Vernon Dahmer, Black businessman and voting rights activist, dies after his home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is firebombed.
January 9, 1961
Mobs of white students riot and school officials suspend Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes after they become the first Black students to integrate the University of Georgia.
January 8, 1908
Newly elected governor of Maryland vows to disenfranchise Black residents and denounces Black voting rights as a threat to white supremacy.
January 7, 1807
“Fair American” ship delivers 88 kidnapped Africans to Charleston, South Carolina, for enslavement and sale.
January 6, 2021
Falsely blaming fraud for Donald Trump’s election loss, thousands wage deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol; hundreds storm the building, some carrying pro-Trump banners and confederate flags.
January 5, 1923
After a white woman falsely accuses a Black man of rape, a white mob attacks the thriving Black town of Rosewood, Florida, in multi-day massacre that destroys the town and leaves up to 80 dead.
January 4, 1876
Mississippi “pig law” punishes farm animal theft by five years in prison; state allows leasing of prisoners to private employers.
January 3, 1895
Nineteen Hopi leaders are imprisoned on Alcatraz Island for opposing government assimilation efforts, which included confining farming to plots and forcibly enrolling Hopi children in boarding schools.
January 2, 1944
Willie James Howard, a Black 15-year-old, is lynched by three white men in Suwannee County, Florida, after one of the men accuses Howard of writing a love noter to his daughter.
January 1, 1863
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, abolishing slavery except in non-rebelling or occupied states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Alabama.