Carol Marie Jenkins
Image courtesy of findagrave.com
Jenkins was a 21-year-old encyclopedia saleswomen who was brutally murdered with a screwdriver by two white men in September 1968. She was out selling books one night when she noticed she was being followed, and took refuge for a couple hours at the home of another black family, the Neals. They called the police, but the cops were unable to find the car that was following Jenkins. The Neals offered her to stay the night, but Jenkins politely refused. She was then killed on her way home. No one was ever tried for the murder.
Reverend George Lee
Image courtesy of zinnedproject.org
Reverend Lee was one of the first African Americans registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi. He was an advocate for getting African Americans registered to vote, and used his own printing press to do so. He was head of his local NAACP and was responsible for hundreds of registered African American voters. He had received several death notes urging him to stop his advocacy, but he persisted. Lee was murdered on May 7, 1955, when a convertible pulled alongside Lee’s car just late at night and an unidentified assailant fired three shotgun blasts, shattering his jaw and driving him off the road. According to zinnedproject.org, an autopsy extracted lead pellets from his face that were consistent with buckshot. The sheriff in charge of the case wanted to call it a traffic accident and close the case, and claimed that the bullets were dental fillings torn loose by the impact of the crash.
John Earl Reese
Image courtesy of Multipix.com
Reese was a 16-year-old in Gregg County, East Texas when he was murdered in a cafe while with his cousin Joyce Nelson, 13, and her sister Johnnie, 15. The tragedy occured not long after the at the time controversial Brown vs. Board of Education and after the Emmett Till murder. According to northeastern.edu, two white men, Joe Simpson, 21, and Perry Dean Ross, 22, drove by the Hughes Cafe with the intent to “make a raid” because, they claimed, they were frustrated with “uppity blacks.” The District Attorney assigned to the case, Ralph Prince of Longview, let the murder go as “a case of two irresponsible boys attempting to have some fun by scaring N—-rs.” The case was closed, and it wasn’t until months after that Captain Bob Crowder of the Texas Rangers reopened the case. The case went to trial and Ross was given a five year suspended sentence, but was released immediately after trial. Joe Reagan Simpson was also indicted for the murder of Reese, but that was eventually dismissed.
Emmett Till
Image courtesy of Famous Biographies
Everyone with their eyes open knows this story. A young 14-year-old from up north who naively thought he could hit on a white women, Carolyn Bryant, while visiting his family down south… or that’s how the story has been told for decades. Till was brutally beaten, shot in the head, tied with barbed wire and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. His face was mutilated beyond recognition, and Moses Wright, who he was staying with, only managed to positively identify him by the ring on his finger, engraved with his father’s initials, “L.T.” Since the murder in 1955, the Bryant, the white women who claimed Till has insulted her at a grocery store, which effectively got him killed, confessed she lied about the encounter. Till and Bryant were in a grocery store together, but she says she did lie about the incident, and can’t even remember what happened today. No one was ever tried for the murder.
Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr.
Image courtesy of nuweb9.neu.edu
On April 9, 1962, military police officer Cpl. Roman Ducksworth, Jr., was killed by Police Officer William Kelly while en route to Mississippi on a bus from Fort Ritchie, Maryland to visit his wife who was pregnant with their sixth child. According to nuweb9.neu.edu, there are two accounts of Ducksworth death. One says that Kelly shot Ducksworth after he refused his order to move to the back of the bus. Ducksworth’s brother gave a different telling, stating that Kelly came aboard the bus when it arrived in Taylorsville and began hitting him, then ordered him to get off the bus so Kelly could beat him. Kelly then shot Ducksworth in the heart. Some speculate that Kelly thought Ducksworth to be a Freedom Rider because it was on the same route. No charges were brought against Officer Kelly, and Ducksworth’s killing was ruled a justifiable homicide. Kelly claimed that he was defending himself from Ducksworth. Ducksworth was a few months away from finishing ten years of military service in the US Army. Ducksworth received full military honors and a 16-gun salute, but did not receive justice.
Trayvon Martin
Image courtesy of The Huffington Post
This tragedy covered every news platform for about a year after it happened. As most already know, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 38-year-old neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida in 2012. This is perhaps the most controversial case in the current decade or even century. Zimmerman claimed self defense in the middle of a physical altercation, the prosecutor charged for murder, since Martin was unarmed and a minor. However one feels about, the boy’s name should not be forgotten.
Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley
Image courtesy of NY Daily News
On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded right before the Sunday morning service at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church was a predominantly black one, that was regularly used as a meeting place for civil rights activist. Four young girls (Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley) were killed and many other people injured. This bombing was the third bombing in 11 days, after the federal court order to integrate schools had hit Alabama.This tragedy was a huge catalyst in the civil rights movement.
This month and every month, remember these names.
Sources:
https://zinnedproject.org/2016/05/rev-george-lee/
http://www.northeastern.edu/law/academics/institutes/crrj/case-watch/reese.html
https://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515
http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/mississippi/roman-duckworth-jr/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing