Mass racial violence in the United States

In the broader context of racism against Black Americans and racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots.

Quotes

• The assassination of Caldwell is symbolic of the reign of terror that defeated Reconstruction, democracy, Black political participation, as well as human rights in Mississippi and the South in the mid-1870s. Violence was central to the establishment of White domination, not only to seize power for White supremacists but also to instill fear and intimidation in the Black population and their allies. In a state with a Black majority, to secure White supremacy and to maintain Black labor, particularly rural workers, as a servile labor force, it was necessary to institutionalize fear and intimidation. Men like Caldwell represented hope for Black progress and resistance to White domination.
  • Akinyele Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. NYU Press. 22 August 2014. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-4798-8603-6. 

• During the 1870s, Black political participation was the primary motivation for White supremacist violence. Black political participation accounted for 83 percent of the recorded mob violence of the period. The federal government allowed its southern adversaries back into the union through the violence, terror, and disenfranchisement of people of African descent. The U.S. government and national Republican Party proved unreliable allies as valiant men like Caldwell were assassinated, Black political officials were deposed, and the Black masses were forced into agrarian peonage. With the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, any pretense of federal intervention in Mississippi and the former Confederacy was dropped for decades. A war was waged in the South to place emancipated Blacks, in the words of Du Bois, "back towards slavery." Terrorist violence was unleashed to secure the White planter elite in power and to perpetuate a system based on White supremacy. The specter of violence remained as a means of intimidation and social control. In the decades following Reconstruction, lynching became common in the state. Between 1882 and 1940, 534 Black people were lynched in Mississippi—the highest total in the United States during that period. The federal government ignored terrorism waged against Black people: "Congress and the president took no action to prevent lynching, and the federal government did not prosecute the perpetrators, even when the event was publicized at least a day in advance." With White supremacist violence as a major vehicle used to intimidate and suppress, within decades Blacks were excluded from representation and participation in electoral politics and apartheid was institutionalized in civil society.
  • Akinyele Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. NYU Press. 22 August 2014. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-4798-8603-6. 

External links

• Racial Massacres and the Red Summer of 1919: A Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress
• Revolution '67 – Documentary about the Newark, New Jersey, race riots of 1967
• Uprisings Urban riots of the 1960s.
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture
• Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882–1968