Wednesday, April 21, 2010

A Civil Rights Watershed in Biloxi, Mississippi | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

A Civil Rights Watershed in Biloxi, Mississippi | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

Wow. So hard to believe that stuff like this happened in US in past half century. Sad.

Read the article, it is good.

"The waters beside Biloxi, Mississippi, were tranquil on April 24, 1960. But Bishop James Black’s account of how the harrowing hours later dubbed “Bloody Sunday” unfolded for African-American residents sounds eerily like preparations taken for a menacing, fast-approaching storm. “I remember so well being told to shut our home lights off,” said Black, a teenager at the time. “Get down on the floor, get away from the windows.”

It wasn’t a rainstorm that residents battened down for, but mob reprisals. Hours earlier Black and 125 other African-Americans had congregated at the beach, playing games and soaking sunrays near the circuit of advancing and retreating tides. This signified no simple act of beach leisure, but group dissent. At the time, the city’s entire 26-mile-long shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico was segregated."


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/A-Civil-Rights-Watershed-in-Biloxi-Mississippi.html#ixzz0lkUvSADj

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