Rioting

Rioting has been a means by which groups of people have acted outside the law, primarily to show their anger at a particular group of people or their frustration with government institutions. The most wellknown riots in the United States, and the ones that have given riots an urban image, were the riots in many major U.S. cities from 1964 to 1968. But throughout U.S. history, rioting has been a common form of expression in urban areas.

Early riots seldom killed anyone, often included ritual punishments (tar and feathering, for example), and were generally forms of protest against government impositions (new taxes, impressments, and so on). In the 1830s and 1840s, tensions over slavery were the cause of many riots in the North; rioters sought to terrorize abolitionists (the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia in 1838, for example) or on the opposite side, prevent Southern slave catchers from taking African Americans back into slavery. Immigration and religion were the causes of other pre–Civil War riots, with the majority nativeborn white population rioting against the influx of immigrants (especially from Ireland). Nativists burned down the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834, and Protestants and Catholics fought in Philadelphia in 1844 over what version of the Bible was to be used in the schools.

Race riots, in which whites went into black communities and attacked residents and destroyed their property, got their start even before the end of the Civil War. In 1863, the federal government instituted a draft for the Union Army, but allowed the wealthy to avoid the draft by making a large payment instead. When the government began to institute the draft in New York, many residents of New York rioted, attacking the people conducting the draft and the soldiers sent to restore order. Although the attacks at first were limited to government officials instituting the draft, and the wealthy, who avoided it, the mobs soon began to target African Americans because they were seen as the cause of the war in the first place. Race riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866 that left scores of people dead showed that Southern whites would not willingly surrender power after the Civil War. African Americans were also the victims of race rioting when they were used as strikebreakers, as was the case in East St. Louis in 1917. White rioters attempted to defend their jobs from African American competition by trying to terrorize the African American community.

In addition to protecting their jobs from African Americans, white residents in many northern cities, which had seen explosive growth in the population of African Americans during the late 1910s, attempted to defend their territory against what they perceived as an invasion of African Americans. The riots in Chicago in 1919, Tulsa in 1921, and Detroit in 1942 were examples of this.

Beginning in the 1960s, urban riots took a different form. The urban riots of the 1960s were frequently the response of African Americans to real or rumored cases of police brutality in low-income, African American neighborhoods (police activities were the instigating factors in Los Angeles in 1965, Newark and Detroit in 1967). Because of the growth of television, impoverished citizens were no longer so isolated and unaware of the increased affluence shared by the rest of the country. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, low-income areas in many large cities were being demolished to make way for either new highways or urban renewal projects. Although property owners were compensated for the destruction of their properties, most low-income residents were renters and were usually forced out without any compensation (later legislation provided some money for relocation). This created a lot of anger in the communities affected and was a primary cause of the riot in Rochester in 1964. Additionally, the Civil Rights [Page 686]Movement brought to light many of the injustices suffered by African American citizens. Yet while the Civil Rights Movement made progress in removing discriminatory barriers, progress was very slow. Some authors suggest that society's unwillingness to meet the rising expectations within the African American community was a major source of frustration that led to the violent outbursts in the urban community. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 set off rioting in 80 cities, including Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (known as the Kerner Commission) investigated the riots of 1967 (Newark and Detroit) and issued its famous conclusion that the United States was rapidly dividing into separate and unequal black and white societies.

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