In the article that follows Syracuse University historian Herbert G. Ruffin II takes us back in time to describe the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 on the eve of its 100-year anniversary. African American life and the passing down of wealth from one generation to … Read MoreWe Can Best Honor Our Past by Not Burying It: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
The Tampa Bay Race Riot was one of dozens of race riots that occurred in U.S. cities during the spring and summer of 1967. The riot took place between June 11 and June 14, 1967 after nineteen-year-old Martin Chambers who was a suspect in the … Read MoreTampa Bay Race Riot (1967)
In 1942, during World War II, British military officials authorized the construction of two military air bases in the then British colony of the Bahamas. The main base would be located outside of Nassau, the colonial capital, near the airport and the other at the … Read More1942 Burma Road Riot, Bahamas
The Ocoee Massacre, which occurred in the town of Ocoee, Florida on November 2-3, 1920, was the largest election-related massacre in the 20th Century. Approximately 50 Blacks and two whites died in the violence and the entire Black community of Ocoee was forced to flee … Read MoreThe Ocoee Massacre (1920)
John B (for the Baptist) Stradford was born a free man in Versailles, Kentucky in 1861. His father, J.C. Stradford was a former slave who had been emancipated and was living in Stradford, Ontario (Canada) but who returned to the U.S. and was in Versailles … Read MoreJohn “the Baptist” Stradford (1861-1935)
The Longview Race Riot occurred on July 10-12 in this northeast Texas city where 1,790 blacks comprised 31% of the town’s 5,700 people in 1919. Racial tensions were high across the United States due to race riots that began in March 1919. Just before the … Read MoreLongview, Texas Race Riot, 1919
The Peekskill Riot was a series of violent attacks by mobs of white citizens directed against African Americans and Jews attending a civil rights benefit concert in Westchester County, New York, in 1949. More than 150 people were injured in the riots. The concert, planned … Read MorePeekskill Riot (1949)
Chattel slavery was practiced in the Danish West Indies from around 1650 until July 3, 1848, when Colonial Governor Peter von Scholten issued an emancipation proclamation. The Danish government, however, then enacted rules that kept people enslaved by contracts for another two years. In 1847, … Read MoreThe Fireburn Labor Riot, United States Virgin Islands (1878)
The US Armed Forces were segregated until President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948 which desegregated all the military service branches. That segregation during World War II helped create the Riot of Bamber Bridge in Great Britain in 1943. When US … Read MoreThe Riot of Bamber Bridge (1943)
The Virden, Illinois Race Riot was an example of the combination of labor and racial violence in the late 19th and early 20th century United States. Following a United Mine Workers (UMW) national coal strike in 1897, a new 40-cents-per-ton rate was agreed on by … Read MoreVirden, Illinois Race Riot (1898)
