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1900

Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League

1900

James Weldon Johnson and brother J. Rosamond Johnson wrote “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” widely referred to as “the Negro national anthem”

1900–1906

Blacks organized boycotts in every Southern state to protest segregated streetcars

1903

W. E. B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk

1905

Niagara Movement organized by W. E. B. Du Bois and others in opposition to Booker T. Washington’s leadership

1906

Three companies of black troops accused of waging a murderous raid in Brownsville, Texas, were denied a fair trial by court martial and dishonorably discharged by President Theodore Roosevelt

1906

A five-day race riot in Atlanta killed at least twenty-seven, injured hundreds, and destroyed black-owned property

1908

Bloody two-day race riot erupted in Springfield, Illinois, and destroyed the city’s black section

1909

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed in New York City in response to the Springfield race riot

1909

Nannie Helen Burroughs established the National Training School for Women in Washington, D.C.

1910

The National Urban League founded in New York City

1910

African American inventor and entrepreneur Madame C. J. Walker, generally considered the first black woman millionaire, started a hair care company for black women in Indianapolis

1911

El Primer Congreso Mexicanista, the first large Mexican American civil rights conference, met in Laredo, Texas

1914–1918

World War I

1914

NAACP published an open letter to President Woodrow Wilson protesting segregation in federal agencies

1915

Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History

1916

Representative Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) became the first woman elected to Congress

1917

Marcus Garvey established the American branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem

1917

Harlem Renaissance began

1917

NAACP led a “Silent March” of 10,000 black New Yorkers down Fifth Avenue to protest the East St. Louis race riot

1919

NAACP published Thirty Years of Lynching, 1889–1918, as part of an antilynching campaign

1919

Summer and early fall race riots erupted in twenty-five cities across the U.S.; later called “Red Summer”

1922

U.S. House of Representatives passed the NAACP-supported Dyer antilynching bill; defeated by Southern Democrats in the Senate

1925

A. Philip Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union

1926

Carter G. Woodson inaugurated “Negro History Week,” later extended to Black History Month

1928

Octaviano Larrazolo (R-NM) became the first Latino U.S. Senator

1929

Oscar DePriest (R-IL) elected as the first black congressman since Reconstruction

1929

NAACP-supported “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” economic boycott movement began with the goal of securing better jobs for African Americans

1931

A filibuster by Southern Democrats defeated the NAACP-supported Costigan-Wagner antilynching bill in the Senate

1931

Nine black men were wrongfully charged and convicted of the rape of two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama; the accused chose the Communist Party-supported International Labor Defense (ILD) rather than the NAACP to represent them

1932

Hattie Wyatt Caraway (D-AR) became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate

1933

Joint Committee on National Recovery formed to represent African Americans during the first 100 days of President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration

1934

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, an interracial organization, formed to advocate for the fair treatment of sharecroppers and tenant farmers under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

1935

National Council of Negro Women founded

1935

National Negro Congress (NNC), led by A. Philip Randolph, called for the unionization of black workers, desegregation, and the protection of migrant workers

1935

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) formed, espousing racial egalitarian rhetoric but allowing discriminatory practices

1936

Jesse Owens defied Nazi racist propaganda by winning four gold medals at the Olympic games in Berlin

1937

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters signed a collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company, the first such agreement between a black union and a major American company

1938

African American choreographer and dancer Katherine Dunham formed her own dance company

1939

African American contralto Marian Anderson sang in concert at the Lincoln Memorial before an integrated audience of 75,000

1939

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund formed