Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919

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Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919
Part of Red Summer
B&W Newspaper article
News Coverage of the Expulsion
DateOctober 31, 1919
LocationCorbin, Kentucky, United States
Deaths2
Non-fatal injuries2

Corbin, Kentucky race riot of 1919 was a race riot in 1919 in which a white mob forced nearly all the town's 200 black residents onto a freight train out of town, and a sundown town policy until the late 20th century.

Corbin Expulsion

On October 29, 1919, two men robbed and stabbed A.F. Thompson before escaping without him getting a good look.[1] Thompson was able to stumble to a nearby house and get help. Word quickly spread about the crime and that the attackers were two black men. On October 31, 1919, an enraged and armed white mob made up of hundreds of Corbin's townspeople organized and went house-to-house rounding up black residents.[2] When they felt that all of the African-Americans of the town had been gathered, the mob marched a group of approximately 200 men, women, and children to the train station, and herded them onto cramped railcars. The train departed with its human cargo and were sent south to the town Knoxville.[1][3][4][5] "They swore at us and said: 'By God we are going to run all Negroes out of this town tonight,'" said longtime black Corbin resident John Turner in a signed affidavit about the incident.[2]

Aftermath

This uprising was one of several incidents of civil unrest that began with the

Chicago Race Riot and Washington D.C. race riot in which 38 and 39 people (respectively) were killed. Both events also had many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching up into the millions of dollars.[6]

Corbin, Kentucky race riot in media

Trouble Behind (1991), a documentary by

Kentucky Fried Chicken and for "its race riots of 1919, during which over two hundred blacks were loaded onto boxcars and shipped out of town." The film aired at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. [7][8]

See also

Bibliography

Notes

References

  • Griggs, Kristy Owens (Summer 2002). "The Removal of Blacks from Corbin in 1919: Memory, Perspective, and the Legacy of Racism".
    OCLC 2263214
    .
  • Henson, Robby (1991). Trouble Behind (Documentary) (Film). Corbin, Kentucky. Event occurs at 56 min. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  • McWhirter, Cameron (2011). Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. . - Total pages: 368
  • . Retrieved July 5, 2019.
  • NPR (March 10, 2007). "Kentucky Town Re-Examines Its Racial History". NPR. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  • Sundance Group (2019). "Archives 1991 Sundance Film Festival: Trouble Behind". Sundance Group. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  • Rucker, Walter C.; Upton, James N. (2007). Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, Volume 2. . - Total pages: 930
  • Voogd, Jan (2008). Race Riots and Resistance: The Red Summer of 1919. Peter Lang. . - Total pages: 234

External links

Trouble Behind Documentary at

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