Atlanta Race Riot

Taylor Schultz History 1100 Dr. Howard November 15, 2010 Influences of the Atlanta Race Riot “A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack and cry of death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars when church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance” (Primary Source 20, line 20). The Atlanta Race Riot occurred in 1906 in Atlanta, Georgia. Many innocent African Americans were murdered by hostile mobs of white men.
Racism and hatred towards African Americans had been around long before the Atlanta Race Riot, but previously built tensions of jealousy, hostilities, abuse of blacks and whites eventually lead to this event. Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and many other African American and white leaders tried to gain respect from whites for the black community and earn equality, but the majority of whites were not willing to cooperate. The main influences of the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 were poor whites and the “sexual assaults” they accused blacks of, politics, and media releases.
After slavery had ended, and African Americans were free, whites still felt that they held a power over the blacks. So, when African Americans were becoming more successful, by owning their own pharmacies, grocery stores, and businesses the poor and middle class whites were not thrilled. These white classes were angry, because blacks were accomplishing more and making better wages then they were. The poor whites were so furious that they started creating mobs against all African Americans accusing them of wrong doings that many had no part in. The men composing the mobs, which created the disorder were principally of the hoodlum class” (Primary Source 13, page 7). Anytime a white man even heard of an African American touching a white woman, mobs would immediately form and attack, often killing a black man who looked remotely close to what the victim described him as. In 1906, the Savannah Morning News reported “there were four attempted assaults on white women by negroes in and around Atlanta today, and these and the publication of them in extras led to the gathering of the mob which killed ten or fifteen Negroes in the city tonight” (Primary Source 11, page 1).

African Americans were not given the chance to go to court for any of the trials and were killed without proper identification by the court. It was getting to the point where blacks could not even walk outside their homes at night without being hunted by the white mobs; “attack spread rapidly and within a few moments the appearance of a Negro was the signal for a riot. The Negroes scattered from the streets, going to their homes by back alleys, or flocked to Decatur Street, the home of the tougher element” (Primary Source 12, page 2).
All of these lynchings and outburst of rage from the poor whites over “sexual assaults” from black men towards white women were not fair towards the blacks. It was a way of whites getting back at blacks because of their own personal issues of jealousy, hostility, and personal self-assurance that they were better. After a long fight to gain freedom, African Americans wanted political equality. Many black philosophers and educators had their own views on how political equality should be met. Booker T. Washington was a black man who had been born into slavery and had gained his independence.
He was a highly successful man who attended an Agricultural Institute. He founded the Tuskegee Institute, providing technical education for African Americans. Washington believed that blacks needed to work hard to show whites that they had value, so that eventually whites would realize this and accept black equality. “Washington was willing to accept social, residential, commercial, and educational subordination”(Secondary Source 1, page 46). On the other hand, W. E. B. Dubois was another successful black man whose views differed from Booker T.
Washington. Dubois grew up in a largely white community, earned a PhD at Harvard, and believed that equality should be pushed for and gained as soon as possible. African Americans sided with both views from Washington and Dubois and had faith and believed that no matter which strategy worked it would eventually lead them to gaining equality. But, most elite whites wanted no part of it. Once white elites had heard speeches from both these leaders and knew what a good majority of blacks wanted, they came up with scandals to get African American’s votes.
Many Democratic and Republican parties promised African Americans that if they gave their vote to them, they would stop lynching and crime rates would go down. “The party in which gave them the ballot had really no means of protecting them in the enjoyment of it” (Primary Source 8, page. 291). Laws like the Klu Klux Klan Act and The Compromise of 1850 were put in place during voting times to stop prejudice and violence, but once votes were gained, acts were dropped, giving none of the protection to African Americans that they had been promised. The whites, on their side, rather helped this plan by the savage means to which they resorted on those States in which the Negros were in majority, to overturn or prevent Negro rule” (Primary Source 8, page. 291). The Media attention that was brought up during the times of the Atlanta race Riot became a large influence on the whites and their bias opinions towards blacks. For the most part, the media sided with the whites, and encouraged the white people to start uproars with their black neighbors.
The media loved all the press that they were able to release at this time in 1906, because they knew it would get a lot of attention, and people would believe everything they were posting. When the Riots were at their highest, Mayor Woodward wrote, “I am thankful for all the papers that did not join in the business of getting out extras Saturday night. Many of the reports that were published were not only fuel to the fire, but entirely false” (Primary Source 5, page. 1).
This statement shows that the media approved violence and did not mind the killing of innocent people, because it gave them something to broadcast about. When these mobs saw that they were getting press from the media, they started to consider themselves famous “protectors of the people”. “Flaring headlines in the special editions of the afternoon papers wrought the populace to a high pitch of excitement” (Primary source 13, page 2). Even though the media had no proof of reporting rapes or crimes that black men had done they would still write about them.
Eventually, it got to the point where African Americans were getting fed up, and even announcing to places like the New York World saying, “There has been no carnival rapes in and around Atlanta. There has been a frightful carnival of newspaper lies” (Secondary Source 2, page 153). The white mobs already had so many racist views on blacks without the media leaking in, so when the media did decide to write alleged reports accusing the blacks falsely, it swept up the intensity and encouraged whites to be more violent then they ad ever been before. The Atlanta Race Riot caused many unnecessary deaths, and lead to more hostilities between blacks and whites then there had ever been. Although many events caused the Race Riot, the main ones were: the bad judgments poor whites held against blacks, and their horrendous approaches at getting back at them, the disagreement on political views from whites and blacks, and the media that influenced and encouraged whites to rebel against blacks and cause violence instead of trying for equality.
Leaders and protectors stood by and watched deaths occur, and nobody tried to make any changes until after the Riot took place. If whites and blacks had come together and taken away prejudice views and hatred towards each other, they could have accomplished more things and many innocent people could have lived.