Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 105

This outbreak of racial violence took place in August 1908, just as the city was preparing to celebrate the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The state capital was known for vice, political corruption, and negative racial attitudes toward its growing number of African Americans. In July a black man, Joe James, cut a white man, Clergy A. Ballard, who caught James in his daughter’s bedroom. Ballard died from his wound, and James was beaten severely by a mob before going to jail. Things settled down until August 14, when local papers headlined his case and another crime with racial overtones. A black man, George Richardson, who was also arrested and jailed, had reportedly raped another white woman. Richardson, a working man with no previous record, was portrayed as being an ex-convict like James and a murderer. Irate whites gathered at the jail, and the crowd swelled to over 4,000 by late afternoon.

Local authorities diverted the crowd with fire engines and took the two black men away through the rear entrance. Word spread that white restaurant owner Harry Loper drove the men out of town, and the mob destroyed his business. Black neighborhoods were the next target, with two blacks lynched, others shot at or beaten, and black homes and businesses burned and destroyed. Four whites died from stray bullets before order was restored on Saturday, August 15, and the riot prompted a mass exodus of blacks from the city.

Fletcher F. Moon