“P” is for Phoenix Riot

“P” is for Phoenix Riot. The Phoenix Riot occurred on November 8, 1898, in the small town of Phoenix in Greenwood County when a group of local Democrats attempted to stop a Republican election official from taking the affidavits of African Americans who had been denied the right to vote. When Thomas Tolbert, the Republican official refused to leave a local polling place, J.I. Bose Etheridge, a Democrat assaulted Tolbert who retaliated. Shots rang out and Etheridge was killed. White retribution was swift and severe. Over the next several days, a White mob of nearly one thousand burned the homes of local Republicans, lynched four Black men, and killed another eight. The Phoenix Riot is best understood as an exaggerated example of the everyday violence that faced late nineteenth-century African Americans in South Carolina.