Thread by @1919raceriots

1. On Friday 6th June 1919, there was a #RaceRiot in the city of #Newport in #Gwent, #SouthWales. What happened in #Newport had a huge overwhelming effect on #RaceRelations for years to come. Here's a clipping from @nytimes about the #riot

2. As @renireni pointed out in Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race:

"Riots always seem to kick off in the summer." 🔥🔥🔥

In 1919, there were riots in:

🔸#Chicago
🔸#Baltimore
🔸#Omaha
🔸#Newport
🔸#Liverpool

+ and more

#Cymraeg #History #Cymru #Hanes

3. According to the #history, a #black man insulted a #white woman in #Newport, which lead to an altercation. It kicked off in #GeorgeStreet [see below], where 3000 white people formed into a mob and attacked the houses of the two black people on the street.

4. #GeorgeStreet is in #Pillgwenlly, which, to this day, is Newport's most racially diverse ward. Check out the information from @NewportCouncil on the #racial diversity in #Pil. What's changed in 100 years?

5. The white mob destroyed their houses, tearing out furniture and burning it in the street. Not even the piano was safe 🔥🔥🔥

6. People of colour fought back (obviously).

This article by @ShaheenCymru in @WalesArtsReview has written a fantastic piece on the #1919RaceRiots in #Newport :

walesartsreview.org/remembering-th…

#1919RaceRiots #Wales #Cymru #Casnewydd #Hanes

7. Two boarding houses were destroyed on #GeorgeStreet in #Newport. According to Jacqueline Jenkinson in "Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain 🇬🇧: 1919", up to two boarding houses were smashed up by the mob+ one of them was an Arab boarding house (probably Yemeni 🇾🇪)

8. Around the corner on #DolphinStreet 🐬, the mob attacked #Chinese laundries 🇨🇳 , cafes ☕️ and #Greek🇬🇷 owned boarding houses. In the South #Wales Argus, one rioter is reported to have said "we are all one in #Newport and mean to clear the n*****s out". Here's another map

9. @ShaheenCymru writes in her piece for @WalesArtsReview that @southwalesargus the next day ran a headline saying

‘White mobs wrecked so many properties that the town looked as if it had suffered an air raid’.

10. Around 30 people were arrested, and 27 of them were black.

Let me rephrase this 90% of all of the people arrested during the #1919RaceRiots in #Newport were black. The rioting crowd was a 3000 people strong and systematically targeting people of colour and their property

11. The #NewportRiot was just one night. It was relatively quiet for the next four nights across the ports in #SouthWales of:

🔸#Newport
🔸#Cardiff
🔸#Barry

It *was* quiet: but the impact of the evening of Friday 6th June 1919 is something #Newport has greatly struggled with

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