Racism-the scourge of our troubled times. In no place has this been more truer than in the United States, which has been anything but united, especially along racial lines.

This racially divisive nation has had a long, bloody and violent history in race relations. This was especially true at the turn of the 20th Century, when racial hatred reached a white-hot intensity and exploded particularly in the inner cities in a way that had not occurred in previous years up till that time.

From the 1870’s to the 1890’s saw a new wave of immigration as never before. Many of these new immigrants were from Europe, mainly from places such as Italy and Poland. Others were from Asia or from the Middle East as well from many other places around the world. Most of them migrated into the inner cities, which was already overcrowded with predominantly poor Irish and African American families living side-by-side in unbelievable squalor and filth.

The new arrivals were not welcome for the most part. Many were not accustomed to American ways and could not quickly master the language. As a result many were ridiculed and picked on and beaten up by neighborhood bullies simply because they were part of a different culture and were not understood by most of the local inhabitants, who did not want to understand them. They just wanted them out.

The ruling class of that time consisted of White, Irish Anglo-Saxon Protestants who considered others who did not fit their caliber of what constituted a human being to be worthless, meaningless trash to be trampled under their feet. Just like today, the poor were relegated to second-class citizenry in a society that claimed to value all of its citizens, but in reality was designed only to cater to the rich ruling class.

The early 1900’s was not a political correct society. Racism then was very open and unabashedly blatant. all sorts of hateful racial epithets were openly used in those ugly times, such as “Wop”, “Kike”, “Mick”, “Chink” and “Pollack”, racist terms used for Italians, Jews, poor Irish, Chinese and Polish as well as many other racist nicknames for other racial groups. These ugly terms are very disturbing to people today in our society, but in early 1900’s America, they meant virtually nothing. Because the system back then was then geared to benefit mainly rich or well-to-do Whites or in some cases even poor Whites-as long as they were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The above nationalities had little or no rights at all.

Undoubtedly the most hated and despised racial group were African Americans, then referred to as Negroes. Even though in actuality Blacks were among America’s first citizens, they were treated as virtual non-citizens, non-human beings. In fact they were held in bondage against their own free will for over 250 years before they were finally freed from this slavish condition.

But in many respects they really weren’t free at all. Even though it had been 35 years since the end of The Civil War and more than 35 years since the last major race riot in the United States, The Draft Riots of 1863 in New York City, the conditions of Blacks hadn’t changed all that much. Though they had made some strides in social progress, they were still being treated harshly and inhumanely. In the South, they had absolutely no rights at all; Whites could do to Blacks whatever they felt like doing, and that is exactly what they did, as testified by the number of lynchings of that time, which for racist Whites of that time was like a hobby or passion.

Unlike the previous-mention ethnic groups, African Americans were relegated to the harshest of racial epithets, being casually called “Niggers” or “Coons” and far-worser names than all the ethnic groups put together. In the North, where many of migrated mainly to escape the institutionalized racism in the then-“Jim Crow” South, they weren’t treated much differently. As more and more Blacks began to migrate into the inner cities, they were met with hostile resentment from the poor White inhabitants, who themselves were targets of racial discrimination by their own people, who were ruling over them. Besides, they could barely get along with the Blacks who were already living alongside them, and now they had to deal with a wave of more Blacks.

By the early 1900’s the racial tensions between Blacks and Whites began to reach a boiling point. Race riots began to break out. One notable race riot happened 109 years ago, today, August 12, 1900, in New York City.

African Americans in New York City in 1900 lived from the Lower West Side up into the section known today as Hell’s Kitchen, or roughly from above West 23rd (called “The Tenderloin Section”) Street to 53rd Street, from Sixth Avenue to the Hudson River, which was then much, much poorer than it is today. With no air conditioning or fans then, it was a lot more humid and stickier. So like a lot of people do today, a lot of the locals hung out on the stoops and street corners, to beat the heat, with nothing to do and no particular place to go. The poor Irish-who weren’t any better off than their equally-poor Black counterparts-were looking for an excuse to drive Blacks out of “their neighborhood”.

They got one on the night of August 12, 1900, when a young African American man in his early 20’s named Arthur Harris, got into an altercation with a White undercover policeman named Robert Thorpe on the corner of 41st Street and Eighth Avenue (near the site of New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, built 50 years later) because he thought that Thorpe was harassing his common-law wife (which he probably was, given those racially tense times), whom Thorpe had mistaken for a prostitute (in 1900, a woman seen on the streets without a male escort was almost immediate assumed to be a prostitute,or a “Lady of the Evening”, as were referred to, because then it wasn’t considered “ladylike” for a woman to be seen on the streets of New York alone at night , especially if she was Black).

Harris and Thorpe got into a scuffle in which Harris, not realizing that Thorpe was a New York City undercover cop, pulled out a penknife and stabbed Thorpe. Thorpe appeared to sustain his wounds, but his condition worsened and he died a few hours later. When word reached the White Community that a Black man had killed a White police officer, the White Community exploded. African Americans were attacked at random everywhere they were seen, they were beaten senselessly on the streets and even pulled from street cars and kicked and savagely beaten by angry white mobs. To protect themselves, the Black Community had to fight back, and fight back they did. Finally, Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, the future President, called for calm and civility in the streets, sending extra re-enforcements to insure that. It was ultimately a torrential downpour that broke the heat wave and the wave of racial violence a few days later.

Things were never the same in Hell’s Kitchen again. Many African Americans were determined to leave the community for good. By 1904 many had moved to a former suburb originally inhabited by rich Whites but because of the high real estate values moved them further up to the Bronx. When they moved out, the real estate values were suddenly lowered and Blacks began to move there in droves. It was called Harlem.

Though that horrific incident happened nearly 110 years ago, there has been many racial tensions and riots since then, which increased in intensity during World Wars One and Two and especially in the racially turbulent 1950’s and 1960’s. But particularly since the 60’s many people have become more and more racially conscious and have tried to sincerely effect racial healing.

Today, racism is nothing like the blatant, ignorant racism of the early 20th Century. This is not your grandparents or great-grandparent’s racism, but it is not entirely gone, either. In fact in some ways it may be more common today than back then, only it’s more subtler, craftier, more underhanded than in previous generations, like the way a mugger may take a unsuspecting person off-guard, from behind, when they think no one else is watching. Make no mistake it, racism is not “over”. It will take a lot more than human efforts to end racism. The solution ultimately will be a much-more powerful, superhuman means.