Easy Waters

On June 9, 1963, while returning from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina, Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights activists were arrested in Winona, Mississippi. Ms. Hamer and the other activists had been traveling in the “white” section of a Greyhound bus despite threats from the driver that he planned to notify local police at the next stop. When the bus arrived at the Winona bus depot, the activists sat at the “white only” lunch counter inside the terminal. Winona Police Chief Thomas Herrod ordered the group to go to the “colored” side of the depot and arrested them when one of the activists tried to write down his patrol car license number.

At the county jail, white jailers forced two African American prisoners to savagely beat Ms. Hamer with loaded blackjacks and she was nearly killed. As she regained consciousness, she overheard one of the white officers propose, “We could put them SOBs in [the] Big Black [River] and nobody would ever find them.”

Ms. Hamer never fully recovered from the attack; she lost vision in one of her eyes and suffered permanent kidney damage, which contributed to her death in 1977 at age 59. Lawyers with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee filed suit against the Winona police who brutalized the activists but an all-white jury acquitted them. Despite the trauma she experienced, Ms. Hamer returned to Mississippi to continue organizing voter registration drives and remained active in civil rights causes until her death.

On June 8, 2016, the grand jury voted not to indict Brian Miller, a white police trainee, for shooting and killing Christian Taylor on August 7, 2015.

Taylor, a 19-year-old black man, was a student and football player at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. On the night he was killed, police officers claimed they arrived at a car dealership in response to reports of a suspected burglary and saw Taylor vandalizing cars via surveillance video. Brian Miller entered the dealership building without his partner, though his partner was more experienced and Miller’s training officer.

Neither officer was wearing a body camera, and no footage exists to explain how an altercation erupted between Miller and Taylor; as the second officer entered and attempted to use a taser to subdue Taylor – who was unarmed – Brian Miller shot him four times in the neck, chest, and abdomen. According to Police Chief Johnson, Taylor never made any physical contact with either officer on scene. Nevertheless, he was killed.

Christian Taylor was a strong supporter of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and on social media he often expressed fear of the police and criticism of the justice system. In August 2014, he tweeted: “I don’t feel protected by the police,” and in December 2014, he tweeted, “Police taking black lives as easy as flippin a coin, with no consequences.” Shortly before his shooting, in April 2015, he tweeted: “I don’t wanna die too young.”

Taylor’s death came only two days before the one year anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Brian Miller was fired from the police force on August 11, 2015 for “inappropriate judgment” in handling the situation, but has not faced prosecution for the murder of Christian Taylor.

On July 6, 2016, 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed by Jeronimo Yanez, a St. Anthony police officer, during a traffic stop for a broken taillight in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mr. Castile was shot multiple times from close range. His fiancee and her four-year-old daughter bore witness to his murder, and his fiancee used her cell phone to broadcast a livestream of the aftermath on social media. The tragic footage of Mr. Castile’s wounded and dying body as the officer shouts orders and the little girl tries to console her mother from the back seat sparked international outrage and protests about police brutality against black communities.

Officer Yanez pulled over Mr. Castile and his fiancee to check their identifications, using a traffic stop as pretext. Police dispatch audio reveals the officer saying, “The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery. The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just because of the wide-set nose. I couldn’t get a good look at the passenger.”

At the start of the stop, Officer Yanes asked Mr. Castile if he had a weapon. Mr. Castile responded that he did have a gun, as well as a valid permit, and explained that his identification and permit were in his wallet. Mr. Castile moved to retrieve the items but Officer Yanez ordered him to keep his hands on the wheel. As Mr. Castile complied, and moved his hands back up to place them on the steering wheel, Officer Yanez fired at least four shots into Mr. Castile’s chest through the open car window, at very close range and close proximity to Mr. Castile’s fiancee and her daughter.

Police who arrived at the scene following the shooting rendered no medical aid to Mr. Castile as he bled out, instead comforting the crying officer who had killed him. Mr. Castile died at the hospital twenty minutes after the shooting and Officer Yanez was placed on medical leave pending investigation. Taking place less than 24 hours after the videotaped fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Mr. Castile’s death led to protest marches and outrage throughout the country. Community members soon came forward to laud him as an inspirational employee at a local elementary school, and publicly mourn his death.

Prior to the fatal shooting, Mr. Castile had been stopped by police for minor traffic violations at least 52 times in recent years, once approximately every four months. These stops resulted in 86 issued violations, most of which were dismissed. The extreme rate of traffic stops cost Mr. Castile over $6,500 in fees and fines.

On August 17, 2016, Officer Yanez was allowed to return to duty in a desk position, though the investigation into the shooting was still ongoing. Within days, community protest led police department officials to return him to administrative leave. On September 6, 2016, local protesters gathered at St. Paul City Hall to mark the shooting’s two-month anniversary and reiterate their calls for a fair investigation and justice.

On June 5, 1966, equipped with only a helmet and walking stick, James Meredith began a 220-mile March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. Mr. Meredith, an activist who had integrated the University of Mississippi four years earlier, organized the one-man march to encourage African Americans in Mississippi to register to vote and to challenge the culture of fear perpetuated by white supremacists in the state.

Mr. Meredith crossed the Mississippi border on the morning of June 6, 1966, accompanied by a handful of friends and supporters. State police and FBI agents monitored the march while reporters and photographers trailed behind. A few miles south of Hernando, Mississippi, Aubrey Norvell, a white salesman, ambushed Mr. Meredith from the woods and shot him in the neck, head, and back. Before he started shooting, Mr. Norvell warned bystanders to disperse and twice shouted out Mr. Meredith’s name from the woods, but law enforcement did nothing to protect Mr. Meredith.

James Meredith survived his injuries but was unable to immediately continue the march. Enraged by the attack, civil rights leaders organized to continue the march to Jackson in his place. On June 26th, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and Floyd McKissick were among the thousands of marchers who completed the trip to Jackson, Mississippi, having weathered harassment and physical abuse from angry mobs and law enforcement alike. Mr. Meredith rejoined the march shortly before its completion in Jackson and led a rally at the state capitol. In November 1966, Aubrey Norvell pleaded guilty to assault and battery and was sentenced to two years in prison.

On June 5, 2013, the North Carolina legislature voted to overturn the Racial Justice Act, an historic law that prohibited the use of race in the imposition of the death penalty.

Passed in 2009, the Racial Justice Act (RJA) required courts to vacate a death sentence where race was a factor in the imposition of the death penalty. North Carolina was the first state to pass legislation aimed at remedying racially discriminatory practices in death penalty trials, including racial bias in jury selection.

Prosecutors vigorously opposed the law and successfully lobbied the legislature to vote for a repeal of the statute in 2011 but Governor Bev Perdue vetoed the repeal. In April 2012, Cumberland County Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks vacated Marcus Robinson’s death sentence based on evidence that North Carolina prosecutors intentionally discriminated against African Americans in selecting capital juries. The groundbreaking ruling came after the state’s first evidentiary hearing under the RJA.

In June 2012, North Carolina’s Republican-led state legislature amended the RJA to weaken its protections by barring defendants from relying on statistical evidence of racial discrimination; the amendment requires a defendant to demonstrate that prosecutors intentionally used racial discrimination in his or her particular case. This made claims much more difficult to win. Nevertheless, in December 2012, the death sentences of Christina Walters, Quintel Augustine, and Tilmon Golphin, were overturned under the RJA after they proved that prosecutors had blocked African Americans from jury service because of their race.

On June 5, 2013, the legislature voted again to repeal the RJA. Two weeks later, Governor Pat McCrory – a Republican who was inaugurated in January 2013 – signed the repeal bill. Governor McCrory predicted that eliminating the RJA would remove the “procedural roadblocks” that had kept North Carolina from executing anyone since 2006. There are 152 people on North Carolina’s death row and nearly all of them filed motions under the RJA; many of those motions remain pending as courts consider whether they may proceed in light of the repeal.