Race Riots Black people need to know about

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The Wilmington Coup d'Etat of 1898, also known as the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898, occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina starting on November 10, 1898 and continued for several days. It is considered a turning point in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics. The event is credited as ushering in an era of severe racial segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. Laura Edwards wrote in Democracy Betrayed (2000), "What happened in Wilmington became an affirmation of white supremacy not just in that one city, but in the South and in the nation as a whole."[1]
Originally described by whites as a race riot (suggesting blacks were at fault), the events are now classified as a coup d'etat, as white Democratic insurgents overthrew the legitimately elected local government.[2][3] A mob of nearly 2000 men attacked the only black newspaper in the state, and persons and property in black neighborhoods, killing an estimated 15 to more than 60 victims.[4]
Two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, two-thirds of which was white, Democratic Party white supremacists illegally seized power and overturned the elected government. Led by Alfred Waddell, who was defeated in 1878 as the congressional incumbent by Daniel L. Russell (elected governor in 1896), more than 2000 white men participated in an attack on the black newspaper, Daily Record, burning down the building. They ran officials and community leaders out of the city, and killed many blacks in widespread attacks, especially destroying the Brooklyn neighborhood. They took photographs of each other during the events. The Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) and federal Naval Reserves, ordered to quell the riot, became involved, using rapid-fire weapons and killing several black men in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Both black and white residents later appealed for help after the coup to President William McKinley, but his administration did not respond, as Governor Russell had not requested aid. After the riot, more than 2,100 blacks left the city permanently, having to abandon their businesses and properties, turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city.

 

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In 1860, before the Civil War, Wilmington was majority black and the largest city in the state, with nearly 10,000 people.[5] Numerous slaves and free blacks worked at the port, in households as domestic servants, and in a variety of jobs as artisans and skilled workers.[5]
After the Battle of Fort Fisher, which the Union won in January 1865, Wilmington was taken by Union troops in February, after they had worked their way through Confederate defenses up the Cape Fear River. Numerous slaves had escaped to Union lines before this, seeking freedom, and some fought with the Union. With its victory in the Battle of Wilmington, the Union completed its blockade of major southern ports. The Confederate General Braxton Bragg had burned tobacco and cotton stores before leaving the city.
With the end of the war, freedmen in many states left plantation and rural areas for towns and cities, not only to seek work but to gain safety by creating black communities without white supervision. Tensions grew in Wilmington and other areas because of a shortage of supplies; Confederate currency had no value and the South was impoverished at the end of the long war.
Federal constitutional amendments had abolished slavery, and granted citizenship and voting rights to freedmen. Adults and children were pursuing education. Freedmen were eager to vote, tending to support the Republican Party that had achieved their freedom.
In North Carolina, state and local races were close, with Republicans winning most of the offices. Their ascendancy to power can be traced to granting the franchise to freedmen, plus the successful formation of a biracial coalition of freedmen, recent black and white migrants from the North, and white Southerners who supported the Union and Reconstruction. Many white Democrats had been embittered since the Confederacy's defeat, and most veterans were armed. Insurgent veterans joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which started in Tennessee but soon had chapters across the South. It generated considerable violence at elections to suppress the black vote, and Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1870. After the KKK was suppressed by the federal government through the Force Act of 1870, new paramilitary groups arose in the South. By 1874, chapters of Red Shirts, a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party, had formed in North Carolina, helping Wade Hampton gain election in 1874 by suppressing the black vote. A Republican governor was elected in 1876, before the end of Reconstruction and withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
In the years that followed, Wilmington, then the largest city in the state, had a majority-black population, which included numerous black professionals and a rising middle class. The Republican Party was biracial in membership. Unlike in many other jurisdictions, blacks in Wilmington gained positions as members of the police force and fire department, as well as elected positions.

Election of 1898
In 1871 Democrats regained control of the state legislature.
After 1875, the white Democratic campaign to reduce voting by freedmen was helped by the Red Shirts, a paramilitary group that openly disrupted Republican and especially black meetings, and intimidated voters to keep them from the polls. The group had started in Mississippi in 1875, and chapters arose in both the Carolinas. In the same period, some 20,000 white men in North Carolina belonged to rifle clubs, who comprised other paramilitary groups. Although Democrats dominated state politics after 1877, both blacks and whites continued to participate in politics and, in the 1890s, the Populists appealed to many former Democratic voters. The last black US Congressman of the 19th century from North Carolina was elected in 1896; another African-American congressman was not elected from the state until the late 20th century, due to disfranchisement of blacks in 1899.
In the 1894 and 1896 elections, North Carolina's Populist Party supported fusion candidates in an alliance with the Republican Party; they won enough votes to gain control of the state government; they were known as the Fusionists. Governor Daniel L. Russell, a Republican was elected in 1896. The Fusionists won the elections and passed a law increasing the franchise for blacks and whites, who were the majority in the state, by decreasing property requirements for voters. Russell was the first Republican elected since 1877.
During the 1898 election, the Democratic Party regained control at the state level, in part due to widespread violence and intimidation of blacks by the Red Shirts, which suppressed black voting. They ran a campaign of regaining white supremacy. Russell was unable to satisfy both the Populist and Republican parties to keep the Fusion coalition viable.[6]
Because Wilmington was a black-majority city, its election of city officers was followed statewide. Groups of four to eight white men had been patrolling every block in the city for weeks before the election.[7] On November 4, 1898, the Raleigh News & Observer noted that,
The first Red Shirt parade on horseback ever witnessed in Wilmington electrified the people today. It created enthusiasm among the whites and consternation among the Negroes. The whole town turned out to see it. It was an enthusiastic body of men. Otherwise it was quiet and orderly.
Despite the Democrats' inflammatory rhetoric in support of white supremacy, and the Red Shirt armed display, voters elected a biracial fusionist government to office in Wilmington on November 8; the mayor and 2/3 of the aldermen were white.
Democratic Party white supremacists, led by Alfred Moore Waddell, who as incumbent had lost his congressional seat to Daniel L. Russell (now governor) in 1878, had organized a secret committee of nine. This committee had planned to replace the government if the Democratic Party candidates lost. During the election campaign, whites had criticized Alexander Manly, owner and editor of Wilmington's Daily Record, the state's only black-owned newspaper, and wanted to close him down.
For some time, Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, had used Wilmington as a symbol for "Negro domination" because of its government, although it was biracial and dominated by a two-thirds white majority. Many newspapers published pictures and stories implying that African-American men were sexually attacking white women in the city. Manly denied such charges, saying the stories represented consensual relationships and suggested "white men [should] be more protective of their women against sexual advances from males of all races."[8] White supremacists publicized his words as a catalyst for violence against the black community.[8]
After the election, whites created a Committee of Twenty-Five, all supremacists, and presented their demands to the Committee of Colored Citizens (CCC), a group of politicians and leaders of the African-American community. Specifically, the whites wanted the CCC to promise to evict Manly and his brother Frank, a co-owner of the paper, from the city. They gave the CCC a deadline of November 10, 1898 to respond. When Waddell and the Committee had not received a response by 7:30 a.m., he gathered a large group of white businessmen and veterans at the Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) armory.[4] By 8:00 a.m., Waddell led the armed group of 1,000-1500 men, organized in military formation, to the Daily Record office, where they destroyed the equipment and burned down the building of the only African-American newspaper in the state. By this time, the crowd had swelled to nearly 2,000 men.[7]

 

[cole phelps]

By this time, Manly, along with many others, had hidden or fled Wilmington for safety. Waddell tried to get the group to return to the Armory and disband, but he lost control, and the armed men turned into a mob. Whites rioted and shot guns, attacking blacks throughout Wilmington but especially in Brooklyn, the majority-black neighborhood.[7] The small patrols were spread out over the city and continued until nightfall. Walker Taylor, of the Secret Nine, was authorized by Governor Russell to command the Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) troops, newly returned from the Spanish-American War, and the federal Naval Reserves, taking them into Brooklyn to quell the "riot". They intimidated both black and white crowds with rapid-fire weapons, but the WLI killed several black men.[7]
Whites drove the opposing political and business leaders from the town. The estimated number of deaths ranges from six to 100, all blacks. Because of incomplete records by the hospital, churches and coroner's office, the number of people killed remains uncertain, but no whites were reported dead. Some whites were wounded. Hundreds of blacks fled the town to take shelter in nearby swamps. After the violence settled, more than 2100 blacks left Wilmington permanently, hollowing out its professional and artisan class and changing the demographics to leave a white majority city.[4]
Waddell and his mob forced the white Republican Mayor Silas P. Wright and other members of the city government (both black and white) to resign. (Their terms would have lasted until 1899). They installed a new city council that elected Waddell to take over as mayor by 4 p.m. that day.[7]
City residents' appeals to President William McKinley for help to recover from the widespread destruction in Brooklyn were met with no response.
Subsequent to Waddell's usurping power, he and his team were elected in March 1899 to city offices. More importantly, that year, the Democratic-dominated state legislators (see North Carolina General Assembly of 1899-1900) passed a constitutional amendment in 1899 to exclude black voters: it required voters to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test (administered by whites) to register to vote, both measures that in practice discriminated against blacks and poor whites. When Democrats had first proposed the measure in 1881, The New York Times estimated that 40,000 black men would be disfranchised by such action in North Carolina. The legislators infringed on the constitutional right to vote, but the US Supreme Court had recently upheld similar measures in a challenge to Mississippi's 1890 constitution. Democrats in other southern states also worked to reduce the black vote, passing disfranchising laws or constitutions following Mississippi's and through 1908.
Once that was done, Democrats passed laws imposing racial segregation of public facilities and Jim Crow. They essentially imposed martial law on African Americans in North Carolina, setting an example that had influence beyond the state's borders. Not until the gains of African-American Civil Rights Movement and after passage of federal laws in the mid-1960s several generations later would most African Americans regain their civil rights in North Carolina and other Southern states.
Hugh MacRae was among the nine conspirators who planned the insurrection. He later donated land outside Wilmington to New Hanover County for a park, which was named for him. In the park stands a plaque in his honor that does not mention his role in the 1898 insurrection. His descendant contributed to the 1998 centennial commemoration.

Election of 1900
In 1900, a second "white supremacy" political campaign cemented the Democrats' domination in the state; they elected Charles B. Aycock as governor. Party agitators used photos suggesting "Negro domination" to raise fears and tensions. The crude strategy, plus the constitutional amendment, had sharply reduced African-American voting, and the Democrats controlled the legislature and governor's office.
The night before the election, Waddell spoke:
You are Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and prepared and you will do your duty…Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns.[9]
The Democratic Party won by a landslide.

 

[cole phelps]

The Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 was a mass civil disturbance in Atlanta, Georgia, USA which began the evening of September 22 and lasted until September 24, 1906. It was characterized at the time by Le Petit Journal and other media outlets as a " Racial Massacre of Negroes ".An estimated 25 to 40 African-Americans were killed along with 2 confirmed European Americans. The main cause was the rising tension between whites and blacks as a result of competition for jobs, black desire for civil rights, Reconstruction, and the gubernatorial election of 1906.
Atlanta was considered to be a prime example of how whites and blacks could live together in harmony; however, with the end of the Civil War an increased tension between black wage-workers and the white elite began. These tensions were further exacerbated by increasing rights for blacks, which included the right to vote. With these increased rights, African-Americans began entering the realm of politics, establishing businesses and gaining notoriety as a social class in the eyes of the white population. These newly acquired African-American rights and status brought increased competition between blacks and whites for jobs and heightened class distinctions.
These tensions came to a boil with the gubernatorial election of 1906 in which M. Hoke Smith and Clark Howell competed for the Democratic nomination. Both candidates were looking to find ways to disenfranchise black voters because they felt that the black vote could throw the election to the other candidate. Hoke Smith was a former publisher of the Atlanta Journal and Clark Howell was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Both candidates used their influence to incite white voters and help spread the fear that whites may not be able to maintain the current social order. These papers and others attacked saloons and bars that were run and frequented by black citizens. These "dives", as whites called them, were said to have nude pictures of women, some of whom were white. Competing for circulation, the Atlanta Georgian and the Atlanta News began publishing stories about white women being molested and raped by black men. These allegations were reported multiple times and were largely false accusations.

 

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The Riot
On the afternoon of Saturday, September 22, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults, none of which were ever substantiated, upon local white women. Extra editions of these accounts, sensationalized with lurid details and inflammatory language intended to inspire fear if not revenge, circulated, and soon thousands of white men and boys gathered in downtown Atlanta. City leaders, including Mayor James G. Woodward, sought to calm the increasingly indignant crowds but failed to do so. By early evening, the crowd had become a mob; from then until after midnight, they surged down Decatur Street, Pryor Street, Central Avenue, and throughout the central business district, assaulting hundreds of blacks. The mob attacked black-owned businesses, smashing the windows of black leader Alonzo Herndon's barbershop. Although Herndon had closed down early and was already at home when
his shop was damaged, another barbershop across the street was raided by the rioters—and the barbers were killed. The crowd also attacked streetcars, entering trolley cars and beating black men and women; at least three men were beaten to death.
Finally, the militia was summoned around midnight, and streetcar service was suspended. The mob showed no signs of letting up, however, and the crowd was dispersed only once a heavy rain began to fall around 2 a.m. Atlanta was under the control of the state militia.
On Sunday, September 23, the Atlanta newspapers reported that the state militia had been mustered to
control the mob; they also reported that blacks were no longer a problem for whites because
Saturday night's violence had driven them off public streets. While the police, armed with rifles, and militia patrolled the streets and key landmarks and guarded white property, blacks secretly obtained weapons to arm themselves against the mob, fearing its return. Despite the presence of law enforcement, white vigilante groups invaded some black neighborhoods. In some areas African Americans defended their homes and were able to turn away the incursions into their communities. (One person who described such activity was Walter White, who experienced the riot as a young boy. The incident was a defining moment for White, who went on to become secretary of the NAACP, and he later described the event in his 1948 memoir A Man Called White.)

On Monday, September 24, a group of African Americans held a meeting in Brownsville, a community located about two miles south of downtown Atlanta and home to the historically black Clark College (later Clark Atlanta University) and Gammon Theological Seminary. The blacks were heavily armed. When Fulton County police learned of the gathering, they feared a counterattack and launched a raid on Brownsville. A shootout ensued and an officer was killed. In response, three companies of heavily armed militia were sent to Brownsville, where they seized weapons and arrested more than 250 African American men. Meanwhile, sporadic fighting continued throughout the day.

 

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It is estimated that there were between twenty-five and forty African American deaths. It was confirmed that there were only two White deaths. Significant African American social changes were also an outcome of the riot.[1] This included a disturbance of black housing and social patterns. In the years after the riot, African Americans were most likely to live in settled black communities. These communities were most likely found to the west of the city near Atlanta University or in eastern downtown. Black businesses were dispersed to the east, where a thriving black business district soon developed. Other outcomes included an increase in black suffrage in 1908.
Some black Americans modified their opinions on the necessity of armed self-defense, even as many issued explicit warnings about the dangers of armed political struggle. Harvard-educated W. E. B. Du Bois purchased a shotgun after rioting broke out in Atlanta, and stated in response to the carnage of the race riot, "I bought a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot. If a white mob had stepped on the campus where I lived I would without hesitation have sprayed their guts over the grass."[1] As his position solidified in later years, circa 1906–1920, Du Bois argued that organized political violence by Black Americans was folly, but in response to real-world threats on black people, Du Bois "was adamant about the legitimacy and perhaps the duty of self-defense, even where there [might be a] danger of spillover into political violence."[1]
Efforts to promote biracial understanding included the creation of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in 1919 (Which later evolved into the Southern Regional Council). However, white supremacist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, made their return in the city. Nathan Bedford Forrest Klan No. 1 had a membership of over 15,000 within the city, displaying a newfound white bitterness towards blacks.

 

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pics of Atlanta race riot

 

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lets discuss this brehs

 

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The East St. Louis Riot (May and July 1917) was an outbreak of labor- and race-related violence that caused between 40 and 200 deaths and extensive property damage. The incident took place in East St. Louis, Illinois, an industrial city on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, Missouri. It was the worst incidence of labor-related violence in 20th-century American history, and one of the worst race riots in U.S. history. The local Chamber of Commerce called for the resignation of the police chief. At the end of the month, ten thousand people marched in silent protest in New York City in condemnation of the riots

.Background
In 1917 the United States had an active economy boosted by World War I. With many would-be workers absent for active service in the war, industries were in need of labor. Seeking better work and living opportunities, as well as an escape from harsh conditions, the Great Migration out of the South toward industrial centers across the northern and midwestern United States was well underway. For example,

blacks were arriving in St. Louis during Spring 1917 at the rate of 2,000 per week.[2] When industries became embroiled in labor strikes, traditionally white unions sought to strengthen their bargaining position by hindering or excluding black workers, while industry owners utilizing blacks as replacements or strikebreakers added to the deep existing societal divisions.
While in New Orleans on lecture tour, Marcus Garvey became aware that Louisiana farmers and the Board

of Trade, worried about losing their labor force, had requested East St. Louis Mayor Mollman's assistance during his New Orleans visit that same week to help discourage black migration.
With many African Americans finding work at the Aluminum Ore Company and the American Steel Company in East St. Louis, some whites feared job and wage security due to this new competition; they further resented newcomers arriving from a rural and very different culture. Tensions between the groups escalated, including rumors of black men and white women fraternizing at a labor meeting on May 28

 

[cole phelps]

Riot

In May, three thousand white men gathered in downtown East St. Louis and attacks on blacks began. With mobs destroying buildings and beating people, the Illinois governor called in National Guard to prevent further rioting. Although rumors circulated about organized retribution attacks from African Americans, conditions eased somewhat for a few weeks.

On July 2, a car occupied by white males drove through a black area of the city and fired several shots into a standing group. An hour later, a car containing four people, including a journalist and two police officers, Detective Sergeant Samuel Coppedge and Detective Frank Wadley, was passing through the same area. Black residents, possibly assuming they were the original suspects, opened fire on their car, killing one officer instantly and mortally wounding another.
Later that day, thousands of white spectators who assembled to view the detectives' bloodstained automobile marched into the black section of town and started rioting. After cutting the hoses of the fire department, the rioters burned entire sections of the city and shot inhabitants as they escaped the flames. Claiming that "Southern negros deserve[d] a genuine lynching," they lynched several blacks. Guardsmen were called in but accounts exist that they joined in the rioting rather than stopping it. More joined in, including allegedly "ten or fifteen young girls about 18 years old, [who] chased a negro woman at the Relay Depot at about 5 o'clock. The girls were brandishing clubs and calling upon the men to kill the woman

Aftermath
Death toll
After the riot, varying estimates of the death toll circulated. The police chief estimated that 100 blacks had been killed. The renowned journalist Ida B. Wells reported in The Chicago Defender that 40-150 black people were killed during July in the rioting in East St. Louis. The N.A.A.C.P. estimated deaths at 100-200. Six thousand blacks were left homeless after their neighborhood was burned. A Congressional Investigating Committee concluded that no precise death toll could be determined, but reported that at least 8 whites and 39 blacks died. While the coroner specified 9 white deaths, the deaths of black victims were less clearly recorded. Activists who disputed the Committee's conclusion, argued that the true number of deaths would never be known because many corpses were not recovered, or did not pass through the hands of undertakers.

Response of black community
The ferocious brutality of the attacks and the failure of the authorities to protect innocent lives contributed to the radicalization of many blacks in St. Louis and the nation. Marcus Garvey declared in an inflammatory speech that the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind" and a "wholesale massacre of our people", insisting that "This is no time for fine words, but a time to lift one's voice against the savagery of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy."
In New York City on July 28, ten thousand black people marched down Fifth Avenue in a Silent Parade, protesting the East St. Louis riots. They carried signs that highlighted protests about the riots. The march was organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), W. E. B. Du Bois, and groups in Harlem. Women and children were dressed in white; the men were dressed in black
Response of business community
On July 6 representatives of the Chamber of Commerce met with the mayor to demand the resignation of the Police Chief and Night Police Chief, or radical reform. They were outraged about the rioting and accused the mayor of having allowed a "reign of lawlessness." In addition to the riots taking the lives of too many innocent people, mobs had caused extensive property damage. The Southern Railway Company's warehouse was burned, with over 100 car loads of merchandise, at a loss to the company of over $525,000; a white theatre valued at over $100,000 was also destroyed.

 

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The Houston Riot of 1917, or Camp Logan Riot, was a mutiny by 156 African American soldiers of the Third Battalion of the all-black Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment. It occupied most of one night, and resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and sixteen civilians. The rioting soldiers were tried at three courts-martial. A total of nineteen would be executed, and forty-one were given life sentences.

Preliminary situation

In the spring of 1917, shortly after the United States declared war on Imperial Germany, the War Department, taking advantage of the temperate climate and newly opened Houston Ship Channel, ordered two military installations built in Harris County, Texas — Camp Logan and Ellington Field.[1] To guard the Camp Logan construction site, the Army on July 27, 1917, ordered the Third Battalion of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment to travel to Houston by train from their camp at Columbus, New Mexico, accompanied by seven white commissioned officers.

 

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Precipitating causes

Around noon August 23, 1917, two Houston police officers stormed into the home of an African American woman, allegedly looking for someone in the neighborhood, after firing a warning shot outside. They physically assaulted her, then dragged her partially clad into the street, all in view of her five small children. The woman began screaming, demanding to know why she was being arrested, and a crowd began to gather. A soldier from the 24th Infantry, Alonso Edwards stepped forward to ask what was going on. The police officers promptly beat him to the ground and arrested him as well. Their official reports and later news reports stated the soldier was charged with interfering with the arrest of a publicly drunk female. Later that afternoon, Corporal Charles Baltimore went to the Houston police station to investigate the arrest, as well as beating of another black soldier, and also to attempt to gain the release of the soldier. An argument began which led to violence, and Corporal Baltimore was beaten, shot at, and himself arrested by the police. Once he was set free and sent back to camp all beaten up, the infantry became angry, and decided to strike on the evening of August 23.


The riot
The Camp Logan riot began the evening of August 23, when 156 angry soldiers, stole weapons from the camp depot and marched on the city of Houston. They were met outside the city by the police and a crowd of armed citizens, frightened by the reports of a mutiny. A virtual race riot began, which left 20 people dead - four soldiers, four policemen, and 12 civilians. Order was restored the next day, and the War Department disarmed the soldiers. The Third Battalion was sent by rail back to New Mexico

Immediate aftermath

Martial law was declared in Houston, and the Third Battalion was not only returned to Columbus, New Mexico, but the entire regiment was later transferred to the Philippines. Seven of its soldiers agreed to testify in exchange for clemency.
Almost two hundred witnesses testified over twenty-two days, and the transcripts of the testimony covered more than two thousand pages. Author Robert V. Haynes suggests that General John Wilson Ruckman was “especially anxious for the courts-martial to begin” (p. 251).[4] Ruckman had preferred the proceedings take place in El Paso, but eventually agreed to allow them to remain in San Antonio. Haynes feels the decision was made to accommodate the witnesses who lived in Houston, plus “the countless spectators” who wanted to follow the proceedings (p. 254).[4] Ruckman “urged” the War Department to select a “prestigious court” (p. 255).[4] Three brigadier generals were chosen, along with seven full colonels and three lieutenant colonels. Eight members of the court were West Point graduates. The court contained a geographic balance between northerners, southerners and westerners.
The Departmental Judge Advocate General, Colonel George Dunn, reviewed the record of the first court martial (known as “the Nesbit Case.”) and approved the sentences. He forwarded the documents materials to Gen. Ruckman on December 3. Six days later, thirteen of the prisoners (including Corporal Baltimore) were told that they would be hanged for murder, but they were not informed of the time or place (p. 3).[4] The court recommended clemency for a Private Hudson, but General Ruckman declined to grant it. Many soldiers were wrongly accused because no witnesses were able to distinguish the soldiers during the riot.

 

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The first hanging
The condemned soldiers (one sergeant, four corporals, and eight privates) were transferred to a barracks on December 10. That evening, motor trucks carried new lumber for scaffolds to some bathhouses built for the soldiers at Camp Travis near a swimming pool in the Salado Creek. The designated place of execution was several hundred yards away. Army engineers completed their work by the light of bonfires. The thirteen condemned men were awakened at five in the morning and brought to the gallows. They were hanged simultaneously, at 7.17am, one minute before sunrise. The scaffolds were disassembled and every piece returned to Fort Sam Houston. The New York Times, impressed by the clean-up operations, observed the place of execution and place of burial were “indistinguishable.” Only army officers and County Sheriff John Tobin had been allowed to witness the execution.
Gen. Ruckman told reporters he had personally approved the death sentences and said that forty-one soldiers had been given life sentences and four received sentences of two and a half years or less. He said he was the one who chose the time and place for the executions. (p. 7).[4] Weiner’s 1989 law review articles point out that what Ruckman had done in the first court martial was “entirely legal” and “in complete conformity” with the 1916 Articles of War. This conclusion was reported in the nation’s newspapers

Second court martial

Six days later, a second court martial began (known as “the Washington Case”). Fifteen men of the Lower A Division were tried and five were sentenced to death. On January 2, 1918, Ruckman approved the sentences in a public statement. A new rule - General Orders No. 167, dated December 29, 1917 - prohibited the execution of any death sentence until after review by the Judge Advocate General’s Office. Just over two weeks after Ruckman approved of the verdicts in the second court martial, the War Department also issued General Orders No. 7 requiring that – as a matter of policy - all death sentences be suspended until the President of the United States could officially review all records. It is certain that Major General Ruckman was aware that this order was in the making. The Washington Post reported that representatives of the New York branch of the NAACP had presented a petition to President Wilson to extend clemency to the five soldiers recently sentenced to hang. The Commander of the Southern Department waited until both the Secretary of War and President Woodrow Wilson could review the case.
Meanwhile, Ruckman approved the holding of a third court martial (known as “the Tillman Case”) to try forty more soldiers. Haynes suggests the announcement of the third trial encouraged President Woodrow Wilson to wait to review records until all of the verdicts were in for the Houston Riot cases. On March 26, twenty-three soldiers were found guilty. Eleven were sentenced to death and the others to life in prison. On May 2, Ruckman approved the sentences.



Wilson's clemency and commentary
On August 31, 1918, President Wilson granted clemency to ten soldiers by commuting their death sentences to life in prison.[5] Wilson also issued a rare public statement in order that the basis of his action might be “a matter of record.”[6]
The President’s statement began by recounting the events that led to the deaths of “innocent bystanders” who were “peaceable disposed civilians of the City of Houston.”[5] He noted the investigations that followed were “very searching and thorough.” In each of the three proceedings, the court was “properly constituted” and composed of “officers of experience and sobriety of judgment.” Wilson also noted “extraordinary precautions” were taken to “insure the fairness of the trials” and, in each instance, the rights of the defendants were “surrounded at every point” by the “safeguards” of “a humane administration of the law.” As a result, there were “no legal errors” which had “prejudiced the rights of the accused.”[6]
Wilson stated that he affirmed the death sentences of six soldiers because there was “plain evidence” that they “deliberately” engaged in “shocking brutality.”[6] On the other hand, he commuted the remaining sentences because he believed the “lesson” of the lawless riot had already been “adequately pointed.” He desired the “splendid loyalty” of African American soldiers be recognized and expressed the hope that clemency would inspire them “to further zeal and service to the country.”
Most importantly, from General Ruckman’s standpoint, Wilson (a former law professor) wrote the actions taken by the former Commander of the Southern Department were “legal and justified by the record.” Indeed, the President agreed that “a stern redress” of the rioters’ “wrongs” was the “surest protection of society against their further recurrence.” However, the morality and justice of the trial was doubted from the first.[5] As historian Calvin C. Smith noted in 1991, there was no proof of a "conspiracy," and many of the sentenced were not conclusively identified in the dark and rainy night as having even participated in the riot.[7] Whites who defended Houston from the illegal actions of the rioting blacks were not charged for their actions.[8]
On September 29, 1918, five more soldiers met their deaths at daybreak. One week later, the sixth was marched to the gallows

 

[cole phelps]

The Detroit Race Riot broke out in Detroit, Michigan, in June,1943, and lasted for three days before Federal troops regained control. The rioting between blacks and whites began on Belle Isle on June 20, 1943, and continued until June 22, killing 34, wounding 433, and destroying property valued at $2 million.

Events leading up to the riot


Sign in response to proposed Sojourner Truth Housing Project, February 1942.
Detroit, like many places in the United States, has a long history of racial discrimination. By the 1920s the city had become a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Legion, organizations committed to white supremacy.[2] In summer 1943, in the midst of World War II, tensions between blacks and whites in Detroit were escalating. Detroit's population had grown by 350,000 people since the war began. The booming defense industries brought in large numbers of people with high wages and very little available housing.
In recent years, 50,000 blacks and 300,000 whites had arrived, mostly from rural Appalachia and the American South.[3] Ethnic groups were pressured to resent African Americans especially. A historian of Detroit's Poles found that they were scared into seeing African Americans as "threatening their jobs, homes, communities, and churches".[4]
Recruiters convinced blacks as well as whites in the South to come up North by promising them higher wages in the new war factories. Believing that they had found a promised land, blacks began to move up North in larger numbers. However, upon arriving in Detroit, blacks found that the northern bigotry was almost as bad as that they left behind in the deep South. They were excluded from all public housing except Brewster Housing Projects, forced to live in homes without indoor plumbing, and paid rents two to three times higher than families in white districts. They also faced discrimination from the public and unfair treatment by the Detroit Police Department.[5] Job-seekers arrived in such large numbers in Detroit that it was impossible to house them all.
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government was concerned about providing better housing for the workers throughout the country. On June 4, 1941, the Detroit Housing Commission approved two sites for defense housing projects--one for whites, one for blacks. The site originally selected by the commission for black workers was in a predominantly black area, but the U.S. government chose a site at Nevada and Fenelon streets, an all-white neighborhood.
The completed housing development that was designated for blacks was named Sojourner Truth, in memory of the black Civil War abolitionist and women's rights advocate. Many whites fiercely opposed allowing blacks to move into an all-white neighborhood. On January 20, 1942, Washington DC informed the Housing Commission that the Sojourner Truth housing project would be for whites and another would be selected for blacks. But when a suitable site for blacks could not be found, Washington D.C. housing authorities agreed to allow blacks into the finished homes, beginning February 28, 1942.[6]
On February 27, 1942, with a cross burning in a field near the homes, 150 whites vowed to keep out any black homeowners. By the following morning the crowd of whites – many armed – had grown to 1,200. Blacks who had already signed leases and paid rent attempted to get through the whites' picket line, leading to a clash between white and black groups.[7] Despite the mounting opposition from white groups, black families moved into the project at the end of April. To prevent violence, Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries ordered the Detroit Police Department and state troops to keep the peace during the move. Over 1,100 city and state police officers and 1,600 Michigan National Guard troops were mobilized and sent to the area around Nevada and Fenelon streets to guard six African-American families who moved into the Sojourner Truth Homes. Eventually, 168 black families moved into the homes.[8]
Later, in June 1943, three weeks before the riot, Packard Motor Car Company promoted three blacks to work next to whites in the assembly lines. In response, 25,000 whites walked off the job, effectively slowing down the critical war production. It was clear that whites who worked with blacks in the same plant nevertheless refused to work side-by-side with them. During the protest, a voice with a southern accent shouted in the loudspeaker, "I'd rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a ******."[9]