Throughout 1919 there were ten major episodes of what I think is best-called anti-black collective violence. Here’s the thing if we really want to understand this history and where it should be in our place. It’s not an aberration that happened along the Mississippi River in the deep south; this was very much a microcosm of a national tragedy, national shame, a national attitude that was happening, a national battle that was happening.
We typically call these episodes race riots, but it’s a misleading term because when we hear the word riot, well, anyone who is participating is equally to blame, right? We think that it’s mayhem, with people acting widely, not having good impulse control, seeing an opportunity to break the law, and doing it.
Even in the papers at the time, there was this sort of amazment; “Oh the blacks are fighting back now.” And honestly, they had been cowed because of the, you know lynching was the way to have extrajudicial terrorism, whites could kill blacks with impunity, and that was a way, especially in the south, to keep this power structure in place and this was a national rebellion against that.