that they had a race problem and called for reform, setting up an open conflict between Abolitionists and Amalgamators. This conflict resonated in fiery debates and violence for decades.
The integrationist ideas of the Amalgamators created a real fear of unfair competition between the white labor forces and the free blacks that competed with each other for the lowest-wage jobs. The competition was exacerbated by Irish immigration. In 1827 the British ended the legislation restricting Irish immigration and 30,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York annually. These conditions created a series of riots between the whites and the blacks that had to be put down by the police—watchmen—and the militia. During the riots, the homes, businesses, and other buildings belonging to abolitionists and Negroes were burned. The militia was called out to support the police watch, and the riots ceased. The 1834 Riot and the 1849 Astor Place Riot foreshadowed the bloody 1863 New York Draft Riot.
1849 Astor Place Riot
The 1849 Astor Place Riot demonstrates how supposedly trivial events have violent outcomes when social classes conflict. The riot shows the distinct class divisions in play in nineteenth-century America. The hatred between two actors—William Macready, an English thespian who represented the New York upper class, and Edwin Forrest, who was the hero of the lower-class and recent immigrants—erupted into a full-scale riot that led to the police and the militia firing into an angry crowd killing twenty-two persons and injuring forty-eight others (McNamara, February 17, 2019). Forrest supporters interrupted Macready’s performance at the upscale Astor Opera House triggering the riot.
The violence between distinct groups continued. Six years later, twelve New Yorkers were killed in July 1857 in a battle between Catholic and Protestant gangs (Vodrey, 2010).
1863 New York City Draft Riots
Although the Draft Riots were initially intended as a protest against the newly created Civil War draft laws, the riots had a more sinister racial objective. The consensus is that the NYC 1963 Draft riot that resulted in from 1,000 to 1,500 white deaths and an unknown number of Negro deaths had its origin in the fear that the city’s Irish workers would lose their jobs to an influx of freed Southern black slaves (Albon, 1951).
The Emancipation Proclamation and the fear of an influx of Southern freemen threatened the social status and economic position of the white Irish immigrants. Taking advantage of this proclamation, slavery supporters pressed the rumors that emancipation would create the business of importing freed blacks to the North to supply cheap labor. The Irish immigrant’s fears were buttressed by the common practice of employers hiring free Southern blacks when the labor supply was low, or when workers complained about employment conditions or wages (Olzak, 1989).
When the riots first started the New York Metropolitan Police Department was the only “official” force available to stop it. The New York State Militia was at Gettysburg assisting Union troops. Until federal troops could be sent to the city, blacks were lynched, and homes were destroyed as the Metro Police beat the mobs with nightsticks and fired into the crowds in futile attempts to stop the violence (Vodrey, 2010; Johnson, 2003). The 1870–1871 religious riots followed these riots.
Orange Riots of 1870–1871
Irish Catholics protested parades held by Irish Protestants—Orange Men—commemorating the Battle of the Boyne—the battle between Catholic and Protestants in Ireland. The brutal NYPD suppressed this riot that killed over sixty people, including women and children, and left over a hundred injured. Once again, the police fired into the mobs (Johnson, 2003).
State Violence in Labor Disputes: The New Dangerous Classes, Radicalized Workers, and Unions
Taft (1966) opines that U.S. labor/management disagreements have turned violent when unorganized strikes occur or when labor union recognition is disputed. In these incidents, the dangerous classes are radicalized workers of no particular racial or ethnic group. The only common factor in these disputes is that one group—radicalized workers or union members—have tried to change the terms of employment and that has been resisted by the other groups—management and owners. These disputes resulted in state-sponsored violence by the police, the militia and federal troops. The police of that time were conventional in their thinking and were antagonist to labor unions, radical groups, and racial minorities (Fogelson, 1977). The worst-case scenario of their contempt is the Great Strike of 1877.
The Great Strike of 1877
The Great Strike of 1877 is considered the most extensive, most destructive, and most frightening use of state power against citizens since the New York City 1863 Draft Riots (Stowell, 2008). What began as a nationwide strike in July 1877 against railroads pay cuts lasted several weeks. The strike spread to sympathetic wageworkers throughout the country as working-class consciousness recognized its struggle against the capitalist classes (Harring, 1983). The elite owners used the police as a weapon against working-class wage earners to break strikes and end protests (DeMichele, 2008). Although the Great Strike took place throughout the country, police violence against peaceful crowds was most evident in Chicago and Pittsburg. In Chicago, the police fired into crowds of protesters until they ran out of ammunition (Schneiroy, 2008). Thirty-five men and boys were killed, and several hundreds were wounded. In Pittsburg, combined police and militia killed an estimated one hundred protesters.
Police violence against citizens was justified by a new definition of the enemy—no class socialist immigrants. The new immigrant working-class wageworkers flocking into the industrialized cities were defined by the Chicago Tribune as “governed by their passions; they are coarse in tastes and vicious in habits; they are ignorant and revengeful; they are readily influenced by liquor” (Schneiroy, 2008: 95). Allen Pinkerton of Pinkerton Detective Agency fame and a supplier of strikebreakers proclaimed that the strikers and protesters were communists, tramps, and misguided unionists (Salvatory, 1976). Compounding their dangerous disposition was that many of the Chicago strikers were socialists and members of the Workingmen’s Party of the United States. The dangerous classes now included immigrants and socialists. In the twenty-first century, immigrants and socialists would return to the popular American definition of dangerous classes. Illegal immigrants were threatened with deportation if they did not cooperate with the authorities in these early riots as it is alleged they are today.
1897: Lattimer Massacre of Immigrant Protesters
An 8-feet rough-cut shale boulder is located in the small coal town of Lattimer, Pennsylvania. It commemorates the killing of nineteen immigrants from southern and eastern Europe on Sunday, September 10, 1897, by local police authorities. The immigrants had migrated to rural Lattimer to work in the deep, dangerous anthracite coalmines. At the time, immigrants from these areas of Europe were considered inferior with strange customs and a threat to native-born American whites—a dangerous class (Shackel, 2019). On the fateful Sunday day, about 400 miners rallied to march to the mine and peacefully protest for improved working conditions. Eighty-six armed deputy sheriffs and company police opened fire on the protesters as they marched. Nineteen of the peaceful marchers died that day and five more died later in the week. The sheriff and his deputies were tried for killing one miner in February 1898. They were acquitted after the defense attorney described the dead miners as “invaders from them steppes of Hungary” who came to America to destroy peace and liberty (Shackel, 2019).
1909 Pressed Steel Car Strike
The Pressed Steel Car Company located in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, was the largest railroad car producer in America. The company manufactured the cars on an assembly line. The work was dangerous, with an average of one person a day being killed from moving cranes (Pitz, 2009). The company was also well known for its low pay and peonage of its workers. The workers—unskilled immigrants from southern and eastern Europe—had to live in quarters rented from the company and buy their food from a “company
