Lombard Street Riot

The Lombard Street riot was a three-day race riot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1842. The riot was the last in a 13-year period marked by frequent racial attacks in the city. It started on Lombard Street, between Fifth and Eighth streets.

In the early decades of the 19th century, there were significant increases in the city's African-American population as large numbers of freed and fugitive slaves joined recent immigrants in Philadelphia. During the twenty-five years prior to the run of riots, the city's African American population grew more than 50%. At the same time, there were increasing numbers of Irish immigrants who were also separated from the larger society by their insularity and ultramontanist Catholicism.

During the years immediately before the riots, there were periodic outbreaks of racial, ethnic and religious violence among Irish Catholics, German Protestants, African Americans and even pacifist Quakers. These were the result of social and economic competition, especially between Irish Catholics and African Americans, who were generally at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Many Irish refused to work on labor teams with African Americans.

Irish Catholics, often competitors for the lowest-paying, unskilled and menial jobs, perceived the city's more successful African-American residents as flaunting their success, setting the stage for blacks to become targets for the immigrants' frustrations and jealous rage.

On the morning of August 1, 1842, a parade was held by over 1,000 members of the black Young Men's Vigilant Association on Philadelphia's Lombard Street between Fifth and Eighth Streets in commemoration of the eighth anniversary of the end of slavery in the British West Indies. As the paraders neared Mother Bethel Church, they were attacked by an Irish Catholic mob. The rioters moved west, setting fires and attacking firefighters and police as they went, heading for the home of African-American leader Robert Purvis. Purvis and his home were reportedly saved from the Irish mob solely by a Catholic priest's intervention.

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