Omaha, Neb, Sept. 28, 1919 William Brown was accused of assaulting a white woman. When police arrested him a mob quickly formed which ignored orders from authorities that they disperse. The rampaging mob set the courthouse prison on fire and seized Brown. He was hung from a lamppost, mutilated, and his body riddled with bullets, then burned. Four other people were killed and fifty wounded before troops were able to restore order.

“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

April 25, 1959 · Poplarville, Mississippi Mack Charles Parker, 23, was accused of raping a white woman. Three days before his case was set for trial, a masked mob took him from his jail cell, beat him, shot him and threw him in the Pearl River.

In 1841, 4 black menM Henderson, A Warrick, J Seward, and C Brown were put on trial; convicted and sentenced to death. They were hanged on July 9, 1841. Tickets for a steamboat excursion to watch the executions on Duncan’s Island, sold for $1.50 to about 20,000 people, or 75 percent of St. Louis’s population at the time. *With rising tension of race/ slavery it ended with the severed heads of the four hung in the front window of Corse’s Drug Store to deter Black resistance

First Massive African American Protest in American History – July 28, 1917 – Children in New York City Participating in the Silent Protest Parade against the East St. Louis Riots. The riots in East St. Louis began when whites, angry because African Americans were employed by a factory holding government contracts, went on a rampage. Over 400,000$ worth of property was destroyed. At least 40 African Americans were killed. Men, women and children were beaten, stabbed, hanged and burned.

“An Ordinary Hero is the story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, a little known Civil Rights worker who did the extraordinary. As a 19 year old college student in 1961, Joan had already participated in nearly three dozen protests and sit-ins when she was arrested for participating in the Freedom Rides. After spending two months at the infamous Parchman Penitentiary on death row she went on to attend Tougaloo College and was one of the first whites to pledge Delta Sigma Theta.”

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.

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.

Annelle Ponder. “The SNCC office in Greenwood is like a front company headquarters during war-time … I was greeted by Annelle Ponder … Annelle has been in Greenwood this past year handling SCLC’s part of the voter registration project. She has been beaten by police in Winona, Mississippi. When friends went to the jail one day, they found her sitting there, her face swollen and marked, barely able to speak. She looked up at them, and just managed to whisper one word: ‘Freedom.'” —Howard Zinn