We have sought to collate a comprehensive record of white mob violence that collectively punished African American communities across the United States. While the thousands of lynchings that occurred were also a form of racial terrorism against the African American community we have generally excluded them from this project. See the Equal Justice Initiative report for full data about lynchings (the New York Times have mapped this here). Where lynchings have been included they are generally crimes which were especially perpetrated to terrorise the wider community. See the lynching in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1927 where the body of the victim was dragged into the middle of the African American area and burnt.

Framed by racism, segregation and white supremacism, these violent incidents cover almost every aspect of American society. Housing, military, labour, unions, politics, business, religion, justice, police enforcement, education, and immigration. Thus we believe this data traces white supremacist efforts to assert dominance and control using terror and violence over a circa 200 year period.

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• http://www.eji.org/files/EJI Lynching in America SUMMARY.pdf
• http://www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/african-americans.html
• http://abhmuseum.org/2013/02/what-is-the-black-holocaust/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Racially_motivated_violence_against_African_Americans

Stoked and goaded by Spurger and others, hundreds of Anglo citizens from all over Anderson County converged on Slocum armed with pistols, shotguns and rifles. That morning, near Saddlers Creek, they fired on three African-Americans headed to feed their cattle, killing 18-year-old Cleveland Larkin and wounding 15-year-old Charlie Wilson. The third, 18-year-old Lusk Holly, escaped, only to be shot at again later in the day while he, his 23-year-old brother Alex and their friend William Foreman, were fleeing to Palestine. Alex was killed and Lusk was wounded. Foreman fled and disappeared. Lusk pretended to be dead so a group of 20 white men would not finish him off.

White mobs marched through the area shooting black folks at will. A 30-year-old African-American named John Hays was found dead in a roadway and 28-year-old Sam Baker was shot to death in front of his house. When three of the Baker’s relatives (Dick Wilson, Jeff Wilson and a 70-year-old man named Ben Dancer) attempted to sit up with his body the following night, they, too, were gunned down in cold blood. According to an August 1 report in the Galveston Daily News, bloodstains at the residence indicated they were shot while relaxing on the front porch and then dragged inside.

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“Men were going about killing Negroes as fast as they could find them,” Black told the New York Times. “And, so far as I was able to ascertain, without any real cause.”

“These Negroes have done no wrong that I can discover,” Black continued. “I don’t know how many [whites] were in the mob, but there may have been 200 or 300. Some of them cut telephone wires. They hunted the Negroes down like sheep.”

According to the local law enforcement leaders on hand at the time, eight casualties was a conservative number. Sheriff Black and others insisted there were at least a dozen more and some reports suggest there may have been dozens more. Frank Austin, the president of the First State Bank of Frankston, reported the death of an African-American named Anderson Austin near Slocum, but it was never investigated. Abe Wilson—who Houston County Justice of the Peace Pence Singletary identified as the African-American who had been put in charge of the local road improvements—disappeared and was never heard from again. Some witnesses counted 22 casualties. Elkhart native F. M. Power said there were 30 “missing negroes.” Slocum-area resident Luther Hardeman claimed to have knowledge of 18 African-American casualties, and that’s the original number reported by the Galveston Daily News and the New York Times (on July 31), but the body count seemed to shrink as the massacre’s publicity grew. A reliable fatality count was impossible, especially with the perpetrators likely covering their tracks. And the deceased weren’t the only folks becoming scarce; the surviving African-Americans began to disappear as well.

It was one thing to return to your home or your daily routine after the odd murder or infrequent lynching of one of your friends, neighbors or relatives—black folks in the south were not unused to that. But a localized campaign of genocide, where the executioners surrounded you and cut phone lines to prevent you from getting help? That was not something Slocum-area African-Americans could easily relegate to a list of bygones.

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When the Grand Jury findings were reported on August 17, several hundred witnesses had been examined. Though eleven men were initially arrested, seven were finally indicted, but only six were named—and they were only accused in the murders of five of the identified victims. Defendants Reagon McKenzie, T. W. Bailey and Morgan Henry were released without being charged. Jim Spurger was indicted in two cases, B. J. Jenkins in four cases and Curtis Spurger, Steve Jenkins, Isom Garner and Andrew Kirkwood in three cases. The seventh indicted man was not arrested or named; only Kirkwood was immediately granted bail. No one was ever indicted for the deaths of John Hays or Alex Holly.

After the Grand Jury indictments came down, Judge Gardner decided to move the trial for the indicted, identified perpetrators of the Slocum Massacre to Harris County, distrusting the potential jury of peers the defendants might receive in Anderson County. The indictments received no interest in Harris County.

On May 4, 1911, Judge Ned R. Morris of Palestine petitioned the Travis County Court of Criminal Appeals to grant bail for the remaining defendants and it was granted. Eventually, all those charged were released and none of the indictments were ever prosecuted.

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Whether – and to what extent – Dick Rowland and Sarah Page knew each other has long been a matter of speculation. It seems reasonable that they would have least been able to recognize each other on sight, as Rowland would have regularly ridden in Page's elevator on his way to and from the restroom. Others, however, have speculated that the pair might have been lovers – a dangerous and potentially deadly taboo, but not an impossibility... Whether they knew each other or not, it is clear that both Dick Rowland and Sarah Page were downtown on Monday, May 30, 1921 – although this, too, is cloaked in some mystery. On Memorial Day, most – but not all – stores and businesses in Tulsa were closed. Yet, both Rowland and Page were apparently working that day...

What happened next is anyone's guess. After the riot, the most common explanation was that Dick Rowland tripped as he got onto the elevator and, as he tried to catch his fall, he grabbed onto the arm of Sarah Page, who then screamed. It also has been suggested that Rowland and Page had a lovers' quarrel. However, it simply is unclear what happened. Yet, in the days and years that followed, everyone who knew Dick Rowland agreed on one thing: that he would never have been capable of rape.

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Mixolydian said:

Dunno why the stuff won't load right on my phone, but can someone tell me the pindrop for Kansas? I know about the 68 KC riot, but can't get the damn map to load for the one displayed.

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Name: El Dorado race riot
Location: El Dorado, Kansas
Date: 12/12/1916
Fatalities: Unknown
Estimated No. of Refugees: 150+
Narrative/Notes: A white mob 300-strong was reported to be "chasing negroes out of the city." They destroyed black businesses and more than "150 negroes were rounded up and driven from the city."
Source: http://nwspprs.com/1hk5r

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Name: Coffeeville race riot
Location: Coffeeville, Kansas
Date: 18-Mar-1927
Fatalities: 0
Estimated No. of Refugees: Unknown
Narrative/Notes: "1,000 whites attempted to invade the Negro district..guns and ammunition [were stolen from shops]...several Negroes were beaten on the streets" but the attacked was repulsed by gunfire from the African American district. A local cavalry company was deployed to keep the white rioters back.
Source: http://goo.gl/VtrZOb

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psylah said:

Here are the ones for Kansas:





There is nothing listed in Kansas for 1968, suprisingly.

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Mixolydian said:

Many thanks. These aren't covered much.

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The white mob – whose actions were triggered in large part by weeks of sensational newspaper accounts of alleged sex crimes by a "negro fiend" – unleashed a wave of violence that swept over the city for four days.


Violence escalated on the second night, Sunday, July 20, when white mobs sensed the 700-member police department was unwilling or unable to stop them. Blacks were beaten in front of the White House, at the giant Center Market on Seventh Street NW, and throughout the city, where roving bands of whites pulled them off streetcars.

"A mob of sailors and soldiers jumped on the [street]car and pulled me off, beating me unmercifully from head to foot, leaving me in such a condition that I could hardly crawl back home," Francis Thomas, a frail black 17-year-old, said in a statement to the NAACP. Thomas said he saw three other blacks being beaten, including two women. "Before I became unconscious, I could hear them pleading with the Lord to keep them from being killed."


As blacks realized that authorities were not protecting them, many took up arms. More than 500 guns were sold by pawnshops and gun dealers that Monday, when the worst violence occurred. White mobs were met by black mobs up and down the Seventh Street commercial corridor. Black Army veterans took out their old guns; sharpshooters climbed to the roof of the Howard Theatre; blacks manned barricades at New Jersey Avenue and at U Street.

Black men were driving around the city firing randomly at whites. Blacks turned the tables and pulled whites off streetcars. At Seventh and G streets NW, a black rioter emptied his revolver into a crowded streetcar before taking five bullets from police. At 12th and G NW, a 17-year-old black girl barricaded herself in her house and shot and killed an MPD detective. In all, 10 whites and five blacks were killed or mortally wounded that night.

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Mesousa said:

Pretty shocked/Impressed to see there wasn't any in California.

Definitely didnt expect that.

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Late in the evening of September 30, 1919, black sharecroppers were holding a union meeting in a church in Hoop Spur outside of Elaine, Arkansas. Tensions were high and they had posted guards at the door. When two deputized white men and a black trustee pulled into view, shots rang out. Who fired first is still debated, likely unknowable, and perhaps not that important. What is important is what transpired afterwards. One of the white men was killed, the other wounded. The black trustee raced back to Helena, the county seat of Phillips County, and alerted officials. A posse was dispatched and within a few hours hundreds of white men, many of them the "low down" variety, began to comb the area for blacks they believed were launching an insurrection. In the end, five white men and over a hundred African Americans were killed. Some estimates of the black death toll range in the hundreds. Allegations surfaced that the white posse and even U.S. soldiers who were brought in to put down the so called "rebellion" had massacred defenseless black men, women and children. Nearly a hundred blacks were arrested, and in sham trials that lasted no more than a few minutes each, sixty-something black men were sentenced to prison, and twelve were slated for execution. A massive effort on the part of the NAACP and others, including a prominent black attorney in Little Rock, ensued, and by 1925 all the men were free. But planters had established that blacks had best not organize, even within the law, for racism would bring whites of different classes together to put them down.

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Htown said:

Reading about the Slocum Massacre from the sources linked in the interactive map.

Jesus.

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psylah said:

There's a laundry list of other peoples that were oppressed and / or killed on the way out West, but that's a story for another thread.

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Mesousa said:

Definitely, just expected to see some in California.

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Kid Kamikaze10 said:

Stuff like this is why despite being very pro-gun control and wanting it away from the general public, I still plan on getting a gun.

Frankly, if more African Americans communities had legal firearms, less crap like this would happen...


Or at least gun control laws would appear quicker.

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Kid Kamikaze10 said:

Stuff like this is why despite being very pro-gun control and wanting it away from the general public, I still plan on getting a gun.

Frankly, if more African Americans communities had legal firearms, less crap like this would happen...


Or at least gun control laws would appear quicker.

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An example of the need for self-defense to enable substantial change in the Deep South took place in early 1965. Black students picketing the local high school were confronted by hostile police and fire trucks with hoses. A car of four Deacons emerged and, in view of the police, calmly loaded their shotguns. The police ordered the fire truck to withdraw. This was the first time in the 20th century, as Lance Hill observes, “an armed black organization had successfully used weapons to defend a lawful protest against an attack by law enforcement.”

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“Men were going about killing Negroes as fast as they could find them,” Black told the New York Times. “And, so far as I was able to ascertain, without any real cause.”

“These Negroes have done no wrong that I can discover,” Black continued. “I don’t know how many [whites] were in the mob, but there may have been 200 or 300. Some of them cut telephone wires. They hunted the Negroes down like sheep.”

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Kid Kamikaze10 said:

Stuff like this is why despite being very pro-gun control and wanting it away from the general public, I still plan on getting a gun.

Frankly, if more African Americans communities had legal firearms, less crap like this would happen...


Or at least gun control laws would appear quicker.

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