Black History Knowledge — October 20

What happened on this day. These are the October 20 moments in Black history worth knowing, remembering, and passing on.

1870 — South Carolina Representative Wade Perrin was assassinated a day after his reelection

On October 20, 1870, Wade Perrin, a Black member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from Laurens County and a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was killed by a white mob one day after he won reelection. Violence against Black residents and white Republicans followed a confrontation in town, and Perrin was shot while trying to flee. His killing was one of at least eight targeted killings of Republicans in South Carolina that day, part of the political violence directed at Black officeholders and voters during Reconstruction.

1898 — North Carolina Mutual was organized

On October 20, 1898, John Merrick and six fellow investors met in the office of Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore to organize the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association. The company was incorporated in February 1899 and opened for business two months later. It grew into one of the nation’s most important Black-owned businesses and helped make Durham’s Black Wall Street a center of finance, employment, and community institution-building.

1951 — Drake University player Johnny Bright was injured in a racially motivated on-field assault

On October 20, 1951, during a Drake University game at Oklahoma A&M, Drake’s Black star Johnny Bright, then the nation’s leader in rushing and total offense, received three hard blows to the face from Oklahoma A&M defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith in the first seven minutes. The third blow broke Bright’s jaw and forced him out of the game. The assault, widely seen in published photographs, became a well-known example of racial violence in college sports, and Drake later withdrew from the Missouri Valley Conference.

1967 — A federal jury convicted seven men in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers

On October 20, 1967, a federal jury in Meridian, Mississippi, convicted seven of eighteen defendants of conspiracy in the 1964 killings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Those convicted included Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and Ku Klux Klan leader Samuel Bowers. Others were acquitted, and the jury could not reach verdicts on three. The verdict was a rare federal conviction in a Mississippi civil rights killing during the 1960s. The defendants received sentences of three to ten years.