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Abstract
On May 14, 1838 abolitionists, black and white, converged in Philadelphia for the dedication of a newly erected building constructed as a meeting place to freely exchange ideas about liberty and equality for all. Three days later, on May 17th, the building was in ashes, burned to the ground by a white mob while government officials did little to intervene. Philadelphia, the former capital of the nation known throughout the country as a beacon of freedom and hub of abolitionism, became another setting of collective racial violence fueled by white rage. In response to the events, abolitionist Frederick Douglass condemned Philadelphia scathingly writing, “Shame Upon the Guilty City!” Almost two centuries later, the nation’s Capitol and symbol of liberty was besieged by a wrath-filled, mostly white mob in a manner similar to the Philadelphia riot of 1838. The preconditions of both violent attacks, the role of the state in their unfolding, and subsequent historical amnesia in their wake underscore the cyclical nature of white rage. This article argues that analyzing the example of Pennsylvania Hall’s destruction alongside the Capitol insurrection reveals historical trends within violent rioting incited by threats to the status quo of white hegemony.
Notes
1 “President-elect Biden Remarks on U.S. Capitol Protesters,” January. 6, 2021, C-Span, video, 1:33–42; 3:23–8, https://www.c-span.org/video/?507742-1/president-elect-biden-at-hour-democracy-unprecedented-assault
2 Frederick Douglass, “Philadelphia,” The North Star, October 19, 1849.
3 See Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, rpt. (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).
4 See Dylan Rodriguez, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020); Sheila Smith McKoy, When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Cultures (Minneapolis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001); Michael J Pfeifer, Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South (Baltimore: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
5 Anne Bonds and Joshua Inwood, “Relations of Power: The U.S. Capitol Insurrection, White Supremacy and US Democracy,” Society and Space 42, no. 2 (August 9, 2021).
6 Gary Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 173–5; Ira Berlin, “Slavery, Freedom, and Philadelphia's Struggle for Brotherly Love, 1685–1861,” in Antislavery and Abolitionism in Philadelphia: Emancipation and The Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love, eds. Richard Newman and James Mueller (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 25.
7 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 26–8; Nash, Forging Freedom, 62–6, 173–5, 181–3; Richard Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), ch. 3.
8 Erica Armstrong Dunbar, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 132–7; See also Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 165–82.
9 “For the Colored American,” The Colored American, August 18, 1838.
10 Koritha Mitchell, Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 3–4.
11 Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro, 25–31.
12 Berlin, “Slavery, Freedom, and Philadelphia's Struggle for Brotherly Love,” 25. See also Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism, 7–10; Beverly Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall: A “Legal Lynching” in the Shadow of the Liberty Bell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), ch. 3.
13 David Walker, Appeal, In Four Articles, Together with A Preamble to The Colored Citizens of The World, revised ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 2011), 70.
14 “Opening of the Hall” The Pennsylvania Freeman, May 17, 1838.
15 Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, 125–6, 133–4.
16 Anderson, White Rage, 3–4.
17 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, reprint (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 8–9.
18 It should be noted that whiteness is a complex historical construction with immigrant groups like the Irish being integrated into white racial categories over the course of the nineteenth centuries. This process has been examined by pioneers of “whiteness studies,” perhaps most notably David R. Roediger and George Lipsitz. See David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso Books, 1991); George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998) More recently Nell Painter has provided a comprehensive analysis of the historical formation of whiteness in her seminal work The History of White People.
19 Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro, 26.
20 Ibid, 27–8; Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, 73–8, 80–2; “Philadelphia Riots–Second Night,” Easton Gazette (Easton, MD), August 23, 1834: 2.
21 “American Face of Insurrection: Analysis of Individuals Charged for Storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Chicago Project on Security & Threats, University of Chicago, 5–15; Scott Tong and Serena McMahon, White, employed and mainstream: What we know about the Jan. 6 rioters one year later,” Here & Now, WBUR NPR January 3, 2022.
22 It was not until the 1840s that abolitionist political power and influence began to grow dramatically. See Corey M. Brooks, Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016).
23 See for example, Steve Inskeep, “Donald Trump and the Legacy of Andrew Jackson,” The Atlantic, November 30, 2016; Dane Strother, “America lived through a Trump-like presidency before, with lasting consequences,” The Hill, February 24, 2019. For a discussion of Trump’s self-association with Jackson, see for example Jenna Johnson and Karen Tumulty, “Trump Cites Andrew Jackson as His Hero,” Washington Post, March 15, 2017.
24 Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Random House Publishing, 169; see also Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, 76–7. For an analysis of increases in violence during the Trump presidency, see for example Daniel Villarreal, “Hate Crimes under Trump Surged Nearly 20 Percent Says FBI Report,” Newsweek, November 16, 2020.
25 Anderson, White Rage, 170.
26 Nash, Forging Freedom, 246–8, 272–3. For an in-depth analysis of the myth of the disappearing white majority and its inaccuracies, see Andrew J. Pierce, “The Myth of the White Minority,” Critical Philosophy of Race 3, no. 2 (2015): 305–23.
27 Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, 114–35; “Riot and Arson in Philadelphia,” The Liberator, May 25, 1838.
28 William Lloyd Garrison, “PHILADELPHIA, May 18, 1838,” The Liberator, May 25, 1838; Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, ch. 5–6.
29 Jan Wolfe “Trump Wanted Troops to Protect His Supporters at Jan. 6 Rally,” Reuters News, May 12, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/congresswoman-says-trump-administration-botched-capitol-riot-preparations-2021-05-12/; Nicole Chavez, “Rioters Breached US Capitol Security on Wednesday. This Was the Police Response When It Was Black Protesters on DC Streets Last Year,” CNN, January 10, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-lives-matter-protest-us-capitol/index.html; Anna North, "Police Bias Explains the Capitol Riot," Vox News, January 12, 2021. https://www.vox.com/22224765/capitol-riot-dc-police-officers.
30 Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, 121–2. See also DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 29–30.
31 Philadelphia Co., Pa. Sheriff's Office and John Goddard Watmough, Address of John G. Watmough, High Sheriff, to His Constituents (Philadelphia, PA: C. Alexander, printer, 1838), 5. See also Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, 121–35.
32 Philip Bump, “Over and Over, Trump Has Focused on Black Lives Matter as a Target of Derision or Violence,” The Washington Post, September 1, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/01/over-over-trump-has-focused-black-lives-matter-target-derision-or-violence/; Tommy Beer, "Trump Called BLM Protesters ‘Thugs’ But Capitol-Storming Supporters ‘Very Special,” Forbes, January 6, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/06/trump-called-blm-protesters-thugs-but-capitol-storming-supporters-very-special/?sh=5f52d7113465.
33 William Lloyd Garrison, “PHILADELPHIA, May 18, 1838,” The Liberator, May 25, 1838; “Philadelphia Riot,” The Liberator, June 1, 1838; Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro, 29.
34 “For the Colored American,” The Colored American, July 28, 1838.
35 “Mob Law at the Capital,” The Colored American, Dec. 22, 1838; Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro, 29. On the resulting series of court battles see Tomek, Pennsylvania Hall, ch. 10.
36 “Philadelphia. Her Good Name–A thing That Was,” The Colored American, June 9, 1838.
37 Fabiola Cineas, “Donald Trump is the Accelerant: A Comprehensive Timeline of Trump Encouraging Hate Groups and Political Violence,” Vox News, January 9, 2021, https://www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-hate-speech
38 “Burning of Pennsylvania Hall,” The Liberator, June 15, 1838.
39 Anderson, White Rage, 176, 178.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Lawrence Dickinson
Michael Lawrence Dickinson is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was also the 2019-2020 Barra Sabbatical Fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His research examines black communities in early Anglo-American cities. His prize-winning book is Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680-1807.