• August 1862 — Lincoln meets with black leaders at the White House to discuss voluntary emigration of blacks to areas outside the US.
  • Jan 1863 — Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln passes an executive order that slaves in 10 Southern states are free.
  • March 1865 — Freedmen's Bureau is established to provide food, medical assistance, legal assistance, schools, and housing to freed slaves.  
  • April 1865 — Lincoln is assassinated, Andrew Johnson takes over as president.
  • May 1865 — President Johnson pardons all white southerners except Confederate leaders and allows them to create new governments.
  • July 1865 — Nearly all of the 4 million slaves in the South are freed by this point. Approximately 200,000 black people joined the Union army.
  • Fall 1865 — Southern states pass Black Codes that heavily restrict black freedom.
  • December 1865 — States ratify 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery.
  • December 1865 — Carl Schurz’s report on conditions in the South details horrific violence against black people in the South, including beatings and killings.
  • December 1865 — KKK is founded in Pulaski, Tennessee.
  • February 1866 — Congress proposes a follow-up Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which President Johnson vetoes. Congress amends the bill, and it is vetoed again by Johnson, but Congress overrides his veto and passes a version of the bill.
  • April 1866 — Civil Rights Act of 1866 is passed.
  • May, July 1866 — Race riots in Memphis and New Orleans. White people kill 46 African Americans and destroy houses, schools, churches, in Memphis, Tennessee.
  • March 1867–March 1868 — Reconstruction Acts lay out the process for readmitting Southern states into the Union. Johnson vetoes these bills but Congress again overrides him.
  • July 1868 — 14th Amendment ratified, African Americans are citizens and granted due process and equal protection under the law.
  • November 1868 — Ulysses S. Grant is elected President.
  • December 1868 — Johnson pardons anyone who participated in the rebellion.
  • February 1870 — 15th Amendment ratified. All adult males are given the right to vote.
  • 1870–1871 — Congress passes three Enforcement Act bills to protect African Americans' right to vote, serve on juries, and receive equal protection under the law. KKK acts of violence are classified as federal offenses, and many are put on trial.
  • 1872 — Freedman’s Bureau is shut down due to lack of funding.
  • April 1873 — Colfax massacre. White Democrats in Louisiana kill mostly black freedmen and black state militia members guarding the courthouse.
  • 1873–1877 — Series of Supreme Court cases (Slaughterhouse Cases, Minor v. Happersett, US v. Reese, US v. Cruikshank), that ruled that due process, right to vote, etc. are not federally protected rights but rather are up to states to determine.
  • March 1875 — Civil Rights Act is passed but later overturned in 1883.
  • 1876 — Rutherford Hayes is elected President after a contentious election. He withdraws federal troops from the South and ends Reconstruction.
  • 1896 — Plessy v. Ferguson — Plessy, forced to sit in black section of railcar, asserts that his 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law had been violated, but the Supreme Court disagrees, creating the “separate but equal” era.