The Straw Hat Riot of 1922

You know in primary school when bullies would steal your hat and then chuck it around so you couldn’t get it back? Well you may have more in common with the men of 1922 New York City than you thought!

Straw hats had grown in social acceptance from just a summer boating hat to an acceptable warm weather option for men by the early 20th century. Social acceptance, however, had limits. Come September 15, straw hats should be tucked away till the next year. If a man was seen forgoing his felt or silk hat for straw, he faced ridicule, light bullying, and the threat of violent adolescents. The unspoken date for the end of straw hat season was completely arbitrary, yet resulted in surprising amounts of danger. Even the newspapers warned of impending risk as the date drew closer.

Youths in NYC made a game out of this social pressure. They would knock the straw hat from a man’s head and stomp on it.

The game started early on September 13, 1922. A group of kids stomped the hats of factory workers in Manhattan. When the kids moved onto the dockworkers, they fought back, and the rioting was officially underway. The fighting stopped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge and several were arrested.

Police did little to de-escalate tensions and fights continued to break out across the city in the ensuing days. Teens took to stalking the streets with sticks, some added a nail to the end for that special edge. Any man who resisted a hat stomping really drew the wrong end of the stick.

Hat stompers lined streets in their hundreds, even stomping the hats of the police who tried to intervene.

The eight day long violence resulted in many arrests, a lot of fines, surprisingly little jail time and a fair number of hospitalisations. But 1922 was somehow not the end of hat stomping. A guy was murdered for wearing his straw hat in 1925 and many hat stomping-related arrests were made in 1925.

The end of the game was not due to an investment into more traditional after-school activities, nor severe legal consequences. Straw hats simply went out of fashion, a frivolity of the Roaring Twenties. They live on in wanky private school uniforms and cottagecore Pinterest boards. We can only hope that primary school bullies don’t escalate to the straw hat-induced fury of 1922.

What

is your main focus in your community work and what you do?

“My main role is in innovation and education. I’m currently based at a secondary school on Hindley street, which is an odd placement for a school, but we work with young people, seventeen to twenty-four, whose potential wasn’t completely harnessed in the mainstream system. It’s a lot of reimagining the education system and looking at what needs to be done so that our state has an offering that encompasses the learning styles of all young people. Although it [the education system] does some parts really well, there’s a drop out rate of about ¼, which is really high for the population of south australia. We are looking at how to make the system inspiring and engaging so that young people want to be there and then graduate with skills that will allow them a higher quality of life and opportunities. My work is research in that kind of realm. I am also currently the curator of the Adelaide Global Shapers Hub. With that, you get to serve a twelvemonth mandate as curator, which affords you the really incredible opportunity to represent the state at the World Economic Forum The forum is about enhancing our leadership skills so that when we go back to our different cities around the world, we are working forward to drive dialogue and work on projects for the betterment of the community. Going to Geneva last year for the forum was incredible.It's pretty insane to even think that I went.”