Philadelphia 1964 race riot

The Philadelphia race riot took place in the predominantly black neighborhoods of North Philadelphia from August 28 to August 30, 1964. Tensions between black residents of the city and police had been escalating for several months over several well-publicized allegations of police brutality.

This riot was one of the first in the civil rights era and followed the 1964 Rochester race riot and Harlem riot of 1964 in New York City.

In 1964, North Philadelphia was the city's center of African American culture, and home to 400,000 of the city's 600,000 black residents. The Philadelphia Police Department had tried to improve its relationship with the city's black community assigning police to patrol black neighborhoods in teams of one black and one white officer per squad car and having a civilian review board to handle cases of police brutality.

Despite the improvement attempts of the Philadelphia Police Department, racial tensions had been high in Philadelphia over the issue of police brutality. The Philadelphia Tribune, the city’s black newspaper, ran several articles on police brutality which often resulted in white policemen being brought up on charges of brutality, only to be later acquitted. The summer of 1964 however was at the peak of the civil rights movement with rioting breaking out in black areas of other northern cities such as New York, Rochester, Jersey City and Elizabeth caused by incidents relating to police brutality against black citizens.

The unrest began on the evening of August 28 after a black woman named Odessa Bradford got into an argument with two police officers, one black, Robert Wells, and the other white, John Hoff, because Bradford stopped the car while arguing with her boyfriend and refused to move out of the intersection at 23rd Street and Columbia Avenue. The officers then tried to physically remove Bradford from the car. As the argument went on, a large crowd assembled in the area. A man tried to come to Bradford's aid by attacking the police officers at the scene, both he and Bradford were arrested.

Rumors then spread throughout North Philadelphia that a pregnant black woman had been beaten to death by white police officers. Later that evening, and throughout the next two days, angry mobs looted and burned mostly white-owned businesses in North Philadelphia, mainly along Columbia Avenue. Outnumbered, the police response was to withdraw from the area rather than aggressively confront the rioters.

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