Black citizens in Montgomery, Alabama, desegregate buses after 13-month boycott; bus company resumes full service.
December 20, 1986
Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old Black man, is hit by a car and killed after a white mob chases him onto a highway in Howard Beach, New York.
December 19, 1865
South Carolina passes law that requires Black “servants” to enter into labor contracts with white “masters” to work from dawn to dusk, and to maintain a “polite” demeanor.
December 18, 1865
Government announces ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.
December 17, 1862
Union General Ulysses S. Grant expels Jewish people from the Tennessee district based on anti-Semitic prejudice but later rescinds the order at President Lincoln’s request.
December 16, 1945
Days after a Black family refuses to leave their white Fontana, California, neighborhood, an explosion destroys their home and kills all four family members.
December 15, 1897
A white mob of 400 men lynches a Black man named Tom Waller in Lawrence County, Mississippi.
December 14, 1819
Alabama is admitted to the Union as the 22nd state, and the 11th state to allow slavery.
December 13, 1918
U.S. government declares Indian Sikh man born in Punjab ineligible for U.S. citizenship because he is not a “free white man”; U.S. Supreme Court later affirms U.S. v. Thind.
December 12, 1922
Over 1,000 white people kill Arthur Young in Taylor County, Florida, days after burning Charles Wright to death; both Black men were accused of murder and lynched without trial.