How Riots and Civil Rights Go Hand in Hand

Sophie Hunka, Year 13, Gellhorn

“A system cannot fail those it was never designed to protect” is a quote credited to an American civil rights activist in the early to mid-1900s — William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. I came across this quote during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the US and thought of the irony that something said in the 1950s would still be so relevant today. The quote identifies a flaw in the status quo as the law in the US is based on a time when people of colour (POC) were considered to be inferior in the eyes of the law. An example of this is the ‘Jim Crow’ laws which were the legal segregation between black and white Americans These laws were meant to marginalise African Americans, denying them civil rights such as the right to vote or education. The Black Lives Matter Movement has been criticised by notable public figures such as the President of the United States Donald Trump and the Attorney General William Barr due to the violent nature of its ‘riots’. However, although the movement condemns and discourages such actions, I thought it would be impactful to highlight the importance of riots in history and civil rights. For this purpose, a riot is defined as a “violent public disturbance against authority figures”. A movement may turn violent for an array of reasons, such as being provoked by said authority or frustration due to a lack of response. There are three civil rights movements that I want to highlight in this article: the women’s suffrage movement in the UK, the Stonewall Riots, and the Soweto Uprising. They have all occurred in the last hundred years, are relatively well known, and were violent movements that led to change or acted as catalysts for change. The women’s suffrage campaign in the UK was a civil rights movement where women protested and rioted for their right to vote. It began in the year 1832 and lasted for another 96 years until 1928 when women at the age of 21 could finally vote without the need to own property, be married, or hold a position in the local government. The first petition was made by Mary Smith in 1832, arguing that women should ‘have a voice in the election of Members [of Parliament]’. This was the catalyst that started the ever-so-slow progress for women’s rights. It began with the Married Women Property Act, which allowed married women to manage their property and money. By 1894, women could vote for their county officials. However, this was still not true equality as women were still largely viewed as inferior and did not have a say in government matters, with their role being limited to caretaker and homemaker. In 1897, there was a peaceful protest that proved unsuccessful in changing legislation. Later, in 1903, the Women Social and Political Union was formed to campaign for women’s suffrage. A protest was able to be organised by the union to protest women’s rights but a riot broke out. Some acts included the breaking of windows, throwing of rocks, and women chaining themselves to the railings of the House of Commons. Women who were arrested for these acts endured hunger strikes which caused authorities to force-feed protesters in custody. The motto ‘deeds, not words’ took over the movement and acts such as burning churches, attacking politicians, and disrupting parliament became commonplace, though they eventually died down. It is speculated that the riots would have escalated had women not been encouraged to support the war effort. During this time, Prime Minister David Lloyd George was elected, and strides were made for the rights of women when he passed a bill in 1918 to allow women to vote at age 30, and 10 years later, in 1928, when another bill was passed to allow women to vote at age 21. It has been less than a hundred years since women have been allowed to vote equally in the UK, and although women’s rights have gone a long way, there is still progress to be made. Currently, women make up 34% of MPs in the UK’s parliament (the highest it’s ever been), despite making up 51% of the population.

In the late 1960s, the US was not widely accepting of the LGBT community, with LGBT activity being banned in almost every state. Businesses would be shut down for having staff who identified as LGBT and bars and nightclubs would be frequently raided for LGBT members. The Stonewall bar was no different. On June 28 1969, plainclothes police officers came to the stonewall bar and began arresting people in the club, including drag queens ‘masquerading’ as the opposite sex which was considered illegal. The police arrested a transgender woman named Storme DeLarverie, who resisted the arrest and is widely recognised as the catalyst for the riots.

She was known throughout the community for protecting lesbians and others in the community from harassment as well as for her androgynous fashion. As she was resisting arrest and calling out for help from the crowd, the crowd began rioting. They threw bottles at the police and slashed tires. The bar was set on fire and 400 people rioted, most being young, homeless individuals who had been kicked out of their homes for being LGBT. Stonewall Bar reopened 4 days later and became a hub of LGBT activism preaching ‘gay power’. Police would regularly raid the bar and teargas those inside to disperse the crowds. The newspapers reported the event discriminatorily, with the New York Times calling it “the forces of faggotry”, which caused small protests and calls for violence outside the news building. Although no major laws were changed as a result of the Stonewall Riots, it inspired the first Pride March in 1970 and acted as a catalyst to unite the LGBT community and its fight for rights. Forty years later, LGBT people in the US still lack fundamental rights. Laws allowing LGBT marriage and prohibiting people from being fired or refused service because of their gender identity and sexuality have only recently been legalised. However, it is still legal to refuse health care to people in the community and practice the ‘gay panic defence’. The gay panic defence is a legal argument where the defendant claims temporary insanity due to unwanted advances from someone of the same sex to excuse acts of violence. Approximately 26 transgender people have been lynched in the US last year alone. The Riots of Stonewall were an important step for the rights of LGBT people in the US but the country still has a long way to go to live up to the promise in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The South African apartheid was institutionalised racial segregation between non-white people and white people from 1948 until early 1990. Contact between the two groups was widely limited by segregating public facilities and housing and banning marriages between the two groups. The alleged purpose of the apartheid was to allow the races to “develop independently”, but this only caused people of colour to be forced into poverty. Although there had been multiple protests against the apartheid, the most notable one seems to be the Soweto uprising. On June 16 1976, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 black schoolchildren protested against a new law forcing children to be segregated to black schools to learn Afrikaans. The protest began peacefully and had the support of teachers and the Black Consciousness Movement,

but the police blocked the route of the protests and sent trained dogs to attack the protestors, who responded by killing the dogs. The police then escalated to shooting directly at the protestors, who were children. The violence continued to mount with 23 total people (mostly children) dying on the first day of the protests. On June 17, the police were heavily armed and patrolled the streets in vans, tanks, and helicopters. An example of violence from the protestors included the killing of two white people due to their being present during the protests. By the end of the second day, the government reported 23 deaths. However, it was later revealed that the true number of casualties fell between 100 and 700 people in total (including both police and children protestors). The movement gained international support due to a famous photograph of a girl carrying her brother who had been shot during the riots, which caused the United Nations Security Council to condemn the actions of South Africa. The Soweto uprising and shooting of black children caused numerous other uprisings such as the 400 white university students who protested the killing of children, a protest in Kagiso that led to the killing of 5 police officers, a fire set to the university of Witwatersrand killing 33 people in the building and more. Political and economical instability from the apartheid and protests continued until the 1990s, when the ruling government of the ‘national party’ negotiated with the African National Congress and other political groups, resulting in the first non-racial elections. These negotiations in addition to international scrutiny allowed the new government to repeal laws contributing to the apartheid. Though the apartheid has since been abolished, South Africa is still considered as being one of the most unequal countries in the world by the World Bank, which is largely due to the lasting effect of the apartheid. Areas that were set aside for POC still have a high rate of poverty with no signs of improvement, and POC still have a significantly smaller chance of having access to healthcare, electricity and a consistent water supply. The pattern throughout all these examples of protests is that violence was a key catalyst that inspired change and raised awareness of the lack of civil rights for women, LGBT people and black people. Although protests and riots incentivise change, thus improving the civil rights of marginalised groups, it is difficult to completely eradicate the inequalities faced by these groups because, as mentioned previously, “A system cannot fail those it was never designed to protect”. Throughout all these examples, although some change was made, it still cannot be considered true ‘equality’ because these groups still face varying levels of discrimination to this day. This is not to say that we cannot try or that protests or riots should be abandoned altogether. We, as a society, need to continue to listen to these groups, believe in their struggles, and advocate for changes in the system to decrease the inequality they experience every day. As the political activist Elie Wiesel once said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”