Also American
The story of Black America, from the first Africans to today.
Black history is American history, not a separate shelf, but the same one read in full. The struggles recorded here, from bondage to the long denial of the vote, are the nation’s own to reckon with; the achievement built in spite of them ranks among its finest. This is the American story told whole, a people written out of it, written back in.
November 7 in Black history
Anniversaries that fall on today’s date.
- 1989ExcellenceL. Douglas Wilder Elected Governor of VirginiaL. Douglas Wilder wins the Virginia governorship by a margin of less than 7,000 votes, becoming the first Black person elected governor of any US state since Reconstruction. His election is a landmark in American political history.
- 1932ExcellenceSupreme Court Rules on Powell v. Alabama in Scottsboro CaseThe Supreme Court overturned the Scottsboro defendants' convictions, ruling that the right to counsel in capital cases was a fundamental constitutional right. The ruling was a landmark in the development of criminal due process protections and was won partly through NAACP and Communist Party legal pressure.
- 1989ExcellenceDavid Dinkins Elected First Black Mayor of New York CityDavid Dinkins defeats Republican Rudolph Giuliani to become the first Black mayor of New York City, the largest and most internationally prominent American city, a landmark in urban Black political power following the trail blazed by Harold Washington in Chicago.
- 2018ExcellenceStacey Abrams founds Fair Fight ActionAfter her narrow loss in the Georgia governor's race amid documented voter suppression, Stacey Abrams founded Fair Fight Action to combat voter suppression nationwide. Her organization registered over 800,000 new Georgia voters, which was widely credited with flipping Georgia to the Democratic column in the 2020 presidential election and the two Georgia Senate runoffs, transforming American politics.
- 1944Excellence761st Tank Battalion 'Black Panthers' enters combat in FranceThe 761st Tank Battalion, called the 'Black Panthers', entered combat on November 7, 1944, at Morville-les-Vic, France, becoming the first African American armored unit to see combat in World War II. Attached to Patton's Third Army, they fought 183 consecutive days through six countries, played a key role at the Battle of the Bulge rescuing besieged forces at Bastogne, and earned 391 decorations.
- 1972ExcellenceAndrew Young elected first Black congressman from Georgia since ReconstructionAndrew Young wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, becoming the first Black congressman from Georgia since Jefferson Long left Congress in 1871, marking a major breakthrough in Southern Black political power.
Ways in
Start at a century and zoom in to decades, years, and individual days.
Open the timelineA map of massacres, lynchings, lost Black towns, and the excellence, near you.
Open the mapTrace stolen labor to the banks, universities, and companies it enriched.
Open the ledgerCurated paths that connect events into one story, with narration at each stop.
Choose a trailTrace a single system, movement, or field across time, pick from the full list.
Choose a themeSee how people, events, and systems connect, the links most histories miss.
Open the graphTeach your children real history.
Each One Teach One is a chronological, age-graded home curriculum, one story walked together, with age-appropriate books and documentaries at every stop. A few hours a month, ten times the depth a classroom has time for.
One root runs through all of it: greed.
Following historian Malcolm Foley’s The Anti-Greed Gospel, this site treats the love of money, not an ancient, free-floating hatred, as the root of American racism. Slavery, the slave codes, Jim Crow, redlining, and mass incarceration start to look less like separate evils and more like one machine, retooled across centuries to keep extracting Black labor and wealth.
See how it connectsTwo histories, one people
History is more than oppression. Switch between the two tracks any time, the same toggle appears on every page.
The timeline at a glance
Each block is a decade. Hover for what defined it; click to dive in.
Move across the timeline to focus a decade · click to open it
Browse by century
Each century is titled by what defined it. Click to zoom into decades, years, and days.
Guided trails
Short, curated paths that connect scattered events into a single story.
From the kingdoms of Africa, through the invention of American slavery, to the Black fight for freedom in the Revolution, a guided path through the era most timelines skip.
From African rhythms carried through slavery to the blues, jazz, gospel, soul, Motown, and hip-hop, how Black Americans created the soundtrack of the modern world.
Browse by movement & field
Follow a single cultural movement or field of achievement across the centuries.
Cultural movements
Looking for sources?
Thousands of free films, books, primary documents, and recordings, searchable and organized by era and theme.