{"id":13351,"date":"2019-07-26T12:03:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T16:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=13351"},"modified":"2020-07-29T09:39:35","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T13:39:35","slug":"101-years-later-mapping-the-south-philadelphia-race-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2019\/07\/101-years-later-mapping-the-south-philadelphia-race-riot\/","title":{"rendered":"101 Years Later: Mapping the South Philadelphia Race Riot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo one who is familiar with the political conditions in Philadelphia, the rioting of July 26-31 was not unexpected,\u201d wrote Walter F. White, Assistant Secretary of the NAACP a few months after the dust settled. \u201cThe only surprising feature is that such an outbreak did not occur much sooner. It is doubtful if there is any other city in the country where a more unclean system of pollical chicanery exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Readers who watch this space know the story. For those to whom the 1918 South Philadelphia Race Riots is news, earlier posts start here<\/a> (for the incident where it started on Friday, July 26th<\/sup>), here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, \u00a0here<\/a> (about the spreading and sustained violence over the weekend that followed) and here<\/a> (for a summary and chronology of the events from July 24th<\/sup> through July 31st<\/sup>).<\/p>\n

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“Crowd at 28th and Federal streets during yesterday’s riots trying to take negroes off Darby car.” The Philadelphia Inquirer,<\/em> July 29, 1918.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What do we know from contemporary sources? Other than White\u2019s 8-page account, the city\u2019s newspapers presented a range of coverage that was accurate at times, inaccurate others, and usually rife with rumors and bias that leaned toward the dramatic. \u201cIn a series of street battles waged for twenty-four hours by more than five thousand white and colored men in a downtown section covering about two square miles,\u00a0read one example, \u201cscores were seriously injured in the most terrific and bitter race riot that has ever taken place in this city. \u2026[Rioting] grew in intensity . . . with individual fights and mobs engaged in gun fire on nearly every other corner of a section bounded by Washington Avenue, Dickinson Street, 23rd and 30th Streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than a century later, there\u2019s no living memory of the events. All we have are the contemporary written sources and previous few images, including the photograph presented here (right). On the 101st<\/sup> anniversary of this and other moments in the riot, we present a mapped version of the story to help restore awareness of what took place, where and when. Not only does this give us a clearer sense of the hot spots, it grounds our understanding of how violence spread through the community over those fateful days and who was involved.<\/p>\n

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South Philadelphia Riot Map (Google)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Click on the map (here<\/a>, or left) to get a better idea of where the riot took place, where it spread and who participated as instigators and victims. Red circles indicate hot spots, blue circles indicate where they lived.<\/p>\n

Riot Locations:<\/strong><\/p>\n