Unity101 Conversations

Chapter 12: The Newport Race Riots in Wales 1919

November 25, 2019 Jamie Baker Episode 12
Unity101 Conversations
Chapter 12: The Newport Race Riots in Wales 1919
Show Notes

The Race Riots in Wales in June 1919 started in Newport on the 6th June and despite crowds involving over a thousand white men and women, no-one was killed. Mary Ellen Sheedy (a white woman charged with riotous assembly) tried to set fire to a Boarding house and became the only woman in the mob to be charged during the riots in Wales.
The events in Newport have received little publicity in the last Century but the mob wreaked havoc in a very small part of Newport.
8 white men and 1 white woman were charged in Court, alongside 32 Black seaman.
The Black seaman had all served in World War One aboard the merchant ships, and some of them were to die in World War 2.