A Black man named Luther Holbert and an unidentifiable Black woman are tortured, mutilated, and burned alive in front of 600 picnicking white spectators in Doddsville, Mississippi.
February 6, 1902
A mob of 200 white people seizes a 19-year-old Black man, Thomas Brown, from jail and lynches him on the courthouse lawn after he is accused of assault in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
February 5, 1917
Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1917 to bar entry of Asian, Mexican and Mediterranean people, poor people, and those with mental or physical disabilities or criminal records.
February 4, 1999
NYPD officers fatally shoot unarmed Amadou Diallo 41 times.
February 4, 1846
Alabama launches convict leasing by leasing Wetumpka State Penitentiary and its inmates to private businessmen.
February 3, 1956
Autherine Lucy, the first Black student admitted to the University of Alabama, attends classes; after white students and residents riot in protest, the school suspends Lucy citing “safety concerns.”
February 2, 1893
A white mob lynches a Black man named Sam Blow in Tazewell County, Virginia, after lynching four other Black men over the previous two days.
February 1, 1965
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and more than 200 others are arrested and jailed after a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama.
January 31, 1964
Louis Allen, witness to the murder of NAACP activist by white state legislator, is killed in Mississippi.
January 30, 1956
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s house in Montgomery, Alabama, is bombed while he speaks at a mass meeting; King later addresses angry crowd and pleads for nonviolence.