Published by The Evansville Courier

While some thought the city's image was permanently tainted, others compared Evansville's trouble with similar conflicts around the country.

Indeed, articles printed in The Courier at that time illustrated that racial issues still stirred throughout the United States. A July 9 Courier headline read: "Auction Negroes Off For Farm Hands." The auction took place in Topeka, Kan.

On July 12, a frightening, graphic Courier story told of the public torture and murder of a black man in Bluefield, W.Va. The headline said, "Negro Cut Into Strips by Mob of Citizens."

Darrel Bigham has written that the riots and violence of that week in July badly blunted the development of Evansville's black business and professional community.

The city's reputation after the events discouraged skilled and professional blacks from considering Evansville as a place to settle, he wrote, adding that a few professional blacks who had worked in Evansville before the riots left town permanently.

One week after the race riots, Evansville's Republican City Council members proposed that any saloon keeper should lose his license if he "allows any Negro to sit or lie down at any hour, day or night, either in saloons or about the premises."

A month later, the Republican-controlled council adopted stricter laws regarding the sale of liquor and raised the price of a liquor license. Nonetheless, the city granted 276 licenses under the new ordinance.

Reports differ, but the death toll from the riots may have reached 12.

Lee Brown, a black man accused of killing a white police officer, was transported to a prison in Jeffersonville, Ind., and died from his wound on July 31. He never went to trial.