Author: Desto22

A mob of over 200 white men attacked the Black community in Rosewood, Florida, killing over 30 Black women, men, and children, burning the town to the ground, and forcing all survivors to permanently flee Rosewood.

On January 1, 1923, in Sumner, Florida, a young, married white woman named Fannie Taylor claimed she had been assaulted by Jesse Hunter, a Black man who had escaped a prison chain gang. Though there was no evidence against Mr. Hunter, local white men launched a manhunt in Rosewood, a nearby town of about 200 Black people. On January 2, a mob of white men kidnapped, tortured, and lynched Sam Carter, a Black craftsman from Rosewood, on suspicion that he had helped Jesse Hunter escape.

White men continued to terrorize Rosewood searching for Mr. Hunter, and Black residents armed themselves in defense. Late on the night of January 4, a white posse fired into the home of Black Rosewood resident Sylvester Carrier (whom they suspected of harboring Mr. Hunter) and killed an elderly woman. A gunfight between Mr. Carrier and the mob lasted into the early morning, killing people on both sides.

Outraged that Black residents had fought back, the posse left the scene to regroup and returned with more men. On January 5, a mob of between 200 and 300 white men attacked Rosewood, killing an estimated 30 to 40 Black men, women, and children on sight and burning the town to the ground. Black residents hid in the woods and fled by train to Gainesville, Florida, never to return. Survivors later recounted that Fannie Taylor had made false accusations against Jesse Hunter to conceal her extramarital affair with a white man.

The city of Montgomery, Alabama, announced that it would remove waiting area seats, lock bathrooms, and plug water fountains at the municipal airport rather than comply with integration orders.

City Attorney Calvin Whitesell announced the plans in a televised response to orders from federal judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. that the city remove segregation signs posted throughout the airport and allow Black passengers to use all facilities. Mr. Whitesell added that the restaurant at the airport would remain open “for the time being,” but that he would order it closed if residents make a “concerted effort” to integrate it.

Opposition to civil rights and racial equality was a mass movement, and most white Americans—especially in the South—supported segregation. Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred racial discrimination in workplaces and public accommodations, most white Americans—including white community leaders, clergy, and educators—fought tirelessly to defend racial hierarchy and white supremacy. Southern officials continued to use their power to hamper civil rights activism and, as was the case here, violate Black Americans’ constitutional rights.

On this day in 1895, federal authorities imprisoned 19 Hopi leaders at Alcatraz Island on sedition charges for opposing the U.S. government’s forced education and assimilation of Indigenous children.

In the late 1800s, the U.S. government sought to “Americanize” Native American children by forcing them into white-run assimilationist schools, often far from their homes and families. In 1887, the government established Keams Canyon Boarding School in modern-day Arizona and pressured Native American parents from the Hopi tribe to enroll their children. Hopi families that complied with the government’s order and sent their children to school were deemed “Friendlies,” while those who refused were branded “Hostiles.” When most parents refused to part with their children voluntarily, the government resorted to force, sending soldiers to round up children and send them to Keams Canyon.

At the same time, tensions were rising regarding the limited land that the government claimed to still belong to Hopi communities. In October 1894, 50 Hopi returned to plant on land that had traditionally belonged to their tribe. The U.S. government, claiming to act in defense of the rights of Friendlies, responded by ordering troops to arrest the Hopi leaders. Justifying the order for military involvement, one government official wrote that “[t]he Friendlies must be protected in their rights and encouraged to continue in the Washington way.”

After the January 1895 arrests, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “[n]ineteen murderous-looking Apache Indians” had been imprisoned at Alcatraz, “because they would not let their children go to school.” The paper added that they “have not hardship aside from the fact that they have been rudely snatched from the bosom of their families and are prisoners and prisoners they shall stay until they have learned to appreciate the advantage of education.” The Hopi leaders were imprisoned in the wooden cells of Alcatraz for nearly one year.

15-year-old Willie James Howard, a Black boy, was kidnapped and lynched by three white men in Suwannee County, Florida, after being accused of sending a love note to the daughter of one of the men.

During Christmas 1943, Willie Howard sent cards to all of his co-workers at the Van Priest Dime Store in Live Oak, Florida. Unlike the other cards, Willie’s card to Cynthia Goff, a white store employee, revealed a youthful crush. His greeting expressed hope that white people would someday like Black people and concluded: “I love your name. I love your voice. For a S.H. [sweetheart] you are my choice.”

After reading the card, Cynthia’s father, Phil Goff, brought two friends to the Howard home and demanded to see Willie. Despite his mother’s pleading, the men dragged Willie away and then kidnapped Willie’s father, James Howard, from work. The men drove the two Howards to the embankment of the Suwanee River, bound Willie’s hands and feet, stood him at the edge of the water, and told him to either jump or be shot. Willie jumped into the cold water below and drowned while his father was forced to watch at gunpoint. Willie’s dead body was pulled from the river the next day.

Goff and his accomplices later admitted to the local sheriff that they took Willie to the river to punish him, but claimed the teen had become hysterical and jumped into the water unprovoked at the thought of being whipped by his father. Fearful for his own life and the other members of his family, James Howard signed a statement supporting Goff’s account. He and his family fled Live Oak three days later and then shared the story of Willie’s lynching.

Slavery was not abolished by the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Issued in the midst of the Civil War, the proclamation applied only to enslaved people in states that were in rebellion in 1863, namely South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina. Tennessee and portions of Virginia and Louisiana that were occupied by the Union were exempt. Slavery was left untouched in the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Many Southern planters in rebelling states attempted to hide news of the proclamation from enslaved people, using threats and violence to force silence and attacking those who dared attempt to flee. Where federal troops were present, however, many enslaved people courageously fled bondage and sought protection and freedom in Union camps. For the many more enslaved people living where federal forces were absent or unreachable, Lincoln’s declaration did nothing, and the hold of enslavement lasted well beyond 1863. Up until the war’s end in 1865, local newspapers in Montgomery, Alabama, continued to advertise auction sales of enslaved people and publish ads seeking the return of “runaways.”

Exercising his powers as commander in chief, President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation primarily as a wartime measure. Key provisions allowing for the service of formerly enslaved Black people in the Union Army and Navy opened the door to the gradual enlistment of almost 200,000 Black men.

Slavery did not become illegal until the Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified on December 6, 1865 (though even then, the provision allowed for legal enslavement “as punishment for crime”). Many Southern states refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment even after the Civil War ended. Delaware and Kentucky rejected ratification, and slavery persisted in those states for several more years before the practice ceased. Mississippi did not officially ratify the amendment until 1995—130 years after it was adopted.

On New Year’s Eve, in his last address as Savannah City Judge, Thomas Norwood, former U.S. senator, argued to a crowd of white Savannah residents for the execution of Black men involved in consensual interracial relationships with white women. Referring to consensual interracial relationships as the “curse of the South,” Judge Norwood alleged that Black people in interracial relationships caused other Black people to commit “deeds of violence” and “created disorder,” and that, consequently, “miscegenation must be repressed by the most vigorous laws.”

In his speech, Judge Norwood depicted Black people as dangerous and subhuman. He based his assertions on encounters with “12,000 Black people,” while admitting that he only interacted with Black citizens when they appeared before him as defendants in court. Judge Norwood described Black people as naturally violent and inherently sexually promiscuous. He advanced degrading, false narratives of Black families as prone to intimate partner violence and child abuse.

Judge Norwood relied on these myths to justify the widely held belief among white citizens that criminalizing, incarcerating, and executing Black men represented the only way to protect white people. He claimed that, “In Africa, [the Black man] knew no government but physical force.” According to Judge Norwood, Black men, who had been trafficked to North America but had now been emancipated, availed themselves of “the white man’s inventions” by securing “razors, pistols, and guns,” and “prowling through the woods to murder white men and assault white women.”

Senator Norwood viewed Black communities as undeserving of state-funded education. Adamant that Black students lacked the ability to do anything more than imitate the achievements of white people, he called for the return of chattel slavery as an alternative to investing resources in Black children. Evincing his commitment to white supremacy, he proposed execution as punishment for Black men caught in interracial relationships, while advocating life imprisonment for white women similarly charged.

Judge Norwood’s rhetoric urging a death sentence for consensual sexual relations had deadly consequences. During the era of racial terror lynching, myths about Black male sexuality fueled white violence against Black men accused of associating with white women. Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of Black men were lynched in the U.S., and nearly 1 in 4 were targeted based on the allegation of sexual impropriety with a white woman. These men were subjected to mob murder without investigation or trial, at a time when the definition of Black-on-white “rape” in the South was incredibly broad and required no allegation of force because white institutions, laws, and most white people rejected the idea that a white woman could or would willingly consent to sex with a Black man. This meant that any action by a Black man that could be interpreted as seeking or desiring contact with a white woman might prove deadly. Throughout the lynching era, Black men were lynched for knocking on the door of a white woman’s home, for delivering a letter to a white woman, or for entering a room where white women were sitting. A white woman’s claim of victimization at the hands of a Black man, whether true or not, could and often did lead to brutal and deadly violence.

During the same era, Black women were routinely targeted for sexual violence and assault by white men who committed rape and other criminal assaults with impunity and no expectation of accountability.

In Savannah, Georgia, traffickers aboard the Susannah removed 90 abducted people to sell them into enslavement. Subjected to horrific conditions during the Middle Passage aboard the Susannah, 20 of the 110 kidnapped Africans were killed during the long and deadly Transatlantic journey.

On September 25, 1766, the British-built trafficking vessel Susannah embarked from London. Tasked with the sole purpose of kidnapping and enslaving African men, women, and children, the ship’s captain and crew arrived in a trafficking port in West Central Africa months later. Dozens of kidnapped Africans were forced aboard the Susannah, where they were subjected to a deadly journey averaging four to six months in duration known as the Middle Passage.

Sometime before their arrival in Savannah, the crew and captain landed in St. Helena, an island occupied by the British in the Atlantic Ocean, where they kidnapped additional enslaved people to be sold in the U.S. While 110 enslaved people in all were forced aboard the Susannah, at least 20 people died during the journey.

On December 30, the surviving 90 enslaved Africans were disembarked in Savannah, where they were bought and sold by white traders, enslavers, plantation owners, and other businessmen.

Across the eastern seaboard, cities like Savannah served as the points of entry into the U.S., where hundreds of thousands of kidnapped Africans were bought and sold into slavery. For almost two decades before the Susannah disembarked, Savannah was an active trafficking port, and Savannah would continue to serve as a port in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and trafficking site for kidnapped Africans for three more decades. Over 23,000 Black people were trafficked into Savannah in at least 300 different voyages during this time period, making it one of the most active trafficking ports in the U.S. In 1767, city officials in Savannah were committed enough to the lucrative practice of trafficking enslaved people to invest in and construct a nine-story quarantine facility. This site would detain enslaved women, men, and children.

The African people aboard the Susannah in the summer of 1767 were among the estimated 12 million people who were transported from West Africa on ships and sold into slavery in the Americas. During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which began in the 15th century and continued “legally” until 1808 in North America, nearly two million people died during the brutal voyage due to horrific conditions.

Hundreds of U.S. troops surrounded a Lakota camp and opened fire, killing more than 300 Lakota women, men, and children in a violent massacre.

In December 1890, Sioux Chief Sitting Bull—who led his people during years of resistance to U.S. government policies—was killed by Indian Agency Police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation as authorities attempted to arrest him for his involvement in the Ghost Dance movement.

In the late 19th century, the U.S. Government began forcefully relocating Native Americans onto reservations, where they were dependent on the government for food and clothing. In response, some Native American people embraced a religion called Ghost Dance, which promoted the belief that Native Americans would become bulletproof and return to their freedom following a great apocalypse. The Ghost Dance performance and religion frightened the U.S. federal government, and sensationalist newspapers across the country stoked fears about an uprising by Native Americans.

Shortly after Sitting Bull’s killing, the Sioux surrendered and were marched to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. On the morning of December 29, 1890, 500 troops of the U.S. 7th Calvary Regiment surrounded a group of Lakota Sioux where they had made camp at Wounded Knee Creek. The troops entered the camp to disarm the Lakota. During a brief scuffle between a soldier and a Lakota man who refused to surrender his weapon, the rifle fired, alarming the rest of the troops. The troops began firing on the Lakota, many of whom tried to recapture weapons or flee the assault. The attack lasted for more than an hour and left more than 300 Lakota dead; over half of those killed were women, children, and elderly tribal members, and most of the dead were unarmed.

Barely one week after the Montgomery Bus Boycott had ended and the busing system in Montgomery was finally integrated, sniper gunshots struck Rosa Jordan, a 22-year-old Black woman who was eight months pregnant, as she rode an integrated bus through a Black neighborhood.

From December 1, 1955, until December 20, 1956, Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted the city bus system to protest their poor treatment on the racially segregated buses. Participants faced threats, violence, and harassment, but were ultimately victorious in December 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle.

After the ruling and official repeal of the city’s bus segregation policies, the Black community returned to integrated buses. But Black riders now faced the threat of violence from white residents who resented the boycott and its results. In a terrifying development, snipers began to target the buses soon after integrated riding commenced.

On the evening of December 28, a sniper shot at a desegregated bus traveling through a Black neighborhood, and Ms. Jordan was shot in both legs. Ms. Jordan was transported to Oak Street General Hospital, but doctors were hesitant to remove a bullet lodged in her leg for fear that it could spark premature labor. Instead, Ms. Jordan was told she would have to remain in the hospital for the duration of her pregnancy.

After the bus driver and passengers were questioned at police headquarters, the bus resumed service. Less than an hour later, near the same neighborhood, the same bus was again targeted by snipers. This time, no one was hit.

These shootings followed two earlier sniper attacks on Montgomery buses that occurred the week before but targeted buses carrying no passengers and resulted in no injuries. On the night of Ms. Jordan’s shooting, Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers ordered all buses to end service for the night. The following day, three city commissioners met with a bus company official and decided to suspend all night bus service after 5:00 pm until after the New Year’s holiday. The curfew policy did not end until January 22, 1957.

On the night of December 27, 1919, a 23-year-old Black veteran named Powell Green was lynched by a mob of white men near Franklinton, North Carolina.

After a “prominent” white movie theater owner was shot and killed, Powell Green was arrested for allegedly committing the crime. During the era of racial terror, white allegations against Black people were rarely subject to scrutiny and often sparked violent reprisal even when there was no evidence tying the accused to any offense. Many African Americans were lynched across the South under the accusation of murder when mere suggestions of Black-on-white violence could provoke mob violence and lynching before the judicial system could or would act. While policemen were moving Powell Green from the jail in Franklinton to the larger city of Raleigh, before he could be tried or mount a defense, a mob kidnapped and brutally killed him.

The mob tied Mr. Green to a car and dragged him for half a mile before shooting him with dozens of bullets and hanging his body. It was not uncommon for lynch mobs to seize their victims from jails, prisons, courtrooms, or out of police hands. Though they were armed and charged with protecting the men and women in their custody, police almost never used force to resist white lynch mobs intent on killing Black people. In some cases, police officials were even found to be complicit or active participants in lynchings. Newspaper sources suggest this was the case in the lynching of Powell Green; one witness reportedly testified that, though there were five officers in the police vehicle transporting Mr. Green, he was “taken from the car [by the mob] without the least trouble.”

Mr. Green’s body was found the next morning riddled with bullets and hanged from a small pine tree along a road two miles from Franklinton. According to press accounts, “souvenir hunters” cut buttons and pieces of clothing from the body and later cut down the tree to yield grotesque keepsakes.

Mr. Green was only 23 years old when lynched and had served in the army during World War I. Rather than thanked for their patriotic service, Black veterans returning from war during the era of racial terrorism were targeted for violence by white supremacists who worried military service would make these men leaders in the Black community and render them committed to fighting for racial equality at home. One news account of Mr. Green’s lynching blamed him for his own death, stating, “it seems that he was disposed to think well of himself and was self-assertive.” Powell Green’s lynching was the second in five months in Franklin County, North Carolina.