“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.” [Frederick Douglass, 1852]
“Don’t be afraid.” That’s what Ruby Bridges’s mother told her on November 4, 1960. Little Ruby listened carefully to the advice. Soon, four United States federal court marshals, or officers, arrived at the Bridges family home in New Orleans, La., to drive the first grader to William Frantz Public School. A screaming mob was waiting. People stood near the building shouting. Ruby held her head high. With the marshals surrounding her, the 6-year-old walked into the school and into history
July 25, 1972, US Government officials ADMITTED that African American’s were used in a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men (THIS WAS KNOWN AS THE TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT). These men were told they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.
On May 2, 1964 Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were kidnapped and murdered by the KKK in Meadville, MS. Their bodies were found in July of that year during a search for civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney but no legal action was taken at that time. In 2004 Canadian filmmaker David Ridgen discovered a film clip of the bodies being recovered which led to the arrest and conviction of the murderer.
List of Businesses Destroyed during the Destruction of Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Ok (suburb of Tulsa) May 31 – June 1, 1921. Tragically STILL one of the bloodiest and most horrendous race riots (and acts of terrorism) that the United States has ever experienced. This was the type of community that African Americans are still, today, attempting to reclaim and rebuild
EAST ST LOUIS RIOTS–On July 2, 1917, Angry white mobs stopped trolleys and streetcars, pulling black passengers out and beating them on the streets and sidewalks. They set fire to the homes of black residents who had to choose between burning alive in their homes, or run out of the burning houses, only to be met by gunfire. In other parts of the city, African Americans were lynched against the backdrop of burning buildings.
January 23, 1957 · Montgomery, Alabama Willie Edwards Jr., a truck driver, was on his way to work when he was stopped by four Klansmen. The men mistook Edwards for another man who they believed was dating a white woman. They forced Edwards at gunpoint to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River. Edwards’ body was found three months later.
1966 January 3, 1966 · Tuskegee, Alabama Samuel Leamon Younge Jr., a student civil rights activist, was fatally shot by a white gas station owner following an argument over segregated restrooms.
Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in May 1961, two buses with black and white passengers set out on a “FREEDOM RIDE” TO CHALLENGE SEGREGATION IN INTERSTATE TRAVEL AND TRAVEL FACILITIES IN THE SOUTH.
On May 15, 1916 Jesse Washington was lynched in Waco TX. Over 10,000 spectators, including city officials and police, gathered to watch the attack. Many children used their lunch hour to attend. NAACP journalist W. E. B. Du Bois published an in-depth report featuring photographs of Washington’s charred body in The Crisis, and the publicity it received helped curb public support for the practice, which became viewed as barbarism rather than an acceptable form of justice.
Negro Motorist Green Book was a publication released in 1936 that served as a guide for African-American travelers. Because of the racist conditions that existed from segregation, blacks needed a reference manual to guide them to integrated or black-friendly establishments
Jonathan Daniels, a minister who answered Dr. King’s call to come to Selma, Alabama to support the Selma to Montgomery March. He was one of the few who stayed back after the march was over and was shot point blank in the chest by a deputized segregationist while trying to buy his fellow black protesters a Coca Cola.
