In the summer of 1900, a black day laborer in New Orleans named Robert Charles touched off a race riot after a violent confrontation with a white police officer. In the week that followed, Charles would shoot twenty-seven whites, including seven policemen, in a desperate assault upon the Jim Crow apartheid system. His small war would reverberate beyond New Orleans, and leave a lasting impression upon the national psyche.
Not a great deal is known of Charles life. Historian Ivy hair in his work Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900, has tried to piece together the life of this relatively unknown figure that would become shrouded in legend and myth after his death. Like many other black southerners Charles grew up as a sharecropper. Though originally from Mississippi, he would end up in New Orleans by the turn of the century. There he lived as a day laborer, doing odd jobs to make ends meet. While not seeming to have any political following or leaving any writings behind, cohorts noted that Charles was an outspoken figure on race relations who voiced harsh disapproval of the Jim Crow apartheid system he lived in. Believing that blacks could not expect to receive fair justice from white authorities, he advocated the need for self reliance. He was also known to be a supporter of self defense, and not only kept himself armed but was said to manufacture his own ammunition. At some point, Charles also became involved with AME leader Bishop Henry M. Turner's "back-to-Africa" emigration movement, and was known to have circulated/sold his magazine as well as donate some of his meager earnings to the cause. No doubt there were many black residents of New Orleans who thought like Charles. And he may have joined them in obscurity, if not for a fateful incident on July 23, 1900.
Around 11pm at that night, three white police officers, Sergeant Jules C. Aucion, August T. Mora, and Joseph D. Cantrelle, attempted to investigate “two suspicious looking Negroes” sitting on a porch in a predominately white neighborhood. The two were Charles and his roommate, 19-year-old Leonard Pierce. When questioned they replied they were "waiting for a friend." And by most accounts, both were indeed there courting black women who were boarders in a nearby residence. At some point, Charles is said to have stood up. Taking this as a threat one of the police officers, Mora, attempted to grab him, setting off a struggle during which Mora assaulted Charles with his billet. Though it is uncertain who drew a gun first, both Mora and Charles soon found themselves armed and exchanging shots--striking each other. Charles fled the scene injured and bleeding, leaving Pierce who was held at gunpoint by the other officers.
Returning to his residence Charles attempted to lay low. However after interrogation Pierce gave up his location and an armed patrol wagon was sent to apprehend him the next morning. But Charles had no intentions of surrendering. As the police approached his residence he fired on them with a rifle, mortally wounding one in the heart. Shouting, "I will give you all some!" Charles proceeded to shoot another officer in the head. The remaining patrol scattered, taking refuge, and allowing Charles to make another escape.
Police officers aided by an armed mob of white New Orleans citizens lay siege to the house, firing their weapons inside. At its height, they totaled nearly a thousand. Yet Charles refused to surrender. With his Winchester rifle and his manufactured ammunition, he remained holed up, sporadically returning fire with such skillful accuracy that a few times the massive mob was sent scurrying for cover. Charles would shoot some twenty four whites in the day-long siege, killing five of them. Fearful of further losses, the police decided to burn down the building. The tactic worked, and Charles was forced to flee. As he attempted to do so he was shot to death. The frenzied mob would drag his body out and continue to mutilate it, shooting and beating until it was unrecognizable. Not content with Charles death, the mob surged into larger New Orleans, killing several more blacks and burning down a local black schoolhouse.
Robert Charles defiance to the social order would make national headlines. White newspapers described him as a monstrous brute, typical of what they saw as Negro crime and "savagery." In a society where Jim Crow racism and white supremacy was codified as law, many black leaders and groups were also forced to make denunciations of Charles--out of fear for further retaliation. But in many quarters of the black community, both local and national, Charles deeds began to take on a celebratory cause of resistance and martyrdom.
Anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells in her pamphlet Mob Rule in New Orleans, portrayed Robert Charles in legendary tones as "the hero of New Orleans" for his singular act of self defense. At a Boston gathering on anti-lynching, a black attendee allegedly asserted, “If one Negro can hold 20,000 at bay what can 10,000 negroes do?” A white Bostonian resident, Lillian Clayton Jewett, would form the Anti-Lynching League in honor of Robert Charles, whose members called for retribution and revenge--an act that would place her life in danger. Some reactions even turned violent.
In Michigan a black boxer walked into a police station and attempted to murder a police chief in solidarity with Charles. In New Orleans a black train rider, Melby Dotson, awakened suddenly from fitful dreams of Charles death, drew a pistol and shot the white conductor. A black sympathizer of Charles would walk up and shoot Fred Clark--the black informant who had helped the police track Charles down--in the head, killing him instantly.
Robert Charles was buried before dawn on July 29 in an unmarked grave to prevent whites from dismembering his body for souvenirs--fingers, toes, ears, even his penis--a macabre act which was common at the time. Jazz and blues musicians would remember and honor him with “The Ballad of Robert Charles,” securing his place as a martyr and folk hero.
Resources:
The Ballad of Robert Charles
http://www.racewithistory.org/html/home.htmlWilliam Ivy Hair. Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976.
Leon F. Litwack. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Random House, 1998.
Patricia A Schechter. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
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