christian meetings (religious services) held for the purpose of education.
- 1691
- Fearful of free blacks in the colony, the Virginia House of Burgesses passes a law restricting severely the freeing of slaves.
- 1700s
Beginning with 32 indentured blacks in 1619, there are 27,817 slaves in British North America by 1700. The late 1600s and 1700s are the height of the slave trade. In British North America, the slave trading companies are headquartered in Boston with the largest markets in Virginia.
- 1700
- The slave trade is increasing as plantation agriculture spreads throughout the Caribbean, northeastern South America, and the southeastern United States/British North America. It is estimated that about 5,500,000 Africans were taken to the Americas as slaves in the 1700s. Between 1532 and 1870 it is estimated that almost 12 million Africans were taken as human cargo to the Americas.
About two million of these people died at sea from harsh ship conditions. Slave ships usually forced people to lie flat on cramp decks with about as much room as a person in a coffin. Often people had to lie in their own waste and sometimes next to the dead. Captains did also force the people on deck daily to be forced to dance for exercise.
The vast majority of African slaves were taken to Portuguese Brazil or the Caribbean. Only about 399,000 were brought to British colonies in North America. About 40% of slaves brought to British North America between 1700 and 1775 were brought through the port of Charleston and briefly quarantined at Sullivan's Island, the "Ellis Island of black Americans."
Some planters favored Africans from a particular region. An estimate of the origins of slaves taken to the Americas in the 1700s locates the majority (37%) as coming from Angola. Most of these people would have been taken to Portuguese Brazil. (Angola eventually became a Portuguese colony.) By 1700 British slavers based out of Boston had begun to heavily compete with Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish slavers. As a result, these British slavers focused on areas that would eventually become British colonies in Africa.
Like earlier European traders, the British developed trade with local kings and rulers who increased raids on neighboring enemies to fulfill demands for fresh slaves. The kingdoms of Ashanti, Oyo, and Dahomey were all strong players in the slave trade. In the 1600s the Dutch were very active slave traders operating in the area of Guinea and Senegal. British traders were concentrating by the 1700s on the area of Ghana via trade with the Ashanti and the kingdom of Dahomey for slaves. Political and economic concerns moved the center of slaving in the 1800s to the delta of the Niger River with the largest group enslaved being Ibos in the 1800s.
Thus, it is likely that many African-Americans' heritage can be traced back to the following countries/areas (with the percentage of the 1700s slave trade volume listed and the major ethnic groups in those areas in italics):
- Senegal/The Gambia (4%) Wolof, Mande/Mandinka, Fulani
- Sierra Leone/Liberia (9%) Susu, Mende, Basa, Kru
- Ghana/"Gold Coast" (12%) Ashanti, Ewe, Fon, Mossi, Fulani
- eastern Nigeria/"Bight of Biafra" (15%) Ibo, Ijo, Ibibio, Iyala
- western Nigeria/"Bight of Benin" (23%) Fon, Yoruba, Tiv, Ibo, Hausa
Alex Haley was able to trace his African ancestors back to one Kunta Kente, a Muslim man taken from presentday The Gambia. Haley's book Roots builds a storyline around his family tree research.
- 1711
- Quaker supports pushes the Pennsylvania colonial government to ban slavery, the first British North American government to do so. Unfortunately, the British government in London vetoes this act.
- 1733
- Peter "Old Captain" Duerett, slave and first black Kentuckian minister, is born in Virginia. He is brought to Kentucky as a slave of John Maxwell.
- c. 1760
- Colonial incursions and disease have changed political, cultural, and settlement patterns among Native American nations. The central Kentucky region has become a buffer zone and hunting ground between the powerful Shawnee Nation (with their capital at presentday Chillicothe, OH)and the Cherokee Nation of the southern Appalachians (with their capital at Chota and later New Echota, GA). The less powerful Yuchi Nation also controls a portion of southern Kentucky and border the Cherokee.
The village of Eskippakithiki is near the present site of Lexington.
The relative lack of permanent Native American settlements in the Kentucky region makes it more ameniable to invasion by white settlers from the American colonies.
- 1763
- The Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War in North America. In this treaty the French government cedes its land claims to areas east of the Mississippi River to the British. The British in turn establish the Proclamation Line of 1763 along the Appalachian Mountains. This Line reserves areas west of the Appalachians (including Kentucky) for the Native American nations living and controlling that area. The prohibition on further invasion/expansion westward angers American colonists...who then ignore the ban. Virginia continues to hold its claim to Kentucky.
- 1767-1771
- Daniel Boone, a Pennsylvania-born North Carolinian, explores the area of Kentucky. His party includes several black men including the black man who guides him into the area. Boone follows a centuries-old Indian path through the Cumberland Gap that links the Cherokee and Yuchi with the Ohio River. This route is subsequently named the Wilderness Road.
- 1774
- Harrodsburg, the first permanent European settlement in Kentucky, is founded. In the eyes of the British, Kentucky is at this time part of Fincastle County, Virginia.
- April 1775
- Daniel Boone and his followers establish Boonesborough.
- June 1775
- Lexington founded. A group of Pennsylvanians led by European-Americans William and Francis McConnell decide to build a settlement on Elkhorn Creek and McConnell Springs. They decide to name the settlement after the recent Battle of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. In the fall of 1775 they return with others to begin settlement. This second group includes European-American Robert Patterson, the most prominent leader of Lexington's founding.
- 1775
- A party led by Daniel Boone is attacked near the Kentucky River by a party of Shawnee group seeking to defend their control of the Kentucky area. Two of the three Americans killed in the ambush are African-American slaves.
- July 4, 1776
- The thirteen American colonies declare their independence from Great Britain. Independence also ends the prohibition on settlement west of the Appalachians by Europeans and Africans.
- December 1776
- Kentucky County, Virginia, is formed out of Fincastle County. It includes the area of presentday Kentucky and had Harrodsburg as its county seat.
- 1777
- Vermont's constitution bans slavery. This makes Vermont the first state to outlaw slavery.
- November 1780
- Kentucky County, a portion of the Commonwealth of Virginia, is divided by the Virginia Assembly into the new counties of Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Fayette is named for the Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman who had assisted in the American Revolution. By 1798 most of the counties surrounding the present Fayette County have been carved out of the earlier, larger Fayette County.
- 1783
- The 1783 Treaty of Paris ends the Revolutionary War. The British pull out of their former colonies. Thousands of slaves flee the new United States on British ships leaving New York, Charleston, and Savannah. Virginia passes a law freeing any slave who assisted the revolution.
- 1784
- Thomas Jefferson devises a plan to create 14 states between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. In this plan the eastern half of modern Kentucky would have been the state of "Pelisipia". The western half would have included southern Illinois and been the state of "Polypotamia". Critics point out, however, that the neat square state boundaries envisioned by Jefferson block access to major rivers and also do not conform to Indian land concessions boundaries.
- 1787
- The Constitutional Convention meets in Philadelphia to draft the US Constitution. For the purposes of taxation and apportionment of representatives to Congress, a slave will only count as 3/5 of a free white person. Slavery is also outlawed in the Northwest Territories (later to be Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc. and establishing Kentucky as the frontier of slavery across from the free lands north of the Ohio). The Constitution includes a fugitive slave law that thus makes it a federal offense to help or hide an escaped slave.
- 1790
- Peter "Old Captain" Duerett begins preaching to a group of followers at his small cabin. This group by 1810 will organize a church. This congregation eventually will evolve into the Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church and the First African Baptist Church.
- 1790
- The first US Census finds that blacks, mulattos, and others mixtures of African heritage make up 19.3% of the population (697,897 slaves and 59,466 free persons of color).
- 1792
- Kentucky becomes the 15th U.S. state despite attempts by the Virginian state government to hold onto its almost 186 year old claim to Kentucky. The first KY Constitution is drafted. It confers suffrage, the right to vote, in Article III on "free citizens". Despite a vehement protest speech against allowing slavery in Kentucky by white Presbyterian minister David Rice, the 1792 Constitution continues the legalization of slavery in Kentucky formerly allowed under Virginia colonial and later state law.
- 1793
- The 1793 Fugitive Slave Law allows owners to track escaped slaves into other states and makes it a federal crime to block such captures.
- 1797
- Henry Clay moves to Lexington. Born in Virginia, Clay is a wealthy white lawyer and politician who quickly becomes Lexington's most famous citizen in the first half of the 19th century. In 1799 he owns three slaves and by 1805 he owns eight slaves despite condemning slavery in his politics. He favors ending slavery by moving black Americans to Africa.
- 1799
- Revisions to the KY Constitution in Art. II , Sec. 8, confers suffrage to "free citizens" but specifically excludes blacks, mulattoes, and Indians (even if free).
- 1800s
- 1800
- The 1800 US Census finds that blacks, mulattos, and others mixtures of African heritage make up 18.9% of the population (1,002,037).
- circa 1800
- Slaves and free blacks are permitted to attend predominately white churches although they can hold no church offices.
- circa 1800
- Col. Robert Patterson, one of Lexington's white founders, establishes a free Sunday afternoon school for blacks that offers basic writing, reading, math, and skills training.
- 1801
- Toussaint L'Ouverture leads a slave revolt and liberates the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. Haiti becomes the first county in North America led by free people of color.
The Haitian Revolt has a number of effects:
a. Creole French planters flee from Haiti to Louisiana with their retinue of house and field slaves. Their arrival revitalizes the Voodoo faith, a mixture of west African and Native American religions hidden under a facade of Catholicism due to forced coversions of slaves into Christianity.
b. The revolt frightens American slave owners...especially owners in areas such as coastal South Carolina where slaves outnumber whites. In 1807 Congress bans the importation of Africans as slaves. Africans, however, continue to be smuggled into the South as slaves until the Civil War. Planters for the newly developed plantations of the Deep South turn to Kentucky as a source of slave labor. Having been settled earlier, Kentucky's enslaved African-American population has grown through natural increase. Lexington's slave market is large enough to afford specialization with at least one dealer, Lewis C. Robards, specializing in mulatto women as slaves for brothels and plantations.
- 1802-1803
- In 1802 the Ohio state Constitution is drafted. It bans slavery and allows free African-Americans to vote. In 1803 Ohio becomes a state.
- 1807
- Congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa. This law goes into effect on January 1, 1808. Smugglers will continue to illegally bring new groups of African slaves into the U.S. into the Civil War years.
As a result of this importation ban, Kentucky and Virginia, two states with early established and large slave populations, become exporters of slaves to the Deep South states. (See 1853 about how this gives rise to Kentucky's state song.)
- 1810
- Peter Duerett and about 50 followers form the African Baptist Church in a building on Winslow (now Euclid) Avenue.
- 1810
- A new federal law forbids an African-American from being a mail carrier.
- 1810
- With production begun in colonial times, the growing and processing hemp has become a key Fayette County industry by 1810. Slaves are forced to operate ropewalks, factories where the rope fibers from the stems of hemp are pulled and twined into rope for ships, horses, and cotton baling.
- 1812
- A slave is convicted of setting fire to Tibbatt's Soap and Candle Factory. Under state law, arson by slaves is punishable by execution. The slave is hanged. The same year two other slaves who confess to setting fire to John Wesley Hunt's cotton bagging factory are convicted of arson. A governor's pardon saves them from hanging even as they are on the gallows.
- 1814
- William Wells Brown, abolitionist, author, and historian, is born into slavery in Fayette County.
- 1816
- The American Colonization Society is founded in Washington, DC. Its aim is to settle the slavery question by colonizing Liberia in western Africa with newly emancipated African-Americans. This scheme eventually leads to hundreds of Kentucky blacks migrating to Liberia.
- 1816
- Transylvania University allows a group of white women to use one of the university's rooms to give educational training to black women.
- 1817
- London Ferrill, a lively slave minister, is actively preaching in Lexington by this date.
- 1818
- Present site of the Pleasant Green Baptist Church purchased by the congregation from Dr. Frederick Ridgely. It is paid for by August 7, 1822.
- 1820
- St. Pauls African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church founded in a stable on the current site of the church, 251-253 North Upper Street. Originally this church branched off from the earlier Hill (now High) Street Methodist Church.
- 1820
- The congregation of the African Baptist Church divides between London Ferrill and Peter Duerett. Ferrill's followers became an African-American extension to the white First Baptist Church as the Elkhorn Baptist Association. Duerett and his followers remained the African Baptist Church until changing its name in 1829 to the Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church.
- 1820
- The Missouri Compromise is adopted. Drafted and sponsored by Lexington white senator Henry Clay, it bans slavery in states north of 30' N, 30" N latitude and allows Missouri to enter the U.S. as a slave state. To keep a balance between slave and free states, a free state will be allowed in the Union for each slave state.
- 1823
- Peter "Old Captain" Duerett, founder of Pleasant Green Baptist Church, dies at the age of 90.
- mid-1820s
- 106 of the country's 130 abolition societies are in Kentucky, Tennessee and western Virginia (later to become West Virginia).
- 1825
- By 1825 John Wesley Hunt is on his way to becoming the first American millionaire west of the Appalachian Mountains. Hunt, a white man, owns numerous slaves that work his various enterprises such as his hemp rope business. Hunt is also heavily involved in land speculation in Kentucky and Alabama as well as banking, insurance, and railroads.
- 1826
- The stable where St. Paul's AME Church has been meeting is replaced with a small brick building. It will be further enlarged in 1850, 1877, and finally to its current form in 1906.
- 1826
- A white mob in Cincinnati tries unsuccessfully to drive the city's 690 African-American residents out. In 1829 over a thousand area African-Americans will flee to Canada after further white looting and mob attacks.
- 1829
- Mexico abolishes slavery. White southern settlers in the northern province of Texas, however, force the Mexican government to re-legalize slavery in Texas. This action helps to heat up the Texan movement for independence from Mexico.
- 1830
- Thomas D. "Daddy" Rice, a white Louisville entertainer, creates the character of "Jim Crow" for his minstrel show.
- 1830
- A white man from Tennessee enrolls 30 black children in a Lexington school. His attempt does not last long apparently since the children are not long enrolled in the school.
- 1831
- Work on Lexington's first railroad, the Lexington and Ohio RR, begins using slave labor to place railroad ties and rails.
- 1832
- The national average price for a healthy 18-25 year old African-American male is about $500. Within 5 years this price will rise to $1300.
- 1833
- London Ferrill's Elkhorn Baptist Association buy the former white Methodist Church at DeWeese and Short Streets. This becomes the First African Baptist Church.
- Summer 1833
- Cholera first appears in Lexington. Over 500 people die in 1833 from cholera out of a town population of just over 6000. Just prior to the epidemic a local white alcoholic vagrant named William "King" Solomon is convicted of vagrancy and auctioned off to a free African-American woman. In her service he assists her business of selling foods via catering and roadside stands. Perhaps because Solomon did not often drink water (contamination of which spread cholera), he did not become ill and stayed in town to dig graves while others fled. For his efforts, he is freed from his sentence and is today buried with a large gravestone honoring him in Lexington Cemetary. London Ferrill stays in town during the epidemic and ministers to hundreds of terrified and dying whites and blacks.
- 1834
- Great Britain abolishes slavery and frees 700,000 people worldwide.
- 1834
- William Wells Brown escapes at the age of 20 to Ohio. He then began helping other escaped former slaves reach freedom in Canada as well as started his writing.
- circa 1835
- A Judge Turner, a wealthy white Lexington lawyer, marries a Boston woman named Caroline. She is the member of an anti-slavery family in Massachusetts. Once in Lexington, however, she becomes a sadistic mistress: ruthlessly flogging male and female servants. Caroline Turner even throws a young slave boy out a second floor window for whimpering while watching another person being lashed. His back is broken, and he is crippled for life. Judge Turner eventually has Mrs. Turner committed in Eastern Lunatic Asylum (later Eastern State Mental Hospital) to escape being arrested for cruelty to slaves. She is eventually released. In 1843 Turner dies and leaves his slaves to his children to protect them from his wife. Caroline, however, manages to keep several slaves including a young coachman named Richard. One day she chains and lashes Richard endlessly. He eventually tears himself loose and strangles the sadistic Mrs. Turner. Because the law did not allow self-defense from beatings from their owners as a legal plea, Richard was convicted of murder and hanged.
- 1847
- Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church is organized.
- 1847
- William Wells Brown's autobiography, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, is published and sells 8,000 copies.
- 1847
- The Waveland Plantation, 225 Higbee Mill Rd., is built. The farm largely raised hemp with 18 slaves to work the house and fields.
- 1848
- Eliza Belle Jackson, educator and political advisor, is born in Boyle County to free African-American parents.
- 1851
- Poet Albery Allson Whitman born in Kentucky.
- circa 1851
- First African-American Christian (Christian denominational) church is organized.
- 1852
- The African Cemetary Number 2, Chestnut & Shropshire Streets, is established by the Union Benevolent Society No. 2. All of this society's members were slaves who started the foundation to jointly share in the cost of members' funerals.
- 1852
- William Wells Brown's My Three Years in Europe is published based on his letters to friends while living in Europe as an ambassador to the 1849 Paris Peace conference. This becomes the first travel book by an African-American.
- 1852
- Kentucky passes a law forbidding entry to the state by free African-Americans.
- 1853
- Stephen Foster composes "My Old Kentucky Home," a song from the viewpoint of a nostalgic Kentucky slave sold into harsher conditions on the Deep South plantations. This song eventually becomes the Kentucky state song. Part of its original lyrics ("The darkies in the fields are gay" [in the old sense of light-hearted and joyful]) are generally removed from current renditions of the song due to its racist terminology.
- 1853
- William Wells Brown's Clotel, The President's Daughter about a mulatto daughter of Thomas Jefferson and his housekeeper is published.
- 1854
- Frederick Braxton succeeds London Ferrill as minister of the First African Baptist Church, at 1,828 members Lexington's largest church.
- 1855
- Mary E. Britton, Lexington's first female African-American physician, is born.
- 1855
- John Mercer Langston becomes the first African-American known to be elected to U.S. office as the clerk of Brownhelm Township, Ohio.
- 1856
- Berea College founded. Until forced to segregate by a state law, it offers racially integrated classes.
- 1856
- The First African Baptist Church opens its new church at DeWeese and Short Streets.
- 1858
- William Wells Brown's The Escape, A Leap for Freedom is published and becomes the first play published by an African-American.
- 1859
- Silas Marshall and his brother are among the slave merchants operating in Lexington. Out of their office on Main Street opposite the Phoenix Hotel, the Marshall brothers seek Kentucky slaves to be sold further south.
- 1861
- Isaac Burns "Ike" Murphy, the most winning jockey in racing history, is born in Fayette County.
- 1862
- Five hundred members of the First African Baptist Church break away under the leadership of Rev. Frederick Braxton as the Independent Baptist Church. By 1870 it has moved to its current site (Main Street at Merino) and been renamed the Main Street Baptist Church.
- September 1862
- President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery on January 1, 1863. It only applies, however, to states that had seceded from the United States. Thus, it does not apply to Kentucky.
- 1864
- Last human being auctioned off in the Cheapside market on the west side of the Fayette County Courthouse. Prior to this date, Lexington was Kentucky's largest slave market and one of the major auction sites for the US.
- January 31, 1865
- Congress passes the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. This amendment abolishes slavery in the United States. It first must be ratified by 2/3 of the states. Although Kentucky does not ratify the 13th amendment (it is symbolically ratified over a century later by the KY legislature), it receives enough state ratifications by the end of the year. Southern legislatures at this time are controlled by Northern occupying forces put in place at the end of the Civil War.
- 1865
- Camp Nelson Union Army Training Center is in operation and teaching African-Americans reading, writing, and basic education. Eliza Belle Jackson becomes the first African-American teacher at the center.
- 1865
- The Ku Klux Klan is born in Pulaski, TN.
- 1869
- Kinkeadtown is developed by white abolitionist George B. Kinkead as a neighborhood for emancipated African-Americans.
- 1870
- The 1870 US Census finds that Lexington's population is 48% Black and 52% White, the point when the city's African-American populace is at its largest (percentage-wise).
- 1870
- Washington, DC, is the center of America's black elites. Coming decades will see Philadelphia, Harlem/NYC, and later Chicago develop black and mulatto elite neighborhoods.
- 1871
- Eliza Belle Jackson, educator, and Jordan C. Jackson, businessman and politician, marry.
- 1872
- Isaac Scott Hathaway, sculptor, is born in Lexington. Hathaway specialized in minitures of historic figures and in 1946 was commissioned to design the Booker T. Washington 50 cent piece.
- 1875
- Ike Murphy begins his career as a jockey at age 14.
- 1876
- Kentucky legislature passes a law racially segregating mental hospitals/asylums.
- 1877
- Garrett Augustus Morgan born in Paris, KY. Morgan eventually moved to Cincinnati and then to Cleveland. He is the inventor of the three color electric traffic light that is today ubiquitous on American roads. He also invented the gas mask.
- 1880s
- The American Citizen, an African-American newspaper, is being published in Lexington.
- 1880
- John E. Hunter, a Virginia native, moves to Lexington. Dr. Hunter was an early African-American physician and the first African-American physician to work at St. Joseph's Hospital. He operated a clinic at Short and Upper Streets and was a founder of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
- 1882
- The National Leader, the first national African-American newspaper, is established by Ragan A. Henry, a Scott County native.
- 1889
- Chandler Normal School founded on Georgetown Street as a private school for Lexington's African-American elite.
- 1889
- The Fourth Street Colored School 1 is opened at 4th and Campbell Streets. It is the first school for African-Americans built with public funds and is subsequently renamed for Green P. Russell, the first licensed African-American teacher in Lexington and the school's principal. The Russell School operated Lexington's first kindergarten. Subsequently two other schools on other sites have been named for the original school.
- 1892
- The Colored Orphan and Industrial Home is founded by a prominent group of African-American women. The site at 644 Georgetown St. is now the Robert H. Williams Cultural Center.
- 1896
- Isaac Murphy dies of pneumonia.
- 1900s
- 1900
- The 1900 US Census finds that African-Americans are the least urbanized racial group in the US. By 1960 African-Americans will be the most urbanized.
- March 22, 1904
- Kentucky legislature passes a statute racially segregating Kentucky schools, universities, and educational institutions. The law is to go into effect on July 15, 1904 and fines a school $1000 for having "Negro" and "white" students together. The educational institution are also fined $100/day while institution open, and any instructor who teaches as such schools fined $100/day after an initial $1000 fine. Even the students are to be fined $50/day. Schools can run separate institutions but had to be more than 25 miles apart.
- 1904-5
- In opposition to the statute barring racially mixed education facilities, Berea College does two things: a) it takes the new statute to court, and b) it pays to transport about 100 black students to Fiske College and Hampton Institute because Berea College could not admit them.
- June 12,1906
- Kentucky Appeals Court issues its ruling upholding racial segregation of schools in Berea College v. Commonwealth.
- 1907
- Lexington has 8 African-American physicians, 3 African-American dentists, and 4 African-American lawyers practicing in the city by this year.
- Nov. 9, 1908
- The US Supreme Court issues its ruling upholding racial segregation of Kentucky schools in Berea College v. Commonwealth.
- 1915
- Twin brothers Morgan and Marvin Smith move to New York City. These two Jessamine County natives were photographers famous for their pictures of the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s and 1940s.
- 1922
- The original all-black Paul Laurence Dunbar High School founded on a site on North Upper Street between 5th and 6th Streets. William H. Fouse served as its first principal until his retirement in 1938.
- 1925
- Mary E. Britton dies.
- 1930s
- Nation of Islam founded in the US.
- 1930
- The present building for Pleasant Green Baptist Church is completed at 540 W. Maxwell Street.
- 1935
- Lucy Harth Smith becomes principal of the Booker T. Washington Grade School. She will serve in this post until her retirement in 1955. Smith is the only woman to serve as president of the Kentucky Negro Education Association.
- 1938
- William Fouse, first principal of Dunbar HS, retires.
- 1942
- Eliza Belle Jackson dies.
- December 10, 1948
- The Lyric Theater opens. It has cost a quarter of a million dollars to construct as a lavish Art Deco cinema.
- 1956
- Dr. John E. Hunter dies.
- 1950-1979
- 1960
- House Bill 163 introduced by one-time Lexington resident and Louisville African-American state Representative William H. Childress. This bill establishes the Kentucky Human Rights Commission and introduced changes to the state merit system which allowed more African-Americans to enter employment in state government.
- 1963
- The Lyric Theater closes as desegregation decimates the DeWeese Street and other area African-American businesses: blacks move to integrate white businesses but not the reverse.
- 1966
- The holiday of Kwanzaa started by Maulana Karenga in California to "restore and reaffirm our African heritage and culture."
- 1967
- The original Paul Laurence Dunbar High School is closed as part of desegregation. Its students are then divided between the city's other high schools.
- 1967
- Isaac Scott Hathaway, native Lexington sculptor, dies in Washington, DC.
- 1969
- John Drake becomes Lexington's first African-American firefighter.
- 1980-Present
- August 1985
- Dr. Thomas H. Peoples, Jr., pastor of Pleasant Green Baptist Church, receives Fayette County's Distinguished Citizen Award.
- 1986
- Batson v. Kentucky reverses Swain v. Alabama somewhat although a prosecutor can still strike several jurors of a particular race.
- 1988
- First Roots and Heritage Festival held.
- 1990
- The new Paul Laurence Dunbar High School is opened on Man O' War Boulevard. It is so named after the original high school.
- 1995
- Brenda Cowan becomes Lexington's first female African-American firefighter.
- 1997
- Orlando "Tubby" Smith named the first African-American head basketball coach of the University of Kentucky.
