America Riots by the Numbers
The Boston Bread Riot. The Zip to Zap Riots. The Baltimore Doctors’ Riots. The Pennsylvania Brothel Riots. The Hawaii Riot. The Red Summer Riots. The Smallpox Riot. The Zoot Suit Riots.
Look at the name of a riot and the mind craves details: Why? How many? For how long? Sometimes it’s just the name of a place: Kent State, Watts, Crown Heights. Or a year: 1968.
A riot is terrifying and exciting because it clearly illustrates how easily our society can come undone. When people run mad through the streets, we’re reminded that civilization is little more than a collective leap of faith.
Do we riot more or less these days? My first thought is that 1968 was the apex of rioting – but flip through any history of New York City and you’ll see Germans, Irish, Whigs, Protestants, abolitionists, and draft-dodgers mixing it up in the 1800s with surprising frequency.
With two possible theories in mind, I decided to make a simple chart to answer the question – and quickly discovered that it’s a tricky issue: how do you define a riot? Were the student protests at Columbia University in 1968 a proper riot? Should prison riots count? There are other variables to consider: riots were probably reported less accurately in the past, population patterns have changed dramatically, and new channels for dissent have emerged.
Keeping this in mind, here are some very rough notes to start a conversation about riots in America.
Theory 1: We riot less today.
Perhaps the early 1800s were the most riotous. America was founded on civil disobedience and these were the sons of the American Revolution. The idea of grabbing your musket, cudgel, or sword to take what is rightfully (or unrightfully) yours was still a handy option. The Revolution was fought largely by citizen armies: soldiers as young as twelve and as old as seventy served, along with nearly every able-bodied man in between. Violent protest was in their blood. In New York City, there was only a vague sketch of a professional police force called “the watch”. If you wanted to riot about Martin Van Buren in 1835, who would stop you?
Today there are more controls: local police, state troopers, the National Guard, the Army, SWAT teams. Our society is older: the grooves holding us in place are deeper and the possibility of change through civil unrest has been thoroughly explored.
Theory 2: We riot more today.
On the other hand, America’s population grows denser by the year, with many groups effectively redlined and excised from economic opportunity. Decades of peaceful protests and sluggish legislation failed to address American racism. In 1965, Stokely Carmichael told a crowd, “You go sit in front of your television set and listen to LBJ tell you that ‘Violence never accomplishes anything, my fellow Americans.’ But, you see, the real problem with violence is that we have never been violent. We have been too non-violent!” Although the riots that followed weren’t his intention, they had their own screwy logic after all legitimate channels had been exhausted.
And what was 1999′s riot in Seattle about, exactly? Were 50,000 people really that steamed up about the World Trade Organization – or was something else at work, fueled by an alarmist media? (It was turned into a video game two years later).
If America does sink into a second Great Depression next year, will these unresolved issues of race, class, and power lead us to riot?
Why do we riot?
Taxes, elections, police brutality, globalization, and Martin van Buren: Americans have rioted for many reasons, but a shocking amount are about race – anti-Irish and anti-German riots in the 1800s, anti-Chinese riots in the early 1900s, and countless anti-black riots the entire time.
Of the riots in the chart above, I broke them into three general categories: race, religion, and politics (although race and politics are always tied together). Race riots generally start in an economically depressed place, triggered by a specific episode. Riots in the early 1900s were often triggered by the sight of an Irish, Greek, Chinese, or black man seen with a white woman. In 1921, a black shoeshiner tripped and brushed the arm of a white elevator operator. The Tulsa Tribune ran a headline: ’Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In an Elevator’. Two days of mayhem followed, leaving 39 dead.
In recent decades, the police are usually part of the cause (Los Angeles, 1992; St. Petersburg, Florida, 1996; Cincinnati, 2001; Benton Harbor, Michigan, 2003).
Which state riots the most?
Regardless of location, a modern American riot often follows the same pattern: people feel frustrated and they lash out at a handy scapegoat. Usually the victim is a racial minority, although sometimes it’s one’s own neighborhood.
The origin of this pattern can be found in the failed promise of Reconstruction following the Civil War. Despite a promising start for racial equality (two black Senators from Mississippi were elected in 1870 and 1875; since then, there have only been three: Edward Brooke in 1967, Carol Mosely Braun in 1993, and Barack Obama in 2005), Reconstruction ended in 1877 after a series of riots by the White League and Red Shirts that ultimately led to the Jim Crow laws in the South. More riots followed. During World War I, nearly 500,000 blacks moved to the industrial towns of the North and Midwest, which led to more riots. This is why my chart is a bit higher for 1900-1950, although many of these riots were much smaller in scale than the big city riots of the 1960s.
New York is a riotous state because it has always been crammed with different people living on top of each other. And Ohio? Although it doesn’t lay claim to America’s largest cities, it contains several large industrial towns (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Columbus, and Dayton) and many of the race riots from 1900 onward were caused by people fearing for their jobs or unable to find work.
Other Questions
Why did Americans riot about Vietnam (Kent State, the Chicago Convention) and not Iraq? Is it simply because there was a draft in the former war?
A riot is defined by “herd mentality”: one person cannot run down the street smashing windows and stealing TVs, but fifty can. What is the threshold for herd mentality? Five? Twenty?
Are American riots different from those of other countries – and do we riot more or less?
Celebrations sometimes turn into riots. Why? Sports riots and the Zip to Zap riot are good examples of this.
Does media coverage help to quell a riot – or does it intensify it?
Is a riot ever morally justified?
Has a riot ever accomplished anything constructive, whether directly or indirectly?
Where is the line drawn between a riot and civil disobedience?
Sources & Further Reading
List of Revolutionary Era Riots
American Experience: Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
Reconstruction: Wikipedia
US Laws, Codes, Statutes, & Cases
Transcript of The Presidents: LBJ
1999 Anti-WTO Protest News Archive
Mass Racial Violence in the United States
Red Summer of 1919: Wikipedia
The Rise & Fall of Jim Crow
Rioting in America
Urban Riots: Wikipedia
The Lordsburg Killings 
Meeting Elvis 
Babushka Lady 
Pretty interesting, in my country riots are because of religion. And because of bad economy.
I know this probably has nothing to do with the article but I couldnt leave a comment anywhere else. People need to read this.
My name is Cole Cummings, i am 17 years old and im going to tell you all the stupid fucking things i see in this earth today. Now if you wanna comment and make fun of me then go ahead your just like any other asshole on this planet.
I am guessing most people know about the theory of 2012 and how the earth is going to end “as we know it”. well i am a believer of that and i am hoping everything will come to a great change. I dont know if you realize this but the life you are living right now is worthless. You live for approximately 100 years maybe 90, you learn to walk, go to school till your 18-25 including college, then you work until your 50-70 depending on when you retire, and isnt that a funny word “retire”, ill get to that later. So look at that above you just waisted more than 50% of your life, and for what? to make money? to have a good life for your family? your family is going to turn out just like you. There is always a chance that you will hit it big but come on that aint to many people. and then finally when your more than 50% through your life you “retire” but some people dont even have enough money to do so, so they work more and then just take a guess at what comes next… Death. No one knows what it is like for sure, you can say you have died and went to hell/heaven and maybe some people will believe you but nobody really knows. So you live your whole life for *money* which i am going to tell you something, its an object, its paper. why is money so important? why do people have more than others, and then they are greedy with it and spend it on stupid things? Why cant we all be equal, and have the same amount of money. I see these people who barely fuckin work like CEOs, the big shots, what the fuck do they do? run the economy? I dont think so, they just think they are big but really they are just like any other human being on this planet. We need to realize that we are all the same, we are all equal, every living thing on this planet is equal, the same…
I am going to get to the subjects of animals now… As humans we think that we are the smartest fuckin creatures on the planet, in other words we think we are the dominant race. So what do we do with this power? we DESTROY, because that is our nature, that is what we do. Now i am sure there are going to be alot of people disagreeing with me on this subject, but im gonna bring it up. Animal testing, okay yes it helps cure diseases but at what cost? do you people realize that these animals you are testing are living beings, just like you and me? they test products like hair spray but they spray it in the animals eyes to see if it hurts, well no fuckin shit its gonna hurt thats why you dont spray chemicals in your eyes. Are humans really this dumb? I dont understand why I am seeing this and other people arent. I am only 17 let me remind you. There is animal abuse everywhere, slaughtering everywhere i could go on and on about the brutal murders of these poor creatures and they cant do anything about it. Think for a moment that reincarnation was real, lets think one of your family members was a monkey in a testing lab or a cow in a slaughter house, just think if your mom was now the soul of that monkey or cow and they were doing brain surgery on the monkey without any use of pain killers and they were just pokin your brain and you saw that monkey twitching and you knew it was your mom. Or if your mom was that cow at the slaughter house and they are hitting and kicking it and sticking brooms up its ass ( yes it is absolutely disgusting but it is true) and then the people slit the cows throat and laugh as it is flopping around on the ground bleeding out, just think if it was you. Would you agree with all this stuff then? well guess what if you didnt it wouldnt fucking matter because you wouldnt have a say in shit. We need to realize what we are doing, and think why are we doing it? do we need to?
Now I will get onto the subject of the enviroment… do you realize we are destroying trees everywhere? do you people understand that we need them? not just for fucking paper but for air that we can breath in and out. dumping oils and chemical wastes into the waters of the earth, and there are bugs and fish, birds and other creatures that go in that water and spread it, spreading disease, viruses, and then it kills the creatures. Did you know that the bee is now going extinct and we dont know why. im guessing because we have been fucking with mother nature so much that they cant handle the enviroment anymore. I cant say much about this subject cause i dont know what to say about it besides we are taking up all the god damn space so nothing else can survive.
Im running out of things that could start a discussion so im coming to a close with this soon. All I want is for people to open their eyes, look at what you are doing…. OH i gotta go into war for a second. Alright here is what I see and this is funny to me, it really shows how dumb people are. Alright so on planet earth there are creatures who think they own different parts of land and they call them countries, now these people get into fights over religion or (and heres the big one) MONEY which is what everyone? an object, something that we think is of worth and it is something we base our whole lives off of. and what do these fights lead to? they lead to killing of another human being. now thats a big one, we are one of the very little species that kill eachother over something stupid like that, actually there isnt any other species that fights over money, thats just a human thing. at least animals fight for something intelligent like food for SURVIVAL not for a fucking thought or stupid object like money. God damnt people all i want is for humans to understand what they are doing to eachother, other living things and especially to the earth. Understand that we are all equal.
Awhile ago I wanted to start a group, cuz i know there are people who think like me, there has to be out of the 6 billion on this earth. I wanted to get a group together that would meet and talk about these things bring ideas together about things we could do to make this better. Now I wanted it to be peaceful but i figured with humans nothing is peaceful so at first it wouldnt be peaceful. Now I hate to say we would fight cause i hate fighting but this is something I truely believe in and I want to start something new with the ideas I listed above. Just think if we were all equal, we didnt have to live our lives off of money. we could all be “rich” all be happy, never be alone, because you would always have someone over your houlder that is willing to help you. This is all I ask for. I dont know how long it will be till I check this so you can comment on this or email me at how_u_doin_hottie@hotmail.com. Time for change is now people.