The 1943 race riot in Beaumont, Texas, erupted on June 15 and ended two days later. It related to wartime tensions in the overcrowded city, which had been flooded by workers from across the South. The immediate catalyst to white workers from the Pennsylvania Shipyard in Beaumont attacking black people and their property was a rumor that a white woman had been raped by a black man. This was one of several riots in the summer of 1943 in which black people suffered disproportionately as victims and had the greatest losses in property damage.James A. Burran, "Violence in an 'Arsenal of Democracy': The Beaumont Race Riot, 1943", East Texas Historical Journal, 1976 Vol. 14, Issue 1, Article 8, available at ScholarWorks, accessed September 20, 2015. The first took place in the largest shipyard in Mobile, Alabama in late May; others took place in Detroit and Los Angeles in June (the latter was a different situation, in which white servicemen attacked Latinos in the Zoot Suit Riots), and Harlem in August. They were related to social competition and tensions arising from the wartime build-up. Some cities were struggling to accommodate the influx of black and white defense workers, dealing with shortages in housing and strained services.
