Robert Charles

Robert Charles

Robert Charles (1865–1900) was an African American living in New Orleans whose armed resistance to unlawful arrest and shooting of police officers sparked a major race riot in 1900; known as the Robert Charles riots.

Charles was involved in the Liberian emigration movement.

In his thirties in 1900, Charles was a quiet, intense man who worked at odd jobs. He supported black emigration to Africa as a response to white terrorism in the South. He read a lot and collected weapons, but broke no laws.

On Monday, July 23, 1900, Charles sat on the front steps of a house in New Orleans talking quietly with a friend, while waiting to rendezvous with his girlfriend, Virginia Banks, who lived on the block.[1] Close to midnight, three police officers arrived to interrogate and then (according to the wounded officer's own statement) attempted to arrest them when Charles stood up.[2] In the ensuing altercation, Charles drew his .38 Colt revolver and wounded one of the officers. Wounded himself from a police bullet, he fled to his nearby residence.

Grabbing a .38-caliber Winchester rifle for self-defense, Charles moved from one hiding place to another. Along his trail he left four dead police officers, three dead civilians, and over twenty others wounded. As the police search for Charles during the following week, mobs of white people attacked the black communities of New Orleans, frequently firing indiscriminately at black residents, taking at least eight innocent lives, and brutally beating many more.[1] Finally surrounded, Charles was burned out of his hiding place and immediately riddled with bullets. As was customary, the mob mutilated the body.[3]

Journalist Ida Wells-Barnett investigated the incident as part of her study of lynchings; she wrote: "The white people of this country may charge that he was a desperado, but to the people of his own race Robert Charles will always be regarded as the 'Hero of New Orleans.'"[2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Hair, William Ivy (1976). Carnival of fury : Robert Charles and the New Orleans race riot of 1900. Internet Archive. Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press.
  2. 1 2 Wells, Ida B. (1900). Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death.
  3. ↑ John Newsinger (February 2015). "The hero of New Orleans". Socialist Review (399). Retrieved 2016-11-11.

Further reading

  • Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death. by Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1900).
  • Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900. By William Ivy Hair. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press,1976.
  • America and its People, Volume 2 From 1865 - 1988. Page 599 "Rise Brothers!": The Black Response to Jim Crow; by James Kirby Martin, Randy Roberts, Steven Mintz, Linda O. McMurry, James H. Jones, Publisher : Scott, Foresmans and Company, ISBN 0-673-18316-5
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