| 1791 | Rhode Island textile mills hire women to make cloth. |
| 1808 | Importation of slaves becomes illegal in the United States. |
| 1820 | The Missouri Compromise (used to maintain balance between free and slave states in the United States) is passed. |
| 1821 | Emma Willard founds the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, the first American institution of advanced education for women. |
| 1824 | Women and men conduct the first labor strike in the textile mills of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. |
| 1827 | The slave, Isabella Van Wagener, later known as Sojourner Truth, escapes from her master and joins a Quaker household. She becomes a crusader for African Americans and women. |
| 1828 | Sarah and Angelina Grimké, members of a South Carolina slave-owning family, begin working in the abolition movement in the Northeast. |
| 1830 | The moral reform social movement in the United States begins and consists primarily of women. Moral reform was a campaign in the 1830s and 1840s to abolish sexually immoral behavior (licentiousness), prostitution, and the sexual double standard, and to promote sexual abstinence among the young as they entered the marriage market. |
| 1831 | William Lloyd Garrison publishes “The Liberator,” the newspaper of the militant abolition movement. |
| 1833 | The founding meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) is held. |
| 1833 | Oberlin College, the first racially integrated and co-educational college, opens in Ohio. |
| 1834 | Phillis Wheatley’s 18th century poems are re-published and are believed to be the first African American’s poems published in the United States. |
| 1835 | The first State Anti-Slavery Convention is held in Utica, New York. |
| 1836 | Angelina Grimké begins working as a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. |
| 1836 | Rochester, New York establishes an anti-slavery society. |
| 1837 | Two hundred women attend the Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention in New York City, the first national political meeting of women. |
| 1837 | Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (later Mount Holyoke College) in Massachusetts, the first school to offer a college education for women. |
| 1839 | Abby Kelly begins travelling and lecturing against slavery. |
| 1839 | The American Anti-Slavery Society splits when a woman, Abby Kelley Foster is elected to the business committee. |
| 1840 | World Anti-Slavery Convention is held in London, England. |
| 1840 | The Rochester, New York newspaper, Workingmen’s Advocate promotes public education for children. |
| 1844 | The Lowell, Massachusetts Female Labor Reform Association, one of the first labor associations for working women, is organized by female textile workers. |
| 1846 | Amelia Bloomer begins publishing The Lily, a newspaper promoting temperance. |
| 1847 | Frederick Douglass begins publishing The North Star in Rochester, New York. |
| 1848 | The first Woman’s Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York. The adjourned meeting is held in Rochester, New York. The Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence is adopted. |
| 1848 | The Oneida Community is formed in New York. Property is held in common, women have equal rights with men, and childcare is shared. |
| 1848 | A convention of seamstresses meets to organize the Women’s Political Union to fight for equal rights for women, reduction in their fifteen-hour workday, and a raise in minimum wages. |
| 1848 | The American Academy of Arts and Sciences votes Maria Mitchell as the first woman member after her discovery of a comet in 1847. |
| 1849 | In Seneca Falls, New York, Elizabeth Smith Miller begins wearing the outfit that will become known as “bloomers.” |
| 1850 | Workers are killed by police in a labor dispute during a strike of New York City tailors. |
| 1850 | Harriet Tubman begins helping slaves escape. At times, the slaves use the Underground Railroad. |
| 1851 | Myrtilla Minder opens the first school to train black women as teachers in Washington, D.C. |
| 1852 | Susan B. Anthony organizes the first Women’s State Temperance Society in New York. |
| 1852 | Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is given credit for inciting Northerners against slavery. |
| 1853 | Rochester, New York seamstresses form the first clothing workers union in the city. |
| 1853 | The first strike by African-American union members is staged by waiters in New York City. Their success inspires white waiters to establish a union. |
| 1853 | Florence Nightingale organizes wartime nursing during the Crimean War in Europe. |
| 1853 | World’s Temperance Convention in New York City is held. |
| 1855 | Elmira (Female) College is founded in Elmira, New York, the first woman’s institution to grant degrees. |
| 1855 | Iowa is the first state to admit women to its public university. |
| 1857 | Elizabeth Blackwell opens the hospital, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. |
| 1860 | Susan B. Anthony and Samuel J. May are burned in effigy in Syracuse, New York by mobs opposed to abolition. |
| 1861 | The freedmen’s aid movement begins. Civilian whites travel to the South to educate former slaves and supervise their work as free laborers. |
| 1862 | United States Congress passes the Morrill Act, establishing land grant colleges in rural areas. These schools allow women to earn low-cost degrees. |
| 1862 | President Lincoln announces the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in areas rebelling against the Union. |
| 1863 | The Workingmen’s Assembly was founded in Rochester, New York. It was the first central trades council in the United States. |
| 1865 | The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery. |
| 1868 | The Fourteenth Amendment gives citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves. |
| 1868 | The Working Women’s Protective Union is established in New York City. It gives free legal aid to workers, acts as employment agencies, and lobbies for laws to protect women workers. |
| 1868 | The National Labor Union supports equal pay for equal work. |
| 1870 | Esther Morris of Wyoming is appointed the first woman Justice of the Peace. |
| 1870 | Augusta Lewis of New York City is elected Corresponding Secretary for the International Typographical Union (ITU), the first woman to hold such a position in a national union. |
| 1870 | The Fifteenth Amendment gives former male slaves the right to vote. |
| 1873 | The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is organized in Fredonia, New York. |
| 1873 | Maria Mitchell helps found the American Association for the Advancement of Women. Its goal is to promote higher education and professional possibilities for women. |
| 1874 | Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, New York urges equal rights for women workers before the National Industrial Council. |
| 1874 | First national convention of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Cleveland, Ohio. |
| 1875 | Smith College opens in Massachusetts, a women’s college created and endowed by Sophia Smith’s estate. |
| 1877 | Helen Magill becomes the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from an American school, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. |
| 1877 | Philomena Daniels becomes the first woman in the world licensed as Pilot and Master for steamboat navigation. Her boat runs on Lake Champlain. |
| 1879 | Frances Willard becomes the leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. |
| 1881 | The Women’s National Indian Association is founded by Mary Lucinda Bonney and Amelia Stone Quinton. |
| 1881 | Spelman College, a school for black women in Atlanta, Georgia opens. |
| 1881 | Clara Barton establishes the American branch of the Red Cross and becomes its first president. |
| 1886 | The American Federation of Labor (AFL) organizes at Columbus, Ohio. |
| 1887 | Black baseball player, John Fowler begins playing for the Binghamton (New York) Bings. He is a pioneer of integrated baseball. |
| 1889 | Alfred Tredway White builds one of the earliest public housing complexes in America in Brooklyn Heights, New York. |
| 1890 | Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr found Hull House, a settlement house project in Chicago, Illinois. Their work coincides with American women’s increased professional involvement in social work. |
| 1891 | Ida B. Wells, newspaper owner in Memphis, Tennessee begins a nation-wide anti-lynching campaign. |
| 1893 | Susan B. Anthony, Helen Montgomery, and other women organize the Women’s Education and Industrial Union (WEIU) to help safeguard the interests of working women. |
| 1896 | The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) is founded by Margaret Murray Washington. Mary Church Terrell is the first president. |
| 1897 | The Jewish Daily Forward in New York City becomes one of the important socialist newspapers in the United States and a leader with the Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants. |
| 1903 | The Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) is founded in Boston, Massachusetts to fight for better working conditions for women. |
| 1903 | Rose Schneiderman organizes the first female local of the Jewish Socialist United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers’ Union. |
| 1903 | Mary Wiltsic Fuller founds Holiday House at Lake George, New York as a low-cost resort for young women workers in the collar factories of Troy, New York. |
| 1906 | The first sit-down strike in the United States occurs at a General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York when 3,000 workers refuse to work. |
| 1909 | The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded by a multi-racial group of activists. |
| 1909 | The “Uprising of the 20,000,” a strike by women shirtwaist workers in New York City occurs. |
| 1910 | Buffalo, New York teachers form a union called the Educational League and demand increases in pay. |
| 1911 | The Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City catches fire and 146 women and girls are killed. Investigations following the fire lead to the enactment of several New York state labor laws. |
| 1912 | Ten thousand woolen textile workers from almost forty different nationalities went on strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. This strike became known as the “Bread and Roses” strike, the request for a living wage and for time for the spirit and mind. |
| 1912 | The Wage Earners Suffrage League hold a suffrage rally in New York City. |
| 1912 | Juliette Gordon Low organizes the Girl Guides, later known as the Girls Scouts of the U.S.A. |
| 1914 | Margaret Sanger publishes Woman Rebel and calls for the legalization of contraceptives. |
| 1914 | Women join the workforce at home as men join the war effort. |
| 1916 | Margaret Sanger and Ethel Byrne open the first United States birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. It is shut down ten days later and the women are tried and imprisoned. |
| 1920 | The Nineteenth Amendment — The Susan B. Anthony Amendment — giving women the right to vote is passed. |