Race riots are a Fourth of July tradition far more in keeping with U.S. history than Band Shell performances of the Boston Pops. In 1910, former (undefeated) World Heavyweight Champion James Jeffries came out of retirement as yet another ‘Great White Hope’ to challenge the current title-holder, expert boxer and dangerously proud Black man, Jack Johnson. Said Jeffries, “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro”. They met on the night of July 4 in Reno, Nevada with Johnson soon dominating Jeffries, knocking him down for the first time in his career during the fifteenth round. And then downing him again. And then again. The Great White Hope threw in the towel. As Black neighborhoods across the country erupted in celebrations, racist white America responded in an orgy of riots (eleven separate riots in New York City alone), lynchings and murder in scores of cities and towns, which saw dozens killed, mostly Black, and hundreds more wounded. Independence Day, 1910.

‘Nation Wide-Riots Follow Jack Johnson’s July Fourth Win’ from the New York Call. Vol. 3 No. 187. July 6, 1910.

Reports Show About 15 Killed and 200 Injured in Trouble Between Jeffries and Johnson Supporters.

“Fair play,” “a square deal,” and similar expressions and maxims which have always been watchwords of the American people in general, and of the sporting American in particular, have ceased to mean anything since Jack Johnson dispatched the fighting reputation of Jeffries to join the memory of Dr. Cook, and Jeffries himself to a hospital.

Riots between white and colored people, which began on Monday immediately after the result of the night at Reno became known, had not ceased up to a late hour last night. At least fifteen people killed and about 200 injured tells the story.

In New York one negro was killed and half a hundred were badly injury. But New York is a long ways from Reno. Further down South, as in New Orleans for instance, bands of young white men organized to uphold the honor of the Aryan race and began terrorizing the colored section of the city, with the result that when the smoke cleared away two men were found dead and a large number injured.

At Houston, Texas, one negro was killed in the outbreaks, and at Keystone, W. Va., another received fatal Injuries at the hands of a mob. Street fights between whites and blacks resulted in ambulance calls in nearly every large city of the country. In most cases the outbreaks resulted from the cheers of bands of negroes for their hero.

The trouble at Mounds, Ill., was still astir late yesterday. A posse was chasing two negroes, and if the pursuit is successful, a lynching threatens.

Trouble in Georgia.

The were also a number of Negros shot to death in a clash between whites and blacks at a  construction camp. The negro workmen there had been insolent in their conduct toward the whites several days, the whites say.

That day they began drinking, and, became so boisterous that a white posse organized to clean out the camp. As the posse approached, the camp was met by a volley of shots. The fire was returned, and when the negroes fled, they left behind three of their number dead and five badly wounded. The fleeing negroes were still being hunted by the vengeful, whites this morning.

At Houston, Tex., a negro’s throat was slashed by a white man and he died in the hospital soon afterward. This altercation took place on a speeding streetcar and grew directly out of the negro’s cheers for the Johnson victory.

The list of the injured is large. Little Rock reported 1; Shreveport 1; Houston 3; New Orleans 2; Wilmington, Del., 12: Baltimore 3; Cincinnati 3: St. Joseph, Mo., 1; Roanoke, Va., 6: Pueblo, Cole, 27; Los Angeles, Cal., 8: Chattanooga, Tenn., 2, while the number of injured in New York will probably reach half a hundred.

Threatened Lynchings.

Lynchings were prevented in a score of cities only by the quick work of the police. At New Orleans, Atlanta and St. Louis extra police reserves had to be kept on duty all night. Washington, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville, Macon, Little Rock, Pueblo and other large cities report serious riots and near-lynchings. In Chicago several minor clashes took place and in one of them a negro woman was slashed.

The police reserves were kept the go in this city all day Trouble centered in the Negro districts along Eighth and Ninth Avenues and in Hell’s Kitchen, although no part of the city was without its disturbance as the result of race prejudice. One lynching was narrow averted and in a score of instances the prompt arrival of the police is all that prevented riots from terminating fatally.

The police anticipating just such an aftermath to a Johnson victory, had taken ample precautions to keep down trouble but as the result proved, their plans fell short of their hopes.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue :https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1910/100706-newyorkcall-v03n187.pdf