Red Was the Midnight

Atlanta, the City That Wasn't Always Too Busy to Hate, has more than one
chapter of shame in its past. The Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot scheduled a series of events in September to mark the hundredth
anniversary of the riot, which wasn't a riot but a four-day rampage and
massacre of African Americans by a mob of about 10,000 whites. They
dragged Black people from their homes and from streetcars, and when their
rampage ended, a hundred or more Blacks and one white person were dead,
an untold number wounded and maimed. Many fled this most segregated
southern city, fearing for their lives. One account states that a white woman
died of a heart attack after seeing a black man hacked to pieces.

Inadequate affordable housing and competition for jobs between poor whites
and the blacks streaming into the city in search of work had caused a volatile
situation. Into this powder keg were dropped sensationalized and mostly untrue
newspaper accounts of whites being attacked by blacks.

Almost immediately when the riots subsided, the same newspapers played
down the violence, stating that all was now calm and peaceful. And so the
coverup continued until recently, with no mention of the events in history
books. But the study of the riots is now part of the new Georgia Program
Standards for 8th grade, and many of the teachers who were supposed to
teach this had never heard about what happened in 1906.

The Coalition to Remember's website has resources for educators and links
to further materials, as well as educational material for the general public. An
ongoing exhibit at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site is
entitled Red Was the Midnight- the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. There's a
walking tour through the area where the riots occurred on every second
Sunday throughout the rest of this year.

Now Georgia 8th graders will learn about the 1906 riot. Maybe eventually
there will also be an effort to teach them some of the other parts left out of
the history books, such as the brutal treatment of workers of all colors
struggling to gain better wages and safe working conditions. Or will they still
read, as we did in school, mostly about how the kings, presidents, generals,
and other such great leaders accomplished everything.