A writer, I often like to turn to a dictionary when I’m attempting to learn about something. This project is no different. So, I consulted, first, the Oxford English Dictionary, widely accepted as the authority on the English language. The OED not only defines words, but digs into their history. I wanted to understand a bit about the history of the word, “riot.”<\/p>\n
Here, the definition of riot that is most appropriate to this project is this:<\/p>\n
The first evidence of the word in use comes from middle English sometime before 1393.<\/p>\n
The term, “race riot,” on the other hand was first documented in 1880. “Saturday night a race riot broke out in the lower part of Newcastle..between gangs of Irishmen, Poles, and Slavacks.”<\/em> This comes form a September 10 article in the Davenport Morning Tribune, an Iowa publication.<\/p>\n I imagine that what comes to mind when one things race riot depends on your experiences, what you’ve read, what you’ve heard, what you’ve seen. The first thing that comes to my mind upon thinking about race riots, for some reason is Watts, which, frankly, has as much to do with my abnormal love for President Lyndon Johnson than anything else. Then, my mind will jump to the LA riots of 1992. See, I was in middle school during that time. This event happened during my formative years. Finally, remembering that I’m a Michigander, I think “Detroit!” It’s a toss-up between 1943 or 1967. Either might come up.<\/p>\n But, the history major in me knows that the history is much longer, and both the entries for “riot,” and “race riot,” help paint that picture.<\/p>\n One of the things that I noticed as I pulled together the preliminary list of riots is that some of them had multiple names. In fact, you may have noticed, upon examining the list<\/a>, that I didn’t often give one of these occurrences a name;\u00a0I just state the location where it took place and the year it took place. Some of these events were described as disturbances or massacres. Some of them are described differently based on which account of the event you’re reading. I left them all on the list, as I couldn’t really tell how a riot differed from a massacre, especially for most\u00a0of the events that preceded 1900.<\/p>\n The other thing I can’t quite figure out what to do with for this project are lynchings. In the cursory preliminary research that I did in order to come up with my preliminary list, I can’t tell you how many times I came across tales of lynchings. Nor knowing what to do, I consulted the OED again.<\/p>\n I was surprised to find this. I thought that I was going to find a reference to a Charles Lynch here. I thought that I was going to be lead directly to some definition that helped to frame the phenomenon of American lynchings. I moved on over to the definition for lynch law. Here’s what I found:<\/p>\n Orig. U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A writer, I often like to turn to a dictionary when I’m attempting to learn about something. This project is no different. So, I consulted, first, the Oxford English Dictionary, widely accepted as the authority on the English language. The OED not only defines words, but digs into their history. I wanted to understand a […] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[701],"tags":[774],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics-of-a-race-riot","tag-mathematics-of-a-race-riot","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p33KTw-15w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4468,"url":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/2015\/03\/the-n-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":0},"title":"The N-word","author":"sherlonya","date":"March 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I am no fool. I knew that I would have to confront the n-word during some point in this project. I just didn\u2019t know that I would have to deal with it so early. There I was researching riot #1 when it first jumped out. Just like that. I thought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mathematics of a Race Riot"","block_context":{"text":"Mathematics of a Race Riot","link":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/category\/mathematics-of-a-race-riot\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"profanity","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.riotnumbers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/profanity-224x300.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4190,"url":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/2014\/12\/an-interview\/","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":1},"title":"An Interview","author":"sherlonya","date":"December 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I asked a friend who is familiar with the variety of my writing and creative projects to ask me 10 questions about this project. I liked to be challenged, and he obliged me. Gotta love having great friends! Terry T: If you allow me to put you in a box\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mathematics of a Race Riot"","block_context":{"text":"Mathematics of a Race Riot","link":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/category\/mathematics-of-a-race-riot\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"interview","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.riotnumbers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/interview-300x295.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4292,"url":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/digging-in\/","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":2},"title":"Digging In","author":"sherlonya","date":"January 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 One of the major challenges of this project is deciding how far to delve into the facts of each riot. The random number generator did me a favor with the first couple of riots. It\u2019s just a bigger challenge to find information about some of these riots than it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mathematics of a Race Riot"","block_context":{"text":"Mathematics of a Race Riot","link":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/category\/mathematics-of-a-race-riot\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"digging","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.riotnumbers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/digging-300x298.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4178,"url":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/2014\/12\/method\/","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":3},"title":"Method","author":"sherlonya","date":"December 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"How does one go about a project to learn about American black-white race riots? One answer is that you just jump in. You just get started. For me, that first step is to figure out the scope of the project. Number of incidents that this project will cover. How sure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mathematics of a Race Riot"","block_context":{"text":"Mathematics of a Race Riot","link":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/category\/mathematics-of-a-race-riot\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"115f","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.riotnumbers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/115f.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4470,"url":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/2015\/03\/philadelphia-pennsylvania-1834\/","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":4},"title":"Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1834)","author":"sherlonya","date":"March 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"On Tuesday, August 12, 1834 a white mob consisting of several hundred people attacked a building in Philadelphia which housed the Flying Horses, a popular carousel that served both blacks and whites in the area. The mob destroyed the building and fought against any black people (and presumably others) who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mathematics of a Race Riot"","block_context":{"text":"Mathematics of a Race Riot","link":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/category\/mathematics-of-a-race-riot\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"carousel","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.riotnumbers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/carousel-257x300.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4271,"url":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/harlem-new-york-1935\/","url_meta":{"origin":4186,"position":5},"title":"Harlem, New York (1935)","author":"sherlonya","date":"January 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Age of Lino Rivera, the black Puerto Rican young man at the center of this event. On March 19, 1935, Mr. Rivera shoplifted a pen knife from a five and dime store. He was chased and caught\u00a0by store employees. Rivera didn\u2019t take being caught calmly. He severely bit the hands\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mathematics of a Race Riot"","block_context":{"text":"Mathematics of a Race Riot","link":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/category\/mathematics-of-a-race-riot\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"16","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.riotnumbers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/16.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherlonya.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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