Origins, 1513-1760. African slaves, African conquistadors ; Origins of North American slavery ; From red to black slavery ; First Africans and the growth of northern slavery ; Royal African Company ; Early misgivings ; Fear and resistance ; Inoculation ; Fort Mose : a different trajectory -- Forging freedom, 1760-1804. First blooms ; Crispus Attucks and the freedom struggle ; Colored patriots ; The king's freedom ; Declaring independence ; Unleashing freedom ; Freedom, technology ; and king cotton ; Establishing freedom ; Creating a black Atlantic ; Toussaint! -- "It shall ever be our duty to vindicate our brethren," 1800-1834. Tracing the trade ; End of the slave trade in Britain and the United States, 1807 and 1808 ; Serving freedom in the War of 1812 ; Yarrow Mamout by Charles Wilson Peale and the rise of a people ; Colonization and Liberia ; "A fire bell in the night" ; Freedom's Journal and Walker's Appeal ; The Liberator and William Lloyd Garrison ; Nat Turner ; The founding of the American Anti-slavery Society and Maria Stewart ; British emancipation -- Race and resistance, 1834-1850. Oberlin College ; Magician and ventriloquist ; Julia Chinn ; An uncompromising talent ; Opposing black freedom ; The Amistad and the Creole ; Finding freedom in Massachusetts ; Frederick Douglass ; Crosscurrents of 1848 : French abolition and the Pearl ; Rush for gold ; Harriet Tubman, American icon ; The Roberts case and the birth of Jim Crow -- Emergence, 1850-1860. The new Fugitive Slave Law ; Resisting the Fugitive Slave Law ; Martin R. Delany and Harriet Beecher Stowe ; Institute for Colored Youth ; The Black Swan ; Clotel, or, The President's daughter, and Colored patriots of the American Revolution ; Anthony Burns ; John Mercer Langston and the bar of justice ; Berea College and Wilberforce University ; Dred Scott ; Our Nig -- War and its meaning, 1859-1865. Harpers Ferry ; "This is a white man's war!" ; Contraband ; The Port Royal experiment ; "An act for the release of certain persons held to service, or labor in the District of Columbia" ; Robert Smalls and the Planter ; President Lincoln and colonization ; First in the field ; Emancipation Proclamation ; Carnival of fury ; The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment ; Fort Pillow ; Extraordinary heroism : New Market Heights ; Defending rights in the midst of war ; Fruit of a bitter harvest : the Thirteenth Amendment ; First black voice in Congress ; Bureau of Refugees, Freemen and Abandoned Lands ; Freedman's Bank ; The Lincoln assassination -- Reconstructing a nation, 1866-1877. Formation of the Ku Klux Klan ; Civil Rights Act of 1866 ; Murder in Memphis, 1866 ; Fourteenth Amendment and black citizenship ; Reconstruction and black higher education ; Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution ; African American diplomats ; Hiram Rhodes Revels ; Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Smalls, and African Americans in Congress ; Harvard and Yale, 1870 and 1876 ; Civil Rights Act of 1871 : the Ku Klux Klan Act ; The decline of civil rights, 1875-1883 ; Fisk University Jubilee Singers ; Charlotte Ray ; U. S. Supreme Court and the Fourteenth Amendment : the slaughterhouse cases ; The Catholic Healys ; Convict lease ; End of reconstruction and ho for Kansas! -- "There is no Negro problem," 1877-1895. Black frontierspeople and cowboys ; The inventive Lewis H. Latimer ; Knights of Labor and Colored Farmers' Alliance ; Education and philanthropy in the nineteenth century ; Major league baseball and Jim Crow ; Mississippi Plan and black disenfranchisement ; Provident Hospital and Dr. Daniel Hale Williams ; Ida B. Wells-Barnett and lynching ; The World's Columbian Exposition and The Banjo Lesson by Henry Ossawa Tanner ; W. E. B. Du Bois and Harvard University -- New Negro, old problem, 1895-1900. Booker T. Washington at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition ; Plessy v. Ferguson ; The National Association of Colored Women and the American Negro Academy ; Wilmington, North Carolina, race riot of 1898 ; Buffalo soldiers ; War with Spain and for an empire ; Afro-American Council ; W. E. B. Du Bois : the Paris Albums, 1900 ; Photo essay : Sambo Art ; Photo essay : the New Negro -- The ordeal of Jim Crow, 1900-1917. George H. White and the ordeal of black politics ; Dinner at the White House ; The music of Johnson, Johnson, and Cole ; Charles W. Chesnutt and James Weldon Johnson ; Paul Laurence Dunbar and In Dahomey ; The Boston Guardian and the Chicago Defender ; The Souls of Black Folk ; Mary McLeod Bethune and African American education ; Niagara Movement ; The Atlanta riot, the Brownsville raid, and the reputations of Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington ; Springfield race riot, the founding of the NAACP, and the beginning of The Crisis ; Madam C. J. Walker ; Matthew Henson ; The founding of the Urban League, the Harlem attack and the death of Booker T. Washington ; Emancipation anniversary, Carter G. Woodson, Rosenwald Schools ; Jack Johnson and white America ; Woodrow Wilson and federal segregation -- Renaissance, 1917-1928. World War I and the great migration ; The Birth of a Nation, NAACP protests, and the founding of the second KKK ; Riots in East St. Louis and Houston, the response of the NAACP, 1917 ; Pan-African Congress ; The red summer, the Tulsa race riot, and more ; Marcus Mosiah Garvey ; Claude McKay and "If We Must Die" ; Sadie Alexander, Eva Dykes, Georgiana Simpson, and Bessie Coleman ; Harry Pace, Tanner and Fuller at the NYPL, Robeson in The Emperor Jones, Howard University Gallery of Art ; Schomburg Collection and Opportunity ; A. Philip Randolph, The Messenger, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters ; Alain Locke and the New Negro ; Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington ; Paul Robeson --

Growing authority, 1928-1939. Oscar De Priest and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. ; Scottsboro and Walter White ; Tuskegee syphilis study ; Etta Moten, Oliver Law, and William Hastie ; The Apollo Theatre ; National Negro Congress ; Jesse Owens and Joe Louis ; Zora Neale Hurston, Arna Bontemps, Richard Wright ; Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women, the National Youth Administration, and the Black Cabinet

The era of World War II, 1939-1950. Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial ; The March on Washington movement and Executive Order 8802 ; Moving toward the double v ; African Americans in the military during World War II ; The Tuskegee Airmen ; World War II-era race riots ; John H. Johnson, Ebony, and Jet ; The Congress of Racial Equality and the Journey of Reconciliation ; John Hope Franklin ; Jackie Robinson and black baseball ; Executive orders and To Secure These Rights ; The artistry of Gordon Parks

Foundations of the new civil rights movement, 1950-1963. Breaking a barrier : Billy Eckstine ; Postwar accomplishments : Alice Coachman, Wesley Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Ralph Bunche ; Brown v. Board of Education and school desegregation ; Invisible Man ; The White Citizens' Council ; Emmett Till ; Rosa Parks and boycotting the buses ; Little Rock and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the stabbing of Martin Luther King, Jr. ; A Raisin in the Sun ; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and sit-ins ; Biloxi wade-in, Atlanta kneel-in, Jacksonville violence, University of Georgia riot ; Freedom rides ; Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics ; James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain

The movement at high tide, 1963-1968. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" ; March on Washington and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing ; Live at the Apollo ; LeRoi Jones's Blues People and King's Nobel Peace Prize ; Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, and Freedom Summer ; War on Poverty, Economic Opportunity Act, Moynihan Report, Robert Weaver, Constance Baker Motley, Thurgood Marshall ; Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 ; Manchild in the Promised Land and The Autobiography of Malcolm X ; Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam ; James Meredith and Medgar Evers ; Civil rights protests and urban rioting in the north ; Selma, 1965 ; Sammy Younge, Vernon Dahmer, and the March Against Fear ; "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" ; Black Panthers, US, Kwanzaa ; Edward Brooke and Julian Bond ; Loving v. Virginia, 1967 ; Riots, Newark, election of black mayors ; Martin Luther King : Chicago, Vietnam, and assassination ; Civil Rights Act of 1968 ; The Orangeburg Massacre and the Kerner Report ; Poor People's Campaign and Resurrection City ; Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics

Cultural integration, 1969-1979. Quincy Jones : American national treasure ; Arthur Ashe : a study in bravery ; Chicago Eight, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis ; 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act ; Growth of black political power ; Soul Train ; Busing in Boston ; Blacks in the military : Samuel Gravely, Janie Mines, Daniel James ; Alex Haley and Roots ; Black women activists of the 1970s ; The Morehouse School of Medicine and Louis Sullivan ; Birth of hip-hop ; The Bakke case and affirmative action

Achievement, 1980-2008. African Americans in entertainment and the arts during the 1980s ; Martin Luther King Day ; Thriller and Purple Rain ; Jesse Jackson and Ronald Brown ; Fred Gorden and Barbara Harris ; Spike Lee ; Growing political power, 1989-1991 ; Riots in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, Virginia Beach, and Los Angeles ; Clarence Thomas ; Air Jordan ; Photo essay : modern Olympians ; Advancement in the sciences ; Giant steps ; The achievements of Carl Lewis and Tiger Woods ; Pulitzer Prize stories : Toni Morrison and George Walker ; Tom Joyner ; Louis Farrakhan and the Million Man March ; Proposition 209 and the Texaco discrimination suit ; Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and DNA ; Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo ; Stellar achiemvements ; Barack Obama in the U. S. Senate ; Hurricane Katrina ; The 2006 elections ; Barack Obama's presidential campaign.