She’s kind of silly this author because while nobody remembers those riots (I never heard of them before and the article tells us nothing about them) pretty much everybody who has studied US History, and many people in NYC, remember the “Draft Riots” that took place there over the drafting of soldiers for the civil war. They were anti-black inasmuch as many black people were attacked and the grievance of the rioters, who were to a large extent Irish immigrants, was that they did not want to go to war to benefit black people since I guess they perceived the war WAS being fought to end slavery even if that was not a stated goal at the time.
Now, somebody smarter than me can come on and tell me how much I screwed up my re-telling of the story of the NYC Draft riots, and that’s OK. But that’s my “recollection” of them and they are quite well remembered in history. But just not our gentle authoress of this piece posted here.
Your account of Draft Riots isn’t bad, but your timeline is a bit off.
The riots started 150 years ago today. (!)
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued in summer of 1862 and the final version January 1, 1863. So ending slavery had been an explicit goal of the war for a year when the riots started.
While the rioters targetted blacks, it was not really a race riot, as such. The mostly Irish rioters also targetted Protestants, cops, soldiers and anybody dressed better than they were.