History Snapshot: 15 Year Old Lynched In Texas

November 30, 1921, A mob of white men chased down the car of Sheriff J.P. Flynt of Runnels County, Texas, and pulled 15-year-old Black Teen Robert Murtore from the car and murdered him.

Muratore had been arrested the day before for allegedly assaulting a nine-year-old white girl in Ballinger, Texas, the only evidence against Murtore was that he worked in the same hotel as the girl’s mother.

The mob had gathered at the jail in Ballinger the morning of the 30th and it was obvious to the veteran lawman what they were going to do. Roughly three miles outside of Ballinger the mob overtook the sheriff’s car. According to the Austin American, the sheriff pleaded with the mob to let the law do its job and let justice take its course but they forced the boy from the car and violently shoved him into one of their cars.

The mob tied him to a post a short way from the road and shot him at least 50 times. The Eagle newspaper of Bryan, Texas reported that the mob then left, “the ‘mob’ was very orderly and dispersed leaving Sheriff Flynt to get the coroner. If Sheriff Flynt, who had been sheriff for 8 years and a Texas Ranger for 7 years, recognized any members of the mob he never pressed charges and Robert Muratore’s murderers walked away.

 

Sources:

http://www.lynchingintexas.org/items/show/449

http://genealogytrails.com/tex/panhandle2/runnels/bios1.html

https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/15566/31295000657113.pdf?sequence

https://www.newspapers.com/image/384422757/?terms=Robert%20Murtore&match=1

History Snapshot: The Lynching of Henry Mason in Rustburg, Virginia

 

November 30, 1885, In the early morning hours a group of disguised white men broke into the jail of Campbell Court-house in Rustburg, Virginia, and took out and lynched Henry Mason for the murder of white farmer Robert Hammersley on the 20th of November. Hammersley was a popular planter who was found on the road about a mile from Rustburg killed with an ax. The sheriff, Major Adam Clement conducted a legitimate investigation and found that the planter had been seen with a Black man on the night of his murder and had stopped at a general store, the clerk remembered Hammersley had a large amount of cash and had bought some candy and tobacco during the investigation wrappers from the candy were reportedly found in Mason’s home and some of Hammersley’s personal papers. Mason was reported to have confessed and added that another negro Jeff Wilcher had done the murder. According to the Alexandria gazette Sheriff Clement had previously, successfully stopped the lynching of Mason and this is why the early morning kidnapping. Mason was hung and then his body shot to pieces. No one was ever charged with his murder and there are no reports of an arrest or lynching of a Jeff Wilcher

Sources:

https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/valynchings/va1885113001/

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1885-11-23/ed-1/seq-2/

The Sand Creek Massacre: Colonel John Chivington Murders Hundreds

 

November 29, 1864, a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory. The village had no warriors but was full of elderly, sick, women and children. The Southern Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle and several other chiefs had gathered along the Big Sandy Creek 40 miles north of Fort Lyon hoping for peace and at the behest of Colorado Territorial Governor John Evans while he and other negotiated with the chiefs regarding sacred grounds and hunting and settlement peace.

On this morning Chivington had circled the camp of Black Kettle even though he no orders to leave Denver at the time and it was known to scouts that this particular camp was not for war or battle. They began their attack  and in the next eight hours the American troops killed around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people composed mostly of women, children, and the elderly. During the afternoon and following day, the soldiers wandered over the field committing atrocities on the dead before departing the scene on December First.

Chivington and his men dressed their weapons, hats, and gear with scalps and other body parts, including human fetuses and male and female genitalia. They also publicly displayed these battle trophies in Denver's Apollo Theater and area saloons. Three Indians who remained in the village are known to have survived the massacre: George Bent's brother Charlie Bent, and two Cheyenne women who were later turned over to William Bent.

Chivington and the majority of his men talked up their massacre as a battle with a very hard-won victory. All his reports were written to make this clear. However, the few survivors started talking and then witnesses did. Among them Silas Soule who was a captain with the Colorado Volunteers under Chivington. Soule was an abolitionist from Kansas whose family had a long been aligned with individual like John Brown and Walt Whitman. On the morning of the massacre Soule refused to order his men to attack

Soule wrote to Major Edward Wynkoop telling what he had witnessed that day and the number of Arapaho and Cheyenne who had approached his command on their knees surrendering. Soule was murdered after testifying to the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War. The Joint Committee held multiple hearings and made a report that Chivington and others who participated in the massacre be prosecuted however neither Evans nor the army followed these, largely in part because Chivington had resigned his commission and was beyond their reach as a civilian. The report and the press with it did destroy Chivington’s political ambitions.

After the massacre of non-combatants many of the Cheyenne, including the great war chief Roman Nose, and many Arapaho joined the Dog Soldiers and sought revenge on settlers throughout the Platte valley. The war pipe was smoked and passed from camp to camp among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in the area. In January 1865, they planned attacked with 1,000 warriors on the stage station and fort, then called Camp Rankin, at present-day Julesburg, Colorado. The associated bands captured much loot and killed many white settlers, including men, women and children.

Image: Black Kettle and Wife, Medicine Woman escaping by Andy Thomas

Sources:

https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/fall2014/campuslife/john-evans-and-the-sand-creek-massacre.html

https://www.nps.gov/sand/learn/historyculture/index.htm

History Snapshot: The Zong Slave Massacre of 1781

November 29, 1781 Captain Luke Collingwood of the British slave ship the Zong ordered 132 captive Africans from Ghana thrown into the sea. The Zong departed the coast of Africa on 6 September 1781 with 470 slaves. Human chattel was such a valuable commodity at that time, many captains took on more slaves than their ships could accommodate to maximize profits. The Liverpool-based ship was en route from Africa to Jamaica, there to exchange its human chattel for New World produce bound for the European market. The Zong’s captain, Luke Collingwood, overloaded his ship with slaves and by late November many of them had begun to die from disease and malnutrition. During the journey, sickness caused the deaths of seven of the 17 crew members and over 50 slaves, because they were stranded in the “Doldrums” and needed to lighten the ship the crew felt it was best to also clear the sickest of the slaves. Over a three-day span beginning Nov. 29, Collingwood had 133 still-living, but sick slaves cast overboard; in part, because he felt he could declare it as an insurrection which gave the owners of the ship an opportunity to claim insurance losses. Upon the Zong’s arrival in Jamaica, James Gregson, the ship’s owner, filed an insurance claim for their loss. Gregson argued that the Zong did not have enough water to sustain both crew and the human commodities. The insurance underwriter, Thomas Gilbert, disputed the claim citing that the Zong had 420 gallons of water aboard when she was inventoried in Jamaica. Despite this, the Jamaican court in 1782 found in favor of the owners. The insurers appealed the case in 1783 and in the process provoked a great deal of public interest and the attention of Great Britain's abolitionists. The leading abolitionist at the time, Granville Sharp, used the deaths of the slaves to increase public awareness about the slave trade and further the anti-slavery cause. It was he who first used the word massacre. The case then came before the lord chief justice, Lord Mansfield, who in a previous judgment had ruled that there was never a legal basis for slave ownership within England under English law. This ruling helped propel the abolitionist movement in England, but it wasn’t until 1833 that slavery was abolished in the colonies.

Photo: Underwater sculpture off Grenada commemorating slaves thrown overboard during the Middle Passage.

 

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/jan/19/the-story-of-the-zong-slave-ship-a-mass-masquerading-as-an-insurance-claim

https://aaregistry.org/story/the-zong-massacre-episode-begins/

Mob of Thousands Lynch and Burn Lloyd Warner

 November 28, 1933, St. Joseph, Missouri a mob of white men attacked the Buchanan County jail where the sheriff was holding 18-year-old Black man Lloyd Warner for suspicion of assaulting a white woman.

As usually happened in the era the law arrested a Black man and jailed him and word spread throughout the White community and they decided to, “make this Black boy suffer” as leaders of the mob said.

While the Governor had sent in the National Guard apparently the mob was still too large and armed for them or law enforcement to stop the mob. The sheriff offered to surrender Warner if the mob would leave the jail and his men alone, and they agreed. Warner had already gone on record with his public defender that he was innocent this of course was irrelevant to the mob.

Sheriff Otto Theisen held off the mob for three and a half hours, hiding Mr. Warner in a crawl space and denying he was in jail. He was also the one to request aid from the governor and Missouri State Police. According to new reports of the incident, the mob had also invaded the sheriff’s home and ransacked it but fearing the mob would eventually break in and kill the other 11 black men in the jail, Mr. Theisen gave Mr. Warner to the crowd.

The mob drug warner a few blocks and hung him from a tree, at this time a crowd of 5,000 to 7,000 people were there to witness the execution. For the bloodthirsty mob, the hanging was not brutal enough or quick enough as they set Warner on fire while alive.

Eventually, after an investigation 8 men were suspected of the crime, with former St, Joseph’s police John Zook charged but he was cleared of charges, and no one else was ever charged even though there was a state police investigation

Lucille Mitchell, who had at least four other children in addition to Lloyd, was forced to bury her son with no funeral – "no mourners, no ministers, and no flowers," in the words of a Black undertaker. On January 15, 1934, she filed a lawsuit for $10,000 against the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company and the local sheriff for permitting the mob to take possession of Lloyd and lynch him. However, there is no evidence to suggest that her suit was successful.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG4XBuNzZqg

https://db9cdc43-c732-4e84-9615-6c33f0bfac6a.filesusr.com/ugd/69a2b2_e10ac4a41c064fae84dedcecb55adbcc.pdf

https://lorimichellesander.wixsite.com/lloydwarner

Callie House and the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association

 

November 28, 1898, The first annual convention of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association was held in Nashville, Tennessee. This association was one of the foremost organizations working on the idea of gaining at least pensions for former slaves.

In the years immediately following the Civil War before reconstruction was utterly dismantled there had been many attempts to help freemen gain some sort of traction for economic stability, such as Sherman’s promise of the coastal Carolina and Georgia section of land or the infamous “40 Acres and a Mule,” House Speaker Thaddeus Stevens had attempted in 1867 but it was defeated and left the majority of freemen and their heirs at the mercy of white supremacists and Confederate supporters for decades.

The MRB&PA had a dual mission: to petition Congress for the passage of legislation that would grant compensation to ex-slaves, particularly elderly ex-slaves, and to provide mutual aid and burial expenses. The association collected membership fees in order to help defray lobbying costs, printing/publication expenses, and travel expenses of the national officers. Monthly dues were reserved for mutual aid purposes (to aid the sick, and the disabled, and for burial expenses). Ex-slaves and their allies gave their meager resources to help further the movement because they believed in the organization's mission. Dedication and charisma characterized the leaders of the association and enabled them to mobilize the masses.

The Convention elected Callie House, a formerly enslaved woman from Tennessee, to be assistant secretary of the Association. House became its leader for the next 20 years.

House explained the political goals of the organization: “If the Government had the right to free us, she had a right to make some provision for us and since she did not make it soon after Emancipation she ought to make it now.”

The MRB&PA under House fought not only for legislation but also in the courts and with federal agencies. MRB&PA brought a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department in 1915. The suit, which was the first litigation on a federal level seeking reparations, claimed that the more than $68 million dollars in taxes collected between 1862 and 1868 on cotton should rightly go to ex-slaves since it had been produced because of their “involuntary servitude.” The case was dismissed by the federal appeals court, and the SCOTUS refused to hear it letting the decision stand.

House and the MRB&PA were targets of harassment by the treasury and the post office for years and they finally got charges, false accusations with no evidence, of postal fraud against House in 1916. She was sentenced to a year in jail at the Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City. She was released from prison in August 1918, having served much of her sentence, with the last month commuted.

The MRB&PA and pension/reparation movement pressed for the passage of pension legislation for over 20 years, but being labeled as fraudulent—especially by antagonistic federal agencies ended the hope for such justice.

My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations

Sources:

https://njsbf.org/2020/02/20/250-years-of-seeking-reparations/

https://www.virginiamemory.com/reading_room/this_day_in_virginia_history/may/18

https://hls.harvard.edu/today/justice-for-the-foremother-of-the-reparations-movement/

Forgotten History: The Hoey Report and the Beginning of the Lavender Scare

November 27, 1950, in history, is a bit of an insignificant date so a senate report that isn’t very famous released on this date doesn’t really carry an impact, except this report to a large degree led to the historic “Lavender Scare” of the 1950s when gay men and women were forced from public service in government and military or from any business doing government work. Homosexuals and lesbians being forcible outed is now considered immoral, but then it was often considered an important part of U.S. National Security.

Officially titled “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government”, but better known as the Hoey Report, after Senator Clyde Hoey, who chaired the senate committee declared that homosexuals “are not proper persons to be employed in government.” (The derogatory term “perverts” was freely and publicly used in these years.)

The report determined that the quality and characteristic of being a homosexual were so extreme and unacceptable that one naturally kept it secret and would go to great lengths to protect their privacy, and this made them easy targets for blackmail. Despite its alarmist homophobic conclusion, the report was unable to cite a single example of a homosexual government employee being blackmailed into divulging sensitive national security information.

Regardless the report was so accepted across government, of course, building on preconceived prejudices that it led to President Eisenhower issuing Executive Order 10450, revising President Truman’s federal loyalty program and adding the categories of “immoral” behavior and “sexual perversion” as grounds for dismissing a federal employee as a “security risk”.

Sources:

shorturl.at/dqRTX

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/10450.html

 

The Washita Massacre and Death of Black Kettle

November 27, 1868 is one of the most disputed days in the Indian Wars; it is the day Custer ordered the 7th Cavalry to murder 103 women and children and elders and the Southern Cheyenne Peace Chief Black Kettle. There had been raids in the Indian Territories, in what is now Oklahoma, by several bands of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho after they had signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty agreeing to move from Colorado and Kansas to the assigned lands in Oklahoma. These raids were partly related to the fact that the final treaty did not have language that the Southern Cheyenne had agreed to regarding their traditional hunting grounds. In the oral agreement, they had the right to hunt the bison in Southern Colorado and Kansas, but the final document had removed this language.

The tribes were preparing for wintering along the Washita River which was known to them as the lodgepole river. There were several encampments, and some were the warriors who had been fighting with settlers and the cavalry. On November 20 Black Kettle and three other chiefs had tried to arrange passage south of the Arkansas River which was the boundary line but because of orders by General Sherman that there existed a state of hostilities regardless of the Medicine Lodge Treaty. So they got supplies for his band and headed for the Washita river and traditional wintering areas quickly hoping to connect to other groups.

Two events combined to cut off Black Kettle’s band. A powerful winter storm on Nov. 26 moved into the plains bringing travel with women and children to a near standstill. Also, on Nov. 25^th a group of 150 warriors, which included young men of the camps of Black Kettle, Medicine Arrows, Little Robe, and Old Whirlwind, had returned to the Washita encampments. They had raided white settlements in the Smoky Hill River country with the Dog Soldiers.

So Black Kettle’s band was basically trapped without their men when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry came up on their camp guided by Cheyenne enemies the Osage. On the early morning of the 27th, the attack came with Custer’s forces killing indiscriminately, and mercilessly any Cheyenne and Arapaho they found. By Custer’s own report 103 members of the camp, including all the women and children were killed.

Some historians have debated whether this was indeed a massacre since Black Kettle knew a condition of war existed and there were armed men in the camp, however with the total annihilation of the camp and the majority being women and children it is hard to dispute the term

Image: The 1868 Battle of the Washita by Steven Lang
 

Sources:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/washita.htm

shorturl.at/dFSZ9

November 23, 1887: The Thibodaux Massacre and the Crushing of Black Unions

A farmworkers union was a challenging concept for anyone to accept in 1887 but especially for White landowners employing Black laborers. On Nov. 23, 1887, the idea led to one of the worst racial/labor massacres in United States history.

In the “Sugar Bowl” area of Louisiana, encompassing St. Mary, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes, sugar cane was cut and pressed by black laborers who were trapped by being paid only in company script and Thibodaux, the town at the center of the cane planting industry was a company town and the store only took the script at a 100 percent mark-up leaving most workers destitute, they also owed their housing to the company. Because of the Louisiana laws about debt and vagrancy, this left most of the workers as indentured servants to the growers.

In 1887 the largest union in the United States was the Knights of Labor and after two failed stoppages/negotiations with the growers, the laborers of the sugar bowl reached out to the Knights, over a few months the Knights organized sugar workers into seven locals of 100 to 150 members and in August of 1887 attempted to meet with the growers, but they refused.

In October as the pressing season began the union requested $1.25 a day in cash wages and the growers again refused and fired all union leaders, so the cutters and rollers went on strike. As the October shadows grew longer and the cane remained in the fields. and growers requested aid from the governor, Samuel D. McEnery, Democratic governor, and former planter, he in turn called for the assistance of several all-white Louisiana militias under the command of ex-Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. At this point, Some 10,000 plantation workers took part in the strike. Most of the strikers were black, but nearly 1000 were white. When striking plantation workers were faced with soldiers armed with Springfield rifles, they offered little to no resistance. They heeded the orders to leave the plantations. Many congregated in the black section of Thibodaux.

With strike-breakers brought in from Mississippi and Tennessee, tensions were extremely high, with the town of Thibodaux sealed and all blacks needing a pass to travel. On the morning of the 23rd shots came from a cornfield at white guards this shooting was a fuse setting off an explosion of violence across the sugar bowl. The white militia began hunting blacks and killing them at random. Records are incomplete, census and pay records are best available but don’t direct much to a crime that was completely covered up. At least 30 people were murdered but based on the available records it is more likely 300 were killed. There was no federal investigation, the state ignored it because of the governor and even the press like the Daily Picayune blamed the black strikers for the violence.

Organized labor made no attempts to work with the Sugar Growers Association until the 1950s and even today the plantations still hold most of the power in the region politically. 

Picture "Cutting sugar cane in Louisiana" by William Henry Jackson for the Detroit publishing company

Sources:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thibodaux-massacre-left-60-african-americans-dead-and-spelled-end-unionized-farm-labor-south-decades-180967289/

https://libcom.org/article/thibodaux-massacre-1887

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/the-thibodaux-massacre-november-23-1887/

 

Black Codes: How The South Tried To Re-Enslave Free Blacks

On this day in 1865 Mississippi passed some of the first “Black Codes” laws that were meant to circumvent the 13th Amendment.

These laws required that all free negros and mulattos register with local officials of both the county and town where they lived, had to register to marry. They also had to be employed and have papers proving they were employed at all-times as well as proof of having a home.

One of the ways these laws could be used to circumvent the Constitution was the employment law which read in part: “every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service” It was not up to the freeman to determine if he was being treated well in a job or quit the job on his own.

Another part of these Black Codes was a system basically re-enslaving orphaned children: “An Act to Regulate the Relation of Master and Apprentice, as Relates to Freedmen, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes” for example required sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other county civil officers were authorized and required to identify all minor Black children in their jurisdictions who were orphans or whose parents could not properly care for them. Once identified, the local probate court was required to “apprentice” Black children to white “masters or mistresses” until age 18 for girls and age 21 for boys.

There was no requirement to pay these “apprentices” and a minor’s former master had preference. In effect, this provision guaranteed that former owners had preference to ensure that the children of their former slaves would continue to labor for the master.

These laws in Mississippi effectively eliminated true social mobility or autonomy for Freemen.

Also any freedman who was unemployed within two weeks of the new year in 1866, was a vagrant. A vagrant needed to pay a fine, and if the vagrant was unable to pay the fine within five days, then the vagrant would be forced into jail and ultimately into unpaid labor.

Many of these laws were duplicated throughout the south forcing Congress to ratify the 14th and 15th Amendments in 1868 and 1870

Sources:

https://mwmblog.com/2020/06/19/black-codes/

https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/legal/docs6.html

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/events-african-american-history/mississippi-black-codes-1865-1866/
 

Kirk and Uhura Kiss: Rodenberry, Shatner, and Nichols Stand Up To Censors

The NBC executives demanded the scene be shot without the kiss regardless of script. Creator producer Gene Rodenberry insisted it be shot as scripted. William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols had already decided to stick to the script regardless of censors and critics. So it was shown as shot in the Star Trek Original Series episode “Plato's Stepchildren", season 3 episode 10, first broadcast on this day in 1968. The first legitimate kiss between a white man and an African American woman.

Television historians will dicker over whether this was the first interracial kiss or not as Shatner had kissed French actress France Nuyen, who is of Asian descent. While there were a handful of kisses one could point to this kiss on Star Trek was between the shows main protagonist and lead female character. It was a major shift in levels of attention. Star Trek was a popular show, even though it would be canceled due to cost vs ratings at the end of this third season. It was also a clear kiss with sexual tension between the two characters and not an off-hand gesture. The plot device allowed for it to be something for Rodenberry and the actors to step away from but also build on if the was a reason too. As the years have passed the growth of Star Trek as a culture touchstone has also allowed the kiss to take on a significance other earlier moments simply do not have.

Producers and NBC executives were extremely concerned about southern viewership and ordered that a scene without the kiss be filmed but Shatner and Nichols simply did things in each take to screw that up from Shatner crossing his eyes to really flubbing it

As Nichols recounts:

Knowing that Gene was determined to air the real kiss, Bill shook me and hissed menacingly in his best ham-fisted Kirkian staccato delivery, "I! WON'T! KISS! YOU! I! WON'T! KISS! YOU!"

It was absolutely awful, and we were hysterical and ecstatic.

In fact there is no record that NBC ever received any negative phone calls or letters. According to Rodenberry and Nichols most of the letters were from girls inquiring what it was like to kiss Kirk or Uhura.

Nichols observed that "Plato's Stepchildren", received a huge response.

“We received one of the largest batches of fan mail ever, all of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive," except from a single mildly negative letter from one white Southerner who wrote: "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."

The kiss might have become just a relic to the past as television evolved except that Star Trek did go on to it's own evolution and become one of the most powerful cultural phenomena of all time.

Sources:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/108958268/star-treks-interracial-kiss-50-years-ago-heralded-change

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/star-trek-s-interracial-kiss-50-years-ago-went-boldly-n941181

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss

 

1927: Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of White Supremacy

On this day in 1927, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down one of its worst decisions in Gong Lum v. Rice. In a 9-0 decision, the court ruled that the state of Mississippi had not violated the 14th Amendment in insisting that a 9-year-old girl, Martha Lum, had to attend a “Colored” school rather than a white one because while she was an American citizen, having been born in Mississippi, she was of Chinese descent and that made her “Mogollon” or “yellow-skinned” and by Mississippi law, the schools could insist that she attend the “Colored” school.

This decision effectively extended the reach of segregation laws and policies in Mississippi and throughout the nation by classifying all non-white individuals as “colored,” and confirming “Separate But Equal” as the law of the nation.

Image: The Lum Family-Berta, Biscoe, and Martha, front row. Gong and Kate, back row. Courtesy of Alvin Gee and the Lum Family. 

Sources:

http://www.gonglumvrice.com/images.html

https://www.britannica.com/event/Gong-Lum-v-Rice

 

Forgotten History: The Native American occupation of Alcatraz

 

On this day in 1969 79 Indigenous Activists began an occupation of the federal facilities on Alcatraz Island. Calling themselves Indians of All Tribes (IAT) they elected a council, set up a school and distributed tasks amongst the whole group, voting on all major decisions. They choose Alcatraz because the fact I t was basically a rock without electricity or running water meant that it was representative of the reservations that most tribes had been given by the federal government.

“We moved onto Alcatraz Island because we feel that Indian people need a cultural center of their own. For several decades, Indian people have not had enough control of training their young people. And without a cultural center of their own, we are afraid that the old Indian ways may be lost. We believe that the only way to keep them alive is for Indian people to do it themselves.” —Letter from Indians of All Tribes, December 16, 1969

The occupiers began broadcasting an unlicensed radio station Radio Free Alcatraz in December of 1969 and their story became worldwide news until June of 1971 when federal law enforcement removed them, however, this incident began a modern Native American Rights movement

Sources:

https://workingclasshistory.tumblr.com/post/701453440807845888/on-this-day-20-november-1969-a-group-of-78

https://books.google.com/books?id=3M6Nhi5Pu1EC&pg=PA223#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/520.html

Executive Order 11063 Outlawing Federal Housing Discrimination

On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy outlawed housing discrimination in federally owned or financed housing with his signature on Executive Order 11063. This was the completion of a campaign promise Kennedy had made in 1960. The official title of the order was Leadership and Coordination of Fair Housing in Federal Programs: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. While he did fulfill this promise it did not change the perception, and frankly reality, that JFK was rather weak on civil rights regardless of his promises and public commitment. Although this order banned segregation in federally funded housing; it did continue in state-funded and of course private housing. It wasn’t until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that racial discrimination was completely outlawed within the United States 

Sources:

https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/fair_housing_and_related_law

 

The Greenup Kentucky Slave Revolt of 1829

 

On this day in 1829, 4 fugitive slaves were hung for attempting murder and escape from traffickers in Greenup, Ky. In August of 1829, a slave driver was driving 60 slaves to market in Mississippi. This was a terrible but common activity in the slave-holding south at the time, in fact, was well known as a ‘Slave Coffle’. The male slaves were chained together but on the morning of August 26th had found a way to free themselves and assaulted the traders, killing three of the four men, but their leader escaped and rode to a nearby plantation to warn of the slaves now free and armed with clubs.

In the week that followed 40 of the 60 slaves were recaptured and 8 of them were charged with the murders of the three traders, and assault on the head trader, a free negro named Gordon. They were quickly convicted and four were given the death sentence. American freeman, abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist David Walker wrote heavily about the incident in his magazine, “The Appeal”. Walker’s articles and an article in the Portsmouth Western Times are generally the only records of the incident so we don’t know what happened to the other slaves, we can assume given the time the 36 uncharged were sold back into slavery and no record exists of others who might have escaped. Given the incomplete records, there might have been only 40 slaves, and no one ran. While there is no record for those slaves the Portsmouth Western Times does provide a good record of what happened to the 4 slaves sentenced to die, one of the four exclaimed to the crowd: “’ Death!  Death, any time, in preference to slavery!’”

Sources: 

https://sciotohistorical.org/items/show/67

https://afropunk.com/2015/11/know-your-black-history-slave-revolts-part-3-death-any-time-in-preference-to-slavery-slave-revolts-by-land/

https://www.executedtoday.com/2015/11/20/1829-the-slaves-of-the-greenup-revolt/

16th Street Bombing Suspect Convicted

On this day in 1977 Robert Edward Chambliss was convicted of using dynamite to blow up the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. The bombing was a watershed moment in that it killed 4 little girls and helped change public perception of the segregationists and Klan members like Chambliss. At the time of the bombing Chambliss was arrested with 122 sticks of dynamite and charged with the murder but acquitted by an all-white jury. The bombing case was closed as a federal matter in 1968 by FBI director J, Edgar Hoover even though agents had evidence from the local case that Chambliss and two other men had definitely participated in the act of terror, in fact Chambliss had the nickname ‘Dynamite Bob’ because he was well known by fellow Klan members for using the explosive to terrorize Blacks across Alabama.

In 1971 Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case using the evidence gathered by the FBI including recordings. Although it took six years Chambliss was eventually convicted and sent to prison in #OTD in 1977. He died in prison at age 81 in 1985. Two other men Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton Jr. were also convicted in 2002 as accomplishes in the bombing and received life sentences.

Sources:

https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/chambliss-robert.htm

https://www.apr.org/arts-life/2013-08-01/no-remorse-prison-letters-of-klansman-convicted-in-63-birmingham-church-bombing

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-02-fi-1334-story.html 

 

J. Edgar Hoover Insults Martin Luther King in the Press

On this day in 1964 years of resentment by FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover exploded into the national news when Hoover called King, the “most notorious liar” in America. The attack was a response to King’s criticisms of the FBI regarding its failure to protect civil rights leaders from racist assaults. King was speaking of how many ‘Freedom Riders’ and Black activists had been attacked and assaulted by the KKK and law enforcement for trying to help Black voters in the South, particularly in Mississippi.

Hoover had long despised King for being a potential communist as well as a disruptive force in society, Hoover distrusted change and no one was pressing for change more than King. Hoover had ordered wiretaps of the civil rights leader the year previous and was disgusted by both King’s extra-marital affairs and how he spoke of public figures in front of crowds, such as Hoover himself, and how he spoke of the same people in private with friends and advisors. King personally had no animosity toward Hoover but felt he was an ineffective leader of the FBI.

After the interview where Hoover called King a ‘notorious liar’ controversy ensued that even pulled in President Lydon Johnson with calls for him to fire Hoover. This led to a meeting in Hoover’s office on December 1, 1964, between Hoover and King and his advisors Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young, where Hoover basically dismissed any issues and lectured the three men on the actual best way to achieve their objectives without causing disruptive protests.

Sources: 

https://www.historynet.com/encounter-j-edgar-hoover-lectures-martin-luther-king/

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/what-really-happened-between-j-edgar-hoover-and-mlk-jr/248319/

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Klan Leader Welcomed At University of North Carolina

Hiram Wesley Evans, 1922

Today's #CRT History Snapshot: #OTD in 1937 over 1,000 white students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gathered to attend a speech openly advocating for white supremacy by the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Dr. Hiram Evans. Evans had been the Imperial Wizard of the Klan for 15 years and overseen both its greatest growth to 6 million members in 1924 to its near collapse by 1932, but in the south, he and the Klan still hung on but with less than 100,000 members. Evans speech this night was not much different than any he had ever given but increasingly the Klan also advocated for an American Nazi party. UNC has had a long and deeply connected past with the Klan as the student newspaper supported Evans but also Saunders Hall, a campus building, after William Saunders, the leader of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan remained until 2015.

Sources:

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/17

https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/22-the-new-era/hiram-evans-on-the-the-klans-fight-for-americanism-1926/

 

1972 Southern University Shooting and Deaths of Leonard Brown and Denver Smith

On November 16, 1972, Leonard Brown, and Denver Smith students at Southern University were shot dead by a sheriff’s deputy on Southern University’s campus. The shooting came after several weeks of protests and class boycotts over poor funding by the Louisiana State Legislature, dilapidated buildings, and little response to their concerns. The state spent only half as much money on Black students and their facilities as they did on white students in predominantly white colleges and universities. On November 15 Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards ordered the campus closed, citing safety reasons, and sent in members of the National Guard, and local police officers. On that day four students were arrested. On the 16th protest, leaders met with university president Dr. G. Leon Netterville, who agreed to go and request the student's release. While Netterville was gone the protest leaders remained in his office. At the same time, other protesters had set fire to the registration building, and someone called and reported that Netterville had been taken hostage and "Radicals" were holding the administration building hostage. 300 National Guard and law enforcement returned and surrounded the building in full riot gear with a tank. They ordered the students out of the building, and although students complied they assaulted them with tear gas; when a student threw a gas canister back at the officers and this resulted in police firing their weapons, killing Brown and Smith. It was never revealed who fired the killing shots. Netterville resigned after the shooting. In 1975, a separate board of trustees was created to govern the university.

Sources:

https://www.wwno.org/news/2022-11-14/pain-lessons-remain-decades-after-southern-university-shooting

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2018/winter/feature/new-documentary-casts-light-the-1972-tragedy-southern-university

 

Brutal Lynching in Limon, CO

On this day in 1900 15-year-old Preston John Porter Jr was lynched by a white mob in Limon, CO. Ostensibly because he had confessed to the murder of a white farm girl named Louise Frost on Nov. 8. There was no evidence of this other than Preston, his brother and father were the only negros in Lincoln County and so had to be the murderers, at least one of them. On November 12, all three were arrested and taken to the city jail in Denver. After the Porters had been in jail for four days, newspapers reported that Preston had confessed to the crime “in order to save his father and brother from sharing the fate that he believes awaits him.” It was a terrible fate, as a mob of 200 stopped the train from Denver at a depot 3 miles west of Limon and assaulted the sheriff of Lincoln County, taking Preston from the train; chained to a railroad stake, and burned alive. Despite enormous press coverage identifying multiple members of the mob, no investigation into the lynching was conducted and the coroner concluded Preston died “at the hands of parties unknown.”

 

Forgotten History: 1922 Guayaquil General Strike & Massacre

Today's Forgotten History: #OTD in 1922 at least 300 striking utility workers were massacred by the Ecuadoran army in the city of Guayaquil. Inspired by railroad workers in the nearby town of Durán, the utility and trolly workers of Guayaquil declared a general strike. Due to competition in the cocoa market, Ecuador was suffering a depression, the strikers made relatively modest demands such as the payment of wages on time, the establishment of medical auxiliary posts, payment in United States dollars or gold rather than the sucre, fifteen days notice before lay-offs and the re-hiring of fired union organizers. The government agreed to exchange rate moratorium and to continue negotiating on demands but the word had not gotten around to the 20,000 strikers and supporters who were advancing on the police station when the army began firing. The general strike ended shortly after the massacre of 15 November. The following day, President Tamayo signaled that he would sign the exchange rate moratorium that had been demanded by the strikers. Most workers returned to their jobs, but the trolley workers continued their strike. On 21 November, the trolley worker strike was finally resolved, with the trolley workers receiving pay raises, shorter hours, and other demands. However, the trolley company would also increase fares

Art Dorrington: Breaking Hockey's Color Barrier November 15, 1950

 Today's #CRT History Snapshot: #OTD in 1950 Art Dorrington became the first Black player in organized hockey in North America when he signed with the New York Rangers and began play for their minor league club the Atlantic City Sea Gulls. He was drafted into the army in 1956 where a broken leg ended his career, before he made it to the National Hockey League. In his brief career Dorrington played for the Atlantic City Sea Gulls, Johnstown Jets, Washington Lions and Philadelphia Ramblers after moving around the Eastern Hockey League (EHL), Eastern Amateur Hockey League (EAHL) and International Hockey League (IHL).

Up on retirement Dorrington joined the Atlantic County Sheriff’s Department and became a major influence in the community. In 1998, he and his wife founded a nonprofit program, Art Dorrington Ice Hockey Foundation, that provides low-income children the opportunity to learn life skills through hockey. For every hour the youths were on the ice, they spent an hour in the classroom. Dorrington’s mantra was “On the Ice – Off the Streets.” The Dorringtons’ foundation received the support of the NHL’s “Hockey is for Everyone.”

In 2012, Boardwalk Hall’s ice hockey rink was named after Dorrington, and three years later, Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian proclaimed March 15 as Art Dorrington Day. Mr. Dorrington died at age 87 on December 29, 2017

Slave Revolt at Webbers Falls, Oklahoma: November 15, 1842

 

Critical Race Theory History Lesson: #OTD in 1842 was the unusual event of a slave revolt against their Indigenous owners. Although it isn't often covered in history texts there were Indigenous people who owned slaves and treated them as cattle no different than white plantation owners. #OTD 25 slaves at Webbers Falls in the Oklahoma Territory owned by Cherokee farmer Joseph Vann locked everyone in the main house and took off for Mexico. Along the way they picked up more slaves from other plantations owned by the Creek people. The Cherokee Nation sent the Cherokee Militia, under Capt. John Drew, with eighty-seven men to catch the runaways. This expedition was authorized by the Cherokee National Council in Tahlequah on November 17, 1842. The militia caught up with the slaves seven miles north of the Red River on November 28, 1842. The tired, famished fugitives offered no resistance. The party returned to Tahlequah on December 8, 1842. Five slaves were executed, and Joseph Vann put the majority of his rebellious slaves to work on his steamboats, which worked the Arkansas, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers. 

A Double Lynching In Texas

November 12, 1935 

Two adolescent boys, 15-year-old Ernest Collins and 16-year-old Benny Mitchell were taken by a white mob of approximately 700 to a giant crossroads oak in Colorado County, Texas, and lynched. 

In October 1935, a young white woman’s body was found in a creek near her family’s farm in Columbus, Texas. When local officials concluded she had been murdered, suspicion soon focused on Ernest Collins and Benny Mitchell: two Black teens who had been seen picking pecans near the same creek. Law enforcement took the boys into custody but word soon got around that the two had confessed. Although the boys had been held in jail in Houston on the day of their trial they were being brought back when the sheriff's car was stopped by several cars of white men, the sheriff for his safety and his deputies turned the boys over to the mob. 

The next day, the white community proudly boasted and praised the lynchings. The county attorney said the lynchings were justice, an extension of the community's will.

The tree is still there and known as the Hanging Tree. No one was ever charged