St. Louis Race Massacre (1917)

Sun Jul 01, 1917

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Image: East St. Louis Race Riot headline from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat on Friday, July 6th, 1917. It reads “100 NEGROES SHOT, BURNED, CLUBBED TO DEATH IN E. ST. LOUIS RACE WAR” [blackpast.org]

On this day in 1917, white mobs in East St. Louis began indiscriminately killing black people, burning down homes with the families trapped inside, killing more than a hundred people in one of the bloodiest race riots of the 20th century.

Racial tensions had begun to increase in February, when 470 black workers were hired to replace white workers who had gone on strike against the Aluminum Ore Company. The use of all-white workforces and using non-white strikebreakers was an often used tactic to break working class solidarity.

At a city council meeting, angry white workers lodged formal complaints to the mayor of East St. Louis about black migration to the city. After the meeting ended, rumors of an attempted robbery of a white man by an armed black man began to circulate through the city.

In response, white mobs formed and rampaged through downtown, assaulting any black people they could find. The mobs also stopped trolleys and streetcars, pulling black passengers out and beating them on the streets and sidewalks.

On this day in 1917, the racial violence resumed at a fever pitch, with white mobs gunning down men, women, and children and burning down the homes of black families with them trapped inside. More than one hundred people were killed.

A year after the violence took place, a federal investigation of the conduct of the city government concluded that police officers fled the scenes of arson and murder, abandoning their posts and refusing to answer calls for help. Less than a dozen white people were sentenced to prison for crimes related to the riot.

  • Pandantic [they/them]English
    8•5 months ago

    I used to live by there. It was a ghost town ghetto. I liked to imagine what it would have been if this hadn’t happened.