The Robert Charles riots erupted in 1900, lasted for four days, and marked some of the most violent days in New Orleans history. Representing some of the worst acts of interracial violence of the time, the riots led to an expansion of racist policies that placed further restrictions on Black Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Following an altercation between white police officers and a Black man named Robert Charles, the riots unfolded between July 23 and 27, 1900, in New Orleans. White police officers and white members of the public pursued Charles and, once he was found, engaged in a firefight outside of the building he occupied. However, hostility toward Charles spilled over into widespread threats and violence against the Black population throughout the city. Between Charles, white police officers, mob members, and innocent bystanders, fourteen people died, and dozens suffered injuries. Among white southerners the riots reinforced the racist ideologies established in the Jim Crow era and provided support for solidifying the racial hierarchy that discriminated against Black Americans in the form of segregation and disenfranchisement laws.

Initial Incident

The initial incident that led to the riots began with an altercation between three white New Orleans police officers and Charles. On the evening of July 23, Charles sat on a stoop in a predominately white neighborhood with his friend Leonard Pierce. Around 11 p.m. Sgt. Jules C. Aucoin and Officers Joseph D. Cantrelle and August T. Mora came across Charles and began questioning him. During the questioning Charles attempted to stand up, and one of the officers struck him with a baton. Bucking the expected behavior of Black men in the Jim Crow South, he pushed back against his treatment and pulled out a firearm. Charles and Mora exchanged several shots, and both men received injuries. Charles fled and eluded police.

A few hours later police tracked down Charles. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, officers interrogated Pierce. During police questioning Pierce revealed Charles’s address to officers. Police then proceeded to Charles’s last-known residence expecting to apprehend their suspect. Yet Charles, likely aware of the violent fate that often awaited Black men who killed white men, determined not to give himself over to the police. Charles fired his Winchester rifle at the group of officers as they approached his door. Two officers fell dead. Charles somehow managed to escape the police once again.

Four Days of Chaos

With one officer wounded and two dead at Charles’s hands, on the following day, New Orleans police began one of the largest manhunts in the city’s history. As the police continued to search for Charles without success, hundreds of white residents began to show up outside of the residence where Charles killed the police officers the previous evening. What began as general curiosity turned into violence. On July 24 white residents engaged in violent attacks against random Black New Orleanians. The sporadic attacks on the first day turned into a more coordinated mob effort to target Black residents. On July 25 a large white mob formed at what was then known as Lee Circle around 8 p.m. and rampaged throughout the city. They went to the parish prison and Storyville, in the city’s predominantly Black neighborhood, in their attempts to allegedly assist the police in tracking down Charles. Three Black people were killed on the first night of the white riots.

The New Orleans Mayor Paul Capdeville (also sometimes spelled Capdevielle) returned to the city the following morning and deputized an emergency civilian police force of fifteen hundred men, hoping to quell the violence from the previous day. This massive show of force quelled the violence of the previous days, but the carnage was not yet over.

On Friday, July 27, the police received an anonymous tip that led them to identify Charles’s location in an apartment on Saratoga Street. Several officers proceeded to the location, and Charles shot two of them with his rifle when they entered the building. Charles then moved to the second floor of the building to continue hiding out. The sound of gunshots and reports of two more slain officers spread quickly. A white crowd reportedly numbering in the thousands formed outside the Saratoga Street building where Charles hid. The armed mob and Charles exchanged fire for several hours. Charles killed three more white residents during this final exchange of gunfire before police officers set the building on fire. He was killed while attempting to flee. The white mob dragged his body through the streets. He was beaten and shot a reported thirty times before officials brought his body to the city morgue. After four days the violence of the so-called Robert Charles Riots ended. But not before members of the white mob burned the Thomy Lafon School, one of the best schools for Black students in the state, to the ground.

In the wake of the violence, reports claimed that white mobs or police killed seven Black people and injured dozens more, although historians suggest the death toll was likely higher. Charles killed seven white New Orleanians during the riots, including four police officers.

Interpreting Robert Charles and the “Riots”

How Charles and the four days of violence were remembered remains contested. Initially New Orleans police and the white public branded Charles a crazed Black man who plunged the city into days of chaos. Yet, within the Black community at the time, Charles emerged as a folk hero. The famed anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote a searing retelling of the riots in which she declared Charles a victim of overly zealous and violent policing by a Jim Crow regime dedicated to white supremacy. To Wells and many other Black Americans, Charles was a courageous man who refused to cow to the dictates of an unjust and racially discriminatory system and who acted in self-defense.