A Brief History On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, an African-American, was arrested for refusing to vacate his seat in a “Whites Only” railroad car.  His case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, where a 7-1 majority ruled against Plessy, and upheld segregation laws in states that had them, as long as the “separate but equal” rule was followed. (Ferguson was the lower court judge that ruled against Plessy.) Digging Deeper This concept of separate but equal was thus the law of the land until the 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education, and much…

A Brief History  In 1965, Maulana Karenga (born Ronald Everett), currently Professor of African Studies at the University of California in Long Beach, created a new holiday he named Kwanzaa during which time African Americans could honor their African heritage.  Digging Deeper As a university student, Karenga had been active in the radical African-American movement known as Black Power and even created an organization he called “US” meaning black people.  This group became a rival to other Black nationalist groups such as the Black Panthers. Karenga’s US (sarcastically called United Slaves by the Black Panthers) clashed with the Panthers to the point of…

A Brief History    On June 1, 1939, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, a plane designed by the German aeronautical engineer Kurt Tank, made its first flight and would go on to bedevil the Allies throughout the rest of World War II.  With upgrades throughout its service life, the “Butcher Bird” (or Shrike) as it was known due to its heavy firepower, would remain on the leading edge of piston-engine performance. Digging Deeper With its introduction to combat over the English Channel and France in 1941, the Fw 190 became an obvious game changer, requiring Allied designers to upgrade existing Spitfires and come up with…

A Brief History On May 27, 1998, Michael Fortier was fined $200,000 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for failing to warn authorities about the conspiracy to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  Fortier’s wife, Lori, was also named as an accomplice, but escaped prosecution and was given immunity in exchange for her testimony against bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Digging Deeper On April 19, 1995, Nichols and McVeigh carried out a domestic terrorist plot in which they blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma city by means of a rented truck filled with explosives, killing…

A Brief History On May 27, 2015, in a surprising move, the overwhelming Republican majority in the Nebraska State Legislature joined with Democrats to overturn the Governor’s veto of the bill making Nebraska the 19th state (plus Washington, DC) to outlaw the death penalty. Digging Deeper The vote was 30-19.  The governor vowed to execute the 10 inmates still on death row. Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Should capital punishment be abolished? If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on…