Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 begins

On the afternoon of September 22, 1906, Atlanta papers report four separate assaults on white women by Black men, none of which is every substantiated by hard evidence. Inflamed by these fabrications, and resentful of the city’s growing African American population, white Atlantans riot. Over the next few days, the race riot will claim the lives of at least 12 Black Atlantans—the total may be more than twice as high—and devastate the city’s Black community.

The race riot took place against the backdrop of a heated gubernatorial primary. Atlanta’s population had nearly doubled over the last three decades, and its Black population had risen from 9,000 in 1880 to 35,000 by 19000. During Reconstruction, before Jim Crow laws became ubiquitous, African Americans competed with whites for jobs, held political office and established a thriving salon society. In fact, it was progress like this that led many whites to embrace Jim Crow, and the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 was a direct result of this phenomenon. In the 1906 Democratic gubernatorial primary, one candidate, Hoke Smith, ran on a platform of explicitly disenfranchising the city’s African American population, arguing that giving them the right to vote had led them to pursue social and economic opportunities that should only be available to whites. His opponent, Clark Howell, was not anti-segregation or pro-civil rights—he simply maintained that the poll tax was already doing enough to prevent Black participation in government. Smith was the former publisher of the Atlanta Journal while Howell was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, and it was no coincidence that city’s papers ran a slew of inflammatory articles about African American men committing crimes as the primary election neared.

READ MORE: The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre: How Fearmongering Led to Violence

The tension boiled over on September 22, after local papers ran with a story about a Black man assaulting a white woman. A white mob formed downtown and headed for Decatur Street and the surrounding district of Black businesses and salons. There, they looted Black-owned businesses, swarmed streetcars and attacked passengers, and assaulted hundreds, killing at least a dozen African Americans. The militia arrived around midnight, but it was only when heavy rain started a few hours later that the mob finally dispersed. Over the next few days, Black and white vigilante groups roamed the area. While law enforcement stood by and watched—and by some accounts, helped—as armed white men moved into Black neighborhoods, they cracked down on a group of Black men who had stockpiled weapons in Brownsville on September 24, arresting 250 men and confiscating the guns.

Although leaders of both races made attempts at reconciliation in the wake of the riot, many viewed it as proof that white Americans would sooner revoke their Black neighbors’ right to vote, destroy their economic and social institutions and murder them in the streets than allow them an equal place in society. The grief, exhaustion and rage felt by the Black community in the wake of the massacre was captured by W.E.B. Du Bois in his poem “A Litany of Atlanta,” published later that year.

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The Great San Francisco Earthquake topples buildings, killing thousands

Year
1906
Month Day
April 18

On April 18, 1906, at 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing an estimated 3,000 people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles.

READ MORE: Why It Took Two Earthquakes for San Francisco to Finally Build Smarter

San Francisco’s brick buildings and wooden Victorian structures were especially devastated. Fires immediately broke out and–because broken water mains prevented firefighters from stopping them–firestorms soon developed citywide. At 7 a.m., U.S. Army troops from Fort Mason reported to the Hall of Justice, and San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz called for the enforcement of a dusk-to-dawn curfew and authorized soldiers to shoot-to-kill anyone found looting. Meanwhile, in the face of significant aftershocks, firefighters and U.S. troops fought desperately to control the ongoing fire, often dynamiting whole city blocks to create firewalls. On April 20, 20,000 refugees trapped by the massive fire were evacuated from the foot of Van Ness Avenue onto the USS Chicago.

By April 23, most fires were extinguished, and authorities commenced the task of rebuilding the devastated metropolis. It was estimated that some 3,000 people died as a result of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and the devastating fires it inflicted upon the city. Almost 30,000 buildings were destroyed, including most of the city’s homes and nearly all the central business district.

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Teddy Roosevelt travels to Panama

Year
1906
Month Day
November 06

On November 6, 1906, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt embarks on a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official diplomatic tour outside of the continental United States.

Roosevelt entered office in 1901 with the firm intention of asserting American influence over Central and South American politics, partly as a result of his own past experiences in the area. In 1897, he became secretary of the Navy under President William McKinley, whose administration worked to secure access to ports and industries in countries with close proximity to the U.S. At the time of Roosevelt’s appointment to the Navy’s highest civilian office, American sea power was on the rise, enabling the U.S. to become a greater influence in world affairs.

Five years later, now-President Roosevelt visited Panama to check on the progress of the Panama Canal, the construction of which had suffered many setbacks, including worker accidents and disease outbreaks. Roosevelt’s tenacious demands for improvements in health care and better working conditions pushed the canal project forward just when it appeared doomed to failure. His trip to the construction site in 1906 –which included the taking of a November 15 photo of the president himself working the controls of a large steam shovel—helped to boost flagging morale.

Roosevelt’s next stop was Puerto Rico, which had become a U.S. protectorate after the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 1900, President William McKinley promised to help establish a civilian government there without becoming an occupying power. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, and Roosevelt, who was then serving as McKinley’s vice president became president, inheriting the stewardship of Puerto Rico. In 1906, he traveled to the country to recommend that Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens. He stopped short of suggesting Puerto Rico become another U.S. state, however, and vowed to allow the island a certain amount of autonomy. (It was not until 1916, under President Woodrow Wilson, that the Jones Act was passed, extending the option of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans while preserving Puerto Rico’s autonomy.)

Although presidents before Roosevelt had traveled outside the U.S. in other diplomatic capacities prior to or after serving as president, Roosevelt was the first to make a “state” visit while in office. His trip to Panama and Puerto Rico signaled a new era in how presidents conducted diplomatic relations with other countries.

READ MORE: 7 Little-Known Legacies of Teddy Roosevelt

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O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” is published

Year
1906
Month Day
April 10

O. Henry’s second short story collection, The Four Million, is published. The collection includes one of his most beloved stories, “The Gift of the Magi,” about a poor but devoted couple who each sacrifice their most valuable possession to buy a gift for the other.

O. Henry was the pen name adopted by William Sydney Porter. Porter began writing in the late 1880s but applied himself to it seriously in 1898, when he was jailed for embezzling from a bank in Austin, Texas. Porter, who came from a poor family in Texas, was married and had a daughter. He fled to Honduras to avoid imprisonment but returned to the U.S. when his wife was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He spent three years in jail and wrote tales of adventure, some set in Honduras, to support his daughter, Margaret. After his release, he moved to New York and was hired by New York World to write one story a week. He kept the job from 1903 to 1906. 

In 1904, his first story collection, Cabbages and Kings, was published. Additional collections appeared in 1906 and 1907, and two collections a year were published from 1908 until his death, in 1910. He specialized in closely observed tales of everyday people, often ending with an unexpected twist. Despite the enormous popularity of the nearly 300 stories he published, he led a difficult life, struggling with financial problems and alcoholism until his death.

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Mine explosion kills 1,060 in France


Year
1906
Month Day
March 10

A devastating mine disaster kills over 1,000 workers in Courrieres, France, on March 10, 1906. An underground fire sparked a massive explosion that virtually destroyed a vast maze of mines.

The Courrieres Colliery in northern France was a complex series of mines near the Pas-de-Calais Mountains. Tunnels into the mines issued forth from several towns in the area and more than 2,000 men and boys worked the mines, digging for coal that was used mostly in the manufacture of gas.

At about 3 p.m. on the afternoon of March 9, a fire began 270 meters underground in what was known as the Cecil pit. Unable to immediately extinguish it, workers decided to close the pit’s outlets and starve the fire of air. The following morning, with 1,795 workers inside the mine’s deep tunnels, a huge explosion issued forth from the Cecil pit. Apparently, fissures in the pit’s walls had allowed in flammable gases that were then sparked by the still-smoldering fire. It was 7 a.m. when debris rocketed out of the tunnels’ openings. Several people on the surface were killed by the blast and the roof a mine office was blown right off the building.

Fires raged from every opening of the mine and many people suffered terrible burn injuries. Since the fires continued to burn, rescuers and family members of the miners were unable to send help down the mine shafts. One rescue party of 40 men paid the ultimate price for their attempt–they were all killed when the shaft they were descending collapsed. Soon, French soldiers were called in to establish order from the mounting chaos outside the mine.

As bodies began to be found, a mortuary was established near the mine. It took weeks for the all of the bodies to be recovered and identified. In the end, the casualty toll from this disaster was 1,060 miners killed, with hundreds more suffering serious injuries.

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Union leaders put on trial for assassination


Year
1906
Month Day
February 17

Union leaders Bill Hayward, Charles Moyer and George Pettibone are taken into custody by Idaho authorities and the Pinkerton Detective Agency. They are put on a special train in Denver, Colorado, following a secret, direct route to Idaho because the officials had no legal right to arrest the three union executives in Colorado. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), of which Hayward was president, tried in vain to stop the unofficial arrests.

Idaho had resorted to this gambit in an attempt to bring the union leaders to justice for the assassination of former governor Frank Steunenberg. On December 30, 1905, a powerful bomb affixed to Steunenberg’s front gate exploded and killed him as he was returning to his home in Caldwell, Idaho. The former governor was a target for union miners after his role in breaking a strike in Coeur d’Alene years earlier.

In order to solve the crime, Idaho called in the Pinkerton Agency and the country’s most famous private detective, James McParland. He was the man responsible for bringing down the Molly McGuires, a secret Irish society from Pennsylvania’s mining district. All men visiting Caldwell were detained and questioned after the bombing, and police began to focus on a man named Tom Hogan.

Through a combination of trickery and intimidation, McParland got Hogan to admit that his name was really Harry Orchard and that he had been hired by the Western Federation of Miners. Orchard implicated Bill Hayward, Charles Moyer, the president of the Western Federation of Miners, and others in the plot to kill Steunenberg. However, these men were in Colorado, where local authorities were friendly to the unions and would not extradite them based on the confession of a murderer.

Government officials in Idaho, including the current governor and chief justice, sanctioned a plan to kidnap Hayward, Moyer, and Pettibone so that they could be put on trial in Caldwell. Despite the blatant illegality of their operation, the union leaders lost their appeals in federal court and were forced to stay in Idaho to be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. However, the union had one more ace up its sleeve.

Clarence Darrow, who was on his way to becoming the country’s foremost defender of liberal causes, was brought in to defend the case. It was the first “Trial of the Century,” drawing national media attention and celebrity attendees. When none of Orchard’s accomplices would corroborate his story, the case came down to Orchard’s testimony alone. At Hayward’s trial, Darrow made an impassioned 11-hour closing argument that mercilessly attacked Orchard, and the jury acquitted.

Hayward, who was almost certainly guilty, later fled the country to Russia. He was buried at the Kremlin in 1928.

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A shoemaker leads German soldiers in a robbery

Year
1906
Month Day
October 17

Wilhelm Voigt, a 57-year-old German shoemaker, impersonates an army officer and leads an entire squad of soldiers to help him steal 4,000 marks. Voigt, who had a long criminal record, humiliated the German army by exploiting their blind obedience to authority and getting them to assist in his audacious robbery.

Wearing a captain’s uniform, Voigt approached a troop of soldiers in Tegel, Germany, just outside Berlin and ordered the unit to follow him 20 miles to the town of Kopenik. After lunch, he put the men in position and stormed into the mayor’s office. Declaring that the mayor was under arrest, Voigt commanded the troops to take him into custody. He then demanded to see the cash box and confiscated the 4,000 marks inside. The mayor was put in a car, and Voigt ordered that he be delivered to the police in Berlin.

On the way to Berlin, Voigt managed to disappear with the money. Still, it took more than a few hours at the police station before everyone realized that it was all a hoax. Although the Kaiser thought the story was funny, the German army didn’t find it so amusing, and a massive campaign to find Voigt was instituted. Days later, Voigt was caught in Berlin. He received a four-year sentence for his caper, but the Kaiser himself pulled some strings to get him out in less than two.

Voigt wound up a folk hero for the rest of his days. Wearing the captain’s uniform, he posed for pictures for years.

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