6 historic key moments

THE MARIAN ANDERSON CONCERT (1939)

On a spring day in Washington D.C., under the pensive gaze of the marble colossus that promised freedom and equality for all citizens, 75,000 people listen to the powerful, proud voice of an African American contralto in a fur coat. Amid the throngs, David, a German-Jewish emigrant, and Delia, a young Black woman from Philadelphia, meet and fall in love... So begins The Time of Our Singing.

In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to grant Marian Anderson, a famous Black contralto from Philadelphia, permission to perform in Constitution Hall, where at the time only white artists were allowed. In Washington D.C., racial segregation was still practised, for example in public toilets, which the concert hall did not have. After the District of Columbia’s Board of Education refused to move the concert to an all-white public school, NAACP co-founder Charles Edward Russell organised a citizens’ committee in support of Marian Anderson. The committee circulated petitions and sparked a protest movement.

The national press quickly picked up on the protests, which resulted in the DAR losing several thousand of its members, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote a scathing letter: “I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist. (...) You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.” Together with her husband, President Roosevelt, the executive secretary of the NAACP, Walter White, and the singer's impresario, the First Lady managed to convince Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to allow the concert to take place outdoors on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on 9 April 1939. The concert was preceded by a politically charged speech to a crowd of 75,000 people and millions of citizens who listened in via live radio.

THE HARLEM RIOT (1943)

On the first Sunday of August 1943, James Collins, a white police officer stationed in the Braddock Hotel, tried to arrest Marjorie Polite, an African American guest of the hotel, for disorderly conduct. At the time, there were varying accounts of the circumstances of the incident. Some said there was a dispute over a $1 tip (now $15) that Polite wanted to recover from a lift attendant. Others stated that the drunk woman was verbally aggressive towards the police officer when he tried to remove her.

Robert Bandy, an African American soldier, and his mother, Florine Roberts, intervened. According to the official police report, Bandy had threatened and assaulted the police officer. When Bandy tried to escape, Collins allegedly drew his gun to stop him. Later, the soldier himself, who was hit in the shoulder, stated in an interview that he intervened when he saw the policeman push Marjorie Polite. He then allegedly intercepted a blow from Collin’s nightstick which was intended for Polite. When Bandy hesitated to return the weapon, Collins suddenly fired his gun. Although he was only superficially wounded, the soldier was taken to hospital, where an angry crowd gathered. Various groups of people also began to surround the hotel and the police station as rumours spread throughout Harlem that an African American soldier had been shot dead by police. A bottle, thrown from the rooftops, landed in the crowd that had gathered at the hospital. The crowd then violently dispersed throughout the neighbourhood to loot the shops of the white residents. It is estimated that in that one night alone, $250,000 to $5,000,000 worth of damage was done. The mayor of New York mobilised more than 15,000 men, made several appeals to the people of Harlem by radio, and enlisted the help of Walter Francis White of the NAACP to help restore the peace.

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON (1963)

In the 19th century, a movement of African American citizens and white abolitionist Americans emerged in the United States. They demanded that the rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution be extended to African Americans. Many of these rights were enshrined in a series of amendments to the Constitution in the aftermath of the Civil War, but their application was hampered in the southern states by various regulations that legalised certain forms of racial segregation.

The year 1963 marked the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. In that year, which was marked by a series of violent clashes in the southern states during which white citizens attacked peaceful black protesters, a group of religious, labour, and civil rights movements organised a march to Washington dedicated to employment and freedom. They made a series of demands, including the immediate abolition of segregation in schools (already declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1954) and a federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment. The March, which took place on 28 August 1963, had between 200,000 and 300,000 participants. Approximately 80% of the participants were African American and 20% of them white or of another ethnicity. The March started at the Washington Monument and ended at the Lincoln Memorial, one kilometre away. It featured music and several speeches, including the famous I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King. The March attracted the attention of the national and international press, leading, in part, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

THE WATTS RIOTS (1965)

On the evening of 11 August 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old African American man, was arrested by the California Highway Patrol for drunk driving in Watts, a neighbourhood in south Los Angeles. The young man's brother, Ronald, got out of the car (which belonged to their mother, Rena Price) and went home to alert her. When the boys' mother arrived, the situation escalated in a flash. The whole family was arrested and held at gunpoint. Rumours that the police had assaulted a pregnant woman quickly spread, causing a crowd of local residents to take to the streets and start bombarding the officers with all kinds of objects. When reinforcements were sent to disperse the crowd, riots broke out south of the city and consumed an area of 119 square kilometres. The riots would ultimately last for six days. More than 14,000 members of the National Guard were deployed to quell the violence, which took a total of 34 lives.

Much ink has since flowed about the cause of the events in Watts, a neighbourhood known for its racial and social tensions. For instance, surveys taken several years later showed that a significant proportion of the US population believed the riots were the work of various communist groups protesting against high unemployment, police brutality, and the systematic discrimination against African Americans, especially in the housing market. After the events of 1963, white families moved away en masse from the surrounding neighbourhoods. This had major economic and demographic impacts on the suburbs of South Los Angeles.

THE ASSASSINATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING (1968)

It happened on a Thursday in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King was staying in room 306 of the Lorraine Motel. He and his colleague and friend, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, were guests at the motel so often that the room was nicknamed the “King-Abernathy Suite”. After asking saxophonist Ben Branch to play the gospel song Take My Hand, Precious Lord at that evening's gathering, King took a moment to stand out on the balcony in front of his room. He was deep in conversation with a young Jesse Jackson when, at 6.01 p.m., a gunshot rang out. The face and voice of the peaceful movement for civil rights lay bleeding on the ground. Abernathy and Jackson rushed to him and thought he had died instantly but then noticed that his heart was still beating. King was rushed to St Joseph’s Hospital where he died at 7.05 p.m. He was 39 years old. His death was followed by a wave of riots in several major cities throughout the country.

Shortly after the shooting, several witnesses saw a man fleeing from a building opposite the Lorraine Motel. Close to the scene of the crime, police found a rifle and binoculars bearing the fingerprints of James Earl Ray, an ex-military man who was discharged after World War II for unsuitability and had previously served time in prison. In 1967, he had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary and was living as a fugitive between Mexico and Canada. After the murder, Ray fled again, and authorities began an international manhunt that ended two months later with his arrest at Heathrow Airport. He was charged with the premeditated murder of Martin Luther King and pleaded guilty, in part to avoid the death penalty. A few years later, however, he retracted his confession. For decades now, several rumours have circulated asserting that the activist's murder was carried out by or with the help of agents of the federal government. In 1977 and 2003 respectively, King was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the two highest awards given to citizens in the United States.

THE LOS ANGELES RIOTS (1992)

Rodney King was born in 1965 in Sacramento, California. He and his sister, together with their brothers, were raised by their alcoholic father, who abused them. Rodney started drinking as a student and was soon involved in the world of crime. In 1989, he robbed a shop in Monterey Park, threatening the owner and stealing $200. Ten days later, he was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. He served one year before being released on parole. King would have remained an anonymous statistic for the rest of his life were it not for his involvement in a separate incident on 3 March 1991. After a 13-kilometre chase through the streets of Los Angeles, an inebriated Rodney King stopped his car and was surrounded by three patrol cars and a helicopter. His two passengers exited the vehicle and were led away. King initially refused to get out of the car but eventually obeyed when he was held at gunpoint. Four policemen then tried unsuccessfully to restrain him. Sergeant Stacey Koon pulled out a taser and gave the driver two electric shocks. King fell to the ground and tried to get back up but was then beaten with a nightstick by two other police officers. He received more than 50 blows to the face, was handcuffed, hogtied with a rope and dragged, on his belly, to the side of the road until an ambulance arrived. The whole incident was filmed by local residents. The violent images circulated on television broadcasts around the world, sparking outrage and anger. In March 1992, the four police officers present that night were prosecuted for the use of excessive force. However, on 29 April 1992, the trial, decided by a jury that did not include one African American citizen, ended in an acquittal. Just two hours after the verdict was handed down, riots, which would ultimately last for six days, broke out in Los Angeles. The toll was heavy: some 50 deaths, over 2,300 injured, thousands of arrests, 3,600 fires, and between $800 million and $1 billion in property damage. A year later, the accused police officers were once again brought to federal court and sentenced to 30 months in prison. The unremitting reporting of the events focused mainly on the images of the riots and the ethnic origins of the conflict, but in many neighbourhoods the events were mainly motivated by hunger and disillusionment and were specifically directed against the police and the fraudulent activities of certain shopkeepers. A survey of the local residents taken in 2010 found that racial tensions in Los Angeles had improved in the 20 years since the riots, mainly due to the significant drop in violent crime. In contrast, though, 77% of the respondents felt that the economic situation in their community had deteriorated since then.

Police brutality and the inequitable treatment of African Americans still dominate public debate in the United States today. In recent years, several deaths of black citizens at the hands of the police have led to a resurgence of organised protests of a political, social, and economic nature, including the Black Lives Matter movement.