At its height on the evening of May 11, 1970, 2,000 to 3,000 people participated, ransacking and set fire to White- and Chinese-American-owned businesses, damaging $1 million of property over a 130-block area.
[1] White police officers violently suppressed the riot, with the endorsement of Georgia governor Lester Maddox, shoot-to-kill orders from their captain, and reinforcements by the National Guard and State Patrol.
Despite the suppression, the riot fundamentally shook the status quo, galvanizing a new wave of activism that opened economic and political doors for Augusta’s Black citizens.
Police brutality and severe poverty were deeply woven into the fabric of White supremacy in Augusta, and they showed no signs of weakening as a new decade dawned.
Simmering tensions came to a head on the evening of May 9 when news began to circulate that Charles Oatman had been beaten to death in the county jail.
In a grim accident in late March, Oatman had fatally wounded his young niece in the kitchen of his family’s small house, but White authorities charged him with killing her and incarcerated him.
In the months that followed, all-White juries convicted the two teenagers charged in Oatman's death, over 100 people active in the riot, and the militants who declared “warfare.” The police captain was promoted to chief, the mayor lavished praise on the police department, and the media and political leaders depicted the riot as nothing more than inherently violent people, an angry mob, getting violent and destroying their own neighborhood, for no reason.
“The rebellion Monday, May 11,” a handbill circulating in the community that summer proclaimed, “was an effort of the Blacks in Augusta, in Georgia, and in Amerikka to seek liberation, freedom, and justice...The PEOPLE REVOLTED.”[10] Amid these changes, White supremacy showed its resiliency.
Rapid White flight to neighboring Columbia County undercut the gains of school desegregation, the Human Relations Commission was weakened and ultimately defunded, and divestment mixed with a fragile capital base decimated the once-bustling principal Black neighborhood.