2002—“I promise you I will listen to what has been said here,” says George W.[MD] Bush at the President’s Economic Forum in Waco, Texas, “even though I wasn’t here.”
1971—Criminal Attorney General John Mitchell announces that there will be no grand jury investigation of the May 4th shootings at Kent State.
1966—“In two or three years, or even before” says Premier of South Vietnam Nguyen Cao Ky, “the Communists will accept defeat.”
1957—Daisy and Bill Myers, who are Black, get a “warm welcome” to Levittown, Pa.—burning cross and all.
1955—Lamar Smith, a Black WWI vet and voting activist, is shot dead at 10:00 a.m. on the lawn of the Lincoln County Courthouse in Brookhaven, Miss. Witnesses: 30; Indictments: 0.
1925—Baltimore’s Chamber of Commerce accuses H.L. Mencken of damaging the city’s trade with the South due to his reporting of the Scopes “monkey” trial.
1906—African-American soldiers raid Brownsville, Texas to avenge racial insults; one man is killed.
1899—David Terry, former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, assaults U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. Terry is shot dead by Field’s bodyguard, a U.S. Marshal later cleared of wrongdoing.
1878—The first of 5,000 Memphians dies of yellow fever in an epidemic caused by a quarantine-jumper.