🩸 When Black Labor Scared White Power: The Forgotten Massacre of East St. Louis
It didn’t start with a cross burning.🔥
It started with a job.
In the summer of 1917, East St. Louis, Illinois, exploded in one of the bloodiest massacres Black America had ever seen.✍🏾
Black families were slaughtered for showing up to work. Children were burned alive in their homes. Men were lynched in broad daylight. And entire blocks were erased by mobs who feared Black labor more than they valued Black life.
This was no “riot.”
This was racial cleansing, sanctioned by silence, and buried by history.📖
⚙️ Why Did It Happen?
At the heart of it: labor, race, and white fear.
As World War I drained the U.S. of white factory workers, companies like the Aluminum Ore Company and meatpacking plants began recruiting Black workers from the South—offering just enough money to escape Jim Crow, but still paying them less and treating them worse than white workers.
White union workers in East St. Louis went on strike, angry about pay and working conditions. Instead of negotiating with them, factory owners brought in Black workers to replace them—sometimes directly by trainloads, sometimes with help from labor agents sent into the South.
The result?
White mobs turned their anger not on the owners, but on Black workers—labeling them “strikebreakers,” “invaders,” and “the problem.”🤦🏽
The working-class solidarity that could’ve built power… was replaced by violent white supremacy.
🧨 What Set It Off?
False rumors, stoked by media and whispers, claimed Black men were raping white women—a classic racist tactic used to justify violence. In May and June 1917, tensions boiled. When two white officers were allegedly shot by Black residents defending themselves, East St. Louis exploded.🤯
On July 1, a white mob began attacking Black homes.💥
By July 2, organized caravans of white men—many from surrounding towns—drove through Black neighborhoods, setting fires, pulling people out of homes, and beating anyone in sight.🖕🏽
Men were dragged off streetcars and lynched.
Women were chased through alleys and beaten unconscious.
Children were burned alive.
Some victims had their heads split open with hammers and bricks.
Others were shot while fleeing across the bridge to St. Louis.
White police officers joined in, according to multiple eyewitnesses.👮♂️
National Guardsmen stood by—or worse, enabled the mobs.🪖
One mob was so massive it “cheered” as Black bodies hit the ground.
🔥 The Aftermath
The official death toll said 39 Black people were killed. But survivors, newspapers, and NAACP reports say 100 to 200 Black people were slaughtered.
More than 6,000 Black residents were left homeless.
Entire blocks were leveled.
The air was thick with ash.
Black families walked across the bridge into St. Louis with whatever they could carry—some with nothing but smoke on their clothes.💨
And the federal government?
Did nothing.
No real investigation.
No reparations.
No national mourning.
🖤 The Legacy They Tried to Bury
The East St. Louis Massacre is rarely mentioned in classrooms or history books. But it set a precedent: that white mobs could terrorize Black people without consequence, especially if those Black people were trying to make a better life.🖕🏽
This massacre was a direct precursor to the Red Summer of 1919, when cities like Chicago, Washington D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas, erupted in similar anti-Black massacres.
📍 Why This Hits Home
This story ain’t just history to me.
This is home.🏠
My grandparents walked those same streets.
My parents walked those same streets.
I walked those same streets.
And I’ve seen the aftermath.💯
East St. Louis today is a city hollowed out by decades of disinvestment. Factories are boarded up. Schools are underfunded. Empty lots stretch for blocks. Poverty is everywhere.
But so is the fight.💪🏾
The people here don’t fold.
They hustle. They grind. They build from the ground up—again and again.✊🏾
This city is full of fighters. Go-getters. Survivors.
And we wear that history on our backs.🤞🏽
✊🏾 This Is Why We Made the Fuck The Klan Collection
You can’t heal what you refuse to name.
You can’t fight what you refuse to remember.
So we remembered.
Introducing:
An unapologetic response to the violence they tried to silence. A tribute to resistance, Black hands, and unfinished business.
A reclamation of the terror they made entertainment. We flipped the image—and turned pain into power.
🩸 The Tyrone “F.T.K.” Johnson Tee
He might be fictional, but the swing is real. For every Black person who ever dreamed of delivering just one blow to the system that beat us down.
🎯 This Collection Isn’t Just Clothing
It’s truth-telling gear.
It’s resistance made wearable.
It’s a message from our people to theirs:
We know what you did.
We know where we come from.
And we’re still here.
Because like we always say:
The art should always reflect the times.
And in 2025?
This is how we feel.🤝🏾