April 3, 1851

Thomas Sims, who escaped slavery in Savannah, Georgia, is captured in Boston, Massachusetts, and after a trial, ordered to return to enslavement.

April 2, 1933

In Winston County, Mississippi, 17 white men take 65-year-old Reuben Micou, a Black man arrested for fighting with a prominent white man, from jail; his body is later found riddled with bullets.

April 1, 1875

U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in U.S. v Cruikshank, in which three white men win reversal of convictions under the Ku Klux Klan Act for massacre of 150 Black people in Colfax, Louisiana.

March 29, 1944

Reverend Isaac Simmons, a Black man, is buried three days after he is murdered by six white men who want to steal his family’s land in Mississippi; his father is threatened and flees Amite County.

March 28, 1951

Four white men abduct a 27-year-old Black man, Melvin Womack, from his home in Oakland, Florida, beat him, shoot him, and leave him to die days later from his injuries.

March 27, 1974

Delbert Tibbs, a Black hitchhiker from Chicago, is indicted for murder of a white man and rape of a white woman in Florida; he is wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury and spends two years on death row.

March 26, 1931

In Scottsboro, Arkansas, nine Black teens are accused of raping two white women and almost lynched; the “Scottsboro Boys” gain national attention after their racially biased trial results in their death sentences.

March 25, 1965

Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from Detroit, Michigan, is shot and killed after driving voting rights activists to Selma, Alabama.