Robert Charles Kills Seven Officers in New Orleans Before Being Shot

Robert Charles, a New Orleans Black man who had been reading back-to-Africa literature, shot and killed seven police officers and wounded twenty others after being accosted without cause. He held off hundreds of police for nearly two days. White mobs retaliated by killing at least twelve Black residents and destroying dozens of homes. Charles became a folk hero to some Black New Orleanians. Ida B. Wells wrote a pamphlet, 'Mob Rule in New Orleans,' documenting the white riot that followed.