Author: Desto22

Boston police officers scoured predominantly Black communities searching for anyone who fit the vague description provided by Charles Stuart, a white businessman, who lied to police, claiming a Black man shot him and his pregnant wife, Carol, two nights before.

Late on October 23, Mr. Stuart called 911 and reported he and his wife Carol had been robbed and injured in Roxbury: “My wife’s been shot. I’ve been shot,” he told the police. Charles Stuart later told police that a Black gunman had forced his way into the couple’s car and told him to drive to the Mission Hill neighborhood, where the man robbed and shot them both. Carol Stuart, seven months pregnant, died of her injuries; their son, Christopher, was delivered at the hospital but died days later.

The case quickly sparked public outrage and nationwide media coverage as local law enforcement faced heavy pressure to solve the case. Black men and boys were publicly strip-searched, repeatedly interrogated, and terrorized, while city officials, lawmakers, and police used the case as a symbol of growing “urban crime” and vowed to crack down on “gun-wielding criminals.” Some even used the alleged crime as a reason that Massachusetts should reinstate its death penalty.

Within a week of the shooting, police had narrowed the list of suspects to “a chosen few.” William Bennett, an African American man who had spent 13 years in prison, soon became a prime suspect; during a lineup, Mr. Stuart claimed that Mr. Bennett looked “most like” the shooter, and several witnesses testified against Mr. Bennett before a specially convened grand jury. The judicial system was poised to prosecute Mr. Bennett to the full extent of the law until, in January 1990, Charles Stuart’s brother, Matthew, came forward with evidence implicating Mr. Stuart himself in the shootings. Matthew Stuart told police he and a friend met Mr. Stuart in the Mission Hill neighborhood on the night of the shootings and agreed to dispose of a gun, Carol’s purse, and several other items. Matthew Stuart agreed, thinking it was just an insurance scam, and did not learn of the murder plot until press coverage later.

The day after his brother’s admission to police, Charles Stuart committed suicide by jumping from the Tobin Bridge. The public soon learned the truth about Mr. Stuart’s crime and lies, motivated by greed and a desire for life insurance money. Many expressed disgust for the ease with which he was able to concoct false allegations and exploit racist prejudices about Black criminality to convince police to target the Black community for harassment and civil rights violations.

Although some city officials and lawmakers made apologies, the Stuart case illustrated the insidiousness of racial bias and the continuing burden of presumed guilt and dangerousness borne by African Americans, generations after the peak of racial terror lynching, and even decades after the civil rights movement. In 2014, William Bennett’s niece recalled the trauma of watching police search her grandmother’s house as an eight-year-old child and the fear and chaos that gripped the neighborhood during the intense police crackdown targeting Black men and boys.

In response to a federal court decision that Birmingham’s racially segregated parks, golf courses, and playgrounds were unconstitutional, Birmingham officials publicly announced that they would close all public parks and facilities rather than racially integrate them.

Under the Birmingham city code, interracial games of pool, cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, and billiards were illegal. Interracial play was not permitted in public parks including ball parks, tennis courts, golf courses, and football fields, as well as theaters, auditoriums, swimming pools, and playgrounds. After 15 Black leaders, including civil rights legend the Reverend F. L. Shuttlesworth, sued Birmingham’s Parks and Recreation board, a federal district judge ruled that Birmingham’s segregated facilities and parks were unconstitutional.

In response to the October 24 court ruling, Birmingham’s mayor, Art Hanes, and the city’s police commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, immediately announced the plan to close all city parks. By December, the city had eliminated funding to almost all of its parks and closed 67 of them, along with 38 playgrounds, four golf courses, and eight swimming pools.

Bull Connor defended the necessity of the city’s decision, insisting that integrating the parks “would only be the first step in total integration of our schools, churches, hotels, restaurants and everything else.” Mr. Connor received a flood of support from white Birmingham residents who wrote letters applauding the decision. One local newspaper, The Jeffersonian, applauded the closures and stated the move helped the white community “retain our white race and culture.”

What happened in Birmingham was not unique. As courts ruled on the unconstitutionality of segregated facilities, white people across the South remained so committed to preventing racial integration that they 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. In some areas, this commitment to preserving and upholding segregation lasted a long time. Birmingham parks remained closed for two years, while some communities reopened parks but permanently shut down facilities like public pools.

On this day in 1909, a white mob from Maryland boldly attempted to lynch a Black man just blocks from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., in a dramatic display of the lawless reign of terror against Black people that defined this era. The mob dispersed only after D.C. police promised to turn over the intended lynching victim the next morning.

On October 22, a Black man was accused of attacking a white girl during a robbery near Landover, Maryland. When news of the incident spread and Walter Ford, a 26-year-old Black man, was targeted as the suspect, Mr. Ford was seized by local police in Washington, D.C., where he lived. During this era, allegations against Black people were rarely subject to scrutiny and often sparked violent reprisal even when there was no evidence tying the accused to any offense. Mr. Ford was detained by the Washington, D.C., police department.

That evening and into the next day, a white lynch mob of more than 100 people from nearby Prince George’s County, Maryland, arrived at the jail, committed to lynching Mr. Ford. Just blocks from the Capitol grounds and in the face of D.C. law enforcement, the mob wielded shotguns, pitchforks, and revolvers. For hours, they attempted to seize Mr. Ford from the jail. In the early hours of the morning on October 23, the would-be lynchers dispersed only after law enforcement promised to turn over Mr. Ford to the mob the next morning. While police ultimately did not turn Mr. Ford over, the mob believed this promise would be kept given widespread law enforcement complicity in lynchings.

The lawlessness that prevailed during this era was possible because state and federal governments retreated from the rule of law, allowing more than 6,500 Black women, men, and children to become victims of racial terror lynching in the U.S. between 1865-1950. These lynch mobs acted with impunity, and in many cases acted in tandem with members of law enforcement who were charged with protecting those in their custody. The federal government’s failure to protect citizens was a serious obstacle to protecting Black people from racial violence and terrorism. No one from the Prince County lynch mob was ever arrested or held responsible for attempting to lynch Mr. Ford just blocks away from the U.S. Capitol.

Five white men who beat to death Leon McAtee, a Black man, were freed by the court in Holmes County, Mississippi, even though one of the five had confessed to his own involvement in the murder and implicated the other four men. Before the trial ended, Judge S.F. Davis acquitted Spencer Ellis and James Roberts, finding the evidence insufficient to prove their guilt. The all-white jury then deliberated for 10 minutes before acquitting Jeff Dodd Sr., Jeff Dodd Jr., and Dixie Roberts.

As a tenant on Jeff Dodd Sr.’s farm, Leon McAtee worked a small plot of land for very little pay. When Mr. Dodd’s saddle went missing, he suspected Mr. McAtee of stealing it and had the Black man arrested. On July 22, 1946, Mr. Dodd withdrew the charges and police released Mr. McAtee into Mr. Dodd’s custody. Mr. Dodd then called Dixie Roberts and together they took Mr. McAtee back to Mr. Dodd’s home, where Jeff Dodd Jr., James Roberts, and Spencer Ellis awaited them.

Inside the home, all five men beat Mr. McAtee and whipped him with a three-quarter-inch rope. The men then drove the badly beaten man to his home and presented him to his wife, who later reported that her husband was dazed and muttering about a saddle. The men then drove away with Mr. McAtee in their truck, and Mrs. McAtee fled with her children. Her husband was found dead in a bayou two days later.

William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent white abolitionist and newspaper editor in the 19th century. Born in 1805 to English immigrants in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Mr. Garrison co-founded his first newspaper at age 22 and began to focus on the issue of slavery. In 1829, Mr. Garrison became the co-editor of the Baltimore-based Genius of Universal Emancipation, through which he and his colleagues criticized proponents of slavery.

Unlike most American abolitionists at the time, Mr. Garrison demanded immediate emancipation of enslaved Black people rather than gradual emancipation. In 1830, he founded The Liberator, which continued to publish criticisms of slavery. By that time, Mr. Garrison had become a vocal opponent of the American Colonization Society, which sought to reduce the number of free Black people in America by relocating them to Africa. In 1832, Mr. Garrison helped to organize the American Anti-Slavery Society and sought to keep the organization unaffiliated with any political party. He also advocated for women’s equal participation in the organization, a radical stance nearly 90 years before white women in America obtained the right to vote.

On October 21, 1835, Mr. Garrison attended a meeting held by the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society to hear remarks from George Thompson, a British abolitionist and personal friend. When Mr. Thompson was warned that a pro-slavery mob planned to tar and feather him, he canceled his appearance. Instead, the mob seized Mr. Garrison, dragged him through the streets by a rope around his waist, and threatened to kill him. Mr. Garrison was rescued by police and spent the night in a city jail before leaving Boston the next morning. He nevertheless remained a staunch opponent of slavery and lived to see the institution’s abolition 30 years later.

The Virginia Colonial Assembly enacted a law that removed criminal penalties for enslavers who killed enslaved people resisting authority. The assembly justified the law on the grounds that “the obstinacy of many [enslaved people] cannot be suppressed by other than violent means.” The law provided that an enslaver’s killing of an enslaved person could not constitute murder because the “premeditated malice” element of murder could not be formed against one’s own property.

In subsequent years, Virginia continued to reduce legal protections for enslaved people. In 1723, the assembly removed all penalties for the killing of enslaved people during “correction,” meaning that an enslaved person could be killed for an “offense” as minor as picking bad tobacco. The willful or malicious killing of an enslaved person could constitute murder, in theory, but the law excused the killing of an enslaved person if the killing was in any way provoked. In effect, enslavers could kill enslaved people with impunity in colonial-era Virginia, and the situation was similar in most other colonial territories.

Following the American Revolution, many states created penalties for killing enslaved people—but the loophole permitting the killing of an enslaved person during “correction” or to prevent “resistance” remained. As a result, throughout the course of slavery in this country’s history, enslavers were rarely punished for killing enslaved people.

52 individuals, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, after refusing to leave their seats at segregated department store lunch counters. Under the heavily enforced Jim Crow segregation laws and customs in Atlanta at the time, Black and white people were required to use separate water fountains, bathrooms, ticket booths, and other public spaces. In addition, Black people were banned from being served at department store lunch counters.

Similar laws in other Southern states had recently become the focus of a “sit-in” movement, in which Black college students calmly and peacefully sat at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served. In February 1960, four North Carolina A&T students held the first sit-in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. Soon, many more students joined their protest and word of the tactic spread to students in other states. By August 1961, sit-ins had attracted more than 70,000 participants, generated over 3,000 arrests, and, in cities like Nashville, Tennessee, successfully led to desegregation.

Dr. King was invited to join the student-organized Atlanta sit-in and ended up arrested alongside students and local activists under a 1960 law that made refusing to leave private property a misdemeanor offense. Charges against 16 of the 52 protesters were dismissed at their first court appearance, but Dr. King (the most high-profile of the group) was held on charges that his arrest violated a term of state probation imposed earlier that year. After Dr. King was sentenced to six months of hard labor, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy reached out to the King family, helped secure Dr. King’s release, and earned pivotal Black votes that would help him win the presidency weeks later.

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.