For seventy-two years I watched as laws were passed, cities burned, appeasement tokens appointed and Black people killed by the police with no actions taken upon their white assailants. For Seventy-two years of my life Black people have been protesting for equality and being killed for being Black in America. For Seventy-two years I still do not feel safe as a Black man walking the streets in most cities of America. For Seventy-two years I am still not a free man in America. At some point, I will die a Black man without justice, without equality, without liberty and the basic rights of a human being. Enough! We must stop this insanity! Now! Nothing has changed in the seventy-two years of my life. Nothing! It has always been “Open Season” on Black people to be killed and murdered by white people.
2020
George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man who was killed by police during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Protests in response to both Floyd’s death, and more broadly to police violence against black people, quickly spread across the United States and internationally.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American emergency medical technician, was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers on March 13, 2020. Three LMPD officers executing a no-knock search warrant entered her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky.
Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia, while jogging on Holmes Road just before the intersection with Satilla Drive in the Satilla Shores neighborhood.[1] Arbery had been pursued and confronted by two white residents.
2015
Tanisha Anderson, 37, died suddenly after she was restrained in a prone position in a confrontation with Cleveland police Nov. 13. Her death was ruled a homicide.
2014
Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri. Start of Black Lives Matter.
Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by Police Officer Pantaleo.
Tamir Rice, a 12-year old African-American boy, was killed in Cleveland, Ohio by Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old police officer. Rice was carrying a replica toy Airsoft gun; Loehmann shot him almost immediately after arriving on the scene.
2008
Barack Obama, becomes the first African American to be elected president of the United States.
2003
In Grutter v. Bollinger, the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School’s policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students.
1992
Race riots erupt in south-central Los Angeles after a jury acquits four white police officers for the videotaped beating of African-American Rodney King.
1978
The Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action, but imposed limitations on it to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority.
1968
John Carlos and Tommie Smith stood up for Black identity – 1968 Olympics in Mexico City
Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
Shirley Chisholm becomes the first black female U.S. Representative. A Democrat from New York, she served from 1969 to 1983.
1967
Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase “Black Power” in a speech in Seattle.
Major race riots take place in Newark (July 12-16) and Detroit (July 23-30).
President Johnson appoints Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. He becomes the first black Supreme Court Justice.
The Supreme Court rules in Loving v. Virginia that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional.
1964
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
1963
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama.
1960
Four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter.
1955
Emmett Till, is brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi.
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the “colored section” of a bus to a white passenger.
1954
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas declares that racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional.
1948
President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order integrating the U.S. armed forces.
I was born Negro, male, and a second class citizen in America because of the color of my skin.
Nothing Has Changed: Nothing Has Been Done To Close The Racial Divide In America.
”Racial Inequality Was Tearing the U.S. Apart, a 1968 Report Warned. It was Ignored.”
New York Times, July 04, 2020
