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Banished from Johnstown: Racist Backlash in Pennsylvania - Cody McDevitt.

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In 1923, in response to the fatal shooting of four policemen, the mayor of Johnstown ordered every African American and Mexican immigrant who had lived in the city for less than seven years to leave. They were given less than a day to move or would face crippling fines or jail time and were forced out at gunpoint. An estimated two thousand people uprooted their lives in response to the racist edict. Area Ku Klux Klan members celebrated the creation of a "sundown town" and increased their own intimidation practices. Figures such as Marcus Garvey spoke out in Pittsburgh against it as newspapers throughout the country published condemnations.

Johnstown was not alone in racial expulsion or violence during this period in the U.S. From 1919 well into the 1920s, racial violence en masse took place in numerous towns and cities across the country. East St. Louis, Chicago, Rosewood, Elaine, and Tulsa were just a few of the U.S. cities that suffered some of the most heinous race clashes and massacres in history. The Johnstown banishment was condemned in many newspapers and by elected officials in Pennsylvania and nationwide but it was also supported by those who felt that all Blacks should pay for the actions of one man.

Journalist Cody McDevitt has retold the story of Johnstown’s banishment by placing the events in the context of the time amid the continued struggle for equality and rights in a largely Jim Crow society. Using newspaper accounts, oral history, and archival documentation, McDevitt pieces together this story that had been missing from history and forgotten by the passage of time. Comparing with contemporary issues of police and African American community relations, White supremacy, economic strife, and the attack on voting rights, Cody McDevitt’s Banished shows that the events in 1923 are not so much dissimilar to today (History Press; paperback, 224 pages).