Jerry Mitchell

For those of you who remember the case of serial killer Felix Vail that I worked on, Gone South has created a podcast series on the case. Check it out if you like. https://t.co/8w4XJTBf53

#OnThisDay in 1969, members of the Black Psychiatrists of America interrupted the breakfast of the trustees of the American Psychiatric Association, sharing a list of demands that included a rise in Black leadership, a call to desegregate mental health facilities and a rule to https://t.co/Re9RHEj90Y

Two days after the $2.5 million “Goon Squad” settlement, Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines praised the sheriff’s department’s lawyer & called the 2 Black men whom deputies tortured "dopers" and rapists. Click link to hear what he said. https://t.co/wQGOtQHWBk

#OnThisDay in 1955, the Rev. George Lee was shot to death in Belzoni, Mississippi, after using his pulpit and his printing press to urge other Black Mississippians to vote. He became one of the first African Americans to register to vote in the mostly Black Humphreys County. https://t.co/ejfLf0weph

Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines backed the sheriff, then described 2 Black men tortured by deputies as "dopers [who] raped & doped your daughters." Their lawyer says this fits the racist trope of falsely accusing Black men of raping white women. https://t.co/DrUNeITEih https://t.co/6051AomxPp

A new housing development in Perth Amboy NJ is slated include a memorial to Thomas Mundy Peterson, the first Black American to vote in an election following the ratification of the 15th Amendment. His vote was cast on March 31, 1870. https://t.co/Lc5K5TjbFR

#OnThisDay in 1983, a federal judge sentenced Raymond Bledsoe to life for beating Black jazz saxophonist Steven Harvey to death in a Kansas City park because of his race. A Missouri jury had acquitted Bledsoe of murder, and afterward, he reportedly bragged to his girlfriend https://t.co/QHUlcnhROF

#OnThisDay in 1917, Eugene Jacques Bullard became the first Black American combat pilot. After the near lynching of his father and hearing that Great Britain lacked such racism, the 12-year-old Georgia native stowed away on a ship headed for Scotland. From there, he moved to https://t.co/5s58ThVivP

#onthisday in 1884, crusading journalist Ida B. Wells, an African-American native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, was riding a train from Memphis to Woodstock, Tennessee, where she worked as a teacher, when a white railroad conductor ordered her to move to another car. She https://t.co/y8ArVZo5b7

#OnThisDay in 1850, Shadrach Minkins, already separated from his family, escaped from the Norfolk, Virginia, home, where he was enslaved. He made his way to Boston, where he did odd jobs until he began working as a waiter at Taft’s Cornhill Coffee House. Months later, Congress https://t.co/y5yJjoh3zH

#OnThisDay in 1964, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two 19-year-old Black Americans, were simply trying to get a ride back home. Instead, Klansmen abducted them, took them to the Homochitto National Forest, where they beat the pair and then drowned them in the https://t.co/TrwcCBWC4w

#OnThisDay in 1937, Jackie Ormes became the first known Black cartoonist whose work was read coast to coast through the major black publication, the Pittsburgh Courier. Her cartoon told the story of Torchy Brown, a Mississippi teenager who sang and danced her way from https://t.co/G8O5Rn1x8u

#OnThisDay in 1945, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, known as the “godmother of rock ‘n’ roll,” made history by becoming the first gospel artist to rocket up the R&B charts with her gospel hit, “Strange Things Happening Every Day.” In so doing, she paved the way for a strange new sound. https://t.co/gWsY3x8i7D

#OnThisDay in 1945, “Black Boy,” Richard Wright’s memoir about his upbringing in Roxie, Mississippi, became the top-selling book in the U.S. Wright described Roxie as “swarming with rats, cats, dogs, fortune tellers, cripples, blind men, whores, salesmen, rent collectors, and https://t.co/b4lVjHtd0R

#OnThisDay 1951: Ruby Hurley opened the first permanent office of the NAACP in the South. Her introduction to civil rights activism began when she helped organize Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Four years later, she became national youth secretary for https://t.co/RqTyTcPsxK