Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 90

This event took place between July 24 and 28, 1900, and resulted from the actions of Robert Charles, an African American who took up arms in self-defense when confronted and attacked by white New Orleans policemen. Charles shot and killed two officers, wounded a third, and was wounded himself before fleeing the scene. He immediately became the object of a manhunt. Before he was killed in a shootout on July 28, varying reports indicate that Charles shot or killed up to 27 white people before losing his own life. In 1899 another black man, Sam Holt, had been lynched and dismembered in Newman, Georgia, and Charles was reported as “beside himself with fury” upon hearing of the incident. He had already proclaimed the right of blacks to defend themselves and carried a weapon for his own protection, based on previous encounters with whites in Mississippi before he moved to New Orleans. While Charles was an uneducated laborer, he was also an agent for the International Migration Society that encouraged blacks to emigrate to Liberia, West Africa. White mobs responded violently after hearing that a black man had dared to shoot white people, and so they began attacking African Americans and their property throughout the city. At least a dozen blacks were killed, nearly 70 were injured, and the best city school for blacks was destroyed. Charles was alternately portrayed as a martyr and hero or violent murderer and desperado in the aftermath of the riot and violence.

Fletcher F. Moon