Charleston Riot of 1919

On the night of Saturday 10 May 1919, white sailors from the Charleston Naval Training Camp went through the middle of the city attacking Black men and wrecking Black businesses. It was the earliest major incident of what became known as the Red Summer, and it set the pattern for the months that followed: the attackers were white servicemen, and the grievance underneath was white resentment at the new assertiveness of Black men who had worn the same uniform in France.

The Charleston News and Courier of 11 May reported that the trouble began with a rumour that a Black man had shot a white sailor in a pool hall. White servicemen, joined by local white civilians, raided a shooting gallery and set about beating Black passers-by. The Navy's own investigation later concluded that the likelier origin was a chance encounter on the pavement near Beaufain and Archdale Streets between two sailors on leave, sixteen-year-old Roscoe Coleman of Ohio and eighteen-year-old Robert Morton of Texas, and an unidentified Black man who did not step aside for them. Black Charlestonians returned fire as their businesses were destroyed. The Marines were ordered to confine all sailors to the navy yard, and some Black residents were disarmed. By the time it stopped that night three African Americans were dead, seventeen were wounded, and seven white sailors were severely injured.

A coroner's inquiry closed on 15 May and the Navy convened a court of inquiry that sat for nineteen days aboard the USS Harford at the navy yard, calling dozens of Black and white witnesses. Two servicemen, Jacob Cohen and George Holliday, were tried for the manslaughter of Isaiah Doctor and acquitted; the court convicted them of rioting instead and each served a year in a naval brig. The newly founded Charleston branch of the NAACP asked the Navy to punish the sailors and compensate the Black businessmen, and asked Mayor Tristram Hyde for protection against future mobs, for Black policemen on the force, and for an interracial committee. Hyde granted everything except the Black policemen - the branch's first partial victory.