Author: Desto22

Louisiana’s House of Representatives broadened its ban on interracial marriage by passing legislation, by a vote of 93 to 10, prohibiting Black people and white people from living together under any circumstances. Under the new legislation, cohabitation was a felony punishable by imprisonment for up to five years. The bill was signed into law by Governor Jared Sanders on July 16, 1910.

The legislation broadened the state’s existing ban on interracial marriage and criminalized the cohabitation of white people and individuals with at least one Black great-grandparent, punishing those found living together irrespective of marital status. The law authorized the state to break up couples who had lived together for years. Acknowledging that the act would likely destroy thousands of families, white legislators declared the impending trauma to be “suffering incidental to a good cause-the cause of preserving the purity of the [white] race.”

Laws criminalizing relationships between Black and white people predated Loiusiana’s statehood. In 1724, the French colonial government criminalized interracial relationships, imposing severe penalties on interracial couples. When Louisiana joined the U.S. in 1812, it banned marriage between enslaved Black people, free people of color, and white people. In 1825, Louisiana severely restricted the ability of biracial children to inherit property through white fathers. In 1868, during Reconstruction, newly elected Black legislators successfully pushed for the repeal of Louisiana’s interracial marriage ban. An all-white legislature reenacted the ban in 1894.

During the 20th century, Louisiana legislators repeatedly broadened the state’s ban on interracial marriage. A set of laws passed in 1900 and 1914 forbade interracial couples who claimed residence in Louisiana from getting married outside the state. A 1914 enactment made it a crime to officiate an interracial wedding and exposed individuals who violated this law to the threat of imprisonment. Louisiana courts were likewise complicit in rigorously enforcing racial hierarchy. Local press boasted that “a large number of persons had been convicted” during the 1908-1910 period. These laws remained in effect until the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation statutes unconstitutional in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia. Louisiana did not formally repeal its ban on interracial marriage until five years later, in 1972.

A white judge ordered a Black mother to brutally beat her 15-year-old son in front of hundreds of white people in the Lexington, Kentucky, town square. Judge John J. Riley imposed this sentence upon the boy, Simon Searce, as punishment for getting into a physical altercation with a white boy.

Compelled by the judge’s order, Simon’s mother took her son straight from the courtroom, through the crowded streets, and to the town square filled with white residents. There, her son was stripped of his clothing and tied to a post, and she administered 20 lashes from a buggy whip. If Simon’s mother had refused to whip her son as ordered, she risked facing her own charges of contempt and also risked angering the judge who had power to impose an even harsher punishment upon her son.

This brutal punishment of a Black child was rooted in the prior era of enslavement. During that time, Black children, women, and men were whipped with impunity by enslavers and traffickers, leaving physical and emotional scars. Narratives of the experience of enslavement written by Black people who escaped bondage often described how white enslavers would cruelly force enslaved people to participate in the punishment of others. Forced to whip fellow enslaved Black people for running away, working too slowly, or other alleged offenses, these men and women were threatened with violence or death if they refused. For generations after Emancipation, white urban and rural communities alike witnessed and participated in the public spectacle of violent punishments inflicted upon Black people through racial terror lynching and deadly massacres targeting entire Black communities.

A narrative of racial difference—the belief that Black people were inferior to white people—was constructed to justify this treatment. That myth of white supremacy survived the formal abolition of enslavement and evolved to include the belief that Black people are dangerous criminals. Black people, even children like Simon, were frequently met with harsh and often violent retribution from courts after being accused of minor social transgressions or for defending themselves against attacks from white people. Even white press accounts of Simon Searce’s punishment recognized the whipping scene’s roots in enslavement; one headline reporting the events declared, “REMINDER OF OLD DAYS: Negro Boy Whipped at Post in Kentucky for Striking White Boy.”

This presumption of guilt and dangerousness persists today and continues to make people of color vulnerable to racial violence, wrongful convictions, and unfair treatment. Our nation’s history of racial injustice has polluted the environment in which the criminal justice system is administered. Understanding how today’s criminal justice crisis is rooted in our country’s history of racial injustice requires truthfully facing that history and its legacy.

Niecey Brown, a 74-year-old Black woman, died from injuries after an off-duty white police officer named George Booker forcibly entered her house and beat her to death with a bottle in Selma, Alabama.

During the early morning on June 10, Officer Booker arrived at Mrs. Brown’s home unannounced. According to reports, when Mrs. Brown answered the door, Officer Booker demanded entry so he could speak with one of her family members. When Mrs. Brown refused him entry and asked him to leave, Officer Booker kicked in the door and began beating her with a bottle, fracturing her skull.

Lige Brown, Mrs. Brown’s husband, came to his wife’s aid and shot the officer in the shoulder in self defense. The Browns’ two grandchildren were also home and witnessed the brutal attack on their grandmother. Two days later, Mrs. Brown, whose skull was crushed, died from her injuries, having never regained consciousness.

Officer Booker was arrested and charged with murder. During his trial in September 1945, his lawyer cautioned the all-white jury, “[I]f we convict this brave man who is upholding the banner of white supremacy by his actions, then we may as well give all our guns to the niggers and let them run the Black Belt.” The jury heeded this advice, ignoring eyewitness testimony and deliberating for only a few minutes before acquitting Officer Booker of all charges.

After the Civil War, the system of policing evolved as a way to maintain racial hierarchy. Though officers were meant to protect and serve their communities, in most cases police departments were restricted to white officers, many of whom used their power to subject Black people to indiscriminate violence. Officers who terrorized and brutalized Black people were rarely held accountable and were often instead exalted as defenders and upholders of racial hierarchy.

Officer James Calvert shot and killed Martin Chambers, an unarmed, 19-year-old Black man, and set off three days of unrest in Tampa, Florida.

Police claimed that they pursued Martin Chambers that day because he and two other young men were suspected of robbing a local photo supply store. While chasing the Black teen, Officer Calvert shot him in the back. According to newspaper accounts, Calvert, a white officer, shot Mr. Chambers when he would not stop running and aimed for his shoulder but missed. Martin Chambers died later that day, shortly after arriving at the hospital.

News of the shooting spread quickly throughout Tampa’s African American neighborhoods. That night, citizens began a public protest that escalated into three days of unrest in the Central Avenue area. As the investigation developed, state officials took testimony from Officer Calvert as well as three young Black men who witnessed the shooting.

The young men reported that Calvert shot Mr. Chambers after he had stopped running and had his hands up against a chain link fence. Calvert insisted that Martin Chambers was still running when shot and said he feared the unarmed 19-year-old would escape if he did not fire his weapon.

After just two days of investigation, officials ruled the shooting necessary. Announcing the decision, the state Attorney General Paul Antinori claimed Officer Calvert’s use of deadly force against an unarmed, fleeing young man was necessary because Martin Chambers was a felon evading arrest. Without acknowledging that Martin Chambers had not been convicted of a crime, and now could never be, Antinori asserted that people who broke the law accepted the risk that law enforcement might have to use force to do their jobs.

City officials and African American community leaders feared that the disappointing announcement would enrage the public and incite more unrest in the Central Avenue area, but the protests ended in despair.

Governors and representatives from 12 Southern states met in Richmond, Virginia, and resolved to defiantly resist the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Released less than a month earlier, the Brown decision struck down racial segregation laws—prevalent in the South—that required separate public schools for Black and white children.

Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley called the Richmond meeting to discuss the Southern states’ options for responding to Brown. The governors of Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi had already publicly stated their intent to maintain the separation of white and Black students, even if it required dissolving the public education systems in their respective states. The governors of Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia had been less radical in their public comments but still expressed interest in exploring legal methods of avoiding integration.

After a six-hour meeting, representatives from all but three of the 12 states present agreed that they would work to resist the desegregation ruling. Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky were the states that declined to make that commitment; notably, all three of those states also had comparatively small African American populations.

Bold and unapologetic vows of resistance, expressed by the highest figures in Southern state governments, inspired and encouraged white communities to wage their own campaigns of massive resistance, characterized by threats, economic intimidation, and violence that spanned decades and spread beyond the South. Those outcomes were the foreseeable result of public rhetoric that denounced desegregation as a threat to civilization and stoked fears of Black children—but political officials who sparked the flame largely denied culpability. “No one had any thought of doing anything wrong,” said Virginia’s Governor Stanley after the resistance meeting. “Everyone is just trying to find a solution to what they consider a major problem.”

The Brown decision signaled the start of a cultural shift in racial dynamics in the U.S. and also launched an organized mass movement of opposition. Most white Americans, especially in the South, supported segregation and resisted all efforts at integration. This campaign of massive resistance to integration in the South discussed at this meeting in 1954 was largely successful. By 1960, only 98 of Arkansas’s 104,000 Black students attended desegregated schools; as did 34 of 302,000 in North Carolina; 169 of 146,000 in Tennessee; and 103 of 203,000 in Virginia. In the five Deep South states, every single one of 1.4 million Black schoolchildren 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%. L

Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights activists were arrested in Winona, Mississippi, while returning from a voter education workshop in South Carolina. Mrs. Hamer and the other activists had been traveling in the “white” section of a Greyhound bus despite threats from the driver that he planned to notify local police at the next stop. When the bus arrived at the Winona bus depot, some of the activists attempted to eat at Staley’s Cafe but were refused service.

Mrs. Hamer, who had stayed on the bus, soon saw police officers arresting some of the activists. She got off the bus and was seized by a white police officer who began kicking her and arrested her. In August 1964, while testifying at the Democratic National Convention to urge party bosses to seat a group of Black Mississippi voters as delegates, Mrs. Hamer recalled the abuse she endured that night at the county jail.

“It wasn’t too long before three white men came to my cell,” she said. “One of these men was a state highway patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, ‘We are going to check this.’ They left my cell and it wasn’t too long before they came back. He said, ‘You are from Ruleville all right,’ and he used a curse word. And he said, ‘We are going to make you wish you was dead.'”

The white officers then forced two African American prisoners to brutally beat Mrs. Hamer with loaded blackjacks; she was nearly killed. As Mrs. Hamer regained consciousness, she overheard one of the white officers propose, “We could put them SOBs in [the] Big Black [River] and nobody would ever find them.”

Mrs. Hamer suffered from life-long injuries following the attack, including permanent kidney damage. Mrs. Hamer died in 1977 at age 59. Lawyers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) filed suit against the Winona police who brutalized the activists, but an all-white jury acquitted them. Despite the trauma she experienced, Mrs. Hamer returned to Mississippi to continue organizing and remained active in civil rights causes until her death.

A city manager in St. Petersburg, Florida, ordered the closure of a public indoor swimming pool after a Black 19-year-old named David Isom used the facility.

In April 1957, St. Petersburg opened its segregated public swimming facilities to Black residents after the city ruled in favor of six Black community members who had filed a suit against the city government over its discriminatory practices.

Despite the ruling, St. Petersburg’s facilities remained segregated by practice for well over a year. Denied access to the public Spa Pool and Spa Beach downtown, Black residents were forced to travel to Tampa Bay where a much smaller, less well-maintained facility nicknamed the “South Mole” was open to them.

On June 8, Mr. Isom arrived at the all-white Spa Pool and purchased an entry ticket. There were roughly 50 white bathers in the pool when he arrived. He swam for less than a half hour and then continued with his day. “I just feel that it’s not a privilege to use the pool, but a right,” Mr. Isom stated.

After Mr. Isom’s departure, the pool manager promptly announced that the Spa Pool and the adjoining Spa Beach would both be closed immediately because of Mr. Isom’s swim, following orders from the city manager, Ross Windom. Both facilities remained closed until the following week, when the city council reopened them.

Throughout the 1950s, despite court rulings on the unconstitutionality of segregated facilities, white people across the South remained committed to preventing racial integration. As was the case in St. Petersburg, white officials in numerous cities voluntarily shut down public parks, swimming pools, and other recreational facilities—choosing to deny all citizens these benefits rather than to extend them to Black people.

A white Ku Klux Klan leader named William Simmons hired publicists to grow membership for the white supremacist organization.

Confederate veterans founded the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. From beneath white hoods, they terrorized formerly enslaved Black people and their political allies with threats, beatings, and murder. The KKK strived to undermine Reconstruction and restore racial subordination in the South. Faced with federal opposition, the Klan dissolved by the 1870s but reemerged early in the next century.

In 1915, William Simmons revived the Klan atop Georgia’s Stone Mountain. That same year, the film The Birth of a Nation debuted, presenting Klansmen as saviors of white man’s civilization and white women’s chastity. President Woodrow Wilson screened the film at the White House.

Beginning in June 1920, the Klan launched a new public relations campaign that exploited white anxieties following the First World War. The “100 Percent Americanism” campaign promoted the Klan as defenders of the white American nation from defilement by Black people, Catholics, Jewish people, foreigners, and “moral offenders.” This “neat package of hatred” caught attention quickly, and within 16 months, nearly 100,000 new members had joined.

In 1921, public pressure prompted Congress to put on the appearance of investigating Klan violence and undue influence in local and state governments—but Congress quickly ended its inquiry when Klan officials denied the allegations. Immediately thereafter, new Klan membership applications jumped to 5,000 per day. By 1924, there were three million active members nationwide, including 35,000 in Detroit, 55,000 in Chicago, 200,000 in Ohio, 240,000 in Indiana, and 260,000 in Pennsylvania.

On June 5, 1966, equipped with only a helmet and walking stick, James Meredith began a 220-mile “March Against Fear” from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. Mr. Meredith, an activist who had integrated the University of Mississippi four years earlier, organized the one-man march to encourage African Americans in Mississippi to register to vote and to challenge the culture of fear perpetuated by white supremacists in the state.

Mr. Meredith crossed the Mississippi border on the morning of June 6, 1966, accompanied by a handful of friends and supporters. State police and FBI agents monitored the march while reporters and photographers trailed behind. A few miles south of Hernando, Mississippi, Aubrey Norvell, a white salesman, ambushed Mr. Meredith from the woods and shot him in the neck, head, and back. Before he started shooting, Mr. Norvell warned bystanders to disperse and twice shouted out Mr. Meredith’s name from the woods, but law enforcement did nothing to protect Mr. Meredith. He survived his injuries but was unable to immediately continue the march.

Enraged by the attack, civil rights leaders organized to continue the march to Jackson in Mr. Meredith’s place. On June 26, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and Floyd McKissick were among the thousands of marchers who completed the trip after weathering harassment and physical abuse from angry mobs and law enforcement alike. Mr. Meredith rejoined the march shortly before it reached Jackson and led a rally at the state capitol. In November 1966, Aubrey Norvell pleaded guilty to assault and battery and was sentenced to two years in prison.

A white mob lynched Douglas Lemon and Rankin Moore, two Black men, as they were walking home from a community festival in Orange County, Texas. In the days leading up to the lynchings, white mobs targeted and terrorized the Black community in Orange County, furious that a jury had recently failed to convict a Black man named Jack White of killing a white man. In addition to lynching Mr. Lemon and Mr. Moore, the white mob shot into the Black district of town and fired at other Black men, who managed to survive. No one was ever held accountable.

Mr. Moore was walking home from a festival with two other Black men, whose names were not recorded in newspapers, when a mob of white men approached them on Orange Avenue, in a section of town where many Black residents lived. Without saying anything, the white mob opened fire on these three Black men, hitting Mr. Moore repeatedly with bullets and killing him instantly. Several white men fired at his two companions, both of whom managed to momentarily escape the mob. Another Black man, Mr. Lemon, later was found shot to death on a side street nearby, almost certainly another target of this white mob. The mob left Mr. Lemon’s body in the street until the next morning.

In the weeks prior, white mobs had targeted and terrorized the Black community in Orange County. Newspapers reported that this violence began because a jury failed to convict a different Black man, Jack White, of killing a white man. Terroristic violence targeting the Black community was common during this period, when white mobs used widespread, unchecked racial violence to instill fear in the entire Black community and discourage organized opposition to pervasive Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial oppression. This brutal violence was often unpredictable and arbitrary. Countless Black people—like Mr. Moore and Mr. Lemon—were victims of racial terror lynchings not because they were accused of any crime, but simply because they were Black and present when the lynch mob chose to act and could not locate its intended victim.

No one was ever held accountable for the lynchings of Douglas Lemon and Rankin Moore, who were two of at least five documented victims of racial terror lynching in Orange County, Texas between 1877-1950.