On October 2, 1930, white neighbors violently attacked a house in Greeley, Colorado, where six Black students who were enrolled at a teachers college lived with their house mother. The assailants threw bricks, fired gunshots at the building, and used iron bars to smash the windows and screens on the house, terrorizing the Black women inside. The attack took place at 2 am, and the women had been living in the house for less than a week.

Before the assault, an “indignation meeting” had been organized by white residents in the area who objected to these Black women living in the neighborhood. White residents said that these were the first Black residents to rent a house in the area and they objected to the college housing students in the neighborhood despite the college’s presence in the same area. After the attack, all seven Black women fled and relocated to another area. No one was ever charged for the racially motivated attack on these women inside their home.

This attack on seven Black women in Greeley is one of thousands of instances throughout American history where white Americans have terrorized Black people in their homes to maintain racial segregation. Throughout the Jim Crow era, white people used intimidation, physical force, and the threat of lethal violence to prevent integration in American neighborhoods and to stifle the political, social, and economic conditions of Black Americans. Learn more about how millions of white Americans joined a mass movement of abusive, unwavering, and often violent opposition to racial equality, integration, and civil rights.