The Washington race riot of 1919
19 - 23 July 1919Southwest Washington, downtown and the Navy Yard district, DC
White servicemen on weekend leave beat Black residents in the streets of the capital for four days while police stood by. Black Washington armed itself and fought back; the toll approached forty dead.
Note: Describes four days of street beatings and shootings.
On the night of Saturday 19 July 1919, a rumour moved through the saloons and pool halls of downtown Washington: a Black man had been picked up, questioned and released over an alleged assault on a white woman. The city's newspapers had spent weeks priming the rumour with lurid coverage of supposed sex crimes. That night a mob of white soldiers, sailors and marines on weekend liberty - many of them veterans of the war that had ended eight months earlier - went into Southwest Washington with clubs, lead pipes and lumber, and beat every Black person they found.
By Sunday night Black Washington had stopped waiting for the police, who had largely declined to intervene. Residents armed themselves, defended their own streets and attacked whites who came into their neighbourhoods. The fighting ran four days through the capital of the United States. Nine people were killed outright in the street battles; an estimated hundred and fifty men, women and children were clubbed, beaten or shot; and the toll approached forty as the wounded died over the following weeks.
President Woodrow Wilson eventually ordered about two thousand troops into the city - cavalry from Fort Myer, marines from Quantico, soldiers from Camp Meade, sailors off ships in the Potomac. What actually ended it was the weather: a heavy summer downpour on 23 July emptied the streets. The NAACP, headquartered in the city, pressed the government to account for what had happened in its own capital. No white rioter's conviction is recorded; the prosecutions that followed fell heavily on Black residents who had defended themselves.
Nine people were killed in the fighting itself; accounts put the final toll at close to forty once those who died later of their wounds are counted. No official tally was ever made.
Sources
- Washington, D.C. Race Riot (1919)BlackPast.orgblackpast.orgThe trigger, the four-day span, the role of white servicemen, Black armed self-defence, and the casualty figures.
- 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought BackCambridge University Press (2015)David F. Krugler's account of the Washington riot, the press coverage that preceded it and the organised Black defence of the city's neighbourhoods.
- Racial Massacres and the Red Summer of 1919: A Resource GuideLibrary of Congressguides.loc.gov
- NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom - Founding and Early YearsLibrary of Congressloc.govThe NAACP's position and activity in Washington during the 1919 violence.