Black History Knowledge — October 28

What happened on this day. These are the October 28 moments in Black history worth knowing, remembering, and passing on.

1830 — Josiah Henson reached freedom in Upper Canada

After escaping slavery in Kentucky in September 1830 and crossing the Ohio River into Indiana with his wife and four children, Josiah Henson reached Upper Canada on October 28, 1830. Henson became an abolitionist, minister, author, and community founder. His life illuminates self-emancipation, the Underground Railroad, and Black institution-building in Canada.

1958 — Police in Monroe, North Carolina, arrested two Black boys in the ‘Kissing Case’

On October 28, 1958, police in Monroe, North Carolina, arrested nine-year-old James Hanover Thompson and eight-year-old David “Fuzzy” Simpson after a white girl kissed them on the cheek during a children’s game. The boys were held for six days without seeing their parents and, according to Thompson’s later account, were beaten. The ‘Kissing Case’ drew international attention to racial injustice in the Jim Crow South.

1964 — Mildred and Richard Loving filed a federal class action against Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage

On October 28, 1964, Mildred Loving, a Black woman, and her white husband, Richard Loving, filed a class action in federal court asking that Virginia’s laws against interracial marriage be declared unconstitutional and that officials be blocked from enforcing their convictions. Their state-court motion to set aside their 1959 sentences had gone undecided for nearly a year. The case led to Loving v. Virginia (1967), in which the Supreme Court struck down state bans on interracial marriage.