Adult white mobs violently attacked black schoolchildren for desegregation in 1966 Grenada.

Evidence

King’s bout of depression hit in the midst of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s efforts to desegregate schools in Grenada County, Mississippi. There he saw, once again, the capacity for evil in those committed to white supremacy. As 150 black students entered John Rundle High School and Lizzie Horn Elementary, an angry mob gathered outside. White students were dismissed at midday. A half hour later, black students walked out of the school and found themselves surrounded. The mob attacked the children with fists, feet, pipes, and tree limbs. Grown men descended upon twelve-year-old Richard Sigh and broke his leg with pipes while others, laughing, pummeled a pigtailed girl. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 264

Categorization

• SEED: A stark, under-remembered atrocity from the desegregation era worth an essay on why Grenada, Mississippi 1966 is absent from the standard Selma-to-Voting-Rights timeline.
• SHARE: A specific, grim detail — grown men breaking a twelve-year-old’s leg with pipes while laughing at a girl — for someone cataloguing the post’-65 violence King’s Depression is usually attributed to.