Carole Poss

History 3090

27 March 2006

University of Georgia

 

The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot as a Consequence of the Threat of the Upwardly Mobile Black

If one considers the 1906 Atlanta riot from the viewpoint of a white Southerner, one is likely to hear details that differ markedly from those told by black Southerners, perhaps not in terms of the undeniably brutal consequences but more in terms of white Southerners’ justifications for the crimes committed against Atlanta’s black citizens.  One hears the white Southerner talk of the black criminal element terrorizing Atlanta’s white citizens, in particular the virtuous white woman.  In the racially segregated South, the specter of miscegenation, even if consensual, was a threat to be dealt with in no uncertain terms, with the frenzy being all the more acute because of accusations of lustful black men raping white women.  Whether these crimes against whites in fact occurred is unknown; what is known is that the self-appointed defenders of the community, that is, the white community, did not see any need to differentiate between the black criminal and any black citizen, male or female, with whom they came into contact.  For that reason African Americans reject the notion that the attacks against the black citizens occurred to subdue the black criminal element and believe instead that the wrath of Atlanta’s white citizens was directed more toward the successful, upwardly mobile black, who challenged the notion of racial superiority endemic in the South.

Blacks question whether lawless acts of other blacks against white females precipitated the Atlanta riot when clearly no attempt was made to restrict one’s efforts to apprehending the black criminals in question.  Retribution, for questionable crimes, as it turns out, was sought from law-abiding black citizens.  Reports of black persons, both men and women, dragged from streetcars and beaten by angry whites, black businesses and residences stormed and looted, often terrorizing and sometimes killing the occupants, and countless reports of blacks pedestrians being chased and beaten do not suggest that whites were attempting to apprehend the actual perpetrators of the crimes against the white female citizenry.  The white mob, enraged and irrational, and bolstered by their numbers and the tacit approval of law enforcement, sought to devastate as many black citizens as possible.  The whites were clearly not provoked by any perceived criminality of the blacks.  Leila Pendleton, in A Narrative of the Negro, describes the feeling on the part of African Americans that the white mob “made no attempt to locate accused criminals,” believing instead that “they took those who could be the most quickly and conveniently found.”1 This sentiment is echoed by African American P. Sheridan Ball, who points out that among the riots’ victims, no one could be found that “had ever been in jail or been arrested.”2

It is widely felt in the black community that race had more to do with the motivations of the white rioters than any fear of crimes blacks might commit.  Reverend Francis J. Grimke shares his outrage at the attacks upon innocent blacks in describing “Assualts not upon the guilty, not upon the criminal classes, but upon all Negroes indiscriminately.”3 Shouts of “Kill every damn nigger in sight!”4 disabused those who sought to make sense of the violence of the notion that whites made any attempt to single out possibly guilty suspects.  In the minds of the mob, dark skin color alone was tantamount to guilt and reason enough for the punishment they inflicted.  At times attempting to provide some justification, however narrow, for hunting them, whites condemned their African American targets for the smallest of perceived infractions.  Labeling a fleeing black man as either “boisterous” or a “bad nigger” proved to be a sufficient rationalization in the minds of the white mob to pursue their prey.5 Although reports vary as to the actual number of people injured or killed in the several days of rioting, with official reports determined to keep the number low to protect the reputation of the city, anywhere from one dozen to several hundred were believed dead or injured by the riot’s conclusion.6

African Americans also question whether such accounts of black men repeatedly attacking white women in the days leading up to the riot are even credible.  While some African Americans allow for the fact that black criminality was an issue to be dealt with, at the very least reports of blacks attacking white women appear to be exaggerated.  In an anonymous editorial to the New York Times titled, “A Negro Woman’s Plea”, the writer of the editorial refers to trumped up charges of black men raping white women in cases where the actual crime would not have been so alarming, in one case a pocketbook having been stolen, or the attempt made to do so, and in another case where a crime was reported because a black man “brushed against a white woman.”7 David Fort Godshalk reports in his book Veiled Visions that black men “merely walking near white women” might be categorized as rapists.8  In other attempts to leave the public with the impression that black men were assaulting white women with regularity, Jesse Max Barber, in his editorial to the New York World, describes cases where a woman’s screams in response to being passed on the street by a black man might be classified as assaults and still another case classified as an assault because an elderly woman believed or “imagined she saw a negro in the yard.”9

Some African Americans believe these reports of crimes by blacks against whites are entirely false and were merely a tool to increase race hatred on the eve of the gubernatorial nomination, in which candidate Hoke Smith’s anti-black campaign rhetoric was well known.  In Jesse Max Barber’s “A Colored Citizen” editorial, he describes the lengths to which he believes this political candidate has gone to ensure the larger percentage of the voting populace casts a vote his way.  Barber believes Smith’s cohorts went so far as to disguise themselves as blacks in order to “knock down a few white women,” presumably in the absence of any genuine reportable crime.  He cites the failure of police to locate a black suspect through the use of bloodhounds, instead tracing the scent to the home of a white man, as proof of a conspiracy to incite race hatred through false reports of black criminality.10 Godshalk notes that reports of Smith’s associates blackening their faces to commit crimes against white women are unsubstantiated.11  In support for the idea that many reports of what Godshalk terms black-on-white crime are likely to have been fabricated, African Americans point to specific black communities as being especially law abiding, in particular the black community in south Atlanta, noting an absence of arrests in the community in the twelve years preceding the riot and noting their overwhelming support for prohibition.12

Other African Americans, such as Grimke, acknowledge that crimes against whites were alleged to have occurred, but he expresses incredulity that that would leave anyone with the impression that criminal acts by some members of a race are justification to condemn the whole race.  For the sake of argument, he assumes that some of the crimes in question did actually occur, but he notes a lack of complicity by the law-abiding members of the black race with any alleged perpetrators and says no suggestion has been made that anyone believed that to be the case.  Absent any knowledge on the part of blacks that crimes were about to occur, and absent aid being furnished to facilitate the commission of those crimes, Grimke wonders why it is presumed that blacks, “as a class, had [any] more responsibility for those assaults than the whites as a class had.”13 In contrast to blacks’ lack of forewarning that crimes were planned against whites, therefore relieving blacks of culpability, Godshalk tells us that on the first day of the riot, whites put out the word that an “antiblack massacre” was in the offing.14 Grimke believes condemning an entire race for the sins of one or more of its members is a manifestation of race hatred, rather than any misguided belief that the criminality of one member suggests the criminality of all members of a race.15

Whether black-on-white crime preceding the Atlanta riot could be corroborated by official sources, newspapers were sure to capitalize on the possibility that the reports could be true.  One such goal was to profit monetarily from increased sales in the wake of eye-catching headlines that accused blacks of the very thing whites feared most:  diluting the racial purity of the so-called superior race.  At a time when a black man brushing against a white woman on the street could be called an assault, publishing unconfirmed reports of black men raping white women was an incendiary tactic that produced a beneficial result for the newspapers in terms of increasing newspaper sales, to the point of pulling some newspapers from insolvency.16  Marion Louise Scott cites a study conducted by Allen D. Grimshaw which references an article by an “anonymous black Georgian living at the time of the riot” who noted that the violence was instigated by spurious reports in various local newspapers of black-on-white assaults, with specific mention being made of the News and Georgian.  This anonymous black citizen cites “competition among the evening newspapers” as their excuse “to use any measures whatsoever to attract readers among a population that can be best attracted by abuse of the negro.”17

African Americans believe money was not the sole motivator in printing stories of black-on-white crime and point, in addition, to the desire of certain newspaper editors to incite a race war.  Sensational headlines and editorial content fomented a race war among those who believed in the supremacy of the white race and abhorred the idea of the races amalgamating, or even intermingling in social or professional venues.  Atlanta News editor Charles Daniel stirred interest in a re-formation of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed lynching, and devoted a disproportionate amount of editorial space to anti-black rhetoric, including that espoused by white supremacist John Temple Graves.18

Not only did newspapers benefit from casting blacks in the worst possible light because of the profitability of doing so, the racist reporting also engendered support for the anti-black political platforms of both Hoke Smith and Clark Howell, who both had vested interests in local newspapers, the Journal and Atlanta Constitution, respectively.19  African Americans such as Jesse Max Barber understood that newspapers can have an agenda and may attempt to alter the perceptions of the readership to accomplish certain goals.  Barber believed the newspapers’ attempt to secure the election for candidate Hoke Smith was evident in their relentless coverage of black-on-white crime, which encouraged a racist climate and for that reason bolstered Smith’s anti-black disfranchisement political platform.20 While Howell’s political platform was rife with anti-black sentiment as well, he opposed disfranchisement for blacks because of the proposed literacy requirements that would presumably prevent many blacks from voting.  Howell believed these requirements would have the effect of likewise preventing uneducated whites from voting and would encourage the higher education of blacks, a sure threat to white superiority.21

African Americans believe politicians’ vitriol toward blacks, undisguised both in the race for governor and in other venues, laid the groundwork for the violence that would follow.  William James Edwards, in his narrative Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt, tells us that the Atlanta riot was the inevitable result of “ten months’ campaigning of race hatred” and explains, “The nominee for governor seemingly was to be given to the one who could prove himself the greatest enemy of the Negro.”22 Bishop G. W. Clinton mentions another politician who he believes contributed to the hostile climate that eventually resulted in the Atlanta riot, South Carolina senator Benjamin Tillman, whose disdain for blacks was evident in his suggestion that blacks’ sexual urges were uncontrolled and that, to this end, blacks preyed upon the community’s “white maidens and wives.”23 Other African Americans spoke out as well against Senator Tillman, including P. Sheridan Ball in his address to the Colored Young Men’s Christian Association.  Ball says, “Tillman is shrewd enough to make his stock in trade his antagonism to the colored people.”24 The positive response from the audience to Ball’s comments about Senator Tillman indicates that many other blacks understood that the incendiary talk of prominent politicians would help shape the views of the community, in this case against the African American.  Reverend S.  L. Corrothers likewise believes Smith and Tillman should be held accountable for inciting race hatred and points out that uneducated whites would be apt to react violently when confronted with inflammatory rhetoric.25

Africans Americans feel the lawlessness of the white mob goes much further in explaining the reasons for the riot than does any lawlessness, real or imagined, of the black citizens.  While unconfirmed reports of black outrages against whites filled the newspapers in the weeks preceding the riot, blacks point to the outrages committed by whites against blacks throughout the riot, which Ball says received scant attention.  In attributing the violence to whites, Ball feels the “cowardly” uneducated poor white was largely responsible for the atrocities committed against Atlanta’s black citizens, who he believes formed mobs and “attacked only lone colored men,” although Ball is quick to point out that the existence of a criminal element in the white race is, again, not justification to condemn an entire race.26 Other African Americans shared the belief that the lower classes had more involvement in the riot, including Grimke, who refers to “the lower classes of whites in the south” as perpetrating the crimes against blacks in the days of the riot.27

While Ball and other African Americans believe lawless poor whites were the primary instigators and participants in the violence, Godshalk mentions others who believe “the mob represented all of the city’s white social classes” and points to press reports of those arrested by police during the riot, to include “a doctor, a dentist, a carpenter, a butcher, a local business college student, a clerk, a nattily dressed white man, a wealthy Mississippian, a railway machinist, a cement worker, and a blue-collar employee of the Georgia Railway and Electric Company.”28 Among those who believed the white mob was not confined to lower-class whites was black professor Kelly Miller, who believed that, in addition, the white mob was guilty of exhibiting the same barbaric traits that had been historically attributed to blacks.  Miller described the white mob as the “half-savage descendants of Oglethorpe’s colonists.”29 Godshalk tells us these comments and others were an attempt by African Americans to characterize white savagery as the rule rather than the exception.30 However, since only a fraction of the riot’s participants were actually arrested, it is unknown whether the rioting mob was largely comprised of uneducated poor whites with prior criminal records or whether rioters from all socioeconomic levels were well represented in the mob.31

Still other African Americans, in considering what role the black criminal element may have played in provoking the riot, point to the problem of uneducated blacks as a factor contributing to the existence of the black criminal element.  Gregory Mixon describes the feeling among black leaders that a lack of adequate educational opportunities in the black communities were in large part responsible for the “crime and unpredictability” present among the population of lower-class blacks, where, in contrast, well-educated blacks enjoyed high esteem in the community.32 African American James Edwards likewise describes the volatile nature of the “uneducated, undisciplined, untrained” black and says, “He makes a criminal of the lowest type for he is the product of ignorance.”33 However, Edwards points to the disparity in educational opportunities for blacks versus whites by describing the meager amount allocated to educate black children.  Edwards says, “In many places in the Black Belt the Negro child receives thirty cents a year for education, while the white child receives fifteen dollars.”34

This lack of emphasis on equality in education and the instances of uneducated blacks that resulted from this was thought by many blacks to be one of many symptoms of the larger problem, which was whites’ intense fear of black mobility.35 Whites in the South had a difficult time reconciling themselves to blacks moving from the roles of slave and servant to blacks being their intellectual and social equals, so in an attempt to maintain class distinctions, whites sought to deny opportunities to blacks to prevent their attainment of equal status.  While claims of black inferiority were often heard, the reality was whites were seeing a steady increase in well-educated blacks, landowning blacks, and those who operated successful businesses, which threatened conservative whites who feared for the loss of their privileged status and their conception of the hierarchy that should exist in the South.  Some African Americans felt the most progressive blacks were the ones most likely to be targeted by whites, certainly not for any fear of the criminal element within but because they represented the biggest threat to the class distinctions whites sought to maintain.  Grimke states, “Sometimes the more progress that is made, the higher the type represented, the greater the peril.”36 On the other hand, Grimke says, whites were most comfortable with blacks who were content with their lot in life, had no great aspirations, and knew and maintained the place established for them by whites.

African Americans contend that the Atlanta riot was caused in part to eliminate competition from black business owners.  To support that claim, blacks point to the many black business owners whose lives were threatened, and sometimes taken, and whose establishments were ransacked during the commission of the riot.  Godshalk tells us that from the perspective of blacks in the community, the white mob targeted black business owners because of their desire to “annihilate black rivals” and tells us the general feeling among whites was one of resentment toward all blacks who were prospering.37 In an area of the country dominated by the white supremacist mindset, it was difficult for Atlantans to conceive that blacks should be allowed to compete with whites on any level.  The idea of white businesses competing with black businesses was intolerable.  This fear of competition and desire to keep blacks’ progress in check was addressed by systematically destroying black-owned businesses during the riot.  Fear of future consequences resulting from anti-black sentiment caused many black business owners to relocate to other parts of Atlanta.  In further support of the idea that whites strove to eliminate competition from blacks, Mixon tells us that “Members of the black elite were not incorporated into the rebuilding and urban planning efforts.  Instead, they were excluded and isolated from Atlanta’s urban redevelopment projects.”38

Other blacks echoed the sentiments of those who believed the riot might have occurred, in its most basic form, “to keep the negro down.”39 Blacks acknowledged that one way to keep them from progressing toward social and political equality was to take away their political power, which was the basis of the disfranchisement platform of Hoke Smith in his bid for governor.  Disfranchisement, together with inadequate educational opportunities, Edwards believed, “increased in the white man the belief that the Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.”40 Grimke gives a compelling reason why whites would have had a strong desire to stop the progress of blacks.  Whites’ claims of black inferiority provided long-term justification for their treatment of blacks, but whites were being proven wrong in the face of accomplishments by blacks, even in circumstances that should make their progress difficult.  Grimke mocks white society’s beliefs about the capacity of the black race when he says, “This hopelessly inferior race, this lowest type of humanity, if he be really human, strange to say is found doing, and doing just as well, what the highest type is doing.”41

While the defining characteristic of the Atlanta riot may have been its clash between races, allegedly instigated by blacks’ sexual assaults on white women, one learns that violence and intimidation was a tactic used by whites not to force black lawbreakers back in line but was actually meant to remind law-abiding black citizens that the whites were still in charge, and they had every intention of staying there.  If this meant that whites had to use to their advantage the fears and prejudices of uneducated lower-class whites to achieve their goals, they intended to do so.  Whites had reason to believe there was an element of the population that could be incited to violence in circumstances where racial tensions were high, as race riots preceding the one that took place in Atlanta had borne out, and whites intended to take advantage of the antagonistic climate which they created.  No attempt was made to dissuade enraged whites from committing crimes against blacks in supposed retaliation for black-on-white crime; in fact, the opposite was true.  They were encouraged to do so.  If  the stories printed in the weeks leading up to the riot helped competing evening newspapers sell more newspapers, built political support for a particular candidate, or helped white businesses by running successful black businesses out of the downtown area, while at the same time teaching a new generation of blacks their place, those were considered desirable outcomes in a society that believed white supremacy was the natural order of things and did not care for blacks’ accomplishments to contradict those claims.

Notes:

1. Leila Amos Pendleton, “A Narrative of the Negro,” 1999, p. 178, in Documenting the American South, [database on-line], First-Person Narratives of the American South, available from http://docsouth.unc..edu/pendleton/pendle.html, accessed 10 March 2006.

 

            2. “Negroes are Arming, Colored Speaker Says,” The New York Times, 3 December 1906, p. 4, in ProQuest Historical Newspapers [database on-line], accessed 22 February 2006.

 

            3. Rev. Francis J. Grimke, “The Atlanta Riot,” 7 October 1906, (Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia), microfilm, p. 8.

 

            4. David Fort Godshalk, Veiled Visions (Chapel Hill and London:  The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 90.

 

            5. Ibid., 88, 89.

 

            6. Ibid., 105.

 

            7. “A Negro Woman’s Plea,” The New York Times, 1 October 1906, in ProQuest Historical Newspapers [database on-line], accessed 22 February 2006.

           

            8. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 37.

 

            9. Mark Bauerlein, Negrophobia, A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906, (San Francisco, California, Encounter Books, 2001), 228.

 

            10. Ibid.

 

            11. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 117.

 

            12. “Religious Press on the Race Riot,” The Atlanta Constitution, 7 October 1906, p. 1, in ProQuest Historic Newspapers [database on-line], accessed 22 February 2006.

 

            13. Ibid., Grimke, “The Atlanta Riot,” 8.

 

            14. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 85.

 

            15. Ibid., Grimke, “The Atlanta Riot,” 9.

 

            16. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 35.

 

            17. Marion Louise Scott, “The Atlanta Riot of 1906 and Press Coverage of Race-Related Crimes:  A Comparative Analysis of News Stories and Editorials in the Atlanta News, Georgian, Constitution and Journal, 1979, Main Library, Repository, University of Georgia, Athens, p. 3)

 

            18. Ibid., Bauerlein, Negrophobia, 228.

 

            19. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 48, 49.

 

            20. Ibid., Bauerlein, Negrophobia, 228.

 

            21. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 49.

 

22. William James Edwards, “Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt,” 1997, p. 83, in Documenting the American South, [database on-line], First-Person Narratives of the American South, available from http://docsouth.unc..edu/pendleton/pendle.html, accessed 10 March 2006.

 

23. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 24.

 

24. Ibid., “Negroes are Arming,” 1.

 

25.  “Blames Smith and Tillman,” The Washington Post, 24 September 1906, p. 1, in ProQuest Historic Newspapers [database on-line], accessed 22 February 2006.

 

26. Ibid., “Negroes are Arming,” 1.

 

27. Ibid., Grimke, “The Atlanta Riot,” 5.

 

28. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 98.

 

29. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 124.

 

30. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 125.

 

31. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 98.

 

32. Gregory Mixon, The Atlanta Riot, (Gainesville:  University Press of Florida, 2005), 125.

 

33. Ibid., Edwards, “Twenty-Five Years,” p. xii

 

34. Ibid., 123.

 

35. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 30.

 

36. Ibid., Grimke, “The Atlanta Riot,” 4.

 

37. Ibid., Godshalk, Veiled Visions, 122.

 

38. Ibid., Mixon, The Atlanta Riot, 126.

 

39. “Talk of War on Whites at Negro Conference,” The New York Times, 10 October 1906, p. 1, in ProQuest Historic Newspapers [database on-line], accessed 22 February 2006.

40. Ibid., Edwards, “Twenty-Five Years,” 83.

 

41. Ibid., Grimke, “The Atlanta Riot,” 6.