On this day in 1946, a race riot broke out in Columbia, Tennessee with a scuffle between a white clerk and black WWII veteran, escalating into armed defense by the black community against a white lynch mob.

Like other outbreaks of violence in the South in the immediate postwar era, this incident involved military veterans who were unwilling to accept prevailing racial norms upon returning to their hometowns.

The Columbia Race Riot began when a young white male clerk began harassing the black mother of WWII veteran James Stephenson. Stephenson and the clerk began to fight and the veteran threw the clerk through a window. He and his mother were arrested for disturbing the peace.

That night, a white mob gathered outside of the black-owned part of town, "Mink Slide". Rumors were that Stephenson may be lynched, and an armed black crowd began to gather as well. When four policemen tried to enter Mink Slide and refused demands to leave, they were wounded by gunfire.

The next day, several officers stormed the district, firing randomly into buildings, stealing cash and goods, searching homes without warrants, and taking any guns, rifles, and shotguns they found. When the sweep was over, more than one hundred black people had been arrested, and three hundred weapons had been confiscated.

In a highly publicized trial, lawyers from the NAACP managed to acquit 23 of 25 black people of attempted murder charges, and the remaining charges were dropped by prosecutors.