Two from the Equal Justice Initiative

The Equal Justice Institute joined BlueSky in mid-November, one of my last favorites to make the move from Twitter, making it possible for me to stop checking there. 

These appeared two days in a row, but in history occurred about five years apart.

U.S. Army Executes 13 Black Soldiers in Houston, Texas: On December 11, 1917 "the U.S. Army executed 13 Black soldiers who had been previously court-martialed and denied any right to appeal." That was the beginning of the killing and life sentences for soldiers who had confronted racist police from Houston. The Black soldiers were assigned in July to guard white soldiers deploying to Europe out of Camp Logan, and had been constantly harassed and sometimes beaten by the police. When they marched in protest in late August, they were attacked by an armed white mob. "In the ensuing violence, four soldiers, four policemen, and 12 civilians were killed." The only ones held responsible were the Black soldiers, 63 of whom were court-martialed. 54 were convicted: 43 to life in prison, and 13 to death with no appeal. Two more trials resulted in 16 more death sentences, but they were allowed appeals and Woodrow Wilson commuted 10 of them; 6 of the men hanged. Work by the NAACP got most of the other 50 early release. "No white civilians were ever brought to trial for involvement in the violence."

White Mob Lynches Arthur Young in Taylor County, Florida: December 12, 1922, was the culmination of a racist manhunt and series of killings, following the murder of a white woman on December 2. There was no plausible evidence that a Black man was involved in the killing —in fact the opposite — but a suspect was fabricated. One Black man (unnamed in the EJI story) was killed first during the search. The suspect, Charles Wright, was captured and burned alive on December 8, and then for no reason I could discern, his friend Arthur Young was arrested on December 12. While the cops were moving Young to the jail, a lynch mob seized him, shot him multiple times, and hung him from a tree. They then burned a number of homes and civic buildings in the Black community of Perry, terrorizing the people there and driving dozens to leave permanently. "No one was ever held accountable for the lynchings of Arthur Young and Charles Wright. They are among 15 documented African American victims of racial terror lynching killed in Taylor County, Florida, between 1877 and 1950."

For every story EJI shares in their daily posts, remember that many powerful and monied forces in this country want to make sure that no one, but especially young people, learn about these truths of our country's history, let alone the greater existence of white supremacy that underpins them.

It's possible to get their daily calendar entries sent as an email by signing up here.

___

Here are two of my past posts about EJI:

Bryan Stevenson: Just Mercy, November 2014

The Gnadenhutten Massacre, April 2024