Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919

Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919 was a race riot in 1919 in which a white mob forced nearly all the town's 200 black residents onto a freight train out of town, and a sundown town policy until the late 20th century.

Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919
Part of Red Summer
News Coverage of the Explusion
DateOctober 31, 1919
LocationCorbin, Kentucky, United States
Deaths2
Non-fatal injuries2

Corbin Expulsion

On October 29, 1919, two men robbed and stabbed A.F. Thompson before escaping without him getting a good look.[1] Thompson was able to stumble to a nearby house and get help. Word soon spread about the attack and that it was two black men who had assaulted him. On October 31, 1919, armed with firearms an enraged white mob made up of hundreds of Corbin townspeople formed up and went house to house rounding of black residents.[2] When they felt that all of the African-Americans of the town had been rounded up the mob marched a group of about 200 men, women and children to the train station, and herded them onto cramped railcars. The train departed with its human cargo and they were sent south to the town Knoxville.[1][3][4][5] "They swore at us and said: 'By God we are going to run all Negroes out of this town tonight,'" said longtime black Corbin resident John Turner in a signed affidavit about the incident.[2]

Aftermath
Main article: Red Summer

This uprising was one of several incidents of civil unrest that began in April American Red Summer, of 1919. Terrorist attacks on black communities and white oppression in over three dozen cities and counties. In most cases, white mobs attacked African American neighborhoods. In some cases, black community groups resisted the attacks, especially in Chicago and Washington DC. Most deaths occurred in rural areas during events like the Elaine Race Riot in Arkansas, where an estimated 100 to 240 black people and 5 white people were killed. Also in 1919 were the Chicago Race Riot and Washington D.C. race riot which killed 38 and 39 people respectively, and with both having many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching up into the millions of dollars.[6]

Corbin, Kentucky race riot in media

Trouble Behind (1991), a documentary by Robby Henson that examines the history and legacy of racism in Corbin, Kentucky, a small railroad community noteworthy both as the home of Colonel Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken and for "its race riots of 1919, during which over two hundred blacks were loaded onto boxcars and shipped out of town." The film aired at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. [7][8]

See also

Bibliography

Notes

  1. Griggs 2002.
  2. NPR 2007.
  3. Rucker & Upton 2007, p. 557.
  4. Voogd 2008, p. 59.
  5. McWhirter 2011, p. 234.
  6. The New York Times 1919.
  7. Henson 1991.
  8. Sundance Group 2019.

References

  • Griggs, Kristy Owens (Summer 2002). "The Removal of Blacks from Corbin in 1919: Memory, Perspective, and the Legacy of Racism". The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. Kentucky Historical Society. 100 (3): 293–310. ISSN 0023-0243. JSTOR 23384408. OCLC 2263214.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Henson, Robby (1991). Trouble Behind (Documentary) (Film). Corbin, Kentucky. Event occurs at 56 min. Retrieved July 22, 2019.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • McWhirter, Cameron (2011). Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 9781429972932.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) - Total pages: 368
  • The New York Times (October 5, 1919). "For Action on Race Riot Peril". The New York Times. New York, NY: Adolph Ochs. ISSN 1553-8095. OCLC 1645522. Retrieved July 5, 2019.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • NPR (March 10, 2007). "Kentucky Town Re-Examines Its Racial History". NPR. Retrieved July 22, 2019.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sundance Group (2019). "Archives 1991 Sundance Film Festival: Trouble Behind". Sundance Group. Retrieved July 22, 2019.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Rucker, Walter C.; Upton, James N. (2007). Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, Volume 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313333026.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) - Total pages: 930
  • Voogd, Jan (2008). Race Riots and Resistance: The Red Summer of 1919. Peter Lang. ISBN 9781433100673.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) - Total pages: 234

Trouble Behind Documentry on IMDb

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.