Greenbelt Timeline

10000 BCE

Indigenous people are living in our area as early as 12,000 years ago

c. 1300

Piscataway Nation (Algonquin-speaking tribes related to Nanticoke and Lenape) establish towns on lands west of Chesapeake Bay and north of Potomac River - in present-day Prince George’s, Charles, Calvert, and St. Mary’s counties.

NMAI, Smithsonian, URL, https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/pamunkey/assets/static/Pamunkey-1610-Chesapeake-Bay-Map-r-24.pdf

1606

Grant by King James I of Charter to Virginia Company includes all of what is now Maryland until 26 years later, in 1632, when King Charles I would grant proprietary Charter of Maryland to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

Smith, John, and William Hole. Virginia. [London, 1624] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/99446115/.

1619

English privateer ship White Lion, sailing under a Dutch letter of marque, arrives in Virginia with first captive Africans in our region.

1634

Ark and Dove arrive in Maryland. First English settlement in Maryland occupies Yaocomico city built by Indigenous people associated with the Patuxent tribe of the Piscataway confederation. English settlers rename the town St. Mary’s City.

"The Ark was a 400-ton English merchant ship hired in 1633 by Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore to bring roughly 140 English colonists and their equipment and supplies to the new colony and Province of Maryland, one of the original Thirteen Colonies of British North America on the Atlantic Ocean eastern seaboard." - Wikipedia

1664

Maryland Assembly codifies race-based law providing that enslaved people of African descent are held in slavery for life (“Durante Vita”) and that all persons born of enslaved African-descent mothers will also be held in slavery for life.

This European iron slave chain was used to chain three slaves together. Chains of this type were often sourced and manufactured in Britain and then used in different parts of the empire.

1666

Treaty of Peace and Amity is concluded between the Province of Maryland and various Indigenous tribes, including Piscataway, but this treaty would be breached by settlers and the provincial government, a pattern repeated throughout the history of agreements with Indigenous nations.

1694

First land patent in our area is issued, to two English settlers whose business is trading with American Indians, for a plantation tract called “Friendship” located on the eastern side of Indian Creek; the tract corresponds to today’s Berwyn Heights, Greenbelt’s Springhill Lake, and Beltway Plaza. The commercial parceling out of Indigenous lands in favor of English settlers is part of a pattern of dispossession.

1650 - 1710

Diaspora: many Piscataway Indians are pushed out of Maryland (many others having been killed by violence or by disease); yet some Piscataway families remain in southern Maryland. Around 1700, some groups of Piscataway join with the Seneca (taking on the tribal name “Conoy”), migrating to Pennsylvania, New York state, or Canada. Piscataway/Conoy who migrated to Pennsylvania would soon become subjected to attacks by settlers there; some survivors would later move to lands west of the Appalachians, such as the Ohio country. Some would eventually return to southern Maryland.

1695

Maryland Assembly passes “Act Restraining the frequent Assembling of Negroes within this Province,” fearing that enslaved Africans are plotting uprisings and escape from bondage.

1696

Province of Maryland establishes Prince George’s County.

1700s

Atlantic slave trade booms; the labor of enslaved Africans becomes central to the economy of Prince George’sCounty.

1739

Jack Ransom is found guilty of, and is executed for, leading a conspiracy to revolt planned by enslaved Africans seeking freedom from bondage at Poplar Neck (near Upper Marlboro in Prince George’s County).

Poplar Neck would be only one among many dozens of uprisings by enslaved persons across North America. Other notable uprisings in southern Maryland include the 1817 revolt at St. Inigoes in St. Mary’s County; and the armed march of freedom-seekers in 1847, co-led by a free person of African descent, that began at Port Tobacco in Charles County and added more escapees as the march moved through Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, aiming for freedom in Pennsylvania.

1763

Royal Proclamation of 1763 recognizes lands west of the Appalachian Mountains (that is, west of the Atlantic Seaboard watershed) as sovereign Indigenous lands off limits to colonial settlement.

Various Indigenous groups, having been pushed by European settlement from their homelands on theEastern Seaboard, would migrate west of the Appalachian Mountains.

After the American Revolution, the 1763 line would not be honored by the new U.S. government.

1776

At the time of the Revolutionary War, half of all households in Prince George’s County hold people of African descent in slavery.

1783

Belinda Sutton, kidnapped from Africa at 12 years of age and enslaved for 50 years, sues the Royalls of Boston for pension and would eventually be awarded £15 per year.

1788

U.S. Constitution is ratified. Certain key provisions result from compromises regarding the institution of race-based slavery.

1791

Haitian revolt by self-liberated Africans against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue begins and would end with Haitian independence in 1804.

New York Public Library Digital Collections, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division

1793

In response to escapes to freedom by enslaved persons, Congress enacts Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, pursuant to Fugitive Slave Clause of U.S. Constitution, Art. IV, § 2, cl.3.

1808

Importation of enslaved persons from outside the U.S. is outlawed. This raises the "sale price"of an enslaved individual as chattel property, so Maryland "owners" find a lucrative market for selling enslaved human beings to the Deep South, where demand for labor is increasing.

Maryland’s race-based life-long enslavement law enacted in 1664 would remain in effect, so the children of enslaved African-descent mothers are also “owned” for life and can be sold for a profit; this gives “owners” an incentive to organize slave breeding farms to promote childbearing by enslaved women.

Advertisement from J.M. Wilson for sale of Maryland and Virginia Negroes (1857), New York Public Library Digital Collections, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division. Public Domain.

1827

Maryland Colonization Society is founded, to return persons of African descent in America, to Africa. This organization would in 1834 found the Republic of Maryland in West Africa (which would in 1857 become part of Liberia).

1847

Maryland-born formerly enslaved Frederick Douglass founds abolitionist newspaper The North Star, and would become a lifelong champion for abolition, social justice, and women’s suffrage.

1849

Maryland-born enslaved Harriet Tubman escapes to freedom in the North.

A prominent abolitionist, she would return to Maryland often, guiding enslaved persons to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Tubman would become a union spy and would lead the 1863 Combahee River raid, freeing 700 enslaved people.

1850

Congress enacts Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to strengthen enforcement of the law requiring return of escaped persons to their captors.

1857

Supreme Court issues Dred Scott decision, holding that people of African descent are, because of their race, incapable of becoming U.S. citizens.

1864

New Maryland Constitution abolishes slavery, at least on paper, effective November 1, 1864. Statewide vote is narrow (30,174 to 28,380); Prince George’s County vote is overwhelmingly against the new Constitution.

Abolition in Maryland brings new waves of terror and intimidation against people of African descent. Deeply discriminatory patterns would persist after abolition, often mirroring the structure of slavery itself.

1865

After consultation with local freedmen leaders, Gen. Sherman on January 16 issues Field Orders: No. 15 calls for “possessory title” to 40-acre parcels to be provided to African Americans in several defeated Confederate states.

This reparations plan is abandoned soon after the assassination of President Lincoln on April 14, 1865.

December 6, 1865

Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery is ratified on December 6, 1865.

1867

Owners of several plantations who had recently held enslaved persons on lands that today are Greenbelt apply to the Prince George’s County Commissioner of Slave Statistics, in hopes of getting compensation for loss of their “property.”

1868

Fourteenth Amendment is ratified and becomes part of the U.S. Constitution (although the Maryland legislature would not ratify it until 1959).

This amendment overturned Dred Scott, defining U.S. citizenship and extending to formerly enslaved persons the “equal protection of the laws.”

1870

Henrietta Wood sues for reparations for her years of enslavement.

After long litigation, an Ohio jury in 1878 would return a verdict awarding her $2500. (To the present day, this award - worth about $65,000 in 2024’s dollars - remains the largest sum granted by a U.S. court as reparations for enslavement.)

1877 - 1960s

Despite the Fourteenth Amendment, “Jim Crow” era emerges as Reconstruction in formerly rebel states ends following 1876 election compromise.

The Jim Crow era in Maryland had begun earlier than in the Deep South. Because Maryland never joined the rebellion, it did not experience the dozen years of Reconstruction following abolition. (The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, likewise, had not applied to Maryland.)

The Jim Crow era is marked by unequal educational opportunities; unequal economic opportunities; unequal access to government benefits; racially discriminatory laws targeting African Americans; racial segregation in restaurants, hotels, theatres, transportation, and other public accommodations; housing segregation through racial zoning (and, later, racially restrictive covenants), discriminatory government policies, unequal lending practices, etc.; disenfranchisement of African American voters; discrimination in law enforcement and in the courts; lynchings; and racially motivated organized violence against African Americans (exemplified by, but not at all limited to, the Ku Klux Klan) over many decades around the U.S.

1884 - 1885

Berlin Conference of European powers brings “colonial imperialism to flower” (per W.E.B. DuBois) as European empires formalize the so-called “Scramble for Africa,” carving up the African continent for exploitation, and ignoring traditional borders.

No Africans are invited to attend this conference to partition Africa.

1896

U.S. Supreme Court holds racial segregation lawful, in Plessy v. Ferguson.

1897

Callie House (born enslaved 1861) establishes Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association to seek pensions/reparations for formerly enslaved persons.

1904

State and local governments in Maryland enact Jim Crow laws mandating segregation of railroad passenger cars, 1904 Md. Laws, ch. 109.

1908

Maryland enacts Jim Crow law restricting voting rights under a “grandfather clause” in certain local elections, 1908 Md. Laws, ch. 525, Md. Laws, ch. 248.

1909

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded, to resist racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws and to promote justice and equal rights for African Americans.

1933

African American field worker George Armwood is lynched by a large mob in Princess Anne, Maryland. According to Maryland State Archives research, at least 44 lynchings took place in Maryland between 1854 and 1933.

1935-1937

Greenbelt is constructed as a racially segregated federal New Deal project. African Americans are included in the relief worker labor force but are excluded, based on race, from living in Greenbelt. Racial segregation was already widespread in surrounding Prince George’s County.

1936

U.S. government abandons plans for separate Rossville Rural Development area north of Greenbelt that was to have been built for African American families.

1937

Greenbelt is incorporated as a municipality.

1941

Threatened demonstration by the March on Washington Movement leads to agreement between FDR and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union president A. Philip Randolph, whereby march is called off in exchange for Executive Order 8802 banning employment discrimination in defense industries.

1952

U.S. government sells Greenbelt to private coop, GVHC (renamed GHI in 1957)

1954

Brown v. Board of Education overrules Plessy v. Ferguson.

1955

Boycott of segregated bus system in Montgomery, Alabama launches new phase of nationwide civil rights movement.

1961

Maryland Attorney General issues opinion advising that county clerks of court should continue to enforceMaryland’s laws prohibiting interracial marriages and should not issue marriage licenses to any interracial couple whose marriage would be prohibited under Maryland’s anti-miscegenation law, 46 Opinions of the Attorney General 44, 44-48 (1961).

1963

Greenbelt Citizens for Fair Housing holds public meetings to promote harmonious racial integration of housing in Greenbelt and to forestall predatory blockbusting.

Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs, Justice and Equality.

1964

Congress enacts federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The first 15 years after the 1964 Act wouldwitness notable progress toward racial equality around the U.S., before the Supreme Court in Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978) begins a 45-year trend of increasing curtailment of race-conscious remedies for race-based discrimination.

1965

Congress enacts federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

1966

After signing a contract with GHI in 1965, pastor Angela Williams, Rivers Williams, and their family move into 7-H Southway in Old Greenbelt on February 12, 1966, becoming among the first African American residents of Greenbelt GHI housing.

1968

Congress enacts federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.

1972

Noting 18 years of unjustified delay by the Prince George’s County Board of Education in desegregating schools, federal judge Frank A. Kaufman orders bussing in Prince George’s County as a remedy. Bussing order would not be ended until 1998.

1970-2020

Prince George’s County experiences major demographic shift, from majority white to majority African American. Greenbelt experiences a parallel shift, although the Old Greenbelt section of town remains majority white.

1989

H.R. 40 is introduced in Congress by the late Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), calling for a federal study of the issue of reparations.

2009

After two City Council seats are added in response to a 2008 voting rights challenge by the ACLU and the NAACP to the historically all-white Greenbelt City Council. Greenbelt voters elect first African American councilmember, Emmett Jordan. Jordan would be elected Greenbelt’s first African American Mayor in 2013. More African Americans would be elected to the Greenbelt City Council in subsequent years: Colin Byrd (2017), who would be elected Mayor in2019; Brandon Ric Gordon (2021); and Danielle McKinney (2023).

2012

State of Maryland recognizes Piscataway Indian Nation and Piscataway Conoy Tribal Confederation, but state recognition confers no benefits on tribal organizations or Indigenous people in Maryland. Tens of thousands ofIndigenous tribal members, including Piscataway, are still living in Maryland.

2020

Economist William A. Darity, Jr., co-authors From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, detailing the stunning present-day racial “Wealth Gap” in the U.S. and tracing this gap to the historical institution of race-based slavery and its discriminatory legacy.

2021

Greenbelt voters approve establishment of Reparations Commission.

Greenbelt's Historical Timeline