Nat Turner leads 60 enslaved Black people in Southampton, Virginia, rebellion that leaves 55 white people dead. Turner and dozens of other Black participants are later executed.
August 20, 1619
Dutch ship lands in Jamestown, Virginia, carrying the first enslaved people to what would become the United States.
August 19, 2016
St. Anthony, Minnesota, police office Jeronimo Yanez returns to duty this week before completion of the investigation into his fatal shooting of Philandro Castile weeks earlier.
August 18, 1995
NAACP protests National Parks Service’s decision, pressured by Sons of Confederate Veterans and Senator Jesse Helms, to remove covering from “faithful slave monument” at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
August 17, 1965
Riots in Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, sparked by white police beating of a young Black man, leave 34 dead, 1032 injured, nearly 4000 arrested, and $40 million in damages.
August 16, 2006
Nearly 55 years after civil rights activists Harry and Harriette Moore were killed by a bomb, a renewed investigation finds four now-deceased Ku Klux Klansmen were responsible.
August 15, 1963
Nine years after Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling, 32 teenagers are jailed for protesting segregated schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia.
August 14, 1908
After failed lynching attempt, a mob of 5,000 white people storms Black neighborhoods, burns Black businesses and homes, and kills Black citizens in Springfield, Illinois riots.
August 13, 1955
Black WWI veteran Lamar Smith is shot and killed in front of Brookhaven, Mississippi, courthouse for urging black residents to vote. No one is arrested despite numerous witnesses.
August 12, 2013
Federal district court rules New York Police Department’s”stop and frisk” policy is discriminatory and unconstitutional upon finding that 85% of people stopped are Black or LatinX.