Blacks in the 20th century: a timeline

W.E.B. DuBois Jesse Owens Black teens are escorted from a Kentucky school. Malcolm X Muhammad Ali Alex Haley Harold Washington

1910: The National Urban League is founded.

1915: Carter G. Woodson establishes the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

1922: The Harlem Renaissance, a golden age of black literature and art in the United States, begins. It lasts until 1929.

1925: A. Philip Randolph organizes the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

1936: Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin.

1937: Joe Louis defeats James J. Braddock, becoming heavyweight boxing champion of the world.

1940: Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first black general in the U.S. Army.

1944: The United Negro College Fund is founded.

1947: Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black player in Major League Baseball.

1950: Ralph J. Bunche wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator in Palestine.

1952: Tuskegee Institute statistics mark 1952 as the first year since 1881 without any lynchings.

1954: In Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., the Supreme Court rules that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

1955: Rosa Parks refuses to change seats on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, sparking a boycott of the bus system. It continues until the next year, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws bus segregation in the city.

1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president.

1957: Congress passes the Voting Rights Bill, the first major civil-rights legislation in more than 75 years.

1960: Sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C., initiate a wave of similar protests throughout the South.

1960: The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee is founded in Raleigh, N.C.

1963: The March on Washington is the largest civil-rights demonstration to date, involving some 200,000 people. Rev. King delivers his ``I Have a Dream'' speech.

1964: The 24th Amendment forbids poll taxes to prevent voting.

1965: The SCLC launches a voter drive in Selma, Ala., which grows into a national protest movement.

1965: Malcolm X is assassinated.

1965: The Watts riot results in 34 deaths, more than 3,500 arrests, and about $225 million in property damage.

1966: The Congress of Racial Equality endorses the concept ``black power,'' which SNCC adopts but the SCLC and NAACP do not.

1966: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party.

1967: Boxing champion Muhammad Ali, a k a Cassius Clay, becomes a political figure as well when he refuses induction into the Army.

1967: In the worst summer for U.S. racial disturbances, more than 40 riots and 100 other uprisings occur.

1968: Rev. King is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., prompting rioting in at least 125 places nationwide.

1969: Kenneth Gibson becomes the first black mayor of a large eastern city, Newark, N.J.

1970: Implicated in a shootout at California's Marin County Courthouse, Angela Davis goes into hiding to avoid arrest. She is acquitted in 1972.

1973: Thomas Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles. Maynard H. Jackson is elected the first black mayor of Atlanta. Coleman A. Young is elected the first black mayor of Detroit.

1974: Henry Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's long-standing record.

1977: ABC-TV hosts a miniseries based on Alex Haley's ``Roots'' over eight consecutive nights.

1980: Racial unrest in Miami results in 15 deaths.

1982: Lee P. Brown is named the first black police commissioner of Houston/

1983: Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.

1983: Louisiana repeals the nation's last racial-classification law, which said anyone with 1/32 Negro heritage was black.

1986: A bronze bust of Rev. King is the first of a black American placed in the nation's Capitol. The first national Martin Luther King Day holiday is celebrated Jan. 20.

1988: Jesse L. Jackson receives 1,218.5 votes for nomination as president during the Democratic National Convention. Michael Dukakis is nominated with 2,082.

1989: Barbara Harris is elected the first woman bishop of the Episcopal Church.

1989: Gen. Colin L. Powell is named chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

1989: David Dinkins is elected the first black mayor of New York City, and L. Douglas Wilder is elected the first black governor of Virginia.

1990: George Augustus Stallings becomes the first bishop of the African-American Catholic Church, a breakaway group from the Roman Catholic Church.

1991: Roland Burris becomes the first black attorney general of Illinois.

1991: Michael Jordan, who became the world's most famous athlete in the 1990s, leads the Chicago Bulls to the first of six NBA championships.

1992: Jackie Joyner-Kersee is the first woman to repeat as Olympic heptathlon champion.

1992: Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois is the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

1993: M. Jocelyn Elders becomes the first black and the first woman U.S. surgeon general.

1993: Toni Morrison becomes the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.