Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: It is a massacre. Monday, the city Atlanta, Georgia, the
Speaker 1: year nineteen o six.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. Maybe no, I
Speaker 2: didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Sadly, there were tons of massacres that
Speaker 1: happened in these United States at the hands of white people. First,
Speaker 1: let's define what a massacre is, and by definition, it
Speaker 1: is a brutal slaughter of people, deliberately and violently killing
Speaker 1: a large number of people. Right now today, in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, If you ask people in Atlanta, one of
Speaker 1: their biggest gripes is man, too many people trying to
Speaker 1: move down here. Shout it. Keep your head at where
Speaker 1: you at, folk. But the reality is folks been trying
Speaker 1: to move to Atlanta since the late eighteen hundreds. In
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty, it was nine thousand black folk in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: By nineteen hundred it with thirty five thousand black folk
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. You did what I'm saying, and need black
Speaker 1: folk was getting money in Atlanta. Jel Like right now,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about elitists in Atlanta and white folk didn't
Speaker 1: like that. Oh no, white folk didn't like that at all.
Speaker 1: See that contributed to the racial tensions in the city
Speaker 1: to during that reconstruction from eighteen sixty seven to eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, black men got the right to vote, and
Speaker 1: they became more involved in politics. They started establishing businesses,
Speaker 1: creating social networks, building communities. They started to get wealth
Speaker 1: and prestige. And the white folks wasn't liking that. And
Speaker 1: it was saloons in Atlanta, down there on Decatur Street,
Speaker 1: clubs basically, and the white folks didn't like that. A
Speaker 1: lot of times, the white folks was blaming the folks
Speaker 1: who was out there in the clubs on the rising
Speaker 1: crime rate that were going on in the city, most
Speaker 1: importantly threats of sexual violence against white women. But the
Speaker 1: cherry on top was done black folk trying to be
Speaker 1: elitists and be equal to the whites. White folk wasn't
Speaker 1: having that. So Saturday, September twenty second, nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: was three Days of madness. The newspaper reported that four
Speaker 1: white girls were assaulted, never substantiated, but it brought that
Speaker 1: white mob out and by midnight they was down the
Speaker 1: Decatur Street. Pride streets, Central Avenue, all throughout the Central
Speaker 1: Business district, just assaulting blacks persons and businesses, vandalism, chaos,
Speaker 1: running in barbershops, killing barbers, and burning the barbershop down.
Speaker 1: It was madness. Man jumped in trolley's beating up black
Speaker 1: men and women, flipping over cars. I mean, the militia
Speaker 1: was called, and that still wasn't enough to stop that
Speaker 1: white mob. It started raining at two in the morning.
Speaker 1: That wasn't enough to stop that white mob. That was
Speaker 1: God himself trying to throw down water. Like y'all stopped
Speaker 1: killing black folk in Atlanta, that didn't stop white mobs
Speaker 1: still out there mobbing. By Sunday, black folks had ran
Speaker 1: off into hiding and Atlanta was under the control of
Speaker 1: the militia. You know what. It looked like, a bunch
Speaker 1: of cops and military folks out there with their big
Speaker 1: guns and they protective gear on protecting that white property.
Speaker 1: That was a gentleman there. His name was Walter White.
Speaker 1: And this whole experience was a defining moment for Walter
Speaker 1: White because he went on to be the secretary of
Speaker 1: the NAACP. By Monday, a group of black folks met
Speaker 1: up in Brownsville down there where Clark, Atlanta is big weapons.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, ready to go get their face back.
Speaker 1: Fulton County police hear about it. It's a raid on Brownsville,
Speaker 1: A shootout ensued, a cop gets killed. Now the militia
Speaker 1: has sent to Brownsville. They arrested two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: black men. Different accounts say between twenty five and forty
Speaker 1: black people were killed in Atlanta, Georgia that weekend, although
Speaker 1: the coroner only issued ten death certificates for black folks,
Speaker 1: and most accounts say only two white people were killed,
Speaker 1: and one of those white people was a woman who
Speaker 1: suffered a heart attack when she saw the mob outside
Speaker 1: of her house. The Atlanta massacre of nineteen o six
Speaker 1: was something that I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either, No,