Negrophobia A Race Riot In Atlanta Sparknotes

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. He explains political campaigns, newspaper propaganda, and a fear of black takeover were responsible for the riot. An important issue in the South during the early 1900’s was maintaining white supremacy. With Georgia, focusing on Atlanta, being labeled as the most progressive city for black and

Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Prior to the riot, African Americans had listened to Washington’s advice. Washington believed that African Americans should be sublevel to whites and focus all their time working diligently and progressing in blue-collar society. This would allow whites to feel supreme, but also allow African Americans to make something of themselves and provide for their families. Washington wanted blacks to be educationally ready for the argument of equality. These ideas would later begin to deteriorate in the black communities due to Jim Crow laws, racial discrimination, and eventually the race riot. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. After the riot in Atlanta, many African American looked to the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois. Bois, who help find the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wanted to force equality for African Americans by all ways possible. He believed this would be a faster approach than Washington’s ideas. His can-do attitude is shown after the riot when African Americans begin to arm themselves and fight back. The author focuses on these two to prove the point that the African American people, while able to make decisions for themselves, were heavily influenced by the media, fear, and black leaders of their