Thursday, February 19, 2009

Urban Word(s) of the Day - 2/19/09

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing –
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a racially motivated terrorist attack on September 15, 1963, by members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Birmingham, Alabama. The bombing of the African-American church resulted in the deaths of four girls. Although city leaders had reached a settlement in May with demonstrators and started to integrate public places, not everyone agreed with ending segregation. Other acts of violence followed the settlement. The bombing increased support for people working for civil rights. It marked a turning point in the U.S. civil-rights movement of the mid-twentieth century and contributed to support for passage of civil rights legislation in 1964.


Huey P. Newton –
Huey Newton was co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, an African-American organization established to promote Black Power, civil rights and self-defense. Under his and co-founder Bobby Seale’s leadership the group became a political force both admired and feared for its aggressively militant stance. The FBI was to label Newton and his colleagues in the Black Panthers as ‘Public Enemy Number One’. In 1967 Newton was arrested and charged with killing an Oakland police officer during a dispute, leading to a much-publicized "Free Huey" campaign organized by the Panthers. His 1968 conviction was overturned due to procedural errors. In 1973 Newton escaped other criminal charges by fleeing to Cuba; he returned in 1977 and in 1980 earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of California. Newton was killed in a 1989 dispute with a drug dealer.

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