Today In White History

3.21 1981 After a Mobile, Alabama jury acquits a Black man of killing a white police officer, Ku Klux Klan members kidnap and kill 19-year-old Michael Donald, a Black man, and hang his body from a tree.

3.20 1924 Virginia’s Eugenical Sterilization Act is signed into law and later becomes the model sterilization law for other states and Nazi Germany

3.19 1939 Lloyd Gaine, a Black man, disappears months after the Supreme Court orders him admitted to the University of Missouri School of Law; his family suspects he was murdered

3.18 1831 The Supreme Court declares in Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia that tribes are dependent nations whose relationship to the U.S. resembles that of a ward to the guardian

3.17 1886 After a white man is charged with assaulting two Black men, 50-100 white men stormed the courthouse in Carroll County MS. and opened fire on local Black residents, killing 23.

3.16 1995 After failing to do so for 130 years, MS finally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime

3.15 1901 Ballie Crutchfield, a Black woman, is lynched in TN by a white mob that was looking for her brother

3.14 1835 Missouri requires free Black peopleto apply for a license to continue to live  in the state

3.13 2020 Louisville KY police fatally shoot Breonna Taylor an emergency room technician, in her home while executing a no-knock warrant

3.12 1956 Congressmen from 11 Southern States issued the Southern Manifesto declaring opposition to the Supreme Court’s Brown V Boad Of Ed decision prohibiting racial segregation in public schools

3.11 1965 The Reverend James Reeb, a white supporter of Black voting rights, dies two days after he was beaten by angry white people in Selma

3.10 1865 During the Civil War Confederate forces in SC hang a young enslaved Black woman named Amy Spain for aiding the Union Army

3.9 1892 Ida B. Wells' friends, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart, are lynched in Memphis, sparking her lifelong crusade against lynching

3.8 1782 Pennsylvania militia members murdered 96 pacifist indigenous people, most of whom were members of the Delaware tribe, near present-day New Philadelphia, Ohio

3.7 1965 Police use teargas, whips ad clubs to attack supporters of Black voting rights marching from Selma to Montgomery; dozens are hospitalized on what is later called “Bloody Sunday.”

3.6 1857 The Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford rules that people of African descent cannot be U.S. citizens, are not protected by the Constitution, and have no standing to sue in federal courts

3.5 1959 Twenty-one Black boys burn to death locked inside a segregated and neglected Arkansas “reform” school 

3.4 1921 While walking down a Georgia road, a Black man named William Anderson is shot and killed by a mob of white people who later admit they mistook him for someone else.

3.3 1819 Congress creates a federal program to “civilize” Native Americans

3.2 1948 In Johnson County, GA, white residents use violent intimidation to stop Black residents from voting.

3.1 1921 Idaho broadens it’s law banning marriage between Black and white people, even though the state's population is less than .02% African American

2.28 1942 A mob of more than 1,000 white people riots outside a public housing project in Detroit to prevent Black families from moving in

2.27 1869 Congress refuses to seat John Willis Menard of Louisiana, the first Black man elected in the House of Representatives. 

2.26 2012 Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was killed in Sanford, FL. Police arrested shooter George Zimmerman only after national outcry against the claim that the “stand your ground” law barred his prosecution

2.25 1886 An anti-Chinese convention in Boise, Idaho  starts an often violent movement against Chinese immigrants; the Chinese share of Idaho’s population decreases from a third in 1870 to nearly zero by 1910

2.24 1865 Kentucky refuses to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and does not do so until 1976

2.23 2020 Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, is shot and killed in Glynn County GA, by a white man, who is not arrested until the failure to bring charges sparks nationwide protests

2.22 1898 After Frazier Baker is appointed postmaster of Lake City, South Carolina, enraged white people burn his home, fatally shoot him and his infant daughter, and wound his wife and other children

2.21 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated in front of his wife and young daughters while giving a speech at the Audi bon Ballroom in Harlem

2.20 1956 Officials in Montgomery issued arrest warrants for more than 100 organizers of an anti-segregation bus boycott; mass arrests soon follow

2.19 1923 In U.S. v. Thind, the Supreme Court upholds a government ruling that an Indian Sikh man born in Punjab is ineligible for U.S. citizenship because he is not  a free white man

2.18 1965 Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old peaceful Black man, is shot by a white police officer after police attack a peaceful civil rights protest in Marion, AL, and dies eight days later

2.17 1947 In Greenville, SC a white mob lynches Willie Earl, slashing chunks off his body before blasting him with a shotgun; 31 men charged with the murder are later acquitted

2.16 1847 Missouri outlaws the education of Black people and bans the immigration of free Black people into the state

2.15 1837 Congress ratified two treaties removing eight indigenous nations from their homelands in the Midwest.

2.14 1945 An all-white grand jury refuses to indict any of the six white men accused of raping Mrs. Recy Taylor in Abbeville, AL. They are never prosecuted.

2.13 1960 Nashville students launch sit-in demonstrations to demand an end to racial segregation at lunch counters ad face violence and jail time.

2.12 1946 While traveling in uniform after the end of WWII, the police severely beat Black veteran Sgt. Issac Woodward, permanently blinded. The bus driver called the police after Woodward asked to use the white-only restroom. 

02.11 1826 Alfred Moore, a white man in Hartford, NC., offers $20 to any white person who captures “Joe”, an enslaved Black man who “ran away” to visit his wife

02.10 1908 In Brookhaven, MS., a mob of 2,000 white people lynches Eli Pigot

02.09 1960 A bomb explodes at the home of Carlotta Walls, the youngest of nine Black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, AR, three years earlier

02.08 1968 White state troopers fire into a group of Black demonstrators at South Carolina State College who were trying to desegregate a bowling alley, killing three and injuring 28

02.07 1904 A Black man named Luther Holbert and an unidentified Black woman are tortured, mutilated, and burned alive in front of 600 picnicking white people in Doddsville, MS.

02.06 1902 A mob of 200 white people seizes a 19-year-old Black man, Thomas Brown, from jail and lynches him on the courthouse lawn after he is accused of assault in Nicholasville, KY

02.05 1917 Congress passes the immigration Act of 1917 to bar entry of Asian, Mexican, and Mediterranean people, poor people, and those with mental or physical disabilities  or criminal records

02.04 1846 Alabama launches convict leasing by leasing Wetumpka State Penitentiary and its inmates to a private businessman.

02.03 1948 Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage sons are sentenced to die in Georgia for killing an armed white man who assaulted them

02.02 1909 Pittsburgh police arrest more than 200 Black men on charges of vagrancy and sentence many of them the next day to forced labor at the city workhouse

02.01 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King and more than 200 others are arrested, and after a voting rights march in Selma, AL.

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The enemy sometimes comes with a rope, a badge, a suit, or a lie. But the story stays the same. Today, it’s not just Black skin—it’s a turban, a hijab, a name, or a language that sounds foreign.

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