Author: Desto22

A mob of at least 2,000 white residents of Princess Anne, Maryland, beat, hanged, dragged, and burned George Armwood to death. Mr. Armwood, who was reportedly intellectually disabled, had been accused of assaulting an 80-year-old woman who was also the mother of a local white policeman. Shortly after being arrested, Mr. Armwood was dragged out of the jail and an 18-year-old boy immediately cut off his ear with a butcher knife. The growing mob then beat George Armwood nearly to death and dragged him to a tree, where he was hanged. Afterward, the mob cut down his corpse, dragged it through the streets, hanged it again, and then staged a public burning. The New Journal and Guide reported that “[m]en, women and children, participated in the savage orgy.” The Afro American reported that the mob danced around Mr. Armwood’s charred remains. The report quoted one white man, who said, “It would have cost the state $1000 to hang the man. It cost us 75 cents.”

Mr. Armwood’s lynching sparked a national outcry and calls for prosecution of the mob members, yet investigations at the county, state, and federal levels faced obstacles and delays. Inquiries following the lynching were marked by residents’ refusal to identify participants as well as mockery and intimidation of Black witnesses. The American Civil Liberties Union, frustrated with the silence, began offering a $1,000 reward to people willing to name leaders of the mob.

Even when finally presented with identifying evidence, the county prosecutor refused to act. When the Maryland Attorney General ordered troops to arrest eight named participants, white residents who supported the accused mob members waged riots of protest. Four white men were ultimately tried for the lynching of George Armwood and acquitted by all-white juries.

Founded in December 1865 by former Confederate Army officers, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) operated as a secret vigilante group targeting Black people and their allies with violent terrorism to resist Reconstruction and re-establish a system of white supremacy in the South.

KKK violence was so intense in South Carolina after the Civil War that U.S. Attorney General Amos Akerman and Army Major Lewis Merrill traveled there to investigate. In York County alone they found evidence of 11 murders and more than 600 whippings and other assaults. When local grand juries failed to take action, Mr. Akerman urged President Ulysses S. Grant to intervene, describing the counties as “under the domination of systematic and organized depravity.” Mr. Merrill said the situation was a “carnival of crime not paralleled in the history of any civilized community.”

In April 1871, President Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which made it a federal crime to deprive American citizens of their civil rights through racial terrorism. On October 12, 1871, President Grant warned nine South Carolina counties with prevalent KKK activity that martial law would be declared if the Klan did not disperse. The warning was ignored. On October 17, 1871, President Grant declared martial law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the same nine counties. Once he did so, federal forces were allowed to arrest and imprison KKK members and instigators of racial terrorism without bringing them before a judge or into court.

Many affluent Klan members fled the jurisdiction to avoid arrest, but by December 1871 approximately 600 Klansmen were in jail. More than 200 arrestees were indicted, 53 pleaded guilty, and five were convicted at trial. Klan terrorism in South Carolina decreased significantly after the arrests and trials, but racial violence targeting Black people continued throughout the South for decades.

Black Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who engaged in a silent protest on the medal stand to bring light to the racial discrimination and violence against Black people in the U.S., were met with hostility by white supporters and the media and were eventually suspended for their protest.

The 1968 Olympics followed a summer of racial unrest and protest following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April and the murder of Robert Kennedy in June. Police violence and poverty burdened Black communities in ways that attracted international attention.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos placed first and third in the 200-meter dash at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. As the U.S. national anthem played during the medal ceremony, the two men bowed their heads and raised black gloved fists in a protest against racial discrimination in the U.S. Both men wore black socks with no shoes, and Mr. Smith also wore a black scarf around his neck. Mr. Smith raised his right fist to represent Black power, while Mr. Carlos raised his left fist to represent Black unity. Mr. Smith said his black scarf represented Black pride and their black socks without shoes signified Black poverty in America.

The following day, the U.S. Olympic Committee threatened other athletes with stern disciplinary action if they engaged in demonstrations. Acting USOC Director Everett Barnes issued a formal statement to the Olympic International Committee, condemning Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos and claiming that the sprinters “made our country look like the devil.”

The USOC suspended Mr. Smith and Mr. Carlos from the U.S. Olympic team following a midnight meeting. In the early hours of the morning on October 18, the Committee ordered both men to vacate the Olympic village in Mexico within 48 hours.

Despite their medal-winning performances, the two athletes faced intense criticism in the media and received death threats upon returning home. At the time, their protest was wrongly perceived as a show of disrespect directed toward the American flag and national anthem.

In 1875, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial discrimination in access to public accommodations and facilities. A number of African Americans subsequently sued businesses that refused to serve Black customers. The Supreme Court heard five of those cases in 1883, and on October 15, 1883, it struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in an 8-1 decision known as the Civil Rights Cases.

The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment, which was cited as the constitutional authorization for the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and mandates “equal protection of the laws,” did not apply to private citizens or entities. The Court decided that the Equal Protection Clause applied only to actions taken or laws passed by state governments. Writing for the majority less than 20 years after the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, Justice Joseph Bradley questioned the necessity and appropriateness of laws aimed at protecting Black people from discrimination:

“When a man has emerged from slavery, and, by the aid of beneficent legislation, has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.”

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Civil Rights Cases eliminated the only federal law that prohibited racial discrimination by individuals or private businesses and left African Americans who were victims of private discrimination to seek legal recourse in unsympathetic state courts. Racial discrimination in housing, restaurants, hotels, theaters, and employment became increasingly entrenched and persisted for generations. It would be more than 80 years before Congress tried again to outlaw discrimination by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Authorities charged four white people with unlawful assembly for convening a literacy class for Black residents in Wheeling, a city in present-day West Virginia that was then a part of Virginia.

That day, a group of free Black people met at a Wheeling schoolhouse to attend a literacy class taught by Ellen Richie, John Templeton, John Moore, and Stanley Cuthbert. When authorities learned about the gathering, they declared that the literacy class was “against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth” and charged the four instructors under an anti-literacy law passed three years earlier by Virginia’s all-white legislature.

That 1831 law, which led to at least a dozen prosecutions in Wheeling alone, declared that “all meetings of free negroes or mulattos, at any school-house, church, meeting house or other place for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be deemed and considered as an unlawful assembly.” The law authorized officers to enter the meeting space, break up the meeting, and subject any Black person found in attendance to up to 20 lashes. White people convicted under the law faced a fine of up to $50—the equivalent of roughly $1,800 today—and could be imprisoned for up to two months.

The law was part of a wave of anti-literacy laws passed throughout the South targeting both free and enslaved Black people as well as those assisting them. Similar legislation was passed in Georgia (1829), Louisiana (1830), North Carolina (1830), and South Carolina (1834).

Yet, despite the criminalization of Black education—and the harsh legal and extrajudicial punishments inflicted on those accused of violating literacy laws—many Black people courageously found ways to circumvent these laws. Historians estimate that hundreds of thousands of Black people acquired literacy during the era of enslavement.

Members of the Black community in Roxboro, North Carolina, were terrorized by an ongoing campaign from a white lynch mob, threatening them to leave their homes or face racial violence.

In July 1920, a mob of local white residents in Roxboro seized an innocent Black farmworker, Ed Roach, from the Person County Jail where he was being held for the alleged assault of a white girl. In broad daylight, the mob took Mr. Roach to the churchyard, hanged him from a tree, and riddled his body with bullets. In the days after the lynching, Mr. Roach’s employer signed a written statement affirming Mr. Roach’s innocence, stating that he had been working with him when the crime occurred. No one was held accountable for his death.

After lynching an innocent man, the white mob sought to further terrorize members of the Black community. The self-identified “Person County Mob” claimed credit for the lynching and began distributing letters and threatening death, bombing, and other violence in an attempt to drive the Black community out of Person County.

In the early weeks of October, a Black community member received a letter signed from the “Person County Mob” that instructed him to leave town “or face a fate similar to that suffered by Ed Roach.” For weeks, each day, more letters were sent by the “Person County Mob” that called for the removal of the Black community from Roxboro or threatened violence.

An older Black woman who lived in a predominantly white area of the county received a letter telling her to move from her home within one week or face violence. She refused to move, and sticks of dynamite were detonated at her home while she was in it, tearing out the windows and doors of her house. She survived but was forced to move from her home.

In addition, white landowners were told to assist in getting Black tenants to leave and everyone was required to support the eviction of Black residents. No one was ever held accountable for this violence and terrorism in Person County.

Jonny Gammage, cousin and business partner of Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ray Seals, was detained during a traffic stop while driving Mr. Seals’s Jaguar in the working-class suburb of Brentwood. According to witness testimony, Lt. Milton Mulholland pulled Mr. Gammage over for tapping his brakes and called Officer John Votjas for backup. The officers later claimed that Mr. Gammage pointed an object at the officers—which turned out to be a cell phone—and struggled. Mr. Mulholland and Mr. Votjas, along with Officer Michael Albert, Sergeant Keith Henderson, and Officer Sean Patterson, ultimately pinned Mr. Gammage face-down on the pavement. After several minutes, the officers’ use of force suffocated Mr. Gammage and he died.

On November 27, 1995, Mr. Mulholland and Mr. Votjas were charged with third-degree murder, and Mr. Albert was charged with involuntary manslaughter. The charges against Mr. Mulholland and Mr. Votjas were later reduced to involuntary manslaughter. Mr. Henderson and Mr. Patterson were not charged in the incident.

Officer Votjas was acquitted by an all-white jury and, a year later, promoted to sergeant; Judge Joseph McCloskey dismissed charges against Mr. Mulholland and Mr. Albert after two trials resulted in mistrials. In January 1996, Brentwood police chief Wayne Babish, who had called for a complete investigation into Mr. Gammage’s death, was fired by the Brentwood City Council for failing to support the charged officers.

Multiple public protests were held in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, calling for “Justice for Jonny” and federal intervention. However, in 1999 the Department of Justice declined to file civil rights charges, stating that there was not enough evidence that unreasonable force had been used. Learn more about how a presumption of guilt and dangerousness makes people of color vulnerable to racial violence, wrongful convictions, and unfair treatment.

Tarrant County Sheriff Carl Smith and Deputy Tom Snow shot David Bunn, a handcuffed Black man, as he fled to escape a white lynch mob.

Four days before these officers shot Mr. Bunn, white mobs made three separate attempts to lynch him. On October 7, a mob of over 500 white men, women, and children surrounded the Tarrant County Jail, where Sheriff Carl Smith stood guard. The mob selected a committee of 15 white men to carry out the lynching, and Sheriff Smith permitted them to enter the jail. Finding no evidence of Mr. Bunn in that jail, the crowd selected a new lynching committee, whose members broke into the Fort Worth City Jail. After inspecting that jail and failing to locate Mr. Bunn, 21 white men got in their cars and drove across the county line to Dallas, intent on seizing Mr. Bunn from the Dallas County Jail and lynching him, but they failed in their attempt.

Threats of a future lynching continued to circulate in Dallas and Tarrant counties over the next several days. Sheriff Smith and Deputy Snow knew that white mobs intended to kidnap and lynch Mr. Bunn as they transported him from the Dallas County Jail to the Tarrant County Courthouse, so they planned to move him in the early morning hours, allegedly to avoid detection.

At 2:30 am on the morning of October 11, the officers handcuffed Mr. Bunn and loaded him into a police car. Mr. Bunn sat in terror as they drove, even saying to the officers that he feared being lynched. As they crossed the county line near Arlington, Sheriff Smith observed four automobiles approaching and identified these vehicles as members of the lynch mob, saying to Mr. Bunn “I think that’s them…”

Fearing for his life, Mr. Bunn jumped, in handcuffs, from the police car. Rather than capture Mr. Bunn and return him to their car, Sheriff Smith and Deputy Snow shot and killed him as the mob approached. Four bullets were lodged in his body before Mr. Bunn fell into a roadside ditch and died. No one faced charges or accountability for Mr. Bunn’s murder.

Three Mexican nationals were killed in central California during cotton growers’ attempts to break a strike waged by roughly 15,000-18,000 cotton pickers and cotton gin workers. Roughly 95% of the strikers were Mexican migrant workers, whose pay had fallen more than 75% since 1930—even as the price of cotton rose 150% in 1932. The strikers were demanding pay of $1 per 100 pounds of cotton picked; the owners offered 60 cents.

Dolores Hernandez, a picker, and Delfino Davila, a Mexican consular representative, were shot and killed in Pixley, California, when at least 30 armed white ranchers confronted dozens of unarmed Mexican laborers who had gathered to hear one of the strike leaders speak. Eight other strikers were shot and wounded by the ranchers. Pedro Subia, the third person killed that day, was shot in a separate incident when other armed growers and police confronted strikers at a nearby farm; three other strikers were shot and wounded alongside Mr. Subia.

Days earlier, growers had tried to break the strike by evicting the Mexican workers and their families from housing on the growers’ property. When the workers and families maintained the strike and camped in nearby fields, growers conspired with local authorities and businesses to refuse them access to food. Even the federal government promised food aid only if the migrant farmworkers acceded to the growers’ demands; over the course of two weeks, seven children of strikers reportedly died from malnutrition.

The strike ended on October 26, 1933, when the growers agreed to pay strikers 75 cents per 100 pounds of cotton. In February 1934, eight ranchers standing trial for the murder of Dolores Hernandez and Delfino Davila were found not guilty by an all-white local jury. No one was ever tried for killing Pedro Subia.

A Black man named Bob Hudson was shot to death by a white lynch mob in Weakley County, Tennessee, near the town of Dresden. According to reports, Mr. Hudson’s wife filed charges of assault and battery against a white man, who was subsequently arrested and fined. In retaliation, 10 masked white men dragged Mrs. Hudson from her home and whipped her severely. When Mr. Hudson ran to his wife’s defense, the mob shot and killed him.

During this era of racial terrorism, white men committed sexual violence against Black women with impunity, while the most baseless fears of sexual contact between a Black man and white woman regularly resulted in deadly violence. Nearly one in four Black men lynched between 1877 to 1945 were accused of improper contact with a white woman. Meanwhile, white men were rarely arrested, let alone convicted or punished for assaulting Black women—or committing lynchings—and, as in this case, if Black people even dared to seek help from authorities, they could be subjected to lethal violence.

Including Bob Hudson, at least six African American victims of racial terror lynching were killed in Weakley County, Tennessee, between 1877 and 1950. Learn more about how over 6,500 Black women, men, and children were victims of racial terror lynching in the U.S. between 1865-1950.