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A’Ja Rolfe
Dan McElderry
FIRM 2014
The Evolution of Race-Rioting in the United States
In 1791, the First Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing every United States citizen the
right to petition, as well as other rights. Does this right justify race-rioting? Race-rioting is, by
definition, a riot resulting from racial tensions or animosity. A riot is a noisy, violent public
disorder caused by a group or a crowd protesting and sometimes rebelling against another
group, a government policy, or an injustice to society, as well as other instances. In our nations
history, has there been an increase or decrease in the number of these riots over the years?
Also, what are the causes of these riots? This paper will investigate race-rioting in the United
States, with a timeline perspective and analyze their effect to change laws, policies and or
public behavior and opinion over the past few decades.
One of the earliest known race-riots in United States history is the riot of 1835. This
riot is often recounted as “The Snow Riot”, as it took place at the Epicurean Eating House that
was owned by Beverly Snow, a freed black man (DeFerarri). The mounting pressures and
tensions of abolitionism and anti-slavery had stricken rife and fear into many whites of
Washington by 1835. Subsequently, when the story and rumors of Arthur Bowen, a young
black slave who attempted to attack his owner with an axe as she lay asleep, surfaced, the city
was thrown into a state of chaos (Morley). This incident triggered the tumultuous riot of 1835,
defiling local black owned businesses, damaging black churches, destroying schools and
defacing the homes of many blacks (DeFerarri).

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Over a decade later, from 1913-1963, more than 60 race-riots erupted across the United
States. Astonishingly, the “Red Summer” of 1919 lead to extremely high tensions between the
African-American and white communities (Johnson). Within six months, over twenty riots had
occurred in America, ending with more than 120 fatalities (Capeci). The first event that
triggered these riots occurred July 27, at a local beach in Chicago. A young African-American
male was reportedly swimming too close to the “white’s only” area. From there a stone-
throwing ensued, consequently leading to the death of the young African-American man
(Knopf). Because the police refused to arrest the Caucasian perpetrators but promptly
prosecuted the African-American victims, rioting for five days after it took place. As a result,
over 500 people were injured, 23 African-Americans, and 15 Caucasians were killed (Capeci).

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The pictures shown previous to this page capture sentiments of how the race riots were

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portrayed and talked about, not just in Chicago but in throughout the United States. Both
pictures were taken from an online database of archived news reports, papers, and articles,
called rarenewspapers.com.
Comparatively, during the summer of 1943, several events leading up to the June 16
riot, resulting in three deaths, over 200 injuries, and roughly 100 destroyed buildings and
homes of African-American’s near downtown Beaumont, Texas (Knopf). The cause of this riot
was the alleged rape of a war workers’ wife by an African-American man. This accusation,
although lacking proof or a suspect, was enough to fuel nearly 4,000 white men to loot, harm,
and riot through two predominantly black neighborhoods (Johnson). Accordingly, several
black-owned and operated newspapers, such as, the Defender and the Norfolk Journal and
Guide, wrote about the catastrophic events that plagued this town (Capeci).
The year 1964 in Detroit marked the beginning of a period of both good and bad
progression into the future. As technology improved and the auto industry was introduced to
the great city through “big capitalism”, racial tensions elevated (Wang). During this same time,
there was a great push for desegregation in schools, as well as other public places like drinking
fountains and buses; start of the Civil Rights Movement. Problems also rose from employment
discrimination (Fasenfast).
The brutal death of Vincent Chin, an Asian-American young man, spurred several
protests and riots for justice to be served. On the evening of June 19, 1982, Chin was
celebrating, at a nightclub, his bachelor's party with friends, when Ronald Ebens and Michael
Nitz confronted him (Fasenfest). Witnesses described a scenario in which Ebens blamed Chin
for the success of Japan’s auto industry and downfall of the United States’ auto industry while
continuing to call Chin derogatory names. Ironic, as Vincent Chin was not even Japanese-

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American; he was Chinese-American. The two parties argued and after being thrown out of the
club, Chin was pursued and beaten by Eben with a baseball bat as Nitz held him down, to death
(Wang). Four days later he died on his planned wedding day. Eben and Nitz were given a three
year probation and $3720 fine; a sentence that many Asian-Americans felt was unjustified
(Fasenfest). In many places around the United States, people broke their silence and went to
the streets protesting and rioting for justice (Wang).
Rodney King was violently assaulted by four Los Angeles police officers on the
morning of March 3, 1991. The horror scene was captured on videotape with eighty-eight
seconds of footage. King suffered over ten fractures, brain damage, a broken ankle, and several
other serious injuries (Amar). This footage was aired on television for weeks after the incident
occurred although the events leading up to King’s altercation with the police seemed to be
overlooked (Eastman). King was heavily intoxicated and led Los Angeles police officers on a
high speed car chase until he was forcibly removed from his vehicle by the officers, on the
night of the notorious beating (Amar). According to Jennifer Eastman, King was advancing at
one-hundred miles during one point of the chase. Consequently, audiences across the nation
were infuriated with the act of terror held against King and not a week later, rioting throughout
LA had taken place. Consequently, the riots caused over an estimated one billion dollars in
costs, more than one thousand residents were arrested, and fifty people murdered ().
The four officers involved in the beating of Rodney King were all acquitted
Angry protesters began rallying against the excessive force used by Anaheim police
officers in California in 2012. The summer of July 2012, twenty-five year old Manuel Diaz
was fatally shot by police officer, Nick Bennallack (Amy). Officer Bennallack was on duty for
an investigation in an area with a great amount of gang related activities when he approached

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Diaz (“LATimes”). Diaz was described to have been dressed similar to a gang member and
when Officer Bennallack approached him and he ran away, Bennallack mistakenly believed
Diaz was a threat to his safety and was a suspected gang member (International Business).
Officer bennallack did not serve a day in jail and was not charged. Riots spread throughout
California and the family of Manuel Diaz attempted to charge Bennallack with excessive force
claims, but was unsuccessful (Velasco). Similarly, in 2009, Theresa Smith’s son was shot and
killed by police officers at a local Wal-Mart in Anaheim. When the trial began, her son, like
Diaz, was depicted as a gang member in the officer involved shooting and this helped to justify
the police officers’ claims of self defense (International Business). "There were pieces of brain
on the ... darn grass, in front of all these children, in front of all these people," Smith said.
"This traumatizes people, and these people are angry" (Amy). Schuyler Velasco wrote, for the
Christian Science Publishing Society, that according to police, the operation was vital to help
clean the Anaheim community and could no longer be “put off”. The most notorious of the
riots was the Disneyland riot of Anaheim. Over 200 supporters stood outside of the Anaheim
police department and then went on to walk towards Disneyland, 9 were arrested, and several
more were taken into custody, as police blocked off the protests (“LATimes”).
Hoodies, Skittles, and Arizona Tea became symbols and markers of the infamous
shooting of 17 year old, Trayvon Martin. Martin was visiting with his father in Florida, after
being suspended from his home school during the fateful week he was murdered (“Orlando
Sentinel”). Martin was walking back to his father's home after going to the store to purchase
skittles and a Arizona Tea while wearing a hoodie in which he would later be deemed
“suspicious looking” (Adjei). A neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, spotted Martin,
contacted the local law enforcement, and continued to pursue the young man before eventually

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firing a Kel Tek 9mm semiautomatic handgun and ending Trayvon Martin’s life (Robles).
Zimmerman was never arrested for the murder of Trayvon Martin and this started a national
protest (“LATimes”).
The day after police completed their investigation of the Martin case, around 400
people rallied for Zimmerman’s arrest as they packed the Allen Chapel AME Church in
Sanford, Florida (Abdollah). George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder on
July 13, 2013. Consequently, angry protesters in Los Angeles, California concluded protesting
with looting and blocking traffic on the 10 Freeway in the Mid-City area (“LATimes”).
The most recent case of race rioting in the United States is happening as I type
this paper, in Ferguson, Missouri. Police Officer Darren Wilson fired 12 rounds at the unarmed
youth, Michael Brown on August 9th, 2014. Brown fit the description of a young male that had
just committed theft at a convenience store, located near where he was walking from with a
friend (Hennessy-fiske). According to Officer Wilson on an interview with ABC News, he
“feared for his life” when Brown attempted to take away Wilson’s gun. The events that
occurred shortly after Officer Wilson approached the two youths from within his vehicle are
debated over with evidence supporting both sides (“The Economist Newspaper”). Protests,
riots, looting, and a city declared under martial law were after effects of Police Officer Darren
Wilson walking away from a murder scene unscathed, no arrests ever made. Governor Jay
Nixon requested aid in calming and protecting the rioting in Ferguson on August 18th, after a
curfew from midnight until 5am failed to help the situation (“NYTimes”).

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The picture on the left was
taken at the scene of a protest in
Ferguson, Missouri. The sign that the
protesters are holding up represents an
organization that was formed as a
result of the Ferguson shooting, named
“Hands Up United”. This organization
was constructed by the youth of the
community in Ferguson, Missouri. The picture was taken from the obs-onthemove.org website.

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The grand jury of St. Louis, Missouri made the verdict that Darren Wilson would not be
indicted on November 24th, 2014. Not even a day later, riots were enflamed about the city,
along with looting, violence, protests, and a national outcry of injustice. Other cities around the
world reacted to the decision with protests and became aware of the still existing racial divide
in the United States. Students around the nation took to walking out of school, in places like
Denver, Colorado, Memphis Tennessee, and Northern California to demonstrate Hands Up,
Don’t Shoot in support of Michael Brown. In some areas, people lied on the ground for 4 and
½ minutes to represent the 4 and 12 hours that Michael Browns body was left on the ground
after he was shot.
Race-rioting in the past few decades has changed and remained constant
simultaneously. Simply put, a single event can cause a chain reaction that easily will trigger a
riot; this is a true today as it was in 1835. Some factors have changed, though, considering that
African-Americans are no longer enslaved, racial tensions are not nearly as high, and that
technology and information has become more readily available and accessible. Other factors,
like prejudice and racism, remain commonplace in the United States.

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Terry Knopf describes the “role of rumors” that spread throughout the cities and towns
that riots occurred in, as inciteful. Most people are familiar with the children’s “telephone”
game, in which someone whispers a sentence to the person next to them and this cycle
continues until the last person has received word. Often the outcome of this game is far from
the original sentence. Similarly, rumors played a key role in the riots of years past. In the
1800s, Facebook, CNN, and e-mail were not a means of communication, like they are today.
People often wrote letters or read newspapers to keep up with current events and people.
Toward the later 19th century and early 20th century, the radio was invented and introduced to
the world and how people received news changed.
In his book, Race Riot, William Tuttle describes and emphasizes the differences
between the riots of the early 1900s versus the riots occurring later in the period. Equality and
justice were heavily emphasized in most, if not all, race-riots during the first part of that
century. In the latter part of the century, however, the race-riots were in response to “symbols
of white-racism” or “justifiable retaliation”, as Tuttle notes.
What is there in common between all of these riots and others like them? In every riot
there was an act or incident that prompted people to act vigorously to either prevent the
incident from happening again and/or bring awareness to the situation. Susan Olzak notes that
“racial deprivation as an explanation for racial unrest has reemerged following several large-
scale riots in the United States.” Comparatively, this argument leads to another example. While
one group of people suffer more than or lack compared to another group of people, a single
incident can increase pre-existing tensions. Consequently, this potentially leads to rioting.
The intended purpose of so many of these riots were to bring awareness to a given
situation. At the time of the 1919 riots, author Bernard Robinson notes, “In the reports on race

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riots it is frequently pointed out that one of the factors abetting the riot is a recent and
abnormally heavy migration of Negroes into the community in which the race riot breaks out.”
Because of these ‘migrations’, it can be ascertained that predisposed racial tensions escalated
(Robinson). Because of harsh segregationist laws, racial tensions, lynchings, crowding
populations, and scarcity of employment opportunities, more and more African-Americans
were looking towards the north to escape from the south (History.com). Looking back in time,
when slavery was prevalent in the United States there was a higher proportion of black slaves
in the southern states. This is why the south was so concentrated with African-American
communities at the time. Stanley Lieberson and Arnold R. Silverman concluded in their paper,
The Precipitants and Underlying Conditions of Race Riots, that these riots happened in areas of
“ institutional malfunctioning, cross-pressures, or other inadequacies” where the city is
incapable of undertaking solutions and precautions in order to resolve.
These riots were the stepping stones to the Civil Rights Era, which helped to get
many laws, acts, and amendments passed, such as the desegregation of schools. In contrast,
when African-Americans did stand up for their rights or to get justice through rioting, many
times they were viewed as criminals and hoodlums disturbing the “peace”. Often times,
African-Americans were not the aggressors but simply forced into defensive roles (Robinson).
According to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, cities with high proportions of
blacks have low levels of education or are employed in highly segregated and low-paying jobs
are more likely to experience racial unrest (Olzak). Conversely, It is important to note that
rioting between the years 1913-1963 not only directed attention to civil rights and racism, the
rioting also made people concentrate on rape, police brutality, equal representation, living
conditions, and other social issues that were prevalent.

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The effects of the riots were similar in most cases. For example, as a result of the
Vincent Chin riots, the American Citizens for Justice was founded by Asian-Americans in
Detroit on March 31, 1983 to urge political action (Wang). The Chin riots are thought of as the
initial action that provoked the Asian- American Civil Rights Movement. Trayvon Martin’s
family created a foundation that advocates for support and awareness of violent crimes, called
the Trayvon Martin Foundation (Trayvon Martin Foundation). Similarly, in Ferguson, citizens
are now aware of the unequal representation in their local government offices and police
department. According to city-data, the black population is 64.9% of the overall population of
Ferguson, versus the white population of 30.6%. In a recent MSNBC paper written by Zachary
Roth, he notes that out of the city’s six council members, five are white. Also, six of the seven
school board members are white, like the town’s mayor. Several riots made it apparent of the
injustices that people suffer everyday, while others enlighten the err in our ways. If we do not
go out and vote or attend school board meetings, how can we expect equal representation in
governing offices?
Why are race riots an important part of our history and culture? Understanding the
frameworks of a race riot and how they can occur, can help to prevent future ones. Also, future
solutions could be found from studying and researching race riots. Analogously, just like
students learn about past events, past leaders, and past experiences of America in classes, such
as, American Studies, race rioting is a part of history, an important one at that.
The key to a better, more successful future is understanding the past and conquering
questions like: why did these people begin rioting, what could have have been done in order to
resolve conflict and prevent rioting, and how did rioting change things? People have become
more involved within their respective communities, technology has changed with time, and the

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underlying conditions and cause for the riot has evolved, as well. When all else seems to have
failed and people are pushed to a breaking point, rioting, the communities usually come
together to resolve issues and live in terms of peace- something the government and/or police
force may have failed to do. Technology in todays time allows people to connect with each
other more efficiently than ever before in history. The simplest of cellular phones can video
record, capture pictures, and instant message news to groups of people in under 30 seconds.
Moreover, the incidents of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin has inspired millions of
Americans to turn on their camera if they were to be caught in or witness to a situation such as
police brutality.

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