Jonathan Fitch

History 3090

Spring 2006

The 1906 Atlanta Riot as Observed in the Nation's Press

There is absolutely no doubt that knowledge is power, for the greater amount of information obtained, the better or more clearer the outlook on life will be. It is a journalist’s job to inform the people by means of finding out the truth and disseminating that truth to the people. It is a major responsibility that should never be held lightly, because people look to journalists as their primary source for knowing the truth of local, national, and world affairs. An abuse of this power will have severe consequences, as was shown in the Atlanta race riot of 1906. Journalism shaped the views of those who participated, as well as how the riot was viewed by people in other states after the mayhem was over and the carnage and destruction had subsided. When in the wrong hands, the sources of information may be wielded to give false or misleading accounts of what is considered truth in order to get the people to believe a certain thing and even garner a desired response, such was the case when the two men running for governor of Georgia had stock and sway in the major Atlanta newspapers that ran coverage of not only their campaigns, but issues that were important to the voters, and ultimately, their election.

Racism was the cancer that had spread throughout the South after Reconstruction and it was racial hatred against blacks that Georgian newspapers used to sell papers and incite violence against black people. After the Civil War and the burning of Atlanta, the city hoped to rebuild with a better image, one of tolerance, one of economic prosperity. For the most part, this was happened. The Atlanta economy was booming in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and the population was growing steadily, with people trying to take advantage of the entrepreneurial opportunities that presented themselves. This economic expanse allowed for more black citizens to start their own businesses and break away from the whip and chains that haunted their past and instead, run toward economic freedom, not needing to rely solely on sharecropping, but instead, having the chance to work and earn a living on their own and not relying on whites to provide for them in one way, shape, or form.

The economic freedom allowed for a false sense of equality. Earlier in the year of the riot, the same paper that helped in the “nigger baiting”¹ described Atlanta as a place where “…the southern man knows how to get along with the negro…”². On the surface, Atlanta was very tolerant of black men and women. There were few altercations, but while the economy of Atlanta provided a way for blacks to provide for themselves like the white men and women, the economic equality did not transfer over to social equality. It was feared by gubernatorial candidate, Hoke Smith, as well as other whites, that if blacks earned the political, equality, that they would believe that it was social equality that they long desired³ that the southern culture and establishment would break down. It was necessary then to disenfranchise blacks through voting requirements that they were unlikely to pass, so that the letter of the constitutional law in the 15^th amendment would be observed while the result of few blacks voting would be the reality⁴.

Hoke Smith was a key factor in inciting the riots with the help of the Atlanta newspapers. His proliferation of Negrophobia the rise of black men and women to power lodged a splinter of resentment in the minds of those white men and women who listened to him, and the rioters used this fear to attack black establishments during the riot in order to render any chances of black economic advancement, negligible⁵. Hoping for a win against Clark Howell, who used his position within the Atlanta Constitution newspaper to promote his positive and hopeful vision of Atlanta and the new south, Smith drummed up fear and resentment against blacks which spurred him on to victory in the gubernatorial primary.

The riot itself was a slow build that started with the speeches and writings of Hoke Smith, but culminated in a series of news reports that alleged negro crimes against white women. The reporting started in August, the month before the riot, with the front-page in the Atlanta Constitution story of a 14-year-old girl, Annie Laurie Poole, who was reported to have been assaulted by a black man near her home in Lakewood, around 10 o’clock in the morning:

“She stopped in the field on the way to pick some cantaloupes and was In the act of filling her bonnet when a negro suddenly emerged from some shrubbery on the edge of the road and before the girl had time to realize his motive he had her by the throat and brandishing a huge oak stick, said that he would kill her if she screamed”⁶

For the alleged attack, the man, Frank Carmichael was seized, brought to the Annie Poole’s home, and as soon as he was identified as her attacker, he was shot multiple times until death by the armed men who came to Annie’s rescue. This story was the beginning of many that would follow, inciting fear and outrage by white men and women against blacks, who they already viewed as inferior and to some extent, perpetual children, if not animals.

The next day, as part of an on-going story, the Atlanta Journal reported that a negro man named Joe Morris killed a man and wife from Milledgville, and that he was swarmed by a posse of 500 men in a swamp. The article makes it clear that “civilian justice” is going to be had with the following quote: “There will be no court cost if he is found,”.⁷ The following day, another report that an elderly woman was assaulted by a black man. The man accused of the assault had to be rescued by a police deputy so he would not be killed by a mob.⁸ A few days later, the city was outraged when it was reported that a negro man tried to assassinate James T. Coyne “as he stood waiting for [a] car”.⁹ The same newspaper followed up a few weeks later with an article calling for some sort of an “effective check” on blacks, calling them “idle, vagrant negroes, half loafers, half thieves, and altogether dangerous”¹⁰. Two days after the call to protect our women, the Atlanta Georgian printed a response and answer to how it could be done.

“We have learned the great truth that lynching does not stop the crime against our women. We have reached by elimination the conclusion that other experiments must be tried to intimidate the criminals of the negro race. One of the most hopeful of these experiments seems to be a statute authorizing the mutilation of the criminal and the branding of him on the forehead with the letter “R” significant of his crime and making him an object of suspicion for the rest of his time.”¹¹

The weekend of September 20^th through the 23^rd is when the riot erupted and it was mostly due to the culmination of media reports of negro violence that had been reportedly on-going since the prior month.

On Friday, September 20^th, the Atlanta Constitution reported that a Miss Orrie Bryan was the victim of an attempted assault in her home on Courtland Street. She was reported to have locked herself in a closet to escape the man who was trying to attack her. The suspect was arrested and scheduled for trial at the time of the printing of the article.¹² The same day, the Atlanta Journal reported on the same incident, but added a quote by a city inspector that described saloons and clubs on Decatur street as the places where the vagrant negroes came from before committing their crimes or attempting to commit crimes against white women.¹³

At 7 o’clock that evening, Mrs. Mattie Arnold went to the back porch of her home where she was assaulted by a man named Henry Green, a black ex-convict. He was captured shortly after and rescued by Officer Dunbar before a crowd of angry citizens was able to carry out their threats of violence. Around the same time, Mrs. Alma Allen was attacked by a black man on Davis Street. She was attacked from behind and screamed and attracted her sister, who in return screamed and called the attention of Dr. Hearn, their next door neighbor. By the time Dr. Hearn arrived, the black man had left. During this time, another incident involving Mrs. Mattie Holcombe took place, where she saw a black man just outside her yard. He left after Mrs. Holcombe screamed.¹⁴ It was these events that were described by the newspapers and caused the furor that incited the mob violence that gripped the city of Atlanta for a weekend in 1906.

The riot itself was one painted in a positive light for the whites involved, at least according to the Atlanta Journal on the day after the incident:

“The mob began to gather shortly after 8 o’clock. ‘Let’s clean the black devils out—teach them a lesson!’ The mobs followed the fleeing Negroes. A Negro was seen running up the street, and the crowd started in fierce pursuit, crying, ‘Lynch him! Lynch him!’”¹⁵

The Constitution, however, while seeming to pass the blame on “youths” who “would rather have trouble then not”, went on to refer to the blacks being chased as “negro brutes” who were responsible for attacks on white women in the recent days. The youths and men were reported to have just received their week’s wages and were having drinks when the first act of violence occurred. One of the men attacked a black bicycle messenger on the corner of Pryor and Decatur streets. A policeman had to rescue the black man from the assault.¹⁶ A mob of 10,000 men were responsible for the violence and carnage that left sixteen black men and one white man dead, many injured, trolley cars smashed, and property destroyed, including a few black-owned businesses.¹⁷

National newspapers had much to day about the riots held in Atlanta. A week following the riots, the Commerce Journal in Commerce, Texas printed a lengthy article explaining the situation of mob violence and how it is unjustified. While the paper deplores the violence that resulted during the mob-rule, it gives a sympathetic look at why it happened. The racist tones are alive as it refers to the black criminals as “bad niggers” and quotes editor of the Atlanta Georgian, John Temple Graves as something to ponder when he turns attention away from lynchings and towards the evil-doers¹⁸, neglecting the presence of false accusations reminiscent of the Salem witch trials which executed many innocents. The blame, by default, is placed on the black men and women accused of a crime, instead of seeking justice through witnesses, truth, and trial. The Trenton Evening Times headlined the event as “Troops are in Control During Negro Horrors”, as if to imply that it were the blacks who were causing the trouble, and then refers to a black man, Zeb Long, as a “fiend” for carrying a gun around town. His lynching is described in the very short piece.¹⁹

The Syracuse Herald in New York had a more accurate portrayal of the events and analysis of the carnage, including descriptions of the victims, whom were all innocent:

“The bodies of both barbers were first kicked and then dragged from the place. Grabbing at their clothing, this was soon torn from them, many of the crowd taking these rags of shirts and clothing home as souvenirs or waving them above their heads to invite n further riot When dragged into the streets, the faces of both barbers were terribly mutilated, while the floor of the shop was wet with puddles of blood.”²⁰

The riots were implied to disgrace the city of Atlanta in the Lima Times Democrat, in Lima, Ohio²¹, and there is nothing said that can possibly disagree with that assessment.

What was expected as the result of the Atlanta race riot was a mass exodus of blacks from the city²² and many black men and women did leave Atlanta with their families.²³ This is certainly what the Ku Klux Klan wanted, for they sent out a notice that negroes should leave Atlanta.²⁴ What others hoped was that the South would not be judged too harshly by its Northern counterpart, for the North has seen its fair share of race riot’s as well, but instead, that rule of law should have been re-established and justice given to the “brutes” who attack women. In Boston, a protest by black men and women started to discuss the Atlanta race riot and the general condition of blacks throughout the South, and condemned Hoke Smith, as well as others, with responsibility for the actions that took place in the city.²⁵

There was some sensationalism elsewhere in the country. For example, the Marble Rock Journal of Iowa states, “Twenty Victims of Atlanta Riot”, when only seventeen people died; a slight exaggeration, but what was also said was that a woman dropped dead of fright after seeing two black men get shot by the mob in front of her house. This is somewhat surprising due to the fact that the paper addresses the issue of exaggerated numbers and an agreement to print only established facts.²⁶

The Syracuse Herald pinpoints the cause, or at least one of the main causes of the Atlanta race riots:

“The riots In Atlanta in which a number of negroes were killed may be traced directly to ‘yellow journalism.’ For months one of the Atlanta newspapers has been stirring up bad blood, not only by exaggerating every crime committed by negroes, displaying It in large type but by upholding lynching as a proper penalty for certain offenses. In the recent campaign for the Democratic nomination for Governor the candidates strove to outdo each other in denouncing the negroe’s influence in politics and in urging that he be denied the suffrage.”

The article goes on to describe how the result of such “yellow journalism” and political dogma is a tension that exists between whites and blacks; a distrust and dislike for one another that boils under the surface until such a thing as what happened in Atlanta, occurs. This article in particular places a little blame on the “decent white people” and on the “decent black people” for being too patient with the “negrophobists”. The conclusion being that had those responsible for spreading hate and lies about blacks been brought to justice or condemned as liars and hate-mongers that the smoldering problem of racial tension might not have been nearly as bad.²⁷

In the days after the riots, the Atlanta papers made the whites look innocent while the blacks were responsible for the uproar. On Tuesday, September 25^th, the Atlanta Constitution had a number of articles concerning the riots and the aftermath, including these: “2 Blacks Riddled By Posse” and “Riots End All Depends on Negroes”. While failing to highlight the previous days’ violence perpetrated by white men as the cause for the civil unrest, the newspaper instead points the finger at blacks as the instigators of violence and treats them with contempt and threatens them with a “war of extermination”.²⁸

It’s very clear that this “yellow journalism” was very responsible for spreading racial hate and distrust for blacks as well as the attempt to keep black men and women from the social equality which results from political equality which was one of the main points of the gubernatorial campaign run by Hoke Smith. The newspapers were a tool used by the candidates to spread racist propaganda and exaggerations in order to acquire votes for election to the office of Governor of Georgia. The irresponsibility of the journalists, editors, and owners and managers of the media outlets was demonstrated by the sensationalizing of racial news stories, and was made a mockery by the national news media, as well as an example of how not to perform the role that journalism plays in society.

Endnotes:

1. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, 1989 ed., “Race Riots.”

2. The Atlanta Journal, February 1906

3. Mixon, Gregory. The Atlanta Riot: RACE, CLASS, AND VIOLENCE IN A NEW SOUTH CITY (Florida: The University Press of Florida, 2005.), 365

4. “Hoke Smith on Disenfranchisement”, The Atlanta Journal. 10 July 1906

5. David Fort Godshalk, “In the Wake of Riot: Atlanta’s Struggle for order, 1899-1919” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1992), 91.

6. “In Presence of Outraged Girl Black Fiend is Shot To Death by Enraged Atlanta Citizens". Atlanta Constitution. 1 August 1906

7. “Black Fiend Surrounded by Posse”. The Atlanta Journal. 2 August 1906

8. “Deputy Saves Negro from Mob”. The Atlanta Journal. 3 August 1906

9. “Negro Tries to Kill Coyne”. The Atlanta Journal. 9 August 1906

10. “We Must Protect Our Women”. The Atlanta Journal. 20 August 1906

11. “The Way to Save Our Women”. The Atlanta Georgian. 22 August 1906

12. “Assault Is Attempted on Miss Orrie Bryan Near Center of City”. The Constitution. 21 September 1906

13. “Negro Dives and Clubs are the Cause of Frequent Assaults”. The Atlanta Journal. 21 September 1906

14. Lane, Mills, ed. Standing upon the Mouth of a Volcano. Savannah (Library of Georgia, 1993), 222-223

15. The Atlanta Journal, September 1906

16. “The Day After the Storm”. The Constitution. 24 September 1906

17. “Facts of Last Night’s Reigh of Terror”. The Constitution. 23 September. 1906

18. “Alarming for Both Races”. The Commerce Journal. 5 October 1906

19. “Troops are in Control During Negro Horrors”. Trenton Evening Times. 24 September 1906

20. “Atlanta is Quest”. The Syracuse Herald. 24 September 1906

21. “Excited Boys”. Lima Times Democrat. 8 October 1906

22. “Troops in Control”. Bismarck Daily Tribune. 25 September 1906

23. Reference Library of Black America. Vol. I., “1906 - Atlanta, GA”, 28

24. “Rioting Continued at Atlanta, Georgia”. The Chillicothe Constitution. 25 September 1906

25. “Protest by Negroes”. Fitchburg Daily Sentinel. 29 September 1906

26. “Twenty Victims of Atlanta Riots”. Marble Rock Journal. 4 October 1906

27. “The Atlanta Riots”. The Syracuse Herald. 24 September 1906

28. The Atlanta Constitution, 25 September 1906