On this date in 1942 in Detroit, Michigan, automobile manufacturing magnate, Henry Ford, 79, wrote a letter to Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard, James A. Colescott, to distance himself from the anti-Semitic smear pieces he ran in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, for five years in the early 1920’s, and to threaten a lawsuit against the Klan if that hate group did not stop publishing and circulating 96 of Ford's anti-Semitic essays the Klan had bound into a four-volume collection called "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." Yet, just four years earlier, on his 75th birthday, Ford was awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.

On this date in 2004 two white men, Zachary Lee Bryant, 22, of Moneta, Virginia, and Christopher Frank Martin, 35, of Roanoke, Virginia, broke into a predominently African-American church, the Mount Moriah Baptist Church which is a nationally recognized historic landmark, and broke out windows in the sanctuary, broke light fixtures, threw hymnals through the broken windows, discharged a fire extinguisher throughout the church, smashed items in the church with a metal post, tore out sinks and toilets, and ripped photographs of congregants from the sanctuary wall and smashed them on the church floor. About $75,000 in damage was done to the church as a result of his race-based hate crime. Both men pleaded Guilty on July 16, 2004, to conspiring to violate the civil rights of the church’s African-American congregation. Bryant and Martin could have each been sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $250,000, but they received much less punishment that that. On October 19, 2004, Bryant was handed a 27-month prison term and was finded $3,000, and Martin, who also was fined $3,000, was given a 21-month prison sentence. Zachary Bryant completed his federal prison sentence on August 25, 2006, and Christopher Martin completed his prison term on May 5, 2006.

In downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on this date in 2006, baseball‐bat wielding teens allegedly beat three homeless men, killing one of the victims, a black man, Norris Gaynor, 45. Florida Atlantic University security camera footage of one of the beatings became a rallying cry for advocates for the homeless. But, as of the summer of 2009 Florida had not passed a hate crimes bill that would include homelessness as a protected category. Three white teens, William Ammons, 18, Brian A. Hooks, 18 (date of birth: August 25, 1987), and Thomas S. Daugherty, 17 (date of birth: November 26, 1988), were charged Mr. Gaynor's murder. Mr. Gaynor died of head injuries after being bludgeoned with a baseball bat. Ammons also allegedly shot Mr. Gaynor with a paintball gun. The two other homeless men beaten were identified as Jacques Pierre, 58, a black man whose attack was caught on video, and Raymond Perez, 49, who is Latino. Before surrendering to police, Hooks and Daugherty fled the state.

At Jensen's Truck Stop on Lovers Lane in Ukiah, California, on this date in 2010, Joseph Anthony Frank, 63, of Redwood Valley, allegedly assaulted one of the truck stop's Pakistani employees, Ahmed Kahn, while hurling racist slurs and a death threat at Mr. Khan. Arrested a short time later for drunk driving by the California Highway Patrol, Joseph Frank was charged with a felony hate crime by the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office. This was the first of two alleged hate crimes directed at Jensen's Truck Stop employees in two weeks (see our January 29 calendar date for details of the other incident).