Cordie Cheek was the African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 victim of a race-hate murder.

Cheek lived in Fisk University

Fisk University

Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...

-owned housing and was not a student there. There are many stories about the reason for his murder, but the most common are:

• Cheek was riding a bike and struck a little white girl
• Cheek raped a white woman and was freed because of lack of evidence
• Cheek failed to address a white youth his own age as "mister"

The story of the little girl was when Cheek was riding his bike and while passing a little girl on the bike they collided. The big brother of the little girl told her to tell everyone that Cheek assaulted her and to do that for a dollar. The little girl went on with the story. A mob of men were at the gates of Fisk and abducted Cheek. On December 15, he was lynched, some say he was hanging from a tree in Maury County, Tennessee.

John Hope Franklin

John Hope Franklin

John Hope Franklin was a United States historian and past president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Franklin is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and...

protested against what happened to everyone, including the President of the United States.