The forgotten history of Black armed defense events

[Imback]

I know some ppl on here are descendants of meek followers and non fighters @Pressure so they align themselves with whiteness above all else.

Others know their history and ancestors.

There are probably over 100 incidents of battles with racists, blacks had militarily in the USA.

Here are a few stories:

Link: The Colfox Massacre

“
On April 13, Easter Sunday, more than 300 armed white men, including members of white supremacist organizations such as the Knights of White Camellia and the Ku Klux Klan, attacked the courthouse. When the militia maneuvered a cannon to fire on the courthouse, some of the sixty black defenders fled while others surrendered. When the leader of the attackers, James Hadnot, was accidentally shot by one of his own men, the white militia responded by shooting the black prisoners. Those who were wounded in the earlier battle, particularly black militia members, were singled out for execution. The indiscriminate killing spread to African Americans who had not been at the courthouse and continued into the night.

All told, approximately 150 African Americans were killed, including 48 who were murdered after the battle. Only three whites were killed, and few were injured in the largely one-sided battle of Colfax.

On April 14, the state militia under the control of Republican Governor William Kellogg arrived at the scene and recorded the carnage. New Orleans police and federal troops also arrived in the next few days to reestablish order. A total of 97 white militia men were arrested and charged with violation of the U.S. Enforcement Act of 1870 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act). A handful of them were convicted but were eventually released in 1875 when the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank ruled the Enforcement Act was unconstitutional. No one was ever arrested by the state of Louisiana or by intimidated local officials.”

 

[Imback]

The Massasoit Guards were an African-American militia company active in 1850s Boston. Clothing retailer John P. Coburn founded the group to police Beacon Hill and protect residents from slave catchers. Attorney Robert Morrisrepeatedly petitioned the Massachusetts legislature on their behalf, but the Massasoit Guards were never officially recognized or supported by the state. The group was a precursor to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

 

[Imback]

Link: Hamburg Massacre

“On July 8, 1876, the small town of Hamburg, South Carolina erupted in violence as the community’s African American militia clashed with whites from the surrounding area. Hamburg was a small all-black community across the river from Augusta, Georgia. Like many African American communities in South Carolina, it was solidly Republican, and with the GOP in charge in Columbia, some of its men were members of the militia.

On July 4, two white farmers from surrounding Edgefield County, Thomas Butler and Henry Getzen, attempted to drive a carriage through the town along the main road but were obstructed by the all-black militia which was engaged in a military exercise. Although the farmers got through the military formation after an initial argument, racial tensions remained high.

Two days later, Butler and Getzen brought a formal complaint of obstruction of a public road before the local court in Hamburg. The case was postponed until July 8. Matthew C. Butler, an Edgefield attorney, appeared as the farmers’ counsel. Butler demanded that the Hamburg militia company be disbanded although that action had no direct connection to the complaint.

By this point, hundreds of armed white men, including many who were members of various rifle clubs, descended upon the small black community. Militia members retreated to a stone warehouse which they used as their armory.

Sometime during the afternoon a battle ensued. Surrounded and outnumbered, twenty-five militiamen and fifteen Hamburg residents fought back from the armory. By mid-afternoon a white attacker and a militiaman lay dead, and a few more members of the militia were wounded. A cannon was brought over from nearby Augusta and aimed at the armory. As cannon fire blew a hole in the armory, some black militiamen and Hamburg’s Town Marshal, James Cook, attempted to flee. Cook was shot and killed.

The rest of the militiamen and townspeople were captured in the armory. Four of the militiamen were brought out and immediately executed by the white mob. The rest were allowed to escape, though as soon as they began to flee, the whites trained their guns on the escaping men, shooting as many as possible.”

 

[Imback]

Knox County Removal

“
Cherry Grove was a Knox County black settlement located in southern Busseron Township. The settlement was near the Maria Creek African American Methodist (AME) Church. The church was listed in the minutes of the Indiana Conference of the AME Church during the 1840s. The cemetery was situated near present-day Highway 41 and seven miles north of Vincennes. Caesar Embree bought land in 1827. An acre of this land, later under the ownership of Nathaniel Newton, was donated for the church in 1842. There was a black school established around 1880.

Surnames connected to the settlement include Allen, Baird, Barber, Bates, Booker, Butler, Charter, Cox, Embree, Guy, Howard, Hughes, Jones, Knight, Lamount, Newton, Noland, Parker, Sims, Stewart, Taylor, White, Whitfield, and Woodley.

U.S. CENSUS NUMBERS FOR KNOX COUNTY, 1820-1870​

Census Year	1820	1830	1840	1850	1860	1870
No. of African Americans	166	447	561	530	449	380

There was a possible settlement in Harrison Township, Knox County, near Monroe City. Names to investigate include Aaron Ritchey and Silence. The Silence family may have had land before 1840, but it is believed that they were forced off the land. The children of later generations came back to try to reclaim the land. An oral account of the family attempting to reclaim the land indicates that there was a gun battle that ensued when they attempted to recover the land.”

 

[Imback]

Negro Fellowship League

“The Negro Fellowship League first emerged following the Springfield race riots of 1908. Over a two-day period that summer, there was wave of violence against the Black community at the hands of a white mob. It followed the alleged assault of a white woman by two Black men. The mob of nearly 5,000 people looted and destroyed Black-owned businesses, assaulted people, and lynched two elderly Black men, Scott Burton and William Donegan. At least seven people were killed before the Illinois National Guard restored order.

In 1917, the all-Black Third Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry was stationed in Texas. As the soldiers encountered Jim Crow racism, a series of incidents occurred, culminating in the arrest of a Black soldier who allegedly intervened in the arrest and mistreatment of a Black woman at the hands of white police. A rumor had spread to the battalion that a fellow soldier had been killed, sparking a gun battle between the battalion, local police, and white residents. The battle resulted in the deaths of 16 white people, including five policemen, and four Black soldiers. In the largest court martial in U.S. military history, 64 soldiers were tried and 13 were hanged for their role in what was described as a “riot.”

 

[Imback]

Glenville Shootout

The Glenville shootout was a gun battle that occurred on the night of July 23–24, 1968, in the Glenville section of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Gunfire was exchanged for roughly four hours between the Cleveland Police Departmentand the Black Nationalists of New Libya, a Black Power group. The battle led to the death of three policemen, three suspects, and a bystander. At least 15 others (police, gunmen, and bystanders) were wounded.

 

[Imback]

Clinton Riots

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln was the dominant political wing of the federal government working to restore national unity and enforce the new civil rights of Black people, while the Democratic Party largely represented the white South of the former Confederacy intent on regaining control of their state governments. The "Radical Republicans" were an arm of the Republican Party that advocated imposing severe penalties on the South for waging the Civil War and also ensuring full political and social equality for the millions of Black people in the South who were now American citizens.

Political realignment during the civil rights movement of the 1960s led to major shifts in party identification, as Southern elected officials and constituents largely left the Democratic Party in protest of civil rights advancements enacted by President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson, while the Republican Party stayed silent on civil rights issues to attract the defecting South, and later embraced the coded language of "law and order" and "state's rights" to dominate regional politics. But in 1875, Republican politicians in the South—a small minority—were considered agents of federal oppression, friends of African Americans, and enemies of the white supremacy many former Confederates wanted to re-establish.

At the Clinton, Mississippi, barbecue on that September evening, the risk of violent conflict between the political parties was great. In the interest of keeping the peace, Republican officials agreed to accommodate Democrats' request to speak and arranged for a public discussion between Judge Amos R. Johnston, a Democratic candidate for state senate, and Captain H.T. Fisher, Republican editor of the Jackson Times.

Both speakers were to be given an equal amount of speaking time, and Johnston spoke first. When Mr. Fisher's turn came, he expressed optimism that meetings between the parties could take place peacefully in the future—but eight minutes into his address, an altercation erupted in the crowd. A gunfight between Black and white people in the audience rang out, as bystanders panicked and rushed to escape the danger. Within 15 minutes, three white people and four Black people were dead, and six white people and 20 Black people were wounded.

Though newspapers reported that the Black people who had fired weapons were acting in self-defense, many white observers were enraged by the Black show of force. That night, armed white men from Clinton and Vicksburg formed roving bands targeting Black men. By the next day, an estimated 50 Black people had been killed. Many more had been forced into the woods and swampland to avoid an attack, where they remained until the attack subsided.

 

[Imback]

Atlanta Massacre 1906

By the 1880s Atlanta had become the hub of the regional economy, and the city’s overall population soared from 89,000 in 1900 to 150,000 in 1910; the Black population was approximately 9,000 in 1880 and 35,000 by 1900. Such growth put pressure on municipal services, increased job competition among Black and white workers, heightened class distinctions, and led the city’s white leadership to adopt restrictions intended to control the daily behavior of the growing working class, with mixed success. Such conditions caused concern among elite whites, who feared the social intermingling of the races, and led to an expansion of Jim Crow segregation, particularly in the separation of white and Black neighborhoods and separate seating areas for public transportation.

On the afternoon of Saturday, September 22, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults on local white women, none of which were ever substantiated. In a series of extra editions published throughout the day, the papers added lurid details and evermore inflammatory language, and soon thousands of white men and boys gathered downtown in protest. City leaders, including Mayor James G. Woodward, sought to calm the increasingly indignant crowds but failed to do so.

By early evening, the crowd had become a mob; from then until after midnight, they surged down Decatur Street, Pryor Street, Central Avenue, and throughout the central business district, assaulting hundreds of Blacks. The mob attacked Black-owned businesses, smashing the windows of Black leader Alonzo Herndon’s barbershop. Although Herndon had closed down early and was already at home when his shop was damaged, another barbershop across the street was raided by the rioters—and the barbers were killed.

On Monday, September 24, a group of African Americans held a meeting in Brownsville, a community located about two miles south of downtown Atlanta and home to the historically Black Clark College (later Clark Atlanta University) and Gammon Theological Seminary. The group was heavily armed. When Fulton County police learned of the gathering, they feared a counterattack and launched a raid on Brownsville. A shootout ensued, and an officer was killed. In response, three companies of heavily armed militia were sent to Brownsville, where they seized weapons and arrested more than 250 African American men. Meanwhile, sporadic fighting continued throughout the day.

 

[Imback]

Berea’s Deadly Racial Shootout of 1968​

The racist National States’ Rights Party, or NSRP, held a rally at a vacant used-car lot along [U.S. 25] on the north side of Berea. About 300 white people—mostly men—attended the rally.

By four o’clock the rally was over. The organizers were packing away their placards, flyers, and Confederate flags when “several carloads of Negro men” pulled up to the site. Words, including racial epithets, were exchanged. Then the shooting began. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but over the next ten minutes, the two sides exchanged more than forty shots in a running gun battle.

 

[Imback]

Elaine, Arkansas, Massacre​

On the night of September 30, 1919, approximately 100 Black farmers attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church in Phillips County, Arkansas. Many of the farmers were sharecroppers on white-owned plantations in the area and the meeting was held to discuss ways they could organize to demand fairer payments for their crops.

Knowing that Black union organizing often attracted opposition, Black men stood as armed guards around the church while the Phillips County meeting took place. When a group of white people from the Missouri-Pacific Railroad attempted to intrude and spy on the meeting, the guards held them back and a shootout erupted. At least two white men were killed, and enraged white mobs quickly formed.

The mobs descended on the nearby Black town of Elaine, Arkansas, destroying homes and businesses and attacking any Black people in their path over the coming days. Terrified Black residents, including women, children, and the elderly, fled their homes and hid for their lives in nearby woods and fields. A responding federal troop regiment claimed only two Black people were killed but many reports challenged the white soldiers’ credibility and accused them of participating in the massacre. Today, historians estimate hundreds of Black people were killed in the massacre.

When the violence was quelled, 67 Black people were arrested and charged with inciting violence, while dozens more faced other charges. No white attackers were prosecuted, but 12 Black union members convicted of riot-related charges were sentenced to death. The NAACP, along with local African American lawyer Scipio Africanus Jones, represented the men on appeal and successfully obtained reversals of all of their death sentences.