Racial crimes were very common in the 1890's and early 1900's. Some of the more well known crimes included The Race Riots and The Robert Charles Riots. A notorious group that inflicted crimes on innocent minorities and African Americans was the KKK.
At the turn of the century from 1890 – 1915, the US experienced lots of new problems. One big problem that the US was facing was racial crimes. Racial crimes were fairly new to America, and they often resulted in riots or groups forming. In these years, the most famous group that was involved with racial crimes was the KKK. Some of the most memorable gatherings, or riots included the Race Riots and the Robert Charles Riots.
The KKK became a major problem in the South in the 1890s and early 1900s. The KKK mostly targeted African Americans, but also targeted Mexican and Chinese minorities. A popular method of eliminating the ethnic groups that the KKK did not like was by hanging them, or lynching them. The KKK often went door to door in mobs to get the target to lynch. These mobs were known as “lynch mobs.” This was a common racial crime performed by KKK members.
Another major problem in the US in the early 1900s were the race riots. The race riots occurred due to an increase of conflict between Americans and European immigrants. The attacks that Americans were performing on the European immigrants were due to racial tensions between the two groups. The Americans were getting frustrated because the European immigrants were coming into America and overcrowding cities. Americans also feared that these new immigrants would start to take over their jobs. Due to these key factors, tensions rose between the two groups.
A huge racial crime that occurred was the Robert Charles Riots. Robert Charles was an African American laborer. The whole thing started when the police confronted “two suspicious looking negroes” sitting on a porch in a predominantly white neighborhood. The police confronted the two men, one of them being Robert Charles, and questioned them. Robert Charles stood up, and the police saw that as an aggressive move. The police officer, August T. Mora, then grabbed Robert Charles and the two began to struggle. Mora hit Charles with his billet and Charles pulled out a gun. Mora pulled out his gun and they both exchanged gunfire, before Charles killed him. Charles fled the scene and was discovered the next morning. When he was being detained Charles shot another police officer in the heart and killed him too, before fleeing again and resulting in a huge manhunt. In the manhunt Charles had killed over twenty seven people and when he was finally caught, a volunteer police officer shot him dozens of times and then dragged his body outside where bystanders began to mutilate and beat his already dead body.
When Robert Charles was finally dead, this is when the riots started to break out all over New Orleans. As the body was on its way to the morgue, riots broke out due to white people who wanted to damage Robert Charles’ corpse even more. When they couldn’t get to his corpse, groups of white people started getting together and forming groups to inflict damage on African American people. Some of the most memorable and disturbing acts that these groups performed included burning down a school that was supposedly the “best Negro schoolhouse in Louisiana” and killing several innocent African Americans.