Product Overview
On July 2 and 3, 1917, race riots rocked the small industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois. American Pogrom takes the reader beyond that pivotal time in the citys history to explore black peoples activism from the antebellum era to the eve of the postWorld War II civil rights movement.
Charles Lumpkins shows that black residents of East St. Louis had engaged in formal politics since the 1870s, exerting influence through the ballot and through patronage in a city dominated by powerful real estate interests even as many African Americans elsewhere experienced setbacks in exercising their political and economic rights.
While Lumpkins asserts that the race riots were a pogroman organized massacre of a particular ethnic grouporchestrated by certain businessmen intent on preventing black residents from attaining political power and on turning the city into a sundown town permanently cleared of African Americans, he also demonstrates how the African American community survived. He situates the activities of the black citizens of East St. Louis in the context of the larger story of the African American quest for freedom, citizenship, and equality.
Charles Lumpkins shows that black residents of East St. Louis had engaged in formal politics since the 1870s, exerting influence through the ballot and through patronage in a city dominated by powerful real estate interests even as many African Americans elsewhere experienced setbacks in exercising their political and economic rights.
While Lumpkins asserts that the race riots were a pogroman organized massacre of a particular ethnic grouporchestrated by certain businessmen intent on preventing black residents from attaining political power and on turning the city into a sundown town permanently cleared of African Americans, he also demonstrates how the African American community survived. He situates the activities of the black citizens of East St. Louis in the context of the larger story of the African American quest for freedom, citizenship, and equality.
