January 1

In Washington, D.C., on this date in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the first of two executive orders, collectively known as the Emancipation Proclamation, outlawing slavery.

On this date in 2009 in Joliet, Illinois, two white men—one with a previous hate crime criminal record—Jerry Bryant, 26, from Joilet, and Lucas M. Bailey, 26, from Wilmington, Illinois, allegedly attacked a 43-year-old black man because of his race outside the Marathon gas station at the corner of Larkin Street and McDonough Street yelling racial epithets at him as he was beaten. The victim was admitted to the Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries. Both suspects were charged with aggravated battery, mob action, committing a hate crime and resisting a police officer. Bryant was also charged with aggravated battery to a police officer; he was pepper-sprayed by a police officer after allegedly striking one of them. This was not the first time Bryant was charged with a hate crime: in February 2003, he was one of two people arrested by the Will County Sheriff's Department after a fight started outside a house owned by a black family in the Ridgewood area. At the time of the 2009 New Years Day hate crime attack, Bryant was on parole for a five-year sentence of theft for shoplifting from a New Lenox, Illinois, store in December 2006. In 2005, Bryant was sentenced to 39 months in prison after shoplifting numerous items from the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Morris, Illinois; and, he previously served time for robbery, aggravated battery and criminal damage to property.

In Buffalo, New York, outside the lesbian club, Roxy Bar, on Main Street in Buffalo's Allentown neighborhood on this date in 2010, Lindsay Harmon, 29, of Buffalo, was stabbed in her right eye (which partially blinded her), on her cheek, and on her arm allegedly by a woman who yelled anti-gay slurs at Ms. Harmon, who is a lesbian. Arrested was Suzanne Grover, 21, a former Buffalo resident who was living in Florida at the time of the attack on Ms. Harmon, an attack Buffalo police refused to classify as a hate crime. Grover was charged with second-degree assault; however, Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita did the right thing by seeking an indictment under New York State's Hate Crime Statute against Grover. The attack on Ms. Harmon was the second anti-gay/lesbian assault on New Year's Day in 2010 in Buffalo, New York: a man thought to be gay had anti-gay slurs hurled at him before he was followed to a suburban mall parking lot where he was then beaten. The judge in the case issued a gag-order so that no further information about the attack, including the victim's identity, can be known.