The Last Time New Orleans Rioted
One hot summer night in New Orleans in the year 1900, a Black man named Robert Charles and his roommate, Leonard Pierce, were sitting on the steps of an Uptown house. The area they were in was rich and white, a block or so from St Charles Ave. The two men were waiting for two women, whom they were acquainted with, to meet them outside of a house across the street. The two women worked for the owner of the house, a white women. This being the time before iPhones, Charles pitched a rock at the window, trying to alert the women of his arrival. A few blocks away, three white policeman received a tip of “two suspicious looking negreos” sitting on a porch.
The women didn’t come outside. If Charles and Pierce would’ve went home at that point, I wouldn’t be writing this piece. They continued to wait on the porch across the street. When officers arrived and questioned the two, they alleged that Robert “made a threatening move”, which made one officer draw his pistol. What he didn’t know was that Charles and Pierce also had guns.
Gunfire rang out…
Both Robert Charles and one police officer were hit. Leonard Pierce was arrested at the scene. What ensued next was a week-long manhunt, in which Robert Charles evaded the NOPD and a white lynch mob of over 1000 people, without ever leaving Uptown. When all was said and done, Charles had wounded over 20 members of the lynch mob, killing seven of them, including four policemen.
The final shootout occurred at a house on Saratoga street. A Black resident in the neighborhood tipped off the police of Charles’ whereabouts. A member of the lynch party set the house on fire, causing Charles to run out onto the sidewalk. He was shot hundreds of times, probably dying after the 10th or so bullet. Many whites felt that he should’ve been tortured to death instead. The mob continued to beat his dead, bullet-riddled body, to the extent that one couldn’t tell it was a human carcass anymore.
Still not satisfied, the mob continued to attack innocent Black citizens of the city. Over a dozen innocent Black people were attacked at the French Market, or pulled off of the streetcar, and killed. Thomy Lafon school, known as “The best Negro Schoolhouse in Louisiana” was also burned to the ground. The Black informant who tipped off police of Charles’ location was shot and killed by another Black citizen in retaliation.
After searching his apartment, and reading through his notes, police discovered that Charles was a supporter of the Back To Africa movement, which encouraged Blacks of the diaspora to leave America and return home to West Africa. Ida B Wells wrote of him, stating “White people may charge that he was a desperado, but to his own race he is The Hero of New Orleans”. Today, 1208 Saratoga Street is an empty lot, in a area that remains poor & Black, same as it was 120 years ago…
(Read: Carnival of Fury, by William Ivy Hair)
