Timeline of events concerning Black Philadelphians and the formation of the nation, 1600 - 1899.
Note:
Words in Bold - events within Philadelphia & surrounding areas' Black American communities
Words in Italics - Laws, statutes, rulings, & other institutional-type events related to the lives of Black Americans
1600 - 1699 Historical Timeline
Year
Historical Event
Pre - 1638
Coaquannock, meaning “the grove of long pine trees,” the land which now includes Philadelphia, was home to the Lenni-Lenape nation.
1638 - 1655
Dutch and Swedish settlers arrived in Lënapehòkink. The land was incorporated into the colonies of New Sweden and New Netherlands over time. It was first colonized by the Dutch, through the Dutch West India Company in 1643.
1667
King Charles II in England claimed the area, creating a new British colony.
1681
King Charles II granted the area to William Penn for the debt he owned Penn’s father. The province was named Pennsylvania, meaning “Penn’s woodlands.” Philadelphia became its first planned city.
1684
One hundred fifty Angolan people were kidnapped from their homes, trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean, and arrived in Philadelphia aboard Isabella, which began its trip in Bristol, England. They were sold into enslavement by Quaker settlers to prepare the land and build up the new city.
1688
On April 18, Garret Hendericks, Francis Daniel Pastorius, along with brothers Derick op de Graeff and Abraham op De Graeff (cousins of William Penn) protested the enslavement of African people by their Quaker brothers and sisters in the Pennsylvania colony. It was the first protest petition of its kind in the British North Amerian colonies.
Ann Squash, daughter of Squash, a Negro man was the first recorded baptism of a person of African descent at Christ Church.
1712
Following a slave insurrection in New York, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed an act to prohibit the importation of enslaved people into the colony by setting an extraordinarily high importation tax of 20 pounds per head. Great Britain disallowed the law.
1717
William, formerly known as Cudgio, an Indian Girl named Jane, Mary Eltes, Elizabeth Migoo, Peter Baroh, and Jane, a “free Negro woman” and her daughter Jane were all baptized at Christ Church throughout the year alongside other white European American attendees.
1726
The Pennsylvania Assembly passed a “Black Code” that required a 30-pound surety bond for manumission, forbade intermarriage between white European and African American people, and restricted the freedom of enslaved and free people to travel, drink liquor, or carry on trade. Justices would bind out free Black children with or without the consent of their parents until 24 years old for boys and 21 years old for girls.
1729
The Pennsylvania Assembly reduced the importation tax of enslaved people from 20 to 2 pounds per head.
1732 - 1748
The construction on the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) began based on the designs of Edmund Woolley, master builder. The Pennsylvania Assembly began meeting in the building in 1735, while it was still under construction. The tower and steeple were added in the 1750s.
1737
The Walking Purchase occurred between the family of William Penn and leaders of the Lenape nation. The family claimed that in a 1686 treaty the Lenape nation ceded an area of 1.2 million acres in the Lehigh River Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania based on how far west a man could walk in a day and a half. It remains a disputed treaty between the nation and the state.
1750
The population of people of African descent reached about 3,000 people.
1754
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting published the pamphlet, An Epistle of Caution and Advice, Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves, instructed Quakers to abandon the buying and selling of enslaved people.
1756-1763
Seven Years War (French & Indian War)
1758
The Yearly Meeting agreed to exclude Friends who bought and sold enslaved people from meetings for business and to refuse their contributions as tainted money.
The Associates of Dr. Bray established a Negro School for free and enslaved children in the city. The school was supported by The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a London-based Anglican organization, Benjamin Franklin, and administered by Reverend William Sturgeon of Christ Church.
1759
Anthony Benezet established his first school for children of African descent in his home on Chestnut Street between 3rd and 4th Streets.
In a letter dated August 9, Deborah Franklin wrote to her husband about her visit to the Associates of Dr. Bray’s Negro School. She was so impressed by the children that she wrote of her intention to send Othello, an enslaved boy in the Franklin household, to the school for instruction.
1765
Great Britain’s Parliament enacted the Stamp Act in the thirteen colonies requiring tax payments on all printed materials including newspapers, legal documents, and magazines.
1766
Great Britain’s Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in response to the colonies’ protests.
1767
Great Britain’s Parliament enacted the Townshend Acts, a series of laws to assert and exercise its right to raise revenue in the colonies, to strengthen enforcement of trade regulations, and for colonies to provide for British soldiers stationed locally.
1770
Anthony Benezet, James and Israel Pemberton, Henry Drinker, Joseph Marriot, and Daniel Stanton established a Negro School, later named the Raspberry Street School.
1772
In June, Aaron Briggs, an enslaved farm laborer, was requested to testify as a witness on behalf of the Crown. Briggs witnessed John Brown, a white European American pro-slavery advocate, and approximately five hundred other men riot and burn the British naval ship, Gaspee, after it stopped to inspect a ship just arrived from Africa on June 10thin Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.
On June 22nd, James Somerset, an enslaved African man, won his emancipation case against Charles Steuart, an enslaver and merchant of Scottish origin. Steuart purchased Somerset at eight years old while residing in Boston, Massachusetts and brought him to live in London, England in 1769. By 1771, Steuart sought to ship Somerset to Jamaica to be sold. Lord Mansfield of the Court of King’s Bench decided Somerset should be set free on English soil since enslavement was never authorized by statute within England and Wales and was unsupported by English common law.
1774
In September, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia at Carpenters' Hall.
The Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends advocated against slaveholding and began systematic visitations to Quaker enslavers to encourage private manumissions.
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was founded.
On November 7, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore and Virginia’s royal governor, proclaimed any enslaved people who came to British encampments would be free and could "take up arms" to fight alongside the British, the “Ethiopian Regiment.”
On November 12, General Washington issued an order to remove African American soldiers from his army at the pressure from white southern leaders. Within 6 weeks, due to little support and the petition of Black troops, he partially reversed the order re-opening the Continental Army to free Black men, but not enslaved men.
1776
On January 10, Thomas Paine published the pamphlet, "Common Sense," in Philadelphia, spreading the ideas of republicanism and denouncing King George III and the English monarchy in a language understandable to everyday people across the colonies. He also criticized slavery and called himself an abolitionist.
On July 2, the members of the Second Continental Congress declared the colonies independent of Britain. They agreed to the writing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. The document was read outside of the State House on the Square on July 8th.
On October 4, Bet, an enslaved domestic servant to Thomas Stone, signer of the Declaration of Independence, sought her freedom while staying in Philadelphia.
1777
On September 26, the British marched into Philadelphia through Northern Liberties to occupy the city. They remained for approximately 9 months - through spring of 1778.
1780
On March 1, the Gradual Abolition Act in Pennsylvania was enacted. It was the first in North America. The law prohibited the importation of enslaved people into the states, stated anyone born after March 1, 1780 would enter indenture servitude and be emancipated once they reached 28 years old, and required non-residents to free any enslaved person kept in the state longer than six months.
1781
On March 1st, the Second Continental Congress disbanded, and the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was enacted after being completed in 1777.
1783
On September 3, Britain signed the “Treaty of Paris” which conceded to the independence of the 13 colonies and retained control of northern Canada.
1787
In May, the Continental Congress convened in the State House to write the Constitution of the United States.
In July, the Free African Society was established by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. A Preamble and Constitution was devised for the Society.
1788
On July 4, the Grand Federal Procession celebrating the newly ratified Constitution marched on the streets of the city from 3rd and South Streets to Bush Hill, the estate of William Hamilton, at 17th and Fairmount Avenue. The parade was organized by rank and occupation, divided by gentlemen and thousands of artisans.
1789
The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery published "A Plan for Improving the Condition of Free Blacks, An Address to the Public" (Philadelphia, 1789).
On April 30, George Washington is sworn in as the first President of the United States of America under the new Constitution.
On May 5 the French Revolution begins due to the country’s financial crisis and inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution.
1790
The population of people of African descent reached about 2,489 out of a total population of 54,391. Approximately 2,102 were free and 387 were still enslaved.
In February, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, headed by Benjamin Franklin, submitted an anti-slavery petition to the First Congress.
George Washington and his household, including nine enslaved people from his Mt. Vernon estate moved to Philadelphia to live in Robert Morris’s home at the southeast corner of 6th and Market Streets.
1791
On July 25, a broadside appeal was published by the founding trustees of the African Church of Philadelphia calling for the necessity of separate and exclusive means to worship God, instruct the youth, and take care of the poor.
On August 22, the Haitian Revolution began, and people began arriving in Philadelphia including nearly 850 Black Saint Dominguans during the next decade.
On December 15, the Federal Congress adopted ten amendments to the Constitution, collectively called the Bill of Rights to protect the freedoms of speech, religion, defense, and jurisprudence.
1793
In August, the Yellow Fever epidemic began in Philadelphia. It ended by November.
In September, a group of “citizens of color of Philadelphia” drafted a letter to the National Convention praising the Commissioners in Saint Domingue for “breaking our chains” with “the immortal Degree [of August 1793] wiping out all traces of slavery in the French colonies.”
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society’s Committee of Education established a co-educational Negro School on Cherry Street where Eleanor Harris, a Black American schoolteacher taught spelling, reading, and needlework.
1794
Benjamin Banneker's Banneker’s New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanac, or Ephemeris, for the Year of Our Lord 1795 was published in Baltimore for the following year.
Absalom Jones and Richard Allen wrote and published A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People during the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793: And a Refutation of Some Censures, Thrown upon Them in Some Late Publications after Mathew Carey accused Black Philadelphians with extortion and theft.
St. Thomas Episcopal Church (Jones) on 5th Street near the State House and Bethel Church (Allen) at 6th and Lombard Streets were established this year after Black people left St. George's Methodist Church en masse after refusing to sit in a separate newly created area for Black parishioners on the balcony.
Zoar United Methodist Church was established (administered by St. George's Methodist Church) separate but still desiring to stay under Methodism. First named African Zoar.
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society’s Committee for Improving the Condition of Free Negroes established a school for boys in the city. Location unrecorded.
1796
On May 21st, Ona Maria Judge, enslaved servant in the household of President George Washington and Martha Washington sought her freedom in the city.
1797
On June 24, the Ancient York Masons, African Lodge No. 44 held their first parade in the city.
1799
Black Philadelphians wrote a petition to the President and Congress calling for the revocation of the Fugitive Slave Law. It was presented by Congressman George Thatcher of Massachusetts, debated for two days, denounced adamantly by southern congressmen, and defeated in a vote of 85-1.
On December 14, General George Washington died at Mt. Vernon in Virginia.
On December 29, Richard Allen gave a eulogy for General George Washington at the end of his sermon at Bethel Church.
1800 - 1899 Historical Timeline
Year
Historical Event
1800
Absalom Jones wrote another petition denouncing slavery and the attempt to renew the slave trade in Maryland.
The population of people of African descent reached about 6,800 out of a total population of 81,009. Approximately 85 people were still enslaved.
1804
On January 1, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti independent from France, ending the revolution, and creating the first Black republic in the western hemisphere.
1807
The First African Presbyterian Church was established at 7th and Shippen (now Bainbridge) Streets by John Gloucester.
In May, the Act of the Abolition of the Slave Trade went into effect prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. It was adopted on March 25, 1807. However, the act did not emancipate those already enslaved in the remaining British colonies.
1808
On January 1, the United States abolished the transatlantic slave trade. It was adopted on March 2, 1807. Like the British act, this act did not emancipate those already enslaved in the United States.
1809
The African Baptist Church was established at 10th and Vine Streets by Reverend Henry Simmons.
1812
In June, the United States declared war against Great Britain due to trade disputes, disputes over territorial expansion, and Britain’s support of Indigenous nations to maintain their land around the Great Lakes and west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society’s Board of Education established the Clarkson School for Black girls. It was located on Cherry Street, between 6th and 7th Streets on the second floor of a building called Clarkson Hall, above the previously established boys’ school. Elizabeth Clendinin, daughter of white American Quaker missionaries, was the schoolmistress for the girls’ school. The building was also called the African Academy.
1816
Robert Finley, a Washington, DC Presbyterian minister, established the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, as known as the American Colonization Society. It was to encourage and financially support the repatriation of free and emancipated Black people back to the continent of Africa due to racist views of Black Americans, their inabilities to adapt to white American society after emancipated, and their possible influence on enslaved people still in the nation.
1828
The Philadelphia School Board of Education established the Lombard Street School, the first co-educational public school for Black children in the city. It was located at 6th and Lombard Streets, across from Bethel AME Church.
On March 20, the Reading Room Society for Men of Color, a literary society for free Black men in the city, was established. William Whipper was a founding member and served as the secretary. The May meeting was held at Bethel AME Church.
1830
In September, Reverend Richard Allen at Bethel AME Church hosted the first meeting of Black Americans in the nation, the meeting of the American Society of Free Persons of Color. Forty delegates from 7 northeastern states traveled to Philadelphia to attend this first convention.
1831
In September, the Female Literary Association was formed for Black women of the city. Sarah Mapps Douglass, an educator, activist, and writer wasone of the organization’s leaders.
In June, the First Annual Convention of the People of Colour was held at the “brick Wesleyan Church, Lombard Street.” The delegates discussed the progress of a Canadian settlement of people, the misrepresentation of the American Colonization Society, the establishment of a fund for future conventions, the creation of a manual labor school for men, and recommended the Declaration of Independence and Constitution be read at the conventions.
1832
In June, the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color in these United States was held at Benezett Hall and the First African Presbyterian Church, both on Seventh Street. A report was given on the settlement in Upper Canada for anyone who felt compelled to leave the states and the divisive nature of the American Colonization Society was discussed.
1833
On January 1, the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons was established by nine men. The main objective was to collect books on every subject for the benefit its members and to educate the group through weekly lectures on literary and scientific subjects. Bishop White of Christ Church was a frequent contributor. They met in the basement of St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
In June, the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour in these United States was held at Benezett Hall and the First African Presbyterian Church. Delegates discussed Prudence Crandell’s school for young girls in Connecticut, the settlement in Upper Canada, a new manual labor school in New York and funding for one outside of Philadelphia to be controlled by the Society of Friends, and the importance of temperance.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was co-founded in the city, led by William Lloyd Garrison.
In December, the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society was co-founded by Lucretia Mott, Hetty Reckless, Charlotte Vandine Forten, and 19 other women, including Margaretta, Sarah, and Harriet Forten, James Forten’s daughters.
1834
In August an anti-Black race riot erupted at the Flying Horses Tavern located on South Street that both Black and white people patronized. The mob was made up of primarily several hundred Irish white American men. They proceeded down South Street destroying known Black-owned buildings, homes, churches, a Masonic Hall, and attacking Black American people. Over five days, 44 buildings were destroyed and 2 people died.
In October, the Minerva Literary Association was established by thirty women for the “encouragement and promotion of polite literature.” They read original and selected pieces of prose and poetry. (Joseph Wilson, Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia. (By a Southerner.) Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, 1841, 108.)
1835
In February, the Council of the Philadelphia Association for the Moral and Mental Improvement of the People of Color was incorporated. Delegates came from various churches, literary, and beneficial societies in the city to discuss matters related to the racial uplift of Black Americans in the city.
In June, the Fifth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the free People of Colour in the United States was held at the Wesley Church. The delegates discussed the creation of the American Moral Reform Society, promoting the science of medicine, the progress of the manual labor school in New York since it opened in 1834, the status of children in high schools across the nation, the use of the terms “colored” and “African” when speaking or writing about themselves, and the end of slavery in the West Indian colonies.
1836
The Rush Library and Debating Society was established. Meetings were held in Salter’s Hall on Elizabeth Street.
1837
In January, the Demosthenian Institute was established to prepare members for public speaking engagements through discussions. They published the Demosthenian Shield, a weekly paper beginning in 1841, with over one thousand subscribers.
The Institute of Colored Youth was founded with funding from Richard Humphreys, a white American Quaker who desired a school designed by and established to educate people of African descent. In 1851, the boys and girls schools were moved to a building at 716-718 Lombard Street and later to 9th and Bainbridge Streets.
The Vigilant Committee is organized in the city led by Robert Purvis and others to aid freedom seekers through the journey to or through Philadelphia.
1838
In May, Pennsylvania Hall opened at 109 N. 6th Street by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. It was open for four days when it was destroyed by arson by an anti-abolitionist mob.
1841
In January, the Gilbert Lyceum was established for scientific and literary pursuits. It was the first and only society to admit men and women. The group was led by Robert Douglass, Jr., a famous painter and attended by people such as Joseph Cassey, Jacob C. White, John C. Bowers, Robert Purvis, Amy M. Cassey, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Hetty Burr, Grace Douglass, Amelia Bogle, and Harriet Purvis.
1842
Lombard Street Riots, now understood to be attacks on Black American homes, businesses, and institutions, began on Lombard Street between Fifth and Eighth Streets.
1848
In July, the Seneca Falls Convention meets in New York and launched the women’s suffrage movement. The “Declaration of Sentiments” is adopted with language similar to the Declaration of Independence, with the revised line, “all men and women are created equal.”
1850
The Fugitive Slave Act was passed in Congress to enforce the recapture and return of any freedom seekers found in the nation, no matter the state’s or its citizens stance on enslavement.
1850 – 1854
Fugitive Slave Hearings in the State House courtroom
1852
Sarah Mapps Douglass became the first Black women to attend the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania.
1854
The Benjamin Banneker Institute was established. It was a literary society for men and women in the African American community, named after the Black American astronomer and mathematician. They met at 409 S. 11th Street in the city.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harperpublished her collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. In 1859, her short story “Two Offers” was published in the monthly magazine, Anglo-African, making it the first short story published by a Black woman.
1861-1865
The Civil War occurred in locations throughout the United States.
1862
Members of Social, Civil, and Statistical Association of the Colored People of Pennsylvania wrote, signed, and submitted the "Petition for the Colored People of Philadelphia to Ride in the Cars issued to the Board of Managers of the various City Passenger Cars." Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, William Still, and others worked to integrate Philadelphia streetcars through speeches and this petition. The signers, who included their names and addresses, were requesting the use of streetcars to move about the city and growing suburbs.
1863
Henry Carey Baird and the Union League of Philadelphia printed the pamphlet, General Washington and General Jackson on Negro Soldiers. It was written to encourage the enlistment of Black soldiers in the southern states during the Civil War by sharing stories of Black soldiers valor during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
Camp William Penn was established as a Union Army training ground in Cheltenham Township for African American soldiers who became United States Colored Troops (USCT) in the Civil War. It was the first training camp for Black soldiers in the nation.
On November 19, President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address in the dedication of the national cemetery at the site of the recent Battle of Gettysburg.
1864
In November the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League was formed. William Nesbitt was president, Octavius Cato was corresponding secretary, and Jacob C. White Jr. was recording secretary. The League was formed to encourage “morality, education, temperance, frugality, industry, and…to obtain by appeals to the mind and conscience of the American people or by legal process a recognition of the rights of the colored people…”
1865
On April 21, Octavius V. Catto gave a speech and presented a regimental flag to Lieutenant Colonel James M. Trippe, the commander of the 24th United States Colored Troops in front of the Pennsylvania State House. The flag read “Let Soldiers in War be Citizens in Peace.”
1867
On March 22, the Pennsylvania street cars were desegregated in the state. Octavius Catto, Caroline V. LeCount, Catto’s fiancée, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Congressman William D. Kelley, and Senator Morrow B. Lowry were all instrumental to see the law passed in the state and enacted in the city of Philadelphia.
1868
On July 9, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified defining citizenship in the nation and inspired by the words of the Declaration of Independence stated that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.”
1870
On February 3, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified prohibiting states from disenfranchising voters “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” However, some states implemented poll taxes, literacy tests, and other obstacles to obstruct Black Americans and other people of color from voting nationwide.
1876
Philadelphia hosted the Centennial Exhibition, the first world’s fair in the United States on the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
1879
Henry Ossawa Tanner, a young Black American painter, enrolled as the first Black student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He would go on to create his most famous piece, “The Banjo Lesson” in 1893.
1896
On May 18, the Supreme Court ruled on the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine, which legitimized racial segregation as constitutional law in the United States. This decision reinforced state-enacted Black Codes and fueled the Jim Crow era across the country.
On July 21, The National Association of Colored Women was established in Washington, DC at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church. Philadelphian Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was one of the founding members, along with Harriet Tubman, Margaret Mary Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Victoria Earle Matthews, Josephine Silone Yates, and Mary Church Terrell.
1899
W.E.B. Du Bois published The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, commissioned by University of Pennsylvania. It was the first study to focus on the sociological conditions of an African American community in the United States. Du Bois focused on the Black residents, churches, and businesses in the city’s Seventh Ward, which was from Spruce to South Streets and Seventh Street to the Schuylkill River.
