Danville Riot/Danville Massacre, 1883

Q-54

The biracial Readjuster Party gained control of the VA General Assembly in 1879 and of Danville’s city council in 1882. In Oct. 1883, White citizens distributed the Danville Circular denouncing African American political power. A local Readjuster official publicly condemned the circular on 2 Nov. The next day, an argument between a White man and two Black men escalated into a fight here, outside the Opera House. White men fired guns, and at least one White and four Black men were killed. Democrats, blaming the violence on African Americans, won control of the General Assembly days later, leading to the demise of the Readjuster Party and an end to Black political power in VA until the 1960s.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Brendan Wolfe, “Danville Riot (1883)” 7 Dec. 2020, Encyclopedia Virginia https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/danville-riot-1883. Brent Tarter, The Readjuster Party, 7 Dec. 2020, Encyclopedia Virginia https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/readjuster-party-the. Jane Dailey, Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.) Danville Times, 9 Nov. 1883. New-York Tribune, 5 Nov. 1883. Danville riot, Nov. 3, 1883, report of a committee of forty with sworn testimony of thirty-seven witnesses, etc. (Richmond: Johns and Goolsby, 1883). Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States for the First Session of the Forty Eighth Congress, 1883-1884, Report no. 579. (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3985975&seq=64) Downtown Danville Historic District NRHP nomination, 1993.