A politically motivated attack by whites against the city’s leading African American citizens, the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 documents the lengths to which white Democrats went to regain political domination of the South after Reconstruction. The violence began on Thursday, November 10 in the … Read MoreWilmington Race Riot of 1898
In 1931 twelve-year- old Thomas J. Pressly witnessed the lynching of George Smith in Union City, the county seat of Obion County, Tennessee. Now a University of Washington historian and Professor Emeritus, Dr. Pressley describes that lynching in the article below. When I was twelve … Read MoreEyewitness to Terror: The Lynching of a Black Man in Obion County, Tennessee in 1931
Founded in Detroit, Michigan in 1946, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) arose out of the merger of three groups with ties to the Communist Party USA: the International Labor Defense (ILD), the National Negro Congress, and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. Embodying the spirit … Read MoreCivil Rights Congress (1946-1956)
Emmett Till was a fourteen year-old African American boy who was tortured and killed in Money, Mississippi in 1955 after allegedly insulting a white woman. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Till lived with his mother, Mamie Till. His father, Louis Till, died while serving in the … Read MoreEmmett Louis Till (1941-1955)
The infamous Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919 was part of the wave of racial and labor violence that swept the United States during the “Red Summer” of 1919. It was witnessed by an estimated 20,000 people, making it one of the largest individual spectacles of … Read MoreThe Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919
Walter Francis White was a leading civil rights advocate of the first half of the twentieth century. As executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1931 to 1955, he was one of the major architects of the modern … Read MoreWalter F. White (1893-1955)
Activist and writer Ida B. Wells-Barnett first became prominent in the 1890s because she brought international attention to the lynching of African Americans in the South. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862. At the age of sixteen, she became primary … Read MoreIda Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
