Category: Race Relations

September 4, 1957 – The Little Rock Crisis: begins as Gov. Orval Fabus calls out the National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School.

9/4/2021

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. Tied to the 14th Amendment, the decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation.[ After the decision, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the school board agreed to comply with the high court's ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school year, which would begin in September 1957.

By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance.[2] Called the "Little Rock Nine", they were Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010), Terrence Roberts (b. 1941), Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942), Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Thelma Mothershed (b. 1940), and Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School.

When integration began on September 4, 1957, the Arkansas National Guard was called in to "preserve the peace". Originally at orders of the governor, they were meant to prevent the black students from entering due to claims that there was "imminent danger of tumult, riot and breach of peace" at the integration. However, President Eisenhower issued Executive order 10730, which federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered them, as well as a detachment of the 101st Airborne Division stationed at Jacksonville, Arkansas, abut 10 miles from Little Rock. to support the integration on September 23 of that year, after which they protected the African American students, who became known in Civil Rights history as the Little Rock Nine.

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September 2, 1885 – Rock Springs massacre: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing se

9/2/2021

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1885 riot and massacre of Chinese-American coal miners, by white miners. From Harper's Weekly: Harper's Weekly, Vol. 29

The Rock Springs massacre, also known as the Rock Springs Riot, occurred on September 2, 1885, in the present-day United States city of Rock Springs in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. The riot, and resulting massacre of immigrant Chinese miners by white immigrant miners, was the result of racial prejudice toward the Chinese miners, who were perceived to be taking jobs from the white miners. The Union Pacific Coal Department found it economically beneficial to give preference in hiring to Chinese miners, who were willing to work for lower wages than their white counterparts, angering the white miners. When the rioting ended, at least 28 Chinese miners were dead and 15 were injured. Rioters burned 78 Chinese homes, resulting in approximately US$150,000 in property damage.
Tension between whites and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century American West was particularly high, especially in the decade preceding the violence. The massacre in Rock Springs was one among several instances of violence culminating from years of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, but not before thousands of immigrants came to the American West. Most Chinese immigrants to Wyoming Territory took jobs with the railroad at first, but many ended up employed in coal mines owned by the Union Pacific Railroad. As Chinese immigration increased, so did anti-Chinese sentiment on the part of whites. The Knights of Labor, one of the foremost voices against Chinese immigrant labor, formed a chapter in Rock Springs in 1883, and most rioters were members of that organization. However, no direct connection was ever established linking the riot to the national Knights of Labor organization.

In the immediate aftermath of the riot, United States Army troops were deployed in Rock Springs. They escorted the surviving Chinese miners, most of whom had fled to Evanston, Wyoming, back to Rock Springs a week after the riot. Reaction came swiftly from the era's publications. In Rock Springs, the local newspaper endorsed the outcome of the riot, while in other Wyoming newspapers, support for the riot was limited to sympathy for the causes of the white miners. The massacre in Rock Springs touched off a wave of anti-Chinese violence, especially in the Puget Sound area of Washington Territory.

After the riot in Rock Springs, sixteen men were arrested, including Isaiah Washington, a member-elect to the territorial legislature. The men were taken to jail in Green River, where they were held until after a Sweetwater County grand jury refused to bring indictments. In explaining its decision, the grand jury declared that there was no cause for legal action, stating, in part: "We have diligently inquired into the occurrence at Rock Springs. ... [T]hough we have examined a large number of witnesses, no one has been able to testify to a single criminal act committed by any known white person that day."

Those arrested as suspects in the riot were released a little more than a month later, on October 7, 1885. On their release, they were "...met ... by several hundred men, women and children, and treated to a regular ovation", according to The New York Times. The defendants in the Rock Springs case enjoyed the same broad community consent that lynch mobs often received No person or persons were ever convicted in the violence at Rock Springs.

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August 13, 1906 - The Brownsville Affair begins with the murder of a bartender in Brownsville, Texas

8/13/2021

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A solider of the 25th Infantry

The Brownsville affair, or the Brownsville raid, was an incident of racial discrimination that occurred in 1906 in the southwestern United States due to resentment by white residents of Brownsville, Texas, of the Buffalo Soldiers, black soldiers in a segregated unit stationed at nearby Fort Brown. When a white bartender was killed and a white police officer wounded by gunshots one night, townspeople accused the members of the African-American 25th Infantry Regiment. Although their commanders said the soldiers had been in the barracks all night, evidence was allegedly planted against the men. Since arriving at Fort Brown on July 28, 1906, the black US soldiers had been required to follow the legal color line mandate from white citizens of Brownsville, which included the state's racial segregation law dictating separate accommodation for black people and white people, and Jim Crow customs such as showing respect for white people, as well as respect for local laws.

A reported attack on a white woman during the night of August 12 incensed so many townspeople that Major Charles W. Penrose, after consultation with Mayor Frederick Combe, declared an early curfew for soldiers the following night to avoid trouble.

On the night of August 13, 1906, bartender Frank Natus was killed and police lieutenant M. Y. Dominguez was wounded by gunshots in the town. Immediately the residents of Brownsville cast the blame on the black soldiers of the 25th Infantry at Fort Brown. But the all-white commanders at Fort Brown confirmed that all of the soldiers were in their barracks at the time of the shootings. Local whites, including Brownsville's mayor, still claimed that some of the black soldiers participated in the shooting.

Local townspeople of Brownsville began providing evidence of the 25th Infantry's part in the shooting by producing spent bullet cartridges from Army rifles which they said belonged to the 25th's men. Despite the contradictory evidence that demonstrated the spent shells were planted in order to frame men of the 25th Infantry in the shootings, investigators accepted the statements of the local whites and the Brownsville mayor.
When soldiers of the 25th Infantry were pressured to name who fired the shots, they insisted that they had no idea who had committed the crime. Captain Bill McDonald of the Texas Rangers investigated 12 enlisted men and tried to tie the case to them. The local county court did not return any indictments based on his investigation, but residents kept up complaints about the black soldiers of the 25th.

At the recommendation of the Army's Inspector General, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered 167 of the black troops to be dishonorably discharged because of their "conspiracy of silence". Although some accounts have claimed that six of the troops were Medal of Honor recipients, historian Frank N. Schubert showed that none were. Fourteen of the men were later reinstated into the army. The dishonorable discharge prevented the 153 other men from ever working in a military or civil service capacity. Some of the black soldiers had been in the U.S. Army for more than 20 years, while others were extremely close to retirement with pensions, which they lost as a result.

The prominent African-American educator and activist, Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute, got involved in the case. He asked President Roosevelt to reconsider his decision in the affair. Roosevelt dismissed Washington's plea and allowed his decision to stand.

Major Penrose was subject to a court martial for "neglect of duty, to the prejudice of good order and military discipline"; McDonald accusing him of trying to shield his soldiers from prosecution. During the trial, which lasted from February 4 to March 23, 1907 Penrose called McDonald a "contemptible coward". Penrose was acquitted of the charge.

Both blacks and many whites across the United States were outraged at Roosevelt's actions. The black community began to turn against him, although it had previously supported the Republican president (in addition to maintaining loyalty to the party of Abraham Lincoln, black people approved of Roosevelt having invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House and speaking out publicly against lynching). The administration withheld news of the dishonorable discharge of the soldiers until after the 1906 Congressional elections, so that the pro-Republican black vote would not be affected. The case became a political football, with William Howard Taft, positioning for the next candidacy for presidency, trying to avoid trouble.

Leaders of major black organizations, such as the Constitution League, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement, tried to persuade the administration not to discharge the soldiers, but were unsuccessful. From 1907–1908, the US Senate Military Affairs Committee investigated the Brownsville Affair, and the majority in March 1908 reached the same conclusion as Roosevelt. Senator Joseph B. Foraker of Ohio had lobbied for the investigation and filed a minority report in support of the soldiers' innocence. Another minority report by four Republicans concluded that the evidence was too inconclusive to support the discharges. In September 1908, prominent educator and leader W. E. B. DuBois urged black people to register to vote and to remember their treatment by the Republican administration when it was time to vote for president.

Feelings across the nation remained high against the government actions, but with Taft succeeding Roosevelt as president, and Foraker failing to win re-election, some of the political pressure declined.

On February 23, 1909, the Committee on Military Affairs recommended favorably on Bill S.5729 for correction of records and reenlistment of officers and men of Companies B, C, and D of the 25th Infantry.

Senator Foraker continued to work on the Brownsville affair during his remaining time in office, guiding a resolution through Congress to establish a board of inquiry with the power to reinstate the soldiers. The bill, which the administration did not oppose, was less than Foraker wanted. He had hoped for a requirement that unless specific evidence was shown against a man, he would be allowed to re-enlist. The legislation passed both houses, and was signed by Roosevelt on March 2, 1909.

On March 6, 1909, shortly after he left the Senate, Foraker was the guest of honor at a mass meeting at Washington's Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. Though both whites and African Americans assembled to recognize the former senator, all the speakers but Foraker were African American. Presented with a silver loving cup, he addressed the crowd,

I have said that I do not believe that a man in that battalion had anything to do with the shooting up of "Brownsville," but whether any one of them had, it was our duty to ourselves as a great, strong, and powerful nation to give every man a hearing, to deal fairly and squarely with every man; to see to it that justice was done to him; that he should be heard.

On April 7, 1909, under the provisions of the Act of March 30, 1909, a Military Court of Inquiry was set up by Secretary of War Jacob M. Dickinson to report on the charges and recommend for reenlistment those men who had been discharged under Special Order # 266, November 9, 1906. Of the 167 discharged men, 76 were located as witnesses, and 6 did not wish to appear.

The 1910 Court of Military Inquiry undertook an examination of the soldiers' bids for re-enlistment, in view of the Senate committee's reports, but its members interviewed only about one-half of the soldiers discharged. It accepted 14 for re-enlistment, and eleven of these re-entered the Army.

In 1970, historian John D. Weaver published The Brownsville Raid, which investigated the affair in depth. Weaver argued that the accused members of the 25th Infantry were innocent and that they were discharged without benefit of due process of law as guaranteed by the United States Constitution. After reading his book, Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins of Los Angeles introduced a bill to have the Defense Department re-investigate the matter to provide justice to the accused soldiers.

In 1972, the Army found the accused members of the 25th Infantry to be innocent. At its recommendations, President Richard Nixon pardoned the men and awarded them honorable discharges, without backpay. These discharges were generally issued posthumously, as there were only two surviving soldiers from the affair: one had re-enlisted in 1910. In 1973, Hawkins and Senator Hubert Humphrey gained congressional passage of a tax-free pension for the last survivor, Dorsie Willis, who received $25,000. He was honored in ceremonies in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.

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August 12, 2006 – Victoria Gray Adams, American civil rights activist, dies.

8/12/2021

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Fannie Lou Hamer, Victoria Jackson Gray and Annie Devine reading a telegram at the U.S. Capitol Building in 1965 from Speaker of the House granting them permission to be seated on the House floor during the debate about the newly elected representatives from Mississippi.

The American Civil Right Movement has as many unsung heroes as any great endeavor. That is the way of history, to focus on great events and the great figures at their center, leaving the details of those who worked along the margins to the shadows. Victoria Gray Adams was one of many such who toiled in the shadows.

Born Victoria Almeter Jackson on November 5, 1926 in a black community called Palmer's Crossing, which is now a part of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Adams was the daughter of Mack and Annie Mae Jackson. Her mother died when she was three years old, and she was then raised by her grandparents. Unusually for the time and place, her grandparents were not tenants farmers, owning and farming their own land.  Thus, Adams grew up with a strong sense of independence.

In 1945, she graduated from Depriest Consolidated School. She then attended Wilberforce University in Ohio, but had to quit after one year due to lack of funds for tuition. Her first marriage was with Tony West Gray, a soldier who was subsequently stationed Germany, taking his family with him. They returned to the United States and lived in Maryland, during which time Adams worked as a cosmetics sales representative. They later returned to Mississippi

Adams' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement began in the early 1960s when she convinced her pastor to open up their church to workers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the 1960 elections, Adams trained individuals from her hometown in voter registration. Many African Americans at the time were illiterate, which prevented them from registering, so she taught began teaching reading, writing, and civics, using the Constitution as her primary text.

Adams' work in the Movement put a great strain on her marriage to Gray, and they couple divorced. She would later marry Rueben Adams, and while much of he early work was under he former married name, she later insisted that she be known as Victoria Gray Adams in all references to her in articles and histories of the Movement.

In 1962, she became field secretary for the SNCC, and led a boycott against Hattiesburg businesses. In 1964, Adams, who continued to work as cosmetics salesperson, decided to run against Senator John Stennis, the Mississippi Democrat who at the time had been in the Senate for 16 years. She announced that she and others from the tiny Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, of which she was a founding member, along with Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine, would challenge the power of white segregationist politicians like Stennis. The time had come, she said, to pay attention "to the Negro in Mississippi, who had not even had the leavings from the American political table."

Adams called the MFDP the true Democratic Party of Mississippi and boasted its accomplishment of tearing down the "curtain of fear in Mississippi for African Americans demanding their rights." During her campaign for Senate, which she knew was a futile effort given that Mississippi politics was tightly controlled by the Democratic Party Machine, she stated that "Unemployment, automation, inadequate housing, health care, education, and rural development are the real issues in Mississippi, not 'states rights' or 'federal encroachment.'"

During the Freedom Summer of 1964, Adams helped open the Freedom Schools that pushed for civil rights in Mississippi. Along with Hamer and Devin and 62 other members of the MFDP, she went to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Mississippi Democratic Party had withdrawn support for President Lyndon Johnson because of Johnson's work to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and sent an all-white delegation to the convention. The three women fought to be seated among the delegation, but were unsuccessful because the rules of the Convention required it to seat the delegates designated by the recognized state party. One of the “Mississippi regulars,” as the white delegates were known, declared they could seat “a dozen dead dodos” and no one could do anything about it.

Eventually, a compromise was devised: If the Freedom Democrats would accept two delegate-at-large seats and withdraw the rest of their delegation, then the Democratic leadership would pledge to ban segregation from all future conventions. For national civil rights leaders, the deal seemed pretty sweet. But not for the Mississippians, who wanted their whole delegation seated. In the hotel rooms, the debate over whether to take the deal raged (and now, in history classrooms, still rages). When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weighed in, he phrased it perfectly: “So, being a Negro leader, I want you to take this, but if I were a Mississippi Negro, I would vote against it.”

In the end, the Freedom delegates refused the deal. “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats,” said Hamer, “’cause all of us is tired.” Gray’s explanation was more restrained. She argued that “people back home were counting on them to bring back gains deep enough and fair enough to hold against conditions in Mississippi.”

The delegation fight played out on national television and heightened public awareness of the divide between the mainstream Democratic Party and the "Dixiecrats" of the South.  John Lewis, the civil rights leader who is now a Georgia congressman, said later, “As far as I’m concerned, this was the turning point of the civil rights movement.”

Adams noted that people made a discovery while in Atlantic City. People realized there was a way out of the lives they had been living in for so long. She explained that the way out of that life would be through "the execution of the vote" and getting representation. In an interview with the Virginia Organizing Project, she says, "We were going in the face of the Mississippi Democratic Party, which included some of the most powerful members of the U.S. Congress, to demand that we be recognized to have representation at the Democratic National Convention."

Adams said she learned in 1964 that there were two kinds of people in the grass-roots politics of the civil rights movement, "those who are in the movement and those who have the movement in them." "The movement is in me", she said, "and I know it always will be."

Adams also founded the Council of Federated Organization (COFO). COFO was a coalition of all the freedom organizations working during the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. COFO was the main organization responsible for leading all the other umbrella organizations, which included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

As was true throughout the South, the civil rights movement in Mississippi was inspired by the grand oratory of men like King and Andrew Young. On the ground, though, away from the crowds, it was often women’s work. Stanley Zibulsky, a Northern white teacher who camped out on Gray’s floor during the summer of 1964, explained that women were compelled to put their bodies on the line. “Men couldn’t even answer the door,” he recalled recently. “It was considered too dangerous. There would be a knock, and Vicky [Adams] was the one who opened the door.”

Adams has received many awards for her courageous work. Two of the most noticeable include, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award and the Fannie Lou Hammer Humanitarian Award. Adams died at her son Cecil's home in Baltimore on August 12, 2006, of cancer, aged 79. Her papers are at the McCain Library and Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi.

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August 11, 1965 – Riots begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.

8/11/2021

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Buildings Burning During the Watts Riots

The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in the Watts neighborhood and its surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old African American man, was pulled over for drunken driving. After he failed a field sobriety test, officers a physical confrontation ensued in which Marquette was struck in the face with a baton. Meanwhile, a crowd of onlookers had gathered. Rumors, later proved to be unfounded, spread that the police had kicked a pregnant woman who was present at the scene. Six days of civil unrest followed, motivated in part by allegations of police abuse. Nearly 14,000 members of the California Army National Guard helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.

While the origins of racial tension in Los Angeles have roots deed in the city's history extending back to its founding, which Spanish settlors divided into a powerful landowning class of Europeans and a peasant class of mixed-race mestizos, it was the World War II era migration of large numbers of African Americans from the east to California which resulted in the adoption of both public and private restrictions creating de facto color barriers (despite such restrictions having been ruled unconstitutional in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)). Racial tensions were high in the city during the summer of 1965, as in much of the country, as a result of local obstruction of efforts to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On the evening of Wednesday, August 11, 1965, 21-year-old Marquette Frye, an African-American man driving his mother's 1955 Buick while drunk, was pulled over by California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer Lee Minikus for alleged reckless driving. After Frye failed a field sobriety test, Minikus placed him under arrest and radioed for his vehicle to be impounded. Marquette's brother, Ronald, a passenger in the vehicle, walked to their house nearby, bringing their mother, Rena Price, back with him to the scene of the arrest.

When Rena Price reached the intersection of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street that evening, she scolded Frye about drinking and driving. However, the situation quickly escalated: Someone shoved Price, Frye was struck, Price jumped an officer, and another officer pulled out a shotgun. Backup police officers attempted to arrest Frye by using physical force to subdue him. After community members reported that police had roughed up Frye and shared a rumor they had kicked a pregnant woman, angry mobs formed. As the situation intensified, growing crowds of local residents watching the exchange began yelling and throwing objects at the police officers. Frye's mother and brother fought with the officers and eventually were arrested along with Marquette Frye.

After the arrests of Price and her sons the Frye brothers, the crowd continued to grow along Avalon Boulevard. Police came to the scene to break up the crowd several times that night, but were attacked when people threw rocks and chunks of concrete. A 46-square-mile (119 square kilometer) swath of Los Angeles was transformed into a combat zone during the ensuing six days.

After a night of increasing unrest, police and local black community leaders held a community meeting on Thursday, August 12, to discuss an action plan and to urge calm. The meeting failed. Later that day, Chief Parker called for the assistance of the California Army National Guard. Chief Parker believed the riots resembled an insurgency, compared it to fighting the Viet Cong, and decreed a "paramilitary" response to the disorder. Governor Pat Brown declared that law enforcement was confronting "guerrillas fighting with gangsters".

The rioting intensified, and on Friday, August 13, about 2,300 National Guardsmen joined the police in trying to maintain order on the streets. Sergeant Ben Dunn said: "The streets of Watts resembled an all-out war zone in some far-off foreign country, it bore no resemblance to the United States of America." The first riot-related death occurred on the night of August 13, when a black civilian was killed in the crossfire during a shootout between the police and rioters. Over the next few days, rioting had then spread throughout other areas, including Pasadena, Pacoima, Monrovia, Long Beach, and even as far as San Diego, although they were very minor in comparison to Watts. About 200 Guardsmen and the LAPD were sent to assist the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) in controlling the unruly crowd.

By nightfall on Saturday, 16,000 law enforcement personnel had been mobilized and patrolled the city. Blockades were established, and warning signs were posted throughout the riot zones threatening the use of deadly force (one sign warned residents to "Turn left or get shot"). Angered over the police response, residents of Watts engaged in a full-scale battle against the first responders. Rioters tore up sidewalks and bricks to hurl at Guardsmen and police, and to smash their vehicles. Those actively participating in the riots started physical fights with police, blocked Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) firefighters from using fire hoses on protesters and burning buildings, or stopped and beat white motorists while yelling racial slurs in the area. Arson and looting were largely confined to local white-owned stores and businesses that were said to have caused resentment in the neighborhood due to low wages and high prices for local workers.

To quell the riots, Chief Parker initiated a policy of mass arrest. Following the deployment of National Guardsmen, a curfew was declared for a vast region of South Central Los Angeles. In addition to the Guardsmen, 934 LAPD officers and 718 officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) were deployed during the rioting. Watts and all black-majority areas in Los Angeles were put under the curfew. All residents outside of their homes in the affected areas after 8:00 pm were subject to arrest. Eventually, nearly 3,500 people were arrested, primarily for curfew violations. By the morning of Sunday, August 15, the riots had largely been quelled.

Over the course of six days, between 31,000 and 35,000 adults participated in the riots. Around 70,000 people were "sympathetic, but not active." Over the six days, there were 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and over $40 million in property damage. Many white Americans were fearful of the breakdown of social order in Watts, especially since white motorists were being pulled over by rioters in nearby areas and assaulted.[36] Many in the black community, however, believed the rioters were taking part in an "uprising against an oppressive system."

Despite allegations that "criminal elements" were responsible for the riots, the vast majority of those arrested had no prior criminal record. Only three sworn personnel were killed in the riots: an LAFD firefighter was struck when a wall of a fire-weakened structure fell on him while fighting fires in a store, an LASD deputy was shot when another deputy's shotgun was discharged in a struggle with rioters, and an LBPD officer was shot by another police officer's gun that was discharged during a scuffle with rioters. 23 out of the 34 people killed in the riots were shot by LAPD officers or National Guardsmen.

Debate rose quickly over what had taken place in Watts, as the area was known to be under a great deal of racial and social tension. Reactions and reasoning about the riots greatly varied based on the perspectives of those affected by and participating in the riots' chaos.

National civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke two days after the riots happened in Watts. The riots were partly a response to Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment sponsored by the California Real Estate Association and passed that had in effect repealed the Rumford Fair Housing Act. In 1966, the California Supreme Court reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act in the Reitman v. Mulkey case (a decision affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court the following year), declaring the amendment to violate the US constitution and laws.

A variety of opinions and explanations were published. Public opinion polls studied in the few years after the riot showed that a majority believed the riots were linked to communist groups who were active in the area protesting high unemployment rates and racial discrimination. Those opinions concerning racism and discrimination were expressed three years after hearings conducted by a committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights took place in Los Angeles to assess the condition of relations between the police force and minorities. These hearings were also intended to make a ruling on the discrimination case against the police for their alleged mistreatment of members of the Nation of Islam. These different arguments and opinions are often cited in continuing debates over the underlying causes of the Watts riots.

A commission under Governor Pat Brown investigated the riots, known as the McCone Commission, and headed by former CIA director John A. McCone. The commission released a 101-page report on December 2, 1965, entitled Violence in the City—An End or a Beginning?: A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965. The McCone Commission identified the root causes of the riots to be high unemployment, poor schools, and related inferior living conditions that were endured by African Americans in Watts. Recommendations for addressing these problems included "emergency literacy and preschool programs, improved police-community ties, increased low-income housing, more job-training projects, upgraded health-care services, more efficient public transportation, and many more." Most of these recommendations were never implemented.

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July 28, 1917 – The Silent Parade takes place in New York City, in protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans.

7/28/2021

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The Silent Parade, was a silent march of about 10,000 African Americans along Fifth Avenue starting at 57th Street in New York City on July 28, 1917. The event was organized by the NAACP, church, and community leaders to protest violence directed towards African Americans, such as recent lynchings in Waco and Memphis. The parade was precipitated by the East St. Louis riots in May and July 1917 where at least 40 black people were killed by white mobs, in part touched off by a labor dispute where blacks were used for strike breaking.

Prior to May 1917, there began a migration of blacks fleeing threats to life and liberty in the South. Tensions in East St. Louis, Illinois, were brewing between white and black workers. Many black workers had found work in the local industry. In Spring 1917, the mostly white workers of the Aluminum Ore Company voted for a labor strike and the Company recruited hundreds of black workers to replace them. The situation exploded after rumors of black men and white women fraternizing began to circulate. Thousands of white men descended on East St. Louis and began attacking African Americans. They destroyed buildings and beat people. The rioting died down, only to rise with vigor again several weeks later. After an incident in which a police officer was shot by black residents of the city, thousands of whites marched and rioted in the city again. The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance states that "Eyewitnesses likened the mob to a manhunt, describing how rioters sought out blacks to beat, mutilate, stab, shoot, hang, and burn."

The brutality of the attacks by mobs of white people and the refusal by the authorities to protect innocent lives contributed to the responsive measures taken by some African Americans in St. Louis and the nation. Marcus Garvey declared in a speech that the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind" and a "wholesale massacre of our people", insisting that "This is no time for fine words, but a time to lift one's voice against the savagery of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy." After the riots, many black people felt that there was little "possibility of the United States ever permitting black people to enjoy full citizenship, equal rights and dignity." Writers and civil rights activists, W.E.B DuBois and Martha Gruening visited the city after the riot on July 2 in order to speak to witnesses and survivors. They wrote an essay describing the riots in "gruesome detail" for The Crisis, an NAACP publication.

James Weldon Johnson, the Field Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), worked with a group of influential community leaders at the St. Philip's Church in New York to decide how to protest the riots. The idea of a silent protest had first been suggested in a 1916 NAACP Conference by Oswald Garrison Villard. Black women in New York had also participated in earlier silent parades with white women, like the June 1917 silent parade in support of the Red Cross. Villard's mother, Fanny Garrison Villard, had organized a silent march for suffragettes in New York in 1913. However, for this protest, organizers felt that it was important that only black people participate because they were the main victims of the recent violence.

Two prominent members of the local clergy were tapped to serve as the executives for the parade. Rev. Dr. Hutchens C. Bishop, rector of the city's oldest Black Episcopal parish, and Rev. Dr. Charles D. Martin, founder of the Fourth Moravian Church, respectively, served as the President, and Secretary for the parade. With "righteous indignation", Dr. Martin wrote the call to action entitled simply "Why We March". It laid out the rationale for the protest, and was distributed before and during[ the parade.

The parade was advertised in The New York Age where it was described as a "mute but solemn protest against the atrocities and discrimination practiced against the race in various parts of the country." Men, women and children alike were invited to take part. It was hoped that around ten thousand people would be able to participate, and that African Americans in other cities might hold their own parades. The New York parade was announced ahead of time in other cities as well.

In the midst of record heat in New York City on July 28, an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 African Americans[ marched in silent protest to the lynchings, as in Waco, Memphis, and especially the East St. Louis riots. The march began at 57th Street, down Fifth Avenue, to its end at 23rd Street. Protesters carried signs that highlighted their discontent. Some signs and banners appealed directly to President Woodrow Wilson.[9] A mounted police escort led the parade. Women and children were next, dressed in white. They were followed by the men, dressed in black. People of all races looked on from both sides of Fifth Avenue. The New York Age estimated that "fully fifteen thousand Negroes, who should have taken an active part, looked on." Black boy scouts handed out fliers describing why they were marching. During the parade, white people stopped to listen to black people explain the reasons for the march and other white bystanders expressed support and sympathy. Some of the messages written on fliers were:

We march because by the Grace of God and the force of truth, the dangerous, hampering walls of prejudice and inhuman injustices must fall.

We march because we deem it a crime to be silent in the face of such barbaric acts.

We march because we want our children to live a better life and enjoy fairer conditions than have fallen to our lot.

The parade marked the first large black-only protest parade in New York.[27] The New York Times described it the following day:

To the beat of muffled drums 8,000 negro men, women and children marched down Fifth Avenue yesterday in a parade of "silent protest against acts of discrimination and oppression" inflicted upon them in this country, and in other parts of the world. Without a shout or a cheer they made their cause known through many banners which they carried, calling attention to "Jim Crowism," segregation, disenfranchisement, and the riots of Waco, Memphis, and East St. Louis.

— New York Times

Media coverage of the march helped to counter the dehumanization of black people in the United States. The parade and its coverage helped depict the NAACP as a "well-organized and mannerly group" and also helped increase its visibility both among white and black people alike.

Marchers hoped to influence Democratic President Wilson to carry through on his election promises to African American voters to implement anti-lynching legislation and promote Black causes. Four days after the silent parade, black leaders involved in the protest, including Madame C.J. Walker, went to Washington D.C. for a planned appointment with the president. The appointment was not kept, as the group of leaders were told that Wilson had "another appointment." They left their petition for Wilson, which reminded him of African Americans serving in World War I and urged him to prevent riots and lynchings in the future. Wilson did not do so and repudiated his promises. Federal discrimination against African Americans significantly increased under the Wilson administration.

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July 12, 1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap and deport nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona.

7/12/2021

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Harry C. Wheeler, the Sheriff of Cochise County who organized the Jerome Deportation. Wheeler's role in the illegal vigilante action was the subject of a United States Supreme Court decision which held that even though the deportees were transported across state lines, the Constitution did not provide the federal government with the authority to prosecute Wheeler and others involved in the deportation.

The mining town of Bisbee, Arizona has a troubled past. In 1883 it was the scene of a brutal robbery by the Cochise County Cowboys gang and in the "red Summer" of 1919, racial violence erupted between African American soldiers and local officials. However, the most notorious event in Bisbee's history was the forced deportation of over 1300 striking miners, mostly Mexican Americans, and their supporters by a posse of 2000 deputized citizens at the instigation of the Phelps Dodge Mining Company.

In May 1917, IWW Local 800 presented a list of demands to Phelps Dodge. They asked for an end to physical examinations after shifts (used by the mine owners to counter theft), having two workers on each drilling machine, two men working the ore elevators, an end to blasting while men were in the mine, an end to the bonus system, no more assignment of construction work to miners, replacement of the sliding scale of wages with a $6.00 per day shift rate, and no discrimination against union members. The company refused all the demands.

IWW Local 800 called a strike to begin on June 26, 1917. When the strike occurred as scheduled, not only the miners at Phelps Dodge, but also those at other mines walked out. More than 3,000 miners—about 85 percent of all mine workers in Bisbee—went on strike. Although the strike was peaceful, local authorities immediately asked for federal troops to break the strike. Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler set up his headquarters in Bisbee on the first day of the strike. On July 2, Wheeler asked Republican Governor Thomas Edward Campbell to request federal troops, suggesting the strike threatened US war interests and claiming, without any evidence that "[t]he whole thing appears to be pro-German and anti-American." Campbell quickly telegraphed the White House and made the request, but President Woodrow Wilson declined to send in the Army. He appointed former Arizona Governor George W. P. Hunt as a mediator; Hunt, however, took no affirmative steps to bring the two sides to the bargaining table.

On July 5, 1917, an IWW local in Jerome, Arizona, struck Phelps Dodge. Douglas ordered his mine superintendents to remove the miners from the town, in what became known as the Jerome Deportation. Mine supervisors, joined by 250 local businessmen and members of the IUMMSW, began rounding up suspected IWW members at dawn on July 10. More than 100 men were abducted by these vigilantes and held in the county jail (with the cooperation of the Yavapai County sheriff). Later that day, 67 men were deported by train to Needles, California, and ordered not to return. When the IWW protested to Governor Campbell, he declared that the IWW had "threatened" the governor.

The Jerome Deportation proved to be a test run for Phelps Dodge, which ordered the same plan, but larger in scale, in Bisbee. On July 11, 1917, Sheriff Wheeler met with Phelps Dodge corporate executives to plan the deportation of striking miners. Some 2,200 men from Bisbee and the nearby town of Douglas were recruited and deputized as a posse— one of the largest posses ever assembled. Phelps Dodge officials also met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, who agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees.

At 7:30 a.m., the 2,000 arrested men were assembled in front of the Bisbee Post Office and marched two miles (3 km) to Warren Ballpark. Sheriff Wheeler oversaw the march from a car outfitted with a loaded Marlin 7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun. At the baseball field, the arrestees were told that if they denounced the IWW and went back to work, they would be freed. Only men who were not IWW members or organizers were given this choice. About 700 men agreed to these terms, while the rest sang, jeered or shouted profanities.

At 11:00 a.m., the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad brought 23 cattle cars to Bisbee. The posse deputies forced the remaining 1,286 arrestees at gunpoint to board the cars, many of which had more than three inches (76 mm) of manure on the floor. Although temperatures were in the mid-90s Fahrenheit,[(mid-30s Celsius), no water had been provided to the men since the arrests began at dawn.

The train stopped 10 miles (16 km) east of Douglas to take on water, some of which was provided to the deportees in the packed cars. Deputies manned two machine guns from nearby hilltops to guard the train, while another 200 armed men patrolled the tracks. The train continued to Columbus, New Mexico (about 175 miles (282 km) away), arriving at about 9:30 p.m. Initially prevented from unloading at Columbus, the train slowly traveled west another 20 miles (32 km) to Hermanas, not stopping until 3:00 a.m.

During the Bisbee Deportation, Phelps Dodge executives seized control of the telegraph and telephones to prevent news of the arrests and expulsion from being reported. Company executives refused to let Western Union send wires out of town, and stopped Associated Press reporters from filing stories. News of the Bisbee Deportation was made known only after an IWW attorney, who met the train in Hermanas, issued a press release.

With 1,300 penniless men in Hermanas, the Luna County sheriff worriedly wired the Governor of New Mexico for instructions. Republican Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey said the men should be treated humanely and fed; he urgently contacted President Wilson and asked for assistance. Wilson ordered U.S. Army troops to escort the men to Columbus, New Mexico. The deportees were housed in tents originally intended for use by Mexican refugees, who had fled across the border to the United States to escape the Mexican Army's Pancho Villa Expedition. The men were allowed to stay in the camp for two months until September 17, 1917.

From the day of the deportations until November 1917, the Citizens' Protective League ruled Bisbee. Based in a building owned by the copper companies, its representatives interrogated residents about their political beliefs with respect to unions and the war, determining who could work or obtain a draft deferment. Sheriff Wheeler established guards at all entrances to Bisbee and Douglas. Anyone seeking to exit or enter the town over the next several months had to have a "passport" issued by Wheeler. Any adult male in town who was not known to the sheriff's men was brought before a secret sheriff's kangaroo court. Hundreds of citizens were tried, and most of them were deported and threatened with lynching if they returned. Even long-time citizens of Bisbee were deported by this "court".

From the day of the deportations until November 1917, the Citizens' Protective League ruled Bisbee. Based in a building owned by the copper companies, its representatives interrogated residents about their political beliefs with respect to unions and the war, determining who could work or obtain a draft deferment. Sheriff Wheeler established guards at all entrances to Bisbee and Douglas. Anyone seeking to exit or enter the town over the next several months had to have a "passport" issued by Wheeler. Any adult male in town who was not known to the sheriff's men was brought before a secret sheriff's kangaroo court. Hundreds of citizens were tried, and most of them were deported and threatened with lynching if they returned. Even long-time citizens of Bisbee were deported by this "court".

When ordered to cease these activities by the Arizona Attorney General, Wheeler tried to explain his actions. Asked what law supported his actions, he answered: "I have no statute that I had in mind. Perhaps everything that I did wasn't legal....It became a question of 'Are you American, or are you not?" He told the Attorney General: "I would repeat the operation any time I find my own people endangered by a mob composed of eighty percent aliens and enemies of my Government."

These actions took place during a period in the early 20th century when attacks by anarchists and labor unrest and violence erupted in numerous American cities and industries. Many native-born Americans were worried about such actions, attributing the unrest to the high numbers of immigrants, rather than to the poor working conditions in many industries. As a result, national press reaction to the Bisbee Deportation was muted. Although many newspapers carried stories about the event, most of them editorialized that the workers "must have" been violent, and therefore "gotten what they deserved", thus criminalizing the victims. Some major papers said that Sheriff Wheeler had gone too far, but declared that he should have imprisoned the miners rather than deported them. The New York Times criticized the violence on the part of the mine owners and suggested that mass arrests "on vagrancy charges" would have been appropriate. Former President Theodore Roosevelt said that "no human being in his senses doubts that the men deported from Bisbee were bent on destruction and murder."

The men deported from Bisbee pleaded with President Wilson for protection and permission to return to their homes. In October 1917, Wilson appointed a commission of five individuals to investigate labor disputes in Arizona. They were led by Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson (with support from Assistant Secretary of Labor Felix Frankfurter, future Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court). The commission heard testimony during the first five days of November 1917. In its final report, issued on November 6, 1917, the commission denounced the Bisbee Deportation. "The deportation was wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal," the commissioners wrote.

On May 15, 1918, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered the arrest of 21 Phelps Dodge executives, including some from the Calumet and Arizona Co., and several elected leaders and law enforcement officers from Bisbee and Cochise Counties. The arrestees included Walter S. Douglas. Sheriff Wheeler was not arrested because he was by then serving in France with the American Expeditionary Force during World War I.

A pre-trial motion by the defense led a federal district court to release the 21 men on the grounds that no federal laws had been violated. The Justice Department appealed, but in United States v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 (1920), Chief Justice Edward Douglass White wrote for an 8-to-1 majority that the U.S. Constitution did not empower the federal government to enforce the rights of the deportees. Rather, it "necessarily assumed the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress and egress." Only in a case of "state discriminatory action" would the federal government have a role to play.

Arizona officials never initiated criminal proceedings in state court against those responsible for the deportation of workers and their lost wages and other losses. Some workers filed civil suits, but in the first case the jury determined that the deportations represented good public policy and refused to grant relief. Most of the other suits were quietly dropped, although a few workers received payments in the range of $500 to $1,250.

The Bisbee Deportations were later used by some proponents as an argument in favor of stronger laws against unpopular speech. Such laws would be justified as empowering the government to suppress disloyal speech and activity, and remove the need for citizens groups to take actions the government could not. During World War I, the federal government used the Sedition Act of 1918 to prosecute people for statements in opposition to the war.

At the end of the conflict, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and others advocated for a peacetime equivalent of the Sedition Act, using the Bisbee events as a justification. They claimed that the only reason the company representatives and local law enforcement had taken the law into their own hands was that the government lacked the power to suppress radical sentiment directly. If the government were armed with appropriate legislation and the threat of long prison terms, private citizens would not feel the need to act. Writing in 1920, Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee mocked that view: "Doubtless some governmental action was required to protect pacifists and extreme radicals from mob violence, but incarceration for a period of twenty years seems a very queer kind of protection."

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July 9, 1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

7/9/2021

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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.

The amendment's first section includes several clauses: the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship, nullifying the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be citizens of the United States. Since the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), the Privileges or Immunities Clause has been interpreted to do very little.

The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without a fair procedure. The Supreme Court has ruled this clause makes most of the Bill of Rights as applicable to the states as it is to the federal government, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people, including all non-citizens, within its jurisdiction. This clause has been the basis for many decisions rejecting irrational or unnecessary discrimination against people belonging to various groups.

The second, third, and fourth sections of the amendment are seldom litigated. However, the second section's reference to "rebellion, or other crime" has been invoked as a constitutional ground for felony disenfranchisement. The fourth section was held, in Perry v. United States (1935), to prohibit a current Congress from abrogating a contract of debt incurred by a prior Congress. The fifth section gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment's provisions by "appropriate legislation"; however, under City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), this power may not be used to contradict a Supreme Court decision interpreting the amendment.

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July 8, 1876 - The Hamburg massacre prior to the 1876 United States presidential election results in the deaths of six African-Americans .

7/8/2021

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A Harper's Weekly cartoon decrying the Hamburg massacre of July 1876

The Hamburg Massacre (or Red Shirt Massacre or Hamburg riot) was a riot in the American town of Hamburg, South Carolina, in July 1876, leading up to the last election season of the Reconstruction Era. It was the first of a series of civil disturbances planned and carried out by white Democrats in the majority-black Republican Edgefield District, with the goal of suppressing black Americans' civil rights and voting rights and disrupting Republican meetings, through actual and threatened violence.

Beginning with a dispute over free passage on a public road, the massacre was rooted in racial hatred and political motives. A court hearing attracted armed white "rifle clubs," colloquially called the "Red Shirts". Desiring to regain control of state governments and eradicate the civil rights of black Americans, over 100 white men attacked about 30 black servicemen of the National Guard at the armory, killing two as they tried to leave that night. Later that night, the Red Shirts tortured and murdered four of the militia while holding them as prisoners, and wounded several others. In total, the events in Hamburg resulted in the death of one white man and six black men with several more blacks being wounded. Although 94 white men were indicted for murder by a coroner's jury, none were prosecuted.

The events were a catalyst in the overarching violence in the volatile 1876 election campaign. There were other episodes of violence in the months before the election, including an estimated 100 blacks killed during several days in Ellenton, South Carolina, also in Aiken County. The Southern Democrats succeeded in "redeeming" the state government and electing Wade Hampton III as governor. During the remainder of the century, they passed laws to establish single-party white rule, impose legal segregation and "Jim Crow," and disenfranchise blacks with a new state constitution adopted in 1895. This exclusion of blacks from the political system was effectively maintained into the late 1960s.

Hamburg was a market town populated by a majority of freed blacks in Aiken County, across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia. Aiken was the only county in the state to have been organized during the Reconstruction era. Following the end of the War, the defunct market town was repopulated by freedmen. (It had been made obsolete by the expansion of the South Carolina Railroad into Augusta.) Many blacks in the postwar period moved from rural areas to cities to escape white violence and gain safety in their own communities.

As Southerners sought to regain control of the state legislature, their leaders planned to disrupt Republican events, as outlined in Confederate veteran General Martin W. Gary's "Plan of the Campaign of 1876" (also known as the Edgefield Plan). On July 4, 1876, Independence Day, two white planters drove in a carriage down Hamburg's wide Market Street, where they encountered a local militia company, which was drilling (or parading) under command of Captain D. L. "Doc" Adams.

The men in the Hamburg Company militia were entirely black and mostly freedmen. A white supremacist group called the Red Shirts, led by Benjamin Tillman, who later went on serve a 24-year career in the United States Senate and whose term was marked by enacting racist legislation, instigated confrontations with the black citizens by claiming that said freedmen intentionally blocked passage of public roads and denied passage to any white man. Alternate sources say that a carriage of white men intentionally drove up against the head of the column to cause a civil disturbance. In any case, after an exchange of words, the Red Shirts, also called "white planters" passed through the ranks of the black parade.

The Red Shirts then went to the local court, where, at a hearing on July 6, they accused the militia with obstruction of a public road before Trial Justice Prince Rivers. The case was continued until the afternoon of July 8. More than 100 whites from Edgefield and Aiken counties arrived at court, armed with "shotguns, revolvers, hoes, axes and pitchforks." At that time, Matthew Calbraith Butler, an attorney from Edgefield, appeared as the planters' counsel. (Of the many men surnamed Butler who were involved in the incident, he was referred to as 'General' Butler, based on his service in the Confederate Army.) Despite the lack of any official standing, M. C. Butler demanded for the Hamburg company to disband and turn their guns over to him personally.

As armed white men gathered in the vicinity, the militia company refused to disarm and took refuge in the armory in the Sibley building near the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad bridge. The white militia surrounded the building. Perhaps 25 black militia and 15 others were in the building when firing began. In the exchange of gunfire, McKie Meriwether, a local white farmer, was killed.

Outnumbered, running out of ammunition, and upon learning that the whites had brought a small cannon to the city from Augusta, the militia in the armory slipped away into the night. James Cook, Hamburg's Town Marshal, was shot and killed in the street.[6]:233–234

The White supremacist militia rounded up around two dozen black citizens, some from the militia, and at about 2 a.m, took them to a spot near the South Carolina Railroad and bridge. There, the whites formed what was later called the "Dead Ring" and debated the fate of the black men. The whites picked out four men and, going around the ring, murdered them one at a time, these men were as follows: Allan Attaway, David Phillips, Hampton Stephens, and Albert Myniart. The Sweetwater Sabre Company, led by Ben Tillman, was chosen to execute black state legislator Simon Coker of Barnwell. After being told of his impending execution, Coker asked the unit to give instructions to his wife regarding cotton-ginning and that month's rent. He was then executed mid-prayer.

Several others were wounded either during their escape or in a general fusillade as the ring broke up. According to the State Attorney General's report, freedman Moses Parks was also killed here; the US Senate investigation said he had been killed earlier near Cook.

A coroner's jury indicted ninety-four white men in the attack, including "M. C. Butler, Ben R. Tillman, A. P. Butler,and others of the most prominent men in Aiken and Edgefield Counties, South Carolina, and Richmond County, Georgia." They were never prosecuted.

The official report by the Attorney General of South Carolina ends with this statement:

... the facts show the demand on the militia to give up their arms was made by persons without lawful authority to enforce such demand or to receive the arms had they been surrendered; that the attack on the militia to compel a compliance with this demand was without lawful excuse or justification; and that after there had been some twenty or twenty-five prisoners captured and completely in the power of their captors, five of them were deliberately shot to death and three more severely wounded. It further appears that not content with thus satisfying their vengeance, many of the crowd added to their guilt the crime of robbery of defenceless people, and were only prevented from arson by the efforts of their own leaders.

Outrage at the events led to the US Senate calling for an investigation. It gathered testimony in hearings held at Columbia, South Carolina and published its findings in 1877.

Republicans were stunned by the massacre at Hamburg. The event deflated the "Co-operationist" faction of the Democratic party, which had anticipated a fusion with the reforming Republican Governor Daniel H. Chamberlain. Democratic support crystallized around the uncompromising "Straight-Outs," who had already launched the terrorist "Edgefield Plan," devised by General Martin W. Gary for South Carolina's Redemption.

The massacre attracted nationwide attention (such as in Harper's Weekly, August 12, 1876 and in The New York Times). A much larger massacre of freedmen by white paramilitary groups took place from September 15 to 21 in the town of Ellenton, also in Aiken County, with estimates of 100 freedmen killed and a few whites. In October 1876, there was a political conflict in Cainhoy, near Charleston, resulting in the deaths of one black man and three to six whites, the only such confrontation that year in South Carolina in which more whites died than blacks.

Following the violent and bitterly contested 1876 election campaign, with suppression of black voting by actions of the Red Shirts and charges of fraud, white Democrats gained undivided control of the South Carolina legislature and narrowly won the Governor's office. They passed laws during the next two decades to impose legal segregation, Jim Crow, and, in 1895, adopted a new constitution, which effectively achieved black disenfranchisement in the state.

M. C. Butler's expectations and extent of involvement in the later events have not been proven. He was not conclusively placed in the "Dead Ring", but his association with the massacre damaged his later career in the U. S. Senate. However, during the 1894 Senatorial campaign, Butler faced Benjamin Ryan Tillman, who led an Edgefield County "Rifle Club" which was part of the Red Shirts and whom had been indicted by the coroner's jury for his involvement, for the Democratic nomination. Tillman had become recognized in the area for his role in the Hamburg Massacre and continued to boast of the "stirring events" of 1876,referring to this more than a decade later during his 1890 campaign for governor of South Carolina. As he put it on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

[A]s white men we are not sorry for it, and we do not propose to apologize for anything we have done in connection with it. We took the government away from them in 1876. We did take it. If no other Senator has come here previous to this time who would acknowledge it, more is the pity. We have had no fraud in our elections in South Carolina since 1884. There has been no organized Republican party in the State.

Butler and Tillman argued vehemently during the 1894 campaign about which of them had participated more in the Hamburg massacre. In South Carolina politics at that time, it was seen as heroic for a white man to have participated in the event. In 1940, the state legislature of South Carolina erected a statue honoring Tillman on the capital grounds. In 1946, Clemson University, one of South Carolina's public universities, renamed its main hall in Tillman's honor. Only after events in 2015, when a white supremacist named Dylann Roof murdered nine black church members during their prayer service, did Clemson vote to distance themselves from Tillman's "campaign of terror." In 2020, trustees of the university asked to rename the hall.

After these events, many blacks left Hamburg and it began to decline once more. After a 1911 flood, Augusta began construction of a river levee, but Hamburg was left unprotected. Disastrous floods in 1927 and following seasons finally forced out the last residents in 1929. In the 21st century, no visible remains exist of the former town of Hamburg, and it is largely covered by a golf course.

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June 30, 1917 -- Singer Lena Horne is born in in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York

6/30/2021

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Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American dancer, actress, Grammy-winning singer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned over 70 years, appearing in film, television, and theater. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of 16 and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood.

Horne advocated for human rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. Later she returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.

Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1941, she sang at Café Society, New York City's first integrated venue, and worked with Paul Robeson. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of black servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she staged her show for a mixed audience of black U.S. soldiers and white German POWs. Seeing the black soldiers had been forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where the black troops were seated and performed with the Germans behind her. However, the USO observed at the time of her death that Horne did in fact tour "extensively with the USO during WWII on the West Coast and in the South." The organization also commemorated her for the appearances she made on Armed Forces Radio Service programs Jubilee, G.I. Journal, and Command Performances. In the film Stormy Weather (1943), Horne's character would perform the film's title song as part of a big, all-star show for World War II soldiers as well. After quitting the USO in 1945, Horne financed tours of military camps herself.

She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in attempts to pass anti-lynching laws. Tom Lehrer mentions her in his song "National Brotherhood Week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a violent attack on civil rights marchers in 1965. In 1983, the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal.

Horne was a registered Democrat and on November 20, 1963, she, along with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman John Bailey, Carol Lawrence, Richard Adler, Sidney Salomon, Vice-Chairwoman of the DNC Margaret B. Price, and Secretary of the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, visited John F. Kennedy at The White House, two days prior to his assassination.

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September 4, 1957 – The Little Rock Crisis: begins as Gov. Orval Fabus calls out the National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School.

September 2, 1885 – Rock Springs massacre: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing se

August 13, 1906 - The Brownsville Affair begins with the murder of a bartender in Brownsville, Texas

August 12, 2006 – Victoria Gray Adams, American civil rights activist, dies.

August 11, 1965 – Riots begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.

July 28, 1917 – The Silent Parade takes place in New York City, in protest against murders, lynchings, and other violence directed towards African Americans.

July 12, 1917 – The Bisbee Deportation occurs as vigilantes kidnap and deport nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona.

July 9, 1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

July 8, 1876 - The Hamburg massacre prior to the 1876 United States presidential election results in the deaths of six African-Americans .

June 30, 1917 -- Singer Lena Horne is born in in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York

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