Segregation now, segregation forever!

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Lombard Street Riot, sometimes called the Abolition Riots was a three-day race riot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1842.[1][2] The riot was the last in a 13-year period marked by frequent racial attacks in the city.[3][4] It started on Lombard Street, between Fifth and Eighth streets.

In the early decades of the 19th century, there were significant increases in the city's African-American population as large numbers of freed and fugitive slaves joined other immigrants in Philadelphia. During the twenty-five years prior to the run of riots, the city's African American population grew more than 50%. At the same time, there were increasing numbers of Irish immigrants, who were also separated from the larger society by their generally rural backgrounds, as well as by their Catholic religion. Given European political and religious tensions and the British occupation of Ireland, there had long been strong anti-Catholic feeling among many American Protestants.[3]

During the years immediately before the riots, there were periodic outbreaks of racial, ethnic and religious violence among Irish Catholics, German Protestants, African Americans and even pacifist Quakers. These were the result of social and economic competition, especially between Irish Catholics and African Americans, who were generally at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Many Irish refused to work on labor teams with African Americans, adding to the difficulties of both groups in getting work.[2][3]

On the morning of August 1, 1842, a parade was held by over 1,000 members of the black Young Men's Vigilant Association on Philadelphia's Lombard Street between Fifth and Eighth Streets in commemoration of the end of slavery in the British West Indies.

As the paraders neared Mother Bethel Church, they were attacked by a mob of Irish Catholics.

Requests to the Mayor and police for protection initially led to the arrest of several of the victims and none of the rioters. Over three days of attacks, the Second African American Presbyterian Church, the abolitionist Smith's Hall and numerous homes and public buildings were looted and burned, many of them destroyed. The mayor had credible evidence of a plan to burn several local churches, which he ignored.

Eventually, as the rioting began to quell, the local militia was brought in to restore order.[2][3]

Afterward, the mayor refused to arrest most of those known to have led the riot. Of those arrested by the militia, most were found not guilty or otherwise released. The three or four who were convicted received only light sentences.[5]

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The East St. Louis Riot (May and July 1917) was an outbreak of labor and racially motivated violence against blacks that caused an estimated 100 deaths and extensive property damage in the United States industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois, located on the Mississippi River. It was the worst incidence of labor-related violence in 20th century American history,[1] and one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. It gained national attention.[2] The local Chamber of Commerce called for the resignation of the Police Chief. At the end of the month, ten thousand people marched in silent protest in New York City over the riots, which contributed to the radicalization of many.

In 1917, the United States had a strong economy boosted by World War I. Because many workers were being recruited for the war, firms also had jobs for African Americans, but labor competition meant that white unions kept out black workers. In addition, industries in St. Louis and East St. Louis were unsettled by strikes. Owners hired blacks as strikebreakers and added to the division among the workers.[3] Blacks had begun the Great Migration out of the South to St. Louis, among other northern and midwestern cities, for work and better living opportunities, as well as an escape from lynchings.

Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), happened to be in New Orleans on a lecture tour in April. He discovered that Louisiana farmers and the Board of Trade addressed Mayor Mollman of East St. Louis when he visited them that same week in April in New Orleans, and asked for his help in discouraging blacks from migrating to the North. That spring blacks were arriving in St. Louis at the rate of 2,000 per week. [4] The farmers worried about losing their labor force.

Many African Americans went to work at the Aluminum Ore Company and the American Steel Company in East St. Louis. Some whites feared job security and maintaining wages in relation to this new competition. They resented the newcomers who came from a different, rural culture. Tensions between the groups escalated on rumors of black men and white women fraternizing at a labor meeting on May 28.[5][6]

Three thousand white men gathered downtown, and started to attack African Americans. They destroyed buildings and beat people. The governor of the state called in National Guard, who prevented further rioting that day. Rumors circulated about fears of an organized attack from African Americans.[5] Conditions eased somewhat for a few weeks.

On July 1, an 18-year-old black man was attacked by a white and shot him. Other whites came by to shoot back. When police came to investigate, the black man who had been attacked returned fire, thinking the police were the earlier attackers. He killed two police officers.[5][7]

On July 2, thousands of white spectators who saw the police's bloodstained automobile marched to the black section of town and started rioting. After cutting the hoses of the fire department, the rioters burned entire sections of the city and shot inhabitants as they escaped the flames.[5] Claiming that "Southern niggers deserve[d] a genuine lynching,"[8] they lynched several blacks. Guardsmen were called in, but several accounts reported that they joined in the rioting rather than stopping it.[9][10] Others joined in, including allegedly "ten or fifteen young girls about 18 years old, [who] chased a negro woman at the Relay Depot at about 5 o'clock. The girls were brandishing clubs and calling upon the men to kill the woman."[5][11]

The police chief estimated that 100 blacks had been killed.[12] The renowned journalist Ida B. Wells reported in The Chicago Defender that 40-150 black people were killed during July in the rioting in East St. Louis.[10][13] Six thousand blacks were left homeless after their neighborhood was burned. The ferocious brutality of the attacks and the failure of the authorities to protect innocent lives contributed to the radicalization of many blacks in St. Louis and the nation.[14]

On July 6 representatives of the Chamber of Commerce met with the mayor to demand the resignation of the Police Chief and Night Police Chief, or radical reform. They were outraged about the rioting and accused the mayor of having allowed a "reign of lawlessness." In addition to the riot's taking the lives of too many innocent people, mobs had caused extensive property damage. The Southern Railway Company's warehouse was burned, with over 100 car loads of merchandise, at a loss to the company of over $500,000; a white theatre valued at over $100,000 was also destroyed.[15]

In New York City on July 28, ten thousand black people marched down Fifth Avenue in silent protest about the East St. Louis riots. They carried signs that highlighted protests about the riots. The march was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and groups in Harlem. Women and children were dressed in white; the men were dressed in black.[16]
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The Duluth Lynchings occurred on June 15, 1920, when three black circus workers were attacked and lynched by a mob in Duluth, Minnesota. Rumors had circulated among the mob that six African Americans had raped a teenage girl. A physician's examination subsequently found no evidence of rape or assault.[2][3]

The killings shocked the country, particularly for their having occurred in the northern United States.[4] In 2003, the city of Duluth erected a memorial for the murdered workers.

During and immediately following World War I, a large population of African Americans emigrated from the South to the North and Midwest in search of job opportunities. The predominantly white Midwest perceived the black migrant laborers as a threat to their employment, as well as to their ability to negotiate pay rates. US Steel, for instance, the most important regional employer, addressed labor concerns by leveraging African American laborers, migrants from the South.[2]

This racial antagonism erupted into race riots across the North and Midwest in 1919; this period of widespread flourishes of violence became known as the Red Summer of 1919. Even after the riots subsided, racial relations between blacks and whites remained strained and volatile.

On June 14, 1920, the James Robinson Circus arrived in Duluth for a performance. Two local teenagers, Irene Tusken, age 19, and James Sullivan, 18, met at the circus and ended up behind the big top, watching the black workers dismantle the menagerie tent, load wagons and generally get the circus ready to move on. What actual events that transpired between Tusken, Sullivan and the workers are unknown; however, later that night Sullivan claimed that he and Tusken were assaulted, and Tusken was raped by five or six black circus workers. In the early morning of June 15, Duluth Police Chief John Murphy received a call from James Sullivan’s father saying six black circus workers had held the pair at gunpoint and then raped Irene Tusken. John Murphy then lined up all 150 or so roustabouts, food service workers and props-men on the side of the tracks, and asked Sullivan and Tusken to identify their attackers. The police arrested six black men in connection with the rape.

The authenticity of Sullivan's rape claim is subject to skepticism. When Tusken was examined by her physician, Dr. David Graham, on the morning of June 15, he found no physical evidence of rape or assault.[3]

Newspapers printed articles on the alleged rape, while rumors spread throughout the town that Tusken had died as a result of the assault. Through the course of the day, a mob estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 people[3] formed outside the Duluth city jail and broke into the jail to beat and hang the accused. The Duluth Police, ordered not to use their guns, offered little or no resistance to the mob. The mob seized Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie and found them guilty of Tusken's rape in a sham trial. The three men were taken to 1st Street and 2nd Avenue East,[3] where they were lynched by the mob.

The next day the Minnesota National Guard arrived at Duluth to secure the area and to guard the surviving prisoners, as well as nine other men who were suspected. They were moved to the St. Louis County Jail under heavy guard.[3]

The killings made headlines throughout the country. The Chicago Evening Post opined, "This is a crime of a Northern state, as black and ugly as any that has brought the South in disrepute. The Duluth authorities stand condemned in the eyes of the nation." An article in the Minneapolis Journal accused the lynch mob of putting a "stain on the name of Minnesota," stating, "The sudden flaming up of racial passion, which is the reproach of the South, may also occur, as we now learn in the bitterness of humiliation in Minnesota."[3]

The June 15, 1920, Ely Miner reported that just across the bay in Superior, Wisconsin, the acting chief of police declared, "We are going to run all idle negroes out of Superior and they’re going to stay out." How many were forced out is not certain, but all of the blacks employed by a carnival in Superior were fired and told to leave the city.[3]

In its comprehensive site about the lynchings, the Minnesota State Historical Society reports the legal aftermath of the incident:

Two days later on June 17, 1920, Judge William Cant and the grand jury had a difficult time convicting the lead mob members. In the end the grand jury issued thirty-seven indictments for the lynching mob and twenty-five were given out for rioting and twelve for the crime of murder in the first degree. Some of the people were indicted for both. But only three people would end up being convicted for rioting. Seven men were indicted for rape. For five of the indicted men, charges were dismissed. The remaining two, Max Mason and William Miller, were tried for rape. William Miller was acquitted, while Max Mason was convicted and sentenced to serve seven to thirty years in prison.[3]

Mason served a prison sentence in Stillwater State Prison of only four years from 1921 to 1925 on the condition that he would leave the state.

No one was ever convicted for the murder of Isaac McGhie, Elmer Jackson and Elias Clayton.
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On March 6, 1863 the city of Detroit, Michigan experienced its first riot. At the time, it was reported as “the bloodiest day that ever dawned upon Detroit.”[1]

While not as famous or destructive as riots later in Detroit’s history, the riot of 1863 was certainly a momentous occasion for the city of Detroit.[2] The casualties of the day included at least two innocent people dead, a multitude of others—-mostly African-American—-mercilessly beaten, 35 buildings burned to the ground, and a number of other buildings damaged by fire.[3]

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Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-Americans who were lynched on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana. They had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16 year old James Cameron, narrowly escaped lynching thanks to an unidentified participant who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder.[1] A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd; thousands of copies of the photograph were sold.

( to be continued...)

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Tulsa race riot, also known as the 1921 race riot, the night that Tulsa died, the Tulsa Race War, or the Greenwood riot, was a massacre during a large-scale civil disorder confined mainly to the racially segregated Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA on May 31, 1921. During the 16 hours of rioting, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless, 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, and $1.8 million (about $21.7 million in 2009 dollars) in property damage was caused.

Officially, thirty-nine people were reported killed in the riot, of whom ten were white. The actual number of black citizens killed by local white militiamen and others as a result of the riot was estimated in the Red Cross report[1][2] at around 300, making the Tulsa race riot the worst in US history. Other estimates range as high as 3,000, based on the number of grave diggers and other circumstances, although the archaeological and forensic work needed to confirm the number of dead has not been performed.[3]

The Tulsa race riot occurred in the racially and politically tense atmosphere of northeastern Oklahoma, some of which was a growing hotbed of anti-black sentiment at that time. The Ku Klux Klan made its first major appearance in Oklahoma on August 12, 1921,[4] less than three months after the riot.

As in several other states and territories during the early years of the twentieth century, lynchings were not uncommon in Oklahoma. Between the declaration of statehood on November 16, 1907, and the Tulsa race riot some thirteen years later, thirty-one individuals — twenty-six of whom were black — were lynched in Oklahoma. During the twenty years following the riot, the number of lynchings statewide fell to two.[5]

The Greenwood section of Tulsa was home to a commercial district so prosperous it was known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street"). Ironically, the economic enclaves here and elsewhere — bounded and supported by racial discrimination — supported prosperity and capital formation within the community. In the surrounding areas of northeastern Oklahoma, blacks also enjoyed relative prosperity and participated in the oil boom.

Sometime around or after 4 p.m. Dick Rowland, a nineteen-year old black shoeshiner employed at a Main Street shine parlor, entered the elevator at the rear of the nearby Drexel Building at 319 South Main Street en route to the 'colored' washroom on the top floor.

Upon entering the elevator, he encountered Sarah Page, the seventeen-year old white elevator operator who was on duty at the time. It has never been determined with any certainty whether the two young people were acquainted, but it seems reasonable that they knew each other at least by sight, as this building was the only one nearby with a washroom that Rowland had express permission to use, and that the elevator operated by Page was the only one in the building.

In the most generally accepted account, Rowland tripped upon entering the elevator and, in an effort to prevent himself from falling, grabbed the arm of Page, who subsequently let out a startled gasp or scream. However, other accounts suggested that the two had a quarrel which culminated in Page being assaulted.

A clerk at Renberg's, a clothing store located on the first floor of the Drexel, heard what sounded like a woman's scream and observed a young black man hurriedly leaving the building. Upon rushing to the elevator, the clerk found Miss Page in what he perceived to be a distraught state. The clerk reached the conclusion that the young woman had been assaulted and subsequently summoned the authorities.[7]

Although the police almost certainly questioned Sarah Page, no written account of her statement has ever surfaced. It may never be known what she told the Renberg's clerk, the police, or anyone else, but whatever conversation transpired between Page and the police, it is generally accepted that they determined what happened between the two teenagers was something less than an assault. This is supported by the fact that the authorities conducted a rather low-key investigation rather than launching an all out man-hunt for her alleged assailant.

Whether or not an actual assault had occurred, Dick Rowland had reason to be fearful. Such an accusation in those days, rightful or not, was enough to incite certain segments of the white public to forgo due process and take such matters into their own hands. Upon realizing the gravity of the situation, Rowland fled to his mother's house in the Greenwood neighborhood.

The morning after the incident, Dick Rowland was located on Greenwood Avenue and detained by Detective Henry Carmichael and Henry C. Pack, a black patrolman, one of only a handful on the city's approximately seventy-eight man police force. After booking, Rowland was taken to the jail on the top floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse for questioning.

Word quickly spread in Tulsa's legal circles. Many attorneys were familiar with Rowland, being patrons of the shine shop where he was employed. Several of them were heard defending him in personal conversations with one another. One of the men said, "Why I know that boy, and have known him a good while. That's not in him."[8]

By late morning, news of the event had apparently reached the Tulsa Tribune. The newspaper broke the story in that afternoon's edition with the headline: 'Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator', describing the alleged incident with the details that that the paper had assembled on short notice. It was, however, another article in the same paper that is credited with providing the misinformation which sparked the chain of events that ensued later that evening.

The second article, apparently an editorial, titled 'To Lynch Negro Tonight', spoke of whites assembling to lynch the teenage Rowland. It is, of course, impossible to know where the Tribune obtained information regarding the impending assembly of a lynch mob, but it is common knowledge that this paper was known at the time to have a rather 'sensationalist' style of news writing. It cannot be determined who the source of this information was, or even if there was any such source at all. Several years later, researchers discovered that the editorial in question was mysteriously missing, having been apparently deliberately removed from the Tribune's archives, as well as the 'Oklahoma Edition' of the Tribune in the state archives. No known copies of this editorial exist today, although several independent citizens, who were confirmably there at the time, corroborate the publication of such an article.

The afternoon edition of the Tribune hit the streets shortly after 3 p.m., and soon news of the impending and, by most accounts, fictitious lynching soon spread. By 4 o'clock, the local authorities were on alert. White people began congregating at and near the Tulsa County Courthouse. Many were simply spectators curious about the rumors while others were incensed by the alleged incident at the Drexel building and were seeking answers. Still others were looking to participate in or at least show their support of the lynching of the black youth being accused of such a brazen act against a young white woman.

It can never be known with any certainty if a lynching had actually been called for before the newspaper report was published that afternoon. But what is known is that by sunset at 7:34 p.m., the several hundred whites assembled outside the courthouse appeared to have the makings of a lynch mob. At the very least, they had the appearance of such a mob.

Willard M. McCullough, the newly appointed sheriff of Tulsa County, was determined that there would be no repeat during his time in office of events like the 1920 lynching of Roy Belton.[9] The sheriff quickly took steps to ensure the safety of Dick Rowland. McCullough organized his deputies into a defensive formation around Rowland, who was by now terrified. He also positioned six of his men, armed with rifles and shotguns, on the roof of the courthouse. He also disabled the building's elevator, and had his remaining men barricade themselves at the top of the stairs with orders to shoot any intruders on sight. The sheriff also went outside and tried to talk the crowd into going home, but to no avail.

At approximately 8:20 p.m., three white men entered the courthouse, demanding that Rowland be turned over. Deputies were able to turn the men away. Although vastly outnumbered by the growing crowd out on the street, McCullough was determined to prevent another lynching.

Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, on Greenwood Avenue, confused members of the black community were gathering to discuss the situation that had been building at the courthouse. With the recent lynching of Roy Belton, they assumed that the group assembled at the courthouse was willing to do the same to Dick Rowland.

Many argued for a more cautious approach, but were apparently overruled when, at about 9 p.m., a group of approximately 25 black men left the gathering. Armed with rifles and shotguns, they decided to march to the courthouse and support the sheriff and his deputies in defending Rowland from the angry community. The sheriff, assuring them that Rowland was safe, implored them to return to Greenwood.

The arrival and subsequent departure of the armed black men did not sit well with the whites gathered outside the courthouse, now numbering 1000 or more, many of whom immediately traveled home to retrieve guns of their own. Others headed for the National Guard armory where they planned to gain access to guns and ammunition. The National Guard, having been alerted to the mounting situation downtown and to the planned break-in, took appropriate measures to prevent this. By a show of force, a crowd of three to four hundred was successfully turned away from the armory.

Back at the courthouse, the crowd had swelled to nearly 2000, many of them now armed. Several local leaders, including judges and clergy, tried in vain to dissuade them. The chief of police, John A. Gustafson, later claimed that he attempted to talk the crowd into dispersing.

Meanwhile, as the situation at the courthouse continued to escalate, anxiety on Greenwood Avenue was reaching frenzied levels. The confidence of the black community members in the security of Dick Rowland was diminishing quickly. Small groups of armed black men began to venture toward the courthouse in automobiles, partly for reconnaissance, but with their weapons visible, they were also demonstrating that they were prepared to take necessary action to protect Dick Rowland.

Many white community members interpreted these actions as a 'Negro uprising' and became concerned. Eyewitnesses reported gunshots, presumably fired into the air, increasing in frequency as the violent hours drew near.

On Greenwood, rumors began to fly—in particular, a false report that whites were storming the courthouse. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., a second, larger group of approximately seventy-five armed black men decided to go to the courthouse. Again, they offered their support to the sheriff to help protect Dick Rowland, and again their offer was declined.

According to witnesses, a white man is alleged to told one of the armed black man to surrender his pistol. The man refused, and fired a shot. That first shot may have been accidental, or meant as a warning shot, but the ones that followed were not, and the Courthouse was taking fire.

The gunshots triggered an almost immediate response by the white men, many of whom returned fire on the black contingent, and they continued firing back at the whites. It is said this first "battle" lasted only a few seconds or so, but already had a heavy toll, several men from both sides lay dead or dying in the street. The Black mob retreated toward Greenwood. A rolling gunfight occurred.

The now considerably armed white mob pursued the black group toward Greenwood, with many stopping to loot local stores for additional weapons and ammunition. Along the way innocent bystanders, many of whom were letting out of a movie theater, were caught off guard by the riotous mob and began fleeing also. Panic set in as mobsters began firing on unassuming blacks in the crowd. At least one white man was apparently mistakenly shot and killed in the confusion.

At around 11 p.m., members of the local National Guard unit began to assemble at the armory to organize a plan to subdue the rioters. Several groups were deployed downtown to set up guard at the courthouse, police station, and other public facilities. Members of the local chapter of the American Legion joined in on patrols of the streets. It soon became apparent, however, that the deployment of forces was being organized to protect the white districts adjacent to Greenwood. This manner of deployment led to them being set in apparent opposition to the black community. They began rounding up blacks who had not managed to make it back across the tracks to friendly territory and taking them to the armory for detainment.

As news traveled among Greenwood residents in these early morning hours, many began to take up arms in defense of their community, while others began a mass exodus from the city. Throughout the night both sides continued fighting, sometimes only sporadically, and began anticipating what would happen at sunrise.

At around midnight white rioters again assembled outside the courthouse, this time in smaller but more determined numbers. Cries rang out in support of a lynching. They attempted to storm the building, but were turned away and dispersed by the sheriff and his deputies.

Throughout the early morning hours, groups of armed whites and blacks squared off in gunfights. At this point the fighting was concentrated along sections of the Frisco tracks, a key dividing line between the black and white commercial districts. At some point, passengers on an incoming train were forced to take cover as they had arrived in the midst of crossfire, with the train taking hits on both sides.

Small groups of whites made brief forays by car into the Greenwood district, indiscriminately firing into businesses and residences.

At around 1 a.m., a small fraction of the white mob began setting fires, mainly to businesses on commercial Archer Street at the edge of the Greenwood district. As crews from the Tulsa Fire Department arrived to put out fires, they were turned away at gunpoint. By 4 a.m., an estimated two-dozen black-owned businesses had been set ablaze.

In the pre-dawn hours the white crowd, now estimated to number over five thousand, had mostly assembled into three groups on the outskirts of Greenwood. One small band of rioters broke free from the group, heading in a car toward the heart of the Greenwood district. Their bodies would later be found, along with their bullet-riddled car, a Franklin, near Archer and Frankfort Streets.

Upon the 5 a.m. sunrise, a reported train whistle was heard. Many believed this to be a signal for the rioters to launch an all-out assault on Greenwood. Crowds of rioters poured from places of shelter, on foot and by car, into the streets of the black community.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of white citizens, many blacks began a hasty retreat, north on Greenwood Avenue, toward the edge of town. Chaos ensued as terrified residents fled for their lives. Rioters were shooting indiscriminately, killing many of them along the way.

Numerous accounts described airplanes carrying white assailants firing rifles and dropping firebombs on buildings, homes, and fleeing families. The planes, six biplane two-seater trainers left over from World War I, were dispatched from the nearby Curtis Field (now defunct) outside of Tulsa.[10] White law enforcement officials later claimed the sole purpose of the planes was to provide reconnaissance and protect whites against what they described as a "Negro uprising."[10] However, eyewitness accounts and testimony from the survivors confirmed that on the morning of June 1, the planes dropped incendiary bombs and fired rifles at black Tulsans on the ground.[10]

Even one white newspaper in Tulsa reported that airplanes circled over Greenwood during the riot. That account, however, had the planes working in conjunction with the police department to survey the riot.[citation needed]

Several groups of blacks attempted to organize a defense, but were ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of whites and weapons. Many blacks, conceding defeat, surrendered. Still others returned fire, ultimately losing their lives.

As the fires spread northward through Greenwood, countless black families continued to flee. Many died when trapped by the flames.

Not all white Tulsans shared the views of the rioters. It is claimed that a few whites and Hispanics in neighborhoods adjacent to Greenwood took up arms in support of their black neighbors, but they too were grossly outnumbered.

As unrest spread to other parts of the city, many middle class white families that employed blacks in their homes as cooks and servants were accosted by angry white rioters demanding that they turn over their employees to be taken to detention centers around the city. Many white families complied, but those who refused were subjected to attacks and vandalism.

Oklahoma National Guard troops finally arrived from Oklahoma City by train shortly after 9 a.m. By this time, most of the surviving black citizens had either fled the city or were in custody at the various detention centers. Although they had arrived too late to stop what had happened during the previous 10 hours, by noon, and after declaring martial law, the troops had managed to put an end to most of the remaining violence.

Official counts put the number of dead at 39; 26 black, 13 white. Some believe that this number under counts the black victims. Those claiming higher estimates generally believe the range from seventy-five to over three hundred. The lack of bodies to substantiate the higher number are generally put down as blacks being put into unmarked mass graves or to the bodies being dumped in the river. No evidence to support these theories has ever surfaced beyond hearsay.

Of the some 800 people admitted to local hospitals for injuries, a vast majority are believed to have been white, as both black hospitals had been burned in the rioting. Additionally, even if any of the white hospitals operating at the time would have admitted blacks under these special circumstances, injured blacks had little means to get to these hospitals. Several among the black dead were known to have died while in the internment centers. While most of these deaths are thought to be accurately recorded, there are no records to be found as to how many detainees were treated for injuries and survived. These numbers could very reasonably be over a thousand, perhaps several thousand.[11]

(to be continued...)

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 was a mass civil disturbance in Springfield, Illinois, USA sparked by the transfer of two African American prisoners out of the city jail by the county sheriff. This act enraged many white citizens, who responded by burning black-owned homes and businesses and killing black citizens. By the end of the riot, there were at least seven deaths and US$200,000 in property damage. The riot led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization.

At the turn of the century, Springfield, Illinois, was a rapidly-growing industrial center, with the highest percentage of African Americans of any comparably-sized city in Illinois. Racial tensions were high at the time due to fierce job competition and the use of black workers as "scabs" during labor strikes.[1]

On July 4, 1908, someone broke into the home of mining engineer Clergy Ballard. Ballard awoke and rose to investigate, finding a man standing near his daughter's bed. The intruder fled the house and Ballard gave chase. After catching up with the intruder, Ballard's throat was slashed with a straight razor. Before he died, Ballard identified the assailant as Joe James, a black man with a long record of minor crimes. White citizens of the town were enraged by this crime, thinking that the murder was the result of a thwarted sexual assault of a white woman by a black man. A crowd of whites caught James and beat him unconscious. The police rescued James, arrested him, and locked him in the city jail.[2]

On Friday, August 15 of that year, the local Illinois State Journal newspaper ran the story of a white woman, Mabel Hallam, who had allegedly been raped by a local black man, George Richardson. The 21-year-old wife of a well-known streetcar conductor claimed that the black caretaker had dragged her out of bed and assaulted her the night before. Police arrested Richardson and took him to the city jail as well.[3]

Later on August 14, a significant amount of mob action took place. A crowd of white citizens gathered in downtown Springfield, outraged by the fact that two black men had allegedly committed brutal crimes against white townspeople. The crowd demanded the release of the prisoners, but Sheriff Charles Werner was able to remove the two from jail and transport them to safety in Bloomington 64 miles away, with the help of restaurant owner Harry Loper.[4]

When the crowd learned that the two black prisoners had been moved with the help of Loper, they walked to his restaurant to exact revenge. Despite the fact that Loper stood in the doorway, the mob trashed the building and torched his expensive automobile. [5] Realizing that the local authorities were overwhelmed by the crowd, Governor Charles S. Deneen activated the state militia.[6]

The crowd now directed their anger toward the rest of Springfield's minorities. They proceeded to Fishman's Hardware, owned by a Jewish businessman, and stole weapons to use in the further destruction of homes and businesses. Then the mob moved on the Levee, a predominantly African American area, and destroyed numerous black-owned businesses.[7]

As the crowd moved on towards the Badlands, another black neighborhood, they encountered a black barber named Scott Burton. Burton attempted to defend his business with a warning shot from a shotgun, and was killed when the crowd returned fire. Burton's shop was burned and his body was dragged to a nearby saloon, where it was hung from a tree.[8]

The mob then burned black-owned homes in the Badlands. By this time, an estimated 12,000 people had gathered to watch the houses burn. When firefighters arrived, people in the crowd impeded their progress and cut their hoses. African American citizens were forced to flee the town, find refuge with sympathetic whites, or hide in the State Arsenal. The National Guard was finally able to disperse the crowd late that night.[9]

The next day, Saturday, August 15, as thousands of black residents fled the city, five thousand National Guard troops marched in to keep the peace, along with curiosity seekers and tourists who had read about the riots in the newspaper.[10] The peace was soon broken, however, when a new mob formed and began marching toward the State Arsenal, where many black residents were being housed. When confronted by a National Guardsman, the crowd changed direction and instead walked to the home of black resident William Donnegan, who had committed no crime, but had been married to a white woman for 32 years; Donnegan himself was either 84 or 76-years old.[11] When Donnegan came outside, the mob captured him, cut his throat, and lynched him in a tree in the yard of what was later known as The Hay-Edwards School across the street from his home.[12]
[edit] Aftermath

The riots ended at this point, leaving 40 homes and 24 businesses in ruins, and seven people confirmed dead: two black men and five white people who were killed in the violence. Some of the white casualties were shot by blacks defending their homes and businesses. There were rumored to have been several more unreported deaths.

A grand jury brought 107 indictments against nearly 80 individuals who had allegedly participated in the riots (including four police officers), but only one man, a 20-year-old Russian Jewish vegetable peddler named Abraham Raymer, was convicted. His crime was stealing a saber from a guard. Raymer had previously been put on trial for the murder of William Donnegan, of which he was acquitted, and he was also subsequently acquitted of other serious charges in two later trials, results which would set the tone for the rest of the cases.[13] Kate Howard, a white woman who had directed much of the violence, committed suicide before facing the charges against her. Mabel Hallam later admitted that her accusation of rape against George Richardson was false, and Richardson was released from jail. Joe James was convicted of the murder of Clergy Ballard and was hanged in the Sangamon County Jail on October 23, 1908.[14]

As a direct result of the Springfield Race Riot, a meeting was held in New York City to discuss solutions to racial problems in the U.S. This meeting led to the formation of the NAACP, a well-known civil rights organization.[15]

Visitors to Springfield, Illinois, can take a self-guided tour of nine historical markers that describe key moments in the Springfield Race Riot of 1908.

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In 1892, a police officer in Port Jervis, New York, tried to stop the lynching of a black man who had been wrongfully accused of assaulting a white woman. The mob responded by putting the noose around the officer's neck as a way of scaring him. Although at the inquest the officer identified eight people who had participated in the lynching, including the former chief of police, the jury determined that the murder had been carried out "by person or persons unknown."[29]

In Duluth, Minnesota, on June 15, 1920, three young African American travelers were lynched after having been jailed and accused of having raped a white woman. The alleged "motive" and action by a mob were consistent with the "community policing" model. A book titled The Lynchings in Duluth documented the events.[30]

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Louie Sam (1870? – February 24, 1884) was a Stó:lō youth from native village near Abbotsford, British Columbia who was lynched by an American mob.

Sam was 14 at the time these events occurred. He had been accused of the murder of James Bell, a shopkeeper in Nooksack (today Whatcom County, Washington). The people of his band, today the Sumas First Nation at Kilgard turned him over to the B.C. government to settle the matter.

Following this, an angry mob crossed the border into Canada on February 24 and captured Sam, who had been in the custody of a B.C. deputy. They then hanged him from a tree close to the U.S. border.

A subsequent investigation by Canadian authorities strongly suggests that Sam was innocent, and that the likely murderers were two white Americans who were leaders of the lynch mob. [1] They were William Osterman, the Nooksack telegraph operator who took over Bell's business, and David Harkness, who at the time of Bell's murder was living with Bell's estranged wife. Neither man was ever prosecuted.
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The United States of Lyncherdom was an essay by Mark Twain written in 1901,[1] after the lynching of three men in Pierce City, Missouri, his home state. It blames lynching in the United States on the herd mentality that prevails among Americans.[1] Twain decided that the country was not ready for the essay, and shelved it.[1] A redacted version was finally published in 1923, when Twain's literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, slipped it into a posthumous collection, Europe and Elsewhere.

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Read through some of these events. NONE of which took place in the South, and ALL of which took place post-Civil War. Chicklet and Jarhead would like you to think these things didn't happen because Congress had passed a CRA in 1875. From their perception, this sort of thing only happened in the South, and in direct violation of the laws passed by Congress. It is this sort of stubborn refusal to accept responsibility and flagrantly cast blame on others, while ignoring history, which has prevailed in our society throughout America since the Civil War. Through this sort of mindset, these clowns can excuse themselves and their respective states or regions of the country from any blame whatsoever for the history of discrimination against blacks.

Keep bumping this thread Jarhead, you and Chicklet keep showing your racist viewpoint! I am all FOR that!

 

[Jarod]

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Glenville Shootout was a series of events of violent acts that occurred in the Glenville section of Cleveland, Ohio, United States, from the dates of July 23—July 28, 1968. The violent acts resulted in the deaths of seven people, and injuries of fifteen others.


The shootout began on the evening of July 23, 1968 in the eastern section of the Glenville neighborhood when two civilian tow truck drivers, wearing uniforms similar to police uniforms, were shot in an ambush by heavily armed snipers while checking an abandoned car. Cleveland police officers were also watching Fred "Ahmed" Evans and his radical militant group, who were suspected of purchasing illegal weapons. The shootout attracted a large crowd that was mostly black, young, and "hostile". When it became clear that the police were ill-equipped to handle the situation, Mayor Carl B. Stokes called in the National Guard. Before the night was over, seven were dead (three of the seven were Cleveland Police officers) and fifteen were wounded.


The following day, Stokes decided to remove all the White police officers from Glenville stationing only African American police officers and community leaders in the predominantly black community, to prevent further rioting and ease tensions in the area. It was the first event in American history in which only African American police officers were sent in to deal with a violent riot or confrontation. While the police and community leaders prevented any more deaths from occurring, there was continued looting and arson throughout the six-square-mile area. On July 25, more police officers and the National Guard entered Glenville and by July 28, order was restored.

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The Omaha Race Riot occurred in Omaha, Nebraska, on 28-September 29, 1919. The race riot resulted in the brutal lynching of Will Brown, a black worker; the death of two white men; the attempted hanging of the mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of whites who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. It followed more than 20 race riots that occurred in major industrial cities of the United States during the Red Summer of 1919.

Three weeks before the riot, federal investigators had noted that "a clash was imminent owing to ill-feeling between white and black workers in the stockyards."[1] The number of blacks in Omaha doubled during the decade 1910-1920, as they were recruited to work in the meatpacking industry, and competing workers noticed. In 1910 Omaha had the third largest black population among the new western cities that had become destinations following Reconstruction. By 1920 the black population more than doubled to more than 10,000, second only to Los Angeles with nearly 16,000. It was ahead of San Francisco and Oakland, Topeka and Denver.[2] [3]

The major meatpacking plants hired blacks as strikebreakers in 1917. Hostility against them was high among working class whites in the city, who were mostly Catholic immigrants of southern and eastern Europe, or descendants of immigrants, and who lived chiefly in South Omaha. Ethnic Irish were among the largest and earliest group of immigrants and they established their own power base in the city by this time. Several years earlier following the death of an Irish policeman, ethnic Irish led a mob in an attack on Greektown, which drove the Greek community from Omaha.[4]

With the moralistic administration of first-term reform mayor Edward Parsons Smith, the city's criminal establishment led by Tom Dennison created a formidable challenge in cahoots with the Omaha Business Men's Association. Smith trudged through his reform agenda with little support from the Omaha City Council or the city's labor unions. Along with several strikes throughout the previous year, on September 11 two detectives with the Omaha Police Department's "morals squad" shot and killed an African American bellhop.[5]
Lynching victim Will Brown.

The violence associated with the lynching of Will Brown was triggered by reports in local media that sensationalized the alleged rape of 19-year-old Agnes Loebeck on September 25, 1919. The following day the police arrested 40-year-old Will Brown as a suspect. Loebeck identified Brown as her rapist, although later reports by the Omaha Police Department and the United States Army stated that she had not made a positive identification. There was an unsuccessful attempt to lynch Brown on the day of his arrest.

The Omaha Bee publicized the incident as one of a series of alleged attacks on white women by black men. The newspaper had carried a series of sensational articles alleging many incidents of black outrages.[6] The Bee was controlled by a political machine opposed to the newly elected reform administration of Mayor Edward Smith. It highlighted alleged incidents of "black criminality" to embarrass the new administration.[citation needed]
[edit] Beginning

At about 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 28, 1919, a large group of white youths gathered near the Bancroft School in South Omaha and began a march to the Douglas County Courthouse, where Brown was being held. The march was intercepted by John T. Dunn, chief of the Omaha Detective Bureau, and his subordinates. Dunn attempted to disperse the crowd, but they ignored his warning and marched on. Thirty police officers were guarding the court house when the marchers arrived. By 4:00 p.m., the crowd had grown much larger. Members of the crowd bantered with the officers until the police were convinced that the crowd posed no serious threat. A report to that effect was made to the central police station, and the captain in charge sent fifty reserve officers home for the day.
[edit] Riot

By 5:00 p.m., a mob of about 4,000 whites had crowded into the street on the south side of the Douglas County Courthouse. They began to assault the police officers, pushing one through a pane of glass in a door and attacking two others who had wielded clubs at the mob. At 5:15 p.m., officers deployed fire hoses to dispel the crowd, but they responded with a shower of bricks and sticks. Nearly every window on the south side of the courthouse was broken. The crowd stormed the lower doors of the courthouse, and the Police inside discharged their weapons down an elevator shaft in an attempt to frighten them, but this further incited the mob. They again rushed the police who were standing guard outside the building, broke through their lines, and entered the courthouse through a broken basement door.

It was at this moment that Marshal Eberstein, chief of police, arrived. He asked leaders of the mob to give him a chance to talk to the crowd. He mounted to one of the window sills. Beside him was a recognized chief of the mob. At the request of its leader, the crowd stilled its clamor for a few minutes. Chief Eberstein tried to tell the mob that its mission would best be served by letting justice take its course. The crowd refused to listen. Its members howled so that the chief's voice did not carry more than a few feet. Eberstein ceased his attempt to talk and entered the besieged building.
A crowd of people forming the riot

By 6 p.m., throngs swarmed about the court house on all sides. The crowd wrestled revolvers, badges and caps from policemen. They chased and beat every colored person who ventured into the vicinity. White men who attempted to rescue innocent blacks from unmerited punishment were subjected to physical abuse. The police had lost control of the crowd.

By 7 p.m., most of the policemen had withdrawn to the interior of the court house. There, they joined forces with Michael Clark, sheriff of Douglas County, who had summoned his deputies to the building with the hope of preventing the capture of Brown. The policemen and sheriffs formed their line of last resistance on the fourth floor of the court house.

The police were not successful in their efforts. Before 8 p.m., they discovered that the crowd had set the courthouse building on fire. Its leaders had tapped a nearby gasoline filling station and saturated the lower floors with the flammable liquid.
[edit] Escalation

Shots were fired as the mob pillaged hardware stores in the business district and entered pawnshops, seeking firearms. Police records showed that more than 1,000 revolvers and shotguns were stolen that night. The mob shot at any policeman; seven officers received gunshot wounds, although none of the wounds were serious.
Windows broken out, people climbing the building

Louis Young, 16 years old, was fatally shot in the stomach while leading a gang up to the fourth floor of the building. Witnesses said the youth was the most intrepid of the mob's leaders.

Pandemonium reigned outside the building. At Seventeenth and Douglas Streets, one block from the court house, James Hiykel, a 34-year-old businessman, was shot and killed.

The crowd continued to strike the courthouse with bullets and rocks. Spectators were shot. Participants inflicted minor wounds upon themselves. Women were thrown to the ground and trampled. Blacks were dragged from streetcars and beaten.
[edit] The first hanging

About 11 o'clock, when the frenzy was at its height, Mayor Edward Smith came out of the east door of the courthouse into Seventeenth Street. He had been in the burning building for hours. As he emerged from the doorway, a shot rang out.

"He shot me. Mayor Smith shot me," a young man in the uniform of a United States soldier yelled. The crowd surged toward the mayor. He fought them. One man hit the mayor on the head with a baseball bat. Another slipped the noose of a rope around his neck. The crowd started to drag him away.

"If you must hang somebody, then let it be me," the mayor said.

The mob dragged the mayor into Harney Street. A woman reached out and tore the noose from his neck. Men in the mob replaced it. Spectators wrestled the mayor from his captors and placed him in a police automobile. The throng overturned the car and grabbed him again. Once more, the rope encircled the mayor's neck. He was carried to Sixteenth and Harney Streets. There he was hanged from the metal arm of a traffic signal tower.

Mayor Smith was suspended in the air when State Agent Ben Danbaum drove a high-powered automobile into the throng right to the base of the signal tower. In the car with Danbaum were City Detectives Al Anderson, Charles Van Deusen and Lloyd Toland. They grasped the mayor and Russell Norgard untied the noose. The detectives brought the mayor to Ford Hospital. There he lingered between life and death for several days, finally recovering. "They shall not get him. Mob rule will not prevail in Omaha," the mayor kept muttering during his delirium.
[edit] Siege of the Court House

Meanwhile the plight of the police in the court house had become desperate. The fire had licked its way to the third floor. The officers faced the prospect of roasting to death. Appeals for help to the crowd below brought only bullets and curses. The mob frustrated all attempts to raise ladders to the imprisoned police. "Bring Brown with you and you can come down," somebody in the crowd shouted.

On the second floor of the building, three policemen and a newspaper reporter were imprisoned in a safety vault, whose thick metal door the mob had shut. The four men hacked their way out through the court house wall. The mob shot at them as they squirmed out of the stifling vault.
Flames rage into the night from the Court House

The gases of formaldehyde added to the terrors of the men imprisoned within the flaming building. Several jars of the powerful chemical had burst on the stairway. Its deadly fumes mounted to the upper floors. Two policemen were overcome. Their companions could do nothing to alleviate their sufferings.

Sheriff Clark led his prisoners (there were 121 of them) to the roof. Will Brown, for whom the mob was howling, became hysterical. Blacks, fellow prisoners of the hunted man, tried to throw him off the roof. Deputy Sheriffs Hoye and McDonald foiled the attempt.

Sheriff Clark ordered that female prisoners be taken from the building due to their distress. They ran down the burning staircases clad only in prison pajamas. Some of them fainted on the way. Members of the mob escorted them through the smoke and flames. Black women as well as white women were helped to safety.

The mob poured more gasoline into the building. They cut every line of hose that firemen laid from nearby hydrants. The flames were rapidly lapping their way upward. It seemed like certain cremation for the prisoners and their protectors.
[edit] Lynching
Will Brown is lynched, and his body mutilated and burned by a white crowd.
Photograph taken from a different angle showing the body of Will Brown after being burned by a white crowd.

Then three slips of paper were thrown from the fourth floor on the west side of the building. On one piece was scrawled: "The judge says he will give up Negro Brown. He is in dungeon. There are 100 white prisoners on the roof. Save them."

Another note read: "Come to the fourth floor of the building and we will hand the negro over to you."

The mob in the street shrieked its delight at the last message. Boys and young men placed firemen's ladders against the building. They mounted to the second story. One man had a heavy coil of new rope on his back. Another had a shotgun.

Two or three minutes after the unidentified athletes had climbed to the fourth floor, a mighty shout and a fusillade of shots were heard from the south side of the building.

Will Brown had been captured. A few minutes more and his lifeless body was hanging from a telephone post at Eighteenth and Harney Streets. Hundreds of revolvers and shotguns were fired at the corpse as it dangled in mid-air. Then, the rope was cut. Brown's body was tied to the rear end of an automobile. It was dragged through the streets to Seventeenth and Dodge Streets, four blocks away. The oil from red lanterns used as danger signals for street repairs was poured on the corpse. It was burned. Members of the mob hauled the charred remains through the business district for several hours.

Sheriff Clark said that Negro prisoners hurled Brown into the hands of the mob as its leaders approached the stairway leading to the county jail. Newspapers have quoted alleged leaders of the mob as saying that Brown was shoved at them through a blinding smoke by persons whom they could not see.
[edit] Aftermath

The lawlessness continued for several hours after Brown had been lynched. The police patrol was burned. The police emergency automobile was burned. Three times, the mob went to the city jail. The third time its leaders announced that they were going to burn it. Soldiers arrived before they could carry out their threat.
Infantry deployed to calm the riot

The riot lasted until 3 a.m., in the morning of September 29. At that hour, federal troops, under command of Colonel John E. Morris of the Twentieth Infantry, arrived from Fort Omaha and Fort Crook. Troops manning machine guns were placed in the heart of Omaha's business district; in North Omaha, the center of the black community, to protect citizens there; and in South Omaha, to prevent more mobs from forming. Major General Leonard Wood, commander of the Central Department, came the next day to Omaha by order of Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Peace was enforced by 1,600 soldiers.

Martial law was not formally proclaimed in Omaha, but it was effectively enacted throughout the city. By the request of City Commissioner W.G. Ure, who was acting mayor, Wood took over control over the police department, too.

On October 1, 1919 Brown was laid to rest in Omaha's Potters Field. The interment log listed only one word next to his name: "Lynched".
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Joe Coe, also known as George Smith, was an African-American laborer who was lynched in 1891 in Omaha, Nebraska. Overwhelmed by a mob of one thousand at the Douglas County Courthouse, the twelve city police officers stood by without intervening. Afterward, the mayor called the lynching "the most deplorable thing that has ever happened in the history of the country."[1]
Contents
[hide]

* 1 About
* 2 Aftermath
* 3 See also
* 4 External links
* 5 References

[edit] About

Coe was a married man with two children who lived on North 12th Street north of downtown Omaha. On October 7, 1891 Lizzie Yates, a five-year-old white child who also lived in North Omaha, accused Coe of assaulting her. A crowd of men was already gathered at the old Douglas County Courthouse the day when Coe was brought in, to witness an unrelated, scheduled hanging, an official execution.

In the crowd, rumors circulated that the girl had died and the suspect's punishment was only 20 years in jail. Having seen Coe brought in earlier, the crowd decided he was guilty. Rumors flew around Omaha that the girl had died, the guilty party was in jail, and was only going to be punished with 20 years' incarceration.[2]

The next day, a mob of several hundred to 1,000 men formed in downtown Omaha early on Saturday, October 10, and overwhelmed the police at the courthouse.[3] Councilman Moriarty drove his cane through a window and led the men against the courthouse.[4] Leaders drove Coe to the assumed victim's house in the Near North Side neighborhood to be identified by the parents. The mother immediately said she had seen Coe roaming around the house, although she would not swear that it was he.[5]

When the mob brought Coe back to the courthouse to be lynched, James E. Boyd, the governor of Nebraska, and the county sheriff both appealed to the men to disperse. Instead, by midnight a crowd of 1,000 to 10,000 people had gathered at the courthouse.[6] The mob beat Coe and dragged him through city streets. He was probably already dead when he was hung from a streetcar wire at 17th and Harney Streets.[7] Omaha mayor Richard C. Cushing quickly condemned the lynching as "the most deplorable thing that has ever happened in the history of the country."[8]
[edit] Aftermath

Seven men were arrested for the crime, including the chief of police and the manager of a large dry goods store. A mob gathered outside the jail and threatened to destroy it unless the suspects were freed on bail but the County Attorney was determined to refuse them.[9]

The following day when Coe's body was set for public viewing at a downtown mortuary, six thousand spectators filed by. Hucksters sold pieces of the lynching rope as souvenirs.[10]

Ten days after the lynching, the Douglas County Assistant Coroner testified in court that Smith died of "fright", rather than of the wounds inflicted on him by the mob. Those wounds included sixteen wounds to his body and three vertebrae broken in his spine. Despite this, the coroner testified, "[T]he heart was so contracted and the blood was in such a condition that the doctor was satisfied that the man was literally scared to death." County Attorney Mahoney said he would have to modify the charges against the lynchers.[11] The grand jury decided not to prosecute.

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Johnny "Jack" Trice (1902 – October 8, 1923) was a football player who became the first African-American athlete from Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). Trice died due to injuries suffered during a college football game against the University of Minnesota on October 6, 1923.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Background
* 2 The game, Trice's death, and aftermath
* 3 Legacy
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 Further reading
* 7 External links

[edit] Background

Trice was born in Hiram, Ohio in 1902, the son of a former slave and Buffalo Soldier. As a child, Trice was active in sports and demonstrated outstanding athletic skills. In 1918, Trice’s mother sent him to Cleveland, Ohio to live with an uncle. Trice attended East Technical High School where he played football. In 1922, Trice followed five of his teammates, as well as his former high school coach, Sam Willaman, to Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa.

While attending Iowa State, Trice participated in track and football (primarily as a tackle). He majored in animal husbandry, with the desire to go to the South after graduation, and use his knowledge to help African-American farmers. In the summer after his freshman year, Trice married Cora Mae Starland. They both found jobs in order to support themselves through school.

On October 5, 1923, the night before his first college football game, Trice wrote the following in a letter on stationery at a racially segregated hotel in Minneapolis/St. Paul (the letter was later found in Trice's suit just before his funeral):
“ My thoughts just before the first real college game of my life: The honor of my race, family & self is at stake. Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will. My whole body and soul are to be thrown recklessly about the field tomorrow. Every time the ball is snapped, I will be trying to do more than my part. On all defensive plays I must break through the opponents' line and stop the play in their territory. Beware of mass interference. Fight low, with your eyes open and toward the play. Watch out for crossbacks and reverse end runs. Be on your toes every minute if you expect to make good. Jack.[1] ”
[edit] The game, Trice's death, and aftermath

On October 6, 1923, Trice and his Iowa State College teammates played against the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was ISU's third game that season; St. Louis refused to play against a black player. On the night of the game, Trice had to stay at a different Minneapolis hotel from his teammates.

During the second play of the game, Trice's collarbone was broken. Trice insisted he was all right and returned to the game. In the third quarter, while attempting to tackle a University of Minnesota ball carrier by throwing a roll block, Trice was trampled by three Minnesota players. Although he claimed to be fine, Trice was removed from the game and sent to a Minneapolis hospital. The doctors declared him fit to travel and he returned by train to Ames with his teammates. On October 8, 1923, Trice died from hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding as a result of the injuries sustained during the game.

Trice's funeral was held at the Iowa State College's central campus in Ames on October 16, 1923, with 4,000 students and faculty members in attendance.

As a result of his death, ISU did not renew their contract to play against Minnesota after the 1924 game. They would not play again until 1989.

(to be continued...)

READ IT YOU RACIST MUTHERFUCKER!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Ossian Sweet (pronounced /ˈɒʃən ˈswiːt/, us dict: ŏsh′·ən swēt′; 30 October 1895–20 March 1960) was an American physician. He is most notable for his self defense in 1925 of his newly-purchased home in a predominantly white neighborhood against a mob attempting to force him out of the neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan, and the subsequent acquittal by an all-white jury of murder charges against him, his family, and friends who helped defend his home, in what came to be known as the Sweet Trials.

Ossian Sweet and The Red Summer

Ossian Sweet was attending Howard University, a leader in black medical education, in 1919 when he personally witnessed the Washington D.C. race riot. Like so many cities in the summer of 1919, Washington D.C. had been stretched to its breaking point. Black migrants from the south had come pouring into the city's main black areas with the promise of wartime jobs, but in 1919 with the end of the war the promise was no longer there, although new migrants were pouring into the city everyday. Thousands of white soldiers were held on the outskirts of Washington D.C. while waiting to be discharged from their service in the World War I. Boredom eventually hit; and when it did, a riot broke that lasted five days and left 6 dead and 150 wounded. Sweet was just four blocks from the riots, but could not leave his fraternity; Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, attributes his lack of composure in this harsh time to fear, and he had good reason. Sweet was “walking down the street when a gang descended on a passing streetcar, pulled a black passenger down to the sidewalk, and beat him mercilessly.” Boyle later states that Sweet did not venture from his house because he was escaping the memories of his past, a true emotion for Sweet, and one that would not leave him until his death.

Home invasion

There were dangerous occurrences happening to friends and acquaintances of Ossian in buying homes in white neighborhoods and then being attacked. There was even a group put together called the Waterworks Park Improvement, which happened to be run by real estate agents from Detroit and nearby cities, whose sole reason of existence was to create controversy against the idea of allowing blacks to move to white neighborhoods. These people were concerned with the belief that allowing blacks into their neighborhoods would lower property values. This was important because at this time, buying a home was a very difficult and lengthy process. The idea of buying land free and clear was no longer an option for most blacks, forcing them instead to take out multiple mortgages to buy a home, leading to even more debt. Also, the idea that an African American could afford what most were struggling to keep was insulting to many of the working class whites that lived in the neighborhood.

Fearing an attack, Ossian had nine other men at his house on the night of the attack to help defend his family and property should any violence arise. The men included: Charles Washington (insurance man), Leonard Morse (colleague), William Davis, Henry Sweet (Ossian's brother), John Latting (Henry's college friend), Norris Murray (handyman), Otis Sweet (Ossian's brother) and Joe Mack (chauffeur). Gladys, too, was inside the bungalow. Inspector Norton Schuknecht had been placed outside the Sweet's house on the first night and he was to keep the peace and protect Ossian and Gladys from any angry neighbors. When a mob formed for the second night in a row in front of Dr. Sweet’s home, he knew that, “Somewhere out there, standing among the women and children, lounging on the porches, lurking in the alleys were the men who would incite the crowd to violence.” As the mob grew restless, people began to throw stones at the house, which eventually broke an upstairs window. There were several of Dr. Sweet’s friends waiting upstairs, armed with weapons that Sweet had purchased prior to moving in. A volley of shots rang out from the upstairs, and in an instant, two attackers were down. One member of the mob, Eric Houghberg, was shot and suffered a minor injury. The other man who was hit, Leon Breiner, was killed from the shot. There was no turning back at this point, as a white man lay dead in the street, killed by an African American man. After the shot had been fired from the bungalow, the eleven African Americans inside were brought to police headquarters and interrogated for five hours. Interrogations would last for an extended period of time and the men would remain in the Wayne County Jail until the entire trial was over. By the next morning, September 10, the story was on newsstands all across Detroit and throughout the country.

The Sweets and their friends were tried for murder by a young Judge, Frank Murphy. Judge Murphy was considered to be one of the more liberal judges in the city, but with the media working the city into a frenzy, Murphy decided to put aside his liberal ideals and denied the defendant’s appeal to have the case dismissed. There was little hope of receiving a fair trial at this point, but Ossian Sweet and his friends remained hopeful. When word of this incident reached the desk of James Weldon Johnson, general secretary of the NAACP, Johnson knew right away that this case would be a major force in the acquisition of civil rights for African Americans.

With the help of the NAACP, Sweet and his friends gained the money and support that they needed, if there was to be any hope of winning this trial. The NAACP helped the Sweets and the rest as much as possible; they had James Weldon Johnson send Walter White to them in order to do some of his legendary investigations work. The Sweet trial was one of three main trials the NAACP supported in this year. The NAACP chose carefully which trials would have the most publicity and which trials, if won, would help the African American race and hopefully make steps towards social change. Funds were limited, and the selection of civil rights battles had to be chosen carefully to maximize the limited funds that were available.

As September passed on, life in the Wayne County Jail became slightly more comfortable for Ossian and the others. It was more difficult for jail officers to keep a close eye on them so the Sweets began seeing a steady stream of visitors, including the elder Henry Sweet, who was Ossian's, Otis's and Henry's father. In early October, Johnson invited Clarence Darrow, who was for a period of time the most brilliant defense attorney in the country, to join the Sweets' defense team. Darrow previously had been an attorney in the Scopes Trial. Publicity was what Johnson was looking for from Darrow. Darrow accepted and on October 15 it was announced he would be taking control of the defense. Several days prior to the announcement, on October 6, Gladys was released on bail by her parents' friends. This was a great relief for Ossian. On the morning of Friday, October 30, Clarence Darrow was ready for trial. As the end of November rolled in, and after the jurors' long deliberations, most came to an agreement that the eight remaining defendants should be acquitted; there were however, a few holdouts. At this point, Judge Murphy dismissed the deadlocked jury and declared the court case a mistrial. Dr. Sweet and Gladys had expectations to head back to court within a few weeks, but there were delays. During the long delay between the first and second trial, Darrow did not devote much time to the Sweets' case. Eventually, almost three weeks after it was planned, the trial began on Monday, April 19, 1926. This shorter trial led to an acquittal of Henry Sweet. The prosecuting attorney then elected to dismiss the charges against the remaining defendants.

After Henry was acquitted, life for the Sweets was not as joyous as hoped. Both Gladys and her daughter, Iva, were suffering from tuberculosis, which Gladys contracted during her incarceration. Two months after Iva's second birthday, she died. During the two years following the loss of their daughter, Ossian and Gladys lived apart; he was back at the apartment near Dunbar Memorial and she went to Tucson, Arizona, in order to benefit from the drier climate. By mid-1928, Ossian finally regained possession of the bungalow, which had not been lived in since the shooting. A few months after Gladys returned home, she died, at the age of twenty-seven. After the death of his wife, Ossian bought the Garafalo's Drugstore. In 1929, he left his practice to run a hospital in the heart of the ghetto. He would eventually run a few of these small hospitals, but none ever flourished. As he began to approach the age of fifty, Ossian started to buy land in East Bartow, as his father had. Finally, in 1930, he decided to run for the presidency of the NAACP branch in Detroit, only to lose by a wide margin. In the summer of 1939, Ossian realized that his brother had also contracted tuberculosis; six months later, he died. By this point, Ossian's finances soon failed him. It took him until 1950 to pay off the land contract and he then assumed full ownership of the bungalow. He faced too much debt after that and, instead of losing the house, Ossian sold it in April 1958, to another black family. With the bungalow out of his possession, he transformed what had been his office above Garafalo's Drugstore into an apartment. Around this time, Ossian's physical and mental health began to decline; he had put on weight and had slowed in his motions. On March 20, 1960, he went into his bedroom and committed suicide with a shot to the head.

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The "Johnny Bright Incident" was a violent on-field assault against African-American player Johnny Bright by White American player Wilbanks Smith during an American college football game held on October 20, 1951 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The game was significant in itself as it marked the first time that an African American athlete with a national profile and of critical importance to the success of his Drake University team had played against Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) on their home field. Bright's injury also highlighted the racial tensions of the times and assumed notoriety when it was captured in what was later to become both a widely disseminated and eventually Pulitzer Prize winning photo sequence. The event later came to be known as the "Johnny Bright Incident".

Johnny Bright's participation as a halfback/quarterback in the collegiate football game between the Drake Bulldogs and Oklahoma A&M Aggies on October 20, 1951 at Lewis Field was controversial even before it began. Bright had been the first African-American football player to play at Lewis Field two years prior (without incident). In 1951, Bright was a pre-season Heisman Trophy candidate from Drake, and led the nation in total offense.[1] Bright had never played for a losing team in his college career. Coming into the contest, Drake carried a five game winning streak, owing much to Bright's rushing and passing abilities. During the first seven minutes of the game, Bright was knocked unconscious three times by blows from Oklahoma A&M defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith. While Smith's final elbow blow broke Bright's jaw, he was still able to complete a 61-yard touchdown pass to Drake halfback Jim Pilkington a few plays later.[1] Soon afterward, the injury finally forced him to leave the game. Bright finished the game with less than 100 yards, the first time in his three year collegiate career at Drake. Oklahoma A&M eventually won the game 27–14.[1]

Bob Spiegel, a reporter with the Des Moines Register, interviewed several spectators after the game, eventually publishing a report on the incident in the October 30, 1951 issue of the newspaper. According to Spiegel's report, several of the Oklahoma A&M students he interviewed overheard an Oklahoma A&M coach repeatedly say "Get that nigger" whenever the A&M practice squad ran Drake plays against the Oklahoma A&M starting defense, prior to the October 20 game.[2] Spiegel also recounted the experiences of a businessman and his wife, who were seated behind a group of Oklahoma A&M practice squad players. At the beginning of the game, one of the players turned around said, "We're gonna get that nigger."[2] After the first blow to Bright was delivered by Smith, the same player again turned around and told the businessman, "See that knot on my jaw? That same guy [Smith] gave me that the very same way in practice."[2]

Drake University and fellow Missouri Valley Conference member Bradley University withdrew from the Conference in protest for several years, not only in response to the Bright incident, but also because both Oklahoma A&M and the Conference refused to take any disciplinary action against Wilbanks Smith.[4] The "Johnny Bright Incident", as it became widely known, eventually provoked changes in NCAA football rules regarding illegal blocking, and mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.[2]

Recalling the incident without apparent bitterness in a 1980 Des Moines Register interview three years before his death, Bright commented: "There's no way it couldn't have been racially motivated." Bright went on to add: "What I like about the whole deal now, and what I'm smug enough to say, is that getting a broken jaw has somehow made college athletics better. It made the NCAA take a hard look and clean up some things that were bad."[2]

---------------------------------------------

Dick Rowland (born c. 1902) was an African-American teen-age shoeshiner whose false arrest in May 1921 was the impetus for the Tulsa Race Riot. When he was arrested for attempted assault, Rowland was 19 years old. The white teen-ager, who was supposed to have been the victim, declined to prosecute. The arrest was prompted after Rowland tripped in an elevator on his way to a segregated bathroom, and a white store clerk misconstrued the incident as an "assault."

Rowland's birth name was Jimmie Jones. [1] It is not known where he was born, but by 1908 he and two sisters were orphans living in Vinita, Oklahoma. Jones was informally adopted by Damie Ford, an African-American woman. In approximately 1909 Ford and Jones moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to join Ford's family, the Rowlands. Eventually, Jones took Rowland as his last name, and selected his favorite first name, Dick, as his own. Rowland attended the city's segregated schools, including Booker T. Washington High School.[2]

He dropped out of high school to take a job shining shoes in a white-owned and white-patronized shine parlor on Main Street in downtown Tulsa. As Tulsa was a segregated city where Jim Crow practices were in effect, black people were not allowed to use toilet facilities used by white people. There was no separate facility for blacks at the shine parlor where Rowland worked and the owner had arranged for Black employees to use a segregated "Colored" restroom on the top floor of the nearby Drexel Building at 319 S. Main Street.

On May 30, 1921, Rowland attempted to enter the Drexel building elevator and, although the exact facts are either unknown or in dispute, according to the most accepted accounts, he tripped, and while falling, latched on to the arm of the elevator operator, Sarah Page, then 17 years old. Startled, the elevator operator screamed and a white clerk in a first floor store called police to report seeing Rowland flee from the elevator and the building. The white clerk on the first floor reported the incident as an attempted assault.

Rowlands was arrested the following day, on May 31, 1921. Subsequent actions by white citizens in an apparent attempt to lynch him, and by black citizens to protect him, sparked a riot that lasted 16 hours and caused the destruction by fire of 35 city blocks and 1,256 residences in Tulsa's prosperous African-American neighborhood of Greenwood, and over 800 injuries and the deaths of at about 300 blacks and 13 whites.[3]

The case against Dick Rowland was dismissed at the end of September, 1921. The dismissal followed the receipt of a letter by the County Attorney from Sarah Page in which she stated that she did not wish to prosecute the case.

According to Damie Ford, once Rowland was exonerated he immediately left Tulsa, and went to Kansas City.[4] Little else is publicly known about the remainder of Rowland's life.Dick Rowland (born c. 1902) was an African-American teen-age shoeshiner whose false arrest in May 1921 was the impetus for the Tulsa Race Riot. When he was arrested for attempted assault, Rowland was 19 years old. The white teen-ager, who was supposed to have been the victim, declined to prosecute. The arrest was prompted after Rowland tripped in an elevator on his way to a segregated bathroom, and a white store clerk misconstrued the incident as an "assault."

Rowland's birth name was Jimmie Jones. [1] It is not known where he was born, but by 1908 he and two sisters were orphans living in Vinita, Oklahoma. Jones was informally adopted by Damie Ford, an African-American woman. In approximately 1909 Ford and Jones moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to join Ford's family, the Rowlands. Eventually, Jones took Rowland as his last name, and selected his favorite first name, Dick, as his own. Rowland attended the city's segregated schools, including Booker T. Washington High School.[2]

He dropped out of high school to take a job shining shoes in a white-owned and white-patronized shine parlor on Main Street in downtown Tulsa. As Tulsa was a segregated city where Jim Crow practices were in effect, black people were not allowed to use toilet facilities used by white people. There was no separate facility for blacks at the shine parlor where Rowland worked and the owner had arranged for Black employees to use a segregated "Colored" restroom on the top floor of the nearby Drexel Building at 319 S. Main Street.

On May 30, 1921, Rowland attempted to enter the Drexel building elevator and, although the exact facts are either unknown or in dispute, according to the most accepted accounts, he tripped, and while falling, latched on to the arm of the elevator operator, Sarah Page, then 17 years old. Startled, the elevator operator screamed and a white clerk in a first floor store called police to report seeing Rowland flee from the elevator and the building. The white clerk on the first floor reported the incident as an attempted assault.

Rowlands was arrested the following day, on May 31, 1921. Subsequent actions by white citizens in an apparent attempt to lynch him, and by black citizens to protect him, sparked a riot that lasted 16 hours and caused the destruction by fire of 35 city blocks and 1,256 residences in Tulsa's prosperous African-American neighborhood of Greenwood, and over 800 injuries and the deaths of at about 300 blacks and 13 whites.[3]

The case against Dick Rowland was dismissed at the end of September, 1921. The dismissal followed the receipt of a letter by the County Attorney from Sarah Page in which she stated that she did not wish to prosecute the case.

According to Damie Ford, once Rowland was exonerated he immediately left Tulsa, and went to Kansas City.[4] Little else is publicly known about the remainder of Rowland's life.

(to be continued...)

TELL US HOW YOUR CONGRESS PASSED A LAW AGAINST SEGREGATION IN 1875 YOU RACIST FUCKING PRICK!

 

[Jarod]

-

 

[Jarod]

Um, its called the Desegregation act of 1875!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Tulsa race riot, also known as the 1921 race riot, the night that Tulsa died, the Tulsa Race War, or the Greenwood riot, was a massacre during a large-scale civil disorder confined mainly to the racially segregated Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA on May 31, 1921. During the 16 hours of rioting, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless, 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, and $1.8 million (about $21.7 million in 2009 dollars) in property damage was caused.

Officially, thirty-nine people were reported killed in the riot, of whom ten were white. The actual number of black citizens killed by local white militiamen and others as a result of the riot was estimated in the Red Cross report[1][2] at around 300, making the Tulsa race riot the worst in US history. Other estimates range as high as 3,000, based on the number of grave diggers and other circumstances, although the archaeological and forensic work needed to confirm the number of dead has not been performed.[3]

The Tulsa race riot occurred in the racially and politically tense atmosphere of northeastern Oklahoma, some of which was a growing hotbed of anti-black sentiment at that time. The Ku Klux Klan made its first major appearance in Oklahoma on August 12, 1921,[4] less than three months after the riot.

As in several other states and territories during the early years of the twentieth century, lynchings were not uncommon in Oklahoma. Between the declaration of statehood on November 16, 1907, and the Tulsa race riot some thirteen years later, thirty-one individuals — twenty-six of whom were black — were lynched in Oklahoma. During the twenty years following the riot, the number of lynchings statewide fell to two.[5]

The Greenwood section of Tulsa was home to a commercial district so prosperous it was known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street"). Ironically, the economic enclaves here and elsewhere — bounded and supported by racial discrimination — supported prosperity and capital formation within the community. In the surrounding areas of northeastern Oklahoma, blacks also enjoyed relative prosperity and participated in the oil boom.

Sometime around or after 4 p.m. Dick Rowland, a nineteen-year old black shoeshiner employed at a Main Street shine parlor, entered the elevator at the rear of the nearby Drexel Building at 319 South Main Street en route to the 'colored' washroom on the top floor.

Upon entering the elevator, he encountered Sarah Page, the seventeen-year old white elevator operator who was on duty at the time. It has never been determined with any certainty whether the two young people were acquainted, but it seems reasonable that they knew each other at least by sight, as this building was the only one nearby with a washroom that Rowland had express permission to use, and that the elevator operated by Page was the only one in the building.

In the most generally accepted account, Rowland tripped upon entering the elevator and, in an effort to prevent himself from falling, grabbed the arm of Page, who subsequently let out a startled gasp or scream. However, other accounts suggested that the two had a quarrel which culminated in Page being assaulted.

A clerk at Renberg's, a clothing store located on the first floor of the Drexel, heard what sounded like a woman's scream and observed a young black man hurriedly leaving the building. Upon rushing to the elevator, the clerk found Miss Page in what he perceived to be a distraught state. The clerk reached the conclusion that the young woman had been assaulted and subsequently summoned the authorities.[7]

Although the police almost certainly questioned Sarah Page, no written account of her statement has ever surfaced. It may never be known what she told the Renberg's clerk, the police, or anyone else, but whatever conversation transpired between Page and the police, it is generally accepted that they determined what happened between the two teenagers was something less than an assault. This is supported by the fact that the authorities conducted a rather low-key investigation rather than launching an all out man-hunt for her alleged assailant.

Whether or not an actual assault had occurred, Dick Rowland had reason to be fearful. Such an accusation in those days, rightful or not, was enough to incite certain segments of the white public to forgo due process and take such matters into their own hands. Upon realizing the gravity of the situation, Rowland fled to his mother's house in the Greenwood neighborhood.

The morning after the incident, Dick Rowland was located on Greenwood Avenue and detained by Detective Henry Carmichael and Henry C. Pack, a black patrolman, one of only a handful on the city's approximately seventy-eight man police force. After booking, Rowland was taken to the jail on the top floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse for questioning.

Word quickly spread in Tulsa's legal circles. Many attorneys were familiar with Rowland, being patrons of the shine shop where he was employed. Several of them were heard defending him in personal conversations with one another. One of the men said, "Why I know that boy, and have known him a good while. That's not in him."[8]

By late morning, news of the event had apparently reached the Tulsa Tribune. The newspaper broke the story in that afternoon's edition with the headline: 'Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator', describing the alleged incident with the details that that the paper had assembled on short notice. It was, however, another article in the same paper that is credited with providing the misinformation which sparked the chain of events that ensued later that evening.

The second article, apparently an editorial, titled 'To Lynch Negro Tonight', spoke of whites assembling to lynch the teenage Rowland. It is, of course, impossible to know where the Tribune obtained information regarding the impending assembly of a lynch mob, but it is common knowledge that this paper was known at the time to have a rather 'sensationalist' style of news writing. It cannot be determined who the source of this information was, or even if there was any such source at all. Several years later, researchers discovered that the editorial in question was mysteriously missing, having been apparently deliberately removed from the Tribune's archives, as well as the 'Oklahoma Edition' of the Tribune in the state archives. No known copies of this editorial exist today, although several independent citizens, who were confirmably there at the time, corroborate the publication of such an article.

The afternoon edition of the Tribune hit the streets shortly after 3 p.m., and soon news of the impending and, by most accounts, fictitious lynching soon spread. By 4 o'clock, the local authorities were on alert. White people began congregating at and near the Tulsa County Courthouse. Many were simply spectators curious about the rumors while others were incensed by the alleged incident at the Drexel building and were seeking answers. Still others were looking to participate in or at least show their support of the lynching of the black youth being accused of such a brazen act against a young white woman.

It can never be known with any certainty if a lynching had actually been called for before the newspaper report was published that afternoon. But what is known is that by sunset at 7:34 p.m., the several hundred whites assembled outside the courthouse appeared to have the makings of a lynch mob. At the very least, they had the appearance of such a mob.

Willard M. McCullough, the newly appointed sheriff of Tulsa County, was determined that there would be no repeat during his time in office of events like the 1920 lynching of Roy Belton.[9] The sheriff quickly took steps to ensure the safety of Dick Rowland. McCullough organized his deputies into a defensive formation around Rowland, who was by now terrified. He also positioned six of his men, armed with rifles and shotguns, on the roof of the courthouse. He also disabled the building's elevator, and had his remaining men barricade themselves at the top of the stairs with orders to shoot any intruders on sight. The sheriff also went outside and tried to talk the crowd into going home, but to no avail.

At approximately 8:20 p.m., three white men entered the courthouse, demanding that Rowland be turned over. Deputies were able to turn the men away. Although vastly outnumbered by the growing crowd out on the street, McCullough was determined to prevent another lynching.

Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, on Greenwood Avenue, confused members of the black community were gathering to discuss the situation that had been building at the courthouse. With the recent lynching of Roy Belton, they assumed that the group assembled at the courthouse was willing to do the same to Dick Rowland.

Many argued for a more cautious approach, but were apparently overruled when, at about 9 p.m., a group of approximately 25 black men left the gathering. Armed with rifles and shotguns, they decided to march to the courthouse and support the sheriff and his deputies in defending Rowland from the angry community. The sheriff, assuring them that Rowland was safe, implored them to return to Greenwood.

The arrival and subsequent departure of the armed black men did not sit well with the whites gathered outside the courthouse, now numbering 1000 or more, many of whom immediately traveled home to retrieve guns of their own. Others headed for the National Guard armory where they planned to gain access to guns and ammunition. The National Guard, having been alerted to the mounting situation downtown and to the planned break-in, took appropriate measures to prevent this. By a show of force, a crowd of three to four hundred was successfully turned away from the armory.

Back at the courthouse, the crowd had swelled to nearly 2000, many of them now armed. Several local leaders, including judges and clergy, tried in vain to dissuade them. The chief of police, John A. Gustafson, later claimed that he attempted to talk the crowd into dispersing.

Meanwhile, as the situation at the courthouse continued to escalate, anxiety on Greenwood Avenue was reaching frenzied levels. The confidence of the black community members in the security of Dick Rowland was diminishing quickly. Small groups of armed black men began to venture toward the courthouse in automobiles, partly for reconnaissance, but with their weapons visible, they were also demonstrating that they were prepared to take necessary action to protect Dick Rowland.

Many white community members interpreted these actions as a 'Negro uprising' and became concerned. Eyewitnesses reported gunshots, presumably fired into the air, increasing in frequency as the violent hours drew near.

On Greenwood, rumors began to fly—in particular, a false report that whites were storming the courthouse. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., a second, larger group of approximately seventy-five armed black men decided to go to the courthouse. Again, they offered their support to the sheriff to help protect Dick Rowland, and again their offer was declined.

According to witnesses, a white man is alleged to told one of the armed black man to surrender his pistol. The man refused, and fired a shot. That first shot may have been accidental, or meant as a warning shot, but the ones that followed were not, and the Courthouse was taking fire.

The gunshots triggered an almost immediate response by the white men, many of whom returned fire on the black contingent, and they continued firing back at the whites. It is said this first "battle" lasted only a few seconds or so, but already had a heavy toll, several men from both sides lay dead or dying in the street. The Black mob retreated toward Greenwood. A rolling gunfight occurred.

The now considerably armed white mob pursued the black group toward Greenwood, with many stopping to loot local stores for additional weapons and ammunition. Along the way innocent bystanders, many of whom were letting out of a movie theater, were caught off guard by the riotous mob and began fleeing also. Panic set in as mobsters began firing on unassuming blacks in the crowd. At least one white man was apparently mistakenly shot and killed in the confusion.

At around 11 p.m., members of the local National Guard unit began to assemble at the armory to organize a plan to subdue the rioters. Several groups were deployed downtown to set up guard at the courthouse, police station, and other public facilities. Members of the local chapter of the American Legion joined in on patrols of the streets. It soon became apparent, however, that the deployment of forces was being organized to protect the white districts adjacent to Greenwood. This manner of deployment led to them being set in apparent opposition to the black community. They began rounding up blacks who had not managed to make it back across the tracks to friendly territory and taking them to the armory for detainment.

As news traveled among Greenwood residents in these early morning hours, many began to take up arms in defense of their community, while others began a mass exodus from the city. Throughout the night both sides continued fighting, sometimes only sporadically, and began anticipating what would happen at sunrise.

At around midnight white rioters again assembled outside the courthouse, this time in smaller but more determined numbers. Cries rang out in support of a lynching. They attempted to storm the building, but were turned away and dispersed by the sheriff and his deputies.

Throughout the early morning hours, groups of armed whites and blacks squared off in gunfights. At this point the fighting was concentrated along sections of the Frisco tracks, a key dividing line between the black and white commercial districts. At some point, passengers on an incoming train were forced to take cover as they had arrived in the midst of crossfire, with the train taking hits on both sides.

Small groups of whites made brief forays by car into the Greenwood district, indiscriminately firing into businesses and residences.

At around 1 a.m., a small fraction of the white mob began setting fires, mainly to businesses on commercial Archer Street at the edge of the Greenwood district. As crews from the Tulsa Fire Department arrived to put out fires, they were turned away at gunpoint. By 4 a.m., an estimated two-dozen black-owned businesses had been set ablaze.

In the pre-dawn hours the white crowd, now estimated to number over five thousand, had mostly assembled into three groups on the outskirts of Greenwood. One small band of rioters broke free from the group, heading in a car toward the heart of the Greenwood district. Their bodies would later be found, along with their bullet-riddled car, a Franklin, near Archer and Frankfort Streets.

Upon the 5 a.m. sunrise, a reported train whistle was heard. Many believed this to be a signal for the rioters to launch an all-out assault on Greenwood. Crowds of rioters poured from places of shelter, on foot and by car, into the streets of the black community.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of white citizens, many blacks began a hasty retreat, north on Greenwood Avenue, toward the edge of town. Chaos ensued as terrified residents fled for their lives. Rioters were shooting indiscriminately, killing many of them along the way.

Numerous accounts described airplanes carrying white assailants firing rifles and dropping firebombs on buildings, homes, and fleeing families. The planes, six biplane two-seater trainers left over from World War I, were dispatched from the nearby Curtis Field (now defunct) outside of Tulsa.[10] White law enforcement officials later claimed the sole purpose of the planes was to provide reconnaissance and protect whites against what they described as a "Negro uprising."[10] However, eyewitness accounts and testimony from the survivors confirmed that on the morning of June 1, the planes dropped incendiary bombs and fired rifles at black Tulsans on the ground.[10]

Even one white newspaper in Tulsa reported that airplanes circled over Greenwood during the riot. That account, however, had the planes working in conjunction with the police department to survey the riot.[citation needed]

Several groups of blacks attempted to organize a defense, but were ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of whites and weapons. Many blacks, conceding defeat, surrendered. Still others returned fire, ultimately losing their lives.

As the fires spread northward through Greenwood, countless black families continued to flee. Many died when trapped by the flames.

Not all white Tulsans shared the views of the rioters. It is claimed that a few whites and Hispanics in neighborhoods adjacent to Greenwood took up arms in support of their black neighbors, but they too were grossly outnumbered.

As unrest spread to other parts of the city, many middle class white families that employed blacks in their homes as cooks and servants were accosted by angry white rioters demanding that they turn over their employees to be taken to detention centers around the city. Many white families complied, but those who refused were subjected to attacks and vandalism.

Oklahoma National Guard troops finally arrived from Oklahoma City by train shortly after 9 a.m. By this time, most of the surviving black citizens had either fled the city or were in custody at the various detention centers. Although they had arrived too late to stop what had happened during the previous 10 hours, by noon, and after declaring martial law, the troops had managed to put an end to most of the remaining violence.

Official counts put the number of dead at 39; 26 black, 13 white. Some believe that this number under counts the black victims. Those claiming higher estimates generally believe the range from seventy-five to over three hundred. The lack of bodies to substantiate the higher number are generally put down as blacks being put into unmarked mass graves or to the bodies being dumped in the river. No evidence to support these theories has ever surfaced beyond hearsay.

Of the some 800 people admitted to local hospitals for injuries, a vast majority are believed to have been white, as both black hospitals had been burned in the rioting. Additionally, even if any of the white hospitals operating at the time would have admitted blacks under these special circumstances, injured blacks had little means to get to these hospitals. Several among the black dead were known to have died while in the internment centers. While most of these deaths are thought to be accurately recorded, there are no records to be found as to how many detainees were treated for injuries and survived. These numbers could very reasonably be over a thousand, perhaps several thousand.[11]

(to be continued...)

KEEP DENYING THE FUCKING HISTORY OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST BLACKS IN AMERICA... ALL OVER AMERICA... FOR NEARLY A CENTURY! KEEP BUMPING THIS GODDAMN THREAD, YOU FUCKING RACIST HYPOCRITE!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 was a mass civil disturbance in Springfield, Illinois, USA sparked by the transfer of two African American prisoners out of the city jail by the county sheriff. This act enraged many white citizens, who responded by burning black-owned homes and businesses and killing black citizens. By the end of the riot, there were at least seven deaths and US$200,000 in property damage. The riot led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization.

At the turn of the century, Springfield, Illinois, was a rapidly-growing industrial center, with the highest percentage of African Americans of any comparably-sized city in Illinois. Racial tensions were high at the time due to fierce job competition and the use of black workers as "scabs" during labor strikes.[1]

On July 4, 1908, someone broke into the home of mining engineer Clergy Ballard. Ballard awoke and rose to investigate, finding a man standing near his daughter's bed. The intruder fled the house and Ballard gave chase. After catching up with the intruder, Ballard's throat was slashed with a straight razor. Before he died, Ballard identified the assailant as Joe James, a black man with a long record of minor crimes. White citizens of the town were enraged by this crime, thinking that the murder was the result of a thwarted sexual assault of a white woman by a black man. A crowd of whites caught James and beat him unconscious. The police rescued James, arrested him, and locked him in the city jail.[2]

On Friday, August 15 of that year, the local Illinois State Journal newspaper ran the story of a white woman, Mabel Hallam, who had allegedly been raped by a local black man, George Richardson. The 21-year-old wife of a well-known streetcar conductor claimed that the black caretaker had dragged her out of bed and assaulted her the night before. Police arrested Richardson and took him to the city jail as well.[3]

Later on August 14, a significant amount of mob action took place. A crowd of white citizens gathered in downtown Springfield, outraged by the fact that two black men had allegedly committed brutal crimes against white townspeople. The crowd demanded the release of the prisoners, but Sheriff Charles Werner was able to remove the two from jail and transport them to safety in Bloomington 64 miles away, with the help of restaurant owner Harry Loper.[4]

When the crowd learned that the two black prisoners had been moved with the help of Loper, they walked to his restaurant to exact revenge. Despite the fact that Loper stood in the doorway, the mob trashed the building and torched his expensive automobile. [5] Realizing that the local authorities were overwhelmed by the crowd, Governor Charles S. Deneen activated the state militia.[6]

The crowd now directed their anger toward the rest of Springfield's minorities. They proceeded to Fishman's Hardware, owned by a Jewish businessman, and stole weapons to use in the further destruction of homes and businesses. Then the mob moved on the Levee, a predominantly African American area, and destroyed numerous black-owned businesses.[7]

As the crowd moved on towards the Badlands, another black neighborhood, they encountered a black barber named Scott Burton. Burton attempted to defend his business with a warning shot from a shotgun, and was killed when the crowd returned fire. Burton's shop was burned and his body was dragged to a nearby saloon, where it was hung from a tree.[8]

The mob then burned black-owned homes in the Badlands. By this time, an estimated 12,000 people had gathered to watch the houses burn. When firefighters arrived, people in the crowd impeded their progress and cut their hoses. African American citizens were forced to flee the town, find refuge with sympathetic whites, or hide in the State Arsenal. The National Guard was finally able to disperse the crowd late that night.[9]

The next day, Saturday, August 15, as thousands of black residents fled the city, five thousand National Guard troops marched in to keep the peace, along with curiosity seekers and tourists who had read about the riots in the newspaper.[10] The peace was soon broken, however, when a new mob formed and began marching toward the State Arsenal, where many black residents were being housed. When confronted by a National Guardsman, the crowd changed direction and instead walked to the home of black resident William Donnegan, who had committed no crime, but had been married to a white woman for 32 years; Donnegan himself was either 84 or 76-years old.[11] When Donnegan came outside, the mob captured him, cut his throat, and lynched him in a tree in the yard of what was later known as The Hay-Edwards School across the street from his home.[12]
[edit] Aftermath

The riots ended at this point, leaving 40 homes and 24 businesses in ruins, and seven people confirmed dead: two black men and five white people who were killed in the violence. Some of the white casualties were shot by blacks defending their homes and businesses. There were rumored to have been several more unreported deaths.

A grand jury brought 107 indictments against nearly 80 individuals who had allegedly participated in the riots (including four police officers), but only one man, a 20-year-old Russian Jewish vegetable peddler named Abraham Raymer, was convicted. His crime was stealing a saber from a guard. Raymer had previously been put on trial for the murder of William Donnegan, of which he was acquitted, and he was also subsequently acquitted of other serious charges in two later trials, results which would set the tone for the rest of the cases.[13] Kate Howard, a white woman who had directed much of the violence, committed suicide before facing the charges against her. Mabel Hallam later admitted that her accusation of rape against George Richardson was false, and Richardson was released from jail. Joe James was convicted of the murder of Clergy Ballard and was hanged in the Sangamon County Jail on October 23, 1908.[14]

As a direct result of the Springfield Race Riot, a meeting was held in New York City to discuss solutions to racial problems in the U.S. This meeting led to the formation of the NAACP, a well-known civil rights organization.[15]

Visitors to Springfield, Illinois, can take a self-guided tour of nine historical markers that describe key moments in the Springfield Race Riot of 1908.

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In 1892, a police officer in Port Jervis, New York, tried to stop the lynching of a black man who had been wrongfully accused of assaulting a white woman. The mob responded by putting the noose around the officer's neck as a way of scaring him. Although at the inquest the officer identified eight people who had participated in the lynching, including the former chief of police, the jury determined that the murder had been carried out "by person or persons unknown."[29]

In Duluth, Minnesota, on June 15, 1920, three young African American travelers were lynched after having been jailed and accused of having raped a white woman. The alleged "motive" and action by a mob were consistent with the "community policing" model. A book titled The Lynchings in Duluth documented the events.[30]

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Louie Sam (1870? – February 24, 1884) was a Stó:lō youth from native village near Abbotsford, British Columbia who was lynched by an American mob.

Sam was 14 at the time these events occurred. He had been accused of the murder of James Bell, a shopkeeper in Nooksack (today Whatcom County, Washington). The people of his band, today the Sumas First Nation at Kilgard turned him over to the B.C. government to settle the matter.

Following this, an angry mob crossed the border into Canada on February 24 and captured Sam, who had been in the custody of a B.C. deputy. They then hanged him from a tree close to the U.S. border.

A subsequent investigation by Canadian authorities strongly suggests that Sam was innocent, and that the likely murderers were two white Americans who were leaders of the lynch mob. [1] They were William Osterman, the Nooksack telegraph operator who took over Bell's business, and David Harkness, who at the time of Bell's murder was living with Bell's estranged wife. Neither man was ever prosecuted.
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The United States of Lyncherdom was an essay by Mark Twain written in 1901,[1] after the lynching of three men in Pierce City, Missouri, his home state. It blames lynching in the United States on the herd mentality that prevails among Americans.[1] Twain decided that the country was not ready for the essay, and shelved it.[1] A redacted version was finally published in 1923, when Twain's literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, slipped it into a posthumous collection, Europe and Elsewhere.

KEEP SPREADING YOUR RACIST HYPOCRITICAL LIES AND DISTORTIONS OF HISTORY, YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF RACIST SHIT!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Yeah, that's right you little lying racist mutherfucking prick! You keep posting your facepalm pic and pretending like you are telling the truth! Keep bumping this thread and pretending sugar won't melt in your lily white racist mutherfucking NORTHERN mouth!

 

[Jarod]

 

[Jarod]

We have a MELTDOWN folks, we finally have MELTDOWN!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Come on you little racist fuctard! Bump the goddamn thread again! I see you online! Tell us all how Congress outlawed desegregation YEARS before New Jersey Amusement parks blatantly segregated blacks from whites! Tell us how the LAW prohibited the segregation of blacks from white restaurants in New York and Illinois YEARS after the fact! Tell us how YOUR America was against segregation while it was LYNCHING blacks for bumping into white women in elevators up north! Tell us how Congress stood tall against segregation and for racial equality while black homes were being torched in Omaha!

You go ahead and bump the thread and tell us your fucking RACIST lies over and over again, because if you don't, I WILL!

 

[Jarod]

Ohhh, I so hope I havent ruined your weekend!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

We have a MELTDOWN folks, we finally have MELTDOWN!

No, what we have is YOU, a racist mutherfucking DENIALIST! Someone who wants to claim something is a fact that simply ISN'T a fact, and contradicts what history shows to be the case!

 

[Jarod]

You are the one who says that those who wrote and voted for and campaigned on the Desegration act of 1875 were for segregation!

 

[Jarod]

Look at the hissy fit you threw over the past 10 or so posts..


I can just see you on the ground kicking your feet, and punching your fists and crying at your computer....

How red is your face right now?

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The Lombard Street Riot, sometimes called the Abolition Riots was a three-day race riot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1842.[1][2] The riot was the last in a 13-year period marked by frequent racial attacks in the city.[3][4] It started on Lombard Street, between Fifth and Eighth streets.

In the early decades of the 19th century, there were significant increases in the city's African-American population as large numbers of freed and fugitive slaves joined other immigrants in Philadelphia. During the twenty-five years prior to the run of riots, the city's African American population grew more than 50%. At the same time, there were increasing numbers of Irish immigrants, who were also separated from the larger society by their generally rural backgrounds, as well as by their Catholic religion. Given European political and religious tensions and the British occupation of Ireland, there had long been strong anti-Catholic feeling among many American Protestants.[3]

During the years immediately before the riots, there were periodic outbreaks of racial, ethnic and religious violence among Irish Catholics, German Protestants, African Americans and even pacifist Quakers. These were the result of social and economic competition, especially between Irish Catholics and African Americans, who were generally at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Many Irish refused to work on labor teams with African Americans, adding to the difficulties of both groups in getting work.[2][3]

On the morning of August 1, 1842, a parade was held by over 1,000 members of the black Young Men's Vigilant Association on Philadelphia's Lombard Street between Fifth and Eighth Streets in commemoration of the end of slavery in the British West Indies.

As the paraders neared Mother Bethel Church, they were attacked by a mob of Irish Catholics.

Requests to the Mayor and police for protection initially led to the arrest of several of the victims and none of the rioters. Over three days of attacks, the Second African American Presbyterian Church, the abolitionist Smith's Hall and numerous homes and public buildings were looted and burned, many of them destroyed. The mayor had credible evidence of a plan to burn several local churches, which he ignored.

Eventually, as the rioting began to quell, the local militia was brought in to restore order.[2][3]

Afterward, the mayor refused to arrest most of those known to have led the riot. Of those arrested by the militia, most were found not guilty or otherwise released. The three or four who were convicted received only light sentences.[5]

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The East St. Louis Riot (May and July 1917) was an outbreak of labor and racially motivated violence against blacks that caused an estimated 100 deaths and extensive property damage in the United States industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois, located on the Mississippi River. It was the worst incidence of labor-related violence in 20th century American history,[1] and one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. It gained national attention.[2] The local Chamber of Commerce called for the resignation of the Police Chief. At the end of the month, ten thousand people marched in silent protest in New York City over the riots, which contributed to the radicalization of many.

In 1917, the United States had a strong economy boosted by World War I. Because many workers were being recruited for the war, firms also had jobs for African Americans, but labor competition meant that white unions kept out black workers. In addition, industries in St. Louis and East St. Louis were unsettled by strikes. Owners hired blacks as strikebreakers and added to the division among the workers.[3] Blacks had begun the Great Migration out of the South to St. Louis, among other northern and midwestern cities, for work and better living opportunities, as well as an escape from lynchings.

Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), happened to be in New Orleans on a lecture tour in April. He discovered that Louisiana farmers and the Board of Trade addressed Mayor Mollman of East St. Louis when he visited them that same week in April in New Orleans, and asked for his help in discouraging blacks from migrating to the North. That spring blacks were arriving in St. Louis at the rate of 2,000 per week. [4] The farmers worried about losing their labor force.

Many African Americans went to work at the Aluminum Ore Company and the American Steel Company in East St. Louis. Some whites feared job security and maintaining wages in relation to this new competition. They resented the newcomers who came from a different, rural culture. Tensions between the groups escalated on rumors of black men and white women fraternizing at a labor meeting on May 28.[5][6]

Three thousand white men gathered downtown, and started to attack African Americans. They destroyed buildings and beat people. The governor of the state called in National Guard, who prevented further rioting that day. Rumors circulated about fears of an organized attack from African Americans.[5] Conditions eased somewhat for a few weeks.

On July 1, an 18-year-old black man was attacked by a white and shot him. Other whites came by to shoot back. When police came to investigate, the black man who had been attacked returned fire, thinking the police were the earlier attackers. He killed two police officers.[5][7]

On July 2, thousands of white spectators who saw the police's bloodstained automobile marched to the black section of town and started rioting. After cutting the hoses of the fire department, the rioters burned entire sections of the city and shot inhabitants as they escaped the flames.[5] Claiming that "Southern niggers deserve[d] a genuine lynching,"[8] they lynched several blacks. Guardsmen were called in, but several accounts reported that they joined in the rioting rather than stopping it.[9][10] Others joined in, including allegedly "ten or fifteen young girls about 18 years old, [who] chased a negro woman at the Relay Depot at about 5 o'clock. The girls were brandishing clubs and calling upon the men to kill the woman."[5][11]

The police chief estimated that 100 blacks had been killed.[12] The renowned journalist Ida B. Wells reported in The Chicago Defender that 40-150 black people were killed during July in the rioting in East St. Louis.[10][13] Six thousand blacks were left homeless after their neighborhood was burned. The ferocious brutality of the attacks and the failure of the authorities to protect innocent lives contributed to the radicalization of many blacks in St. Louis and the nation.[14]

On July 6 representatives of the Chamber of Commerce met with the mayor to demand the resignation of the Police Chief and Night Police Chief, or radical reform. They were outraged about the rioting and accused the mayor of having allowed a "reign of lawlessness." In addition to the riot's taking the lives of too many innocent people, mobs had caused extensive property damage. The Southern Railway Company's warehouse was burned, with over 100 car loads of merchandise, at a loss to the company of over $500,000; a white theatre valued at over $100,000 was also destroyed.[15]

In New York City on July 28, ten thousand black people marched down Fifth Avenue in silent protest about the East St. Louis riots. They carried signs that highlighted protests about the riots. The march was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and groups in Harlem. Women and children were dressed in white; the men were dressed in black.[16]
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The Duluth Lynchings occurred on June 15, 1920, when three black circus workers were attacked and lynched by a mob in Duluth, Minnesota. Rumors had circulated among the mob that six African Americans had raped a teenage girl. A physician's examination subsequently found no evidence of rape or assault.[2][3]

The killings shocked the country, particularly for their having occurred in the northern United States.[4] In 2003, the city of Duluth erected a memorial for the murdered workers.

During and immediately following World War I, a large population of African Americans emigrated from the South to the North and Midwest in search of job opportunities. The predominantly white Midwest perceived the black migrant laborers as a threat to their employment, as well as to their ability to negotiate pay rates. US Steel, for instance, the most important regional employer, addressed labor concerns by leveraging African American laborers, migrants from the South.[2]

This racial antagonism erupted into race riots across the North and Midwest in 1919; this period of widespread flourishes of violence became known as the Red Summer of 1919. Even after the riots subsided, racial relations between blacks and whites remained strained and volatile.

On June 14, 1920, the James Robinson Circus arrived in Duluth for a performance. Two local teenagers, Irene Tusken, age 19, and James Sullivan, 18, met at the circus and ended up behind the big top, watching the black workers dismantle the menagerie tent, load wagons and generally get the circus ready to move on. What actual events that transpired between Tusken, Sullivan and the workers are unknown; however, later that night Sullivan claimed that he and Tusken were assaulted, and Tusken was raped by five or six black circus workers. In the early morning of June 15, Duluth Police Chief John Murphy received a call from James Sullivan’s father saying six black circus workers had held the pair at gunpoint and then raped Irene Tusken. John Murphy then lined up all 150 or so roustabouts, food service workers and props-men on the side of the tracks, and asked Sullivan and Tusken to identify their attackers. The police arrested six black men in connection with the rape.

The authenticity of Sullivan's rape claim is subject to skepticism. When Tusken was examined by her physician, Dr. David Graham, on the morning of June 15, he found no physical evidence of rape or assault.[3]

Newspapers printed articles on the alleged rape, while rumors spread throughout the town that Tusken had died as a result of the assault. Through the course of the day, a mob estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 people[3] formed outside the Duluth city jail and broke into the jail to beat and hang the accused. The Duluth Police, ordered not to use their guns, offered little or no resistance to the mob. The mob seized Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie and found them guilty of Tusken's rape in a sham trial. The three men were taken to 1st Street and 2nd Avenue East,[3] where they were lynched by the mob.

The next day the Minnesota National Guard arrived at Duluth to secure the area and to guard the surviving prisoners, as well as nine other men who were suspected. They were moved to the St. Louis County Jail under heavy guard.[3]

The killings made headlines throughout the country. The Chicago Evening Post opined, "This is a crime of a Northern state, as black and ugly as any that has brought the South in disrepute. The Duluth authorities stand condemned in the eyes of the nation." An article in the Minneapolis Journal accused the lynch mob of putting a "stain on the name of Minnesota," stating, "The sudden flaming up of racial passion, which is the reproach of the South, may also occur, as we now learn in the bitterness of humiliation in Minnesota."[3]

The June 15, 1920, Ely Miner reported that just across the bay in Superior, Wisconsin, the acting chief of police declared, "We are going to run all idle negroes out of Superior and they’re going to stay out." How many were forced out is not certain, but all of the blacks employed by a carnival in Superior were fired and told to leave the city.[3]

In its comprehensive site about the lynchings, the Minnesota State Historical Society reports the legal aftermath of the incident:

Two days later on June 17, 1920, Judge William Cant and the grand jury had a difficult time convicting the lead mob members. In the end the grand jury issued thirty-seven indictments for the lynching mob and twenty-five were given out for rioting and twelve for the crime of murder in the first degree. Some of the people were indicted for both. But only three people would end up being convicted for rioting. Seven men were indicted for rape. For five of the indicted men, charges were dismissed. The remaining two, Max Mason and William Miller, were tried for rape. William Miller was acquitted, while Max Mason was convicted and sentenced to serve seven to thirty years in prison.[3]

Mason served a prison sentence in Stillwater State Prison of only four years from 1921 to 1925 on the condition that he would leave the state.

No one was ever convicted for the murder of Isaac McGhie, Elmer Jackson and Elias Clayton.
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On March 6, 1863 the city of Detroit, Michigan experienced its first riot. At the time, it was reported as “the bloodiest day that ever dawned upon Detroit.”[1]

While not as famous or destructive as riots later in Detroit’s history, the riot of 1863 was certainly a momentous occasion for the city of Detroit.[2] The casualties of the day included at least two innocent people dead, a multitude of others—-mostly African-American—-mercilessly beaten, 35 buildings burned to the ground, and a number of other buildings damaged by fire.[3]

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Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-Americans who were lynched on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana. They had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16 year old James Cameron, narrowly escaped lynching thanks to an unidentified participant who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder.[1] A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd; thousands of copies of the photograph were sold.

( to be continued...)

READ IT! YOU LITTLE RACIST DENIALIST MUTHERFUCKER!

 

[Jarod]

Desegregation act of 1875!

Read it!