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.
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.
February 10, 1915
The Birth of a Nation premieres this week in Los Angeles; with white supremacist themes and white actors in blackface, the hit film celebrating the kkk is screened in the White House by President Woodrow Wilson.
February 9, 1960
A bomb explodes at the home of Carlotta Walls, the youngest of nine Black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, three years prior.
February 8, 1968
White state troopers fire into crowd of African American students at South Carolina State College, killing three and injuring 28, after students attempt to desegregate bowling alley.
February 7, 1904
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.