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White Racist Have Been Killing Black People Over 150 Years

White supremacist, white racist, white mobs, white nationalist, right-wing extremists, neo-nazis, the KKK and other white supremacist groups have been killing and terrorizing black people for over 150 years. White supremacist, white racist, white mobs, white nationalist, right-wing extremists, neo-nazis, the KKK and other white supremacist groups pose to American citizens has come to the forefront in recent years. Everyone is at risk bullets and bombs do not have a care about the colors of one’s skin or one’s religion. However, white supremacist, white racist, white mobs, white nationalist, right-wing extremists, neo-nazis, the KKK and other white supremacist groups have been killing black people without any repercussion in many cases for over 150 Years. In some cases, they were helped by and/or protected by police and/or government officials. Many black men were lynched and towns destroyed simply for or because someone thought, a black man had looked at a white woman or someone lying on a black man for something that a white person did. Many black people were massacred in towns like Greenwood or Rosewood by white mobs. No one really knows how many black people have been killed by white supremacist, white racist, white mobs, white nationalist, right-wing extremists, neo-nazis, the KKK and other white supremacist groups over the years. The KKK may have given up their sheets for suites and changed their name to the alt-right or other names to hide who they are, but at their core, they are white people who hate black people, people whose skin is not white and Jews. If black lives mattered in America, White supremacist, white nationalist, right-wing extremists, neo-nazis, the KKK and other white supremacist groups would be branded as the domestic terrorist groups they are and government resources would be devoted to combating them.  #WhiteSupremacist, #WhiteNationalist, #RightWingExtremists, #KKK, #Racism, #Hate

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Vox - The hidden history of an American coup.

Scott Neuman

On Nov. 10, 1898, a mob descended on the offices of The Daily Record, a Black-owned newspaper in Wilmington, N.C. The armed men then moved into the streets and opened fire as Black men fled for their lives. Finally, the rabble seized control of the racially mixed city government. It expelled Black aldermen, installed unelected whites belonging to the then-segregationist Democratic Party and published a "White Declaration of Independence." Historians have called it a coup d'etat. The number of people who died ranges from about 60 to as many as 250, according to some estimates. more...

Mass Grave Unearthed in Tulsa During Search for Massacre Victims
An excavation found 11 coffins in Oaklawn Cemetery, but painstaking work will be required to identify whether the remains are from Black victims of the 1921 race massacre.
By Ben Fenwick

OKLAHOMA CITY — A forensic team in Tulsa, Okla., said on Wednesday that it had unearthed 11 coffins while searching for victims from the 1921 massacre in which hundreds of Black residents were killed. The mass grave was discovered in an area of the city’s Oaklawn Cemetery where records and research suggested that as many as 18 victims would be found. Painstaking work will be required to identify whether the remains are from victims of the massacre.

The remains will not be moved until they can be exhumed properly to avoid deterioration, said Kary Stackelbeck, a state archaeologist. She said the discovery “constitutes a mass grave.” “We have a high degree of confidence that this is one of the locations we were looking for,” she said. “But we have to remain cautious because we have not done anything to expose the human remains beyond those that have been encountered.” more...

A handful of the group's participants claimed to be members of the U.S. Army.
Jessica Lee, Jordan Liles

Numerous Facebook users who branded themselves as armed vigilantes protecting Kenosha, Wisconsin, shared posts justifying the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse — a white teenager charged with killing two people and wounding another during a protest against police brutality in the lakeside city — and threatened to start violence after his arrest, a Snopes investigation has found.

Despite the social media site’s ban on such discourse by militias and white supremacists, Facebook accounts used a private group named Wisconsin Liberty Militia to discuss plans that included opening fire on “any one that starts rioting” and setting suspicious vehicles on fire.

The police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer in Kenosha on Aug. 23, 2020 sparked nightly protests against racism by American police in the city, and then those gatherings prompted armed counter-protesters, including Rittenhouse, to patrol streets. He was arrested on Aug. 26, in Antioch, Illinois, where he reportedly lives with his mother in an apartment complex, and he was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, among other crimes.

Under the guise of trying to prevent looting and property destruction, the Wisconsin Liberty Militia Facebook group included at least four people who claimed to be members of the U.S. Army, Wisconsin Army National Guard, or U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on their Facebook profiles. Additionally, at least one other user said he did “army shit” while simultaneously being a member of the group, and one of the group’s supposed founders told Milwaukee journalists he was a veteran.

The wave of violence a century ago against Black Americans echoes how today, "people feel they have little to lose, and so much at stake," one historian said.
By Erik Ortiz

Racial strife flaring across the United States. Black Americans standing up to societal structures in unpredictable ways. And people enduring months of a deadly pandemic infecting millions worldwide, shuttering businesses and heightening fears of a lengthy economic downturn. That was 1919, during what would later be coined the "Red Summer," when communities across America were reeling from white mobs inciting brutality against Black people and cities were still wrestling with a third wave of the so-called Spanish flu pandemic that emerged the previous year. The story line parallels with today: violence against Black people, leading to mass demonstrations and calls to end systemic racism, converging with a months-long coronavirus pandemic. Such commonality is not lost on historians and scholars of African American history.

By Abby Phillip and Kate Sullivan, CNN

Tulsa, Oklahoma (CNN) The beating heart of Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood District is Vernon A.M.E. Church. Vernon sits atop the only structure still standing after the 1921 race massacre left the once-prosperous black district burned to the ground and hundreds if not thousands of its residents homeless or dead. The weight of that legacy weighs heavily on Vernon A.M.E. always -- but especially in recent weeks, as the city marked 99 years since the massacre, an anniversary that came at a time of protests and upheaval nationwide over the killing of George Floyd in police custody. As the city prepared to mark the anniversary of the massacre at the end of May, protesters in Tulsa took to the streets against racism and police brutality. Some businesses were damaged and fires were set. And now, the community is bracing itself again, as President Donald Trump is expected to bring thousands of his supporters to the city for the first campaign rally since March.

By Christina Maxouris, CNN

For nearly 100 years, the "Red Summer" as it was called by NAACP field secretary James Weldon Johnson because of its explosive violence and bloodshed, went overlooked and forgotten. "The  Red Summer doesn't fit into the stories we tell ourselves about US  history," Krugler says. "It's also a very prominent example of another  feature of American history that we don't like to fully acknowledge."

The events of November 10, 1898, in Wilmington were a turning point in North Carolina history. By force, a white mob seized the reins of government in the port city and, in so doing, destroyed the local black-owned newspaper office and terrorized the African American community. In the months thereafter, political upheaval resulted across the state and legal restrictions were placed on the right of blacks to vote. The era of "Jim Crow," one of legal segregation not to end until the 1960s, had begun. Understanding the Impact In 2000, the General Assembly established the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission to develop a historical record of the event and to assess the economic impact of the riot on African Americans locally and across the region and state. Building on earlier scholarly, the commission held public hearings and conducted detailed analyses of the written record, both primary and secondary sources, to create a thorough, 500-page report that sought to achieve the aims outlined above.

By Heather Gilligan

Even by the standards of the 1920s South, the chain of events in Rosewood were unfathomable. Nine-year-old  Minnie Lee Langley was outside with her mother on New Year’s Day 1923  when she saw them coming: a mob of white men marching toward her  hometown of Rosewood, Florida. A daughter of the Jim Crow South, where  violence against black people was part of everyday life, Minnie knew  that all those white men together meant terrible trouble.
“We  was out there in the front yard and them crackers were just coming down  the railroad just as far as you can see, some of them,” she recalled  in a radio documentary in the 1990s. “Just as far as you could look,  you could see them in those big white hats and on horseback.”
Even  by the standards of the 1920s South, the chain of events that followed  was unfathomable. Over the course of a week, Minnie Lee’s small town  would be wiped off the map, with the families who lived there so  terrified to speak of what happened that the town was almost wiped from  history, too. A conservative estimate places the number killed at eighteen, while many  men of standing in the community declare not less than forty were  killed. No white man was injured during the trouble.”

A whole town wiped out, and only recently any acknowledgment
By Coshandra Dillard

Charlie Wilson, Cleveland Larkin, and Willustus “Lusk” Holley were walking down a dirt road in rural Slocum, Texas when they were blindsided by a mob of armed white men. On their way to tend to family livestock on July 29, 1910, the three black teenagers became the first casualties of what would turn out to be a shameful massacre — with groups of white Texans going from road to road, house to house, shooting black citizens. Wilson and Holley survived the attack, but Larkin succumbed to the injuries. The ensuing bloodshed lasted for at least two days, spilling to the south in Houston County. Black residents hastily gathered what belongings they could and escaped across creeks to wooded areas and marshes. Some families fled to the nearby town of Palestine, while others trekked farther. During the panic, they had no choice but to leave behind loved ones who’d been killed along the roads and in the woods of Slocum. As the violence intensified, local officials turned to Texas Governor Thomas Campbell, and a company of U.S. cavalry troops and Texas Rangers were brought in to quell the situation.


Scientists in Oklahoma are one step closer to finding possible evidence of mass graves linked to the deadly race massacre of 1921. Researchers in Tulsa used ground penetrating radar to survey two sites and found irregularities that could be consistent with large-scale burials. The neighborhood of Greenwood was known as black Wall Street. Restaurants, grocery stores and tailors were all black-owned businesses. In 1921 a white mob burned much of the Tulsa neighborhood to the ground, and some say as many as 300 black residents were killed. Almost forgotten by history, the city is trying to uncover the past and heal the wounds.

Photojournalist Kavin Ross said he's grateful that a tragic, little known part of Tulsa history is now coming to light. "For decades it was hush-hush," Ross told CBS News correspondent Omar Villafranca. "Even some of the survivors that I interviewed, they were quiet and telling me, 'Oh and the white people—' They were whispering in their own homes because they were brought up not talking about what happened.'" The white mob clashed with several armed black men who had gathered to protect a black shoe shiner who was unjustly accused of assaulting a white woman. After a shot was fired, violence broke out and hundreds of black people were massacred.

Ross' great-grandfather was forced to flee the city after his business was destroyed. "You had explosions. You had people running for their lives. It was just hell on earth," Ross said. The horror was brought to life in the premiere episode of HBO's new series "Watchmen." Witnesses reported seeing bodies put in mass graves, but local officials hid evidence of any crimes.

By Shammara Lawrence

Ninety-eight years ago, one of the worst episodes of violence sparked by racism in America erupted in the heart of one of the most prosperous Black communities in the nation. Dubbed “Black Wall Street” due its affluent black residents, the Greenwood neighborhood of Oklahoma, where the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre took place, was a hub of Black success featuring Black-owned homes and establishments, including banks, restaurants, and hotels, in a community that included accomplished lawyers, doctors, and dentists. It was one of a fewpredominantly Black areas that thrived economically after the end of the Civil War and into the 20th century, when racial discrimination was the order of the day. The residents of Greenwood faced racism from those in neighboring white communities, and the tension hit a fever pitch in 1921, when 19-year-old Dick Rowland, who was Black, was apprehended by police on May 31, for allegedly assaulting a 17-year-old white elevator operator, Sarah Page, inside an office building on South Main Street. Accounts differ as to what occurred between the two — some say he accidentally stepped on her foot when entering the elevator, causing her to scream — but the encounter sparked widespread outrage among white people, who rioted and destroyed Black Wall Street, which never fully recovered from the incident.

The December 28, 1923, assault and murder of a white woman in the Catcher community in Crawford County quickly ignited a firestorm of racial hatred that, within the span of a few days, exploded into the murder of an innocent black man, charges of night riding being leveled against eleven African Americans, and the exodus of all black families from Catcher, numbering at least forty. Two African-American men were sentenced to death and executed in relation to the murder, while a third was given life in prison, following trials that included dubious evidence offered by the prosecution. From the days of slavery, the township in which Catcher is situated, four miles southeast of Van Buren (Crawford County) in cotton-producing river bottomland, was inhabited by a larger percentage of African Americans than whites. On December 28, 1923, Effie Latimer (age twenty-five) was, as reported in the newspapers the following day, raped, shot in the back with a shotgun, and clubbed over the head with the same gun. The news was quickly broadcast when a friend discovered the victim in mid-afternoon. A doctor was summoned, and he reported that Latimer regained consciousness long enough to name the shooter as “Son [William or Will] Bettis, but that she did not know the other two colored men.” Before nightfall, newly elected Sheriff Albert D. Maxey arrested Bettis, who denied the charge and calmly went to the Van Buren jail. Interestingly, Latimer’s husband of six years, Robert (age thirty-eight), was reported in the Arkansas Gazette as having not been heard from since he “left home a week ago taking a dozen chickens and half of the provisions in the house.”

By David Chalmers

The Ku Klux Klan is a native-born American racist terrorist organization that helped overthrow Republican Reconstruction governments in the South after the Civil War and drive black people out of politics. It revived in the 20th Century as a social lodge and briefly became a nationwide political power. During the 1960s, the Klan fought the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Under attack in state and federal courts, in a racially changed and disapproving South, the Klan hangs on —marginally, but still violent. In the summer of 1866, six young ex-Confederate officers organized a social club. Drawing on their college Greek, they adopted the term for circle, "kuklos." They added the alliterative word "klan," and the "Ku Klux Klan" was born. Their nightly rides, in which members disguised themselves in masks and flowing robes, soon became a political successor to the prewar slave patrols in controlling newly freed blacks. Particularly across the upper South, Klansmen sought to overturn the new Republican state governments, drive black men out of politics, control black labor, and restore black subordination. Led by elites and drawing on a cross-section of white male society, the Klan's assaults and murders numbered in the thousands. Similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia in Louisiana copied the Klan. In an organizing meeting at the Maxwell House in Nashville, ex-Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest became grand wizard, and other generals served as state grand dragons. But in fact, the Klan was decentralized and local; each state and community had its own violent story. By 1869, the Klan had helped terrorize black voters and overturn elected Republican governments in the Deep South. In 1870 and 1871, the Radical Republicans struck back in Congress, passing the Enforcement and Ku Klux Klan Acts aimed at protecting the rights of blacks, and a Joint Select Committee issued a 12-volume report on its hearings on Klan violence. President Ulysses S. Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties, and convictions in South Carolina and Mississippi helped bring a decline in violence.

A former white supremacist who is now an anti-hate activist says that online platforms should treat white nationalism like other international threats from groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda. Arno Michaelis pointed to Saturday's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and an online manifesto being investigated in connection to the shooting that cited the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque attack earlier this year and included anti-immigrant rhetoric. “White nationalism is an international threat as the El Paso shooter was inspired by the Christchurch shooter who was inspired by the Norway shooter,” Michaelis told Hill.TV, referencing the Christchurch shootings and the 2011 Norway attacks. “There’s very plain international connections that drive this kind of violence, so we need to start approaching white nationalism the same way we approach ISIS, al Qaeda, al-Shabaab and come down on them just as hard,” he added. Michaelis said there is a little more leeway with white nationalist content due to the First Amendment, but he argued that there must be a threshold, especially when such rhetoric incites violence. "I’m a huge proponent of the First Amendment, it’s probably the best thing about our Constitution, but at the same time we have to be wary of when this free speech actually becomes planning of terror and I think that threshold has certainly been reached," he said. Michaelis maintained that he has personally worked with tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter on the issue, who he says "have dedicated a ton of time and energy and resources to combat white nationalism.” more...

By Associated Press

America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened. It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago. Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. Thousands saw their homes and businesses burned to the ground and were driven out, many never to return. It was branded "Red Summer" because of the bloodshed and amounted to some of the worst white-on-black violence in U.S. history. Beyond the lives and family fortunes lost, it had far-reaching repercussions, contributing to generations of black distrust of white authority. But it also galvanized blacks to defend themselves and their neighborhoods with fists and guns; reinvigorated civil rights organizations like the NAACP and led to a new era of activism; gave rise to courageous reporting by black journalists; and influenced the generation of leaders who would take up the fight for racial equality decades later. "The people who were the icons of the civil rights movement were raised by the people who survived Red Summer," said Saje Mathieu, a history professor at the University of Minnesota.
Throughout the late 19th century racial tension grew throughout the United States. More of this tension was noticeable in the Southern parts of the United States. In the south, people were blaming their financial problems on the newly freed slaves that lived around them. Lynchings were becoming a popular way of resolving some of the anger that whites had in relation to the free blacks. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched. These numbers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded. Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching and even for domestic crimes. Was lynching necessary? To many people it was not, but to the whites in the late 19th century it served a purpose. Whites started lynching because they felt it was necessary to protect white women. Rape though was not a great factor in reasoning behind the lynching. It was the third greatest cause of lynchings behind homicides and ‘all other causes’.

No one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans who had proven their valor and courage as soldiers during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Because of their military service, black veterans were seen as a particular threat to Jim Crow and racial subordination. Thousands of black veterans were assaulted, threatened, abused, or lynched following military service. The disproportionate abuse and assaults against black veterans have never been fully acknowledged. This report highlights the particular challenges endured by black veterans in the hope that our nation can better confront the legacy of this violence and terror. No community is more deserving of recognition and acknowledgment than those black men and women veterans who bravely risked their lives to defend this country’s freedom only to have their own freedom denied and threatened because of racial bigotry.

Mass racial violence in the United States, also called race riots, can include such disparate events as: racially based communal conflict against African Americans that took place before the American Civil War, often in relation to attempted slave revolts, and after the war, in relation to tensions under Reconstruction and later efforts to suppress black voting and institute Jim Crow and maintain white supremacy. Conflict between Americans and recent European immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. Attacks on Native Americans and Americans over the land. Frequent fighting among various ethnic groups in major cities, specifically in the Northeast and Midwest United States throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century. One example was explored in the 1957 stage musical West Side Story and its 1961 film adaptation, about ethnic conflict in New York between Puerto Ricans and Italians. Violence against Latin American immigrants in the 20th century. Mass violence and looting within African-American, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican American communities during the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the 1967 nationwide riots in most major U.S. cities that led to over 100 deaths, and the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read about some of the most violent riots in U.S. history 1898: Wilmington, North Carolina While Democrats held power at the state level in North Carolina, a coalition of white Republicans and African Americans controlled politics in Wilmington, in 1898. A group of Democrats sought to remove blacks from the political scene and launched a campaign to do so by accusing black men of sexually assaulting white women.

Here is a list of some of the countless massacres in the history of the United States. Most of these massacres were designed to suppress voting rights, land ownership, economic advancement, education, freedom of the press, religion, LGBTQ rights, and/or labor rights of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, and immigrants. While often referred to as “race riots,” they were massacres to maintain white supremacy. One of the best explanations about why it is important for students to learn this history is included in the article (and related lesson) by Linda Christensen, Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession. A tweet thread by historian Stephen West shows how politicians fueled hate crimes during the Reconstruction era, with parallels today. Ursula Wolfe-Rocca writes about Red Summer of 1919, Remembering Red Summer — Which Textbooks Seem Eager to Forget. We also offer a list of massacres that includes these same events and massacres in other countries. While this list includes dozens of entries, it is by no means complete.

The New Orleans Massacre, also known as the New Orleans Race Riot, occurred on July 30, 1866.  While the riot was typical of numerous racial conflicts during Reconstruction, this incident had special significance. It galvanized national opposition to the moderate Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson and ushered in much more sweeping Congressional Reconstruction in 1867. The riot took place outside the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans as black and white delegates attended the Louisiana Constitutional Convention. The Convention had reconvened because the Louisiana state legislature had recently passed the black codes and refused to extend voting rights to black men. Also on May 12, 1866, four years of Union Army imposed martial law ended and Mayor John T. Monroe, who had headed city government before the Civil War, was reinstated as acting mayor. Monroe had been an active supporter of the Confederacy.

The NRA continues to blast the creator of its short-lived TV outlet, claiming it strayed from Second Amendment messaging when it put cartoon characters in KKK hoods.
By Andrew Kirell

The federal lawsuit between the National Rifle Association and the ad firm that created its now-defunct NRATV outlet has taken an uglier turn, with the pro-gun group now alleging its own leadership found the TV outlet’s messaging “distasteful and racist.” According to an Oct. 25 amended complaint filed in its ongoing lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen, NRA officials believed the short-lived TV outlet—which featured shows from right-wing stars like Dana Loesch and Dan Bongino—“strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist.” As an example of a “damaging” segment, the NRA filing alludes to an instance on Loesch’s show Relentless, in which an on-air graph featured a picture of kid’s cartoon character Thomas the Tank Engine wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. “Attempts by the NRA to ‘rein in’ AMc and its messaging were met with responses from AMc that ranged from evasive to hostile,” the gun lobby further alleges. Furthermore, the NRA claims, in closed-door meetings Ackerman McQueen presented to embattled NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre “fabricated and inflated sponsorship and viewership claims.” When tasked with the “simple request” of gathering digital “unique visitors” data for NRA executives, the filing claims, AMc went silent. Overall, the gun group alleges, the ad firm often gave an “intentionally (and wildly) misleading” representation of NRATV’s viewership performance. “Tellingly, when NRATV finally shut down in June 2019, no one missed it,” the NRA fumes in the new filing. “Not a single sponsor or viewer even called, confirming what at least some NRA executives suspected—the site had limited visibility and was failing the accomplish any of its goals.” more..


The Ocoee massacre was a white mob attack on African-American residents in northern Ocoee, Florida, which occurred on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election. The town is in Orange County near Orlando. As many as 60 or 70 African Americans may have been killed during the riot, and most African-American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out on threat of more violence. Ocoee essentially became an all-white town. The riot has been described as the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history". The attack started after efforts to suppress black voting. In Ocoee and across the state, various black organizations had been conducting voter registration drives for a year. Blacks had essentially been disfranchised in Florida since the turn of the 19th century. Mose Norman, a prosperous African-American farmer, tried to vote but was turned away twice on Election Day. Norman was among those working on the voter drive. A white mob surrounded the home of Julius "July" Perry, where Norman was thought to have taken refuge. After Perry drove away the white mob with gunshots, killing two men and wounding one who tried to break into his house, the mob called for reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County. The whites laid waste to the African-American community in northern Ocoee and eventually killed Perry. They took his body to Orlando and hanged it from a lightpost to intimidate other blacks. Norman escaped, never to be found. Hundreds of other African Americans fled the town, leaving behind their homes and possessions.


The Opelousas massacre occurred on September 28, 1868 in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, United States. Beginning with the execution of 27 black prisoners, whites conducted widespread attacks of African Americans in the vicinity, and are believed to have killed up to 200-300. At the time, whites referred to events as the Opelousas Riot, as if caused by an outbreak of violence by blacks, and a minority of historians continue to refer to it by this name. Prior to the elections in the fall of 1868, some African Americans from Opelousas attempted to join a Democratic Party political group organized in the neighboring, larger town of Washington. Whites rejected them, and Democrats in Opelousas, mainly members of the Seymour Knights, the local unit of the white supremacist organization Knights of the White Camellia, visited Washington to violently drive the blacks out of the party. In response, Emerson Bentley, an 18-year-old Ohio-born white school teacher and editor of The Landry Progress, a Republican newspaper in Opelousas, wrote an article that described the attack by the Seymour Knights against the black Democrats.

He suggested that such events should persuade blacks to remain loyal to the Republican Party. Bentley was known as an advocate of education for the children of freedmen and of Creole people of color (who had been free before the war). He also helped adult men of color of both groups to register to vote. Shortly after the article appeared, Bentley was assaulted at his class by three white men and severely beaten. Afterward, Bentley quickly fled town and ran for his life to reach the North. Due to Bentley's sudden disappearance, reports circulated that the teacher had been killed because of his article. Several local armed African Americans banded together to retaliate and marched toward the county seat of Opelousas. Some left the march when they learned that Bentley had not been murdered. The armed blacks were met by armed whites determined to defend their town, many of whom had been rallied by The Knights of the White Camellia. Due to local laws restricting gun ownership by blacks, the white Democrats had the overwhelming advantage in weapons, as well as in numbers. Shooting broke out on both sides, and the whites captured twenty-nine black prisoners. On September 29, all of the captured prisoners were taken from the prison and executed, with the exception of two men. The dead included twelve Black Republican leaders.


The Opelousas Massacre occurred on September 28, 1868 in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana. The event is also referred to as The Opelousas Riot by some historians. There is debate as to how many people were killed.  Conservative estimates made by contemporary observers indicated about 30 people died from the political violence.  Later historians have placed the total as closer to 150 or more. While most Reconstruction-era violence was sparked by conflicts between black Republicans and white Democrats, the initial catalyst for the Massacre was the attempt by some Opelousas blacks to join a Democratic political group in the neighboring town of Washington.  White Democrats in Opelousas, mainly members of the Seymour Knights, the local unit of the white supremacist organization Knights of the White Camellia, visited Washington to drive them out of the Party.   In response Emerson Bentley, an Ohio-born white school teacher and editor of The Progress, a Republican newspaper in Opelousas, wrote what many local whites thought was a racially inflammatory article which described the violence that the Seymour Knights had used against the African American Democrats in Washington.  Bentley argued that such violence should persuade the blacks to remain loyal to the GOP. Shortly after the article appeared, Bentley was assaulted by a group of whites while he taught his class.  He was severely beaten and whipped although he survived the assault.  In response he fled the town, literally running for his life for nearly three weeks before escaping back to the North.


In early August 1896, a “race war” broke out between white and black workers who were working on the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railway (later the Kansas City Southern) in both Polk County and near Horatio (Sevier County) to the south. As a result, three African Americans were killed and eight wounded. Although reports place some of the events near Horatio, accounts clearly stated that the purpose of the attack was to keep African Americans out of Polk County, and so it was generally referred to as the Polk County Race War. This was part of a pattern of labor-related racial intimidation that was sweeping Arkansas at the time. Other incidents during that period included unrest at the Hawthorne Mills southwest of El Dorado (Union County) the following November; at a lumber mill in Canfield (Lafayette County); on the line of the Cotton Belt Railroad in Ouachita County; and at the McNeil (Columbia County) sawmill in December. According to the August 6, 1896, Arkansas Gazette, the problem in Polk County started on August 5 when a group of thirty black workers who had gone into the county the week before were run out by enraged citizens. Another carload of African Americans had arrived in Horatio that same day (August 6) on their way to Polk County and were being protected by the sheriff of Sevier County, but trouble was still expected. The report went on to say that “Polk County citizens say they have no negroes there nor will they permit them to come and work on the railroad. The contractors are equally as determined to use negro labor, as it is the best they can do.”


On New Year's Day, 1923, a violent race riot ravaged an  entire town in Florida. The Rosewood Massacre would spell the end for  the small town as its residents fled never to return. The racially-motivated attack, known as the gruesome  Rosewood Massacre, occurred in a small predominantly African-American  town in Florida in 1923. The town burned to the ground during the  seven-day riot in which all the residents fled. Among the dead were at  least six black people and two white people, however, eyewitness  accounts place that number much higher – by some estimates as high as  150.
The story of what happened in Rosewood remained largely hidden until 1982 when a journalist for the St. Petersburg Times  interviewed survivors and went on to publish a series of articles that  gained national attention. As a result, the Florida Legislature  commissioned an investigation into his 1993 report and the state became  the first to compensate survivors and their descendants for damages they  incurred as the result of racial violence.


In 1921, Tulsa had the wealthiest black neighborhood in the country. On Sundays, women wore satin dresses and diamonds, while men wore silk shirts and gold chains. In Greenwood, writes historian James S. Hirsch, “Teachers lived in brick homes furnished with Louis XIV dining room sets, fine china, and Steinway pianos.” They called it Black Wall Street. “They had done everything that they were supposed to do in terms of the American dream,” says Carol Anderson,  Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. “You work  hard, you save your money, you go to school, you buy property. And this  is what they had done under horrific conditions.” Greenwood  was strictly segregated from the rest of the city, but still it  flourished. It was home to black lawyers, business owners, and doctors —  including Dr. A.C. Jackson, who was considered the most skilled black  surgeon in America and had a net worth of $100,000. Dr.  Jackson was killed on the night of May 31st, 1921, along with hundreds  of black Tulsans. Thirty-five blocks of Greenwood were razed that night.  1,256 homes and 191 businesses were destroyed. 10,000 black people were  left homeless. By morning, Black Wall Street had been reduced to rubble.

By Francine Uenuma - smithsonian.com

White Arkansans, fearful of what would happen if African-Americans organized, took violent action, but it was the victims who ended up standing trial. The sharecroppers who gathered at a small church in Elaine, Arkansas, in the late hours of September 30, 1919, knew the risk they were taking. Upset about unfair low wages, they enlisted the help of a prominent white attorney from Little Rock, Ulysses Bratton, to come to Elaine to press for a fairer share in the profits of their labor. Each season, landowners came around demanding obscene percentages of the profits, without ever presenting the sharecroppers detailed accounting and trapping them with supposed debts. “There was very little recourse for African-American tenant farmers against this exploitation; instead there was an unwritten law that no African-American could leave until his or her debt was paid off,” writes Megan Ming Francis in Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. Organizers hoped Bratton’s presence would bring more pressure to bear through the courts. Aware of the dangers – the atmosphere was tense after racially motivated violence in the area – some of the farmers were armed with rifles. At around 11 p.m. that night, a group of local white men, some of whom may have been affiliated with local law enforcement, fired shots into the church. The shots were returned, and in the chaos, one white man was killed. Word spread rapidly about the death. Rumors arose that the sharecroppers, who had formally joined a union known as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) were leading an organized “insurrection” against the white residents of Phillips County. Governor Charles Brough called for 500 soldiers from nearby Camp Pike to, as the Arkansas Democrat reported on Oct 2, “round up” the “heavily armed negroes.” The troops were “under order to shoot to kill any negro who refused to surrender immediately.” They went well beyond that, banding together with local vigilantes and killing at least 200 African-Americans (estimates run much higher but there was never a full accounting). And the killing was indiscriminate—men, women and children unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity were slaughtered. Amidst the violence, five whites died, but for those deaths, someone would have to be held accountable.


The Tulsa Race Riot (or the Greenwood Massacre) of 1921 took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district — at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street". More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate. When a state commission re-examined events in 2001, its report estimated that 100–300 African Americans were killed in the rioting.

Forensic anthropologists are using ground-penetrating radar at Oaklawn Cemetery to look for evidence of long-rumored mass graves.
By DeNeen L. Brown

Nearly 100 years after a race massacre left hundreds of black people dead, Tulsa began searching for evidence that victims of one of the country’s worst episodes of racial violence were buried in mass graves. On Monday, scientists and forensic anthropologists armed with ground-penetrating radar combed the grounds of Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery, looking for anomalies that might be consistent with mass graves. The cemetery, which is owned by the city, is just a few blocks from what is known as Black Wall Street. It is also the site where, in 1999, renowned forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow led a team of scientists who discovered an anomaly bearing “all the characteristics of a dug pit or trench with vertical walls and an undefined object within the approximate center of the feature,” the Tulsa Race Riot Commission concluded in its 2001 report. Along with testimony from a witness of the massacre, the report said, “this trench-like feature takes on the properties of a mass grave.” The commission recommended excavation, but the city decided not to dig for physical evidence. Last year, Mayor G.T. Bynum (R) announced that he would reopen the investigation into mass graves, calling it a murder investigation. The announcement followed a Washington Post story about the unresolved questions surrounding the massacre. “We owe it to the community to determine if there are mass graves in our city,” Bynum told The Post at the time. “We owe it to the victims and their family members.” The city is obligated to find out what happened in 1921 as Tulsa prepares to mark the 100th anniversary of the rampage, he said. more...


The trouble started on Sunday night when Conductor Cooper of a Mobile & Ohio train attempted to stop a disturbance made by a negro. He was badly cut by the man, and opened fire with the result that two negroes were mortally wounded. One of the negroes concerned in this affair, George Simpson, escaped, and a posse set out in pursuit of him. He was overtaken at Wahalak, but killed Constable O'Brien, who was in the party. He was soon surrounded and captured and was immediately lynched by the posse.

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