Author: Desto22

U.S. Congress enacted the Civilization Fund Act, authorizing the President, “in every case where he shall judge improvement in the habits and condition of such Indians practicable” to “employ capable persons of good moral character” to introduce to any tribe adjoining a frontier settlement the “arts of civilization.”

The fund paid missionaries and church leaders to partner with the federal government to establish schools in Indian territories to teach Native children to replace tribal practices with Christian practices. In 1824, the federal government established the Bureau of Indian Affairs to oversee the fund and implement programs to “civilize” the Native people.

In the following years, as the U.S. systematically removed tribes from their homelands to land west of the Mississippi River, the U.S. turned to policies purportedly aimed at achieving “the great work of regenerating the Indian race.”

According to Indian Commissioner Luke Lea, it was “indispensably necessary that they be placed in positions where they can be controlled, and finally compelled by stern necessity…until such time as their general improvement and good conduct may supersede the necessity of such restrictions.” Over the ensuing decades, the U.S.’s orientation to Native peoples changed from adversarial to paternalistic, focused on killing Native American culture.

In Johnson County, Georgia, white residents use violent intimidation to stop Black residents from voting.

Idaho amends its anti-miscegenation law to include additional restrictions on interracial marriage. Idaho passed its first anti-miscegenation law in 1864, which banned marriage between a white person and “any person of African descent, Indian or Chinese.” The punishment for marrying in violation of the statute was imprisonment for up to two years. Idaho also passed a law banning interracial cohabitation in 1864, violation of which could result in a $100-$500 fine, six to 12 months in jail, or both. The anti-miscegenation law was amended in 1867 to increase the range of fines and the maximum possible prison time to 10 years.

The 1921 amendment to the law banned marriage between white people and “mongolians, negroes, or mulattoes,” although the state’s population at the time was less than .02% African American. The Idaho state legislature repealed the anti-miscegenation law in 1959.

Idaho was not unique in its attempts to obstruct marriage between the races. In the 1920s, Social Darwinism had captured the attention of the country’s elite, who became concerned with maintaining and promoting the eugenic racial purity of the white race by controlling procreation. Concerned that states were not adequately enforcing their anti-miscegenation laws, eugenicists pushed for stronger measures against racial mixing and stricter classifications to determine who qualified as white when seeking a marriage license. Like Idaho, many states added the racial category “mongolian” during this time in response to an influx of Japanese immigrants to the U.S.

A mob of more than 1,000 white people riots outside public housing project in Detroit, Michigan, to prevent Black families from moving in.

Congress refuses to seat John Willis Menard of Louisiana, the first Black man elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

On the rainy evening of February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a Black boy, was fatally shot in a gated residential community in Sanford, Florida, while walking home from a nearby convenience store. George Zimmerman, a local resident and neighborhood watch coordinator, saw Trayvon and decided the Black youth in a hooded sweatshirt was “suspicious.” Zimmerman called 911 to report Trayvon’s presence while following him at a close distance and, despite the dispatcher’s contrary instructions, confronted the teen and fatally shot him. The teen was carrying only iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

Police questioned Zimmerman and, based on Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which permits the use of deadly force even in avoidable confrontations, they released him with no charges. Trayvon’s unidentified body went to the morgue and his family learned his fate the next morning only after they reported him missing.

Outraged by the lack of police response, Trayvon’s parents worked with advocates to publicize their son’s murder. The story sparked national and international outrage, symbolizing for many the continuing danger of being a young Black male in America. On March 21, 2012, hundreds participated in a “Million Hoodie March” in New York City, calling for prosecutors to file criminal charges against Zimmerman. President Barack Obama called for a complete investigation and reflected, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”

George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in April 2012 but later acquitted of all charges. The presumption of guilt and dangerousness assigned to African Americans has made minority communities particularly vulnerable to the unfair administration of criminal justice.

Anti-Chinese convention in Boise, Idaho, starts a movement, often violent, against Chinese immigrants; Chinese share of Idaho’s population decreases from one-third in 1870 to nearly zero by 1910.

Kentucky refuses to ratify Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and does not do it until 1976.

On February 23, 2020, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed by two white men while he was out jogging in Satilla Shores, Georgia, the suburban neighborhood he had been living in with his mother. After the shooting, Mr. Arbery’s killers (an ex-police officer and his son) were allowed to leave the scene and faced no consequences for months, as local officials refused to fully investigate, misrepresented the circumstances surrounding the shooting, and rejected efforts to hold the men accountable. It was not until video footage of the shooting surfaced and national attention focused that officials finally arrested the two white men.

Mr. Arbery, a high school football star, ran regularly in the neighborhood. That morning he jogged past Gregory McMichael, a 64-year-old former police officer and retired investigator for the Brunswick district attorney’s office who was standing in his front yard.

Mr. McMichael called out to his son, Travis McMichael, to tell him that Mr. Arbery “looked like” the suspect in a string of break-ins that had occurred in the neighborhood. The two men grabbed guns, got into their pick-up truck, and began chasing Mr. Arbery, shouting at him to stop running.

Once they caught up to Mr. Arbery, Travis McMichael jumped out of the truck with his shotgun, startling Mr. Arbery. After a struggle over the gun, Travis McMichael shot Mr. Arbery, who was unarmed, three times, killing him.

The Glynn County Police Department arrived on the scene to investigate, but rather than treat the McMichaels as suspects who had chased and killed an unarmed Black jogger, the officers let both men go home. A police investigator then called Mr. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper, and lied to her, saying her son had been involved in a burglary during which the homeowner killed him.

The prosecutor assigned to Mr. Arbery’s case concluded that the McMichaels were legally carrying their guns under Georgia’s open carry law and were within their rights to chase Mr. Arbery under the citizen’s arrest statute. He also suggested that the two armed white men were right to be suspicious and afraid of unarmed Mr. Arbery because he had an “aggressive nature,” underlining the presumption of dangerousness and guilt young Black men are forced to navigate on a daily basis.

In early May 2020, nearly three months after Mr. Arbery was killed, a video of the shooting filmed by William Bryan, who had been following the McMichaels in a second vehicle, was released online. The video drew national attention to Mr. Arbery’s case, and outrage over the fact that no one had been prosecuted for the killing.

Under national scrutiny, and only after the video of Mr. Arbery’s shooting was widely distributed across news outlets and social media, District Attorney Tom Durden announced a grand jury would decide whether charges would be brought.

74 days after killing Mr. Arbery, the McMichaels were arrested. A grand jury later indicted them, as well as William Bryan, on charges of malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault.

After Frazier Baker is appointed postmaster of Lake City, South Carolina, enraged local white people burn his home, fatally shoot him and his infant daughter, and wound his wife and other children.