Author: Desto22

A white church board in Durant, Mississippi, voted unanimously to fire a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Marsh Callaway, after he defended racial integration and spoke out against the White Citizens’ Council in Holmes County.

In September, a group of white people in nearby Tchula, Mississippi, demanded that Dr. David Minter and Eugene Cox, two white men who operated a cooperative farm, leave the community for supporting racial integration. Dr. Minter served as a physician and, alongside Mr. Cox, had assisted the Black community in Holmes County with medical care and aid over the prior 17 years. When news spread that the two men supported racial integration and allegedly permitted Black and white teenagers to swim in a pond together near the farm, an officer of the White Citizens’ Council called a meeting to vote to remove these two men from the community.

Like White Citizens’ Councils across the country, the White Citizens’ Council in Holmes County was committed to preserving racial segregation and white supremacy in all aspects of life. In 1955, 250 White Citizens’ Councils had formed throughout the South, composed of a total of 60,000 members, and by 1957, membership reached 250,000.

During the meeting attended by at least 400 white people from Holmes County, as individuals gathered to vote on the removal of Dr. Minter and Mr. Cox from the community, the Rev. Callaway, a minister at the Durant Presbyterian Church, stood up in opposition, calling the meeting “undemocratic and un-Christian.” He praised Mr. Cox as “a fine Christian man,” to which the crowd booed and hissed him into silence. Shortly after the meeting, the Rev. Callaway was asked by his white congregation to resign as minister because his support for integration caused “many of the church members to lose faith in the minister.”

In the week prior to the Rev. Callaway’s public condemnation of the White Citizens’ Council, Durant Presbyterian had one of the “largest crowds in several months” attend church services. The following week, church members of the Durant Presbyterian Church boycotted services because the Rev. Callaway had spoken out at the meeting. On November 20, members of the church voted unanimously for the Rev. Callaway’s immediate removal, citing “personal conflict.” He was fired after approval by the Central Mississippi Presbytery.

Dozens of Black veterans who were wrongfully discharged from the 25th Infantry Regiment, a segregated unit stationed at Fort Brown, Texas, went to San Antonio seeking work. In a coordinated effort, white employers throughout the city uniformly refused to hire these men in an attempt to drive them out of town.

Over the summer of 1906, Black soldiers of the segregated 25th Infantry Regiment were stationed by the U.S. government in Fort Brown, Texas, even though the War Department recognized that Black soldiers would “not be welcomed” there and would be at risk for racial violence. While stationed at Fort Brown, Black soldiers were subjected to segregated facilities and barred from most establishments and parks in nearby Brownsville.

On the evening of August 13, 1906, shots were fired into civilian homes in Brownsville by an unknown group of individuals. When police arrived at the scene, an altercation ensued, leaving a white man, who was hit by stray bullets, dead and a police officer wounded. Without any evidence identifying those responsible, suspicion quickly turned to a group of Black soldiers of the 25th Regiment.

When questioned by authorities, Fort Brown’s all-white military commanders corroborated the alibis of these Black soldiers, affirming that the soldiers remained in their barracks at the time of the shooting. Despite this strong evidence of their innocence, Brownsville authorities charged 12 Black soldiers with murder. The soldiers repeatedly and consistently stated they had no knowledge of the attack or those who were involved.

Attempting to force confessions from this group of innocent Black soldiers, the federal government gave the entire regiment a deadline to come forward with information about the August 13 incident or face the consequences. When no soldiers came forward, in an action unprecedented in U.S. history, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an executive order dishonorably discharging not only the 12 accused men, but the entire unit—167 Black soldiers of the B, C, and D companies of the 25th Infantry—from the U.S. Army on November 6 for their “conspiracy of silence.” The order further barred the men from ever re-enlisting in the U.S. military or applying for a civil service position with the federal government.

In the wake of being discharged, these innocent Black veterans, who had bravely chosen to serve the U.S., were forced to navigate the presumption of guilt and dangerousness, despite never having a trial or being convicted of any crime, and were subjected to mistreatment and abuse, as exemplified by the white employers in San Antonio who colluded to deny them employment. Some of these veterans had served in the military for over 20 years, but because of this action, were denied their pensions.

A Black man named James Cody was beaten with a flashlight, subjected to electric shock on his testicles and buttocks, and threatened with castration by officers acting under Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. Over the course of almost 30 years, Commander Burge oversaw and participated in the torture of over 100 Black men, resulting in scores of forced confessions. When Commander Burge first took command of the jurisdiction known as Area 2 as a detective in 1972, he and his men—known as the “Midnight Crew”—began forcing confessions using brutal torture practices such as beating, suffocation, electric shock, burning, Russian roulette, and mock execution.

In 1982, Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Daley was notified of Commander Burge’s tactics through a letter detailing Commander Burge’s abuse of a man named Andrew Wilson, who was beaten, shocked, suffocated, burned with a radiator, and threatened with a gun in his mouth. Mr. Wilson sued the city in one of numerous complaints and lawsuits alleging torture by Commander Burge and his men. Despite these complaints, the State’s Attorney’s office continued to use confessions obtained by Commander Burge’s team to convict and incarcerate dozens of Black men over the next 10 years.

An investigation into the torture allegations was not launched until 1991, following pressure from advocacy groups, international human rights organizations, and torture survivors. Two years later, Commander Burge was fired, and 15 years after that, he was convicted of perjury for lying under oath in one of the civil suits; he served less than four years in prison. In 2015, the city of Chicago approved a $5.5 million reparations package for survivors of the Burge-led torture campaign. The settlement included a formal apology as well as curricular reforms that would highlight the survivors’ stories in schools. Despite the review and reversal of many convictions that were obtained under Commander Burge’s command, in 2015 more than a dozen survivors remained in prison and had not yet had their cases reviewed.

Over 1,000 white students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gathered to attend a speech openly advocating for white supremacy by the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Dr. Hiram Evans. The UNC Political Science Department and the Carolina Political Union hosted the event, entitled “America and the Klan.” Amidst the rise of Nazism in Europe, Dr. Evans told students, “What America needs most now to restore the good old days when nations loved each other is a universal dose of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Dr. Evans said that “the Klan will continue to insist on white supremacy, for experience has shown that nations that have mixed breeds with the Black race have found themselves headed for destruction.” Dr. Evans also urged that “America had admitted too many foreigners” who were “responsible for most of our country’s social and economic ills” and that “America must be dominated by Americans, not by Negroes or aliens.” He warned students of the rise of Black leadership in the South, urging white students and faculty to join the Klan to combat Black political power.

As Dr. Evans spewed racism and intolerance, the more than 1,000 white students and faculty showed support and enjoyment of racial insults and threats throughout the event.

Locals viewed Dr. Evans’ visit as an attempt to launch a new public KKK chapter. In covering Dr. Evans’ 1937 speech, the Daily Tar Heel, Carolina’s student newspaper, noted that since the chapter first launched privately in 1921, “The KKK has grown to the strongest secret organization in existence.”

Carolina’s ties to the Klan persisted well into the 21st century. In the 1920s, UNC named Saunders Hall, a campus building, after William Saunders, the leader of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan.

Despite decades of student activism seeking to change this name, Saunders Hall remained the name on the building until 2015.

A 15-year-old Black teenager named Preston “John” Porter Jr. was burned alive while chained to a railroad stake in Limon, Colorado. A mob of more than 300 white people from throughout Lincoln County gathered to participate in the brutal public spectacle lynching.

Earlier in the year, Preston, his father, Preston Porter Sr., and his brother, Arthur Porter, moved to the Limon, Colorado, area from Lawrence, Kansas, to seek work on the railroad. When a white girl named Louise Frost was found dead in Limon on November 8, a search began for possible suspects. Newspapers reported that the Porter family had left Limon for Denver a few days after the girl was found dead, and white authorities focused suspicions on them. On November 12, all three were arrested and taken to the city jail in Denver.

During this era, the deep racial hostility that permeated American society burdened Black people and communities with presumptions of guilt and dangerousness when crimes were discovered. Allegations against Black people were rarely subject to serious scrutiny, and mere accusations of inappropriate behavior or violence by a Black person towards a white person often incited mob violence and the threat of lynching.

After the Porters had been in jail for four days, newspapers reported that Preston had confessed to the crime “in order to save his father and brother from sharing the fate that he believes awaits him.” Black suspects were often subjected to beatings, torture, and threats of lynching during police interrogations. While news reports often reported these confessions as justifications for the brutal terror lynchings that followed, the confession of a lynching victim was always more reliable evidence of fear than guilt.

Despite the governor’s order to not transfer Preston back to Lincoln County for at least eight days following Preston’s confession, the sheriff of Lincoln County prematurely transported Preston by train from the Denver jail to return to Lincoln County. When the train stopped just outside of Limon, a mob of 300 or more people—including Louise Frost’s father—were waiting. Newspapers described the lynching as follows:

[Preston] was said to have been reading a Bible and was allowed to pray before his lynching. When the flames reached his body, reports documented his screams for help as he writhed in pain, crying, “Oh my God, let me go men!…Please let me go. Oh, my God, my God!” When the ropes binding [Preston] to the stake had burned through, such that his body had fallen partially out of the fire, members of the mob threw additional kerosene oil over him and added wood to the fire. It was reported that [Preston’s] last words were “Oh, God, have mercy on these men, on the little girl and her father!”

Despite ample press coverage identifying multiple members of the mob, no investigation into the lynching was conducted and the coroner concluded Preston died “at the hands of parties unknown.” Following the lynching, Preston’s father and brother left Colorado to return to Kansas and soon afterward the Colorado legislature voted to reinstate the state’s death penalty to avoid future “lawlessness” like the lynching in Limon.

Preston “John” Porter Jr. is one of more than 6,500 documented African American victims of racial terror lynching killed in the U.S. between 1865 and 1950, and one of six killed in Colorado.

North Carolina passed two laws designed to limit the influence of an anti-slavery pamphlet and discourage its dissemination, mandating the punishment of death for those who twice violated the law. About a year earlier, in September 1829, David Walker, a free Black abolitionist and activist living in Boston, Massachusetts, published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. The anti-slavery pamphlet advocated for racial equality and called for free and enslaved Black people to actively challenge injustice, racial oppression, and the institution of slavery.

The Appeal was the first published document to demand the immediate and uncompensated emancipation of enslaved people in America. Mr. Walker also indirectly targeted his pamphlet to white readers, urging them to cease their inhumane treatment of enslaved people.

The pamphlet was quickly and clandestinely circulated among Black people, especially in the South, inciting anger among many white people and sometimes swift and harsh punishment. Jacob Cowan, a literate enslaved man in North Carolina, was sold “downriver” to Alabama after he was caught with 200 copies of the pamphlet for distribution to other enslaved people in the community. Copies of the pamphlet found by Southern officials were destroyed, the State of Georgia offered a bounty for Mr. Walker’s capture, and several Southern states—like North Carolina—eventually passed laws to further oppress both enslaved and free Black people.

Titled “An Act to Prevent the Circulation of Seditious Publications,” North Carolina’s first law banned bringing into the state any publication with the tendency to inspire revolution or resistance among enslaved or free Black people; a first violation of the law was punishable by whipping and one-year imprisonment, while those convicted of a second offense would “suffer death without benefit of clergy.”

The second law forbade all persons in the state from teaching the enslaved to read and write. A white person convicted of violating the law would be subject to a $100-200 fine or imprisonment; a free Black person would face a fine, imprisonment, or between 20 and 39 lashes; and an enslaved Black person convicted of teaching other enslaved people to read or write would receive 39 lashes.

Four federal marshals escorted six-year-old Ruby Bridges to her first day of first grade as the first Black student to attend previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. A riotous white mob organized by the local White Citizens’ Council gathered to protest her arrival, screaming hateful slurs, threats, and insults.

In August 1955, African American parents in New Orleans, Louisiana, sued the Orleans Parish School Board for failing to desegregate local schools in compliance with the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The following February, a federal court ordered the school board to desegregate the city’s schools. For the next four years, the school board and state lawmakers defied the federal court’s order and resisted school desegregation.

On May 16, 1960, Judge J. Skelly Wright issued a federal order demanding the gradual desegregation of New Orleans public schools, beginning with the first grade—but the Orleans Parish School Board convinced Judge Wright to accept an even more limited desegregation plan, requiring African American students to apply for transfer into all-white schools. Only five of the 137 African American first graders who applied for a transfer were accepted; four agreed to attend, including six-year-old Ruby Bridges, who was the sole Black student assigned to William Frantz Elementary.

After getting past the angry white crowd to enter the school, Ruby arrived in her assigned classroom to find that she and the teacher were the only two people present; it would remain that way for the rest of the school year. Within a week, nearly all of the white students assigned to the newly integrated elementary schools in New Orleans had withdrawn.

Despite threats and retaliation against her family, including her grandparents’ eviction from the Mississippi farm where they worked as sharecroppers, Ruby remained at Frantz Elementary. The next year, Ruby advanced to the second grade, and the school’s incoming first grade class had eight Black students.

Longview, Texas, Police Chief Roy Stone threatened four top-ranking NAACP officers—the Reverend S.Y. Nixon, I.S. White, E.C. Hawkins, and Rance James—phoning each of the men at home and stating he would jail them if they did not produce NAACP membership records immediately. Chief Stone acted under the authority of a new Longview city ordinance that gave the city manager the power to demand membership lists from any organization operating within the city’s limits and to impose criminal fines for non-compliance. Within 24 hours, Chief Stone made good on his threat, arresting Mr. Nixon, Mr. White, Mr. Hawkins, and Mr. James and detaining them in the city jail. Longview City Judge Henry Atkinson set bail at $200.

On October 9, the Texas NAACP announced plans to host the organization’s annual state conference in Longview. During planning meetings, local white officials refused to allow the Texas NAACP to convene in Longview unless they produced membership lists. During one meeting on October 23, white Longview journalist Carl Estes physically assaulted Field Secretary Edwin Washington and forced Black organizers out of his office after the NAACP declined to disclose confidential information about its members.

The following day, the Longview City Commission passed the mandatory disclosure ordinance targeting the Texas NAACP. Every city commissioner endorsed enforcement of the ordinance, knowing that requiring the NAACP to disclose its membership lists could have disastrous and deadly consequences for its members. On October 27, NAACP Field Secretary Washington announced plans to move the Texas annual conference to Dallas, considering “the pressures, threats, ugliness, and distress” that Black civil rights leaders faced in Longview.

Membership in the NAACP or participation in civil rights work often meant that Black people would be fired from their jobs, harassed by the police, and become targets of vigilante violence and hate crimes. African Americans joined despite the threats because of their commitment to end racial inequality, but the risks were real.

The passage of this ordinance in Longview led to the passage of a new state law, enacted in December 1957, modeled on the Longview ordinance, which authorized county judges to demand confidential records from civil rights organizations. In 1958, in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel Patterson, the U.S. Supreme Court declared these mandatory disclosure laws unconstitutional, as violative of the First Amendment right to freedom of association.

A mob of at least 700 white men, women, and children killed two teenage Black boys—15-year-old Ernest Collins and 16-year-old Benny Mitchell—in Colorado County, Texas, in a public spectacle lynching. Afterward, officials called the lynching “justice,” and no one in the mob was punished.

In October 1935, a young white woman’s body was found in a creek near her family’s farm in Columbus, Texas. When local officials concluded she had been murdered, suspicion soon focused on Ernest Collins and Benny Mitchell: two Black teens who had been seen picking pecans near the same creek. During this era, the deep racial hostility that permeated Southern society burdened Black people with a presumption of guilt that often served to focus suspicion on Black communities after a crime was discovered, whether evidence supported that suspicion or not.

Law enforcement officers arrested Ernest and Benny and, soon after, reported that the young men had confessed to the crime. Black suspects in the South during this time were regularly subjected to beatings, torture, and threats of lynching during police interrogations. News reports eagerly reported Ernest’s and Benny’s alleged confessions as truthful justifications for the brutal lynchings that followed, but without fair investigation or trial, their supposed confessions serve as more reliable evidence of fear than guilt.

The boys were held in Houston after arrest until they had to return to Columbus for a trial on November 12. While the sheriff was transporting Benny and Ernest to the Colorado County courthouse, several cars filled with armed white men stopped them on a bridge crossing and demanded to lynch the two boys. The sheriff handed them over.

Immediately, the white mob brought Ernest and Benny to a live oak tree about a mile from the young white girl’s home and prepared to kill them. A crowd of at least 700 people gathered to watch and repeatedly “burst into jeering screams” as Ernest and Benny, who had been chained together by their necks, were led to the tree. Several members of the mob placed ropes around the boys’ necks and hanged them until dead.

The next day, the white community proudly boasted and praised the lynchings. The county attorney publicly said the lynching was “an expression of the will of the people,” and a local judge called the lynchings “justice.” Several newspapers reporting on the lynchings printed an image of two local sheriff officials posing with one of the lynching ropes, and both ropes were exhibited in a local drug store. Local press was silent about the lynching’s impact on the local Black community. Though the mob members and spectators were widely known, no one was immediately arrested or charged for their actions.

Since the end of Reconstruction in 1877, racial terror lynchings targeting Black communities had killed thousands of men, women, and children throughout the U.S., but repeated calls for a federal anti-lynching law had failed due to obstruction by Southern white lawmakers. In 1935, the same year that Benny Mitchell and Ernest Collins were lynched, the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate. Texas’s own Sen. Tom Connally opposed the bill and claimed that states were capable of stopping lynching without “federal interference.” Within weeks of the lynchings of Benny and Ernest, the NAACP protested the lack of any state or local investigation and insisted it clearly showed that many states could not—or would not—act to stop the lynching of Black people. The bill ultimately failed, and the U.S. Congress never passed anti-lynching legislation during the 20th century.

After a rushed trial and conviction, an enslaved Black man named Nat Turner was hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia, after being convicted of leading a revolt against his enslavers.

On August 21, 1831, Mr. Turner led a group of Black people in a revolt against slavery. Other enslaved Black people joined the uprising, and Mr. Turner’s troops grew to 60 to 70 people who fought white enslavers before being defeated by a militia. Many of Mr. Turner’s followers were killed or captured immediately, but Mr. Turner escaped and evaded searchers for weeks before being captured on October 30, 1831.

Enslavers and defenders of slavery throughout Virginia wanted Nat Turner and all who participated in the revolt harshly punished as an example to others who might be inspired by his efforts. At least 18 Black participants in the uprising were executed along with Nat Turner.

However, in the months after the rebellion, angry white mobs began to torture and murder hundreds of Black people who had not participated in the revolt, terrorizing enslaved and free Black people. Conditions of enslavement worsened for thousands of enslaved Black people as more cruel, barbaric, and traumatizing forms of control were implemented.

In response to Mr. Turner’s revolt, at least nine states—Virginia, Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee—passed laws targeting enslaved and free Black people and limiting their mobility. These laws prohibited Black people from assembling freely, conducting independent religious services, or preaching to a crowd of more than five people. Some states passed laws criminalizing the education of Black people, prohibiting Black people from learning to read or write. Some states also passed laws barring free Black people from living in the state.

Rather than retreat from the horrors of slavery as was happening in Central and South America, southern states in America committed to a new era of harsher conditions, dehumanizing control, and brutal punishment of enslaved people.