1961 — The Paris Massacre of Algerians

On October 17, 1961, in Paris, 30,000 Algerians marched peacefully against a racist curfew, during their country's war of independence. Under orders from police chief Maurice Papon, the French police attacked. Protesters were beaten in the streets, herded onto buses, and thrown into the River Seine. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, were killed that night, in the capital of the country that ruled their homeland across the sea.

France denied it for nearly 40 years, until the truth was finally acknowledged in 1998. The massacre of October 17 remains one of the darkest nights in the long struggle for Algerian freedom, a night whose dead were denied, for decades, even the acknowledgement of what happened to them.