In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
The Philadelphia nativist riots were a series of riots that took place on May 6—8 and July 6—7, 1844, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and the adjacent districts of Kensington and Southwark. The riots were a result of rising anti-Catholic sentiment at the growing population of Irish Catholic immigrants. The government brought in over a thousand militia—they confronted the nativist mobs and killed or wounded hundreds of anti-Catholic rioters.
Levi Day Boone served as mayor of Chicago, Illinois (1855–1856) for the American Party (Know-Nothings).
Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company is an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was once the largest producer of beer in the United States. Its namesake beer, Schlitz, was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was advertised with the slogan "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer". Schlitz first became the largest beer producer in the US in 1902 and enjoyed that status at several points during the first half of the 20th century, exchanging the title with Anheuser-Busch multiple times during the 1950s.
Chicago has played a central role in American economic, cultural and political history. Since the 1850s Chicago has been one of the dominant metropolises in the Midwestern United States, and has been the largest city in the Midwest since the 1880 census. The area's recorded history begins with the arrival of French explorers, missionaries and fur traders in the late 17th century and their interaction with the local Potawatomi Native Americans. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a black freeman, was the first permanent non-indigenous settler in the area, having a house at the mouth of the Chicago River by at least 1790, though possibly as early as 1784. The small settlement was defended by Fort Dearborn after its completion in 1804, but was abandoned as part of the War of 1812 in expectation of an attack by the Potawatomi, who caught up with the retreating soldiers and civilians not two miles south of the fort. The modern city was incorporated in 1837 by Northern businessmen and grew rapidly from real estate speculation and the realization that it had a commanding position in the emerging inland transportation network, based on lake traffic and railroads, controlling access from the Great Lakes into the Mississippi River basin.
In the United States, beer is manufactured in breweries which range in size from industry giants to brew pubs and microbreweries. The United States produced 196 million barrels (23.0 GL) of beer in 2012, and consumes roughly 28 US gallons (110 L) of beer per capita annually. In 2011, the United States was ranked fifteenth in the world in per capita consumption, while total consumption was second only to China.
Politics in Chicago through most of the 20th century was dominated by the Democratic Party. Organized crime and political corruption were persistent concerns in the city. Chicago was the political base for presidential nominees Stephen Douglas (1860), Adlai Stevenson II, and Barack Obama, who was nominated and elected in 2008.
The Know Nothings were a nativist political movement in the United States in the 1850s, officially known as the Native American Party before 1855, and afterwards simply the American Party. Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its colloquial name.
The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933.
The Cincinnati riot of 1853 was triggered by the visit of then-Archbishop Gaetano Bedini, the emissary of Pope Pius IX, to Cincinnati, Ohio, on 21 December 1853. The German Liberal population of the city, many of whom had come to America after the Revolutions of 1848, identified Cardinal Bedini with their reactionary opponents. An armed mob of about 500 German men with 100 women following marched on the home of Bishop John Purcell, protesting the visit. One protester was killed and more than 60 were arrested.
The Cincinnati Riots of 1855 were clashes between "nativists" and German-Americans. The nativists supported J. D. Taylor, the mayoral candidate for the anti-immigrant American Party, also known as the Know-Nothing Party. During the riots, German-Americans erected barricades in the streets leading into their Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and fired a cannon over the heads of a mob of nativists attacking them.
This is a bibliography of selected publications on the history of Chicago. For most topics, the easiest place to start is Janice L. Reiff, et al. eds. The Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004), which has thorough coverage by leading scholars in 1120pp of text and many illustrations. It does not include biographies. It is online free. See also Frank Jewel, Annotated bibliography of Chicago history (Chicago Historical Society 1979; not online.
Historically, Chicago has had an ethnic German population. As of the 2000 U.S. Census, 15.8% of people in the Chicago area had German ancestry, and those of German ancestry were the largest ethnic group in 80% of Chicago's suburbs. As of the year 1930, those of German ancestry were the largest European ethnic group in Chicago. However, as of today that number has decreased to 6%.
In the 1855 Chicago mayoral election, Know Nothing candidate Levi Boone defeated Democratic incumbent Isaac Lawrence Milliken by a 5.75% margin.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1879, Democrat Carter Harrison Sr. defeated both Republican Abner Wright and socialist Ernst Schmidt in a three-way race. Harrison had a nearly nine point margin of victory.
Elmer Washburn was an American politician. He was the 3rd Chief of the United States Secret Service from 1874 through 1876. Before serving as chief of the United States Secret Service, Washburn had headed the Chicago Police Department from 1872 through 1873. He would later run unsuccessfully for mayor of Chicago in 1891.
The Spring Valley race riot of 1895 was a violent racial conflict between Eastern and Southern European immigrants and African American coal workers in the mining town of Spring Valley, Illinois. The conflict was in response to the robbery and shooting of Italian miner Barney Rollo, who reported that his assailants were five black men. The assault provoked the town's long-standing social and racial unrest, and many white immigrant workers united against the African American miners. During the investigation into the shooting several black miners were temporarily taken into custody for questioning and many white townspeople began to form a mob, demanding that all blacks be fired and removed from Spring Valley. The mine manager refused, which prompted the white miners to violently riot against both the black miners and their families, forcing them to flee to the nearby town of Princeton.
Taverns in North America date back to colonial America. Colonial Americans drank a variety of distilled spirits. As the supply of distilled spirits, especially rum, increased, and their price dropped, they became the drink of choice throughout the colonies. In 1770, per capita consumption was 3.7 gallons of distilled spirits per year, rising to 5.2 gallons in 1830 or approximately 1.8 one-ounce shots a day for every adult white man. That total does not include the beer or hard cider, which colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most consumed distilled beverage available in British America. Benjamin Franklin printed a "Drinker's Dictionary" in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, listing some 228 slang terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia.
Jacob Rehm was a policeman who served several tenures as the head of the Chicago Police Department.
The Baltimore Know-Nothing riots of 1856 occurred in Baltimore, Maryland between September and November of that year. The Know Nothing Party gained traction in Baltimore as native-born residents disliked the growing immigrant population. Local street gangs became divided on political grounds, with the Know-Nothing affiliated gangs clashing with gangs affiliated with the Democratic Party. The partisans were involved in widespread violence at the polls and across Baltimore during municipal and national elections that year.
