The Controversy: The Elaine Race Riot Of 1919

The Detroit race riot of 1967 was one the most destructive and violent riots of the 159 race riots that occurred during the “Long Hot Summer.” For five straight days civilians fought the police, resulting in 43 deaths, 1,189 injuries, 7,200 arrests, and over 2,500 lootings. Fifty years later there are still visible results of the riot, and the event remains a source of reflection for Detroit citizens. Asides from the building damage and violence, the riots affected various aspects of Detroit's culture, including the Motown enterprise, which was producing chart-topping music that influenced listeners across the globe. As a genre of music that was known as “The Sound of Young America” in the 1960s, studying the Motown sound before and after the riots can provide insight into Detroit citizens’ mindset.

The Civil War was fought over the “race problem,” to determine the place of African-Americans in America. The Union won the war and freed the slaves. However, when President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, a hopeful promise for freedom from oppression and slavery for African-Americans, he refrained from announcing the decades of hardship that would follow to obtaining the new won “freedom”. Over the course of nearly a century, African-Americans would be deprived and face adversity to their rights. They faced something perhaps worse than slavery; plagued with the threat of being lynched or beat for walking at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the addition of the 14th and

White supremacy in Tulsa during 1917 to 1921 was soaring, white citizen of Tulsa thought with events of bombing a wealthy oilman home to the killing of a taxi cab driver that they should have take the law into their own hands. African Americans were terrified in the white citizens actions. African Americans felt that they would not get equal justice with the law, so African Americans had to stand together against white supremacy and challenge their authority. Which leads into the events that start of the Tulsa race riot. Dick Rowland work as a shoe shiner on Main Street. There were no toilet facilities for the boot shiners, so the owner of the shine parlor where Rowland worked arranged for the employees to use the restroom across the street on the top floor. So the morning of “May 31, 1921” Rowland went across the street to us the bathroom. Dick Rowland got onto the elevator to go to the top floor of the building. Minutes later the young lady ran out of the elevator with scratches on her hands,

Urban Blacks were also encounter with extreme racial violence in neighborhoods and at work. Different ethnic groups of new immigrants obtained power and used conflict as a strategy of diminishing urban Blacks power level. They began blocking Urban Black workers going to work throughout new immigrant’s neighborhoods. Race riots have played a crucial role in the social establishment of race, prejudice, and discrimination across the United States. Race riots uncovered fundamental tensions in societies experiencing swift technological and economic changes. In 1920, there were many race riots and other violence in many places, such as Red Summer Race Riots of 1919 and the St. Louis Riot of 1917 that took place during the segregation in the South and the Black urban migration to the North. These race riots were response to the reality that Urban Blacks were carrying on a powerful struggle against White supremacy. During race riots, Urban Blacks lived through a renewed flow of riots, massacres, and racial terrorism.

Have you ever said that you wanted to start a riot, and people have responded by saying that’s not funny? Well here’s why they say that. On May 31, 1921 a riot occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It all happened when Dick Rowland (an African American) was accused of raping a white woman named Sarah Page in an elevator, when Rowland had tripped and grabbed her arm by accident. A salesclerk overheard the scream and called the police. Rowland was arrested. There were angry whites that were outside the courtroom protesting for Rowland to be lynched. The violence started for some people on May 31, 1921 and went on until June 1, 1921. 1265 homes, dozens of office buildings, restaurants, churches and schools had been destroyed during this

The Tulsa Riot of 1921 was a tragic racial riot that resulted in the periodic destruction of Greenwood, a neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nicknamed “Little Africa”, Greenwood was described as a vibrant community, and was built up by African Americans. This community, however, was completely destroyed by a massive mob of white men, whose anger stemmed from rape allegations of an African American man. Before and after the Tulsa Riot occurred, African Americans of the Greenwood community faced social issues due to the prevalence of racism among white men across the nation.

According to one researcher “In 1900 there were three black families and five white families on his block” (James 106) this later became a race war. The race riot on July 3, 1903, Robert Lee was shot and killed by an Evansville police officer named Louis Massey. Groups of whites threatened to “kill every Negro in town” (James 106) after going to the county jail leading to a eleven deaths and five injured. Many black people left the city during this time. The most serious race riot broke out when Cox was only seven years

There are five themes that persist throughout American history. The five themes are mission, manifest destiny, industrialization, imperialism, and race. Racism has been an issue throughout American history. Only in recent years has the problem been resolved, but even now there is still some issues. Some private groups are still against some races.

The Chicago Race Riots of 1919 helped to further show how African Americans are looked as inferior, not just within the citizens of the United States, but the Congress and criminal justice system. White and black beaches were separated by an invisible line; the black beach on 25th street and whites on 29th street. The story of Eugene Williams swimming on the beach worsened after a white police officer, Dan Callahan, refused to intervene or arrest the group of white men responsible for his death, in turn starting the deadliest racial violence in Chicago history. The riot lasted a week with protestors full of rage mostly on the South side with white gangs attacking isolated blacks and blacks attacking isolated whites.

The Chicago race riots of 1919 were one of the darkest moments in our nations history. But something so terrible does not just happen over night, in fact the reason for this riot began with the Great Migration around 1910. The Great Migration was the relocation of more than 6 million African-Americans from the rural south into the urban north. Of those 6 million African-Americans traveling to the north 500,000 of them went to Chicago 's South Side. The African-American population thought they were going to a better situation by escaping the apartheid practices of Jim Crow. However they were taken advantage of and seen as new competition to the northern white population. Nine years later during the summer of 1919, two years after World War I ended, the American society suffered from a racial tension that it has never seen before. The racial tension brewed from the demobilization of black and white

The Elaine Race Riot can be even said as the Elaine massacre that had taken place on September 30, 1919, in Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta. The fight started when around 100 African Americans, commonly black farmers on the farms of white landlords joined a consultation of the Progressive Farmers and the Household Union of America at a church in Hoop Spur, the Phillips County that was three miles north of Elaine. The assembly was managed by Robert Hill; he was the organizer of the Progressive Farmers and the Household Union of America. The main goal of the meeting was that one of the numerous black sharecroppers in the Elaine area during the former months was achieving better payments for their cotton crops from the white farm owners who conquered the area during the Jim Crow’s era.

killed than the amount of people being killed in the Chicago race riots. Fighting was happening all over our country. We were killing one another because of the hatred towards racism. “The Red Summer of 1919 refers to a series of race riots that took place between May and October of that year. Although riots occurred in more than thirty cities throughout the United States, the bloodiest events were in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Elaine, Ark.” (Retreived from the About Education website : http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/segregation/p/The-Red-Summer-Of-1919.htm). The riots lasted for about 5 months in 1919. That is almost half of the year of killing, shooting, and fighting. There wasn’t any sign of peace. All that needed to happen was for a law to be set of not making any type of racial decision or comment towards anyone. Twenty-five race riots occurring in one summer is a case that had to be solved quickly. Nobody was willing to take action like Martin Luther King did in the 1950’s and 60’s towards stopping segregation and racism. (Retreived from the biography website : http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086).

Pre-existing racism in Tulsa was the foundation on which all the other causes of the riot were built upon. Wide-spread segregation was still common in America at that time and it was accepted by many in the North and South that whites were inherently superior to blacks. These views were particularly strong in the South, where emancipated blacks were seen as a threat and scourge to white Southern culture, a culture which was utterly dominated by whites and where blacks were oppressed with no hope of equal protection under the law, equal representation, etc. This was also the case in Tulsa in the early 1900s. Blacks were segregated against by the white residents and as a consequence formed their own community, called Greenwood, on the north side of the Frisco Railroad tracks, which was heralded by

In the Journal of the Elaine Race Riots, I got to know the basic criticism that was for almost all the Race Riots that had taken place. However, the sophisticated social, economic and racial analysis of the Racial Riots was relatively new on the scholarly scene. It was, therefore, not surprising comparatively to work that was been undertaken. The problems the poor Negroes faced during the 1919’s. The Negroes had worked hard to raise the cotton crops but there was some trouble regarding the settlements for the cotton crops. The white landlords and the sharecroppers never went along with each other after the cotton was ready to be sold out.

On 1 May 1866 in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, an altercation between black Union soldiers and Memphis police officers started a chain reaction that eventually brought about what has come to be known as the Memphis Riots of 1866. The group of amicably intoxicated soldiers reacted negatively when told by a small group of officers to break up their party, and although no one was seriously injured, the situation quickly escalated to the point where shots were fired on both sides (Carden 2). This incident, however, was not the cause of the Memphis Riots. Instead, I will argue that the altercation merely served as the spark to set a fire to a whole mess of kindling made of economic, political, and social twigs and branches, which was already in place long before the actual events of the Memphis Riots.