Crowds began to join those already in that neighborhood, and they were made up of men and half-grown boys, usually in an angry mood. The citizens soon dispersed about the neighborhood, talking together, in small groups.
The presence of the police rendered any outburst impossible so they carried their destructive propensities into an adjoining district, and there commenced an attack upon houses occupied by colored people in Small Street between Sixth and Seventh. The inmates were beaten and put to flight, and their furniture destroyed.
From that place their ravages were resumed upon the colored residents in Seventh and Shippen Streets. Thence the destruction was transferred to “Red Row”—a block of eight houses on Eighth Street below Shippen.
The mob here made a discrimination. All the young colored men who could be found were brutally assaulted, because the colored youth were generally saucy and impudent, but the old men and women of color were not molested or in any manner injured.
During the proceedings “Red Row” was set on fire and all the houses destroyed. The mob had now become so infuriated that they were unrestrained even by the presence of police, and from the burning homes in “Red Row” they proceeded to Christian and Ninth Streets, where several brick and frame houses occupied by colored people were attacked.
Several of those houses were defended by the owners, and others who had sought refuge in them. Several shots were fired from behind doors and windows, and two persons in the mob were wounded. By the time the houses were finally entered the residents had escaped.
The houses in flames in “Red Row” had brought the firemen to the scene, but when they set up their apparatus, they were opposed by the mob. The hose was cut and no water could be brought into play. The firemen, however, fought their way and succeeded in saving from total destruction all the houses, except the one in which the fire was started. The mob became even more determined and attacked houses which had been passed by at the beginning of the attack.
By these occurrences the colored people in the lower part of the city were frightened to a degree of terror which had not affected them in previous years.
On the day after this riot hundreds of families moved out of the neighborhood, or, locking up their houses, sought refuge where they could find it. Numbers of men, women and children bivouacked in the woods and fields, and not a few fugitives were given shelter in barns and outbuildings.
On Tuesday evening, July 14, crowds again began to assemble in the vicinity of Sixth and South Streets, on the rumor that a house on St. Mary Street was garrisoned by armed Negroes.