|
The Longview Race Riot refers to a series of violent incidents in Longview, Texas, between July 10 and July 12, 1919, when whites attacked black areas of town, killed one black man, and burned down several properties, including the houses of a black teacher and a doctor. It was the second of 25 race riots during what became known as Red Summer, a period of heightened racial conflict, mostly in urban areas of the United States after World War I. The riot is notable for local and state officials taking actions to impose military authority and quell further violence. After ignoring early rumors of planned unrest,〔 local officials appealed to the governor for forces to quell the violence. In a short time, the Texas National Guard and Texas Rangers sent forces to the town, where the Guard organized an occupation and curfew.〔 Some men were shot and numerous black homes and businesses were burned prior to arrival of the law enforcement and military units. One black man was shot and killed by armed whites before the National Guard occupied the town. No one was prosecuted for events, although numerous whites and blacks were arrested. The black suspects were taken to Austin for their safety; half were advised against ever returning to Longview.〔 ==Background== Longview is located approximately 125 miles east of Dallas in northeast Texas, and had a population 5,700 in 1919, of which 1,790, or thirty-one percent, was African American. It was an area of historic cotton cultivation, which had depended on slave labor before the American Civil War. Lumbering of pinelands was another major part of the rural economy. Longview is the seat of Gregg County. In 1919 the county had a population of 16,700, of which 8,160, or forty-eight percent, was black. The area was still very rural, according to historian Kenneth E. Durham, Jr. Cotton was a major commodity crop.〔 Thousands of blacks had already left the South in the Great Migration, settling in northern and midwestern cities. They had sometimes been hired as strikebreakers and competed with working-class whites for jobs. That summer riots took place in many cities across the country, where ethnic whites clashed with blacks in postwar social tensions brought on by competition for jobs and housing. In Longview, racial tensions had deep roots. Most blacks in Texas and the South were disenfranchised in the South, following new constitutions and laws passed at the turn of the century in Texas and other southern states. Excluded from the political system, they were oppressed under Jim Crow rules and white supremacy. Another reflection of postwar violence was a rise in the number of lynchings: in 1919, 78 blacks had been lynched, a substantial increase over the numbers during the Great War: an increase of 15 lynchings over the total in 1918, and 30 more deaths than the lynchings of 1917.〔(William M. Tuttle, Jr., "Violence in a `Heathen' Land: the Longview Race Riot of 1919" ), ''Phylon'' 33 (1972), accessed 6 January 2015 〕 ;Causes Following service by many blacks in the military in the Great War, African Americans aspired to better treatment in the United States. East Texas blacks were in touch with national movements and media, as represented by the weekly delivery by train of the influential ''The Chicago Defender,''〔 a weekly newspaper with nationwide coverage and circulation. The local reporter and newspaper distributor was Samuel L. Jones, a school teacher. At the time, Jones and Dr. Calvin P. Davis, a 34-year-old black physician, were prominent leaders in Longview's African-American community. Not long before the riot, the two were known to be encouraging local black farmers to avoid white cotton brokers and sell directly to buyers in Galveston in order to keep more of their profits. At the same time, members of the Negro Business League had set up a cooperative store that competed with white merchants.〔 In June, local man Lemuel Walters of Longview had been whipped by two white men from Kilgore, allegedly for making "indecent advances" toward their sister. (One account said he was found in her bedroom.)〔 Under Jim Crow, white men strictly monitored and discouraged relations between black men and white women, but not the reverse. Walters was arrested and put in jail in Longview. A lynch mob of ten men abducted him on June 17 and killed him that night by gunshots, leaving him near the railroad tracks.〔〔 Dr. Davis, Jones and some other respectable black men went to Judge Bramlette in town, asking him to investigate the lynching. He asked for the names of people Jones had talked to at the jail. When no investigation was undertaken, the men returned to Judge Bramlette but became convinced he did not intend to pursue the case.〔 On July 5, 1919, ''The Chicago Defender'' published an article about Walters' death. It said that "Walters' only crime was that he was loved by a white woman," and it quoted her (unnamed) as saying that she "would have married him if they had lived in the North."〔 The article described her as "so distraught over his () death that she required a physician's care." It said that the sheriff guarding Walters had let the lynch mob take him, without offering resistance. While the article did not identify the woman, in those small towns many readers knew who she was. Some were offended at the suggestion that she had loved Walters, saying it was damaging to the young woman's reputation.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Longview Race Riot」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|