Qualla: 1942 Phoenix Thanksgiving Day Riot

1942 Phoenix Thanksgiving Day Riot: Introduction

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0. The soldiers of the 364th Infantry Regiment had not been granted leave in over a month. On Thanksgiving Day 1942, their commanding officer finally approved passes for the all-Black regiment stationed at Camp Papago Park, along with a generous supply of beer. By 11 p.m., a routine arrest outside a downtown venue had spiraled into chaos. By dawn, three people lay dead, a 28-block neighborhood had been cordoned off and swept by police with machine guns and armored cars, and Phoenix faced a reckoning with the racial tensions that historian Matthew C. Whitaker would later call 'a foreshadowing of the long struggle for civil rights.'

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1942 Phoenix Thanksgiving Day Riot: Jim Crow in the Desert

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0. Phoenix in 1942 was a city of strict racial boundaries. The African American population numbered roughly 4,200, about five percent of the city's total, and residential segregation confined most of that community to an area east of downtown around Eastlake Park. The political clim...

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1942 Phoenix Thanksgiving Day Riot: A Holiday Unravels

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0. The trouble began when an infantryman attacked a woman with a bottle at a venue east of downtown. Military police from the 733rd Battalion attempted an arrest, but the soldier fought back and brandished a knife. A crowd gathered. The MPs fired shots, wounding the knife-wielding s...

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1942 Phoenix Thanksgiving Day Riot: Twenty-Eight Blocks Under Siege

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0. The riot scattered soldiers into Phoenix's African American neighborhood, centered at Jefferson Street and 16th Street. Police cordoned off 28 blocks, setting up a machine gun at the intersection. Armed with automatic weapons and armored cars, officers went door to door searching...

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1942 Phoenix Thanksgiving Day Riot: Aftermath and Reckoning

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0. The event made national news, covered by Time and The New York Times. Over 150 members of the 364th were arrested, though most were released quickly. Fifteen faced courts-martial; fourteen received prison sentences, and one soldier, Joseph Sipp, received a death sentence later co...

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