07.13_NYC Riots To Protest Draft Legislation

#OTD Several days of rioting began in New York City to protest the draft during the Civil War.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This day in Custory. July thirteenth, eighteen sixty three, several
days of rioting began in New York City as a
way to protest draft legislation during the Civil War. The
working class citizens of New York destroyed city property to
illustrate their anger over the implementation of the draft. The
disturbances quickly turned from being directed at policy to being

(00:23):
directed at blacks when the community became fearful that they
would have to compete for jobs with emancipated slaves. Mobs beat, tortured,
and in many instances killed a number of blacks, and
even burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum, which at the
time housed over two hundred black children and all. Two
thousand people were injured in the riots, and one hundred

(00:44):
and twenty were killed, eleven of them black men, by lynching.