Atlanta Race Riot occurred September 22nd through 24th in 1906.
There was a lot of tension in the air amongst whites and blacks.
There were several causes of the race riot.
There was job competition for the first time between whites and blacks.
And this frustrated a lot of whites.
People like Alonzo Herndon would frustrate whites because there became this kind of a
social elite class of blacks who were doing well—better than some of the whites.
Alonzo Herndon was an incredibly inventive and successful entrepreneur,
who was born into slavery, learned the trade of barbering, and came to Atlanta
and established a barber shop.
And it was a barber shop that had African-American barbers who cut hair for white men.
And so he was able to establish a very successful business.
There was a way of suppressing black participation in political life,
relegating African-Americans to a second-class status.
And part of making that happen was for white people to vilify African-Americans.
During political campaigns, a lot of candidates believed if they were
more racist than the other candidate, they would get more white votes.
And you had a lot of just racial rhetoric.
A couple of the newspapers printed stories that were untrue about black men assaulting white women.
There was a guy running for governor named Hoke Smith.
And Hoke Smith played off the white fears.
In his speeches, he talked about the newspaper articles, the crimes against white women
being committed by blacks, and he said that black disenfranchisement was
necessary to "put blacks or keep blacks in their place." And so he added fuel to the fire.
So with all this climate, on September 22, 1906,
white mobs began to assemble downtown.
They took to the streets and they just begin attacking blacks.
They began pulling them off the trolley cars.
They began choking them, smothering them.
They began attacking African-American businesses like the Alonzo Herndon barber shop.
And a number of African Americans were killed, as well as wounded, by the mobs.
The governor didn't immediately call out the state militia, but eventually it was
clear that the Atlanta City Police could not disperse the mob.
And so the militia was called out, but violence continued for several days.
And the response of the African-American community was to defend themselves.
And black people began to fight back when this occurred.
There were some white bodies who fell.
There were dozens of blacks killed. Hundreds were injured, tremendous property damage was done.
The business leaders quickly got together because it was one thing to
have the suppression of African-Americans,
but it was another thing to have riots. That was bad for business.
The white leaders of Atlanta were also concerned about how Atlanta was viewed around the world.
Press began to talk about how racist Atlanta looked.
And so the white civic leaders reached out to black elites,
and they worked out a compromise to quell the violence.
And there were black businesses that operated downtown.
And so there was an agreement that that would be segregated.
And what came to be known as Sweet Auburn was created as a central black business district.
Black people were no longer operating all throughout downtown any longer.
So segregation was reinforced, black people were blamed for the causes of the riot,
but there was agreement that they wouldn't allow the mob
to continue to attack black communities any longer.
The white leaders were intent on further suppressing African-American rights.
And so the African-American participants in this process were
looking for safety, but in the long run they were not successful in maintaining
the voting rights that they had before the riot took place.
And the response was further disfranchisement of African-Americans to make sure that they
didn't have any effect on voting.
And so in the legislative session that followed in 1907,
the state passed a disfranchisement law that reduced the
black electorate from 25% of African Americans voting to 4%.
And that held true then for most of the first half of the 20th century