My high school was in a fairly rural but rapidly growing county...primarily white, but like most popular suburbs at the time, was having an enormous and varying rush of new people in new neighborhoods, and it was bringing a very turbulent change to the community and specifically, to the high school.
The year I started there, it was about 99.999999999999% white, by my junior year, I'd say the population was about 90% white, but that change was very noticeable and dramatic. I played sports the entire time I was there (particularly basketball) so I guess I was kind of in a bubble of not really noticing the building racial pressure and tension. Then one day it literally toppled over in front of my eyes and it was pretty terrifying for about a week.
It started with a party, and a couple of the players on the basketball team being accused of statutory rape. The news was at our school, cops (back then this was weird as we still had people with gun racks in their trucks and it was not a huge deal at the time). I remember walking out of the gym after P.E. and seeing this group of around 50 black and hispanic students facing down about 150 white students...then a bunch of white students who supported the black students joined their group, and about 100 more opposing white students ran to the other side. This all happened in the main parking lot in front of the school, and the news trucks were swarming to get cameras in place to film what was about to happen.
Racial name calling started, then just a constant roar of profanity and then...a bottle of some sort goes flying towards the black students hitting one in the head, and all hell broke loose. I remember standing where the coke machines were next to the gym with a kind of deer in headlights feeling, and watched people just beating the absolute shit out of each other. People smashing others into car fenders, people getting trampled...and all the while, the new outlets were just recording away, not trying to stop anything...I look to my right and I see school teachers and administrators just standing there with absolute fear in their eyes...and the handful of cops that were there were radioing in for more units.
A few minutes later the county sheriff's department and about 10 patrol cars flooded into the parking lot and got the huge fighting mob under control relatively quickly. Ambulances came, people were being treated for all kinds of injuries and others were being arrested. I walked towards the front office to see if classes were still being had for the day (it was morning) and the lady said "Honey, you can go home if you need to.", and because I was 17, I didn't hesitate and was so excited to go home early.
The next day I found out that a few of my friends were suspended indefinitely and one of them was kicked off the basketball team for the incident. It really sucked because he was a big part of the team but he was also one of the main instigators of the fight and actually tried to start another one (while suspended) by coming to the campus and breaking a guys windshield with a rock.
Tensions fizzled down and my senior year was fairly uneventful. That day sticks out big time though because of how surreal it was. I'm glad that people still fought most battles (at that age) with fists instead of guns...these days, that fight could have been devastatingly violent, even deadly. Sometimes I'm really thankful I grew up in that time frame and not today.
TL;DR - Race war.