The sentence meted out to this sociopath will mean absolutely nothing. It will not change a single white racist cop’s behavior. There are far too many protections for their criminal conduct.

Minneapolis con­vict­ed killer-cop Derek Chauvin is sched­uled to be sen­tenced today, Friday, June 25^th, by judge Peter Cahill for mur­der­ing George Floyd.
This is not a case n which jus­tice can or will be served; there is no bring­ing George Floyd back to life.
No amount of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey paid to the Floyd fam­i­ly will com­pen­sate for his loss; no amount of prison time for that degen­er­ate killer will mean that jus­tice is served.
For mil­lions in this coun­try, mis­ter Floyd’s life was worth­less, unde­serv­ing of respect, unde­serv­ing of def­er­ence and care.
We can­not change those hate-filled [deplorables], but for the rest of us, we must con­tin­ue to observe the unique nature of how sacro­sanct the one life God gave us is.

American police con­tin­ue to kill unarmed civil­ians at a rate that makes it dif­fi­cult to believe they do not go out look­ing for rea­sons to fire their weapons.
The lev­els of dis­re­spect they exert when deal­ing with Black Americans are shock­ing to behold, but it is not just the hos­til­i­ty with which they car­ry out those polic­ing func­tions; it is also the arro­gance and sense that they do so with­out any fear of being held accountable.
No one, cer­tain­ly no one in the Black com­mu­ni­ty should be under any illu­sions that any­thing that resem­bles a fair sen­tence by Peter Cahill today will sig­ni­fy that police are being held account­able for their crimes.
White racist cow­boys across the coun­try, pro­tect­ed by acqui­es­cent pros­e­cu­tors and judges all the way up to the Supreme Court’s qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty doc­trine, con­tin­ue to bru­tal­ize and kill inno­cent peo­ple of col­or under col­or of law daily.

The con­vic­tion and sen­tenc­ing of a mur­der­ous sociopath who killed with aggra­va­tion (in front of chil­dren) should not lull any­one into believ­ing that any­thing is chang­ing about this mur­der­ous sys­tem that has nev­er respect­ed the lives of Black citizens.
What has hap­pened is that despite the social jus­tice march­es of 2020, we see a con­ve­nient] across-the-board uptick in vio­lent crimes, which is serv­ing to shift the focus from police crimes to look­ing at oth­er crimes.
One is forced to won­der, who are the peo­ple doing those shootings?
Why is it that at a time when there is a nation­al focus on reimag­in­ing polic­ing, all of a sud­den, gun crimes begin to tick upward after decades of low­er vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics (if we dis­re­gard the white mass killings that plague America)?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

In 1992 Rudolph Guiliani led a most­ly white mob of drunk­en cops up to the steps of city hall in a riot against the Mayor. Frothing at the mouth like rabid dogs, the pro­test­ers hurled racial slurs and used every pejo­ra­tive in their lim­it­ed vocab­u­lar­ies to debase David Dinkins, the city’s first African-American Mayor.
Rudolph Guiliani, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, want­ed to be may­or of New York City, and he would do any­thing to get into Gracie Mansion.

What Rudolph Guiliani did that day, September 16^th, 1992, should’ve land­ed him in prison for incit­ing a riot. Nothing was done to him, so Guiliani rode on the back of that police riot into city hall. Rudolph Guiliani cre­at­ed a lie against Dinkins; as a result of that lie, a drunk­en depraved mob of over ten thou­sand racist degen­er­ates marched on city hall with the express desire to cause harm to the sit­ting mayor.
The real rea­son behind the riot was not about any­thing the Mayor had done wrong. They were opposed to the idea that they had to report to and be held account­able to a black Mayor.
In an arti­cle pub­lished at the Cato Institute, Nat Hentoff, New Yorker and Civil Libertarian, wrote the following.

In 1912, white mobs set fire to black church­es and black-owned busi­ness­es. Author Patrick Phillips revis­its the inci­dent in his book, Blood at the Root. Originally.

FRESH AIR.
David Bianculli, edi­tor of the web­site TV Worth Watching, sit­ting in for Terry Gross, author of a book about a night­mar­ish and racist chap­ter in American his­to­ry. Little more than a cen­tu­ry ago, in Georgia in the year 1912, the white res­i­dents of Forsyth County ter­ror­ized and drove out the entire black pop­u­la­tion, about 1,100 peo­ple. That was the white response to two inci­dents — the alleged rape of a white woman by a black man and the rape and beat­ing of a young, white woman who died of her injuries. A lynch mob attacked and hanged one black sus­pect. And two teenagers, fol­low­ing a short tri­al, were hanged in pub­lic executions.

Patrick Phillips is one of the white peo­ple who grew up in this coun­ty when it was still all-white, and peo­ple of col­or were def­i­nite­ly not wel­come. His par­ents were among the civ­il rights pro­test­ers who, in the 1980s, protest­ed against the coun­ty’s con­tin­u­ing seg­re­ga­tion. His book titled “Blood At The Root” is now out in paper­back. It’s based on his archival research, as well as his inter­views with the town’s res­i­dents and descen­dants of the black peo­ple who fled in 1912. Terry Gross spoke with Patrick Phillips in 2016.

read more here; https://​www​.npr​.org/​t​r​a​n​s​c​r​i​p​t​s​/​5​6​9​1​5​6​832

For many migrants arriv­ing in the United States regard­less of col­or, pre­con­ceived notions abound about one of the old­est indige­nous peo­ple in the coun­try, speak­ing of African-Americans.
For those peo­ple, the white­washed American pro­pa­gan­da against Blacks has long pen­e­trat­ed their per­cep­tions and influ­enced their think­ing all the way back in their coun­try of birth.
“Blacks are lazy; they are crim­i­nals, they are unwill­ing to pull them­selves up by their boot­straps, they refuse to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able in the country.”[sic]
I, too, felt that for far too many African-Americans, the pos­si­bil­i­ties in America were untapped and unexploited.
Today, I still believe that despite what obtains in the way of obsta­cles, a greater effort to over­come is nec­es­sary to once and for all change the over­whelm­ing bal­ance of pow­er tilt­ed toward whites.
I hold those sen­ti­ments because I believe that any­thing else is a fool’s errand that will not change blacks’ eco­nom­ic or social plight in the United States.
The pur­vey­ors of the anti-black pro­pa­gan­da nev­er both­ered men­tion­ing that their dis­dain and deri­sion for the work eth­ic of blacks start­ed after they stopped work­ing for free.
And so, the con­tin­u­a­tion of neg­a­tive per­cep­tions against blacks in their own home­land is con­tin­u­al­ly assured because of the sys­temic cam­paign against them by their own gov­ern­ment and people.

Whether on the moth­er con­ti­nent or in the dias­po­ra, African peo­ple have been placed at an extreme dis­ad­van­tage due to European crimes against them. For well over five (5) hun­dred years, begin­ning with the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias, the African con­ti­nent was pil­laged for its resources, its peo­ple mur­dered, raped, bru­tal­ized, and had all kinds of crimes com­mit­ted against them.
Almost five and a half cen­turies after Bartolomeu Dias first des­e­crat­ed the con­ti­nent with his pres­ence; lit­er­al­ly, every European nation, both great and small, became excep­tion­al­ly rich from their plun­der and exploita­tion of not only the African land but the African people.
Having mur­dered count­less mil­lions, stolen their wealth, stolen their cul­tur­al her­itage & tra­di­tions, lied about who they are, raped and sodom­ized them, enslaved and com­mit­ted all kinds of heinous acts against them, one would have thought that descen­dants of those who per­pe­trat­ed those acts of sav­agery would feel some shame.
As I con­sid­er this sub­ject, I won­dered how could they not feel shame?
Then it occurred to me that if their ances­tors had it in them to do the things they did to our ances­tors, why would I expect their descen­dants would have the capac­i­ty for shame?

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​l​e​s​t​-​w​e​-​f​o​r​g​e​t​-​m​o​m​e​n​t​s​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​w​h​i​t​e​s​-​w​o​u​l​d​-​h​a​v​e​-​y​o​u​-​n​o​t​-​l​e​a​r​n​-​a​b​o​ut/

In the United States, lit­er­al­ly every attempt to give the recent­ly enslaved blacks a chance at sur­vival was erased in 1877 after the peri­od known as recon­struc­tion end­ed, while Rutherford B Hayes, a Republican, was in office.
Jim crow laws were ush­ered in across the south, which made the lives of the recent­ly freed blacks just as bad as when they were under the bondage of forced servitude.
Even though the war between the Union and the Confederacy effec­tive­ly end­ed slav­ery as it were, in the north and oth­er parts of the coun­try, black peo­ple were hat­ed and treat­ed no bet­ter than in the south, where jim crow was the law of the land.
Across the coun­try, in every state, racism was entrenched in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy at all levels.
In hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, health­care, food qual­i­ty, employ­ment, polic­ing, and every oth­er gov­ern­ment sec­tor, blacks were red­lined and seg­re­gat­ed to sec­ond-class sta­tus as a mat­ter of gov­ern­ment policy.
It was gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to restrict the rights of blacks then; it is gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to restrict the rights of blacks today.

And so it remains, in the Senate, peo­ple like Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, and oth­ers are vehe­ment­ly opposed to the teach­ing of race in classrooms.
In many states, par­tic­u­lar­ly those run by Republicans, there are efforts to remove any teach­ings about race in schools.
If their actions were right­eous, why are they opposed to young peo­ple learn­ing about what they did?
The Associated Press report­ed that teach­ers and pro­fes­sors in Idaho will be pre­vent­ed from teach­ing stu­dents about race. In addi­tion, Oklahoma teach­ers will be pro­hib­it­ed from say­ing cer­tain peo­ple are inher­ent­ly racist or oppres­sive, whether con­scious­ly or unconsciously.
Tennessee schools will risk los­ing state aid if their lessons include par­tic­u­lar con­cepts about race and racism.
Governors and leg­is­la­tures in Republican-con­trolled states across the coun­try are mov­ing to define what race-relat­ed ideas can be taught in pub­lic schools and col­leges, a reac­tion to the nation’s racial reck­on­ing after last year’s police killing of George Floyd. The mea­sures have been signed into law in at least three states and are con­sid­ered in many more.
Education Weekly said thou­sands of schools across the coun­try might soon be forced to upend cur­ric­u­la, dis­con­tin­ue eth­nic stud­ies cours­es and anti-bias train­ing for teach­ers, and shut down class­room dis­cus­sions on Black Lives Matter and oth­er race-relat­ed events like the insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capitol and mur­der of George Floyd.
That’s because a wave of leg­is­la­tion in some states aims to severe­ly lim­it how teach­ers and schools address race — a cam­paign that dis­trict lead­ers and experts say would squash a range of efforts to root out dis­crim­i­na­tion, bias, and racism expe­ri­enced by stu­dents of color.

As Republican leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try embark on a scorched-earth assault against vot­ing rights aid­ed by the Roberts Supreme Court, those same states are also active­ly engaged in white­wash­ing history.
They intend to scrub the geno­cide their ances­tors per­pet­u­at­ed to give them the advan­tage they now enjoy.
They argue that peo­ple are not respon­si­ble for the crimes of their ances­tors, even as they take more steps to lim­it and cur­tail the rights of the descen­dants of those peo­ple on whom they per­pet­u­at­ed those crimes.
The amus­ing thing is that as it was when they were com­mit­ting the lynch­ings and oth­er mur­ders, so too were they opposed to black edu­ca­tion, while at the same time they took pho­tographs so they could gloat over their gris­ly crimes.
How do they expect that they are going to stop the free flow of infor­ma­tion? Are they count­ing on black peo­ple’s con­tin­ued reluc­tance to be educated?
I’ll tell you what scared the hell out of them. It was the legions of young white men and women who marched for racial jus­tice last sum­mer after Derek Chauvin and his cohorts lynchedGeorge Floyd.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

White Mobs Attack Chicago’s Black Communities

By noon on July 31, 1919, more than thir­ty fires had been set in Chicago’s African American neigh­bor­hood. Set by angry white mobs, these acts of arson were part of an extend­ed bar­rage of vio­lence tar­get­ing Chicago’s Black com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing a sum­mer filled with racial vio­lence in America. This sea­son was dubbed “Red Summer of 1919,” and saw attacks tar­get­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties erupt in major cities through­out the coun­try. The five days of riots and attacks that upend­ed Chicago are wide­ly con­sid­ered the worst of the Red Summer riots.

The vio­lence began on July 27, 1919, when a 17-year-old Black boy named Eugene Williams drowned in Lake Michigan. Eugene and some friends had been swim­ming at the seg­re­gat­ed beach when a white man grew angry that the teens had drift­ed into the “white side” of the lake. The man threw a rock at the group, strik­ing Eugene in the head, knock­ing him uncon­scious, and caus­ing him to drown despite onlook­ers attempts to save him. This ter­ri­ble tragedy took place near the start of the Great Migration, a peri­od in which African Americans still liv­ing pri­mar­i­ly in the south­ern states were relo­cat­ing in large num­bers to the North and West. Fleeing racial ter­ror lynch­ing, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and eco­nom­ic oppres­sion, mil­lions of Black peo­ple left behind their homes and com­mu­ni­ties seek­ing, jobs, safe­ty, and the still elu­sive dream of free­dom. Many head­ed for urban cen­ters like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Chicago — often to find low-pay­ing jobs, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry treat­ment, and infor­mal but strict res­i­den­tial seg­re­ga­tion poli­cies that rel­e­gat­ed them to over-crowd­ed and poor qual­i­ty hous­ing. Chicago’s Black pop­u­la­tion near­ly dou­bled between 1915 and 1940; in 1919, that wave was new and grow­ing, and tens of thou­sands of Black migrants had already arrived. Many white res­i­dents of the city saw Black Americans as an eco­nom­ic and social threat.

On May 10, 1919, the Chicago Tribune pub­lished a let­ter to the edi­tor from a 52-year-old white man and Chicago home­own­er blam­ing Black migra­tion — rather than white prej­u­dice or insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism — for his falling prop­er­ty val­ues. “The blacks came into our neigh­bor­hood and the white peo­ple are mov­ing out as fast as they can,” the let­ter read. “My prop­er­ty has depre­ci­at­ed 50 per­cent. I hate the Negroes on this account; they ruin the prop­er­ty where they live. Wish the whites would orga­nize a pro­tec­tive league to keep the blacks in their place.”

Just weeks lat­er, on July 27^th, young Eugene Williams was drowned for being Black. Police respond­ed to the scene but refused to arrest the white man wit­ness­es iden­ti­fied as the rock throw­er; instead, offi­cers arrest­ed a Black man at the scene for not fol­low­ing their orders to calm down. Black onlook­ers who protest­ed this injus­tice were shout­ed down and attacked by grow­ing white crowds. Soon, a con­flict sparked by the mur­der of a Black boy became an oppor­tu­ni­ty for white mobs to act on the ten­sion and anger they felt toward Chicago’s grow­ing Black com­mu­ni­ty. For sev­er­al days, white mobs ter­ror­ized Black Chicago, attack­ing peo­ple and destroy­ing prop­er­ty. The vio­lence con­tin­ued until August 3^rd.

Chicago Tribune | May 10, 1919, Page 12

White Transit Workers Protest Black Workers’ Promotions in Philadelphia.

On August 1, 1944, white employ­ees of the Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC) launched a strike to protest the company’s deci­sion to pro­mote eight Black work­ers to the posi­tion of trol­ley dri­ver — a job pre­vi­ous­ly reserved for white men. The Black men were pro­mot­ed after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Orders 8802 and 9436, which pro­hib­it­ed com­pa­nies with gov­ern­ment con­tracts from dis­crim­i­nat­ing on the basis of race or reli­gion, and required com­pa­nies to include a nondis­crim­i­na­tion clause in their contracts.

As the United States pre­pared to enter World War II in the 1940s, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, quick­ly became one of the coun­try’s largest war pro­duc­tion sources. As many as 600,000 work­ers relied on the PTC to get to their work­places, includ­ing many fac­to­ries. The strike threat­ened the entire city’s abil­i­ty to func­tion, and crip­pled crit­i­cal war-time production.

White PTC employ­ees James McMenamin, James Dixon, Frank Thompson, and Frank Carney led the strike, and threat­ened to main­tain the protest until the Black work­ers were demot­ed. The strike grew to include over 6,000 work­ers, pre­vent­ed near­ly two mil­lion peo­ple from trav­el­ing and cost busi­ness­es almost $1 mil­lion per day.

On the strike’s third day, President Roosevelt autho­rized the War Department to take con­trol of the PTC. Two days lat­er, 5,000 U.S. Army troops moved into Philadelphia to pre­vent upris­ings and pro­tect PTC employ­ees who crossed the pick­et line. Despite the mil­i­tary pres­ence, the con­fronta­tion result­ed in at least thir­teen acts of racial vio­lence, includ­ing sev­er­al non-fatal shootings.

After more than a week, the strike end­ed when PTC employ­ees fac­ing threats of ter­mi­na­tion, loss of draft defer­ments, and inel­i­gi­bil­i­ty for unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits chose to return to work with­out achiev­ing their goal of block­ing Black work­ers’ oppor­tu­ni­ty for advance­ment. By September 1944, the PTC’s first Black trol­ley dri­vers were on duty.

North Carolina Votes to Disenfranchise Black Residents

On August 2, 1900, North Carolina approved a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that required res­i­dents to pass a lit­er­a­cy test in order to reg­is­ter to vote. Under the pro­vi­sion, illit­er­ate reg­is­trants with a rel­a­tive who had vot­ed in an elec­tion pri­or to the year 1863 were exempt from the requirement.

These pro­vi­sions effec­tive­ly dis­en­fran­chised most of the state’s African-American vot­ing pop­u­la­tion. At the same time, the rules pre­served the vot­ing rights of most of the state’s poor and une­d­u­cat­ed white res­i­dents — who were much more like­ly to have a rel­a­tive eli­gi­ble to vote in 1863, before the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and pas­sage of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. To the drafters and sup­port­ers of the amend­ment, this out­come was by design.

In the days and months lead­ing up to the spe­cial elec­tion to vote on the lit­er­a­cy test pro­pos­al, cam­paign events through­out the state encour­aged white cit­i­zens to cast their votes in favor of the pol­i­cy that would achieve Black dis­en­fran­chise­ment. On the eve of the elec­tion, judi­cial can­di­date and for­mer Confederate offi­cer William A. Guthrie pro­claimed to a crowd of over 12,000:

“The peo­ple of the east and west are com­ing togeth­er. The amend­ment will pass and the negro curbed in every part of the state. Good gov­ern­ment will be restored every­where. Then our ladies can walk the streets of our towns in safe­ty, day or night. White women will not be afraid to go about alone in the coun­try. We will teach the col­ored race that our peo­ple must be respect­ed. We have restrained and con­quered oth­er races. They obeyed our demands or were exter­mi­nat­ed with the sword. We are at a cri­sis. Let us rise to the occa­sion. Come together!”

The cam­paign was also marked by wide­spread attempts to sup­press African Americans’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the elec­tion. “No negro must vote. All white men must vote,” insist­ed one promi­nent politi­cian. “We’ll try to bring this about by law. If that don’t go — well, we can try anoth­er tack. The white man must and will rule in North Carolina, no mat­ter what meth­ods are nec­es­sary to give him authority.”

The effect of racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vot­ing laws in North Carolina and through­out the South would per­sist for gen­er­a­tions, effec­tive­ly dis­en­fran­chis­ing Black peo­ple through­out the region with lit­tle fed­er­al inter­ven­tion until the pas­sage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Five Days of Racial Violence Leave 38 Dead and 1,000 Black Families Homeless in Chicago

On August 3, 1919, sev­er­al days of racial vio­lence tar­get­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties in Chicago, Illinois, came to an end after inter­ven­tion by the state mili­tia. After five days of gun­fire, beat­ings, and burn­ings, fif­teen white peo­ple and twen­ty-three African Americans had been killed, 537 peo­ple injured, and 1,000 African American fam­i­lies were left homeless.

During the Great Migration, Chicago, Illinois, was a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for many Black migrants leav­ing the South in search of eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty and a refuge from racial ter­ror lynch­ing. From 1910 to 1920, the city’s Black pop­u­la­tion swelled from 44,000 to 109,000 peo­ple. The new arrivals joined thou­sands of white immi­grants also relo­cat­ing to Chicago in search of work. Many Black new­com­ers set­tled on Chicago’s south side, in neigh­bor­hoods adja­cent to com­mu­ni­ties of European immi­grants, close to plen­ti­ful indus­tri­al jobs. But racism was not com­plete­ly behind them.

Although African American migrants had fled the Southern brand of racial vio­lence, once in Chicago they still faced racial ani­mos­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­tion that cre­at­ed chal­leng­ing liv­ing con­di­tions like over­crowd­ed hous­ing, inequal­i­ty at work, police bru­tal­i­ty, and seg­re­ga­tion by cus­tom rather than law.

In the sec­ond decade of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, seg­re­ga­tion in Chicago was not as legal­ly-reg­u­lat­ed as in Southern cities, but unwrit­ten rules restrict­ed Black peo­ple from many neigh­bor­hoods, work­places, and “pub­lic” areas — includ­ing beach­es. On July 27, 1919, a Black youth named Eugene Williams drowned at a Chicago beach after a white man struck him with a rock for drift­ing to the “white” side of Lake Michigan. When police refused to arrest the rock throw­er, Black wit­ness­es protest­ed; white mobs respond­ed with wide­spread vio­lence that last­ed five days.

Over that ter­ri­fy­ing peri­od, white mobs attacked Black peo­ple on sight, set fire to more than thir­ty prop­er­ties on Chicago’s south side, and even attempt­ed to attack Provident Hospital — which served most­ly Black patients. Six thou­sand National Guard troops were called in to quell the unrest, and many Black peo­ple left Chicago after the ter­ri­fy­ing experience.

Though state offi­cials announced a plan to inves­ti­gate and pun­ish all par­ties respon­si­ble for vio­lence and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty dur­ing the unrest, many more Black peo­ple were arrest­ed than white. The sub­se­quent grand jury pro­ceed­ings result­ed in the indict­ment of pri­mar­i­ly Black defen­dants. Later tes­ti­fy­ing before a com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the roots of the Chicago vio­lence, the city’s police chief admit­ted this was due to bias in his depart­ment of white officers.

“There is no doubt that a great many police offi­cers were gross­ly unfair in mak­ing arrests,” he said in 1922. “They shut their eyes to offens­es com­mit­ted by white men while they were very vig­or­ous in get­ting all the col­ored men they could get.

Missing Civil Rights Workers Found Dead in MississippiOn August 4, 1964, fol­low­ing sev­er­al weeks of nation­al news cov­er­age and an inten­sive search by fed­er­al author­i­ties, the bod­ies of civ­il rights work­ers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were found in Longdale, Mississippi. The three men, who went miss­ing after being released from a local Mississippi jail, had been shot to death and buried in a shal­low grave.

Earlier that year, Michael Schwerner had trav­eled to Mississippi to orga­nize Black cit­i­zens to vote. A white New Yorker work­ing with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Mr. Schwerner worked exten­sive­ly with a Black CORE mem­ber from Meridian, Mississippi, named James Chaney. The activist pair led an effort to reg­is­ter Black vot­ers and helped Mt. Zion Methodist Church, a Black church in Longdale, cre­ate an orga­niz­ing cen­ter. These devel­op­ments angered local mem­bers of the Ku Klux Klan; on June 16, while Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Chaney were away, Klansmen torched the church and assault­ed its members.

On June 21, Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney, and a new white CORE mem­ber named Andrew Goodman inves­ti­gat­ed the church burn­ing and then head­ed for Meridian, Mississippi. Knowing that they were in con­stant dan­ger of attack, Schwerner told col­leagues in Meridian to search for them if they did not arrive by 4:00 p.m. While pass­ing through the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the three men were stopped by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price.

A mem­ber of the Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Price had been mon­i­tor­ing the activ­i­ties of the civ­il rights work­ers. He arrest­ed the men on traf­fic charges and held them in jail for about sev­en hours before releas­ing them on bail. Price escort­ed Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney, and Mr. Goodman out of town, but soon re-arrest­ed the men and held them until oth­er Klansmen could join. They were not seen alive again.

When the three activists did not arrive in Meridian, they were report­ed miss­ing and soon became the sub­jects of a high­ly-pub­li­cized FBI search and inves­ti­ga­tion. As the days turned into weeks, some Mississippi offi­cials and white seg­re­ga­tion­ists accused civ­il rights lead­ers of fab­ri­cat­ing the work­ers’ dis­ap­pear­ance to gain sup­port for their cause. Once the three men’s bod­ies were dis­cov­ered on August 4, how­ev­er, no one could deny their fates.

While their dis­ap­pear­ance result­ed in nation­al news sto­ries, Michael Schwerner’s wife and fel­low-CORE work­er, Rita, admon­ished reporters in 1964: “The slay­ing of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my hus­band and Andrew Goodman were white that the nation­al alarm has been sound­ed.” Indeed, inves­ti­ga­tors search­ing Mississippi’s woods, fields, swamps, and rivers that sum­mer found the remains of eight African American men: Henry Dee and Charles Moore, col­lege stu­dents who were kid­napped, beat­en, and mur­dered in May 1964; and six uniden­ti­fied corpses, includ­ing one wear­ing a CORE T‑shirt.

Black Workers Sue Memphis Cotton Gin for Racial Discrimination

On August 5, 2014, three Black men filed a fed­er­al law­suit against the own­ers of Atkinson Cotton Warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee — a work­place where the men had expe­ri­enced racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment, and threats from a white super­vi­sor, and then been fired for report­ing the sit­u­a­tion. The law­suit, brought by Untonia Harris, Marrio Mangrum, and Vashone Ford sought anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion train­ing for all employ­ees and future mon­i­tor­ing of the busi­ness environment.

Two months before, Mr. Harris and Mr. Mangrum had filed a fed­er­al com­plaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) report­ing that, on a dai­ly basis, African American employ­ees were called “mon­keys” and told, “you need to think like a white man.” The com­plaint also assert­ed that their white super­vi­sor would yell: “Hey, Black boy, get over there and get my cot­ton,” and once — accord­ing to Mr. Harris — “pulled his pants down in front of us and told us to kiss his white tail.”

Eventually, Mr. Harris began to use his cell phone to record the encoun­ters. On one occa­sion, when Mr. Harris asked to use a microwave, the super­vi­sor told him he couldn’t, “because you are not white.” In anoth­er, the super­vi­sor said about a water foun­tain, “I need to put a sign here that says ‘white peo­ple only’.” When Mr. Harris asked what would hap­pen if he drank from the foun­tain, the super­vi­sor replied: “That’s when we hang you.”

This dis­crim­i­na­tion was a direct lega­cy of the Jim Crow era, and the super­vi­sor was record­ed favor­ably recall­ing the days of seg­re­ga­tion. “Back then, nobody thought any­thing about it,” he said. “Now every­body is made to where to think it’s bad.”

After the reports of dis­crim­i­na­tion became pub­lic, the own­er of the ware­house claimed no knowl­edge of the abuse and stat­ed that ware­house man­age­ment out­sourced to anoth­er com­pa­ny. The man­age­ment com­pa­ny, Federal Compress, soon report­ed that the super­vi­sor was no longer their employ­ee, and set­tled the law­suit in May 2015.

After Generations of Inaction, U.S. Government Enacts Voting Rights Act

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law. The leg­is­la­tion was the cul­mi­na­tion of orga­nized civ­il rights activism and came after unchecked, sys­tem­at­ic vot­er sup­pres­sion had tar­get­ed African American com­mu­ni­ties in the South for gen­er­a­tions. The VRA out­lawed dis­crim­i­na­to­ry bar­ri­ers to vot­ing like poll tax­es and lit­er­a­cy tests, and also imposed strict over­sight upon states and dis­tricts with his­to­ries of vot­er dis­crim­i­na­tion. The new law quick­ly proved extreme­ly effec­tive; Black reg­is­tra­tion rates soon rose through­out the South and Black offi­cials were elect­ed at the high­est rates since Reconstruction. In this way, the VRA direct­ly con­front­ed and addressed a cen­tu­ry of racist vot­ing policies.

After the end of the Civil War and the legal abo­li­tion of slav­ery, the Reconstruction Era spawned con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship rights to for­mer­ly enslaved Black peo­ple. The 14^th Amendment, adopt­ed in 1868, guar­an­teed cit­i­zen­ship and equal pro­tec­tion under the law, while the 15^th Amendment, rat­i­fied in 1870, pro­hib­it­ed deny­ing cit­i­zens the right to vote based on “race, col­or, or pre­vi­ous con­di­tion of servi­tude.” By 1877, how­ev­er, Reconstruction end­ed, fed­er­al author­i­ties large­ly aban­doned their duty to enforce these new rights for Black peo­ple, and Southern white lead­ers set out to use laws and vio­lent intim­i­da­tion to rel­e­gate Black peo­ple back to a posi­tion of oppres­sion and servitude.

Despite their new Constitutional rights, African Americans seek­ing to vote faced legal obsta­cles, threats of eco­nom­ic hard­ship, and even risked lynch­ing. Poll tax­es, grand­fa­ther claus­es, felony dis­en­fran­chise­ment poli­cies, and lit­er­a­cy tests were all passed with the intent of sup­press­ing the Black vote, and enforced in dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ways to achieve that result. For more than a cen­tu­ry after eman­ci­pa­tion, the major­i­ty of Black Americans lived in the South and were large­ly disenfranchised.

Throughout this time, Black com­mu­ni­ties and lead­ers braved great risk to mount reg­is­tra­tion cam­paigns and pub­lic protests. Many Black peo­ple were killed for such activism, but the efforts con­tin­ued, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Selma Movement. In March 1965, the nation’s atten­tion turned to “Bloody Sunday”, a wide­ly-tele­vised law enforce­ment attack on peace­ful pro­test­ers march­ing to the Alabama State Capitol to show sup­port for Black vot­ing rights. The vio­lent treat­ment suf­fered by activists in Alabama sparked pub­lic out­cry that helped spur pas­sage of the VRA.

Throughout the 1960s, oppo­nents chal­lenged the Voting Rights Act’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, but it was repeat­ed­ly upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2013, how­ev­er, the Court’s deci­sion in Shelby County v. Holder sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­ened one of the law’s most effec­tive pro­vi­sions. The deci­sion unleashed a surge in vot­er sup­pres­sion mea­sures — includ­ing strict vot­er ID laws, cut­ting vot­ing times, restrict­ing reg­is­tra­tion, and purg­ing vot­er rolls–that are under­min­ing vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion by peo­ple of color

Thousands Lynch Two Black Men in Marion, Indiana

On August 7, 1930, a white mob used crow­bars and ham­mers to break into the Grant County jail in Marion, Indiana, to lynch three young Black men, who had been accused of mur­der­ing a white man and assault­ing a white woman, and arrest­ed ear­li­er that after­noon. Thomas Shipp, 18, and Abram Smith, 19, were severe­ly beat­en and lynched, and 16-year-old James Cameron was bad­ly beat­en but survived.

During that after­noon, word of the charges against these young Black men spread and a grow­ing mob of angry white res­i­dents gath­ered out­side the Grant County Jail. Around 9:30 p.m., the mob attempt­ed to rush the jail and was repelled by tear gas. An hour lat­er, mem­bers of the mob suc­cess­ful­ly bar­reled past the sher­iff and three deputies, grabbed Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith from their cells as they prayed, and dragged them into the street. By then, the crowd totaled between 5000 and 10,000 peo­ple — half the white pop­u­la­tion of Grant County. While spec­ta­tors watched and cheered, the mob beat, tor­tured, and hanged both men from trees in the cour­t­house yard, bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing them with­out ben­e­fit of tri­al or legal proof of guilt.

As the bod­ies of Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith remained sus­pend­ed above the crowd, mem­bers of the mob re-entered the jail and grabbed 16-year-old James Cameron, anoth­er Black youth accused of being involved in the crime. The mob beat Mr. Cameron severe­ly and was prepar­ing to hang him along­side the oth­ers when a mem­ber of the crowd inter­vened and said he was inno­cent. Mr. Cameron was released.

The bru­tal­ized bod­ies of Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith were hanged from trees in the cour­t­house yard and kept there for hours as a crowd of white men, women, and chil­dren grew by the thou­sands. Public spec­ta­cle lynch­ings, in which large crowds of white peo­ple, often num­ber­ing in the thou­sands, gath­ered to wit­ness and par­tic­i­pate in pre-planned heinous killings that fea­tured pro­longed tor­ture, muti­la­tion, dis­mem­ber­ment and/​or burn­ing of the vic­tim, were com­mon dur­ing this time. When the sher­iff even­tu­al­ly cut the ropes off the corpses, the crowd rushed for­ward to take parts of the men’s bod­ies as sou­venirs, before final­ly dispersing.

Enraged by the lynch­ing, the NAACP trav­eled to Marion to inves­ti­gate, and lat­er pro­vid­ed the U.S Attorney General with the names of 27 peo­ple believed to have par­tic­i­pat­ed. Though the lynch­ing was pho­tographed and spec­ta­tors were clear­ly vis­i­ble, local res­i­dents claimed not to rec­og­nize any­one pic­tured. Charges were final­ly brought against the lead­ers of the mob, but all-white juries acquit­ted them, despite this over­whelm­ing evi­dence. The alleged assault vic­tim, Mary Ball, tes­ti­fied years lat­er that she had not been raped.

A pho­to­graph of Mr. Shipp’s and Mr. Smith’s bat­tered corpses hang­ing life­less from a tree, with white spec­ta­tors proud­ly stand­ing below, remains one of the most icon­ic and infa­mous pho­tographs of an American lynch­ing. In 1937, an encounter with the pho­to inspired New York school­teacher Abe Meeropol to write “Strange Fruit,” a haunt­ing poem about lynch­ing that lat­er became a famous song record­ed by Billie Holiday.
The total­i­ty of this infor­ma­tion was derived from https://​cal​en​dar​.eji​.org/​r​a​c​i​a​l​-​i​n​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​/​a​u​g​/09