Although baseball, Mom's apple pie, and the Fourth of July are staples in the cultural fabric of the United States, nothing is more American than race riots. Throughout the nation's history nothing has been more constant than racial warfare. In many ways race riots have taken on a life and a culture of their own.

The 1906 riot in Atlanta, Georgia, would set the stage for the majority of white attacks on African Americans. The conflict erupted on September 22, when approximately 10,000 whites, angry at a report that black men were allegedly assaulting white women, "beat every black person they found on the streets of the city." In all, twelve deaths were registered, at a time when African Americans had begun to assert themselves as men and women, shedding an image of compliancy. Two years later, a similar attack occurred in Springfield, Illinois.

The period of World War...