Historic breakthroughs (contextualizing Obama's speech tonight)

Historic breakthroughs
August 28, 2008
(from L.A. Times)
Milestones for blacks in the U.S. Forty-five years to the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois will formally accept his party's nomination for president. Here are some key landmarks in African American political history:1847 Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, launches an abolitionist newspaper called the North Star.

1857 The U.S. Supreme Court dismisses the appeal for freedom of a Missouri slave named Dred Scott because "Negroes, whether slaves or free, that is, men of the African race, are not citizens of the United States by the Constitution."

1863 President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, a presidential order that frees slaves in states that were in rebellion against the federal government.

1866 The Civil Rights Act, which grants full citizenship to those born on U.S. soil (except Indians), is passed.
1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi is elected as the first African American U.S. senator. That same year, the 15th Amendment, which prohibits states from denying the right to vote because of race, is ratified.

1909 The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization, is formed by W.E.B. DuBois and others.

1954 The Supreme Court outlaws segregation in public schools in the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., case.

1963 More than 200,000 people participate on the march on Washington and assemble at the Lincoln Memorial, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

1965 President Lyndon Johnson issues an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

1967 Former NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall is the first black justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1989 L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia is the first African American to be elected as governor of a U.S. state.

1992 Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois becomes the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

2001 Colin Powell is the first African American appointed secretary of State.

2005 Condoleezza Rice becomes the first black woman to serve as secretary of State.

2008 Barack Obama becomes the first African American presidential nominee of a major party.

Source: Times reporting.