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African Americans have been violently expelled from at least 50 towns, cities, and counties in the United States. Most of these expulsions occurred in the 60 years following the American Civil War but continued until 1954. The justifications for the expulsions varied but often involved a crime committed by White Americans, labor-related issues, or property takeovers. [1] [2]
 |
| Date | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1831 | Portsmouth, Ohio | All 80 Black residents were expelled under Ohio’s discriminatory "Black Laws." [3] |
| 1870s - 1940s | Wyandotte, Michigan | African Americans were expelled from Wyandotte on multiple occasions. [4] |
| April 13, 1873 | Pollock, Louisiana | The small black population of Pollock left the town after the massacre of more than 100 blacks in nearby Colfax. |
| November 1, 1878 | Celina, Tennessee | Celina's black population left on November 1, 1878 after being subject to a series of violent actions over the course of several months. [5] |
| 1886 | Comanche County, Texas | White residents expelled blacks from Comanche County because of alleged crimes committed by black men. [6] |
| 1888–1908 | Paragould, Arkansas | A number of race riots occurred in Paragould between 1888 and 1908, resulting in most of the town's 150 black residents leaving. [7] |
| 1892 | Lexington, Oklahoma | [8] |
| 1893 | Blackwell, Oklahoma | [8] |
| June 20, 1894 | Monett, Missouri | Monett's black population was expelled after the lynching of a black man who killed a white man during a fight. The Monett expulsion was the first of number of violent expulsions in Southwestern Missouri between 1894 and 1906. [9] |
| 1896 | Linton, Indiana | 300 black strikebreakers were expelled from the coal mining town of Linton after one of the strikebreakers shot a white boy. Eventually blacks were banned from living in all of Greene County. [10] |
| August 27, 1897 | Elwood, Indiana | [11] |
| November 10, 1898 | Wilmington, North Carolina | A coup d'état and a massacre which was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898. The white press in Wilmington originally described the event as a race riot caused by black people. Since the late 20th century and further study, the event has been characterized as a violent overthrow of a duly elected government by a group of white supremacists. The number of Black people killed by the mob by the end of the day (November 10) is uncertain. Estimates have included "about 20", "more than twenty", "twenty or more", "somewhere between fourteen and sixty", "as many as 60", "at least sixty", "90",, "more than one hundred", and "exceeded 300".. An additional number, variously estimated between 20 and 50, were banished and ordered to leave town by the mob. Along with Alex and Frank G. Manly, brothers who had owned the Daily Record (one of the few black newspapers in the state and reportedly the only black daily newspaper in the country), more than 2,000 blacks left Wilmington permanently, forced to abandon their businesses and properties. This greatly reduced the city's professional and artisan class, and changed the formerly black-majority city into one with a white majority. |
| April 10, 1899 | Pana, Illinois | Gun battle between striking white miners and strikebreaker black miners results in the deaths of five blacks and two whites as well as the expulsion of Pana's black population. |
| September 17, 1899 | Carterville, Illinois | A violent shootout occurred between striking white miners and non-union black miners who were brought into Carterville as strikebreakers. Five black miners are killed. All the surviving black miners left Carterville shortly after the riot. [12] |
| Date | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| February 20, 1901 | Mena, Arkansas | Most of Mena's black population left the town after a black man named Peter Berryman was lynched for allegedly assaulting a white girl. [13] |
| August 18, 1901 | Pierce City, Missouri | 300 black residents were expelled after white residents lynched three black men for allegedly killing a white woman. |
| June 1902 | Decatur, Indiana | A mob of 50 men forced black residents out of Decatur. [14] |
| April 16, 1903 | Joplin, Missouri | White residents drove out Joplin's black residents following the lynching of a black transient for the murder of a white policeman. [15] |
| July 9, 1903 | Sour Lake, Texas | A mob of 500 white men opened fire on blacks and chased them out of Sour Lake after a brakeman was shot dead by a black man. [16] |
| October 1905 and January 1909 | Harrison, Arkansas | Race riots in 1905 and 1909 resulted in the expulsion of Harrison's black residents. [17] |
| August 24, 1906 | Cotter, Arkansas | [18] |
| 1908 | Marshall County, Kentucky | Whites led by a local doctor drove out blacks from the now extinct city of Birmingham and most of the rest of Marshall County. [2] |
| November 1909 | Anna and Jonesboro, Illinois | Whites expelled Anna and Jonesboro's 40 black families after the lynching of William "Froggie" James in nearby Cairo. [4] |
| September 1912 | Forsyth County, Georgia | 98% of Forsyth County's 1,000 black residents were expelled after two alleged attacks on white women allegedly committed by black men. |
| July 1917 | East St. Louis, Illinois | The East St. Louis riots or East St. Louis massacres, of late May and July 1–3, 1917, were an outbreak of labor- and race-related violence by whites that caused the death of 40–250 black people and about $400,000 (over $8 million, in 2017 US dollars) in property damage. An estimated 6,000 black people were left homeless. |
| May 1918 | Erwin, Tennessee | A Black man was murdered and the entire remaining Black population of 131 residents was forced to witness his body being burned, after which they were ordered to leave their homes and were banished from the town; this incident is known as the Erwin Expulsion. |
| Fall 1919 | Corbin, Kentucky | 200 black workers were forced to leave Corbin during a labor dispute. [19] |
| November 2–3, 1920 | Ocoee, Florida | Ocoee's black community was burned to the ground and nearly all of its 500 residents killed or expelled by whites after black men killed two whites in self defense. At least 56 blacks were killed during the massacre. |
| May 31, 1921 | Tulsa, Oklahoma | As many as 300 black people were killed and 10,000 left homeless after whites attacked and destroyed the Greenwood district of Tulsa, known as "Black Wall Street". |
| 1922 | Jay, Florida | 175 Black residents fled the town after a death of a white farmer who was shot by a black farmer in self-defense. [20] [21] |
| January 1923 | Rosewood, Florida | Whites attacked and completely burned down the black Levy County town of Rosewood after a black man allegedly raped a white woman. At least 8 people and perhaps as many as 150 people were killed. |
| 1923 | Blanford, Indiana | Ku Klux Klan-led expulsion. [2] |
| January 3, 1924 | Manhattan Beach, California | The Manhattan Beach City Council passed ordinance 263, claiming eminent domain for a public park, in order to take properties owned by black residents and eliminate the African American resort, Bruce's Beach. [22] |
| 1954 | Vienna, Illinois | White residents burned down all the black homes of Vienna and nearby areas outside city limits. The expulsion was sparked by the murder of an elderly white woman and the attempted rape of her teenage granddaughter by two black men. [1] |
| 1954 | Sheridan, Arkansas | Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and a reversed decision of the school board to integrate the schools, local sawmill owner Jack Williams threatened to burn down the homes of all his black employees unless they accepted a buyout offer and relocated to Malvern. [1] |
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 city of Harrison is the county seat of Boone County, Arkansas, United States. It is named after Marcus LaRue Harrison, a surveyor who laid out the city along Crooked Creek at Stifler Springs. According to 2019 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city was 13,069, up from 12,943 at the 2010 census and it is the 30th largest city in Arkansas based on official 2019 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Harrison is the principal city of the Harrison Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Boone and Newton counties.
Bonanza is a city in Sebastian County, Arkansas, United States. It is part of the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the 2010 Census, the population of Bonanza was 575. According to the 2018 US Census Bureau estimates, the population of Bonanza was 564. Bonanza began as a coal mining town of the Central Coal and Coke Company.
Monett is the most-populous city in Barry and Lawrence counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. The city is located in the Ozarks, just south of Interstate 44 between Joplin and Springfield. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was estimated to be 9,576 individuals.
The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30 – October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas where African Americans were organizing against peonage and abuses in tenant farming. As many as several hundred African Americans and five white men were killed. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of black people killed during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds. The white mobs were aided by federal troops and local terrorist organizations. Gov. Brough led a contingent of 583 US soldiers from Camp Pike, with a 12-gun machine gun battalion.
Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States. They are considered towns that practiced or still practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence. They were most prevalent before the 1950s. The term came into use because of signs that directed "colored people" to leave town by sundown.
Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.
Calvert City is a home rule-class city in Marshall County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 2,514 at the 2020 census.
The Camilla massacre took place in Camilla, Georgia, on Saturday, September 19, 1868. African Americans had been given the right to vote in Georgia's 1868 state constitution, which had passed in April, and in the months that followed, whites across the state used violence to combat their newfound political strength, often through the newly founded Ku Klux Klan. Georgia agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau recorded 336 cases of murder or assault with intent to kill against freedmen from January 1 through November 15.
The Battle of Virden, also known as the Virden Mine Riot and Virden Massacre, was a labor union conflict and a racial conflict in central Illinois that occurred on October 12, 1898. After a United Mine Workers of America local struck a mine in Virden, Illinois, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany African-American strikebreakers to start production again. An armed conflict broke out when the train carrying these men arrived at Virden. Strikers were also armed: a total of five detective/security guards and eight striking mine workers were killed, with five guards and more than thirty miners wounded. In addition, at least one black strikebreaker on the train was wounded. The engineer was shot in the arm. This was one of several fatal conflicts in the area at the turn of the century that reflected both labor union tension and racial violence. Virden, at this point, became a sundown town, and most black miners were expelled from Macoupin County.
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a guidebook for African American roadtrippers. It was founded by Victor Hugo Green, an African American, New York City postal worker who published it annually from 1936 to 1966. This was during the era of Jim Crow laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans especially and other non-whites was widespread. While pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging African American middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest. In the South, these dangers were particularly severe, where Black motorists risked harassment, physical violence, or even murder for minor infractions or for being in predominantly white areas. In some cases, African American travelers who got lost or sought lodging off the beaten path were killed, with little to no investigation by local authorities. In response, Green wrote his guide to services and places relatively friendly to African Americans. Eventually, he also founded a travel agency.
Berry Washington was a 72-year-old black man who was lynched in Milan, Georgia, in 1919. He was in jail after killing a white man who was attacking two young girls. He was taken from jail and lynched by a mob.
The Johnson–Jeffries riots refer to the dozens of race riots that occurred throughout the United States after African-American boxer Jack Johnson defeated white boxer James J. Jeffries in a boxing match termed the "Fight of the Century". Johnson became the first black World Heavyweight champion in 1908 which made him unpopular with the predominantly white American boxing audiences. Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion came out of retirement to fight Johnson and was nicknamed the "Great White Hope". After Johnson defeated Jeffries on July 4, 1910, many white people felt humiliated and began attacking black people who were celebrating Johnson's victory.
Howell is a neighborhood of Evansville, Indiana, United States.
The Port Arthur riot happened on July 15, 1919, in Port Arthur, Texas. Violence started after a group of white men objected to an African American smoking near a white woman on a street car. A "score" of whites and twice that number of African Americans battled in the streets leaving two seriously injured and dozens with minor injuries.
Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919 was a race riot in 1919 in which a white mob forced nearly all the town's 200 black residents onto a freight train out of town, and a sundown town policy until the late 20th century.
African-American man, Jordan Jameson was lynched on November 11, 1919, in the town square of Magnolia, Columbia County, Arkansas. A large white mob seized Jameson after he allegedly shot the local sheriff. They tied him to a stake and burned him alive.