People, Locations, Episodes

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is established

*The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established on this date in 1996. The TRC was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the end of apartheid. The TRC was set up in Cape Town under terms of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995. The hearings […]

Pigford v. Glickman is Decided

*On this date in 1999, Pigford v. Glickman was decided. This was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging racial discrimination against Black farmers in allocating farm loans and assistance between 1981 and 1996.   After Shirley and Charles Sherrod lost their farm when they could not secure United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) loans, they became class action plaintiffs in the […]

Church Bombing Hate Crime Tried 39 Years Later

On this date in 2002, the last of the bomb killers of four Black children in Alabama was convicted.

Closing the books on the deadliest crime of the civil rights era, a jury convicted an aging former Klansman of murder for the 1963 church bombing that shook the nation’s soul. The verdict, reached by a racially mixed jury in less than seven hours of deliberation, brought tears from relatives on both sides and a statement of defiance from the 71-year-old defendant, Bobby Frank Cherry.

The ‘No Fear Act’ is Signed into Law

On this date in 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No FEAR Act.

The Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR ACT), was the first civil rights law of the 21st century. No FEAR, among other things, requires agencies to make employees aware of discrimination and whistle blower protection laws. This provision is the result of the tireless work of Marsha Coleman-Adebayo.

The First Black President Of The Alabama State Bar Is Elected

On this date in 2002, the first Black president of the Alabama state bar association was installed.

Fred Gray, Sr., who defended Rosa Parks in her landmark bus segregation case and represented victims of the well-known Tuskegee syphilis experiment, has broken another racial barrier at age 71. With his installation he assumes a post that white attorneys normally achieve when they are in their 50s.

Alabama’s law schools did not admit blacks in the early 1950s, so Gray headed to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. His goal: “To destroy everything segregated I could find.”

The Central Park Jogger Case is Dismissed

On this date in 2002, A New York judge dismissed the convictions in the “Central Park Jogger” rape case.

Another Klan Member Is Found Guilty Of Murder

*On this date in 2003, another Ku Klux Klan member was convicted of killing a Black man in 1966.

Klansman Ernest Avants was found guilty of slaying Ben White, a Black sharecropper, more than thirty years ago. The trial and verdict took place in Jackson, Mississippi for a crime prosecutors say was staged to lure Martin Luther King Jr. to the southern part of the state to be assassinated.

The Supreme Court Reaffirms Affirmative Action

On this date in 2003, the U. S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action.

A divided Supreme Court reaffirmed colleges’ right to give an edge to minority applicants to attain campus diversity, but raised the threshold in hopes of ending affirmative action within 25 years. While the 5-4 decision found that the University of Michigan law school’s race-based admissions system meets “a compelling government interest,” the court gave a separate victory to opponents of affirmative action.

Grutter v. Bollinger is Decided

*Grutter v. Bollinger was decided on this date in 2003. This was a landmark case of the United States Supreme Court concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors “underrepresented minority groups” does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause so long as it considers other […]

Life Sentence for Black Florida Boy is Changed

On this date in 2003, A Florida appeals court threw out a African American boy’s conviction for beating a 6-year-old playmate to death.

The case spotlighted a Florida law that says child murderers must be locked away for the rest of their lives. In West Palm Beach, the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Lionel Tate, now 16, saying his mental competency should have been evaluated before his trial. He was tried as an adult and is serving life without parole at a maximum-security juvenile prison.

The Gullah/Geechee Corridor Act is Passed

*On this date in 2005, the Gullah/Geechee Corridor Act was signed into law. The Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act – Establishes the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor (Heritage Corridor) to: (1) recognize the significant contributions made to American culture and history by African Americans known as the Gullah/Geechee, who settled in the coastal counties of South Carolina, […]

Justice is Served for Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney

On this date in 2005, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was convicted of manslaughter in Mississippi.

Edgar Ray Killen was convicted in the murders of three Civil Rights workers exactly 41 years ago. A jury of nine Whites and three Blacks reached the verdict on their second day of deliberations, rejecting murder charges against Killen but also turning aside defense claims that he wasn’t involved at all. An all-white jury in 1967 just three years after the murders had found Killen innocent.

The Jena Six Teenagers, a story

*On this date in 2006, the Jena Six were convicted. They were six African American teenagers accused and convicted in the beating of Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana. Barker was injured in the assault by the members of the Jena Six, and received treatment for his injuries at an emergency room.

While the case was pending, some media commentators cited it as an example of racial injustice in the United States, due to a belief that the defendants had initially been charged with too-serious offenses and had been treated unfairly.

Allegheny, PA. Bar Posthumously Admits George Vashon To Practice Law

*On this date in  2010, a Black man was admitted to the Allegheny County Bar posthumously, 163 years after he applied.  In 1847, the Allegheny County Bar denied George Boyer Vashon entry because he was Black. Vashon reapplied to the bar in 1868 and was again rejected. Pennsylvania was a “free state” before the American […]

Police Brutality Protest in Oakland, CA Occurs

*On this date in 2010 the Black community in Oakland, California protested and verdict in the death of another black man by an Oakland police officer.