The immediate cause of the terrible Atlanta riot of 1906 had been the newspaper drumfire of alleged assaults upon white women by black men. The underlying cause was to be found in the politics of class conflict among the white people. As cities of the New South like Atlanta filled with poor whites and blacks, the planters and politicians in rural counties mobilized...to brake the power of the urban colossi. Bloodsucking railroads, flint-hearted banks, merciless factories, the loss of white men's jobs to black men, sin corruption, and race mixing -- the rural diatribe ... was shrill and long. ... As [W.E.B.] DuBois wrote in a moving essay in The World Today, the explosion had occurred inevitably after "two years of vituperation and traduction of the Negro race by the most prominent candidates for governorship, together with a bad police system"Brought on, one might add, by the strong xenophobia the country had towards the ex-slaves, the Negros in their midst.
Thank goodness that is all behind us: Today we don't exhibit xenophobia towards people who are racially, culturally different; We have no difficulty advancing the cause of liberty to anyone regardless of their views on life; our leaders and newscasters don't spread vituperation via senseless name calling or degrading of those whose views differ from their own; The divisive fire of class warfare is not stoked by the elite nor politicians intent on gaining office. In short, the century that separates us from the riot of 1906 has brought us tolerance and the ability to discuss our different opinions about the country in a 'cool marketplace of ideas'. We should rejoice that we have ascended so far from those events...
What? What was that you said?
Oh.
Nevermind.
* Lewis, David Levering. "W.E.B. DuBois - Biography of a Race 1868-1919" Henry Holt, New York, 1993. p334.
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