A Black man’s gas pump purchase triggered his seven-gunshot murder.

Evidence

As Elmore got out of his truck, two white men confronted him, including one of the men who’d come into the store. It seemed that in buying a pump and selling gas, Elmore had stepped over some invisible line. Suddenly, gunfire rang out. The white men shot Elmore seven times—six times with a pistol and once with a shotgun blast to his back. His wife and three of his children—all under the age of thirteen—heard the terrifying sounds and rushed from the store to find him lying dead in a ditch. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 889

Categorization

• SHARE: The specific trigger of the murder — buying a pump and selling gas — is a stark quantified detail useful for someone studying Black economic history under Jim Crow.