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The timeline can be navigated with the “Scroll Left” and “Scroll Right” buttons or by dragging the pointer to a date on the timeline waveform (located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile). To filter by a particular topic and see a smaller section of the data, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. Hover over the abbreviated filter tags in the blue boxes to see the complete name of the filter, or click a filter to display all the data with this tag. If you want to take a deeper dive into a specific topic by viewing a narrative essay page and a curated timeline, click on “Stories.”

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First United States Census conducted.

1790

RAC
SLA
LLP
WHI
BH

The U.S. Constitution mandates that "an actual enumeration" be conducted every 10 years. The first census separates people into the head of household, free white males over 16, free white males under 16, free white females, all other free people by "sex and color, and slaves." Unfree white people, still in existence in 1790, were not counted. At this point "free" and "white" are not seen as the same thing, though this will have changed by the next census. Enslaved Black people are counted as 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation.