#OnThisDay in 1965, members of the Ku Klux Klan, some of whom worked with Natchez NAACP President George Metcalfe at the Armstrong Tire plant at Natchez, decided to attack him because he had helped register more than 8,000 Black Mississippians to voting rolls. He had also

#OnThisDay in 1963, eight years after Emmett Till was slain, about 250,000 gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, calling for racial harmony. But the

On the anniversary of Emmett Till's lynching, we also remember the tragedy of lies told about him. Secret records show William Bradford Huie knew Carolyn Bryant was lying when she claimed Till attacked her. Huie printed that lie as fact. #EmmettTill mississippitoday.org/2024/08/16/the…

Wanting to learn more about the lynching of Emmett Till? Check out this online resource: the Emmett Till Memory Project: etmp.site

#OnThisDay in 1942, Charity Adams Earley became the U.S. Army’s first Black female officer after joining the Women’s Army Corps. As she traveled on a train to her family’s home in Columbia, South Carolina, rail workers refused to let her enter the dining car until a fellow

#OnThisDay in 1983, Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first Black astronaut in space, four years after beginning his training. The Vietnam War pilot who flew 144 combat missions boarded the Challenger on a rainy morning. Despite the weather, crowds flocked to glimpse history.

#OnThisDay in 1904, George Poage became the first Black American to compete and win a medal in the Olympic games, capturing bronze medals in the 200-yard and 400-yard hurdles in the Olympics in St. Louis. A year earlier, the star athlete and student at the University of

#OnThisDay in 1912, civil rights lawyer R. Jess Brown was born in Kansas, grew up in Oklahoma, and moved to Mississippi after World War II. After teaching school, he became involved in a 1948 lawsuit to equalize pay for Black and white teachers. Fired for that, he decided to

#OnThisDay in 1922, Bessie Coleman became the first female pilot of color to take part in a flying exhibition in the U.S., performing over New York’s Long Island. Born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, to a Native American sharecropper and an African-American maid, she excelled in

Thursday at 6 at @MillsapsCollege, I'll be discussing "Dying to Vote" w/ filmmaker Loki Mulholland & Dennis Dahmer, whose father Vernon Dahmer died defending his family from a Ku Klux Klan attack in 1966. Klansmen attacked because of his push for voting rights for all Americans.

#OnThisDay in 1957, Elizabeth Eckford, one of nine Black students, attempted to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Unlike the other eight, she had never received the message to stay away from the school. As she walked toward the school, a mob hurled racist

#OnThisDay in 1864, Louisiana became the first state to incorporate President Abraham Lincoln’s conciliatory approach and was the leading test case for post-war policy when pro-Union voters ratified Louisiana’s new state Constitution, which abolished slavery and authorized the

If you're around the Jackson area tonight, check out the new documentary, "Dying to Vote," with Dennis Dahmer, whose family was attacked by the KKK because of voting rights, and the filmmaker Loki Mulholland. Bring your questions because we will have a discussion afterward.

I heard Austin was the new Silicon Valley. Glad to see it’s so!

#OnThisDay in 1955, Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, opened her son’s casket so that the world could “see what they did to my baby.” Some wept. Some fainted. All were moved by the sight of his brutalized body, a witness to the murderers’ monstrous deeds. More than

#OnThisDay in 1954, in compliance with the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision, schools in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., were desegregated. Baltimore was one of the first school systems to desegregate below the Mason-Dixon line. A month after a dozen Black students

#OnThisDay in 1966, Nichelle Nichols became one of the first Black women to play a lead role on television, portraying Communication Officer Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek.” Ebony magazine featured her as the first Black astronaut, “a triumph of modern-day TV over modern-day NASA.” A