Gabriel Mahia

 CONTRIBUTED BY:  MEGAN BRODSKY On the evening of Sunday, September 30, 1962, Southern  segregationists rioted  and fought state and federal forces on the campus of the University of  Mississippi  (Ole Miss) in Oxford, Mississippi to prevent the enrollment of the first African American student to attend the university,  James Meredith , a  U.S. military veteran . President John F. Kennedy had sent federal marshals to Oxford on Saturday, September 29, 1962 to prepare for protests he knew would arise from Meredith’s arrival and enrollment. While this occurred, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, a publicly avowed segregationist, spoke at an Ole Miss football game encouraging action on campus to block Meredith’s entry into the university. The next day, Meredith was escorted by Mississippi Highway Patrol as he made his way to the campus to move into his dorm room. He was greeted by 500 federal marshals assigned for his protection. Thousands of rioters ...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  NICHOLAS IAROSLAVTSEV The city of Camden,  New Jersey  was the setting for two deadly  race-related riots  on September 2nd, 1969, and August 20th, 1971. Both riots were in response to alleged police  brutality or murder , the victims being an unidentified young black girl, who was beaten by a white police officer in 1969, and Rafael Rodriguez Gonzales, a  Puerto Rican  motorist who was beaten and killed by other white officers in 1971. Protestors called for the punishment of the officers responsible; however, in both instances, those responsible never faced full justice. At the time of the riots, the city of Camden was facing economic depression and rapid de-industrialization. Fifty years earlier, in the early years of the 20th century, the exact opposite was occurring, where Camden underwent a great population boom in response to industrial growth and job availability. Many of the newcomers were Southern blacks. While this growt...

 CONTRIBUTED BY:  MARITZA FERNANDEZ Asbury Park,  New Jersey ’s West Side district—predominantly black and housing 40% of the town’s permanent population—was consumed by  rioting  from July 4 to July 10 in 1970. At the time of the riot, 30% of the population, 17,000 people approximately, were African American. The town’s huge tourist-resort industry brought the population to 80,000 annually and employed a large portion of African Americans. However, over time, jobs were increasingly given to white youth from surrounding areas instead of local black youth, creating an unemployment crisis similar to many other cities at the time. This plus few recreational opportunities and poor housing conditions sparked the violence in 1970. On July 4, a group of black youth broke windows after a late dance at the West Side Community Center; minor damage and youthful boredom quickly turned to fire bombs and looting. Eventually 180 plus people, including 15 New Jersey state troop...

 CONTRIBUTED BY:  AUSTIN HSU The Ferguson Unrest and Ferguson  Riots  were a series of several riots and protest triggered by the fatal  shooting  of  Michael Brown , an 18-year-old African American, in the city of Ferguson,  Missouri , U.S. by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on August 9th, 2014.  Exact details on the incident remain uncertain and continue to be disputed. Some accounts report that Brown made no threatening movements towards the officers while others state that Brown charged at Wilson and attempted to take Wilson’s firearm. The police claimed that Brown was a suspect in a nearby store robbery and that the items had been spotted in his possession, prompting their action.  Some witnesses said that Brown put his hands up and others said that he ran for his life.  The conflicting accounts were the subject of much controversy in the following days.  Several peaceful protests occurred in addition to incidents o...

 CONTRIBUTED BY:  SAMUEL MOMODU The  Creole  Case was the result of an American  slave revolt  in November 1841 on board the  Creole , a ship involved in the United States coastwise slave trade. As a consequence of the revolt, 128 enslaved people won their freedom in the  Bahamas , then a  British  possession. Because of the number of people eventually freed, the  Creole  mutiny was the most successful slave revolt in US history. In the fall of 1841, the brig  Creole , which was owned by the Johnson and Eperson Company of Richmond,  Virginia , transported 135 slaves from Richmond for sale in New Orleans,  Louisiana . The  Creole  had left Richmond with 103 slaves and picked up another 32 in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Most of the slaves were owned by Johnson and Eperson, but 26 were owned by Thomas McCargo, a slave trader who was one of the  Creole  passengers. The ship also carried tobacco; a cr...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  ERICKA BENEDICTO Frazier Baker, a  schoolteacher  and married father of six, was appointed the first African American postmaster of Lake City,  South Carolina , in July 1897 by President William McKinley. Baker and his wife Lavinia were born in Effingham, South Carolina, a mostly black area, where he had previously served as postmaster. To assume his latest federal assignment, Baker and his family relocated to Lake City, a predominantly white community. From the outset Baker faced bitter opposition from Lake City whites. Residents filed several grievances against Baker sharply criticizing his administrative abilities and accusing him of being incompetent, ill-mannered, and lazy. Among their complaints was that Baker had reduced mail deliveries from three times to once a day. Baker however had curtailed deliveries to daily drops due to repeated threats on his life. Federal postal inspectors investigated the claims and determined that the accusations a...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  CLAUDIA SUTHERLAND On Sunday, September 9th, 1739 the  British  colony of  South Carolina  was shaken by a  slave uprising  that culminated with the death of sixty people. Led by an  Angolan  named Jemmy, a band of twenty slaves organized a rebellion on the banks of the Stono River. After breaking into Hutchinson’s store the band, now armed with guns, called for their liberty.  As they marched, overseers were killed and reluctant slaves were forced to join the company. The band reached the Edisto River where white colonists descended upon them, killing most of the rebels.  The survivors were sold off to the  West Indies . The immediate factors that sparked the uprising remain in doubt. A malaria epidemic in Charlestown, which caused general confusion throughout Carolina, may have influenced the timing of the Rebellion.  The recent (August 1739) passage of the Security Act by the South Carolina Colonial Ass...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  WESTON W. COOPER One of the last of the major  riots  of the “Red Summer” of 1919, the so-called race riot in Elaine,  Arkansas  was in fact a racial massacre. Though exact numbers are unknown, it is estimated that over 200 African Americans were killed, along with five whites, during the white hysteria of a pending insurrection of black sharecroppers. The violence, terror, and concerted effort to drive African Americans out of Phillips County, Arkansas was so jarring that  Ida B. Wells , a founder of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)  published a short book on the riot in 1920. It was also widely reported in African American  newspapers  like the  Chicago Defender   and generated several public campaigns to address the fallout. On the night of September 30, 1919, approximately 100 African Americans, mostly sharecroppers on the plantations of white landowners, attended a me...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  BRIAN KASTNER Deton Brooks in India,  CBI Roundup , ca. 1945 During World War II, thirty African-American correspondents risked their lives reporting news home from the front-lines of the war. Covering the war took two forms. First, they were reporters of the combat between the Allies and the Axis. Concurrently, they reported on the treatment of African American soldiers amid the segregation of American Army units. This is the dichotomy that African American correspondent Deton Brooks experienced as a reporter and advocate in his war coverage in Burma. Deton Brooks was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 14, 1909 to parents Laura and Deton Brooks. Educated in the local public schools, he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1935 before becoming a school teacher and later, a journalist. Reporting on the war for the  Chicago Defender , he arrived in India to cover the China-India-Burma theater in September of 1944. Soon after arriving, he drew the i...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  KC WASHINGTON The Thibodaux Massacre took place in Thibodaux, Louisiana on November 23, 1887. Black sugar cane workers, determined to unionize for a living wage, chose to combine their minimal power during the crucial harvest season. Instead, their actions sparked a massacre. With echoes of the bondage their ancestors had experienced during slavery, the cane workers protested the harsh working conditions, long hours, and starvation wages. They were fed subsistence meals and paid as little as 42 cents a day with scrip which could only be used in plantation stores. The Knights of Labor, one of the few labor unions to organize blacks, encouraged the sugar cutters to demand better treatment and $1.25 a day in cash. The Knights had tried unsuccessfully to organize the workers in 1874, 1880, and again in 1883 but had been blocked all three times. But the cutters thought the results might be different in 1887, when the Knights urged them to wait until the rolling season w...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  BLACKPAST PREAMBLE Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal righ...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  VIRGILLO HUNTER British West Indies Regiment, Amiens Road near Albert, September 1916 Image courtesy Imperial War Museum (Q1201) On August 4, 1914,  Britain  joined the  Great War . The First World War, 1914-1918, is usually viewed as a predominantly white  European  conflict. In fact, many  Africans ,  Asians ,  black Britons , and  Caribbeans  fought for the British Empire. At the beginning of the war, the British War Office, however, was reluctant to allow blacks to enlist in the British Army, fearing it would create racial tension in the ranks. By early 1915, the British Colonial Office and War Office, despite their differences on allowing blacks into the British Army, agreed that Britain needed reinforcement from the colonies. With the support of King George V, in April 1915, a West Indian contingent was formed from colonial volunteers who had enlisted. On October 26, 1915, the British West Indian Regiment (BWI...

CONTRIBUTED BY:  NATALIE MALLARD In 1968, a group of  businessmen  in Portland,  Oregon  saw the recently founded  Bank of Finance  in Los Angeles,  California  as a model for their creating the first black-owned commercial bank in the Pacific Northwest.  The businessmen, with help from Los Angeles, founded the Freedom Bank of Finance, which opened in 1969. The African American businessmen in Portland included Realtor Venerable F. Booker, restaurateur Roy Granville, grocery-store owner Silas Williams, and dentist Dr. Booker T. Lewis.  All of them felt that a black-owned commercial bank would serve the financial needs of the local black community including providing capital for emerging businesses in the Albina-North Portland district that was home to most of African Americans in the city.  Roy Granville, one of the bank’s founders persuaded  Onie B. Granville , his cousin and the founder of the Bank of Finance in Los Angel...