The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot: An Explanatory Timeline
Phase One: Reconstruction, 1863-1877
Phase Two: The Emergence of Jim Crow, 1878 -1905
Phase Three: Context for A Race Riot, 1906
Aftermath of Riot
Compiled by Clarissa Myrick-Harris, Ph.D.
Design by Norman Harris, Ph.D.
Coalition Web Site: http://www.1906atlantaraceriot.org
Coalition Email: infor@atlantaraceriot.org
Phase One: Reconstruction 1863-1877
1863: During Wartime Reconstruction, Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolishes slavery
in the southern states of the confederacy, including Georgia. However, the Confederacy does not recognize the
proclamation; many enslaved Africans are not told of their change in status. Newly freed African American men
are allowed to enlist in the Union Army.
1864: September – Union General William Sherman occupies Atlanta and hundreds of escaped and freed
African Americans follow him and his troops to the city.
1865: April - Civil War Ends seven months after Sherman burned almost 5,000 Atlanta buildings to the ground
in preparation for his March to the Sea. Atlanta had been one of the Confederacy’s most important
manufacturing and transport centers. The city’s downfall helped spur the end of the war.
Black Family during Recnostruction
Courtesy APEX Museum
By the end of 1865, Atlanta had begun to rise from the ashes. Approximately 150 stores had opened and the city
was on its way to recreating itself as a progressive commercial center. African American laborers are essential to
this rebuilding and would continue to provide a lion’s share of the labor force throughout the Reconstruction era.
December –The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery nationally, but by this time Georgia has begun to establish
Black Codes to restrict the rights of African Americans.
A smallpox epidemic hit the city and continues into 1868. The African American community is hardest hit
because the substandard housing and conditions in low-lying areas in which they lived leaves them exposed to
the elements.
Six former officers of the Confederacy begin to form the Ku Klux Kan in Pulaski Tennessee over the winter of
1865 to 1866. The name of the secret terrorist society is adapted from the Greek word kuklos (“circle”). The
Klan starts as a prankish social organization, but by 1867 its activities are directed against blacks and whites in
the Republican Reconstruction governments throughout the South, including Georgia.
1866: January - Georgia Equal Rights and Education Association is established by African Americans to educate
black women and men about their rights as citizens and teach black men about the voting process. As the
Republican Party takes shape in Georgia, the majority of the members are African American men.
In Atlanta Black churches such as Big Bethel AME and Friendship Baptist begin to focus on teaching black
people their rights as citizens. These churches also become incubators for future black politicians and
foundations for black institution building and business ventures, such as joint stock company the South View
Cemetery Association established in Friendship Baptist Church.
Big Bethal Church
Courtesy APEX Museum
Atlanta’s economy has skyrocketed. The city does $4.5million in business, more than it had before the Civil War.
Though the majority of blacks who migrate to the city are poor unskilled laborers from rural Georgia, some skilled
blacks would establish successful businesses during Reconstruction. They include James Tate who starts a grocery
store in this year. Other African American men and women would open barbershops, restaurants and boardinghouses
over the next decade.
1867: March 2- At the beginning of Radical Reconstruction, Congress passes the first of a series of Military
Reconstruction Acts, which calls for the enfranchisement of freedmen in the South. The moderates and radicals in
Congress unite and eliminate state governments established by President Johnson. Georgia and the other nine
“unreconstructed” former Confederate states are divided into five military districts that oversee the voting registration
of black and white eligible male citizens and the election of state governments comprised of black and white legislators.
Big Bethal Church
Courtesy APEX Museum
Thousands of former confederates are stripped of their voting rights.
Courtesy APEX Museum
April – The U.S. Army begins to supervise the registration of African American and White voters in Georgia. A
total of 98,507 black men register to vote, only about 4,000 fewer than the number of white men who register to
vote.
July – The 14th Amendment is ratified guaranteeing the rights of citizenship to African Americans.
Atlanta University chartered. Summer Hill School opens; it later becomes Clark University, then later Clark
College.
A total of 37 African American men are elected delegates to the Georgia Constitutional convention in 1867
.
James Tate
Courtesy APEX Museum
1867: First Congregational Church is established.
Reverend Henry Proctor became the first Black minister of First Congregational in 1894
Courtesy APEX Museum
1868: Thirty-two black legislators win seats in the state General Assembly. However, in September 1868, the
white legislators argue that the right to vote does not include the right to hold office; the expel the black elected
officials.
1870: Georgia forced to ratify the 15th Amendment guaranteeing African American men the right to vote
After a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the expelled African American state legislators are
reseated.
Tunis Campbell
Credit: Hargrett Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, University of Georgia
1870: Two black councilmen take their seats on Atlanta’s city council
Bishop Henry McNeil Turner
Credit: Georgia Capitol Museum, Office of
Secretary of State
William Finch
Courtesy APEX Museum
William Finch, “the father of education in Atlanta” became the city’s first Black councilman in 1870. He
lived in the Auburn Avenue community on Edgewood Avenue.
July - A branch of the Freedman’s Bank opens in Atlanta and extends credit to black citizens.
One of the most influential African
American leaders in late-nineteenth-century
Georgia,
Henry McNeal Turner was a pioneering
church organizer and missionary for the
African Methodist Episcopal Church
(A.M.E.) in Georgia, later rising to the rank
of bishop. Turner was also an active
politician and Reconstruction-era state
legislator from Macon. Later in life, he
became an outspoken advocate of back-toAfrica emigration.
1870: Wheat Street Baptist Church
is established
Wheat Street Baptist Church
Courtesy APEX Museum
1872: Georgia’s Reconstruction government ends when it is redeemed by white supremacists.
1874: As a publisher for the Atlanta Herald Henry Grady coins the term “The New South” to describe his vision of
industrial development and the restoration of the racial hierarchy that existed before the Civil War—whites in
control; and blacks as subordinate.
Reverend Peter James Bryant, pastor
of Wheat Street, 1898 to 1929,
organized the Atlanta Benevolent
Protective Association, predecessor
of the Atlanta Life Insurance
Company
Henry Grady
Courtesy Atlanta History Center
1874: A bankrupt Freedman’s Bank closes in Atlanta and nationwide
1875: The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was the last effort by Congress to protect the civil rights of African-Americans
for more than half a century. The act stated: That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be
entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public
conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and
limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous
condition of servitude.
1876: The Georgia Republican Convention, held in Atlanta, chooses 13 whites and 9 blacks to go to the National
Republican Convention in Cincinnati. Additionally, a black man, John Emory Bryant, was appointed chainman of the
state central committee
Henry Grady becomes co-owner of Atlanta Constitution newspaper and uses the paper as a mouthpiece for his New
South Creed, which advocates oppression of African Americans as essential to southern progress.
1877: Reconstruction ends for the nation with the Compromise of 1877—Republican Rutherford B. Hayes is given
the presidency in exchange for removing the last of federal troops from the South
Georgia institutes a poll tax, which disenfranchises African American men and poor white men.
Phase Two: The Emergence of Jim Crow
1878: Atlanta Baptist Seminary, (later Morehouse College) moves to Atlanta from
Augusta
1880: Republicans are in power in Atlanta. African American men represent 75
percent of the Republican Party in the city for the next two years.
1881: Morris Brown College founded in the basement of Big Bethel and Spelman
Seminary founded
African American women laundresses strike for better wages
1883: Civil Rights Act of 1875 struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, paving the
way for the rise of Jim Crow laws.
Former slave Alonzo Herndon, comes to Atlanta and begins to establish his
successful barbershops
Morris Brown College Baseball Team circa 1900 Courtesy APEX Museum
1883: November – Race Riot. White conservatives in Danville,
Virginia, seize control of the local government--racially
integrated and popularly elected--killing four African-Americans
in the process.
1884-1891: Fifty percent of black men in Atlanta vote in spite
of poll tax and other measures put in place to disenfranchise
African Americans. African American businesses thrived in the
Central Business District and on Auburn Avenue.
Alonzo Herndon Courtesy of APEX Museum
In the 1880s, David T. Howard, one of the wealthiest Blacks in Atlanta, owned a successful funeral home on
Piedmont Avenue.
Wesley C. Redding helped establish the Atlanta Loan and Trust Co. and European Hotel, the first hotel for
Blacks in the city. Both are located on Auburn Avenue.
David Howard Courtesy APEX Museum
Wesley C. Redding
Courtesy APEX Museum
1886: The Carrollton Massacre. On March 17, 20 black Americans were massacred at Carrollton, Mississippi.
1887: Hoke Smith, a protégé of New South booster Henry Grady, purchases the Atlanta Journal to put forth his
political agenda for white power and black repression.
Hoke Smith
Courtesy Atlanta History Center
1890s Atlanta becomes Georgia’s most segregated city as Jim Crow laws and
racial terrorism forced African Americans in Atlanta to live in underdeveloped
areas of the city.
Courtesy of APEX Museum
1891: Law enacted to segregate Georgia’s public streetcars.
Tom Watson, a white Populist politician, establishes the People’s Party
and proposes a biracial alliance to defeat the Democratic Party and the
business elite
Tom Watson
Courtesy Atlanta History Center
1892: Georgia now dominated by the Democratic Party, excludes black voters
by establishing a “white primary.”
One hundred and sixty-one black Americans are known lynched, more than in
any year before or after.
1894: Reverend Edward Randolph Carter’s book The Black Side of Atlanta is
published. It chronicles the achievements of African Americans in the city.
1895: Cotton States and International Exposition held in Piedmont Park, with a
pavilion for African-Americans. Booker T. Washington gives the speech
W.E.B. Du Bois would later call the “Atlanta Compromise.” In the speech,
Washington urges blacks to pull themselves up by bootstraps, advance
economically and forget about political power. His accommodationist stance
capitulates to Jim Crow.
Edward Randolph Carter Courtesy APEX Museum
Although Auburn Avenue became a
mecca for middle-class AfricanAmericans in the early part of the
century, many Blacks lived in
Darktown, a poor section between
Auburn, Jackson, Forest and
Piedmont.
1895: African-American militant integrationist leader and statesman Frederick
Douglass dies on February 20.
Several Baptist organizations combined to form the National Baptist
Convention of the U.S.A.; the Baptist Church is the largest black religious
denomination in the United States.
One hundred and thirteen black Americans are known to have been lynched
1896 July - The National Association of Colored Women is formed on July
21; Mary Church Terrell was chosen president.
1897: President William McKinley appoints Henry A. Rucker the first Black
Collector of Internal Revenue for Georgia.
Henry A. Rucker
Courtesy APEX Museum
1897: W.E.B. Du Bois comes to Atlanta to become a professor of History at Atlanta University and continue the
institution’s series of empirical studies undertaken to document conditions among African Americans.
W.E.B. Dubois
Courtesy of APEX Museum
Moses Amos Courtesy APEX
Museum
Moses Amos becomes the first
African American pharmacist in
Georgia and in 1896 opened the
first pharmacy for Blacks in
Atlanta. The Gate City Drug
Store.
1898: November – Race Riot Wilmington, North Carolina, eight black Americans are killed during
white rioting to remove African Americans from political power.
The Spanish American War, in large measure manufactured by New York newspaper publishers
Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. This War, supposedly in support of Cuban
independence from Spanish actually propels the United States to the forefront as an imperialist
power.
1899: The Afro-American Council designates June 4 as a national day of fasting to protest
lynchings and massacres.
Lynchings. Eighty-five black Americans are known to have been lynched
Ida B. Wells Barnett writes the pamphlet “Lynch Law in Georgia,” recounting the murder of Sam
Hose and others by white mobs near Atlanta. It was the fear of "Negro rule" that fueled racial
terrorism, according to Wells-Barnett. "The real purpose of these savage demonstrations is to teach
the Negro that in the South he has no rights that the law will enforce," she wrote.
1900: W.E.B. Du Bois mounts the “Negro Exhibit” at the Paris Exposition. The exhibit which
displays images of prosperous and educated African American women and men along with charts and
statistics that tout black advancement in spite of racial oppression in the decades since the abolition
of slavery.
Blacks in Georgia Politics Exhibit
APEX Museum
Two of the Photos W.E.B. DuBois mounted as part of the Paris Exhibition
Photo Credit: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/dubois/aa_dubois_exhibit_3_e.html
1900: Ironically, Du Bois is forced to ride in a substandard segregated train car from Atlanta to New York. He later
talks with B.T. Washington to gain support and advice about a lawsuit against the railroad.
Booker T. Washington establishes the National Negro Business League
One hundred and six African Americans known lynched
1903: In Atlanta University Professor W.E.B. Du Bois’ book of essays The Souls of Black Folk he says of Atlanta:
“South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills.” He also criticizes B.T. Washington’s
accommodationist stance.
African American J. Max Barber comes to Atlanta to establish a publication that reflects the militant integrationist
perspective of those labeled by Henry Grady “Afro-American agitators.”
Eighty-four black Americans are known lynched
1904: J. Max Barber launches the magazine Voice of the Negro in Atlanta. It’s perspective deviates from the B.T.
Washington supported Atlanta Independent published by Benjamin Davis.
James Max Barber
Courtesy Atlanta History Center
Seventy-six black American known lynched
1905: Black Disenfranchisement, racial terrorism and vilification of African Americans viewed as the way to
unite rural and urban, elite and working class whites
June - Atlanta’s white newspapers (e.g. Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Journal) begin to report alleged assaults by black
men against white women.
July – The Niagara Movement led by Atlanta University Professor W.E.B. Du Bois meets at Niagara Falls to articulate
an agenda for demanding black rights.
Niagara Movement Leadership
Photo Credit: http://www.nps.gov/hafe/niagara/photos/niagara-leaders.jpg
Phase Three: Context For A Race Riot
1906: February – The Georgia Equal Rights Convention draws 500 black ministers, educators and newspaper
editors to Macon to map a plan of action to combat Jim Crow and disenfranchisement of black voters. Atlanta AME
Bishop Henry McNeal Turner forcefully condemns America for its treatment of African Americans.
March – White woman Mae Dupree confesses that a black man did not attack her as she had claimed a month
earlier. She had attempted suicide.
April – Former populist Tom Watson now condemns African American
activism and calls former supporter Bishop Turner, “an ungrateful Negro.”
Throughout this year gubernatorial candidates Clark Howell and Hoke
Smith fan he flame of racism with anti-black rhetoric. Howell warns “there
are 65 counties in Georgia in which there are more Negroes of voting age
than white men.” Future Governor Hoke Smith warns it was "folly for us
to neglect any means within our reach to remove the present danger of
Negro domination."
August - In Brownsville, Texas black troops rebelled against segregation.
Du Bois’ The Niagara Movement meets in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. They
honor white abolitionist John Brown for his raid on the arsenal in an
attempted armed rebellion against slavery.
B.T. Washington’s National Negro Business League meets in Atlanta at
Big Bethel AME Church
The Atlanta Georgian publishes a three part series of editorials on “The Reign of Terror for Southern Women.”
Threatening stronger means to end black crime.
Atlanta Constitution, Journal and Evening News papers intensify its campaign against what they call a “Negro crime
wave.” The focus on bi-racial vice in the black saloons and other establishments on Decatur Street The majority of
the stories they publish about black men molesting white women they publish are rumors, half-truths or completely
fabricated.
Hoke Smith wins the Georgia governor’s race
National Negro Business League
Credit: Library of Congress
1906: In this year Thomas Dixon’s “historical romance “novel” The Clansman, becomes a bestseller in the South.
It depicts racial terrorists as heroes and African Americans as villains.
September 20 – White Farmer’s wife Knowles Kimmel accuses an unidentified black man of assault in Oakland
City.
September 22 – In the Central business district of Atlanta, Black restaurant owner Mattie
Adams tries to defend her establishment and her family against a white mob seeking revenge
for alleged assault of Mrs. Kimmel. The mob beats Mrs. Adams, her daughter and her son
and destroy the restaurant.
A mob of working class, middle class and professional white men swells to 10,000 and they
go on to attack and kill two black barbers who had offered no resistance. They killed a third
black man and dragged the three bodies to the foot of the Henry Grady statue at Forsythe and
Marietta streets.
An African American youth named Walter White and his father, a postal worker, ride through
the riot area protected by their white skin. They rescue a 50-year-old black woman, who is
running from a throng of white men.
A black man named Henry Welch is killed either by the force of a fireman’s water hose or by
a mob of whites.
African Americans on streetcars are targeted by the growing mob because segregation is not
enforced on this form of public transportation At least two black women on a streetcar are
killed by the mob
Entire Black families take refuge in homes of fellow African Americans in the Fourth Ward,
which includes the Auburn Avenue community.
A young railroad worker named John Wesley Dobbs protects his wife and other family
members at the home of his sister-in-law on Auburn Avenue.
Working Class black men and women rally to wage a defense against the mob. They help protect the upper class
members of the Black Atlanta
September 23: By Sunday the State Militia has been called to patrol the streets of Atlanta. Blacks arm
themselves on the streets and in their homes. Some black Atlantans, like the family of Walter White, are armed
in their homes prepared to confront white mobs. Other African Americans boldly patrol the area with weapons,
ready to stop attackers, and even police, who have sometime joined the mob’s attack of blacks.
Credit: Documenting the American South
September 24: On this day the newspapers report there are discrepancies in the reports about the
number of deceased blacks. Sixteen was the number reported by the Atlanta Journal, but bodies were
missing throughout the community. For example, on Saturday, five blacks had been assaulted in two
different areas of the Atlanta city limits, and were pronounced dead. Although some individuals did not
know, witnesses did see cars rush in to carry the bodies away. A prominent black man stated that the
bodies were removed from the city because some believed that the deceased would not receive the
proper burials.
W.E.B. DuBois rushes to take a train home from Alabama after hearing about the riot. On the train he
scribbles a poem later to be published in the Atlanta Independent. The poem is entitled “Litany of
Atlanta.”
Police attempt to confiscate guns from African Americans
September 25: On Tuesday morning in Brownsville, a Black middle class suburb where Gammon
Theological Seminary and Clark University are located, students, faculty and administrators arm
themselves ready to protect themselves and their families. They open the campuses to other residents of the
Brownsville community. The militia and the Governor’s House Guard are sent in not to protect, but to take
away the arms of blacks in Brownsville. The militia, police and white civilian intruders fight with black
residents in a bloody battle. One black man kills a policeman.
The result: “257 heavily armed blacks” were arrested and one killed. No whites are arrested here. The
militia placed lines around Clark University and Brownsville. Eventually, families within these lines were
forced into groups of ten and fifteen and were thoroughly searched for various weapons. This is how life
continued to be for the next few days.
After the Brownsville incident, both blacks and whites call for an end to the violence. Black leaders
demand that Atlanta Mayor Woodward, police and militia protect the black community and compensate the
victims. for the rioters.
Credit: Harper's Weekly
Militia Patrolling After riot
W.E.B. DuBois
Courtesy APEX Museum
Aftermath of Riot
Hundreds of African Americans flee the city.
During the coming weeks, meetings occur between select group of Black leaders and white leadership. The
goal is to restore the image of Atlanta as a progressive city and discuss ways to discourage vice in the city.
Responses of conservative black leaders shaped by desire to prevent further attacks and protect black
progress. Betrayal by those who had been perceived as friends of black
1907 Last black elected to state legislature
1908—Further Disenfranchisement of African American men through literacy test.
Prohibition approved in the city of Atlanta.
Social welfare institutions are developed by African-American women and men to support resistance to
white urban rule. Imbued with the spirit of Progressivism, African-American women found clinics, schools,
reformatories and churches in the wake of the 1906 riot. The most prominent of these institutions, the
Neighborhood Union, is established by Lugenia Burns Hope, wife of Morehouse President John Hope.
Racial Polarization of the city has occurred. African Americans have moved most of their businesses to the
Auburn Ave. community and have begun establishing communities in the western part of the city
The Klu Klux Klan re-emerges in Atlanta and throughout the South as a means of reinforcing white
domination.