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Race Making, Improvementism, and the Cincinnati Race Riots and Anti- Abolition Riots of 1829, 1836, and 1841

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Race Making, Improvementism, and the Cincinnati Race Riots and Anti- Abolition Riots of 1829, 1836, and 1841 Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 1-1-2010 Community Development for a White City: Race Making, Improvementism, and the Cincinnati Race Riots and Anti- Abolition Riots of 1829, 1836, and 1841 Silas Niobeh Crowfoot Portland State University Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Recommended Citation Crowfoot, Silas Niobeh, "Community Development for a White City: Race Making, Improvementism, and the Cincinnati Race Riots and Anti-Abolition Riots of 1829, 1836, and 1841" (2010). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 3. 10.15760/etd.3 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Community Development for a White City: Race Making, Improvementism, and the Cincinnati Race Riots and Anti-Abolition Riots of 1829, 1836, and 1841 by Silas Niobeh Tsaba Crowfoot A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies Dissertation Committee: Carl Abbott, Chair Karen J. Gibson Michele R. Gamburd David A. Johnson Katrine Barber Portland State University ©2010 Abstract This project is an historical ethnography and a cultural history of the anti-black race riots and anti-abolition riots in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1829, 1836, and 1841. It is also a case history in an urban and commercial/early industrial context of the idea that violent social practices such as riots, as well as law and the customary practices of everyday living, are deployed as race making technologies , actually constructing racial categories. By extending this constructivist concept to the conversion of space to place through the human ascription of meaning, this study also examines racial violence as a strategy for place making - for establishing and maintaining Cincinnati as a white city, one in which the social practices of its white residents, including those of community development, consistently define and preserve the privileges of being white. Many sectors of the white-identified population performed this co-construction of race and place . Using a multi-disciplinary approach to method and theory, the discourses and practices of improvement - the community development of the period - and of race making in antebellum Cincinnati were analyzed using local newspapers and a variety of other published and unpublished sources from the period. Analysis of the overlapping discourses and practices of race making and the “Negro problem” and of improvement indicated that white Cincinnatians of all classes, men and women, participated in creating a local racialized culture of community development. This was a prevailing set of values and practices in the city based on assumptions about who i could be improved, who could improve the city, and who should benefit from the city’s improvements. The language of local improvement boosters was particularly powerful in synthesizing images of nation, region, and community in which a harmonious fit between the land, the virtuous population who comes to develop it, and the free and republican institutions they put on the land had no room for Negroes and mulattoes in the picture. White rioters, and those elites and city officials who enabled them to act, acted with them, or didn’t stop them from assaulting Negroes, mulattoes, or the abolitionists who were their allies, and burning and looting their property, acted within a socio- cultural context of widespread local economic and social boosterism and improvementism. Using their local common sense about race relations, as well as about improving the community, the white residents of Cincinnati enacted a public strategy of community development to attempt to achieve a city with few Negroes. Racialized community development, instrumentalized though the collective violence of race riots and ant-abolition riots, made Cincinnati a whiter city. ii Acknowledgements The work of researching and writing a doctoral dissertation is never accomplished without the important help of others. I would like to acknowledge the following people for their invaluable aid in preparing this document: my wife and soul-mate Katherine Bobula for her tireless support, far beyond the “call of duty”; the staff of the Ohio Historical Society, and particularly, the staff of the Cincinnati Historical Society (where I spent nearly three weeks) for their friendliness and professionalism; the staff of Interlibrary Loan at Portland State University for six years of diligence and good humor in finding many rather obscure published sources for my research; to geographer Rodney Garland for preparing my excellent and clear maps for me - any mistakes are my own; to the “Coffee Klatch” of dissertating urban studies doctoral students at Portland State University for their empathy and their collegial critique; and finally, but not least, to my dissertation committee of diverse and able scholars for their time and helpful comments. Any mistakes or omissions are entirely my own. iii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Tables ix Figures x Abbreviations xi CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 A. The Intensions of This Study 1 B. Design and Methods 6 C. Literature Review 12 1. Previous Studies of Nineteenth-Century Race and Anti-Abolition Riots 12 2. Improvement and Community Development in Nineteenth-Century America 15 3. Previous Studies of Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati 17 4. Previous Studies of Cincinnati’s Antebellum Race and Anti-Abolition Riots 21 D. Theoretical Orientations and Assumptions 25 CHAPTER 2: The City and the People of Antebellum Cincinnati To the 1840s 38 A. The Geography of Cincinnati 38 B. The People of Cincinnati 40 iv C. Class Stratification and Class Consciousness 57 D. The State of the City 65 E. The Inhabitants’ Sense of Cincinnati 73 CHAPTER 3: From Self to Community: Improvementism and Community Development in Antebellum Cincinnati 76 A. Introduction 77 B. Self-Improvement as the Basis of All Improvement 80 C. Improvement and Associations 86 D. Improvement in the African American Community 96 E. Abolition and Colonization as Improvements 106 F. Local and Internal Improvements in Antebellum Cincinnati 113 G. Boosters, Place Making, and the Community 119 H. Conclusion 128 CHAPTER 4: Racial Consciousness and Race Making in Antebellum Cincinnati 131 A. Introduction 132 B. Preliminary Thoughts on Identity and Race Making 134 C. Prejudice and Race Making in Antebellum Cincinnati 137 D. Anti-Prejudice Discourse and Practice in Cincinnati 158 E. Race and Improvement 165 F. Abolition and Colonization and Improvement Technologies 171 G. Amalgamation 180 v H. Booster/Improvers and the Discourse of Race in Antebellum Cincinnati 195 I. Conclusion 201 CHAPTER 5: The 1829 Cincinnati Race Riots 207 A. Improvement and the Black Laws in 1829 210 B. Public Discourse on the Black Laws and Negro Removal Before the Riots 223 C. The Race Riots of 1829 237 D. Mopping Up 242 E. What Really Happened 247 CHAPTER 6: The Cincinnati Race Riots and Anti-Abolition Riots of 1836 261 A. Cincinnati at the Start of 1836 262 B. Anti-Abolition Meeting at the Court House in January 273 C. April Race Riot 281 D. The July Anti-Abolition Riot 283 E. Public Discourse after the July Riot 288 F. Lower Market House Meeting, July 23 295 1. Call for the Meeting 295 2. Public Meetings, Improvement, and Public Opinion 298 3. The Lower Market House Meeting 301 4. The Committee to Speak to Birney 306 vi 5. A Meeting of the Mob 308 G. The Anti-Abolition and Race Riots of Late July 309 H. After the Riots, Blame to Go Around: Serious Games 318 CHAPTER 7: The Cincinnati Race riots and Anti-Abolition Riots of 1841 337 A. 1841 – A Violent Year 338 1. Violence Early in 1841 338 2. Lead-up to the Riots: Local Violence and the Black Laws 343 B. The Riots Begin 348 1. Friday’s Violence 348 2. A White Meeting and a Black Meeting 352 3. Saturday’s Tension: Rounding-up and Disarming the Men 355 4. Saturday’s and Sunday’s Riots 358 C. The Riots Are Over 362 1. Criticisms 363 2. Post-Riot Development Discourses 371 3. Discourse on the Black Laws 389 4. Discourse on the Mobs 393 5. Anti-Black Violence in the Region after the Riots 394 6. The Return of Booster Discourse 396 D. What Happened 396 vii CHAPTER 8: Conclusions 405 A. Improvement, Race Making, and Place Making in Antebellum Cincinnati 405 1. Improvement in the City 405 2. Race Making in the City 407 3. The Racialization of Community Development in Antebellum Cincinnati 410 4. Race Riots and Anti-abolition Riots and Race Making Technologies 416 5. The Riots as Community Development Strategies: Race Making as Place Making 418 B. The Implications of This Study 420 1. Implications for Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati 421 2. Implications for Contemporary Community Development 423 C. Suggestions for Further Research 424 References 426 Appendix: Individuals Who Figure Prominently in This Study 447 viii Tables 2.1 Population in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1819-1840 43 2.2 Population Statistics of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1810-1850 45 4.1 Population Statistics of Cincinnati, Ohio, by Decades, 1850-1930 149 ix Figures 2.1 Map of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1825-1841, showing wards and neighborhoods 47 5.1 Map of African American homes centered on Columbia St. (Second St.) and Western Row, area of general attack during the Cincinnati Race Riots, 1829 216 6.1 Map of identifiable locations of the Cincinnati Race and Anti-Abolition Riots, 1836 277 7.1 Map of identifiable locations of the Cincinnati Race and Anti-Abolition Riots, 1841 339 x Abbreviations CHS Cincinnati Historical Society (Cincinnati, OH) HCL Hamilton County Library (Cincinnati, OH) OHS Ohio Historical Society (Columbus, OH) xi Chapter 1 Introduction A.
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