Just sharing a little of the history that America hides in their archives and will never release. The place that everyone wants to be a part. Oh, how the times have changed and history is repeating itself
The children involved in the landmark Civil Rights lawsuit ‘Brown V. Board of Education,’ which challenged the legality of American public school segregation, Topeka, Kansas, 1953. From front, Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown (the ‘Brown’ of the case’s name), James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, and Katherine Carper.
In 1966, Mississippi voting rights activist Vernon Dahmer was killed after his home was firebombed by the KKK. The day prior, Dahmer had announced that he would pay the poll tax for any citizen who could not afford it. HistoryMaker Joyce Ladner remembers that day: “I remember my mother calling me in St. Louis when I was in grad school early one morning. And she said, ‘Mr. Dahmer is dead–was killed,’ and I was stunned. I said ‘How, what happened?’ She said, ‘They killed him. They burned up his house, and he got caught in there.’ Oh, my heart sunk, because he was a survivor.”
TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE
Willie Francis, a young man from St Martinville LA is pictured holding a calendar with the date circled, which is May 9, 1947.
Francis holds the distinction of being the first and only person in memory to survive an execution on May 3, 1946.
He was convicted of murdering a well-known pharmacist with a shady past for whom he had worked for, despite the fact that no evidence connected him to the crime, the gun used belonged to a local sheriff that had threatened the victim.
He was coerced into confessing and something he wrote was not looked into by authorities.
A kangaroo court convicted him in three days and sentenced him to death.
After the botched execution, a young Cajun attorney began a year-long effort to save his life, arguing that its double jeopardy try and, execute him a second time, the case made it to the Supreme Court with no success.
As a result, Willie Francis (who remained humble throughout, as evident by the photo) was put back into the electric chair on May 9, 1947, and this time there was no mistake.
He was 18.
