A clash between two Black men and three white police officers led to the July 1900 race riot in New Orleans.
Robert Charles and his roommate, Leonard Pierce, were sitting on a stoop in a predominantly white neighborhood when they were approached by three white police officers, according to an article by Arnold Burks. The officers had received a tip about “two suspicious-looking negroes.”
As the officers harassed them, Charles stood up. Officer August Mora and Charles each pulled guns, shooting each other. Charles ran and Pierce was arrested. Police tracked Charles to his home, where he shot and killed two officers before escaping.
“The next day, a crowd of white residents gathered at the location where the policemen were killed and called for the lynching of Charles,” an article on BlackPast states. For days, white mobs terrorized the Black community.
“During the ensuing manhunt, white vigilantes burned Black-owned homes and businesses, shot Black streetcar riders, and attempted to lynch innocent people suspected of the (police) killings,” the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans states.
Based on a tip from a Black resident, police found Charles hiding at 1208 Saratoga Street. A member of the mob set the house on fire, forcing
Charles out to meet his death. His body was riddled with hundreds of bullets and beaten beyond recognition.
Mayor Paul Capdeville ended the riot by deputizing 1,500 special police and calling in the state militia, according to the Robert Charles Project.
Charles was born in Mississippi in 1865. A self-educated activist, he encouraged Black people to move to Liberia to escape racial discrimination.
“White people may charge that he was a desperado,” journalist Ida B. Wells wrote about Charles in “Mob Rule in New Orleans,” “but to his own race he is ‘The Hero of New Orleans.’ ”
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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