Racism has played a tremendous part in the history of the United States and is still a common problem in today’s society. Even though many races have endured racial discrimination, African Americans have experienced by far the worst forms of discrimination and hatred towards them. In the early 1920s, a wave of violent racial conflicts against African Americans began to emerge and was known as one of the most socially violent times of American history. During this time period, African Americans had to withstand Jim Crow laws, race riots, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. (Lecture Notes) Twenty years prior to the existence of Jim Crow laws, African American men were granted “full citizenship and equality” under the fourteenth amendment. (Lecture …show more content…
There were over twenty five riots between the months of April and October alone. One of the major riots of this time was the Chicago riot. An African American child was swimming in Lake Michigan and ended up on the whites’ side of the lake. Whites became infuriated and began throwing stones at the child. African Americans were enraged when they saw what had happened and attacked the whites. This riot lasted for a couple of days until the U.S. Marshalls were called in. An average of forty people was killed and over five hundred were injured due to this riot. (Lecture Notes) Another major riot that took place during this time was the Tulsa riot. In 1921, a white elevator operator claimed that an African American man had assaulted her and without any further investigating, the man was arrested. Whites were very outraged about the elevator incident and began to act on their anger. They set African Americans’ homes on fire and vandalized their businesses nearly destroying the entire community. As for African Americans, they were all imprisoned for over a week. An average of three hundred people was killed and over eight hundred were treated for injuries. …show more content…
Everything that happened during that time paved the way for how society is today. If those events had never occurred, the world we know today probably would not exist. Even though racial discrimination is not as extreme as it once was, it still has significant impact on society
Another major event that would solidify just how much disgust people had was when the school was shut down for a year, in an attempt to show how dedicated they were to stopping the integration the schools were closed down, which not only affected the black students, but the white students as well. Thousands of kids now had no school to go to which was detrimental to
The Tulsa Race Riot was the destruction of Black Wall Street in 1921, which was caused by an allegation of a white woman accusing a black man of rape. It lasted from May 31st to June 1st. The Tulsa Race Riot caused plenty of damage from “dozens of deaths [and] hundreds of injuries” to the destruction of Black Wall Street leading to unemployment of the black community (Hoberock n. pag.). An estimated property loss was over $2.3 million. This was an important event in our Nation’s history because “it teaches how far hatred [and violence] can go” (Hoberock n. pag.).
Accounts vary from 40 to 150 as to the number killed. Approximately 6,000 blacks are left homeless after their neighborhoods are burned. As for Kate, this day is vividly
Most of these squads were forced to use invasive tactics to control the riots bringing havoc to the city. The police were forced to use aggressive actions which resulted in many local African Americans sustaining mild and severe injuries. Although, most of the actions taken by police were deemed necessary from a general consensus by outside viewers looking in. This was also the cause for some of the controversy witnessed later on across America. The vigorous debate that was triggered in the United States regarding the relationship between law enforcement agencies, and the American citizens escalated.
The major role played by African American women in the reconstruction era is revised and illustrated in Tera W. Hunter’s To Joy my Freedom and Elsa Barkley Brown’s article Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom. Both documents analyze the participation and involvement of black women in social and political activities inside of their communities. To Joy my freedom, written by Tera W. Hunter provides an inner look into the lives and strives of African American women – mainly working class – living in Atlanta between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in the middle of one of the most belligerent environments created in the era of Reconstruction.
In the 19th century, slavery and the Reconstruction was a sore subject for the South. Reconstruction forged civil rights for African-Americans, but once the North’s influenced waned in the South, the South terrorized African-Americans and blocked them from accessing their newfound rights. While Reconstruction may have brought civil rights, those rights were quickly squashed by the South’s racism. Even after certain freedoms were securely gained, every new attempt to make African-Americans equal to the white populace was contested. A large group of people were happy to see slavery ended and civil rights rise.
Hardly any lynchings led to mass expulsions of African Americans from their communities, until the Forsyth County Race Riots of 1912. The Forsyth County Race Riots of 1912 were a tragic manifestation of deep-seated racial tensions, fueled by white supremacist ideology and a desire to maintain racial segregation. Through an analysis of the cause, event,
Finally the tension exploded, white people went into black neighborhoods to attack the black people starting the 1943 Detroit Riots. This started a race war between the black and white citizens of Detroit. The riots lasted about 2 days, when it finally ended 24
This was supposed to mark the end of slavery and the beginning of freedom for black people. In no way did this mean equality or even equity between black and white people would exist. The inequity between black and white people didn’t suddenly come to an abrupt ending. White people still had superiority over black people and the law was still in their favor. Not to mention, people were still extremely prejudice.
The riot was demonized in ways no Cincinnati riot was before, and the reputation of the city was in ruins. The newspaper The Democracy ran an article calling the riots “-the most dastardly and villainous acts ever perpetrated in any community.” This juxtaposes the riot of 1841 as the black community is forced to justify the defense of their community to the city of Cincinnati as German immigrants are praised for their resilience and ability to stand against the unjust violence that occurred in 1855. Even the London News found the riot appalling by and published a depiction of the destruction that occurred. Few other than
Shortly after the verdict had been released, the first riot began in the intersection between Florence and Normandie avenues. Company and supermarket buildings were looted and set on fire. Hardly any light-skinned people could pass through the mob of 100 African Americans without being attacked. Only around 12 people in the mob were throwing rocks and shouting racial slurs - everyone else was cheering them on or simply watching. Eventually, the mob grew to around 200 people, all fueled by revenge and free alcohol looted from a nearby alcohol store.
Refugee camps were established, families slept in makeshift tents of quilts and material that was brought with them from their houses. Even though the African Americans were also devastated by the flood, they were forced to be a part of the relief efforts and had to clean up flooded areas. The National Guard was called to patrol the refugee camps but soon began to rob, assult, raoe and even murder African Americans that were held on the levee. More than one African American man was shot for refusing to work. This caused a huge uproar and rebellion and soon Greenville was at a standoff.
Racial Discrimination was very prevalent during the 1930’s. The line between caucasians and african americans was relevant in the way the african american community was treated in the south. The african american community had very little to no rights, which was strongly represented in the Powell V. Alabama court cases. On March 25th , 1931 Nine African American males jumped on a empty freight train heading to Scottsboro.
The defeat caused major rioting due to Jack Johnson being African American beating a white top heavyweight champion. The riots caused by the win of Jack Jefferies had hundreds of African Americans to be brutally mistreated and seriously injured. There are records shown that there were only 11-26 people killed during this riot. And so this influenced racial tension already believed to be existing in society. Before 1919, when World War 1, ending in the late 1918s the African Americans who had risked their lives fighting for freedom, and equal rights as the whites received the rights they deserved under the law.
In Mark Bauerlein’s, Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906, the political and social events leading to the riot are analyzed. The center of events took place around and inside Atlanta in the early 1900’s. The riot broke out on the evening of September 22, 1906. Prior to the riot in 1906, elections were being held for a new Georgia governor. Bauerlein organizes his book in chronological order to effectively recount the events that led to the riot.