2015/05/12 – May 12, 1898: Louisiana adopted a new constitution, which incorporated a “grandfather clause” into voting requirements. It stated that a person may only vote if their father or grandfather was eligible to vote on or before January 1, 1867, thereby disqualifying most African Americans. By 1910, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Oklahoma had adopted similar “grandfather clauses.”

May 12, 1967: Benjamin Brown, a former civil rights organizer, was shot in the back on this day in Jackson, Miss. He had walked with a friend into a café to pick up a sandwich to take home to his wife. On his way back, he encountered a standoff between law enforcement officers and students, who had been hurling rocks and bottles at them. Brown was hit in the back by two shotgun blasts. No arrests were ever made. In 2001, a Hinds County grand jury reviewing the case blamed two deceased officers: Jackson police officer Buddy Kane and Mississippi Highway Patrolman Lloyd Jones. The Brown family filed a lawsuit, and the city of Jackson settled for $50,000.

May 13, 1963: In United States of America and Interstate Commerce Commission v. the City of Jackson, Miss., the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the city’s attempt to circumvent laws desegregating interstate transportation facilities by posting sidewalk signs outside bus and railroad terminals reading “Waiting Room for White Only — By Order Police Department” and “Waiting Room for Colored Only — By Order Police Department” to be unlawful.

May 14, 1961: On this Mother’s Day, a group of Freedom Riders traveling by bus from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans were met by a white mob in Anniston, Ala. The mob attacked the bus with baseball bats and iron pipes. They also slashed the tires. When the hobbled bus pulled over, the mob pulled riders off the bus and beat them with pipes. Then they set the bus on fire. The photograph of the Greyhound bus engulfed in flames, the black smoke filling the sky became an unforgettable image of the civil rights movement.

May 14, 1966: Stokely Carmichael defeated John Lewis, longtime national chairman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Carmichael announced SNCC would no longer send white organizers into black communities.

May 15, 1832: Mary Fields, who became the first African-American woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service, was born in Hickman County, Tennessee. In 1895, the 63-year-old Fields was hired as a mail carrier because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses. She never missed a day, her reliability earning her the nickname “Stagecoach.” Ebony magazine reported, “Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath, or a .38.”

May 15, 1970: Mississippi law enforcement officers opened fire on the Jackson State University campus, killing two African-American students, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green. Police insisted the students fired first, but no evidence was found to confirm this. The killings took place 11 days after the shooting of students at Kent State University in Ohio. A historical marker at JSU pays tribute to the victims.

May 16, 1792: Denmark became the first European country to outlaw the slave trade. Slave traders abducted millions of Africans and treated them as cargo, cramming them together as close as possible. Many died from suffocation, malnutrition and disease. One former slave later wrote, “The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.” Half or more died on these trips, according to estimates. The Portuguese term for these slave ships? “Floating tombs.”

May 16, 1950: A South Carolina lawsuit, Briggs v. Elliott, was filed that would help lead to the successful Brown v. Board of Education decision four years later. Levi Pearson had previously sued, asking that school buses be provided for black students. After J.A. DeLaine as well as Harry and Eliza Briggs joined this litigation, both Briggs were fired from their jobs, and DeLaine’s church was torched. The judge in the case, Walter Waring, who sided with their concerns, was forced to leave the state. In 2003, Congressional Gold Medals were awarded posthumously to the Harry and Eliza Briggs, Pearson and DeLaine.

May 16, 1968: Six weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the city of Memphis settled its sanitation strike. The civil rights leader had come to Memphis to help the sanitation workers with their strike.

May 17, 1875: The first Kentucky Derby ever held was won by an African-American jockey, Oliver Lewis, riding the horse Aristides. On that day, 14 of the 15 jockeys were African-American.

May 17, 1954: In Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law. The historic decision, bringing an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African-American girl denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin. In Mississippi, segregationist leaders called the day “Black Monday.”

May 17, 1957: The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom became the largest nonviolent demonstration for civil rights so far. Martin Luther King Jr. led 30,000 on the pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., to mark the third anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in education unconstitutional.

May 18, 1896: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation on railroads or similar public places was constitutional, forging the “separate but equal” doctrine that remained in place until 1954. In his dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, “Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”

Source: The Clarion-Ledger 

Jerry Mitchell