------- 1900 Akron disturbances -----------
Calgary Weekly Herald Aug. 30, 1900 (p. 1, 8) reported that law and order had been re-established in Akron, Ohio following "labour riots" of Aug 22. Streets were deserted except for soldiers patrolling the streets in the business section. Arrests of those involved was expected.
The Edmonton Bulletin also carried news of the disturbance although not stating that it was caused by labour unrest nor what the cause was. (Edmonton Bulletin, Aug. 24, 1900)
And in fact it was not a labour riot.
An old book recording the history of the city, Akron 1825 1925 blandly says city hall had been blown up with dynamite and hardware stores broken into to equip mobs on the street who then took control of some parts of the city. A brief mention elsewhere simply says city hall rebuilt after disturbances.
This is the full story from on-line sources:
A white vigilante gathered a mob and demanded authorities produce a black man accused of performing an immoral act on a white woman. Authorities spirited him out of the city, and the mob took its frustrations out on the city hall and other city buildings.
About that same time,
under the ironic headline "All Are Free and Equal," Calgary Herald (Aug. 30, 1900) recounted how in New York after a black man shot one of a group of whites that were taunting him, there had been numerous white mob attacks on innocent blacks, including a large-scale invasion of a black apartment block.
See also “Akron riot of 1900 Rubber City Revisited UAkron Blog” on-line.
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Other racist episodes in U.S. history:
The Wilmington massacre of 1898,
where white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina conducted a municipal-level coup d'etat (forcing the elected city mayor, aldermen and chief of police to resign and replacing the mayor with a leader of the white mob)
while other racists and actual government military units - the Wilmington Light Infantry and units of the Naval Reserve -- were shooting and killing approx. 50 black civilians.
see Wikipedia article and other sources.
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