American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot And Black Politics
by Charles L. Lumpkins /
2008 / English / PDF
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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. 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.
