Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

included the Matewan Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain, erupted over the

same basic issues.

—John R. Burch Jr.

Further Reading

Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West

Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appala-

chian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982.

Williams, John Alexander. A ppalachia: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 2002.

Hatfield, Sid (1893–1921)

Albert Sidney “Sid” Hatﬁeld was supposedly born on May 15, 1893. Little is

known of his early years as he was an orphan who was raised by members of the

infamous Hatﬁeld family of Mingo County, West Virginia, whose notoriety had

arisen courtesy of the Hatﬁeld-McCoy feud. Like many young men in West

Virginia’s Tug Valley, he ﬁrst worked in the local coal mines and became a

member of the Unit ed Mine Wor ke rs of America (UMWA). I n 1919, he left the

coal mines to ac cept the offer from Matewan mayor C. C. Testerman to become

the community’s police chief.

Although no longer a miner, Hatﬁeld continued to be active in the UMWA .

During the early months of 1920, he actively aided a labor organizer’s efforts to

enroll miners from the Tug Valley into the union. The Stone Mountain Coal Cor-

poration was opposed to the efforts of the UMWA and decided to evict any of their

employees and their families from company housing if they opted to join the

union. The corporation hired private detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective

Agency to conduct the actual evictions. On May 19, 1920, Baldwin-F elts agents

arrived in Matewan and evicted a number of families from their homes. Sid

Hatﬁeld allowed the evictions to occur despite believing that only he had the juris-

diction within the community to enforce evictions. Backed by Mayor Tes terma n

and a number of angry miners, Hatﬁeld then confronted the Baldwin-Felts agents

and an argument ensued. Gunshots soon followed, which resulted in the death of

Testerman, two miners, and seven Baldwin-Fe lts agents, incl uding Albert a nd

Lee Felts. The “Matewan Massacre” resulted in Hatﬁeld becoming an icon among

members of the UMWA. Two days after the massacre, he married Jennie Testerman,

the widow of C. C. Testerman. Sid was disavowed by many members of the Hatﬁeld

798 Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)

family, whose loyalties lay with the coal entrepreneurs who were operating through-

out West Virginia.

In January 1921, Hatﬁeld and 15 other men faced charges in Matewan for their

roles in the death of Albert Felts. The prosecut io n was ai de d by hig hly regarded

lawyers that had been hired by Tom Felt s, one of the founders of the Baldwin-

Felts Detective Agency and the brother of both Albert and Lee Felts. The jury

was not impartial, and all the defendants were acquitted. The opportunity for the

Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to exact its revenge occurred on August 1, 1921.

Hatﬁeld and his deputy Ed Chambers were scheduled to testify in a case a t the

McDowell County, West Virginia, courthouse and as they arrived with their wives,

the men were murdered by Baldwin-Felts detectives Bill Salter, George Pence, and

C. E. Lively. More than 10,000 enraged miners marched on Mingo County a month

later to protest the murder of the two men.

—John R. Burch Jr.

Further Reading

Bailey, Rebecca J. Matewan before the Massacre: Politics, Coal, and the Roots of Conﬂict

in a West Virginia Mining Community. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press,

2008.

Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellio n in the Coal Fields: The Southern West

Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Waller, Altina L. Feud: Hatﬁelds, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860–1900.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Matewan Massacre (1920)

The Matewan Massacre was one of the opening events in the Mine War of 1920–

1921. One of the key issues that caused the labor conﬂict was the desire of miners

to be represented by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). This was an

issue that had been left unresolved at the conclusion of the previous labor conﬂict,

the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike of 1913 and 1914. To dissuade its coal miners

from joining the UMWA, the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation made it a policy to

evict miners and their families from company housing if they became union mem-

bers. The actual evictions in the environs of Matewan were conducted by agents of

the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.

The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was well known for their ability to

obstruct unionization efforts. The company had one of the best-developed espion-

age programs in the mines as many of its employees, posing as coal miners,

Battle of Blair Mountain (1921) 799

actively fed information to their superiors. Some of its employees worked as labor

organizers, which enabled them to gain leadership positions in the union hier-

archy. Other Baldwin-Felts employees served as an armed force for coal operators.

Their brutality and constant use of excessive force often contributed to an unnec-

essary escalation in violence in the coalﬁelds.

Baldwin-Felts agents arrived in Matewan on May 19, 1920, and began forcibly

evicting families from their homes. Since the Baldwin-Felts agents were depu-

tized, they believed they had the right to enforce eviction notices within Matewan.

Matewan’s police chief Sid Hatﬁeld, a member of the UMWA, disagreed with that

assessment. Accompanied by Mayor C. C. Testerman and a group of angry miners,

Hatﬁeld confronted the Baldwin-Felts agents. It is believed that Albert Felts

attempted to arrest Hatﬁeld, which subsequently led to weapons being ﬁred. It is

not deﬁnitively known who ﬁred ﬁrst, but the ﬁghting claimed the lives of Mayor

Testerman, two miners, and seven employees of the Baldwin-Felts Detective

Agency. Two of the detectives that died that day, Albert and Lee Felts, were the

brothers of the agency’s cofounder, Tom Felts. The deaths of the detectives were

all credited to Sid Hatﬁeld, which m ade him a folk hero to miners throughout

Appalachia. It also resulted in making him a target of Tom Felts and his agency’s

ruthless employees.

Hatﬁeld and 15 other men were tried in Matewan for the murder of Albert Felts

in January 1921 and were acquitted. A vengeful Tom Felts took the law into his

own hands on August 1, 1921, and had three of his employees murder Sid Hatﬁeld

and his deputy Ed Chambers in McDowell County, West Virginia.

—John R. Burch Jr.

Further Reading

Bailey, Rebecca J. Matewan before the Massacre: Politics, Coal, and the Roots of Conﬂict

inaWestVirginiaMiningCommunity. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press,

2008.

Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West

Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Savage, Lon. Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–192 1.

Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

800 Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)

Tulsa Race Riot (1921)

The Tulsa race riot of May 31 and June 1, 1921, stands as one of the largest civil

disturbances in U.S. history a nd resulted in the destruction of the predominantly

African American Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. After 16 hours

of rioting, dozens of citizens had died, hundreds more injured, and an equal num-

ber made homeless. Even with conservative casu alty ﬁgures, the Tulsa riot ranks

among the worst outbreaks of racial violence in the nation’s history.

The violence shaped race relations in Tulsa for generations and helped to con-

tribute to the relatively small African American community in a metropolitan area

approaching one million residents. Efforts at reparations and reconciliation have

stirred renewed interest in the riot and have now placed it within the larger context

of American race relations.

Tulsa’s location adjacent to the 1905 Glenn Pool gusher on the Mid-Continent

oil ﬁeld pushed the city’s population from 1,390 in 1900 to over 72,000 in 1920.

African Americans also moved to Tulsa and established the Greenwood neighbor-

hood with the oil prosperity, giving it the nickname of the “Black Wall Street”

within the segregated city. Tulsa’s white citizens, however, also practi ced white

supremacy much like the rest of the nation, demanding the protection of white

womanhood and African American deference to whites in all social and economic

settings. The threat of vigilante violence buttressed that argument and underpinned

those who resented the prosperity of Tulsa’s black community and feared demands

for a greater role in the city’s life. These concerns mirrored an era that had experi-

enced a host of race riots acr oss the country in East St. Louis, Washington, D.C.,

Houston, and Chicago, resulting in dozens of deaths, hundreds injured, and mil-

lions of dollars in property damage.

On the afternoon of May 30, 1921, a black shoeshine named Dick Rowland and a

white elevator operator named Sarah Page encountered each other at the Drexel

Building on South Main Street. Rowland, coming to use the “colored” restroom on

the top ﬂoor, tripped upon entering the elevator and grabbed the arm of Page, who

screamed. As Rowland ﬂed the building, nearby workers found Page upset and

assumed an attempted assault had happened. The police eventually detained Row-

land in Greenwood and took him to the jail at the Tulsa County Courthouse. Investi-

gators had conducted the search for the young man without the fanfare of an ofﬁcial

manhunt, sending one of the city’s few black police ofﬁcers to make the arrest.

801

By the morning of May 31, the Tulsa Tribune editor Richard Lloyd Jones pub-

lished inﬂammatory accounts of Rowland and Page’s encounter, stirring anger in

both the white and African American communities. The afternoon brought crowds

to the courthouse and prompted the sheriff to take steps to protect Rowland from a

potential lynch mob. Several groups of men bot h white and black gathered at the

courthouse, prompting city ofﬁcials and the sheriff to urge them to return to their

homes. The encounter between the armed groups, whites fearful of a black upris-

ing and blacks fearful of a possible lynching, met at the courthouse late that eve-

ning with shots exchanged and set off the main round of violent rioting.

Throughout the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, African Americans out-

side of Greenwood were detained and taken to the National Guard armory, with

others being ﬁred upon by groups of armed whites. The deployment o f the

National Guard and members of the American Legion brought whites into conﬂict

with African Americans defending Greenwood. Some incursions into the neigh-

borhood resulted in exchanges of ﬁre and dead on both sides, further inﬂaming

the situation. Groups of white rioters set ﬁres at the edge of Greenwood that

802 Tulsa Race Riot (1921)

Crowd of African Americans during the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riot of 1921. (Library of

Congress)

eventually spread into the neighborhood and a full incursion by daybreak. Though

some African Americans organized a defense, they were quickly overwhelmed by

the mob and ﬁre retreating out of the area. National Guard troops from Oklahoma

City arrived by midmorning and reasserted orde r, including overseeing the hun-

dreds of Greenwood residents held in makeshift detention centers. Travelers com-

ing to the city could see the plume of smoke before seeing the city and

encountered bands of frightened African Americans ﬂeeing the city. Many of these

families obtained transportation to towns within the region hoping to return, while

others moved to other cities and sacriﬁced their property rather than return to

Tulsa. The disruption to the community would complicate rebuilding efforts an d

make the records on casualties vary widely.

Among the most controversial aspects of the riot involves the number of cas u-

alties. Conservative estimates place the number of dead at 36 (26 black, 10 white)

while other estimates range from 300 to 3,000. Of the more than 800 injured

admitted to local white hospitals, as both black hospitals had burned in the riot,

the whites made up the vast majority of patients. Further, even if the hospitals

had admitted blacks under these special conditions, those injure d citizens would

have had few avenues to travel through a city under martial law and through a

still-hostile white community. Several African American casualties died while in

the internment centers, and while most of these deaths have records, no records

exist as to how many detainees received treatment for injuries.

Within weeks of the riot, African American families returned to the ruins of the

neighborhood to establish a tent city on the site of their former properties. Relief

and rebuilding efforts faced resistance from city ofﬁcials who expressed concern

that charity would cause dependence on the part of the survivors. Unease at their

own act ions prompted a conﬂicted response, resulting in a ser ies of policies such

as zoning and codes aimed at limiting black businesses on the grounds of immoral-

ity. A series of court cases overturned many of these efforts and w idened the gap

between the two communities. Within a year, the Greenwood neighborhood began

rebuilding with African Americans successfully r eturning to the prosperity they

had previously enjoyed. The post–World War II era proved less successful as the

softening of segregationist practices in business and the de struct ion wrought by

the construction of an expressway prompted the area’s decline.

The aftermath of the riot also saw the rapid erasure from the white majority’s

memory. City histories simply ignored it or downplayed its violence, relegating

it to an unpleasant part of a bygone era. Until the publishing of Scott Ellsworth’s

Death in a Promised Land in 1982, few whites, either in Tulsa or in society as a

whole, had ever heard of the 1921 riot. Within the white community, oral tradition

held the riot’s cause came from the black community or that poor whites engaged

in violence, not th e better classes. African Americ ans, by contrast, preserved the

Tulsa Race Riot (1921) 803

memory of the events, but within the small Tulsa African American community.

Their oral tradition reminded members of the mercurial nature of the white com-

munity and the potential for violence for what would appear to be a minor trans-

gression in a sea of unwritten rules.

The 75th anniversary of the riot resulted in the creation of the Tulsa Race Riot

Commission in 1997, charged with the creation of an historical account of the

event. The repor t produced in 2001 recommended a combination of repar ations

to survivors and descendents, scholarships to Greenwood residents, and economic

revitalization efforts for the neighb orhood, among other mea sures. Though t he

Oklahoma legislature provided for s ome of the recommended measures later in

2001 , it d id not pass reparations. Further legal efforts starting in 2003 attempted

to provide education and health-car e improvements for the Greenwood area but

have had little success either in the courts or in legislation.

—Matthew Daley

See also all entries under Stono Rebellion (1739); New York Slave Insurrection (1741);

Antebellum Suppressed Slave Revolts (1800 s–1850s); Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831);

New Orleans Riot (1866); New Orleans Race Riot (1900); Atlanta Race Riot (1906);

Springﬁeld Race Riot (1908); Houston Riot (1917); Red Summer (1919); Civil Rights

Movement (1953–1968); Watts Riot (1965); Detroit Riots (1967); Los Angeles Uprising

(1992).

Further Reading

Brophy, Alfred L. Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: Race,

Reparations, and Reconciliation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Ellsworth, Scott. Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1992.

Hirsch, James S. Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War an d Its Legacy.Boston:

Houghton Mifﬂin, 2002.

Madigan, Tim. The Bur ning : Massac re, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 .

New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2001.

Oklahoma Historical Society. “A Report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa

Race Riot of 1921.” http://www.okhistory.org/trrc/freport.htm (accessed August 25,

2008).

Tulsa City County Library, African-Am erican Resource Cente r. “Tulsa Race Riot of

1921.” http://www.tulsalibrary.org/aarc/riot/riot.php (accessed August 25, 2008).

Tulsa Reparations Coalition. “Tulsa Race Riot—A Report by the Oklahoma Commission

to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.” http://www.tulsareparations.org/TRR.htm

(accessed August 25, 2008).

804 Tulsa Race Riot (1921)

Ku Klux Klan

The nam e Ku Klux Klan comes from the Gr eek word kuklos, meaning “circle,”

and serves as the name of several past and present entities that advocate a range

of beliefs based in nativism and white supremacy. The KKK has not existed as a

continuous organization under a single governing body or uniform set of goals;

instead, it has waxed and waned since its founding and acted as a cipher for a host

of localized issues regarding race, immigration, religion, and cultural values.

The KKK had its founding in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May 1866 by Confederate

Army veterans and citizens opposed to the policies of the Republican Party and its

sympathy to the newly freed slaves or freedmen, the inﬂux of northern investors

(carpetbaggers), and southern whites (scalawags) who worked with them. Though

it spread rapidly and had Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest as a nomi-

nal leader, the KKK acted in concert with similar groups. By 1870, these masked,

secret groups had helped reestablish white rule, relying on intimidation, violence,

and lynchings. The federal government under the aegis of the Ku Klux Act of 1871

acted against the groups in the Carolinas, but the return of white rule had already

caused a decline in the Klan.

The second Klan emerged during a period of social tension regarding large-

scale Southern and Eastern European immigration to urban areas, rapid industrial

growth and commercial expansion, and the migration of African Americans to the

North. Using author Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman (1905) and ﬁlmmaker

D. W. Grifﬁth’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) as inspiration, former minister Wil-

liam Joseph Simmons restarted the Klan to assert white Anglo-Saxon Protestant

control over society. Far more cohesive than the original g roup, it grew thro ugh

selling memberships, promoted the repression of African Americans and anti-

Catholic, anti-Communist, nativist, and anti-Semitic views. Its marketers created

a set of costumes and rituals based ostensibly o n Celtic folklore, including the

burning cross. The second KKK reached its peak during the mid-1920s with

marches in Washington, D.C., political power in I ndiana a nd Colorado, and a

national membership both rural and urban that cut across social classes. Despite

this, the second KKK did not act as a monolith with local chapter activities rang-

ing from the vigilantism to the fraternal. The Klan would decline after a series of

scandals but survive until the mid-1940s.

The civil rights movement led to a resurgence of independent groups invoking

the name of the KKK during the 1950s and 1960s. Though not openly recognized,

state and local governments relied on the support of these vigilante groups in sup-

pressing civil rights activities. Violence in Birmingham, Alabama, the assassination

of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers, and the murder of three civil rights workers in

805

Mississippi during the summer of 1964 all had connections to KKK members or

supporters. Federal intervention, public sentiment, and a tacit acceptance of African

American social and political involvement prompted a decline of these groups by

the mid-1970s. The present-day Klan remains small, highly localized, and catego-

rized as a hate group and monitored by public and private organizations.

—Matthew Daley

Further Reading

Blee, Kathleen M. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s.Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1991.

Chalmers, David Mark. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. Chicago:

Quadrangle Books, 1968.

Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949.Tuscaloosa:

University of Alabama Press, 1999.

Lay, Shawn. Hooded Knights on the Niag ara: The Ku Klux Klan i n Buffalo, New Yo rk.

New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Lay, Sh awn, ed. Th e Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of

the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansman: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928. Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

Segregation

Segregation in the United States consists of the legal or socially enforced separation

of racia l, e thnic, and religious minorities from mainstream society bo th in pu blic

and private spheres. Such practices included restrictions on public accommoda-

tions, transportation, education, and employment. It can further involve the spatial

separation of groups along with the mandatory use of different and usually inferior

institutions such as schools and hospitals. Institutions also foster segregation, in

housing for example, through selective enforcement of codes and the provision of

services, and urban renewal policies that further isolated communities. Law

enforcement and sentencing guidelines, immigration policies, and other actions

reach beyond individual actions and make social assumptions a matter of policy.

Two major types of segregation have and continue to exist in the United States

to the present day. De facto (“in-fact”) exists when members of a particular group

mutually or under social pressure associate and conduct business and social rela-

tions apart from the mainstream. This type is often found in areas with large

806 Tulsa Race Riot (1921)

immigrant or migrant communities in rural regions or urban neighborhoods. De

jure (by law) segregation received the sancti on and enforcement of law ba sed on

the provision of separate-but-equal facilities and an acceptance of a lower level

of citizenship and legal rights. Enacted through the aegis given by the 1896

Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, public policies based on its provisions

were targeted primarily at African Americans. In practice, the services and facili-

ties reserved for African Americans provided a lower quality of service than those

reserved for whites, both North and South.

Main tenance of segregation came in a variety of forms, from restr ictive cove-

nants placed in housing deeds that prohibited particular groups, discrimination in

rentals, voting restrictions, institutional separation in the armed forces, and limita-

tions placed on hiring and promotion in employment. Particularly during the

period from 1890 to 1930, vigilante violence throughout the United States resulted

in thousands of reported and unreported lynchings and acts of violence for real or

perceived breaches of social customs. The First and Second Great Migrations from

1915 to 1930 and 1940 to 1970 brought many African Americans to northern

cities, where clashes with whites and ot her ethnic groups resulted i n new segre-

gated areas that would offer few avenues for advancement.

Though many immigrant groups eventually fo und acceptance into mainstream

society, African Americans remained the primary targets of social and legal segrega-

tion. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, a series of court cases and congressional laws

ended legal segregation. These included President Harry S Truman’s 1948 order to

desegregate the armed forces, the Supreme Court cases of Shelly v. Kraemer (1948)

and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that ended restrictive deed covenants and

“separate-but-equal” policies in education respectively, and the Civil Rights Act of

1964. Together with federal and state enforcement , these policies ended the most

egregious examples of legal segregation. Despite these changes, segregation contin-

ues to the present shaped by the movement to suburbs, continued mortgage and lend-

ing discrimination (also called redlining), and the unequal provision of education,

public services, health care, housing, and employment.

—Matthew Daley

Further Reading

Litwack, Leon. F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York:

Knopf, 1998.

Loewen, James W. Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension to American Racism. New York:

New Press, 2005.

Williamson, Joel. A Rage for Order: Black/Whites Relations in the American South Since

Emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1974.

Tulsa Race Riot (1921) 807