A group of boys started the riot by destroying a Negro resort.

A mob then proceeded to the Negro district, where white and colored men engaged in a fight with clubs and stones.
The next day the mob ruined the African Presbyterian Church and attacked some Negroes, destroying their property and beating them mercilessly.

This riot continued for three days.

A committee appointed to inquire into the causes of the riot reported that the aim of the rioters had been to make the Negroes go away because it was believed that their labor was depriving them of work and because the blacks had shielded criminals and had made such noise and disorder in their churches as to make them a nuisance.

It seemed that the most intelligent and well-to-do people of Philadelphia keenly felt it that the city had thus been disgraced, but the mob spirit continued.[19] The very next year was marked by the same sort of disorder.