March 1946 [My Mother’s Birth Year]: A White Male KKK Governor of Arkansas Dies & Influential Black Americans Wes Unseld, Carl Augustus Hansberry & Cumberland Posey
March 9, 1946: Attorney, the 27th governor of Arkansas & KKK member, Tom Terral, dies.
Preparing to run again for governor in 1924, Terral joined the KKK in Louisiana, near Arkansas.
Apparently, he was rejected for Klan membership by various chapters in Arkansas but wanted to show his commitment to the organization as he mounted his gubernatorial race.
78 years later, white male of the right-wing supremacy remains the greatest domestic terrorist threat, now tracked by DHS, DOJ and the FBI.
March 14, 1946 (Pisces): Professional basketball player, coach and executive, Wes Unseld, born
March 17, 1946: Real estate broker, political activist, and plaintiff in the 1940 Supreme Court decision Hansberry v. Lee, Carl Augustus Hansberry, dies.
He was also the father of award-winning playwright Lorraine Hansberry and the great-grandfather of actress Taye Hansberry.
When his youngest child was eight years old, Hansberry bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago that was restricted to whites.
The family was met with intense hostility by local residents.
The Kenwood Improvement Association filed a mandatory injunction for the Hansberry family to vacate their home which was granted by a Circuit Court judge and upheld on appeal by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Hansberry challenged the ruling, which led to the landmark U. S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee (1940).
In a unanimous opinion rendered November 12, 1940, the court rejected the specific restrictive covenant impacting the Hansberry family without ruling on the constitutionality of restrictive residential covenants in general.
March 28, 1946: Baseball player, manager, and team owner in the Negro leagues, Cumberland Posey, dies
Thank you for sharing these stories. I had never heard of any of these individuals before reading but I’m glad I do because it’s important to tell about these events no matter if the individual is good or bad. That’s how we learn
I can't get over the unhappiness on the faces of old right wing racists and new ones alike. It's not a good way to live your life.