Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations (review)

Sept. 22, 2006 was the 100th anniversary of the great Atlanta race riot in which 26 persons were killed, scores seriously injured, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of property destroyed. At the time, the violence of white gangs in the Five Points area of Atlanta made national and international news. The Oct. 7 cover of Paris' Le Petit Journal rendered a full-color illustration of white rampage, complete with a descriptive caption "Les 'Lynchages' Aux État-Unis." By any measure, the Atlanta riot was a significant event in 1906, and as Godshalk argues it would become a defining moment in black-white relations in the 20th century.

The author does a superb job establishing the socio-economic context for the mob violence. Deteriorating agricultural conditions led to increasing tenancy and sharecropping which motivated many black and whites to flee rural counties and move to urban centers seeking jobs in the textile mills, factories and the services. Atlanta was alive with economic growth, New South boosterism and an expanding black population, including a black elite of businessmen, academics, journalists and church leaders. The summer of 1906 would witness a spirited gubernatorial campaign pitting Hoke Smith, former owner of the Atlanta Journal, against Clark Howell, owner of the Atlanta Constitution. Both men were ardent white supremacists who warned white Georgians that unruly black men endangered them, especially their wives and daughters – the infamous black brute rapists. In addition to the heated rhetoric of race-baiting politicians, the white-owned Atlanta newspapers were quick to report any hint of black-on-white aggression, including unsubstantiated reports of black assaults on white women. Godshalk documents the public fear of a newspaper-hyped black crime wave in the city center. Newspapers and politicians clamored for strong action to restrain Georgia's black population.

On Saturday, Sept. 22, 1906 blacks and whites crowded into the shops and saloons in the Five Points area. The day's newspaper stories of alleged assaults by black men on white women brought a heightened atmosphere of racial crisis. By late afternoon, rumor was spreading that now was the time whites should stop the imagined black crime wave. Early Saturday evening Atlanta's mayor, James Woodward, went to Five Points and told the large crowd of whites that they should return to their homes and businesses. The crowd was deaf to Woodward's pleas and began to march toward black businesses on Decatur Street. Over the next several hours, mobs of whites, many of which were unemployed or marginally employed white youth, marauded the Five Points area brutalizing African American men and women. Some were sent to Grady Hospital to have their injuries treated while others ended their day at the morgue. The Atlanta police were ineffective, either through a lack of numbers or a lack of will.

As word of the riot swept the black community, many blacks began to organize for self-defense. On Sunday evening, white mobs recongregated and began to move into Dark Town, a neighborhood north of Five Points near Auburn Avenue. They were welcomed with gunfire causing the mob to quickly retreat. South of Five Points was the middle-class African American neighborhood of Brownsville. According to Godshalk, there were rumors in that community that white mobs were going to march on Brownsville; similarly there were rumors in Atlanta that the men of Brownsville were organizing to retaliate against whites. On Monday evening, police entered the community and arrested six Brownsville men. A firefight erupted resulting in the death of a white policeman and a black grocer. The next morning three companies of state militia were sent into Brownsville to disarm its residents. Several hundred were arrested for alleged firearms violations or the murder of the white police officer. By Tuesday afternoon the Atlanta race riot was effectively over.

Godshalk goes to extraordinary lengths to trace how the riot affected...