Louisiana fails in its attempt to execute 17-year-old Willie Francis by electrocution; the state executes him a year later by electrocuting him again.
May 2, 1963
More than 700 Black children protesting racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, are arrested, blasted by fire hoses, clubbed by police, and attacked by police dogs.
May 1, 1863
In the midst of the Civil War, Confederate Congress declares Black Union soldiers criminals and authorizes their enslavement or execution.
April 30, 1892
A white mob seizes a Black man named Ephraim Grizzard from jail in Nashville, Tennessee, and lynches him without a trial.
April 29, 1992
All-white jury finds the officers who violently beat Rodney King, a young Black man in Los Angeles, not guilty, sparking an uprising in which more than 50 people died and over 2,000 were injured.
April 28, 1936
Just before his trial for attempted assault, Lint Shaw, a 45-year-old Black farmer, is shot to death by a mob of 40 white men in Colbert, Georgia.
April 27, 2015
Nine states, including Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, recognize Confederate Memorial Day as an official state holiday to commemorate the surrender of the Confederate army in April 1865.
April 26, 1960
At Biloxi Beach this week, more than 100 Black men, women, and children are attacked and beaten by white people during peaceful protest for the right to access beaches in Mississippi.
April 25, 1959
A white mob beats, shoots, and throws chained body of Mack Charles Parker, a Black man, into the Pearl River after he is accused of raping a white woman in Poplarville, Mississippi.
April 27, 2013
Alabama man sentenced to jail for consensual sex with another man.