A mob of white men in Glynn County, Georgia, hangs two Black men, Wesley Lewis and Henry Jackson, from a tree, shoots them over 1000 times, then leaves them on display for thousands of white spectators.
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 16, 1847
Missouri outlaws education of Black people and bans immigration of free Black people into the state.
February 15, 1804
New Jersey passes gradual emancipation act, becoming the last Northern state to abolish slavery.
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 12, 1901
After having rejected it in 1865, Delaware ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery.