Lynching in America / 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre

Between 1865 and 1950, racial terror lynching claimed the lives of thousands of African Americans and became a notorious form of resistance to emancipation and equal rights, used to intimidate Black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Many Black people were lynched for allegedly violating social customs, resisting economic exploitation, or being accused of crimes even without evidence, while law enforcement and white officials routinely failed to stop the violence and granted mobs impunity. Mob terrorism often extended beyond an accused person to entire Black communities, which usually received no help repairing the harm. At least 36 racial terror lynchings have been documented in Fulton County and at least 595 in Georgia. On September 22, 1906, thousands of white men and boys gathered in downtown Atlanta and over four days white mobs terrorized Black people in the Five Points area and nearby Black neighborhoods, burning homes, destroying Black-owned businesses, and attacking Black people. Hundreds of Black people reportedly filled Grady Hospital's segregated ward before the violence ended on September 25, and at least 25 Black men and women were lynched. The violence followed months of racist gubernatorial campaigning and sensational reporting about alleged assaults on white women by Black men, and when the attacks began, law enforcement failed to intervene and at least 12 Black people were lynched before midnight. On September 23, one Black neighborhood on present-day John Wesley Dobbs Avenue repelled an attack by turning out the streetlights and firing on the mob, and on September 24, Black Atlantans in Brownsville stopped a mob attack on their neighborhood but were then arrested by county police and left in streetcars that white mobs attacked, killing at least one detained person. Of the thousands of white participants, only two were ever convicted for their role in the massacre.

Atlanta, Georgia · United States