Meanwhile, the four white-owned local papers, including the Washington Post, fanned the violence with incendiary headlines and calling in at least one instance for mobilization of a "clean-up" operation.

[3] After four days of police inaction, President Woodrow Wilson ordered 2,000 federal troops to regain control in the nation's capital.

Washington D.C. had evolved as one of the places in the United States where a significant number of successful African-Americans were living, with a particular concentration in the Le Droit Park area, near Howard University.

This area had originally been segregated as a white-only zone, but students from Howard University had torn down the gates as part of a wider initiative to desegregate the suburb in 1888.

The preceding weeks had seen a sensationalist newspaper campaign concerning the alleged sexual crimes of a "negro fiend", which contributed to the violence of the succeeding events.

[citation needed] The race riot started on Saturday July 19 following the incident involving Charles Ralls and Elsie Stephnick.

The mob of white Americans, mostly consisting of veterans, formed and started towards the southwest quadrant of the city, a “predominantly black, poverty-stricken neighborhood”.

Black Americans were “dragged from cars” by the veterans and beaten, and throughout all of this, there was little attention brought to the police [13] The violence continued to grow into Sunday.

He recalled that others were not so lucky and stated, “They had caught a negro and deliberately held him as one would a beef for slaughter, and when they had conveniently adjusted him for lynching, they shot him.

[14] In response to the second night, The Washington Post ended up releasing a headline “Mobilization for Tonight” that called for all servicemen to commune on Pennsylvania Avenue around 9:00pm.

[2] After claiming to see gunshots coming from the window, police raided the home of 17-year-old black girl, Carrie Johnson and her father.

[16] The NAACP sent a telegram of protest to President Woodrow Wilson:[17][18] ...the shame put upon the country by the mobs, including United States soldiers, sailors, and marines, which have assaulted innocent and unoffending negroes in the national capital.

Crowds are reported ...to have directed attacks against any passing negro....The effect of such riots in the national capital upon race antagonism will be to increase bitterness and danger of outbreaks elsewhere.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People calls upon you as President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the nation to make statement condemning mob violence and to enforce such military law as situation demands...On November 1, 1919, Albert Valentine Connors, 1014 Pennsylvania Avenue southeast, a park policeman, was assaulted by a crowd of African-Americans in an alley near Seventh and K streets southeast, shortly after noon.

[19] At the time of the Washington Race Riot, Walter White was the assistant executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

While tensions were always high between whites and blacks during American history, these issues began to grow during the Jim Crow Era.

The Washington Race Riot was a clear example of what occurred when agitation built up and exploded" Economic competition connects to the previous cause.

Due to the influx of black southerners to northern towns (the Great Migration), many different economic and social changes were occurring.

Richard B. Freeman, a professor at Harvard, describes this situation in the 1960s in the quote, “blacks had markedly lower incomes than whites, on average and within comparable occupational or educational groups”.

White people’s anger at blacks due to the color of their skin as well as the changes that were occurring in the nation lead to their many outbursts of violence.