Election-day violence is historically one-sided

It has never been an uprising against privilege. It has always been aimed at limiting how many people may vote.

As we steel ourselves for potential violence today and in the days that follow, we should remember that, if history is any guide, the threat won’t come from the left—defined broadly as protests against those who are more privileged—but rather from the right, or protests against those who are less privileged.

American history is of course not without episodes of left-wing violence—the Haymarket riot, assorted anarchist bombings in the early 20th century, Puerto Rican separatists’ 1954 shootings in the House of Representatives, the recent Portland killing of Aaron Danielson. But these haven’t been very common, and they were never prompted by presidential elections.

Election protests, historically, have targeted the expansion of the franchise, not its limitation, with the targets typically Blacks, immigrants, and women. In throwing punches, election-day rioters have punched down rather than up, the most preposterous instance being the Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000, in which a bunch of wealthy Republicans organized by Roger Stone shut down a manual vote recount in Miami.

The worst Election Day riot in history occurred 100 years ago in Ocee, Florida, as a follow-on to the horrific wave of anti-Black riots that followed the return of African American soldiers after World War One. A Black man named Moses Norman attempted, twice, to vote, and was turned away. A white mob gathered outside the house of a friend where Norman was rumored to have sought refuge and burned it down, along with two dozen other homes owned by African Americans and an AME church. The friend, July Perry, was lynched, along with an indeterminate number of other Blacks, perhaps as many as 60. The mob’s leader was subsequently elected mayor of Ocee.

For a fuller history of white racist election-related violence, click here.

Another memorable Election Day riot was Louisville’s Bloody Monday in August 1855. In this case the violence was aimed at Irish and German Catholics “and other Papists who aim by secret oaths and horrid perjuries and midnight plotting,” the Louisville Journal wrote, “to sap the foundation of our political edifices.” The interlopers were beaten and lynched, and in the end 22 people were killed. The candidate of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing party won the governorship in a landslide. A similar episode in Baltimore the following year left five people dead.

The chief episode in the U.S. of violence against women who sought to vote did not occur on Election Day because women were not yet eligible to vote. But it did happen in November—November 1917—after 33 suffragists from the National Women’s Party who’d been picketing for months in front of the White House (raising a banner at one point protesting “Kaiser [Woodrow] Wilson”) were rounded up, probably at Wilson’s request, and sent to the Occaquan Workhouse in Lorton, Virginia. On the so-called “Night of Terror,” Nov. 14, the women were subjected by prison guards to various kinds of torture, including being forced to stand all night, being forced to wear a straightjacket, and getting a head and arm slammed against iron surfaces. One woman suffered a heart attack. The following year a judge ruled the arrests illegal and Wilson, surrendering reluctantly to political pressure, endorsed passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, which was ratified in August 1920.

I have tried and failed to find persuasive examples of left wing Election Day violence. The worst recent offense was an episode in November 2008 in which two members of the New Black Panther party, one of them holding a billy club, stood in front of a polling station in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Philadelphia and shouted things like “You’re about to be ruled by the Black man, cracker.” The Bush Justice Department and congressional Republicans were incensed and filed suit, but in the end the Obama Justice Department concluded that this case was too chickenshit to warrant its attention (pardon my legal jargon) and satisfied itself with an injunction against the nightstick-wielder, King Samir Shabazz, from coming within 100 feet of a polling place. Shabazz had better behave himself today!

There’s a decent chance we’ll see a lot of marching in the streets in coming days, by groups on both the left and the right. But overwhelmingly, any violence that breaks out will likelier come from the right, and it won’t be from billy clubs but from the lethal weapons whose untrammeled ownership and display has become a central tenet of conservatism. White supremacist groups represent the most grave domestic terror threat, according to Trump’s own FBI (in a report that it was somewhat mysteriously unable to release before the election). The evidence from history concurs. If we see violence—and I very much hope we don’t—it will probably come from the people who don’t want to count votes rather than from the people who do. Because that’s the way it’s always gone before.