America has a deep and pervasive history of racism. A blight that has persisted for centuries, it continues to seep into the justice system in both blatant and insidious ways. You don't have to look very far to see the disparity between how whites and minorities are treated in the criminal justice system - it seems that almost daily there is a new outrageous case that defies belief.
Everyone has heard about a murder where race was a factor, whether it happened a hundred years ago or just last week. And all too often, people are getting away with these horrific crimes thanks to racism. This list explores these egregious injustices and takes a look at racist murderers who almost got away with it, as well as crimes where race was a factor and the offending parties emerged almost completely unscathed.
Read on to learn more about terrible crimes people almost got away with due to racism.
8 Horrific Crimes People Almost Got Away With Thanks To Racism,
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
On September 15, 1963 - just weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech - a bomb went off at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. The terrorist attack killed four young African-American girls, and wounded many other innocent churchgoers.
The church was a popular meeting place and focal point for the Civil Rights Movement, a distinction that made it a target for the Ku Klux Klan, who repeatedly called in bomb threats. Though there were individuals immediately suspected as culpable for the crime, it took over a decade any arrests to be made.
In 1977, local Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was tried and convicted of murder for his connection to the bombing. Two other Klan members, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry, were ultimately convicted for their involvement as well, though not until 2001 and 2002.
Why did it take decades for any justice to be served? It turns out that in 1965, the FBI had specific information on the men involved, and did nothing with it. Speculation says the inaction was due to then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's distaste for the Civil Rights Movement.
Emmett Till
On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered for speaking to a white woman. The young black man from Chicago was visiting was some family in Money, MS. Till went into a candy store, and was reportedly heard saying "Bye, baby" to the white woman behind the counter as he left.
The woman told her husband Roy Bryant what had happened. Bryant, in a fit of rage, picked up his brother-in-law J.W. Milam and drove out to Till's uncle Mose Wright's home, where the young man was staying, and forced him into the car.
The two men drove Till to the Tallahatchie River, where they forced him to carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank. They then stripped him, severely beat him, gouged out his eye, and shot him in the head. They then threw his body, fastened to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.
A few weeks after the murder, Bryant and Milam went on trial, where an all-white jury found them not guilty, citing the dubious reason that the state failed to prove the identity of Till's disfigured corpse.
Absolved of their crimes, an emboldened Bryant and Milam gave a notorious interview to Look magazine in which they were utterly unrepentant. The reaction to such brazen callousness was strong, and former supporters turned on them. Both men's businesses struggled, as no one would give them loans and they were unable to hire any black employees. A small price to pay, however, as they lived out the rest of their lives in freedom.
Joseph Paul Franklin
Serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin had a simple motivation for his murderous spree: he was a vehement racist. Franklin claimed 18 lives during a reign of terror that went on for over a decade. A rabid white supremacist, Franklin loathed blacks, Jews, and other minorities, and consumed with hatred, he frequently sought blood.
In 1980, Franklin shot and killed Darrell Lane, 14, and Dante Evans Brown, 13, in Cincinnati, OH. He had been laying in wait under a railroad trestle, waiting to murder the first black person he saw.
It would be years before Franklin faced any sort of justice. He was finally executed in Missouri in 2013 for another murder conviction. During that crime, he had killed a Jewish man outside of a St. Louis synagogue, a sniper-style execution he carried out in the name of the purity of white race.
Mark Wahlberg
Critically-beloved actor Mark Wahlberg has a dark history he tends to avoid addressing. In 1988, in Dorchester, MA, a young Wahlberg assaulted two Asian men during a convenience store robbery. Wahlberg reportedly called them men "Vietnam f*cking sh*t," and repeatedly struck them with a wooden stick.
When arrested, Wahlberg was defiant, telling police officers, "I’ll tell you now that’s the motherf*cker whose head I split open," and repeatedly calling his victims "gooks." He was convicted of assault and served just 45 days behind bars.
Wahlberg asked the state of Massachusetts for a pardon for his crimes, saying that he is a devout Catholic and changed man, but dropped the request in 2016.
Murder of Vincent Chin
On June 19, 1982, 27-year-old Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat in Detroit, MI. Out on the town for his bachelor party - he was to be married the following week - Chin and his friends attended the Fancy Pants gentlemen's club where they ran into two autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz.
Eben and Nitz blamed the Japanese for America's waning automotive industry, and though Chin was Chinese, they took out their ire on the innocent groom-to-be. In the parking lot of the bar, Nitz put Chin in a headlock while Ebens struck him four times in the skull with a baseball bat. Vincent Chin died four days later.
On March 18, 1983, both men pleaded guilty to the racially-charged killing. Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced them to an incredibly light 3 years probation and a small fine. When asked for his reasoning for such leniency, the judge offered this: "These aren't the kind of men you send to jail. You fit the punishment to the criminal, not the crime."
The Shooting Of Philando Castile
Warning: this video contains graphic images.
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was pulled over for a broken taillight by police in Falcon Heights, MN. In the car with him were his fiancée Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter. The officers had thought the group matched the description of suspects in a recent armed robbery.
Castile, who had a permit to conceal and carry a firearm, alerted Officer Jeronimo Yanez that he had a gun on him and went to remove it from his person. A panicked Yanez then shot Castile, who died shortly after. Reynolds, aware of the police's historically hostile relationship with the black community, began live-streaming the traffic stop on Facebook Live after the officer fired the shots.
Without the aide of video evidence, it's impossible to say whether Yanez would have faced any repercussions for death of Castile. The St. Anthony police officer faces charges of second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm.
The Death Of Trayvon Martin
Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old black high school student who was shot to death on February 26, 2012 in the city of Sanford, FL. He had been walking back to his father's house after a trip to a nearby convenience store when local vigilante and neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman spotted him. Zimmerman, convinced that Martin was up to no good, pulled over and harassed the teenager - though when Zimmerman called 911 to report a suspicious person, he was instructed specifically to stay in his car. A scuffle ensued and Zimmerman shot and killed Martin in what he described as self-defense.
On April 11, 2012, after a national fervor and endless headlines decrying what appeared to be a racially-charged execution, George Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was found not guilty.
George Zimmerman went free in what is considered to an incredible miscarriage of justice. However, his life has not been easy. He claims to live in constant fear of retribution, and has had several dust-ups with the law.
The Murders Of Charles Moore And Henry Dee
On May 2, 1964, teenagers Charles Moore and Henry Dee were kidnapped and murdered in Franklin County, MS. They had been abducted from the main street of a small town called Meadville and brought to Homochitto National Forest, where they were tied to a tree and beaten nearly to death. The two 19-year-olds were then placed in the trunk of a car and driven to the Mississippi River, where they were thrown in, still alive and tied to an engine block. Their bodies were found two months later by area fishermen.
On November 6, 1964, after a thorough FBI investigation of the murders, James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards - both active members of the Ku Klux Klan - were arrested. The following year, however, charges against both men were dismissed by the district attorney for reasons that remain unclear, though there are suspicions that acting officials also had Klan involvement.
Edwards and Seale almost got away with it. In 2004, however, justice seemed to be on the horizon. A Canadian filmmaker doing a documentary on the cold case began sniffing around the two former Klansmen, and the FBI - who had re-opened the case in 2000, but had thought Seale to be dead - made an arrest in 2007. Edwards was granted immunity for rolling on Seale, who ended up with three consecutive life sentences. He died in a federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, IN in 2011.