The 115th anniversary of the 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre
The Atlanta Way of Doing Things - Episode One
Welcome to the King Williams newsletter…a look at the intersections of Atlanta to the world.
This is dedicated to my former Georgia State University professor Dr. Cliff Kuhn who introduced this history to me when I was an undergrad. Kuhn passed away in 2015. He was leading the charge alongside my other professor Dr. Akinyele Umoja, who currently still teaches to build more historical markers downtown to commemorate the event.
Top Story: The 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre
Wednesday marked the 115th anniversary of the 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre (formerly known as The Atlanta Race Riot). The Atlanta Racial Massacre was a 3-day ordeal in the fall of 1906 that saw at least 100 African Americans* (more on this later) killed at the hands of a white mob numbering in the thousands. And upon the 115th anniversary, I decided to write an abbreviated overview of the 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre.
The 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre was also the subject of our May/June book club entry, Rage in the Gate City, by former Atlanta Magazine editor and University of Georgia Journalism professor Rebecca Burns. Rebecca’s book covers what led to the worst incident of racial violence in the city’s history. We also talk about her article in Atlanta Magazine on the connection of white anger, political violence, and the role of fake news reports between Atlanta in 1906 and the January 6th US Capitol insurrection.
You can also listen to my podcast episode with Rebecca here on Substack. But it’s also available on Apple Podcasts, also Spotify, and SoundCloud.
Rebecca’s session of our Book Club is available to listen to as well.
Rebecca has twice talked to our book club regarding her book. You can listen to the first session by clicking on the link below:
The Socially Distanced Book Club: A Rage in the Gate City - Session #1 with Rebecca Burns
I also recommend reading these other articles:
Saporta Report - Remembering the 1906 Atlanta race riots (2019) by me!
Atlanta Studies - Electrifying Race Relations: Atlanta’s Streetcars and the 1906 Race Riots by Casey P. Cater
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution - 115 years ago, a deadly race riot reshaped Atlanta by Ernie Suggs
Disarm the Negroes - The Racist Roots of Georgia’s Gun Laws
“Good Negro—Bad Negro”: The Dynamics of Race and Class in Atlanta During the Era of the 1906 Riot by Gregory Mixon
Reckoning with Violence: WEB DuBois and the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot by Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Jack C. Knight
The Zinn Education Project - Massacres in US History
The Equal Justice Initiative - Reconstruction in America
Plus these other newsletter issues that are built off of the legacy of racism laid by the 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre:
The History of Stone Mountain and the KKK -Part One
The History of Stone Mountain and the KKK Part Two
The first Memorial Day, Confederate women, and the erasure of Black History
The Update - 5/25/21
‘New’ Atlanta is built on the foundation of ‘Old’ Atlanta’
In 2021, gentrification, rampant teardown development, and historic erasure are wiping out much of Atlanta’s history. Combined with a decade-long streak of new residential growth and sanitized suburban development, Atlanta threatens to finally develop its own history into oblivion. The 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre was an event fundamental to the development of the socio-politico climate we have today 115 years later. Our history should be learned unless were doomed to repeat it in the future.
I. What was the 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre?
The 1906 Racial Massacre was a three-day attack on African American residents in Atlanta by a vengeful white mob under the purposeful campaigns of two Georgia Governor candidates. The incident happened at the intersection of population growth, racial tensions, white resentment, a hotly contested governor’s race, and fake news.
A. Reconstruction and white resentment
The Civil War and Sherman’s March to the Sea destroyed not only Atlanta but 3/4th of the wealth in the state of Georgia. The Civil War also led to the era of Reconstruction in which for the first time, the US government occupied the south in order to ensure the formerly enslaved people were given equal access to opportunity denied for over 200+ years. The resulting cultural and economic divisions that emerged remained fraught in the years preceding the war.
During The Reconstruction Era (1865-77), Black men obtained the right to vote, and some gained political office. Also saw the rise of Black colleges, businesses, and some socio-economic self-sufficiency. This was all done in part by the US government overseeing that equality and progress were made. This was juxtaposed by the south where many Whites saw Blacks as inferior, childlike, property, and most importantly, undeserving of aid by the now re-unified United States. Once then-president Rutherford B. Hayes abruptly stopped the reconstruction efforts as a result of the highly controversial 1876 Presidential Election. Atlanta like most places in the south saw an immediate and abrupt end to nearly all the gains met for Black southerners. After selling out the entire Black community for the opportunity to control the White House via the Great Compromise (or betrayal) of 1877, which lead to a newly created aparthied state to take hold for nearly a century in the form of Jim Crow segregation throughout the south.
B. Atlanta in 1906
In Atlanta, this was problematic but Black Atlanta developed fast enough to have a multi-class society. A class that was developing primary schools and colleges, combined with a growing merchant class who had both White and Black patrons. But a rising racial resentment of Blacks in Atlanta, particularly from many Whites who were sympathetic to the Confederacy from the Civil War era and hated the gains made by Blacks during Reconstruction.
C. The 1906 Georgia Governor’s Race
The 1906 Georgia gubernatorial race between Hoke Smith and Clark Howell is a prime example of what happens when candidates weaponize media and inflame racial rhetoric. Both men were editors of the two of the largest newspapers in Atlanta, The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. This allowed for newspapers at the time in particular the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution to publish unconfirmed and outright false stories regarding Black men committing crimes, especially those accusing them of raping White women. Throughout the year 1906, this came to heads in the fall as late September saw four false reports of sexual assaults of White women at the hands of Black men.
D. Fake news caused real deaths: September 22nd-24th, 1906
Throughout 1906, both the Journal and the Constitution, the two biggest papers in Atlanta at the time published unconfirmed reports of ‘negro’ crime. These stories boiled over into violence as mobs of White men assembled in downtown Atlanta near current-day Georgia State University. These mobs began pulling Black men off of streetcars and attacking them in the streets. Aided by the firebombing, looting, and destruction of Black businesses and homes located on and around Decatur Street. Atlanta was a streetcar town, most Atlantans traveled by foot or streetcar in 1906. When the attacks first happened, the mob attacked Black people on streetcars.
As well as attacking an area known as Brownsville, encompassing current-day South Atlanta. The violence overtook current-day Woodruff Park, Peachtree Street, and Five Points. The first day of violence saw the largest amount of casualties, mostly African Americans who were heading home from working on the evening of Saturday, September 22nd, 1906.
E. The violence shifted the residential patterns of Black Atlanta
The mob violence caused the Black population to move to Auburn Avenue, further into the south Atlanta area, and westward around the current day Atlanta University Center (AUC). This damaging of Black businesses and homes forced the city’s Black business district to coalesce north of Decatur Street to Auburn Avenue. Since then, the role of Auburn Avenue as the central business, religious, and political district emerged, lasting for decades until the creation of I-75/85 beginning in the 1950s. That move would permanently destabilize the concentration of Black wealth in the city.
F. The Atlanta Way of Doing Things
The 1906 Racial Massacre and the response to it were to the formation of what we now know as Atlanta today. The immediate national and international coverage left Atlanta with a literal black eye. The official report on the riot was written by the Chamber of Commerce, then eschewed largely from the history books by white Atlantans. As a result, Atlanta’s White business and social elites worked with Atlanta’s Black business and social elite to form a de facto shadow board of governance. This governance would be known as ‘the Atlanta Way of doing things’, becoming the way in which Atlanta has made itself be the hub of racial progress in the south. This governance did everything it could to keep Atlanta out of the national spotlight regarding racial strife and civil rights issues.
G. Alonzo Herndon
From this destruction rose the collective stock of Alonzo Herndon, Atlanta’s first Black millionaire and a pillar in the Black community in his time. The ensuing violence lasted for three days, in the process destroying most of the Black businesses in the city including that of Alonzo Herndon, Atlanta’s first Black millionaire.
Herndon an owner of several barbershops that served mixed-race clientele was seen as the bridge between the white business and social elites and the Black community at large. A position that has been played by many since then as Atlanta’s way of doing things has largely positioned itself as ‘north of the south, and south of the north’ from a business and social public image. This repositioning of Atlanta post-1906 has helped aid in Atlanta’s growth in the airport, recruiting fortune 1000 businesses, the 1996 Olympics, and positioning itself as a ‘Black Mecca.’
II. Why haven’t we learned about this in school?
Racial terrorism is often one of the least known chapters in American history and folklore. Often this history contradicts and to de-legitimize many of the cultural principles and ideals of ‘American’ history. It’s part of the current cultural and educational battles against ‘wokeness’, ‘cancel culture’, and the dismissal of unfavorable history.
The 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre like Tulsa, Oklahoma (aka Black Wall Street) in 1921; Rosewood, Florida in 1923; Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898; Elaine, Arkansas; Colfax, Louisiana in 1873; or even Forsyth County, Georgia in 1912 are all part of a legacy of omitting radicalized terror for US history books. And if you’re learning about this for the first time, don’t feel bad, throughout US history incidents like these have been mostly purposely omitted out of the histories, textbooks, and collective memory. There are over at least 100 confirmed incidents of racial massacres in the US, most people barely know of Black Wall Street. The majority of that coming within the last 18 months related to the post-George Floyd reconciliatory efforts to learn more of Black history.
The scholarship on the 1906 Racial Massacre is recent
Like the story of Black Wall Street, Rosewood, and others, Atlanta’s racial massacre wouldn’t pick up again until newer generations of scholars picked up the story. The 1906 Atlanta Racial Massacre only picked up steam in the last 15-20 years. Even now the story still isn’t well known by most Atlantans who’ve been born and raised here. The official until scholarship highlighting the impact of the event began gaining more prominence beginning in the 1990s and early 2000s. Several other Georgia State professors such as Cliff Kuhn, Dr. Tim Crimmins, Dr. Akinyele Umoja, Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, as well as Dr. Herman ‘Skip’ Mason at Morehouse College, scholars from Emory University, and others such as the FCRC. This includes several books including 2001’s Negrophobia by Mark Bauerlein, 2004’s Atlanta Riot by Gregory Mixon, 2005’s Veiled Visions by David Fort Godshalk, and 2006’s Rage in the Gate City by Rebecca Burns.
In the case of Atlanta/Georgia’s political elite, this was swept under the rug after the end of the 1906 Georgia Gubernatorial election. While both papers The Journal and The Constitution quickly blamed African Americans for the incident, lied about what happened, and then moved on. While most African Americans moved on and simply didn’t talk about it anymore out of pain and/or shame; similar to what happened at the end of the burning of Black Wall Street in 1921.
Stop calling these incidents ‘race riots’
Many historians, journalists, and scholars have stopped calling these incidents race riots, due to the realities of both media coverage as well as the cover-ups of these incidents. The term ‘race riot’ was often used by the white press, vigilante groups, Klan members, and local politicians at the time as a term used to justify their acts of violence against African Americans. These were acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. A riot implies two important details: One, equal combatants, and Two, justifiable retaliation. The 1906 Racial Massacre was less of a riot and an act of deliberate genocide. It’s been hard for some in Atlanta to parse this, but we must call it what it is.
III. Who’s carrying the legacy of history now?
Well, that’s on us. Currently, there is the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition (FCRC) who’s done a lot to remember the African Americans who died including a week of events this week. Both the A Tomb With A View and Archive Atlanta podcasts have been aiding in keeping the story alive. There’s also been Dr. Akinyele Umoja at Georgia State University, who’s aided in preserving the work of himself and Dr. Kuhn, on the 1906 racial massacre. As well as local organizers Ann Hill Bond, Shatima Tankson, in addition to Georgia State professor Michael Black who is looking to get at least one statewide marker on the event placed downtown.
IV. Can Georgia State University be the home of good stewardship?
Georgia State University could and should be the home of stewardship of the 1906 racial massacre. Most of the events happened across the current-day campus downtown, in addition to the university purchasing the Atlanta Life Building on Auburn Avenue. Downtown and Auburn Avenue, in particular, has already seen most of it bulldozed to make parking lots, while GSU is rumored to be encroaching on purchasing more property on Auburn Avenue. But currently, there are no plans for historic remembrance, design standards, or even acknowledgment of Alonzo Herndon. I’m not sure if this history will actually be preserved. As the university has already destroyed its 94-year-old Kell Hall, a building that birthed the modern car culture in Atlanta as well as served as a model for adaptive reuse.
V. Conclusion
The Atlanta of 2021, is one of Columbusing, mass historical erasure, large-scale real estate development, and suburbanization. Considering all of these factors, it would be disappointing to never acknowledge the role of the 1906 Racial Massacre in shaping modern Atlanta.
For a deeper understanding I suggest you read the following books:
Rage in the Gate City
Negrophobia
The Color of Property
Veiled Visions
When Peachtree met Sweet Auburn