0610blog
The Worst, Not The Only
Imagine this dystopian scene: Out of control, venom-spewing mobs of white supremacists descending in pogroms, armed with guns, rifles and other weaponry, on a section of a midwestern American city, where in an orgy of hatred, they proceed to pillage and burn homes and businesses, shoot down African Americans in their homes and on the streets, whose only crime was being African American. The rampage left an unimaginable wasteland of destruction like a scene out of World War II and imagine that the police never showed, the fire department stayed away, even the press was part of the conspiracy. And the newspapers blamed the wounded African Americans for inciting a riot and the history books in years ahead make no mention of the massacre and there are no arrests, no arrests, no arrests, other than the African Americans on trumped up riot charges. It was a holocaust, nothing less, where African Americans were treated like subhumans, killed like dogs, with no rights and no reasons to exist.
It was the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 in the formerly thriving, predominantly black section of Tulsa, Okla. known as Black Wall Street. On this the 100th anniversary of the worst racist massacre in U.S. history, there are any number of documentaries available on many streaming platforms, even President Biden went to Oklahoma to commemorate the dark stain.
Tulsa was the most gruesome but it was hardly unique in American history, as white supremacists have sporadically attacked black communities throughout the nation, their bitterness usually primed by the same matters as are repeated today, fears that African Americans were gaining too much political power or that white women allegedly were sexually assaulted by an African American, all but a smokescreen for the same racism that persists today, a smoldering tinderbox waiting for a spark.
These matters of racist hatred had other common factors, no whites are charged while blacks were typically charged with inciting to riot, white authorities conspired with others to foment the violence and news of the incidents were blotted out from the newspapers and the schools.
What follows is a list of the most commonly reported race massacres but the list is hardly all encompassing as attacks, lynchings and more were all too frequent not just in the south but around the country.
1873 COLFAX, LA., MASSACRE
It was just eight years after the end of the Civil War, when in April 1873, around 150 Black men were murdered by white men with guns and cannons for trying to freely assemble at a courthouse in the sleepy, predominantly black town, known for its annual Louisiana Pecan Festival and nestled on the northeast side of the Red River, where many of the black bodies were thrown.
Three white men were charged and convicted of violating the victims’ civil rights which are guaranteed under the first, second and 14th amendments of the constitution and for violating the 1870 Enforcement Act, a law that barred conspiracies to deny the constitutional rights of any citizen. The three appealed and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions, ruling that the first, second and 24th amendment rights did not apply to private citizens but only to states.
1898 WILMINGTON, N.C. MASSACRE
The insurrection and mass riot was carried out by white supremacists who refused to accept that black officials were elected to share power with white officials. A day after the election, on Thursday, Nov. 10, 1898, the whites announced the “white declaration of independence,” and proceeded to begin a coup d’etat and take over the Wilmington government, destroyed the printing press and forced out the mayor while the horde of white men attacked Black residents, killing from 60 to 300. The white press in Wilmington described it as a race riot that was caused by the black residents. Not until a century later, in 2000, the North Carolina General Assembly established a commission to study the massacre, which was then made part of the state’s historical record.
1906 ATLANTA MASSACRE
After a false newspaper report that four white women were sexually assaulted by black men, a white mob that mushroomed to an estimated 2,000 rioters began two days of carnage, from Sept. 22 through Sept. 24, 1906, in which homes were destroyed and up to 100 African Americans were slaughtered in the streets and in their homes. Some were hanged from lampposts; others were shot, beaten or stabbed to death. One hundred years later, the event was publicly acknowledged and later made part of the state’s public school curriculum.
1919 ELAINE, ARK., MASSACRE
Many of the black residents had recently returned from serving in World War I when whites living in this tiny town in the Arkansas Delta region of the Mississippi River grew outraged that black sharecroppers would even consider creating a union. Their rage became bloody when whites along with federal troops and members of the Ku Klux Klan showed up to stop a fledgling union meeting, one white man was shot and killed and quickly hundreds of whites arrived to attack and more than 200 black people, including children, were tortured and killed. A dozen blacks were forced to confess to starting the insurrection and received the death penalty. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions. It took another 100 years before an Elaine Massacre Memorial was created in September 2019.
The year of 1919 is known as the “Red Summer” referring to a series of race riots from May to October in more than 30 cities. The animus among whites in the north was compounded by the migration of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the south to work in northern and midwestern cities.
The first violence of the Red Summer was in Charleston, S.C., followed by riots in small Southern towns such as Sylvester, Ga. and Hobson City, Ala., and northern cities including Scranton, Pa. and Syracuse, N.Y., with the largest in Washington D.C., Chicago, and Elaine.
1919 WASHINGTON, D.C. RIOTS
After hearing an allegation that a black man had raped a white woman, marauding white mobs pulled African Americans off streetcars and beat them along with pedestrians. Police refused to get involved and within four days, four whites and two African Americans were killed along with 50 others who were seriously injured.
1919 CHICAGO RIOTS
A black man who was visiting Lake Michigan, was seen swimming on the south side, a whites only area. A violent mob stoned and drowned the unfortunate black swimmer. Police again refused to get involved and whites rioted for 13 days, burned homes and uprooted 1,000 African American families while killing 50 and injuring more than 500 African Americans.
1923 ROSEWOOD, FLA., MASSACRE
Once again, white supremacists went on a deadly rampage after a married, white woman lied to cover up an affair she was having with another white man and instead claimed she was sexually assaulted by a black drifter on Jan. 1, 1923. The enraged mob disturbed the sleepy village and began the killing spree, starting with Sam Carter, a local blacksmith, who was tortured and his mutilated body was hung from a tree. Subsequently, whites combed the countryside to hunt down and kill somewhere between 27 and 150 blacks and burn their homes and businesses. There were no arrests ever made. In 1994, the Florida state legislature awarded a total of $2 million, or about $150,000 in compensation for each of the nine surviving family members.