Race Always Mattered: Black-on-Black Mob Violence and Interracial Relations in Kansas

This study examines black-on-black mob violence and situates it within the historiography of mob disorder in the United States more generally. Unlike previous such studies, this one employs intra-racial violence among blacks as a prism through which to explore interracial relations between blacks and whites. It examines the roles that whites assumed in these incidents, the objectives that they pursued, and the influence that they exercised over the trajectory of subsequent events. Rather than focusing on lynching alone, as have previous studies, this one addresses several non-lethal types of mob violence, such as beatings, whippings, and the like, as well as the threat of violence, as embodied in threatened lynchings. Moving away from the usual focus on the American South and the years from 1880 until 1930, this study examines the Midwestern state of Kansas in the years from 1869 until 1911.