Author: Desto22

An African American man named Charles Julius Miller and an unnamed African American woman entered the Café Neapolitan in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The couple was immediately refused service and ordered to leave. When Mr. Miller refused to exit, a “free-for-all” ensued in which white patrons and staff attacked Mr. Miller, who pulled out a gun for protection after being attacked. The violence left many people injured and resulted in approximately 50 arrests. Mr. Miller was among those hospitalized for his injuries.

Racial segregation and violence plagued the U.S. throughout the early 20th century and was not an exclusively Southern problem. Riots and disturbances like these took place throughout the country, and racial segregation and bias remained pervasive problems nationwide.

As was common at the time, mainstream, white-run newspapers reported the Pittsburgh restaurant incident as having been caused by the African American who dared enter an establishment where he did not belong and made no critique of the injustice of racial segregation.

Jim Johnson, an Arkansas supreme court justice, told a state-wide segregationist rally at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to “do what needs to be done” to fight the proposed integration of schools in the Dollarway School District. “When Dollarway falls,” Johnson exhorted the crowd, “Arkansas falls!” The crowd of over a thousand white Arkansas residents cheered.

On August 4, a federal judge ordered that three Black children be admitted to the Dollarway School District when schools reopened in September. The Dollarway School Board appealed the decision. Meanwhile, white residents in the Dollarway District put together a petition with over 1,200 signatures asking Governor Orval Faubus to preserve segregation in the district “with all the force at your command.”

Though Brown v. Board of Education determined in 1954 that school segregation was unconstitutional, for years white residents across Arkansas relied on intimidation and organized political resistance to maintain segregation in the public schools. White residents fought court rulings and held intimidation rallies to terrorize Black families and their children while politicians closed schools to avoid integration. By 1960, only 98 of Arkansas’s 104,000 Black students attended integrated schools.

Justice Jim Johnson was an outspoken segregationist who served as an Arkansas state senator and associate justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court in the 1950s and 1960s. After the Brown decision, Justice Johnson launched a campaign to ensure that defense of segregation remained a central political platform in Arkansas. Justice Johnson formed the White Citizens’ Council of Arkansas, which protested plans to integrate schools in the town of Hoxie, and proposed an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution that would authorize state officials to ignore federal law, which Arkansas voters passed. In 1956, Justice Johnson challenged incumbent Orval Faubus and ran for governor on a segregationist platform with the endorsement of the KKK. Although Justice Johnson lost the election, he leveraged his supporters to pressure Governor Faubus to embrace the segregationist cause. He was instrumental in persuading Governor Faubus to defy federal orders to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

The massive resistance to integration by the white community was largely successful in preventing integration of schools, especially in the South. In the five Deep South states, every single one of 1.4 million Black school children attended segregated schools until the fall of 1960. By the start of the 1964-65 school year, less than 3% of the South’s Black children attended school with white students, and in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina that number remained substantially below 1%. In 1967, 13 years after Brown v. Board of Education, a report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights observed that white violence and intimidation against Black people “continues to be a deterrent to school desegregation.”

The stage was set for slavery in the U.S. as early as the 14th century, when Spain and Portugal began to capture Africans for enslavement in Europe. Slavery eventually expanded to colonial America, where the first enslaved Africans were brought in the Virginia colony at Point Comfort on the James River on August 20, 1619. It was reported that “20 and odd Negroes” from the White Lion, an English ship, were sold in exchange for food; the remaining Africans were transported to Jamestown and sold into slavery.

Historians have long believed that these first Africans enslaved in the colonies came from the Caribbean, but Spanish records suggest they were captured in Angola, then a Portuguese colony in West Central Africa. While aboard the ship São João Bautista bound for Mexico, they were stolen by two English ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. Once in Virginia, the enslaved Africans were dispersed throughout the colony.

Although Virginia was the first British colony to legally define slavery in mid-17th century North America, slavery did not immediately become the predominant form of labor there. For decades after slavery was formalized, Virginia plantation owners held nearly 10 times as many indentured servants as enslaved Africans, and many of them were white. By the 1680s, however, African slave labor became the dominant system on Virginia farms and the population of enslaved people continued to grow exponentially. As enslavement became a status centrally tied to race, colonial American laws and culture developed to create a narrative of racial difference that defined African people as intellectually inferior, morally deficient, and benefitting from the “civilizing” influence of slavery.

This belief system and institution spread widely over the next two centuries, even as the U.S. gained independence and embraced a national identity as the “land of the free.” At the start of the Civil War in 1861, Virginia had the largest population of enslaved Black people of any state in the Confederacy.

A mob of white people in Alachua County, Florida, lynched five Black individuals—Andrew McHenry, Bert Dennis, John Haskins, Mary Dennis, and Stella Young—while a Black man named James Dennis was also killed nearby by a “sheriff’s posse.” On the same day, almost 1,000 miles away in Navarro County, Texas, a mob of 200 white people lynched Edward Lang, a 21-year-old Black man. These incidents of racial terror violence occurred just months before the U.S. entered World War I to fight on behalf of the principles of democracy and freedom.

On August 18, in Jonesville, Florida, a Black man by the name of Boisey Long was accused of murdering the local constable. When Mr. Long went missing, word spread that four Black men—Andrew McHenry, Bert Dennis, James Dennis, and John Haskins—and two Black women—Mary Dennis and Stella Young—had allegedly aided Mr. Long in an escape. On Saturday, August 19, a mob of white people captured Andrew McHenry, Bert Dennis, John Haskins, Mary Dennis, and Stella Young, and lynched them. According to reports, on the same day James Dennis was captured and killed by a “sheriff’s posse.”

As was the case here, and typical of the era, white people sought to maintain white supremacy and dominance by instilling fear in the entire Black community through brutal violence that was often unpredictable and arbitrary. With no reported evidence connecting these men and women to the alleged crime, the white mob’s focus clearly expanded beyond a specific person accused of an offense and instead targeted members of the wider Black community, instilling community-wide fear.

Nearly 1,000 miles away, on the same day, a 21-year-old Black man named Edward Lang was accused of assaulting a young white woman near the town of Rice in Navarro County, Texas. A mob of white people captured Mr. Lang four miles from where the alleged attack took place and handed him over to the sheriff. However, before Mr. Lang could be tried, on that same day, an unmasked and armed mob of 200 white farmers seized Mr. Lang from the jail and hanged him from a telephone pole.

During this era, almost 25% of lynchings involved allegations of inappropriate behavior between a Black man and a white woman that was often characterized as “assault.”

Lynchings and racial terror during this era reinforced racial hierarchy and fostered lawlessness and disregard for constitutional guarantees of equal protection. Despite the tragedy of this violence, hundreds of thousands of Black people fought to defend the U.S. when it was threatened during World War I.

A mob of white people in Chatham County, Georgia, lynched Walter Asbury after he was accused of assaulting a white girl in the community. In an effort to terrorize the Black community, the mob left his body hanging all day with a sign that read: “This is the way we protect our homes.”

On August 17, a young girl reported that she had been assaulted in her home in Pooler, Georgia. When news spread that the alleged attacker was a Black man, white mobs in Pooler began searching the surrounding area for the alleged assailant. Mr. Asbury, who was attending a local dance about a mile from the scene, was located just after midnight and seized by the mob.

The deep racial hostility that permeated Southern society during this time period often served to focus suspicion on Black communities after a crime was discovered or alleged, whether evidence supported that suspicion or not. Almost 25% of all lynchings involved allegations of inappropriate behavior between a Black man and a white woman that was characterized as “assault” or “sexual assault.” The mere accusation of sexual impropriety regularly aroused violent mobs and ended in lynching. Allegations against Black people were rarely subject to scrutiny.

Though no evidence linked Mr. Asbury to the crime, a mob of 300 white men from Pooler captured him and took him to an open field. Just after midnight, the mob hanged him next to a railroad track 10 miles west of Savannah and riddled his body with bullets. Newspapers reported that Mr. Asbury asked for time to pray in the moments leading up to his lynching and, right before he was killed, begged that word be sent to his wife.

Mr. Asbury’s body was left hanging by the railroad tracks all day with a sign that read: “This is the way we protect our homes” in an effort to intimidate the entire Black community. The practice of terrorizing members of the Black community following racial violence was common during this period. Southern lynching was not only intended to impose “popular justice” or retaliation for a specific crime. Rather, these lynchings were meant to send a broader message of domination and to instill fear within the entire Black community. Mobs often forced a victim’s body to hang for hours and even prevented families from claiming their loved ones. In this case, more than 24 hours passed before the coroner was permitted to cut down Mr. Asbury’s body.

No one was ever held accountable for the lynching of Walter Asbury. Mr. Asbury was one of at least two victims of racial terror lynchings in Chatham County and one of at least 593 victims in Georgia between 1877 and 1950.

An estimated 1,000 white men and women participated in a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony just outside of Warwick, New York.

Newspapers reported that motorists traveling from the city of Warwick to the city of Florida in New York on the evening of August 16 were stopped by guards connected to the Ku Klux Klan rally and asked for a “password” to enter the public area. Beginning at 9 pm, hundreds of white people who had arrived for the initiation gathered in an open field near the highway and burned a cross more than 20 feet tall. The meeting lasted until the early hours of the morning on August 17.

Hundreds of people in the open field dressed in “full regalia” with robes bearing the insignia of the white supremacist organization. The “white hoods and the red crosses embroidered on the breasts of the loose garments could be plainly seen even from a distance of several hundred yards” by eyewitnesses. The leader of the Klansmen reportedly spoke about the organization’s commitment to opposing interracial marriage, as well as their dislike of foreigners.

During this era, white supremacist organizations sought to maintain racial hierarchy and dominance through terror. Organized groups committed to the myth of the inferiority of Black people such as White Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan drew in crowds of hundreds, and often thousands. Claiming prominent politicians and other high-ranking members of white society, the Ku Klux Klan mounted campaigns of racial terror violence and used political power to uphold segregation and racial hierarchy.

Although racial terror and codified racial segregation have come to be thought of as uniquely Southern phenomena, the legacy of white supremacy and racial bigotry was a powerful force in the North as well. Inspired by Southern segregationists and white supremacists, there is a clear and undeniable record of pervasive discrimination based on race that spread across America, including the North. The legacy of this history haunts us still.

A mob of unmasked white men in Marengo County, Alabama, lynched Rufus Lesseur, a 24-year-old Black man, and left his body riddled with bullets.

Less than two days earlier, a white woman in Thomaston, Alabama, claimed that a Black man had entered her home and frightened her. After someone claimed that a hat found near the woman’s home belonged to Mr. Lesseur, a mob of white men formed and kidnapped him. The white men transported a terrified Mr. Lesseur into the nearby woods and locked him in a tiny calaboose, or makeshift jail, for more than a day.

Black people carried a heavy presumption of guilt during this era, and many hundreds of Black people across the South were lynched based on false allegations, accusations of non-serious crimes, and even for non-criminal violations of social customs and racial expectations. Such “offenses” could be something as simple as arguing with or insulting a white person or, as in this case, frightening a white woman.

At 3 am on August 16, without an investigation, trial, conviction of any offense, or a sentencing proceeding, a mob of white men broke into the locked shack, seized Mr. Lesseur, dragged him outside, and lynched him, riddling his body with bullets.

Although he was lynched by a mob of unmasked white men in a town with only 300 residents, state officials claimed that no one could be identified, arrested, or prosecuted for his murder. Mr. Lesseur is one of at least four Black victims of racial terror violence in Marengo County, Alabama, between 1877 and 1950.

Today, the makeshift jail where Mr. Lesseur was unlawfully held still stands in Thomaston.

Just after midnight, three firebombs were hurled through the windows of Holy Cross Church of God in Christ, a Black church in Providence, Rhode Island. The church had opened five weeks prior in an all-white part of the Federal Hill neighborhood.

The bombs shattered the church’s glass windows and lit several pews in the Sunday school classroom on fire. The perpetrators of the attack also vandalized a pillar by the church’s main entrance with a racial slur.

The bombing took place amidst a summer of virulent white backlash to the Black community’s efforts to integrate city housing and public schools.

At that time, Providence was one of the most racially segregated cities in the country, with nearly 80% of its Black population residing in South Providence. A 1965 University of Rhode Island study concluded that Providence was “as segregated as many cities of the Deep South.”

In Providence, as in much of the country at the time, many of the leaders of the campaign against segregation were prominent figures in the Black church. This made Black churches a target for white fear, anger, and violence.

Over 100 Black churches were burned, bombed, or vandalized during the civil rights era. While the majority of these racially motivated attacks took place in Southern cities such as Birmingham, where explosives placed by a white man killed four young Black girls at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963, Black churches outside the South were also targeted, in cities including Providence, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

A mob of white citizens gathered at the local jail in Springfield, Illinois, intent on lynching two Black men named George Richardson and Joe James. When the would-be lynch mob learned that the men had been taken from the jail to another city, a violent riot broke out.

Some members of the mob destroyed the business of Henry Loper, a man rumored to have helped transport Mr. Richardson and Mr. James from the jail. Others, convinced the men were still in the jail, attacked police and militia stationed at the facility. The two mob groups then rejoined and descended on homes and businesses in Springfield’s Black neighborhoods, stealing close to $150,000 worth of property and setting fire to whole blocks.

The violence climaxed early the next morning with the lynching of two Black men. After Scott Burton tried to defend himself against the attackers, he was shot four times, dragged through the streets, then hanged and mutilated until the militia interceded. William Donegan, an 84-year-old Black man married to a white woman, was taken from his home and hanged from a tree across the street, where his assailants cut his throat and stabbed him. Mr. Donegan was still alive when the militia arrived at the scene but died the next morning.

Amidst the terror of the riot, which left an estimated seven people dead, hundreds of Black citizens sought National Guard protection at nearby Camp Lincoln. Others fled the city. Police arrested 150 people suspected of participating in the violence, and 117 were indicted. Of the three individuals indicted for murder, one committed suicide and two were acquitted.

On the morning of August 13, 1955, white men shot and killed Lamar Smith, a 63-year-old Black farmer and veteran of World War I, in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse in Brookhaven, Mississippi, while he was encouraging African Americans to vote in a local run-off election.

Mr. Smith, a voting rights advocate affiliated with the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had been threatened and warned to stop trying to register and organize African American voters in the community. His murder took place on the courthouse lawn in front of dozens of witnesses, including Sheriff Robert E. Case, who permitted one of the alleged assailants to leave the crime scene covered in blood. Days later, that man and two others were arrested in connection with the shooting. All three suspects were white.

In September 1955, a grand jury composed of 20 white men declined to indict the three suspects for murder after witnesses failed to come forward to testify. Following the grand jury’s report, District Attorney E.C. Barlow criticized the lack of witness cooperation and complained about the sheriff’s handling of the case. Despite the district attorney’s public promises to proceed with the investigation, the criminal case against the three suspects was dismissed and no one was held accountable for Lamar Smith’s murder.

The shooting of Lamar Smith was one of several racially motivated attacks in Mississippi in 1955. Others included the May murder of civil rights leader George Lee in Belzoni, the August abduction and murder of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta, and the near-fatal shooting of Gus Courts in Belzoni in December 1955. Throughout the next decade and beyond, Mississippi would be known as one of the most violent and deadly environments in the fight for equal rights.

In 2019, EJI unveiled a new monument at the Peace and Justice Memorial Center that commemorates 24 men and women who were lynched or killed in racially motivated attacks during the 1950s, including Lamar Smith. Mr. Smith’s grandchildren, pictured below, traveled from Mississippi to attend the monument dedication ceremony.