'People Died So Tonight Could Happen'

Freedom Riders bus burned near Anniston, Alabama (1961)

On the day that Barack Obama was born, black people in a number of cities and towns across the United States could not swim in the same public pool, drink from the same water fountain or use the same restroom as white people. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was still nearly four years away on Aug 4, 1961.

Between the day that Barack Obama was born and 1968, at least 28 people were killed as they actively worked for the rights of black people to live in an integrated society, vote, and eventually run for public office. Their names are:

Louis Allen, Willie Brewster, Benjamin Brown, James Chaney, Vernon Dahmer, Jonathan Daniels, Henry H. Dee, Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr., Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, Samuel Hammond Jr, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Wharlest Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Herbert Lee, Viola Gregg Liuzzo, Delano H. Middleton, Charles E. Moore, Oneal Moore, William Moore, Rev. James Reeb, Michael Schwener, Henry E. Smith, Clarence Triggs, Virgil Ware, Ben Chester White, Samuel Younge Jr.

These men and women did not die in vain.

They died because somewhere in their souls they knew that someday in America, there would be a night like this night.

-- WILL BUNCH