People, Locations, Episodes

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.

Trent Lott Resigns As Senate Majority Leader

On this date in 2002, Trent Lott, a White Republican senator from Mississippi, resigned his position as Senate majority leader.

Lott’s tumble followed a tribute that he gave earlier in the month at Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. The Mississippian hailed the respected South Carolinian and said he thought the nation would have been better off if Thurmond had won his campaign for the presidency in 1948. Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat at the time, on a segregationist platform.

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.

A Racial Protest Takes Place in Benton Harbor, Michigan

On this date in 2003, a racial disturbance occurred in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

Benton Harbor is a city of 12,000, of which 92% were Black, and plagued for years by poverty, high unemployment, and racial tensions. The riot began after the death of Terrance Shurn, 28, of Benton Harbor. His speeding motorcycle crashed into a building as Benton Township police chased him. Shurn was Black and the officers who chased him into the city were White. No serious injuries were reported in Monday’s violence, but late Tuesday, bottle-throwing residents overpowered the small police force.

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 […]

President George W. Bush Condemns American Slavery

*On this date in 2003, President George W. Bush publicly said American slavery was one of history’s greatest crimes.

He spoke from notorious Goree Island, Senegal, which for several centuries was a processing station for African slaves bound in chains for the Western Hemisphere. He said, “At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history.”

George W. Bush Pledges Support to Liberia

On this date in 2003, American President George W. Bush ordered an unspecified number of U.S. forces to be positioned off the coast of war-torn Liberia.

Los Angeles Police Brutality Case Deadlocked

On this date in 2003 in Los Angeles, a Superior Court judge declared a deadlocked jury in a police brutality case against a white former officer and the case was dismissed.

Inglewood Officer Jeremy Morse punched and slammed Donovan Jackson, a handcuffed black teenager, onto a squad car during a videotaped arrest. The jury deliberated more than three days without reaching a verdict.

Yetunde Price, Serena and Venus Williams’ Sister is Killed

*On this date in 2003 the eldest sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams was killed in a Los Angeles suburb.

31-year-old Yetunde Price was shot about 12:15 am in Compton, south of Los Angeles. The suspected murder occurred after a confrontation between neighborhood residents and Price, who was riding in a white SUV with an unidentified man. Sheriff’s deputies and a gang squad from the local Compton Police department had surrounded a house near the shooting but the suspects fled the building prior to their arrival. Price died of gunshot wounds to her upper torso.

Nigerian Woman is Acquitted in Adultery Case and Avoids Stoning

On this date in 2003, a Nigerian woman won an acquittal in court, avoiding death by stoning.

Amina Lawal a Nigerian peasant sentenced under Islamic law to death by stoning for having had sex outside marriage, was set free by the highest religious court in her state. Her case had become a flash point in the debate over the reintroduction of Shariah, or Islamic law, across northern Nigeria and a difficult political problem for a nation already inflamed by deep religious and regional divides. Death-by-stoning is not allowed under the Nigerian constitution.

Child Slaves Are Rescued From Nigeria

On this date in 2003, 116 Black African boys were rescued from a slave labor camp in Nigeria. Police rescued the boys, who were as young as 4 years old, who had been put to work in the granite quarries in southwest Nigeria.

This initial intervention stemmed from increased international attention to child labor. The intervention activity includes boycott threats of Ivory Coast cocoa, often harvested with the help of trafficked children. Their parents had put them in the hands of labor traffickers for as little as $35.

White Television Commentator Resigns Over Racist Statements

On this date in 2003, White conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN television over racial comments he directed at African American athlete Donovan McNabb.

Three days earlier, he had said the Philadelphia Eagles football player was overrated because the media wanted to see a Black quarterback succeed. Before McNabb led the Eagles to a 23-13 victory over the Buffalo Bills, Limbaugh said on ESPN’s pre-game show that he didn’t think McNabb was as good as perceived from the start.

The African Burial Ground (New York City) is Re-Established

On this date in 2003, an African Burial Ground in New York City was re-established and re-consecrated.

The African Burial Ground is a 6-acre cemetery that was used between the late 1600s and 1796, and originally contained between 10,000 and 20,000 burials. The discovery of the African Burial Ground occurred in June 1991. Earlier that month, construction workers began to dig the foundation for a new $300 million federal government building in lower Manhattan. It all stopped when they came upon the burial ground, where they found wooden coffins and human remains.

A Board Game Company Is Sued For Using Black Stereotypes

On this date in 2003, protesters gathered outside an Urban Outfitters store in Philadelphia, PA., to protest a racist board game being sold at the store.

The racial issue centered on the ‘Ghettopoly’ board game that had many in the black community outraged. In the game, players act as pimps and game cards read “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50.” Properties in the game include West Side Liquor, Harlem, The Bronx, and Long Beach City. A local chapter of the NAACP and Black clergy called the game offensively racist.