On this day in American history, August 31, 1966 — Alabama Forbids Local School Districts From Desegregating

Posted on August 31, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

A decade after the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many school districts throughout the South still maintained segregated public schools. In 1964, the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which contained a provision that conditioned federal funding for school districts on integration.

In 1966, twelve years after Brown, the United States Office of Education issued regulations to segregated districts that provided guidance on school desegregation and required that segregated districts submit integration plans to the federal government. Noncompliant districts risked losing federal funds under the Civil Rights Act.

Alabama’s legislature responded by passing a bill proposed by Governor George Wallace, forbidding Alabama school districts from entering into desegregation agreements with the federal government. At legislative hearings, representatives of Alabama’s teachers’ unions spoke against the bill and warned that it would put twenty-four million dollars of federal funding for Alabama schools at risk. Nevertheless, the bill passed the Alabama Senate almost unanimously on August 31, 1966, with only seven members voting against it. Shortly after, the Alabama House of Representatives passed the bill, and Governor Wallace signed it into law on September 9, 1966.

In the wake of the law’s passage, several Alabama school districts revised or rejected previously-negotiated desegregation plans.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 30, 1956 — Riots Prevent School Desegregation in Mansfield, Texas

Posted on August 30, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

In 1956, Mansfield, Texas, was a small farming town of 1500 people. Its schools were strictly segregated and facilities for black students were run-down and under-funded. Before the start of the 1956-1957 school year, in compliance with a federal desegregation order and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision barring racial segregation in schools, the Mansfield school board approved a plan to admit 12 black students to all-white Mansfield High School. However, many local white residents opposed integration and some took to the streets in protest.

On August 30, 1956, the first day of school, mobs of white pro-segregationists guarded Mansfield High School and patrolled the streets threatening to use guns and other weapons to prevent black children from registering. Outside the school, the mob hung an African American effigy at the top of the school’s flag pole and set it on fire. Attached to one pant leg of the effigy was a sign that read, “This Negro tried to enter a white school. This would be a terrible way to die.” On the other leg, a sign read, “Stay Away, Niggers.” A second effigy was hung on the front of the school building.

In response, Texas Governor Allan Shivers sent six Texas Rangers to Mansfield with instructions to “maintain law and order” and transfer any students “white or colored, whose attendance or attempts to attend Mansfield High School would be reasonably calculated to incite violence.” Soon afterward, the Mansfield School Board voted to “exhaust all legal remedies to delay segregation.” Though the United States Supreme Court in December 1956 rejected the Mansfield school district’s request to delay integration due to local opposition, resistance and non-compliance continued for years. Mansfield, Texas, public schools did not officially desegregate until 1965.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 28, 1955 — Emmett Till, 14-year-old Chicago Youth, Abducted and Murdered in Mississippi Delta

Posted on August 28, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On August 20, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till boarded a train in Chicago, Illinois, headed for Money, Mississippi, to spend two weeks with his great-uncle and cousins. A few days into his visit, Till and a group of friends went into a nearby store to buy candy. While there, Till allegedly acted “familiar” when speaking to the white female storekeeper, Carolyn Bryant. This was a dangerous transgression in the racial caste system of the Mississippi Delta, a system of which Chicago-bred Emmett Till was largely unaware. Within a few days, word of the interaction reached Carolyn Bryant’s husband, Roy.

On August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted Emmett Till at gunpoint from his great-uncle’s home and drove him to a storage shed on Milam’s property in Drew, Mississippi. Each man took turns torturing and beating Till with a pistol, then took the battered boy to a nearby ginning company and forced him to load a 74-pound fan into the back of their pick-up truck. The men then drove Till to the edge of the Tallahatchie River, ordered him to remove his clothes, and shot him in the head. Bryant and Milam then attached the heavy fan to the child’s neck and rolled his body into the river.

On August 31, 1955, Emmett Till’s corpse was discovered by two young boys. Devastated by her son’s brutal murder and badly disfigured body, Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, defiantly held an open-casket funeral in Chicago, where thousands gazed in horror at his mutilated body. To show the world the fate that had befallen Emmett, Mrs. Bradley also distributed a photograph of his corpse for publication in newspapers and magazines, later explaining that “the whole nation had to bear witness to this.”

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 26, 1874 — Mob of 400 Lynches Sixteen Black Men Kidnapped from Tennessee Jail

Posted on August 26, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On August 26, 1874, sixteen African American men were held in the Gibson County Jail in Trenton, Tennessee, transferred from Picketsville, a neighboring town where they’d been arrested and accused of shooting at two white men.

Around 2:00 a.m. that morning, a contingent of 400-500 masked men, mounted on horses and armed with shot guns, demanded entrance to the Gibson County Jail. The men confronted the jailer and threatened to kill him if he did not relinquish the keys to the cell holding the African American men. After the jailer gave the leader of the mob the key, the members of the mob bound the men by their hands and led them out of the jail cell. The jailer would later testify that he soon heard a series of gun shots in the distance.

Upon investigation soon after the kidnapping, the jailer found six of the men lying along nearby Huntingdon Road – four were dead, their bodies “riddled with bullets.” Two of the men, found wounded but alive, later died before receiving medical attention. The bodies of the ten remaining men were later found at the bottom of a river about one mile from town.

Local white officials denounced the lynching and held an inquest that concluded the men were killed by “shots inflicted by guns in the hands of unknown parties.” The town mayor also expressed local whites’ fears that black people throughout the county were arming themselves in plans to exact retaliatory violence. Just one day after the mass murder of sixteen black men by hundreds of white men who remained unidentified and free, the mayor ordered police to take all guns belonging to Trenton’s black residents and threatened to shoot those who resisted.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 25, 1956 — Montgomery, Alabama, Home of Bus Boycott Supporter Bombed

Posted on August 25, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On the night of April 25, 1956, several sticks of dynamite were thrown into the yard of Pastor Robert Graetz’s Montgomery, Alabama, home where they exploded, breaking the home’s front windows and damaging the front door. A young white minister serving the city’s primarily African American Trinity Lutheran Church, Pastor Graetz was a member of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the community group that had planned and guided the city’s bus boycott to protest racially discriminatory treatment toward black bus riders. Pastor Graetz had been an outspoken supporter of the ongoing bus boycott since it began on December 5, 1955, and was known to regularly provide transportation to boycott participants traveling to and from work.

At the time of the explosion, Pastor Graetz was attending an integration workshop in Tennessee. His wife and children were not at home and no one was injured in the blast. In January 1956, the Montgomery homes of local minister Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and E.D. Nixon, former president of the local NAACP, were bombed. Both men were active boycott leaders.

In response to the bombing of Paster Graetz’s home, Montgomery Mayor W. A. Gayle called it an inside job and claimed the attack was “just a publicity stunt to build up interest of the Negroes in their campaign . . . This latest bombing follows the usual pattern. It’s a strange coincidence that when interest appears to be flagging in the bus boycott something like this happens.” No one was arrested, charged, or convicted for the attack.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 24, 1923 — Black Man Lynched in Jacksonville, Florida

Posted on August 24, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On August 24, 1923, a 34-year-old black farmhand Ben Hart was killed based on suspicion that he was a “Peeping Tom” who had that morning peered into a young white girl’s bedroom window near Jacksonville, Florida. According to witnesses, approximately ten unmasked men came to Hart’s home around 9:30 p.m. claiming to be deputy sheriffs and informing Hart he was accused of looking into the girl’s window. Hart professed his innocence and readily agreed to go to the county jail with the men, but did not live to complete the journey.

Shortly after midnight the next day, Hart’s handcuffed and bullet-riddled body was found in a ditch about three miles from the city. Hart had been shot six times and witnesses reported seeing him earlier that night fleeing several white men on foot who were shooting at him as several more automobiles filled with white men followed.

Police investigating Hart’s murder soon determined he was innocent of the accusation against him; he was at his home 12 miles away when the alleged peeping incident occurred.

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On this day in American history, August 23, 1989 — Black Teen Murdered by White Mob in Brooklyn, New York

Posted on August 23, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On August 23, 1989, 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins and three friends went to the predominately white Bensonhurt section of Brooklyn, New York, to inquire about a used Pontiac for sale. On their way through the neighborhood, the three black boys encountered a group of 30 white youths gathered in the street. Armed with baseball bats and at least one handgun, the mob set upon the three boys. While his companions managed to escape the attack without serious injury, Yusef was shot twice in the chest and later pronounced dead at nearby Maimonides Medical Center.

Later investigation revealed that a neighborhood girl, Gina Feliciano, had recently spurned the advances of a young white man in the neighborhood and was rumored to be dating an African American. Angry, the rejected white boy gathered friends to lay in wait for the black boyfriend they believed would be visiting Ms. Feliciano. Yusef Hawkins walked into this scene of racial tension.

Hawkins’s death was the third murder of a black male by a white mob in the 1980s in New York, where racial tensions were high. Shortly after the slaying, the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest march through Bensonhurst. Neighborhood residents met the protesters with such intense resistance that one marcher said she had “not been through an experience like this since the 60s.” A year after Hawkins’s murder, 18-year-old Joseph Fama was convicted of second degree murder and a string of lesser charges and sentenced to 32 years in prison. Five other participants were charged in connection with Hawkins’s murder and received lesser sentences.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 22, 1905 — Whites Riot After Black Man Enters Pittsburgh Restaurant

Posted on August 22, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

According to newspaper reports, an African-American man named Charles Julius Miller, and an unnamed African-American woman entered Café Neapolitan, a Pittsburgh restaurant, on August, 22, 1905. The couple was immediately refused service and ordered to leave. When Miller refused to exit, a “free-for-all” ensued, leaving many injured and resulting in approximately fifty arrests. Mr. Miller was among those hospitalized for his injuries.

Though many choose to view racial tension and violence as an exclusively southern problem, such riots and disturbances were commonplace occurrences throughout the country, where racial segregation and bias remained pervasive problems. As in most cases, the newspapers at the time reported the riot as having been caused by the African-American who dared enter an establishment where he did not belong.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 21, 1831 — Nat Turner Leads Enslaved Black People in Virginia Rebellion

Posted on August 21, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Nat Turner was an enslaved black man who lived in Southampton, Virginia. By many accounts, Turner was a very religious man who ministered to fellow enslaved blacks as well as whites. Turner studied the Bible fervently and often claimed to have divine visions. In the late 1820s, Turner claimed to have several visions leading him to believe that God was calling him to lead a rebellion. In February 1831, he witnessed a solar eclipse and interpreted it as a sign to start his campaign. Turner and his followers planned to rebel on July 4, 1831, but postponed the plan. On August 13, 1831, Turner witnessed a second eclipse and believe it to be yet another sign to begin the rebellion.

On August 21, 1831, Turner led his most trusted followers to various plantations, recruiting other blacks, until their ranks swelled to between 60 and 70 fighters armed with muskets and tools. As the rebels moved, they indiscriminately killed white plantation owners, but seemed to spare poor whites. Turner and his followers killed nearly 60 whites before they were confronted and defeated by a militia. Turner’s men were killed or captured immediately, but he escaped and remained at large until October 30, 1831. Upon capture, Turner was criminally convicted and executed along with 30 other blacks convicted of insurrection. In the wake of the rebellion, angry white mobs tortured and murdered hundreds of blacks and Southern legislatures passed laws prohibiting blacks from assembling freely, conducting independent religious services, and gaining an education.

 

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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On this day in American history, August 20, 1619 — First Enslaved Africans Land in Jamestown, Virginia

Posted on August 20, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The stage was set for slavery in the United States as early as the 14th century, when Spain and Portugal began to capture Africans for enslavement in Europe. Slavery eventually expanded to colonial America, where the first enslaved Africans arrived in the Virginia colony at Point Comfort on the James River on August 20, 1619. There, “20 and odd Negroes” from the White Lion, an English ship, were sold in exchange for food; the remaining Africans were transported to Jamestown and sold into slavery.

Historians have long believed that these first African slaves in the colonies came from the Caribbean but Spanish records suggest they were captured in the Portuguese colony of Angola, in West Central Africa. While aboard the ship São João Bautista bound for Mexico, they were stolen by two English ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. Once in Virginia, the enslaved Africans were dispersed throughout the colony.

Although Virginia was the first British colony to legally define slavery in mid-17th century North America, slavery did not immediately become the predominant form of labor there. For decades after slavery was formalized, Virginia plantation owners held nearly ten times as many indentured servants as enslaved Africans, and many of them were white. By the 1680s, however, African slave labor became the dominant system on Virginia farms and the slave population continued to grow exponentially. At the start of the Civil War, Virginia had the largest population of enslaved black people of any state in the Confederacy.

“The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is proud to present A History of Racial Injustice – 2018 Calendar.  America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans.  The genocide of Native people, the legacy of slavery and racial terror, and the legally supported abuse of racial minorities are not well understood.  EJI believes that a deeper engagement with our nation’s history of racial injustice is important to addressing present-day questions of social justice and equality.

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