The Equal Justice Initiative has a calendar of racial justice moments n history. Here are a few for the month of February! Comment a fact that you learned about today!
February 1, 1965: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and more than 200 others are arrested and jailed after a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama.
February 4, 1846: Alabama launches convict leasing by leasing Wetumpka State Penitentiary and its inmates to a private businessman.
February 5, 1917: Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1917 to bar entry of Asian, Mexican, and Mediterranean people, poor people, and those with mental or physical disabilities or criminal records.
February 8, 1968: White state troopers fire into a group of Black students at South Carolina State College who were trying to desegregate a bowling alley, killing three and injuring 28.
February 13, 1960: Nashville students launch sit-in demonstrations to demand an end to racial segregation at lunch counters and face violence and jail time.
February 19, 1923: In U.S. v. Thind, the Supreme Court upholds a government ruling that an Indian Sikh man born in Punjab is ineligible for U.S. citizenship because he is no a 'free white man'.
February 20, 1956: Civil rights activists are arrested for organizing a bus boycott to protest mistreatment and segregation in Montgomery, Alabama; 89 are indicted the following day.
February 21, 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated in front of his wife and young daughters while giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York.
February 23, 2020: Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, is shot and killed in Glynn County, Georgia, by a white man who is not arrested until the failure to bring charges sparks nationwide protests.
February 24, 1865: Kentucky refuses to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and does not do so until 1976.
February 26, 2012: Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, is killed in Sanford, Florida; police arrest shooter George Zimmerman only after national outcry against claim that Stand Your Ground law barred his prosecution.
February 27, 1869: Congress refuses to seat John Willis Menard of Louisiana, the first Black man elected to the House of Representatives.
