Race riots are innate to the American experience.
A series on race, violence, and American heritage.
Before you click, a word of warning and a word of invitation.
Part I is long. Very long. It is a timeline of race-related riots, massacres, and uprisings. It opens with the Haitian Revolution of 1804, which sets the stage, and then documents thirty-seven American incidents between 1824 and the Wilmington insurrection of 1898. I walk through them one at a time, in the present tense, as though you and I were standing there: the Hardscrabble riots, the New York Draft Riots, the Colfax Massacre, and many more. A table of contents near the top lets you jump to any year, and you don’t have to read it in one sitting.
I wrote it because too many of us were taught that these were isolated outbursts when they were part of a pattern. I am not saying race riots are the whole American story. They aren’t. But they are part of it, and I believe we owe it to the people who lived through them to keep that history fresh on our conscience.
Expect difficult material: mobs, murder, and the names of people who deserved better. Read slowly. Read with someone if you can. Then come back and tell me what you found.
Part II, covering 1900 to 1965, is on the way.
