Rumours and racial violence in the United States, 1873 to 1908

Kimberley, Lewis (2024) Rumours and racial violence in the United States, 1873 to 1908. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Rumours permeate our lives but have been relatively neglected by historians, particularly in studies of the late nineteenth century United States. This research project addresses this scholarly omission, analysing the role rumours played in five different incidents of American popular mass racial violence: the Colfax Massacre (1873), the Rock Springs Massacre (1885), the New Orleans Lynchings (1891), the Atlanta Massacre (1906) and the Springfield Riot (1908). In exploring the role of these rumours, this project uses historical testimonies, personal accounts, newspapers, Congressional reports, personal papers and oral histories.

In these incidents of racial violence, rumours were highly varied, fulfilling different functions dependent on location, time period and victim profile. As a result, this thesis proposes a new typology of rumour defined in the following groups: anticipatory, legitimisation, rationalisation, situational and fabrications. In the anti-black incidents, anticipatory and legitimisation rumours predominated whereas for the anti-Chinese and anti-Italian incidents, rationalisation rumours are most prevalent. Situational rumours and fabrications were highly dependent on the conditions in each locale and have the most variation.

The findings of this project clearly demonstrate that considering rumours a merely oral phenomenon is an outdated viewpoint owing to the importance of newspapers in recording, transmitting and preserving many of the rumours in this study. Rumour, in its various forms, was very important in all five of the examined incidents and the causes, results, and long-term implications of mass-action racial violence in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century America cannot be understood properly without explaining fully the role played in them. Using a new typology, this thesis provides a new tool for exploring mass racial violence in a new way.

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