People, Locations, Episodes

South Africa’s First Immorality Act is Imposed

*On this date, 1927, South Africa’s first Immorality Act was issued. This was the title of acts of the Parliament of South Africa, which prohibited, amongst other things, sexual relations between white people and people of different races until amended first in 1950. Part of the Apartheid regime was installed to prohibit sex between whites […]

Buck v. Bell (Supreme Court Case) is Decided

*On this date in 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200.  This episode followed the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and channeled race into an unmonitored deciding factor of sterilization in America.   Buck v. Bell was the United States Supreme Court ruling that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, “for the protection and health of the […]

Another Black Man is Lynched in America (Image may not be suitable for children)

*On this date in 1927, another Black man was lynched in Little Rock, Arkansas.  This murder and the rioting that followed are one of the most notorious incidents of racial violence in the state’s history. The experience and wave of mob violence culminated in the lynching of John Carter. This event reveals much about the […]

William Thompson, Soldier born

*William Thompson was born on this date in 1927.  He was a decorated Black soldier in the United States Army.   Born in Brooklyn, New York, to an unmarried mother, little is known of William Henry Thompson’s early life, but he grew up in an impoverished tenement house neighborhood. He dropped out of school young and spent his teen years wandering the […]

Juanita Milam, Murder Defendant born

*Juanita Milam was born on this date in 1927. She was a white-American clerk and the widow of one of Emmett Till’s killers.    Born Mary Juanita Thompson in Greenville, MS, she was the fifth of six children of Albert and Myrtle Thompson. She married World War II veteran John William Milam on December 10, […]

The Crockett State School of Texas is Founded

*The founding of the Crockett State School is celebrated on this date in 1927. This was a Texas Youth Commission juvenile correctional facility. The Crockett State School, located in Crockett, Texas, was on a 125-acre farm about 115 miles north of Houston, TX, and students there committed various crimes, including truancy, property crimes, and crimes […]

James Earl Ray, Murderer born

*James Earl Ray was born on this date in 1928. He was a white-American fugitive and felon.   Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois, the son of Lucille and George Ellis Ray. He had Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry and a Catholic upbringing. Ray was the firstborn of nine children, including John Larry Ray, Franklin Ray, Jerry William Ray, Melba Ray, Carol […]

The Conant Gardens Community is Formed

*Conant Gardens is celebrated on December 2, 1928. This is a Black neighborhood in northeast Detroit, Michigan.  Due to the automobile industry boom, the community was not very densely populated until the 1920s. Named after reluctant abolitionist Shubael Conant, Conant Gardens was to be developed for white-collar Ford workers, but there was a lack of interest. However, the industrial boom […]

The Hallie Q. Brown Center, (St. Paul) Opens

The Hallie Q. Brown Center of St. Paul, MN, was incorporated on this date in 1929.

The center is one of the oldest African American community service organizations in Minnesota. The Hallie Q. Brown Center’s story started in 1908 when Black members of the Odd Fellows and Masons fraternal lodges of St. Paul, purchased six lots on Aurora Street between Kent and Mackubin located within St. Paul’s largely African American Rondo neighborhood. There the organization began to serve the unmet needs of the Black community and create better relationships with the white community.

Sarah Keys, Army Nurse born

*Sarah Keyes was born on this date in 1929. She is a retired Black nurse’s aide and WAC Army officer. From Washington, N.C., Sarah Louise Keyes was the daughter of David Artist Keyes and Curley Vivian Wooten. One of seven children, she graduated locally from Mother of Mercy School in 1948. After graduation, Keyes worked […]

The Green Pastures Debuts on Broadway

*On this date in 1930, The Green Pastures debuted on Broadway. This play was written in 1930 by Marc Connelly and adapted from Ol’ Man Adam and His Chillun (1928), a collection of stories by Roark Bradford. The play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930. It had the first all-Black Broadway cast. […]

The New York Cubans Baseball Team is Formed

*The New York Cubans baseball team is celebrated on this date in 1930. They were a Negro League baseball team that played from the 1930s to 1950. Operating in the Negro leagues, the team occasionally employed white-skinned Hispanic baseball players as well because Hispanics, in general, were largely ignored by the major league baseball teams […]

Bobby Frank Cherry, American Domestic Terrorist born

*Bobby Frank Cherry was born on this date in 1930. He was a white-American white supremacist and terrorist who played a pivotal role in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963.   Bobby Frank Cherry was born in Mineral Springs, a neighborhood of Clanton, Alabama.  He joined the United States Marine Corps as a […]

The Northeasterners Club Begins

*This date in 1930 marks the first meeting of The Northeasterners Inc. The Northeasterners Inc. was a Black woman’s social club started in Harlem, NYC that still exists today.

The Lynching of J. Thomas Shipp, and Abraham S. Smith Occurs

*On this date in 1930, the lynching of J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith occurred.  They were two young Black men murdered by a white mob of thousands in Marion, Indiana. Three suspects had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker, Claude Deeter, and raping his girlfriend, […]