White nationalists protest removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia; the next day, a protester drives a car into counter-protesters, injuring 19 and killing one woman.
August 10, 1988
More than 45 years after the internment of Japanese Americans began, the U.S. government authorizes reparations payments to surviving detainees.
August 9, 2014
Eight days after graduating from high school, Black teenager Mike Brown is shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking protests and outcry nationwide.
August 8, 2016
14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed sues the Irving, Texas, school district after he was arrested and suspended for bringing to school a homemade clock that officials claimed was a bomb.
August 7, 1930
Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith are lynched in Marion, Indiana; 16-year-old James Cameron survives the attack and later founds America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee.
August 6, 1965
More than a century after Black Americans are granted voting rights, the federal Voting Rights Act is enacted to enforce and protect those rights.
August 5, 2014
Black workers at Memphis, Tennessee, cotton gin file discrimination lawsuits after white supervisor uses racial slurs and threatens to hand them for drinking from “white” water fountain.
August 4, 1964
Bodies of murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman are discovered in a Mississippi dam, nearly two months after their disappearance.
August 3, 2019
Suspected white nationalist commits mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 people and wounding 24.
August 2, 1900
North Carolina voters overwhelmingly approve amendment to disenfranchise African Americans as part of a statewide campaign to intimidate Black registered voters.