The “Atlanta Race Riots”—more accurately termed the Atlanta Race Massacre—occurred from September 22 to 26, 1906, and stand as a brutal manifestation of the lingering wounds of a divided America.
Relatively few people realize that America’s freedoms are not birthright privileges, but rather hard-fought pacts forged from strife — and war, America’s civil war.
The Confederacy’s defeat in 1865 unleashed a torrent of unresolved racial animosities that festered through Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow South.
What Were the Atlanta Race Riots?
The riots were not a spontaneous clash but a targeted pogrom by white mobs against Atlanta’s Black community, resulting in at least 25 confirmed Black deaths (with estimates up to 100), over 100 injuries, and widespread destruction of Black-owned property…