January 1951

In February 1951, Virginia executes seven Black men — Frank Hairston Jr., Booker T. Millner, Howard Lee Hairston, John Clabon Taylor, James Luther Hairston, Francis DeSales Grayson, and Joe Henry Hampton — for the rape of a white woman. NAACP lawyers document that Virginia had never executed a white man for rape. The seven are electrocuted over two weekends. Their case illustrates the racially discriminatory application of capital punishment.

In February 1951, the Truman Justice Department indicts 83-year-old W.E.B. Du Bois as an unregistered foreign agent for his role with the Peace Information Center, which circulated a Soviet-backed petition against nuclear weapons. Du Bois and colleagues are handcuffed and fingerprinted. The case is eventually dismissed, but the indictment effectively silences Du Bois domestically, ruins his reputation among mainstream civil rights organizations, and exemplifies Cold War suppression of Black radical politics.