Brownsville

Brownsville was a Black community on the south side, home to Clark College and Gammon Theological Seminary — a neighbourhood of professors, students and property owners.

On the evening of Monday 24 September, a posse of ten police officers and armed private citizens marched in, believing residents were arming for a counteroffensive. In the gun battle that followed, Officer James Heard was killed. So was George Union Wilder, seventy years old, who had escaped slavery during the Civil War and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Three militia companies then occupied the neighbourhood, seized weapons and arrested more than 250 Black men, including the professors.