1528: Accompanied by African slaves, the first Spanish explorers arrive.

1824: The U.S. Army establishes Fort Brooke partly to control American Indians and runaway slaves.

1865: Three months after the Civil War ends, former slaves parade in Tampa to mark the first Emancipation Day. Some start the town of Bealsville in eastern Hillsborough County.

1870: The Rev. Thomas W. Long walks from Brooksville to Tampa to found St. Paul AME Church, which became a rallying point during the civil rights movement.

1880s: Vigilantes begin terrorizing blacks, political radicals and labor activists in Tampa with lynchings and beatings common through the 1930s.

1891: Centro Espanol, a mutual aid society and social club primarily for people of Spanish descent, is founded.

1893: Roberts City, Tampa's first integrated neighborhood with a population of blacks, Cubans, Italians, Spaniards and Anglos, is established near the present-day site of Blake High School.

1898: During the Spanish American War, many Cubans work from Tampa to overthrow Spanish rule in Cuba. Black U.S. troops sent here wreck whites-only saloons after they are refused service.

1899: Cubans in Tampa form El Club Nacional Cubano, also known as the Tenth of October Club. But within a year, the group splits along racial lines, with whites forming El Circulo Cubano and blacks forming Sociedad La Union Marti-Maceo.

1902: Centro Asturiano, a mutual aid society and social club named for a region of Spain, is formed as a breakaway from Centro Espanol.

1905: Clara Frye establishes the first hospital for blacks in Tampa. A news report calls it ``one of the leading colored institutions of its kind in the South.''

1908: Tampa's newly formed White Municipal Party takes control of municipal elections by instituting white-only primaries.

1915: Tampa's first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is formed, although it isn't formally chartered for another two years.

1922: Blanche Armwood becomes supervisor of Hillsborough County's black schools. Under her hand, five new school buildings go up and Booker T. Washington High School is accredited.

1926: A mob burns the field office of a company developing a black subdivision.

1927: The Raper Report documents squalor and unfit living conditions in The Scrub, a black Tampa shantytown that's now the site of Central Park Village, a public housing project.

1934: A Tampa mob lynches Robert Johnson, a black man accused of assaulting a white woman. Investigators conclude Johnson likely was innocent, but his killers go unpunished.

1943: School teacher Hilda Turner successfully sues the Hillsborough County School Board for equal pay for black and white teachers.

1950s: The heyday of Central Avenue, Tampa's thriving black business district.

1958: The NAACP, armed with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, sues to end segregation in the Hillsborough County school system.

1959: Civil rights leaders and white business owners form Tampa's Biracial Committee, which works for peaceful desegregation.

1960s: Roberts City, aging but still Tampa's best-known integrated neighborhood, gradually is destroyed to make way for Interstate 275 and urban renewal initiatives.

1960: Clarence Forte, president of the Tampa NAACP Youth Council, leads the first lunch counter sit-in at Woolworth's Department Store. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visits Tampa nine months later.

1961: Benjamin Lowry, the son of civil rights leader A. Leon Lowry, becomes the first black since Brown v. Board of Education to enroll at an all-white Tampa public school, the Bayside School for Handicapped Children. Soon after, Robert W. Saunders Jr. transfers from Dunbar Elementary to all- white Macfarlane Elementary.

1962: U.S. District Judge Bryan Simpson orders Hillsborough County schools desegregated.

1967: Tampa police kill Martin Chambers, an unarmed 19- year-old black burglary suspect, sparking five days of rioting

1971: U.S. District Judge Ben Krentzman imposes busing on the Hillsborough County school system with the goal of creating a systemwide white- black student ratio of 4 to 1.

1974: The Central Avenue neighborhood is demolished in the name of urban renewal.

1983: Perry Harvey Jr. becomes the first black elected to the Tampa City Council since Reconstruction.

1985: Rubin Padgett becomes the first black elected to the Hillsborough County Commission since Reconstruction.

1987: Melvin Hair, a mentally ill black, dies after Tampa police use a chokehold to subdue him, sparking three nights of rioting. Nine people are hurt; 14 are arrested.

1989: The Tampa City Council votes to change the name of Buffalo Avenue to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

1991: Rather than integrate under pressure, Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla cancels Gasparilla during Tampa's hosting of Super Bowl XXV. The next year the Krewe admits four blacks and parades again.

1992: Developers propose turning an old pirate and slave ship, the Whydah, into a museum and entertainment complex. The plan dies after black leaders protest.

1993: Three whites kidnap Christopher Wilson, a black from Brooklyn, N.Y., out for a walk as he visits friends in Valrico. He is taken to Fort Lonesome, taunted with racial slurs, robbed, then drenched with gasoline and set afire.

1993: Black leaders promote an ``Agenda for Inclusion,'' calling for more minority involvement in local decision-making. It's endorsed by the city council, the county commission, the school board and the chamber of commerce.

Research by ANGIE DROBNIC HOLAN