Year

1909

2 sourced events from this year.

Events

1909 Timeline

All Years

1909

Civil Rights 20th Century North America

NAACP Founded on Lincoln's Centennial

Following the 1908 Springfield race riot in Illinois, which highlighted the need for organized resistance to racial violence and Jim Crow laws, a group of activists convened in New York. Prominent figures including W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Ida B. Wells, and others issued a call for a national conference timed to the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. On February 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formally established to combat lynching, segregation, and disenfranchisement. The interracial organization aimed to secure full civil and political rights for African Americans through legal action, education, and advocacy. Its founding marked a shift toward sustained, structured efforts against systemic racism in the United States.

Event Detail America 250 Atlas

1909

Science 20th Century North America

Walcott Discovers Burgess Shale Fossils in Canada

In the summer of 1909, American paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was conducting fieldwork in the Canadian Rockies near Mount Burgess in British Columbia. While exploring the rugged terrain of what is now Yoho National Park, Walcott's party encountered a promising outcrop of shale. On August 30, during one of the final days of the season's work, they split open slabs of rock and uncovered exceptionally well-preserved fossils from the Cambrian period, including soft-bodied organisms rarely found in the fossil record. These specimens represented an extraordinary window into early complex life forms, with thousands of specimens eventually collected over subsequent years. The discovery site became known as the Walcott Quarry, and the fossils revolutionized understanding of...

Event Detail America 250 Atlas