Racial violence is woven throughout the fabric of the history of the United States. In the centuries following the initial colonization of North America, racial and ethnic minorities—especially African American and Indigenous people—have repeatedly been targeted by white people, often as part of organized actions undertaken by white supremacist groups. Violent race riots often devolved into massacres, though in some instances mass death was intended from the outset, as in many of the military massacres of Native Americans. Since the 1900s, there have also been a number of protests and riots led by African Americans in response to police brutality and continued inequality and discrimination. The following is a list of some of the major incidents of racially motivated violence in U.S. history, organized chronologically. See also slave rebellions.
A major four-day eruption of violence in New York City that resulted from deep worker discontent with the inequities of conscription during the American Civil War.
During the American Civil War, Confederate soldiers slaughtered surrendering African American Federal troops stationed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864. While it is impossible to determine how many people were killed in the battle as opposed to the massacre, between 277 and 295 Union troops—the majority of whom were Black—were killed in total.
A force of about 675 U.S. troops carried out a surprise attack upon a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory. More than 230 Native Americans were massacred, including some 150 women, children, and older adults.
A brutal and unprovoked attack by a white mob on Black residents of Memphis, Tennessee, occurred a little more than a year after the Confederate surrender in the American Civil War. Acting over several days, from May 1 to 3, the mob murdered 46 African Americans (most of whom were Union veterans) and wounded more than 75 others.
On July 30, 1866, a mob of white men—acting with the compliance and even aid of local civilian authorities and the police—attacked newly freed African Americans in urban New Orleans. The mob murdered 35 Black citizens and wounded more than 100 others who had gathered peacefully to support a political meeting.
A vigilante group consisting of a mix of Anglo-Americans, Mexican Americans, and members of the Indigenous Tohono O’odham people carried out a mass murder of more than a hundred members of the Apache people—mostly women, children, and the elderly—on April 30, 1871. The massacre occurred near Winkelman, Arizona, about 70 miles (115 km) north of Tucson, and derives its name from the nearby Camp Grant, an American military post.
One of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history, the massacre occurred in the original Chinese Quarter of Los Angeles on October 24, 1871. The racist attack left at least 18 Chinese immigrants dead at the hands of a largely white and Latino mob.
A white militia massacred some 150 African American militia members who were attempting to surrender on April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana.
White coal miners undertook a violent crusade on September 2, 1885, in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, that resulted in the deaths of 28 Chinese people and the injury of 15. It was one of the bloodiest massacres against Chinese immigrants in America.
On December 29, 1890, U.S. Army troops slaughtered approximately 150–300 Lakota people, including women and children, in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians.
White supremacists carried out a political coup and massacre in which the multiracial Fusionist (Republican and Populist) city government of Wilmington, North Carolina, was violently overthrown on November 10, 1898. As many as 60 Black Americans were killed in a premeditated murder spree that was the culmination of an organized statewide campaign to eliminate African American participation in government and permanently disenfranchise Black citizens of North Carolina.
In September 1906 white mobs, inflamed by newspaper reports of Black men attacking white women, killed at least 12 and possibly as many as 25 African Americans in Atlanta. The mobs also burned more than 1,000 homes and businesses in the city’s Black neighborhoods.
Triggered by the transfer of a Black prisoner charged with raping a white woman (an accusation later withdrawn), several thousand white citizens violently descended on the Black community of Springfield, Illinois, in August 1908. Almost the entire Illinois state militia was required to quell the frenzy of the mob, which shot innocent people, burned homes, looted stores, and mutilated and lynched two older Black residents.
On July 2, 1917, a white mob in East St. Louis, Illinois, indiscriminately attacked African Americans over the employment of Black workers in a factory holding government contracts during World War I. Some 6,000 people were driven from their homes, and 40 Black people and 8 white people were killed in the racist violence.
Texas Rangers, white ranchers, and U.S. Cavalry soldiers executed 15 boys and men of Mexican descent living in Porvenir, Texas, on January 28, 1918, before burning the town to the ground. It was one of many deadly confrontations along the Mexican-U.S. border in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
One of approximately 25 race riots throughout the United States in the “Red Summer” (meaning “bloody”) following World War I, the Chicago race riot was triggered on July 27, 1919, when a Black youth drowned after being stoned for swimming in an area tacitly reserved for white people. For 13 days Chicago was without law and order despite the fact that the state militia had been called out on the fourth day; by the end, 38 people were dead (23 African Americans, 15 white people), 537 were injured, and 1,000 Black families were made homeless.
On November 2, 1920, a white mob, reacting violently to the news that an African American man had tried to cast his vote in an election, massacred Black residents in Ocoee, central Florida. Estimates vary on how many African Americans were killed. Some put the figure as high as 80, but in the years after the event, many locals said they believed the death toll had been about 30 or 35.
One of the most severe incidents of racial violence in U.S. history, the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, began on May 31, 1921, and lasted for two days. The actions of a white mob left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly African Americans, and destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood, known as “Black Wall Street.” More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless.
A violent white mob attacked the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida, over several days in January 1923. In the years since, some have estimated that as many as 200 people were killed, but an official study in 1993 placed the death toll at 8: 6 African Americans and 2 white people. In addition, virtually every building was burned to the ground.
Precipitated by a Black Puerto Rican teenager’s theft of a penknife from a store and rumors of police brutality, the riot occurred in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem on March 19–20, 1935. It left 3 people dead and more than 100 injured.
In June 1943 a series of racist attacks in Los Angeles were carried out primarily by U.S. servicemen against Mexican American youths, the latter of whom wore outfits called zoot suits. The worst of the rioting occurred on the night of June 7, when thousands of servicemen and citizens prowled the streets of downtown Los Angeles, attacking zoot-suiters as well as other members of minority groups. In response to these confrontations, police arrested hundreds of Mexican American youths, many of whom had already been attacked by servicemen.
On August 1–2, 1943, a riot again erupted in Harlem after a white police officer shot and wounded an African American soldier who had attempted to intervene in the police officer’s arrest of an African American woman for disturbing the peace. Six people died and nearly 500 were injured in the violence.
A six-day period of rioting started on July 18, 1964, in Harlem after a white off-duty police officer shot and killed an African American teenager. The rioting spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville in Brooklyn and to South Jamaica, Queens, and resulted in the death of one person.
Beginning on August 11, 1965, and lasting six days, the Watts riots were a series of violent confrontations that broke out between Los Angeles police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles. The riots resulted in the deaths of 34 people, and more than 1,000 were injured. In addition, more than $40 million worth of property was destroyed.
Over the course of five days beginning on July 23, 1967, residents of predominantly African American neighborhoods in Detroit and the city’s police department engaged in a series of violent confrontations that resulted in the deaths of 43 people, including 33 African Americans and 10 white people. Many others were injured, and more than 1,000 buildings were burned. The riot is considered one of the catalysts of the militant Black Power movement.
A major outbreak of violence, looting, and arson erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, in response to the acquittal of four white policemen on all but one charge (on which the jury was deadlocked) connected with the severe beating of Rodney King, an African American motorist, the previous year. As a result of several days of rioting, more than 50 people were killed, more than 2,300 were injured, and thousands were arrested. About 1,100 buildings were damaged, and total property damage was about $1 billion, which made the riots one of the most devastating civil disruptions in American history.