The aftermath of the 1908 Race Riot in Springfield gave rise to the formation of the NAACP.
Dr. Wesley Robinson-McNeese recalled a scene where he was swimming with some Air Force buddies in the waters off Biloxi Beach in Mississippi in the late 1960s.
A stranger pulled up in a pickup truck and, producing a shotgun and hurling epithets, promised that he was going to blow away McNeese, who is Black, if he didn t get out of the water. My friends said, Wes, you’re a soldier, you don’t have to do that, McNeese remembered. I said, He’s not aiming the shotgun at you guys. He’s aiming it at me.