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The Forgotten Story of Washington's First Race Riot, August 1835
Well, this is what happens when you fall down a rabbit hole. I was checking the bio of Jefferson Morley, who keeps up with the Kennedy assassination. It turns out he's written a book about this incident, which until now I've never heard of.
The Forgotten Story of Washington’s First Race Riot
09/05/2024 in DC
by Ethan Ehrenhaft
Beverly Snow opened his Epicurean Eating House in the basement of this three-story brick building at the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in 1832. (Source: Evening Star, September 25, 1932.)
In the mid 1830s, Washington stood on edge as pro and anti-slavery forces battled for influence. Conditions were ripe for D.C.’s first race riot, which erupted in August 1835 when a lynch mob targeted Beverly Snow, a successful free black restaurateur. Long ignored by local officials and historians, the Snow Riot sprang from white bitterness over the city’s prosperous free black community and previewed sectional tensions that would soon plunge the nation into the Civil War.
Established in the South by the Compromise of 1790, Washington harbored strong Southern sympathies in the decades following its founding and hosted America’s largest slave trading depot in Alexandria, then part of the District.1 But as the number of free blacks eclipsed the enslaved population by 1830 and abolitionist speakers and pamphlets began trickling in, white Washingtonians feared the antebellum social order and their privileged place in it and would be upended.2
{snip}
Against this backdrop of human misery, anti-slavery advocates, both black and white, began fighting back and petitioning Congress to ban the slave trade or slavery altogether in the District. In the summer of 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society organized the country’s “first direct mail campaign,” sending bagfuls of printed abolitionist materials to civic and religious leaders in Washington and other Southern cities.6
Many white residents grew outraged, not only with the pamphlet campaign but also by the increasing affluence of their black neighbors. At the time D.C. afforded its population of more than 6,000 free blacks a degree of social and economic mobility unheard of in the South, with a number of black-owned schools, churches, and businesses flourishing.7
{snip}
09/05/2024 in DC
by Ethan Ehrenhaft
Beverly Snow opened his Epicurean Eating House in the basement of this three-story brick building at the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in 1832. (Source: Evening Star, September 25, 1932.)
In the mid 1830s, Washington stood on edge as pro and anti-slavery forces battled for influence. Conditions were ripe for D.C.’s first race riot, which erupted in August 1835 when a lynch mob targeted Beverly Snow, a successful free black restaurateur. Long ignored by local officials and historians, the Snow Riot sprang from white bitterness over the city’s prosperous free black community and previewed sectional tensions that would soon plunge the nation into the Civil War.
Established in the South by the Compromise of 1790, Washington harbored strong Southern sympathies in the decades following its founding and hosted America’s largest slave trading depot in Alexandria, then part of the District.1 But as the number of free blacks eclipsed the enslaved population by 1830 and abolitionist speakers and pamphlets began trickling in, white Washingtonians feared the antebellum social order and their privileged place in it and would be upended.2
{snip}
Against this backdrop of human misery, anti-slavery advocates, both black and white, began fighting back and petitioning Congress to ban the slave trade or slavery altogether in the District. In the summer of 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society organized the country’s “first direct mail campaign,” sending bagfuls of printed abolitionist materials to civic and religious leaders in Washington and other Southern cities.6
Many white residents grew outraged, not only with the pamphlet campaign but also by the increasing affluence of their black neighbors. At the time D.C. afforded its population of more than 6,000 free blacks a degree of social and economic mobility unheard of in the South, with a number of black-owned schools, churches, and businesses flourishing.7
{snip}