America's
history of
racial tolerance has been, at best,
hesitant and at times, absolutely
abominable. There were few periods after the
Civil War that were worse than the
summer and
fall of 1919.
Beginning in the summer of that year,
racial tensions, fueled by a poor post-
WWI economy, stronger
Jim Crow laws,
lynchings in the South, the revival of the
Ku Klux Klan, and long-standing and growing
resentments between whites and blacks, began exploding into full-scale
race riots in
Little Rock,
New York City,
Baltimore,
New Orleans,
Houston, and a number of other American cities, in both the North and the South. It is usually considered that the worst incidents took place in
Chicago,
Washington, D.C., and
Elaine, Arkansas.
It appears that things got started in Washington, where at least 24 people were killed from July 19-24. That riot started after
rumors that a black man had
assaulted the wife of a white
sailor convinced a
mob of 400 whites to invade the black section of town, where they attacked blacks in
discriminately.
Police arrested more blacks than whites, but the white mobs got a
surprise they weren't expecting: the blacks fought back. When it became clear that the police would not
protect them, black
veterans took their
service revolvers out of mothballs and local
pawnshops sold a record number of
guns to blacks. Some took up positions on rooftops as
sentries and
snipers, while others took to
random shootings of whites. After the fourth day of rioting, a heavy
downpour flooded the city and killed off everyone's
rage.
Only a few days later, on July 27, 1919, at Chicago's
29th Street beach, a black youth accidentally swam into an area claimed by whites. This set off a bunch of
rock-throwing between
whites and
blacks that led to the
drowning of a black man named
Eugene Williams. Afterwards, a white
police officer refused to arrest the white men who had caused Williams' death and
arrested a black man instead. This caused a larger
riot, which caused another larger riot, and another larger riot after that. By the time
fighting finally ended 13 days later, 23 blacks and 15 whites were
dead, 537 people of both races were
injured, and a thousand black families were
homeless.
On September 30, 1919, In
Phillips County, Arkansas, shots were exchanged between two white
policemen and a group of black
farmers at a rural
church. One of the policemen was killed, and the county
sheriff openly called for white men to come to kill as many Black people as they could. Several hundred whites soon showed up and began
targeting blacks wherever they found them. After three days, the
Army stopped the rioting (though some claimed they participated in the rioting first); the official
death toll found that 25 blacks and five whites had been killed, but there are
suspicions that as many as 200 blacks may have died and been dumped into the
Mississippi River.
At the time of the riots, many whites were dismayed that blacks were fighting back. The
New York Times said, in an
editorial:
"There had been no trouble with the Negro before the war when most admitted the superiority of the white race." But many blacks saw the riots as a
turning point in which blacks stopped
kowtowing to whites. In a
letter to "
The Crisis," a black woman wrote:
"The Washington riot gave me a thrill that comes once in a life time ... at last our men had stood up like men. ... I stood up alone in my room ... and exclaimed aloud, 'Oh I thank God, thank God.' The pent up horror, grief and humiliation of a life time -- half a century -- was being stripped from me."Research from articles in the "Washington Post" and from "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow," a PBS documentary.
My unhappiness with the skimpy size of this writeup knows no bounds. I eagerly look forward to this writeup being surpassed and superceded by longer, more complete writeups.