Beaumont 1943: The Riot America Tried to Erase On June 15, 1943, a white woman accused a Black man of rape in Beaumont, Texas. When she appeared to identify her attacker from the jail, she couldn't point to anyone. Yet a mob of 4,000 destroyed the Black community anyway. This is the Beaumont Race Riot—one of America's most violent, least remembered acts of racial violence during World War II. According to documented historical records from the Texas Historical Society, Smithsonian Institution, a