CHAPTER ONE The Nature of Riots and the 1960s Historical Overview Riots in the United States The United States has a long and sordid history of racial violence. From the time when enslaved Africans first arrived in Jamestown in 1619, to the present day, black and white interactions have often been tense, or even vicious and deadly, particularly as white Americans began to feel threatened by any sort of African American success. Much of this violence has come in the form of riots.1 White-on-black riots took hold during the early 19th cen- tury, frequently in response to abolitionists, whose efforts imperiled the slave economy reached their peak during the Red Summer of 1919 in the frenzied aftermath of World War I and then greatly subsided as World War II came to an end in 1945. During these incidents, whites carried out brutal attacks against African Americans in order to push back against any sort of per- ceived economic, political, and social progress. Complete annihilation of black neighborhoods and business districts, as well as the lynching of thou- sands of African Americans, characterized this era as especially monstrous. Also, by the second decade of the 20th century, a younger generation of Afri- can Americans born after the end of the Civil War became less reticent in countering the assaults against them. Moreover, as many African Americans migrated out of the rural Jim Crow South, they became more emboldened to assert their rights for equality, heightening some of these riots into full- fledged race wars. This opposition, of course, provoked white panic even more. These white-on-black attacks gradually faded, and by the 1960s,
Previous Page Next Page