February 20, 1956

Arrest warrants based on a 34-year old anti-boycott statue are issued for 89 people involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

February 19, 1942

President Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, leading to the forced internment of 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry living in the western United States.

February 18, 1965

Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old Black man, is shot by a white officer after police attack a peaceful civil rights protest in Marion, Alabama; he dies eight days later.

February 17, 1947

In Greenville, South Carolina, a mob of white men lynches Willie Earle, slashing chunks of flesh from his body before blasting him with a shotgun; 31 men charged with the murder are later acquitted.

February 14, 1945

All-white grand jury refuses to indict any of the six white men accused of raping Mrs. Recy Taylor in Abberville, Alabama; they are never prosecuted.

February 13, 1960

Nashville students launch sit-in demonstrations to demand an end to racial segregation at lunch counters; Fisk University student Diane Nash emerges as a leader and joins the Freedom Rides in 1961.

February 11, 1906

Bunk Richardson, a Black man, is lynched by a white mob in Gadsden, Alabama, terrorizing the Black community and forcing his relatives to abandon their businesses and leave town.