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Columbus "discovered" America. Native Americans were characterized as savages. Columbus may not have been the first European to arrive but that is the widely known event. Certainly, Columbus represented the colonization and associated racist perspective.

The Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World.  Source

When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established St. Augustine in 1565, he was accompanied by free and enslaved Africans. They worked on early fortifications, sawed timber, and built several structures, including a church, a blacksmith shop, and an artillery platform. They also cleared land for planting and harvested the crops. Source

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This was the first enslavement of Africans in what is now the United States. Within a decade there were laws instituted distinguishing Black and white as separate races receiving different rights and privileges.

Native Americans (Indians) were forcibly removed from the land so that white people could have it for their purposes. Indians enslaved Africans as well. Per the article What you probably don’t picture are Cherokee slaveholders, foremost among them Cherokee chief John Ross. What you probably don’t picture are the numerous African-American slaves, Cherokee-owned, who made the brutal march themselves, or else were shipped en masse to what is now Oklahoma aboard cramped boats by their wealthy Indian masters. And what you may not know is that the federal policy of Indian removal, which ranged far beyond the Trail of Tears and the Cherokee, was not simply the vindictive scheme of Andrew Jackson, but rather a popularly endorsed, congressionally sanctioned campaign spanning the administrations of nine separate presidents."

Between 1846-49 J. Marion Sims operated on at least 10 enslaved women without anesthesia. One enslaved woman, Anarcha, endured at least 30 painful surgeries. Source

A major precursor to the Civil War, this controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision denied citizenship and basic rights to all blacks -- whether slave or free.

The war between the states that would end slavery and begin other atrocities. At the end of the war the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

The Bear River Massacre of 1863 near what’s now Preston, Idaho, left roughly 350 members of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation dead, making it the bloodiest — and most deadly — slaying of Native Americans by the U.S. military, according to historians and tribal leaders. The Indians were slain after soldiers came into a valley where they were camping for the winter and attacked, leaving roughly 90 women and children among the dead.

Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end to slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African American holiday.

13th amendment ratified emancipating enslaved Africans

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46 Black people were killed, 75 injured, over 100 robbed, 5 Black women raped. 4 churches, 8 schools (every Black church and school) burned.

The KKK was created at this time by former Confederate soldiers and included congressmen, political leaders, government personnel. They performed terrorist acts often at night throughout the south somewhat anonymously since they wore hoods to protect their identities.

Reconstruction

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Reconstruction Acts, U.S. legislation enacted in 1867–68 that outlined the conditions under which the Southern states would be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War (1861–65). The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

After the war ended in 1865, the debate intensified over how the former Confederate states would rejoin the United States. Pres. Andrew Johnson indicated that he would pursue even more lenient Reconstruction policies than those of his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. However, he faced opposition from the Radical Republicans, a powerful antislavery faction within Congress that was committed to enfranchisement and equal rights for freed blacks. These politicians favoured more stringent measures, and they largely crafted the Reconstruction Acts. The first bill called for 10 of the “rebel States” to be divided into five districts under military control; only Tennessee was excluded because it had already been readmitted. The states were also required to craft new constitutions, which had to include universal male suffrage and needed approval by the U.S. Congress. In addition, they had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and former slaves. After completing the requirements, the states would be readmitted to the Union.

Congress approved the bill in February 1867, and then on March 2 it overrode Johnson’s veto. Three more acts were later enacted (two in 1867 and one in 1868), which concerned how the constitutions would be created and passed at the state level. A legal case (Ex Parte McCardle) arose over the constitutionality of military occupation in the South—thereby bringing into question the legality of the Reconstruction measures. The suit was brought under the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, and the Radical Republicans responded by stripping the Supreme Court of its power to hear appeals involving that act. Congress again overrode Johnson’s veto, and in 1869 the court dismissed the case, stating that it lacked jurisdiction.

The former Confederate states began rejoining the Union in 1868, with Georgia being the last state to be readmitted, on July 15, 1870; it had rejoined the Union two years earlier but had been expelled in 1869 after removing African Americans from the state legislature. Source

1873 - Colfax Massacre

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Massacre of Blacks in Louisiana Source

1874 - Eufaula Massacre

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Massacre of 15-40 Blacks in Mississippi and wounded 70 Source

1874 - Vicksburg Massacre

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Massacre of 75-300 Blacks in Mississippi Source

1875 - Clinton Massacre

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Massacre of 5 Blacks in Mississippi Source

1890 - Mississippi

Mississippi became one of several states to change their constitution to disenfranchise Black people. Source

1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre

300 murdered

1891 - Compulsory attendance at Federal "Indian schools"

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11 treaties with Native Americans required attendance at Federal schools. Teachers attempted to replace cultures, languages and identities. Plains sign talk was used by the students to communicate so teachers wouldn't understand.

1865 - 1960 Jim Crow era

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The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Ku Klux Klan

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

Jim Crow Laws Expand

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there. Source

1896 Plessy v Ferguson

Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal".

1924 - Native American citizenship

Native people were not given full citizenship until 1924 when Congress passed the Native American Citizenship Act. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting. Source

1932-1972 - The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

600 Black men were lied to about participating in a human experiment. They were told they were being treated for bad blood. Even after treatment was discovered the 'experiment' continued until 1972. We all complain about the dehumanizing experiments of the nazi Mengele, but he may have taken his ideas from American on this. Source

1943 - Detroit

Like the successive rebellion that would erupt 24 years later, the Detroit Race Riot of 1943 was deeply rooted in racism, poor living conditions and unequal access to goods and services. The apparent industrial prosperity that made Detroit the “Arsenal of Democracy” masked a deeper social unrest that erupted during the summer of 1943. Detroit was not alone in its turmoil that summer, though the violence and civil disturbances that occurred here were some of the worst in U.S. history.

Before and during World War II, workers migrated north to seek factory employment in such vast numbers that Detroit was incapable of adequately receiving them. Because black Detroiters were still treated as second class citizens, they suffered disproportionately from wartime rationing and the overall strains on the city. Factories offered employment but not housing, and because whites violently defended the borders of their segregated neighborhoods, black residents had little choice but to suffer in repulsive living conditions.

Detroit’s 200,000 black residents were marginalized into small, subdivided apartments that often housed multiple families. They were crammed into 60 square blocks on the city’s east side, an area known as Black Bottom.Source

1944 - Koramatsu v. US

The Court in this case upheld the conviction of an American of Japanese descent, who had been prosecuted for remaining in California after a 1942 presidential order designating much of the West Coast a "military area" and requiring relocation of most Japanese-Americans from California (among other West Coast states). Source

1948 - Desegregate Armed Services

President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services. Source

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had allowed Jim Crow laws that mandated separate public facilities for whites and African Americans to prevail throughout the South during the first half of the 20th century. While the Brown ruling applied only to schools, it implied that segregation in other public facilities was unconstitutional as well. Source

On December 1, 1955, African American civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest initiated a sustained bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The protest began on December 5, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., then a young local pastor, and was so successful that it was extended indefinitely. In the ensuing months, protestors faced threats, arrests, and termination from their jobs. Nonetheless, the boycott continued for more than a year. Finally, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that segregated seating was unconstitutional, and the federal decision went into effect on December 20, 1956. Source

In September 1957 nine African American students attended their first day at Little Rock Central High School, whose entire student population had until that point been white. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be called, encountered a large white mob and soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard, sent by Arkansas Gov. Orval Eugene Faubus, blocking the entrance of the school. For the next 18 days Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gov. Faubus, and Little Rock’s mayor, Woodrow Mann, discussed the situation. The Little Rock Nine returned on September 23, but were met with violence. The students were sent home and returned on September 25, protected by U.S. soldiers. Although the students were continually harassed, eight of the nine completed the academic year. The entire confrontation drew international attention not only to civil rights in the United States but also to the struggle between federal and state power. Source

1964 - Civil rights act

On July 2, 1964, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act into law, a stronger version of what his predecessor, President Kennedy, had proposed the previous summer before his assassination in November 1963. The act authorized the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. Although controversial, the legislation was a victory for the civil rights movement.

1965 - Malcolm X assassinated

Black religious leader Malcolm X is assassinated during a rally by members of the Nation of Islam.

1967 - Loving v. Virginia

This decision holds that state laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage are unconstitutional.

1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated

Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray is convicted of the murder in 1969.

1985 - MOVE bombing

Police destroyed a residential area by bombing a Philadelphia neighborhood from the air.

1986 - Batson v. Kentucky

This decision holds that a state denies an African American defendant equal protection when it puts him on trial before a jury from which members of his race have been purposefully excluded.

1992 - Rodney King Beating by Police

Four Los Angeles policemen — three of them white — were acquitted of the savage beating of Rodney King, an African-American man. Caught on camera by a bystander, graphic video of the attack was broadcast into homes across the nation and worldwide.

Fury over the acquittal — stoked by years of racial and economic inequality and injustice in the city — spilled over into the streets, resulting in five days of rioting in Los Angeles. It ignited a national conversation about racial and economic disparity and police use of force that continues today. Source

2015 - Mass shooting at a Charleston church

Nine members of a Black church were murdered during a prayer meeting by a white man who was attending