People, Locations, Episodes

Cecil Price, Police Officer born.

*Cecil Price was born on this date in 1938. He was a white-American police officer and white supremacist. Cecil Ray Price was born in Flora, Mississippi, and graduated from Flora High School in 1956. After graduation, Price became a deputy sheriff in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and joined the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. On June […]

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada is Decided

*On this date in 1938, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337, was decided.   This was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that states that provided a school to white students also had to provide in-state education to Blacks. States could satisfy this requirement by allowing blacks and whites to attend the same school or creating a second school for […]

Lawrence Guyot, Civil Rights Lawyer born

*Lawrence Guyot was born on this date in 1939. He was an African American, lawyer and Civil Rights activist. From Pass Christian, Mississippi after high school Guyot (pronounced GHEE-ott) enrolled at Tougaloo College where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry in 1963. It was during his undergrad college years that he became active in civil rights.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is Formed

*On this date in 1940, we celebrate the founding of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). They are a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.   Created by Charles Hamilton Houston in the 1930s, the organization stems from the legal department of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1940, Thurgood Marshall established LDF […]

Alston v. The School Board of Norfolk is Decided

*On this date in 1940, Alston v. The School Board of Norfolk was decided. This was a suit instituted by Melvin O. Alston, a Black schoolteacher from Norfolk, VA, and the Norfolk Teachers’ Association, an association composed of Black schoolteachers from that city. From the beginning of segregated public schooling in Norfolk, black teachers made […]

The American Marine Corps Integrates

On this date in 1941, the Marine Corps formally integrated. This was a result of President Roosevelt signing Executive Order 8802 months before Pearl Harbor.

The Fair Employment Practice Committee is Created

*The Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) was created on this date in 1941. Officially termed Executive Order 8802 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, its purpose was: “banning discriminatory employment practices by Federal agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war-related work.”   This was a significant advancement for African Americans, initiated primarily by three individuals and […]

Executive Order 8802 is Signed

*On this date in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which prohibited ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation’s defense industry. It also established the Fair Employment Practice Committee, the first federal action, though not a law, to promote equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the United States. Many citizens of […]

The John M. Langston Bar Association is Formed

*The founding of the John M. Langston Bar Association is celebrated on this date in 1943.    They began as a small support group of Black attorneys in Los Angeles. Attorney Crispus Attucks Wright and other pioneering Black lawyers began a “law club.”   They founded the association in response to other bar city associations’ policies of excluding […]

Nat Glover Jr., Administrator born

*Nat Glover was born on this date in 1943. He is a Black college administrator, former police officer, and sheriff.   Nathaniel Glover Jr. was born and attended public schools in Jacksonville. As a young man, he experienced the racism of the early 1960s when he stumbled into Ax Handle Saturday. On that day, white men, including some members of the Ku Klux […]

Sharon Pratt, Policy Administrator born

*Sharon Pratt was born on this date in 1944. She is a Black lawyer, politician, and administrator. From Washington D.C., she was born to D.C. Superior Court judge Carlisle Edward Pratt and Mildred “Peggy” (Petticord) Pratt. Three years later, a sister, Benaree, was born. After she lost her mother to breast cancer at an early […]

Duvall v. School Board is Ruled

*On this date in 1944, Duvall v. School Board was ruled on. This case involved equal pay for certified schoolteachers in South Carolina regardless of race.  On November 10, 1943, NAACP lawyers filed the case with the federal district court to equalize the salary of Viola Louise Duvall, a Black educator from Charleston’s Burke High School. The […]

Algernon J. Cooper, Jr., Lawyer and Administrator born.

*Algernon J. Cooper, Jr. was born on this date in 1944. He is a Black politician and lawyer. Algernon Johnson Cooper, Jr., his sister Peggy, and brother Gary were born in Mobile, Alabama, to Gladys Catherine Mouton and Algernon Johnson Cooper, Sr. Cooper attended St. Peter Claver Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, until he attended […]

Korematsu v. The United States is Decided

*On this date in 1944, Korematsu v. the United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was decided. This was a landmark United States Supreme Court case upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The case exemplifies the racial intersectionality between Asian Americans and African Americans in the United States. The decision has widely been criticized, with some scholars describing it as “an […]

Lena Baker is Executed

*On his date in 1945, Lena Baker, an African American mother of three, was electrocuted at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville.

She was convicted for the fatal shooting of E. B. Knight, a white Cuthbert, GA mill operator she was hired to care for after he broke his leg. She was 44 and the only woman ever executed in Georgia’s electric chair. For Baker, a Black maid in the segregated south in the 1940’s, her story was a tough sell to a jury of 12 white men. And rumors that she was romantically involved with victim E. B. Knight did not help.