Category: African American History

In 1949, four young black men were arrested and accused of rape in Groveland, Florida. The case, which hinged on the allegation of a young white woman with inconsistent stories of the offenses, came to be known as the “Groveland Four” and forever changed the lives of the four defendants: Earnest Thomas, who was lynched […]

On April 8, 1911, the Banner Mine near Birmingham, Alabama, exploded, killing 128 mine workers. According to the official investigation report, “about 90 percent were negro convicts. The other men in the mine were white convicts and free negroes who were employed as shot firers and foremen.” By 1910, the State of Alabama had become […]

Beginning on April 5, 1921, a local white plantation owner named John Williams stood trial in rural Georgia for allegedly killing 11 black sharecroppers to try to escape federal charges for illegally holding them in debt slavery. Although slavery was officially abolished in 1865, African Americans faced continued slavery-like conditions in systems of peonage — […]

By EJI Staff, EJI On April 1, 1875, the Supreme Court finished hearing arguments in United States v. Cruikshank, a case that asked whether the federal government had the power to punish white men convicted of slaughtering dozens of black people in Louisiana. Two years earlier, on April 13, 1873, hundreds of white men clashed with […]