1981-1985
Day 61 1981: “The Last Lynching In America”- The Lynching of Michael Donald and A Mother's Love That Takes Down the KKK Michael Donald was a 19 year old young man who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. In Alabama, a black man who possibly killed a police officer was not sent to prison when the jury declared a mistrial. This incensed the local KKK members (please remember, this is 1981, not 1921. I was alive when this happened). For the KKK “this meant that a black man could kill a white man with impunity so long as there were blacks on the jury…[Donald] was killed as a reprisal against the black community and to confirm the power of the Ku Klux Klan in south Alabama.” (ummm…..also remember how many black men have been murdered and whose murderers walked free because of all white juries!) Furious about the verdict, Klan members Henry Francis Hays and James “Tiger” Knowles chose Michael Donald at random, chased him down, beat him brutally, then strangled him to de...