Mass Racial Violence in The United States - 20th Century Events

20th Century Events

Labor conflict was a source of tensions that catalyzed into the East St. Louis Riot of 1917. White rioters killed an estimated one hundred black residents of East St. Louis, after black residents had killed two white policemen.

White-on-Black race riots include the Atlanta Riots (1906), the Omaha and Chicago Riots (1919), and the Tulsa Riots (1921). The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 grew out of tensions on the Southside, where Irish descendants and African Americans competed for jobs at the stockyards, and where both were crowded into substandard housing. The Irish descendants had been in the city longer, and were organized around athletic and political clubs.

A young black Chicagoan, Eugene Williams, paddled a raft near a Southside Lake Michigan beach into "white territory", and drowned after being hit by a rock thrown by a young white man. Witnesses pointed out the killer to a policeman, who refused to make an arrest. An indignant black mob attacked the officer. Violence broke out across the city. White mobs, many of them organized around Irish athletic clubs, began pulling black people off trolley cars, attacking black businesses, and beating victims with baseball bats and iron bars. Black people fought back. Having learned from the East St. Louis Riot, the city closed down the street car system, but the rioting continued. A total of 23 blacks and 15 whites were killed.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot grew out of black resistance to the attempted lynching of 19-year old shoeshiner Dick Rowland. Thirty-nine people (26 black, 13 white) were confirmed killed. Recent investigations suggest that the actual number of casualties could be much higher. White mobs set fire to the black Greenwood district, destroying 1,256 homes and as many as 200 businesses. Fires leveled 35 blocks of residential and commercial neighborhood. Black people were rounded up by the Oklahoma National Guard and put into several internment centers, including a baseball stadium. White rioters in airplanes shot at black refugees and dropped improvised kerosene bombs and dynamite on them.

By the 1960s, decades of racial, economic, and political forces, which generated inner city poverty, sparked “race riots” across America. The beating and rumored death of cab driver John Smith by police, sparked the 1967 Newark riots. This event became, per capita, one of the deadliest civil disturbances of the 1960s. The long and short term causes of the Newark riots are explored in depth in the documentary film Revolution '67.