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Riots and Civil Unrest that Shook History

Khalid Elhassan January 13, 2021 33 min

Astor Opera House - Astor Place Riot — Authorities putting down the Shakespeare rioters. New York Public Library

4. The Steel City Pioneered Straw Hat Riots

Nineteenth century New York City thugs. American Yawp

One of the earliest recorded instances of widespread criminal unrest, violence, and rioting at the end of straw hat season occurred in Pittsburgh in the early twentieth century. On September 15^th, 1910, Felt Hat Day demonstrations were organized. Mobs descended upon the straw-lidded to snatch away and destroy their headgear. Some resisted the destruction of their straw hats and stood up for their right to wear whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, only to get beat up and nearly destroyed themselves by the demonstrators.

As crime and violence spread, some straw hat wearers used firearms to protect their headgear. Elsewhere in the city, some had their straw hats taken off their heads at gunpoint. Eventually, police were mobilized to disperse the rioters, and serious bloodshed and loss of life were narrowly avoided. The following day, many newspapers wrote it off as “youthful exuberance“. As the scale of the September 15^th rioting grew in subsequent years, however, the public’s and the media’s patience with such exuberance grew thin.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.