Reporters had trouble describing the epic racial violence and hostility that 40,000 black people brought to Virginia Beach in April of 2013. So let’s start here: Black College Beach Week was organized by black people, for black people, promoted by black people, on black radio stations, at black colleges.
They sent buses to pick up members of black fraternities and sororities. And they brought them all to Virginia Beach. And they raised holy, violent, unapologetic, race-conscious, hell.
Or as WTKR TV described the week: “Guns, knives, fights: Complete chaos.”60 Much of it was on video. Even so, every step of the way, local politicos and media types tried to minimize and deny the violence. And who was responsible. Let’s get a snapshot of what this rolling race riot looked like.
The family of Anas Harmache owns a restaurant in Virginia Beach. He posted a video on his Facebook page that captured some of black mob violence when dozens of people stormed his business.61
“These guys destroyed my family's store, beat a kid senseless, and put my dad's life in danger,” said Harmache. “When I called the cops not one person showed up.”
Note for the rest of the book: You have probably already figured this out, but “teens” equals black people of varying ages. Pre- and post-teen as well.
Nancy Rodio owns the Upper Deck restaurant and lounge. They got her too. When the local news found Rodio, the black news anchor started the story by describing the hyper-violence as “rowdy,” then she tossed it to one of her field reporters, Anne McNamara who took it a bit more seriously.
“The business owners found themselves held hostage in their own storefronts,” said McNamara. “And in some cases they actually got hurt.”
Now we meet Rodio: “She was assaulted by an unruly group of girls,” said McNamara ever so carefully.62
Putting aside the “complexities of race” that people in Rochester love to bleat about, here is a simple version of what happened: The black people did not want to leave. They did not want to pay. They did want to punch the 65-year old Rodio in the face.
So that is what they did, giving her a black eye. On video.
“When I turned, the girl spit in my face,” Rodio said. “She then threw her drink at me. Then she hit me upside the head” with a cell phone in her hand, she would later add. Only leaving when someone shouted the police are coming.
When they were not.
Rick Kowclewitch owns a surf shop in Virginia Beach. He told WAVY TV news that he saw things get “unbelievable” and “real ugly” around 10:00 p.m. He heard gunshots, saw violence, and commended the police for doing a great job in spite of being overwhelmed by this ocean of criminal activity. “I experienced this back in 1989 and this was the same magnitude.”
This happened before? That was news to most people depending on local news for that information. More on the 1989 nightmare in a minute. Back to the current victims:
“It was a nightmare, I’m surprised no one got killed down here,” said George Smith, another business owner. He said college-age kids were out of control.”63
"It was just so crazy," said bar owner Baldwin to the local ABC affiliate. "We actually had a fight break out in front of my business at Sandbar that the crowd busted in and broke my front window. So that's a thousand dollars per window."
How many stories of black mob violence do you want? Pick a number between 1 and 40,000: That’s how many there are:64 “I was scared to death,” said Denise Gordon, a manager for 18th Street Seafood Bar and Grill.
Though all those incidents happened late at night, Gordon said she’d noticed “rude, obnoxious” behavior around her restaurant much of the day. Fearful, she closed the restaurant at 8 p.m., two hours earlier than usual for a Saturday.
Gordon then said she called for security to help employees get to their cars after closing. “It was so crazy, I don’t even know how to describe it,” she said. Without describing the violent visitors as black people, that is. Want to know how crazy it was? They closed the liquor stores.
Kathy Grissom owns Pirate’s Paradise Mini Golf. She spent the riot fixing up the walking wounded that collapsed in front of her business. You can see it on video. The next day, she watched, speechless, as her security videos showed the same people breaking in and stealing more than a dozen bikes she rented to tourists. 65
On Fox43 news, a black woman said mayhem and lawlessness at Beach Week is nothing to worry about. "I think it's still fun," said Kharizma Jackson. "It happens when you get a lot of people together this stuff happens everywhere you go. It's like that."66
Black mob violence is normal. Funny how often I hear that. Funny how often no one disagrees.
Laurette LaLiberte, on Facebook, also said this kind of racial violence is becoming a regular feature of life in Virginia Beach: “My son was jumped a few months ago... 6 guys... right down the block from [this video] ... Robbed him and they kept kicking and beating him even after he was unconscious... he was in the hospital a week and had hemorrhaging on his brain... they haven't caught those punks either.”67
City officials downplayed the violence for as long as they could, even after videos began flooding YouTube and Facebook. “The events that transpired Saturday evening into early Sunday morning at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront should in no way, shape or form be compared to Greekfest 1989,” said Mayor Will Sessoms. “The disruption at the Oceanfront was just that — a disruption.”68
People from Greece were rioting in 1989?
Uh no. More in a minute.
The mayor even told one reporter that the victims of violence and visitors were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the same thing happened to him once in Cancun. “That wasn’t the right time for me to be there,” said the mayor. 69
Perhaps future visitors to Virginia Beach should call ahead, presumably to see if any riots are on the schedule.
Some local reporters pitched in, and did what they could to minimize the violence. While introducing a segment on the mayhem, black anchor Don Roberts of WAVY reminded everyone that they really had no idea whether the “students” were in fact responsible for the violence.
Students equal black people. At least they did that weekend. You knew that Don. But you would not say it.
This is favorite technique of the deniers: Ignore the evidence, then say the evidence does not exist.
Reporters did their damnedest to pretend the crowd just “happened to be black.” And this kind of racial violence had never happened in their comfortable beach town before. Not even during the black college student riot called Greekfest in 1989.
But the locals knew city officials and reporters were wrong on all counts. And readers were not buying it.
Daniel Johnson was one of dozens eager to talk about the widespread chaos, danger, thefts and violence during College Beach Week -- which was supposed to be a time when black students could “blow off some steam” before final. 70
As the week after the riot wore on, more and more locals began to reveal how bad it really was. Far different than the “spot of bother” narrative the local media was spinning: Said Gigi at WND.com:
I was in Virginia Beach that very night and I can tell you it was incredibly frightening. There was definitely a mob mentality. Kids were jumping on moving vehicles, walking through 4 lanes of traffic.
You could just feel this building insanity. I had one car come flying at my vehicle, turn sideways and almost hit me. I'm not doing it justice.
I felt VERY unsafe! I and my money will NEVER return to VA beach because of that craziness and the intimidating people.71
Others took to Facebook and the local news sites to say what the local reporters could not. Or would not.
“Because it was a group of young black college people, everyone is scared to say anything for fear of being called a racist,” Johnson said in a post to a news story at the Virginian-Pilot. 72
“It is what it is - these people come to the Beach and do everything in their power to intimidate the local and visiting white people at the Beach - rude - disrespectful - dirty and violent --- They come here and treat our beach like a toilet.”
Police reported 900 emergency calls to 911 Saturday night -- not the 325 widely reported -- involving at least three shootings, three stabbings and three robberies. (I listened to six hours’ worth of them.)
All during a six-hour period. That they know of. One reader at WND said there were many more:73
The reported crimes of three shootings, stabbings, and robberies are just a sample size of what went on this weekend. The police were so overwhelmed, emergency calls were not getting through and even calls of "shots fired" were not responded to.
The major artery to the resort area was even closed, as the interstate to there was shut down from miles away for hours.
Conscious of the paper’s history of deleting comments that refer to race, Mark Morrell testified anyway:74
“PSA: There were no persons of any other race on the videos perpetrating those crimes. None. Not stealing the bikes, or starting the brawls, or any other illegal, crazy action. Have I mentioned any race at all? Nope!!! Because you know exactly what I'm talking about, I most certainly don't have to. You can identify me all you want, I'm not scared, and I don't hide behind my screen - or my newspaper. There is an elephant in the room, Pilot. WHATCHAGONNADOOOOO ABOUT IT???”
In a community meeting a week later, 700 locals let loose: They talked about:
Unreported violence.
Racial slurs.
War zones.
Guns shots.
Hotel havoc.
Boardwalk brawls.
Cowardly media.
Happening a long time.
People dining and dashing. And laughing.
Not just this weekend, other weekends too.
White cops could not handle a black situation.
People were beat and no one arrested.
And dope, lots and lots of dope smoking.
But above all: ‘How did we let this happen to us?’
One after another, for hours. But they were mostly talking to themselves and reporters. The mayor and members of the city council were no-shows after trying to convince meeting organizers to cancel the event to avoid bad publicity.
That is, anyone foolish enough to tell the truth. And the video is gone. Of the meeting that is. The riot videos are not.
Kenneth Darden told the Virginian-Pilot that anyone who notices that all the lawbreakers were black is a racist:75
“Being a black male, I am insulted reading your comments because they are very degrading and assumes that white kids are not capable of doing such things. Well let me tell you, all you have to do is come to Ocean View any day of the week and see for yourself how wrong you are!”
Yeah: I get that a lot. But never with videos. Or links. Even one. I have a few we’ll see later. Spoiler alert: White riots are disappointingly tepid.
This is not a book or history or sociology or Colin Flaherty’s patented instant solutions to the problem of racial violence. This is a record of what is happening now. Even so, some of the old-timers in Virginia Beach thought it was worth remembering the last time a large crowd of black college students came to town bent on mass destruction.
It was 1989. Back then, they called it Greek Week. One of dozens of such gatherings of black college fraternities and sororities up and down the East Coast over a several year period. All leaving crime, trash, destruction, and excuses in their wake.
All.
Twenty years after the fact, a reporter suddenly discovered Greek Week was a multi-ethnic funfest that some people mistakenly thought was some kind of race riot:76
“Way too many people showed up for an end of the summer celebration in Virginia Beach during the 1989 Labor Day Weekend. Yes, many were black fraternity members (hence the "Greek" in "Greekfest), but there were lots of non-students as well. People just wanting to drink, flirt, and hang out. I'm convinced there had to be a few Renaissance fair actors in the mix. And maybe some flamboyant tap dance instructors.”
Isn’t that a cute lie.
But during that time, no one questioned or poked fun at whether 50,000 to 100,000 black people were creating incredible levels of mayhem by destroying 100 shops, fighting cops, breaking the law.
They killed a horse. They threw a huge brick at its head.
All while blasting out the two big hits of that summer: Fuck the Police and Fight the Power, from the Spike Lee movie sound track, Do The Right Thing.
Afterwards, most of the media discussion centered on how the people of Virginia Beach must be racists to have caused such an outbreak. Many of the students blamed the locals for not making them feel welcome.
If you are playing a drinking game, please do not guzzle whenever you hear someone say they committed violence because the people who live there did not make them feel welcome. You will be way too drunk to finish this book.
There are so many contemporary accounts of Greekfest. This one from a police blog.77
I was living in Va. Beach when we had the riots. It started off as 'Greekfest' whereby mostly black fraternities would come to the Beach every Labor Day. Thousands of young college age people would pack the Beach oceanfront every year (mostly students from historically black colleges, such as Norfolk State, Hampton, Howard, etc.)
The crowds got rowdier and larger, the year of the riots the crowd was estimated at 100,000. Anyway, some drunken student fell from a balcony and when the ambulance responded a crowd that had formed began throwing bottles and other debris.
The crowds began throwing rocks through store windows and looting the stores. Cars would pull up and everyone would jump out and do a 'smash and grab'.
While reporters try to convince us that Greek Week 1989 was really a mis-remembered collection of rowdy belly dancers, other residents insist it really began in the years before: By 1988, large groups of black people were looting stores in the middle of the day, vandalizing hotel rooms, destroying property, and police took a hands-off attitude.
Everyone involved on the wrong end of this mayhem agrees on this: White Racism caused it all. How about an eyewitness account: