On May 1, 1866, increasing tension amongst the civilians of Memphis, Tennessee reached its breaking point, as both white and black citizens engaged in a riot that led to the death of African-Americans and destruction of their homes. The Farmer’s Cabinet newspaper reported; “women and children have been burnt alive with the dwellings of the negroes.” Although the riot lasted several days, the...
The concept of prisoners being viewed as human and having rights was not widely understood or enforced until the 1960s. Before the 1960s, prison officials operated prisons in the manner they deemed acceptable with little oversight. The courts utilized a “hands off doctrine” that did not give them the jurisdiction to interfere with prison operations. Challenging the hands off doctrine, Jones v....
On September 11, 1851, Edward Gorsuch, a Maryland slave owner, and a posse of several men including Federal Marshal Kline, descended upon the house of William Parker, in search of escaped slaves. The southerners believed that with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 the retrieval of their slaves would be a swift and cooperative occurrence. However, the small Quaker town of Christiana in Lancaster, Pennsylvania...
Just a week after the attack on Fort Sumter, tempers flared in Baltimore, Maryland. Secessionist and southern sympathizers in Baltimore orchestrated a riot against Union soldiers while they traveled through the city on their way to Washington D.C, that left four soldiers and twelve civilians dead. As stated in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, “A clash between pro-South civilians...
The slave owner Edward Gorsuch traveled to Pennsylvania, along with several men, two of whom were federal marshals, to retrieve six of his slaves that had escaped from his plantation years earlier. Gorsuch planned to confront William Parker, the owner of a tenant house, about harboring his fugitive slaves. An altercation between the two groups of people developed and Gorsuch was killed during the...
During the late night hours of July 18, 1966, 26-year-old Joyce Arnett walked through Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood with two friends. As they approached E. 83rd Street, police officers ushered them into the second floor of a nearby building. The police presence had recently arrived to disperse a large crowd that had gathered on the street. Mrs. Arnett, a mother of three who lived nearby, ventured...