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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

2. The Big Apple’s Straw Hats Unrest Put Pittsburgh to Shame

Article on the Straw Hat Riots. New York Tribune

New York City kicked off the Straw Hat Riot by targeting some dockworkers. The dockworkers did not see the humor in it, got mad, and fought back. Things escalated, and that night, widespread mayhem and crime engulfed Manhattan. After getting their asses handed to them by the dockworkers, the kids regrouped in ever-larger and increasingly more violent gangs. Soon, mobs of out-of-control youth were snatching hats off heads, attacking people en masse, and beating up any who resisted.

The Big Apple’s 1922 Straw Hat Riot went on for days. The initial unrest and mayhem on the night of September 13^th grew so widespread and got so bad that it halted traffic on the Manhattan Bridge. Police reinforcements were rushed in to end the rioting, but the relief was only temporary. The following night, the crime spree intensified when youth gangs returned to roaming Manhattan’s streets, some of them armed with nail-studded clubs. Straw hat wearers who crossed their path were lucky to get away with just losing their hats. The unlucky ones lost their hats and got beaten to a pulp.

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.