*On this date in 2007, Thousands of chanting civil rights demonstrators filled the streets of Jena Louisiana.
They came in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate. Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said the scene was reminiscent of earlier civil rights struggles. He said punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but “the justice system isn’t applied the same to all crimes and all people.”
learn more*On this date in 2007, two students were shot and wounded at Delaware State University. The campus was locked down as police searched for a gunman.
Three days later On September 24th, police arrested an 18-year-old man in the shooting. As they led him into a courthouse, he told reporters: “I’m sorry.” Loyer D. Braden, arrested about 3 a.m. in his dorm room, was charged with attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment, as well as a gun charge, according to court documents.
learn moreOn this date in 2007, a Black University of Memphis football player was fatally shot on campus in what police believe was a targeted attack.
Taylor Bradford, 21 years old, was shot while driving a car near a university housing complex and crashed into a tree on campus, officials said. Reports of gunfire had been heard in a parking lot of the housing complex about 200 yards from where Bradford was found.
learn moreOn this date in 2007, Jacob Zuma was elected leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC).
Zuma, a populist whose political career survived rape and corruption charges, received 2,329 votes, ahead of incumbent Thabo Mbeki’s 1,505 votes, following one of the most divisive campaigns the party has seen. The win put Zuma into a position to become South Africa’s president in 2009. As the results were announced, chaos erupted in the hall; then Mbeki and Zuma, both 65-year-old veterans of the ANC in exile, mounted the stage together and embraced.
learn moreOn this date in 2008, New Jersey officially expressed regret for its role in “perpetuating the institution of slavery.”
learn more*On this date in 2008, a teenage Black student was acquitted of felony second-degree assault in his school. Randall Nelson broke the jaw of a white schoolmate who taunted him with racial slurs in their Steamboat Spring Colorado Middle School. It took 40 minutes for the all-white jury in Steamboat Springs to reach a verdict. […]
learn more*On this date in 2008 About 50 white separatists protested the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in JENA, La.
Police separated participants in the “pro-majority” rally organized by the Learned, Miss. based Nationalist Movement from a racially mixed group of about 100 counter-demonstrators outside the LaSalle Parish Courthouse. There was no violence and one arrest, a counter-demonstrator. Chants of “No KKK” from the mostly college-age counter-demonstrators were met with a chant from the separatists that contained a racial nickname.
learn more*On this date in 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech on race during his first presidential campaign. A storm was threatening to overwhelm his path breaking presidential nomination. Excerpts of racially charged sermons by his former minister and spiritual mentor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who for 20 years had been pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, were all over the news. In the spring of that year, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (then) Senator Obama delivered “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Here is a transcript of that speech.
learn more*On this date in 2008, more than 140 years after a former Florida governor described Africans as “a wild barbarian to be tamed and civilized,” the Legislature apologized for the state’s role in sanctioning slavery.
learn more*On this date in 2008, The NAACP selected Benjamin Todd Jealous as its president. The Oxford University-educated activist is the youngest president to lead the nation’s oldest Civil Rights organization. Jealous, 35, was chosen by the group’s 64-member board after a yearlong search and was introduced at the group’s national headquarters in Baltimore.
learn moreOn this date in 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois won the Democratic presidential nomination.
This historic step made him the nation’s first Black president candidate. Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton and set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a 46-year-old opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.
learn more*On this date in 2008, O.J. Simpson was convicted on all charges in his Las Vegas kidnapping and robbery trial.
He was taken into custody at the Clark County Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas. Simpson, a former football star who was notably cleared of murder in the “Trial of the Century”, was convicted along with co-defendant Clarence Stewart on the 13th anniversary of his controversial 1995 acquittal. He was ordered jailed by Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass immediately after the verdict.
learn more*On this date in 2008, white-American politician John McCain publicly defended the religious and ethnic identity of Barack Obama. During the 2008 American Presidential campaign, there was a highly-charged open meeting in a high school gymnasium in Lakeville, Minn. There was a growing public display of fear and unease over Obama in which Republicans at […]
learn moreOn this date in 2008 Barack Obama became the first Black man to be elected president of the United States of America.
Obama, the multiracial son of a white mother from Kansas and an African father from Kenya, was elected as the 44th president of the United States, writing a remarkable new chapter in American history with a campaign built on the theme of hope.
learn more*On this date in 2009 the first African American became president of the United States of America.
learn more