The Cincinnati riots of 2001 were caused by the killing of 19-year-old African-American Timothy Thomas by white police officer Stephen Roach , who was subsequently acquitted on charges of negligent homicide . The 2014 Ferguson unrest occurred against a backdrop of racial tension between police and the black community of Ferguson , Missouri in the wake of the police shooting of Michael Brown ; similar incidents elsewhere such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin sparked smaller and isolated protests . According to the Associated Press ' annual poll of United States news directors and editors , the top news story of 2014 was police killings of unarmed black people , including Brown , as well as the investigations and the protests afterward . During the 2017 Unite the Right Rally , an attendee drove his car into a crowd of people protesting the rally , killing 32-year-old Heather D. Heyer and injuring 19 others , and was indicted on federal hate crime charges
drove his car into a crowd of people
Charlottesville car attack
Mass racial violence in the United States