January 5, 1875- Peter Crosby and the Vicksburg Massacre

Chicago Inter Ocean

After the election of a Black sheriff, Peter Crosby, along with several other Black officials in Warren County, Mississippi, violence erupted.

In December of 1874 the Taxpayer’s League (a White political organization) demanded Crosby’s resignation. When he refused, they returned with an armed mob and forced him to sign a resignation document in the county courthouse.

On December 7, when a group of Black citizens marched on the county courthouse to demand Crosby’s reinstatement, they were fired upon by White mobs. Not satisfied with vanquishing the organized marchers, the mobs continued seeking Black victims around the city. It is estimated that up to 300 Black people were killed in what became known as the Vicksburg massacre.

On January 5, 1875, President Ulysses Grant ordered federal troops to restore order to the city and reinstate the Sheriff. Though successful in the short term, racialized political violence would continue to plague Vicksburg as it did many cities across the country in the Reconstruction era.

Sources:

Peter Crosby (1844-1884)- Black Past

Ulysses S. Grant, Key Events- The Miller Center, UVA

December 1, 1955- Rosa Parks Arrested

Rosa Parks fingerprinted by a deputy sheriff in Montgomery, Alabama on February 22, 1956, when she was arrested again, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and others, for boycotting public transportation.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, NYWT&S Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-90145] https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/02/rosa-parks-in-newspapers-and-comic-books/

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1913. She joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in her youth and remained a member her whole life.

She joined the NAACP in 1943 and served as the chapter’s secretary for many years. Through this work, Parks investigated many cases of discrimination and violence around the country.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus for a White person, resulting in her arrest.

Since the 1940s, similar incidents had occurred all over the US with increasing frequency. Sometimes this was the result of conscious organizing. Other times they were spontaneous actions Black people undertook because they were, in Parks’ words, “tired of giving in.”

The NAACP and other civil rights organizations collaborated on making Rosa Parks’ case a major flashpoint in the fight against Jim Crow, resulting in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 

Numerous lawsuits around the country had ruled against segregation laws and practices, but had failed to result in concrete change. However, these earlier fights were critical in building the momentum that would lead to more radical changes. Thanks to collaborative activism among many organizations and individuals, the Montgomery Boycott became a sustained and visible campaign that helped the anti-segregation lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, make its way to the US Supreme Court. The court found for the 4 Black female plaintiffs, ruled against American “Separate But Equal” policies, and marked the beginning of widespread integration on local, state, and federal levels. Brown v. Board of Education had only addressed integration in public schools.

Sources:

Rosa Parks: My Story- Internet Archive

Nonviolence vs. Jim Crow 1942: Bayard Rustin- Civil Rights Teaching

Irene Morgan 1944- Equal Justice Initiative

Lillie Mae Bradford 1951- Wikipedia

Claudete Colvin 1955- Smithsonian Magazine

Browder v. Gayle- Stanford University

November 10, 1898- North Carolina's Wilmington Massacre

The remains of the office of the Black-owned newspaper the Daily Record after it was burned in the Wilmington coup and massacre, November 10, 1898. (McCool/Alamy)

The Wilmington Massacre of 1898 was long referred to as a riot, but was in fact, a bloody coup executed by a White mob organized by local Democrats. The mob burned down the offices of the local Black Newspaper, killed over 50 Black people, and banished numerous citizens of both races from Wilmington.

Such incidents were common during Reconstruction, the decades after the Civil War. In towns and cities throughout the country, White vigilantes ran smear campaigns in the press that often culminated in the violent overthrow of elected Blacks and Republicans, as well as mass displacement of Black communities.

Sources:

North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources

Cape Fear Museum

Southern Coalition for Social Justicetary-underway-on-the-wilmington-massacre-of-1898/

Equal Justice Initiative