The Robert Charles Riots break out in…

The Robert Charles Riots break out in New Orleans on July 25, 1900.

Two days earlier, Robert Charles had been sitting on the front steps of a house in New Orleans talking with a friend, while waiting to rendezvous with his girlfriend, Virginia Banks, who lives on the block.

Three white police officers, Sergeant Jules C. Aucion, August T. Mora, and Joseph D. Cantrelle, investigating reports of "two suspicious looking negroes" sitting on a porch in a predominantly white neighborhood, found Robert Charles and his roommate, nineteen-year-old Leonard Pierce, at the scene.

The policemen questioned the two men, demanding to know what they "were doing and how long they had been there.

One of the two men replied that they were "waiting for a friend."

Charles stood up, which the police took as an aggressive move.

Mora grabbed him and the two struggled.

Mora hit Charles with his billy club.

Mora and Charles pulled guns and exchanged shots

Reports vary on who drew first; both men received non-lethal gunshot wounds to the legs

Charles fled to his residence, leaving a trail of blood.

At Charles' residence, two officers, Officer Lamb and Captain Day, arrived and attempted to arrest Charles, but he brandished a rifle and shot and killed them both.

Charles then fled on foot and the police initiated a manhunt.

On Tuesday July 24th, following the initiation of a manhunt, several New Orleans newspapers, especially the Times-Democrat, had blamed the black community for Charles' crimes.

Outraged white residents gathered in armed mobs and began roaming the streets, ostensibly searching for the fugitive Charles.

In the following days, several race riots occur as the armed white mobs confronted and attacked black residents.

On the night of the July 25, white mobs kill three blacks and wound six more so severely that they have to be hospitalized.

Five whites are also hospitalized, and more than fifty people suffer lesser injuries.