R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), is a case of the United States Supreme Court that unanimously struck down St. Paul ‘s Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance and reversed the conviction of a teenager, referred to in court documents only as R.A.V., for burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family since the ordinance was held to violate the First Amendment ‘s protection of freedom of speech.

Concurrence: White, joined by Blackmun, O’Connor, Stevens (in part)

Full case name: R.A.V., Petitioner v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota

Majority: Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas

Prior: Statute upheld as constitutional and charges reinstated, 464 N.W.2d 507 (Minn. 1991)

Hearing arguments in the case of the Zong, a slave ship, the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in London states that a massacre of enslaved African “was the same as if Horses had been thrown over board” on June 22, 1783. The crew of the Zong had thrown at least 142 captive Africans into the sea, but the question before the court was not who had committed this atrocity but rather whether the lost “cargo” was covered by insurance. The trial laid bare the horror and inhumanity of the Atlantic slave trade and galvanized the nascent movement to abolish it.

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Citation Information

Article Title

Zong slave ship trial

AuthorHistory.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/zong-slave-ship-trial

Access Date

June 21, 2022

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 21, 2021

Original Published Date

June 10, 2020

1558 – The French took the French town of Thioville from the English.

1611 – English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several other people were set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers.

1772 – Slavery was outlawed in England.

1807 – British seamen board the USS Chesapeake, a provocation leading to the War of 1812.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated a second time.

1832 – J.I. Howe patented the pin machine.

1868 – Arkansas was re-admitted to the Union.

1870 – The U.S. Congress created the Department of Justice.

1874 – Dr. Andrew Taylor Still began the first known practice of osteopathy.

1909 – The first transcontinental auto race ended in Seattle, WA.

1911 – King George V of England was crowned.

1915 – Austro-German forces occupied Lemberg on the Eastern Front as the Russians retreat.

1925 – France and Spain agreed to join forces against Abd el Krim in Morocco.

1933 – Germany became a one political party country when Hitler banned parties other than the Nazis.

1939 – The first U.S. water-ski tournament was held at Jones Beach, on Long Island, New York.

1940 – France and Germany signed an armistice at Compiegne, on terms dictated by the Nazis.

1941 – Under the codename Barbarossa, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

1942 – A Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River.

1942 – In France, Pierre Laval declared “I wish for a German victory”.

1942 – V-Mail, or Victory-Mail, was sent for the first time.

1944 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the “GI Bill of Rights” to provide broad benefits for veterans of the war.

1945 – During World War II, the battle for Okinawa officially ended after 81 days.

1946 – Jet airplanes were used to transport mail for the first time.

1956 – The battle for Algiers began as three buildings in Casbah were blown up.

1959 – Eddie Lubanski rolled 24 consecutive strikes in a bowling tournament in Miami, FL.

1964 – The U.S. Supreme Court voted that Henry Miller’s book, “Tropic of Cancer”, could not be banned.

1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It required that the voting age in the United States to be 18.

1973 – Skylab astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific after a record 28 days in space.

1974 – In Chicago, the Sears Tower Skydeck opened. (Willis Tower)

1978 – James W. Christy and Robert S. Harrington discovered the only known moon of Pluto. The moon is named Charon.

1980 – The Soviet Union announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan.

1989 – The government of Angola and the anti-Communist rebels of the UNITA movement agreed to a formal truce in their 14-year-old civil war.

1990 – Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled in Berlin.

1992 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that hate-crime laws that ban cross-burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.

1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence illegally obtained by authorities could be used at revocation hearings for a convicted criminal’s parole.

1998 – The 75th National Marbles Tournament began in Wildwood, NJ.

1999 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that persons with remediable handicaps cannot claim discrimination in employment under the Americans with Disability Act.

2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announced that it would discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Color Film.