What I Believe Happened During The Memphis Race Riot

In Harlem Runs Wild, Claude McKay depicts the Harlem Riot of 1935 as merely "…a gesture of despair of a bewildered, baffled, and disillusioned people." (McKay 224) The Harlem Riot of 1935 was spontaneous and unpremeditated. It was not a race riot in the sense of physical conflict between white and non-white groups as there was little direct violence to white persons. McKay states, "The mass riot in Harlem was not a race riot." (McKay 221) Its distinguishing feature was the persons' attack upon property rather than persons, and resentment against whites that, while exploiting Negroes, denied them an opportunity to work. Communists did not instigate the riot, though they

This paper is going to present the view from the black population of Tulsa at the time of the riots. Events took place prior to the riot and created more tension to the race debate. These will need to be explained to set the tensions that led to the burning homes and brutal violence taken on the black citizens.

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was the culmination of racial tensions both endemic in American society as a whole in the period, and certain tensions peculiar to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921, Greenwood and its African American population became the outlet for these often violent tensions seething among Tulsa’s white population. The following paper seeks to shed some further understanding on what motivated and pushed the whites of Tulsa, Oklahoma to such a violent, extreme reaction during the riot.

The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was a dark time in the history of Oklahoma. It all began with a simple misunderstanding, but had catastrophic consequences. Homes and businesses were destroyed, many African Americans and whites were killed, and Tulsa had lost its soul. In the beginning Oklahoma was just a young state, and Tulsa was just a young town, trying to find its place in the world. The discovery of Oil quickly turned Tulsa into one of

They did not appreciate Charles and his actions; this lead to a riot. A large white mob was formed where the two police men were injured wanted to end Robert Charles’s life because of what he has done. They wanted to be killed without being given a trial. The mob consisted of people from Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, and other surround states. On July 23, word had gotten out that Charles was killed. This was not the case and Charles was very much still alive and hiding from the police. Many African Americans who were in trouble, were running and hiding from the police at this time. Many people mistook Charles for those people. After the people found out that Charles was not dead, they were angry again. The mob roamed through the city trashing and terrorizing New Orleans’s African American community. They stormed the African American business district only to find it deserted. Over the course of three days, the angry mob took the innocent lives of several African Americans and injured several more. By having these riots, they people hoped to restore some justice in the

One of the main reasons that white supremacy erupted at the turn of the twentieth century was the lack of protection for blacks against individual forces of power, typically with ideals centered in white superiority. An event that proves that the federal government and the state government did not sanction any protection for blacks and other minorities is the violence in the black neighborhood of Wilmington, which is part of the 1898 white supremacy campaign (Lecture 14 Slide 11). “In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the offices of the local black newspaper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents — the precise number isn’t known — and banished many successful black citizens and their so-called “white nigger” allies” (Tyson 1). This act of violence took away the value of black bodies in this respective communities and implanted blacks with the idea that their lives are expendable. It is hinted that Wilmington

Imagine forbidden to eat in the same restaurant, study in the same school, pray in the same church, or seek medical treatment in the same hospital as a white. This was Black America in the South during the Jim Crow era. Living under a code of laws created to separate the races and maintain a segregated society. The end of World War I brought a lot of change. Black troops were returning home from Western Europe determined to claim the same democracy for which they had fought. The continuous migration of blacks to the north led to labor conflicts. For the first time, whites had to compete with blacks for jobs. Whites turned their anger and frustration on black neighborhoods spurring racial conflict and spreading terror and fear nationwide. The Red Summer of 1919 featured riots occurring in numerous cities including Washington, DC; Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Indianapolis, Indiana. The Elaine Race Riot of 1919, also known as The Elaine Massacre, was the deadliest racial conflict in Arkansas history and possibly even the United States. A shooting incident occurred while a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and

We have always had racial riots since the beginning of American history, from the Stono Rebellion to Charlottesville. Each riot has a reason behind it, for Stono, it was a tribute to the resist of African Americans to the oppressive system of slavery. During the lynching

Around 1300 black sanitation workers walked off the job in attempt to protest. Memphis’s mayor at the time, Henry Loeb had declared the strike illegal and refused to meet with the black protest leaders.

Eventually, the occurrence of the Orangeburg Massacre led to the racial integration of Orangeburg and many other parts of South Carolina. If the Orangeburg Massacre had not occurred, South Carolina might not have become the racially equal society it is today. However, not everybody agreed with the change that was being brought as a result of the event. Many caucasians at the time attempted to cover the incident up, and to blame whatever could not be hidden on the protesters. Nevertheless, civil rights protesters were not going to let the killing of their fellow pupils be in vain. The students of Orangeburg demanded the punishment of highway patrolmen and other law enforcers on scene the night of the massacre. “They wished to see the officers punished to the fullest extent of the law so that justice could be served to the families of the three young men who were killed” (Pulaski 10). But, as an attempt to hide the massacre, many white-owned newspaper companies either simply refused to report the event, or blamed the massacre on the protesters that participated that night (3 Negroes 1). “A skirmish line of highway patrolmen and city police returned the fire of demonstrating college students last night” (3 Negroes 1). After a scant two weeks, no white-owned newspaper business covered the event at all.

The topic of police brutality is very popular in the media today. According to CNN’s Eliott C. McLaughlin, “It feels like every week, a name is added to the list: another man, often black and unarmed, has died at the hands of police.” The Huffington Post even has a whole section of its website dedicated to police brutality. It includes a listing of all the recent events of police brutality, violence

The riot between these people was “in protest to the abuses that local white civilians had perpetrated against the soldiers and the lack of concern about those abuses shown by the unit’s commanders.” Although this began in 1917, this was not the end of the riots, but instead, it was just the beginning.

One police chief was fired for neglecting his duty and was taken on trial and found guilty yet he never served any time in prison. Dick Rowland remained safe throughout the entire riot and when it was over he was transported out of the town and any charges that had been pressed against him were dropped and of course he never again returned. Not one charged was filed against the white attackers and sadly all of the proceedings against the insurance companies were looked passed and nothing got done. An attempt to rebuild the city was made but of course whites were not going to let that occur. This riot had even further increased tensions between the whites and black there in Tulsa and the whites wanted nothing more than to be completely segregated from the black people, those of which remained in the city. W. Tate Brady, the founder of Tulsa, OK and KKK member, joined the Tulsa Real Estate Exchange and devised a plan to relocate the blacks of Tulsa further northeast. They also developed new building codes for Greenwood which made it virtually impossible to rebuild because it was so expensive. Luckily these building codes and plans were deemed unconstitutional and were not implemented, but not so luckily the people of Greenwood would receive no compensation, reconstructive ordinances or help in rebuilding their once “Black Wall

In the black walls there was 108 black businesses establishments including forty one shopping stores, two newspaper stands and much more. The white people where recist to the black. The schools in this small town where way better then the white schools. It was named advanced economically than some of the white areas in Tulsa. This event started when a black men went inside a white bathroom and there was drama everywhere, so the white people started to kill black people. They burned down their house and sometimes they burned the black alive. The black started to leave their own home and go live somewhere more safe.

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.