A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
COLLECTIVE RACIAL VIOLENCE
AND WAR
WARREN SCHAICH
Millard Fillmore College
State University of New York at Buffalo
Racism is a necessary condition for the outbreak of
interracial violence. Racism has been with us from the
beginning of our experience with slavery and is present
today, but collective racial violence fluctuates so as to
indicate time-related patterns of high and low intensity and
frequency during the twentieth century. Racism has been a
constant for over 300 years and cannot of itself explain the
fluctuations of racial violence.
Collective black-white violence has erupted during the
1960s for the third time this century. In both world wars and
in the Vietnam War corresponding outbreaks of racial
violence have occurred. The significance of an association
between the external violence of war and the collective racial
violence is that war may be a factor which precipitates racial
violence. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that
the high frequency of collective racial violence during both
world wars and the Vietnam War and the low frequency of
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am indebted to Elwin Powell
ideas presented in this paper.
for
JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 5 No. 4, June 1975
Sage Publications, Inc.
@1975
[374]
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many
of the
[375]
racial violence during war-free periods are not due to chance
factors. The hypothesis states that war generates internal
collective violence.
A survey of racial violence from 1910-1967, a stretch of
some 57 years, indicates a total of 210 outbreaks of
collective racial violence. A dramatic increase during wartime
is shown by the fact that 202 incidents of racial violence
occurred in a combined nine-year period (1917-19; 1942-43;
1964-67); each violent year falls within each of three
American war periods. Since the Korean War is one exception
to the reoccurring cycle of war and racial violence, caution
must be taken in tracing migration and economic changes
which may be correlates of explosive racial violence during
war.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
Collective racial violence is distinguished from crime in this
paper as quite a different kind of behavior and requiring a
different type of explanation (Marx, 1970; Powell, 1970).
Racial violence develops around the readiness of one racial
group to challenge the claims of another racial group. For
blacks it involves challenge to the white power structure and
for whites it involves the fear of black encroachment to
sacredly held and racially defined territorial and symbolic
boundaries.
Collective racial violence is preferred over the term racial
riot in order to advance the perspective that &dquo;rioting might
equally be applied to the police&dquo; (Marx, 1970: 48-49). Use of
the term riot may exaggerate the violence of the black
participant and underestimate the violence of policy. Use of
the term collective racial violence is suggested in order to
balance the scale of investigation into both violence by police
and violence by blacks as a war-related hypothesis.
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[376]
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO COLLECTIVE
RACIAL VIOLENCE
Before examining the violence data and the relationship to
American war involvement, I will summarily explore two
historical factors for their possible effect on large-scale racial
violence during war-migration and economics.
MIGRATION
Migration has been considered an important force in
disrupting the social fabric and contributing to racial violence
(Lieberson and Silberman, 1965; Rudwick, 1964; Willhelm,
1970: ch. on &dquo;Urbanology mythology&dquo; provide evidence
against the migration argument). Large black migrations
during both world wars were accompanied by outbreaks of
racial violence. Still, in actual numbers black migration out of
the South remained greater during the 1929-1930 years (with
no accompanying violence) than in the racially violent World
War I period. The accelerated shift of blacks during World
War II continued pace throughout the war and into the late
1940s. Yet no racial violence took place in the postwar
period. During the 1950-1960 decade five million southern
blacks migrated to the North and West with no large-scale
racial violence. (For a table of estimated intercensal migration of &dquo;Blacks by Thousands for Selected States by Decade
for the 1910-1960 Period,&dquo; see Taeuber and Taeuber, 1966:
110.)
Emigration of blacks North and West continued during the
sixties, but slowed down substantially. As the racial violence
erupted in force during the summer of 1964, the annual rate
of migration was decreasing (Taeuber and Taeuber, 1966:
110). The migration argument does not sufficiently explain
why racial violence occurred when it did or when it did not.
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[377]
ECONOMICS
Economic determinism has also been put forth as an
no dramatic change
altered the economic conditions of blacks in the 1960s as
compared to the 1950s or the late 1940s that would account
for the higher incidence of racial violence. The occupational
picture for blacks has brightened since 1910, but their gain
relative to white gain has remained fairly stationary over the
last seventy years (Beale, 1966: 224; Miller, 1964). Increasing
black employment opportunities by itself may generate
higher expectancy that gets registered as aggressive demands
on the system. Both world wars, for instance, have meant
general improvements for black Americans. However, the
correspondence between greater economic opportunities for
blacks and the occurrence of racial violence during both
world wars does not hold for the Vietnam War period.
Black unemployment, for instance, was a widely held
grievance in the violence-torn cities in 1967, and has been
running at double the white rate since 1948 (Kerner, 1968:
24). Although many blacks arrested for rioting were better
educated and employed with semi-skilled and skilled occupations, jobs held were below their skill level. Materially,
conditions for blacks have not improved during the racial
violence of the 1960s (Conrad, 19~8; Palmer, 1972:
explanation for racial violence. Yet
160-161).
WAR
Spencer believed that feelings fostered by war abroad
would produce a vengeance at home (Spencer, 1896: 594; for
a bibliography dealing with the effects of war, see Wright,
1964: 56; Camus, 1962: 439; Parsons, 1961: 318; Park,
1940-1941: 563; Malinowski, 1964: 264; Sorokin, 1961:
92-96). Sociologist Powell (1970: 206) claims that war
changes what Emile Durkheim called the collective
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con-
[378]
science
the collective mood of a nation, producing a
belligerence that gets translated into crimes of violence-&dquo;Not
the experience but the idea of war determines the behavior of
the crime rate.&dquo; Powell (1970: ch. 13) cites the rise of violent
crime during both world wars as evidence of collective
vengeance emerging from war (see Rosenbaum, 1939-1940:
or
722).
&dquo;Official violence is contagious whether it is exercised by
police or by a whole nation waging war&dquo; writes Iglitzn
(1970). During the Civil War mobs of whites invaded black
areas of New York, Buffalo, and Cincinnati (Delany, 1968:
29). The New York Pogrom of 1863 left thousands of slain
blacks, while thousands fled the city for safety (New York
Times, 1863). In the period following the Civil War, white
guerilla bands organized around violence and the threat of
violence to control and suppress the aspirations of the black
population (Conrad, 1968).
Osotsky (1963) writes of the New York racial violence of
1900 that came on the tail end of the Spanish-American War.
World War I left its legacy in the violent labor strikes, the red
summer of 1919, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan
(Iglitzn, 1970).
The Japanese fell victim to official vengeance during World
War II, as they were forcibly confined to concentration
camps (Delany, 1968: 27). The reaction from the Korean
War may have accelerated the witch hunt for Communists in
the early 1950s.
PATTERNS IN RACIAL VIOLENCE: 1900-1967
Racial violence during the twentieth century is divided
into six periods roughly classified as follows: Pre-World War I
(1900-1916), World War I (1917-1919), Post-World War I and
Interwar Depression (1920-1941), World War II (1942-1945),
Post-World War II (1946-1963), and Vietnam War Period
(1964-1967).
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[379]
TABLE
1
Collective Racial Violence In The United States
(1900-1967)a
NOTE: Estimates of riot frequency vary. Lieberson et a)., using the New York
Times for their primary source, came up with 72 riots between the years
1913-1963 (Lieberson and Silberman, collective violence responsible for
large-scale destruction of life and property. Consequently, Grimshaw identifies
only 33 major interracial disturbances between 1905 and 1949 of which he lists
18 riots between 1915 and 1919 (Grimshaw, 1959: 179). Waskow, on the other
hand, lists over 20 riots of minor and major importance for the year 1919. Other
authors, such as W.E.B. DuBois, support the latter estimate. Waskow (1966: 174)
adds that &dquo;some of the so-called minor riots could not
qualify as riots-some
were expanded lynchings, others brief clashes of sullen crowds which quickly
dispersed&dquo; (1966: 174). The type of disturbance cited by Waskow as expanded
lynchings or brief clashes of sullen crowds are omitted in the table presented here.
Only collective racial voolence resulting in personal inj-ury, loss of life, arrests or
...
property damage, or all four are included in Table 6.
U.S. News and World Report, 1964: August 28-29, 34; 1966:
September 34-35; Grimshaw, 1959: 179; Waskow, 1967: 304-307, ; Murray,
1940: 82-87, 219-222, 32 and 4; Murray, 1944: 82-93; Franklin, 1965: 433;
Osotsky, 1963: 16-24.
a. Designated periods in which war and collective racial violence occurred.
____
__
SOURCES:
_
__
PREWAR VIOLENCE (1900-1916)
New York City’s collective racial violence in 1900 (possibly war-related) closed the period of the Spanish-American
War and launched the twentieth century into a new era of
repressive Jim Crow legislation and continued racial conflict.
The black population, located for the most part in the South,
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[380]
individually resisted the widespread repression. Grimshaw
(1963: 31 ) notes,
The high incidence of violence against the Negro populace was, at
least in part the manifest expression of white reaction to Negro
resistance. If Negroes had &dquo;known their place&dquo; it would not have
been necessary to lynch Negroes in order to remind them of that
place.
Southern racial violence consisted almost entirely of lynching. Large-scale violence (outside of New York City, 1900,
Atlanta, 1906, and one more racial incident in the 1906-1908
period) rarely occurred during this period. Violence up to
World War I had been overwhelmingly white dominated.
Blacks seldom directly attacked the power structure
(Waskow, 1967: 174).
Table 2 indicates the location of all collective interracial
violence from 1915-1919 by national region. The West Coast
is without a violent disturbance. Blacks had not yet migrated
into the West in large numbers (Taeuber and Taeuber, 1966:
109-111).
WOR LD WAR 1 (1917-1919)
The period from 1917 to 1919 saw the largest outbreak of
collective violence since the Civil War. Escalation of the
TABLE 2
location Of Collective Racial Violence By
Region
(1915-1919)
SOURCE: Rudwick, 1964: 302-304, chs. 1-111; Grimshaw 1959: 179.
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[381]
internal violence during an American war is shown by the 22
racial incidents recorded for this time period: all but five
took place in the crucial postwar year, 1919. Four incidents
occurred in 1917. Major racial violence took place in East St.
Louis, Missouri (1917); Chester and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1917); Chicago, Illinois (1969); Longview, Texas
(1969); Knoxville, Tennessee (1969); and to a lesser extent
Phillips County, Arkansas (1919; Waskow, 1967: 2, 179;
Grimshaw, 1959, 1963; Rudwick, 1964; Seligmann, 1919:
48-50). Both collective racial violence and lynching increased
dramatically during World War I. Lynching actually dropped
in 1917, but reached a new high the first full war year (1918)
and reached its peak in 1919. Needless to say, whites
initiated and monopolized most of the racial violence against
TABLE 3
Lynchings In The United States
(1900-1919)
SOURCE: Hovland and
Sears, 1940: 340.
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[382]
blacks during World War I
(Kerner, 1968: 219, Myrdal, 1964:
588-566):
The development of racial violence during World War I
marked a turning point in black people’s determination to
fight back collectively. Motives for a new quality of militance
against overt racism was gaining acceptance during World War
I, boosting the changing black Weltanschauung.
In 1919 the New Negro emerged, prepared to fight back against
attack ... turning passionately and violently against white mobs
that sided with their attackers, who broke the Winter [Waskow,
1966: 211 ] .
The term pogrom (one-sided violence) was used to define
white-dominated violence against blacks. Prior to and including some of the violence during World War I, the term riot
(two-sided violence) began to be used interchangeably as
blacks collectively defended themselves.
Racial dissension, not solidarity came out of World War I.
Once passions were unleashed by war, racial groups erupted
in violent conflict. The Ku Klux Klan, in a general response
to the times, reorganized and by the 1920s boasted a
membership of four million (Conrad, 1968: 215).
Hostile police actions were closely connected to the
outbreak of almost all collective racial violence during World
War I (Waskow, 1967: 128, 209-210; Rudwick, 1964:
228-229;Grimshaw, 1959: 63-64). In the long run, Washington and Arkansas police bias helped precipitate full-scale
violence (Waskow, 1967: 209). A direct clash between blacks
and police took place in Norfolk, Virginia (1969; Waskow,
1967: 209). In the violence of Chicago and St. Louis most of
those killed, injured, and arrested were blacks. Yet there was
greater violent activity by whites. Finally, the military was
called to stop the violence (Rudwick, 1964: 228-229). Racial
violence in Arkansas had been directed solely against blacks,
but &dquo;not a single white man was arrested&dquo; (Waskow, 1967:
128, 209). Estimates of the number killed range as high as
sixty (Waskow, 1967: 227).
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[383]
Black soldiers were also the targets of white vengeance.
Out of seventy blacks lynched during the first year after the
war, a substantial number were black soldiers. Some were
lynched in uniform (Kemer, 1968: 224). World War I even
undermined the obedience of men in arms preparing for
organized aggression abroad. Racial violence took place in or
near military training installations in both the South and the
North (Grimshaw, 1959: 34, 241). Violent incidents between
black military men, white citizens, and white police took
place in New London, Connecticut (1918); Baltimore,
Maryland (1918); and Bisbee, Arizona (1919; Waskow, 1967:
304-315). In Houston (1967), black soldiers rebelled against
their officers. After clashing with police, the soldiers-armed
with guns-stormed the city. In Charleston and Washington
white military attacked blacks (Waskow, 1967: 304-315). In
Baltimore two hundred white soldiers attempted to terrorize
a black neighborhood (Waskow, 1967: 306-307). In 1919
white mobs were led by &dquo;white men in uniform&dquo; (Seligmann,
1919: 48-50).
Every American war, including the Civil War, has been
accompanied by labor violence. During World War I, racially
inspired labor violence occurred in Longview, Texas (1919),
Bogalasa, Louisiana, and Syracuse, New York (1919) and
Phillips County, Alabama (1919). Racial antagonism also
played a large role in the collective violence of East St. Louis
and Chicago (Grimshaw, 1959: 34, 341; Waskow, 1967:
16-17, 121; Rudwick, 1964: 219).
A militant black press grew out of World War I. The
Messenger, The Voice, The Crusader, The Challenge, The
Emancipation, and The Negro World papers organized around
the symbolic thrust evident in the violent rhetoric of
prominent black leaders (Cronon, 1955):
louder than words and
A winchester
attention.
speaks
You tell
that the
man ...
us
We
are
only bad shots fail of
man who will not protect himself
putting your teachings into practice.
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is
no
[384]
TABLE 4
Lynchings In The United States
(1920-1940)
(1920-1940)
SOURCE: Murray, 1949: 99.
When the mob moves we propose to meet it with bricks and clubs
and guns [Waskow, 1967: 177].
Again the prevailing climate of war is depicted in People’s
Pilot-a black newspaper urging violence against the white
man. &dquo;We must do as he did and overcome him or let him
treat us as he treated his enemy&dquo; (Cronon, 1955: 35-36).
Here the vocabulary of violence borrows its symbolic
meaning directly from the idea of enemies at war. Blacks
begin to perceive themselves in war terms as the white man’s
enemy and the only survivor is the victor.
POST-WORLD WAR I AND THE INTERWAR DEPRESSION
In the two decades between the world wars only six
collective outbreaks are reported-two of these in the
immediate postwar years, 1920 and 1921. The Harlem
violence of 1935 was the first major incident since Tulsa
(1921). The major thrust of black militancy also declined
after the First World War period. Grimshaw (1959: 181)
remarked that the depression kept blacks and whites alike
busy &dquo;just trying to survive.&dquo; Lynching continued, particularly in the South, but after the upsurge in 1919 the number
of lynchings permanently declined.
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[ 385]
In 1940 the Tuskegee Institute ceased its research on
lynching. Dahlke (1952: 422) writes that by World War II
lynching was &dquo;past history.&dquo;
WORLD WAR II
(1942-1945)
Escalation of internal collective racial violence took place
for the second time in the twentieth century during the
Second World War. Eighteen incidents of racial violence took
place between 1942 and 1963. Two of the most bitter
racially violent incidents occurred in Harlem, New York
(1943) and Detroit, Michigan (1945). Racial violence also
took place in Beaumont, Texas (1943); Mobile, Alabama
(1943); Detroit, Michigan (1942); Newark, New Jersey
(1943); and Chester, Pennsylvania (1943; Murray, 1944: 3,
14, 42-49, 219-221 ).
Although nine fewer large violent incidents occurred
during World War II compared to World War I, racial violence
involving servicemen increased during this racially violent
period. Racial violence involving black and white military
took place in Alexandria, Louisiana (1942); Flagstaff, Arizona (1943); Florence, South Carolina (1942); Phoenix,
Arizona (1942); Valleg, California (1943); Camp Stewart,
Georgia (1943); Senango, Pennsylvania (1943); Camp Van
Dom, Mississippi (1943); Camp McCain and Camp Shelby,
Mississippi (1943). In a number of cities, mostly northern,
&dquo;zoot-suit&dquo; violence flared up. One serious incident took
in Los Angeles, California between sailors, Mexicans,
and blacks (Turner and Surace, 1956: 14-20).
Latent racial tensions exploded into violence with the
emergence of war in both military and civilian sectors of
society. Black soldiers clashed directly and violently with
white military, white police, and white civilians or combinations of all three in eleven of the eighteen incidents of
collective racial violence during World War II (Murray, 1944:
42-49, 143, 219-221). Racial violence also spread geographically to areas of the far West, formerly free of large-scale
place
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[386]
TABLE 5
Location Of Collective Racial Violence By
(1942-1945)
SOURCE: Murray, 1944:
Region
(1942-1945)
3, 4, 43-49, 219-222.
interracial violence involving blacks. For the second time men
training for armed warfare abroad vented their vengeance at
home. Hostile civilian police actions, both military and
civilian, have been specifically cited for helping to activate
racial violence in Alexandria, Louisiana (1942); Flagstaff,
Arizona (1942) and New Orleans, Louisiana (1947). Military
police helped to ignite the violence at Fort Dix, New Jersey
(1942) and at Camp Stewart, Georgia (1942; Murray, 1949:
201-203). Police action played a large part in the precipitation of major violent clashes during this period.
Rudwick writes that there is a remarkable similarity
between police actions in the racial violence of the First
World War and the 1943 violence in Detroit: police &dquo;invariably interfered when Negroes assaulted whites but when
Negroes were attacked, police frequently left the scene or
adopted the role of ... spectators.&dquo;
Police aggression against blacks in both world wars has
been well documented (Ruckwick, 1964: 184-205; Kerner,
.
1968; Waskow, 1967; Grimshaw, 1959, 1963; Wills, 1968;
Marx, 1970; Iglitzn, 1970; Wilson, 1967; Shogran and Graig,
1964; Palmer, 1972; Fogelson, 1970).
In total, the World War II period has fewer incidents of
interracial violence and a lower violence intensity than World
War I. Major violence was confined to a two-year period,
1942-1943. World War I violence peaked immediately after
the war; World War II racial violence peaked during the war.
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[387]
Odum (1943: 184-205) observes that racial tensions had
reached a dangerous level in the early years of the war
paralleling World War I, but that strenuous efforts from all
levels of society including the government to cooperate wi’th
black groups prevented further collective outbreaks of racial
violence.
POST-WORLD WAR II: 1946-1963
this seventeena number of
year
incidents in the North and South came close to erupting into
large-scale violence. This is especially true of the South,
which received the thrust of organized civil rights activities.
The Korean War was without racial violence. This period
also saw a little military racial violence that plagued both
world war periods. Moskos (1966-1967: 135) cites the
&dquo;Korean war as the coup de grace for segregation in the
army.&dquo; The black-white conflict was still there in segregated
military units, but the &dquo;timing of desegregation in the
military defused an ingredient ... that would have been
potentially explosive&dquo; (Moskow, 1966-1967: 135). Most of
the black energy went to legal efforts.
No
major racial violence took place during
period in American history, although
VIETNAM WAR: 1964-1967
Official intervention in Vietnam came about as a result of
the Tonkin resolution in 1964, the same year interracial
violence erupted in eleven American cities. Racial violence
continued into the summers of 1965, 1966, and 1967. With
the exception of a slight decrease in 1965, racial violence
increased along with stepped up official violence used against
the Vietnamese people up to 1967. Violence spread further
across the nation than in either previous war period. The
nationwide revolt hit 86 cities in 1967 with a total of 109
racial incidents (see reference for Table 1). The Lumberg
Center for the Study of Violence (1968: 61) put the
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[388]
collective violence, both racial and nonracial, in 1967 at 233
and for the first four months of 1968 at 251. Massive racial
violence in Harlem (1964); Watts, Los Angeles (1965);
Chicago (1966); Newark, New Jersey (1967) and Detroit
(1967) dramatizes what the Kerner report (1968: 205)
referred to as the &dquo;new ’climate of violence’ during the
1960’s which served to approve and encourage violence.&dquo;
Black violence should be distinguished in kind from police
violence during at least the Vietnam War period. Black
violence was primarily directed at property, looting, and
burning. Police violence was directed at the person. Out of
the one hundred killed during the Vietnam racial violence,
police were responsible for most of them (Wills, 1968; Marx,
1970: 55).
Marx (1970: 33) comments on the heavy police action:
police today, while in many ways different from the police in
are also dealing with a very different kind of social
violence. Rather than white attacking Negroes under the guise of
an ideology of white supremacy held by police, we find Negroes
attacking stores and police under the guise of ideology clearly not
held by the latter. The task of restoring law and order today
coincides with the repression of Negroes rather than of whites as
The
1917,
earlier.
War generates policing activities. Police violence during war
may become independent of and take precedence over the
TABLE 6
Collective Racial Violence
By Year And Location By Region
(1964-1967)
Negro Yearbook, 1966: 82-87; U.S. News and World Report,
1966: August, 289; 1964: August, 34.
SOURCE: The
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[389]
legal mandate (Westley, 1963: 39). The words of the New
York City police commissioner during the racial violence in
1964 denotes the war spirit behind policing: &dquo;Sure we make
mistakes, you do in any war&dquo; (Marx, 1970: 17). The Kerner
Commission (1968: 120) reported that 40% of the racial
violence &dquo;involved allegedly abusive or discriminatory police
actions.&dquo; A sampling of police actions that helped precipitate
racial violence took place in Rochester, New York (1964);
Harlem, New York (1964); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(1964); Dikmoor, Illinois (1964); Jersey City, New Jersey
(1964); and in Watts, California (1964; Murray, 1944; U.S.
News and World Report, 1964: 22).
War activates our violent fantasies, and blacks and whites
seek out victims in each other. Racial aggression held and
shared in groups surfaces and finds outlets against socially
defined enemies (New York Times, 1970: 61). An anonymous article in Outlook on the racial violence in Washington,
D.C. in 1919 caught the collective victimization of blacks by
whites, then whites by blacks, as each violently defined the
other in preparation for war and during war.
[White] attacks on Negroes were carried into sections where
population is heavy. The whole Negro element of Washington suddenly became aware of a war on their race. By Monday
night the colored population held themselves to be without police
black
protection. The mob elements
[Grimshaw,
1963:
among the blacks armed for
war
277].
War mobilizes fear and the police become the moral arm of
white society (Westley, 1953: 35-36, 1951; Campbell, 1971:
19; Grimshaw, 1959). Police violence speaks for the collective violence of society. War fosters fear and danger, and the
social need for protection grows.
&dquo;Every American war has been accompanied by an
enlargement of the police establishment&dquo; (Powell, 1970:
207). An internal state of war is illustrated by the director of
Newark police who told police over the radio during the
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[390]
racial violence of 1967, &dquo;If you have a gun
use it&dquo; (Marx,
In
1970: 1 ~.
each war period police and segments of the
black community view each other as inferred enemies. The
police reflect white society at large, perceiving and acting in
response to blacks with hostility, while blacks see the police
as the invading army. Blacks’ complaints against police were
found to increase from a total of 40 in Los Angeles in 1963
to 46 in 1964 to 55 in 1965, again indicating a spiraling
hostile black-police exchange during the growing involvement
in the Vietnam War.
...
SUMMARY
Collective racial violence developed out of World War I as
blacks began to redefine collectively their subordinated
position into one of strength. The war gave impetus to a
more militant Weltanschauung from which blacks collectively
defended themselves against white vengeance. This is reflected in the changing pattern of violence since 1917, the
eve of World War I. White-controlled lynchings of blacks and
white pogroms gave way to two-sided collective racial
violence.
In each violent period, war seems to produce a state of
mind whereby whites and blacks get caught up in collectively
defming each other in violent terms as internal enemies at
war. As of the Vietnam War period, racial violence has shifted
more into the hands of the police where it remains as
white-dominated violence. Police violence aims at the person,
whereas black violence is directed more at property and/or at
symbols of white control. Black initiated violence emerged
out of the Vietnam War and the traditional use of black
violence for defense began to shift to one of frequently
increasing offensive actions. Police violence has become more
noticeable with each war involvement. Police were responsible for most of those injured and arrested during racial
conflict in the Vietnam War years.
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[391]
The hypothesis of war generating internal collective
violence seems to hold up against the violence data. Twentytwo incidents of collective racial violence took place in World
War I, 18 during World War II, and 161 during the Vietnam
War period up to 1967. Out of a total of 210 collective racial
incidents, 202 took place in American war periods. Eight
violent incidents occurred in war-free years during the
twentieth century, and out of the 8 only in Harlem (1935)
did massive violence occur. The 8 racial incidents are
scattered over a period of 53 years (Korean War considered)
of nonwar involvement. The war years (including 1919,
World War I ended officially in November 1918) which cover
an 11-year span (14 years, including Korea) account for 202
violent racial clashes. Nine years out of the 11war years
consumed all of the 202 collective incidents.
Racial violence was greater in World War I than in World
War II. The Vietnam War period saw the highest frequency of
racial violence.
Each American war except the Korean War shows a
dramatic increase in collective racial violence. Because of the
Korean exception to the overall pattern of racial violence
during war, refinements are probably needed before the
significance of war on racial events can be confirmed. While
there is a great deal of evidence to support the hypothesis
that war generates collective racial violence, it does not
account for the absence of violence during the Korean War. If
war does generate violence, as this paper purports, then
factors other than chance must be found to be present during
the Korean War period that inhibited violence. If further
research cannot support this thesis, then the question of why
violence occurred during wartime must still be pondered.
It is hoped that further research into violence of war and
its effect on the human spirit will supplement this study.
With a keen sociological imagination Spencer wrote (1896:
594) that &dquo;with the pursuit of vengeance outside the society
there goes the pursuit of vengeance inside the society.&dquo; This
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[392]
study concludes that the violence of
war and the racial
violence spring from one collective mind and mood and that
war is a significant factor generating collective internal racial
violence.
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