Thirteen Black soldiers executed after Houston, Texas, police beat and shoot Black troops, prompting 156 soldiers to revolt; in all, 19 are hanged and 50 sentenced to life in prison.
December 10, 2009
Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, police officers face federal charges for covering up murder of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez by white teens spewing racial slurs.
December 9, 2014
U.S. government releases report on CIA torture of Muslim detainees from 2001 to 2006, including force feeding, mock executions, physical and sexual violence, sleep deprivation, and water boarding.
December 8, 1969
More than 200 police officers including the militarized SWAT team, violently raid the Black Panther Party’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California with about 12 members inside.
December 7, 1874
After a formerly enslaved man is elected sheriff in Vicksburg, Mississippi, white people remove him and kill Black citizens who try to reinstate him; he is later shot in the head by a white deputy.
December 6, 1915
In Mackenzie v. Hare, U.S. Supreme Court upholds federal statute stripping women of their U.S. citizenship if they marry “foreigners.”
December 5, 1960
In Boynton v. Virginia, U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation in interstate bus terminal restaurants is unconstitutional but segregation persists for several years due to lack of enforcement.
December 4, 1849
Massachusetts Supreme Court hears arguments in Roberts v. City of Boston and later rules that the city can mandate separate schools for Black and white children.
December 3, 1970
Cesar Chavez is jailed in Monterey County, California, after he refuses to follow a court order demanding that he call off a migrant farmworkers’ strike against a lettuce farm.
December 2, 1922
Eugenicist Henry Laughlin publishes “model sterilization law” which 18 states pass in the following five years.