January 20

Four Virgin Islands police officers were indicted on this date in 1995 in St. Thomas for their role in setting a homeless man, Maurice Clarke, 42, on fire. The Department of Justice alleged that Clarke’s shirt was doused with alcohol and lit on fire by Officers Francis Brooks and Kent Hodge in June, 1993, and that Officers Tracy Robinson and Richard Velazquez allegedly neglected to protect Clarke from the attack.

On this date in 2007, a number of Guilford College football players are alleged to have attacked three Palestinian students, Faris Khadar, Osama Sabbah (both Guilford students) and Omar Awartani (a student visiting from North Carolina State), while yelling anti-Arab epithets on the school's campus in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the victims suffered a broken jaw, another suffered a broken nose, and all the victims suffered concussions. Two white males—Michael Bates, a 6’2”, 225-pound sophomore from Reidsville, North Carolina, and Michael Robert Six, a 6’3”, 270-pound junior from Clemmons, North Carolina—and one black male—All-American player and NFL-hopeful Christopher Barnette, a 6’0”, 190-pound senior from Semora, North Carolina—were immediately arrested in the attack, in which brass knuckles were allegedly used. Three other football players were later arrested (Jonathan Blake Underwood of Clinton, South Carolina, Micah Rushing of Albemarle, North Carolina, and Jazz Alfray Favors of Alpharetta, Georgia). Less than a week after the attack, several hundred Guilford students walked out of class carrying scarecrows, placards and banners condemning the crime and also as a show of support for the attacked Palestinian students. It was reported that the college refused to classify the alleged incident as a hate incident. However, Bates and Six were each charged with three counts of Assault & Battery, Barnette was charged with two counts of Assault & Battery, and all three men were charged with ethnic intimidation. All charges were dropped against all six football players on March 14, 2007, by Guilford County Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann.

On this date in 2008 in Omaha, Nebraska, Brittany Williams, 21, a black nursing student at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, was shot to death while sitting in her car in a fast-food restaurant drive-through lane near North 30th Street and Craig Street by a white sniper, Kyle Bormann, 19, originally from Dell Rapids, South Dakota, because of her race. Bormann, a South Dakota State University dropout, was arrested for Ms. Williams' murder a short time after the north Omaha killing that took place outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken/Long John Silver's restaurant. Ms. Williams, a college junior who did not know her killer, was waiting to pick up food she had purchased for her father. Police charged Bormann with a racially motivated hate crime murder; he went trolling for a black person to kill after becoming upset by a play call made by an African-American NFL referree during a playoff game involving the Green Bay Packers, Bormann's favorite football team. On December 2, 2008, Bormann, who could have received the death penalty had he been convicted of first-degree murder as a hate crime, was sentenced by Judge Gerald Moran to 60 years to life in prison plus an additional 20 to 30 years for using a weapon to commit a felony, after being convicted by a jury of second-degree murder (not as a hate crime). Apparently, the jury did not believe that locating Ms. Williams through the crosshairs of Bormann's hunting rifle constituted premeditation or that statements Bormann made to a detective about being angry with blacks at the time of the murder constituted a hate crime element. At the time of Ms. Williams' murder, Bormann was on probation in Brookings County, South Dakota for a July, 2007, drug charge. Days before Ms. Williams' murder, Bormann was shooting to death squirrels in his father Greg's backyard in Omaha.

On this historic date in 2009 in Jersey City, New Jersey, someone taped newspaper covers of President Barack Obama on the apartment door of a woman and then set the door on fire in what authorities say might have been a hate crime.

In Fruitland Park, Florida (Lake County), on this date in 2009, a Fruitland Park police officer, James Elkins, 28—who claimed to be too injured to work as a police officer since a late 2007 auto accident, but who was not too injured to work as a "district Kleagle" (recruiter) in the National Aryan Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—tendered his resignation from the police force after learning that his police department was investigating his Klan activities. The Fruitland Park Police Department began to investigate Elkins—who had been on-leave and receiving workers' compensation since the 2007 auto accident—after it received information he had been distributing fliers in Sumter County promoting the KKK. Elkins told Fruitland Park police Chief J.M. Isom that he was active in the Klan while on disability leave; however, according to documents obtained by the Lake Sheriff's Office, Elkins joined the Klan in 2006, and became a recruiter in April, 2007.