But it also galvanized blacks to defend themselves and their neighborhoods with fists and guns; reinvigorated civil rights organizations like the NAACP and led to a new era of activism; gave rise to courageous reporting by black journalists; and influenced the generation of leaders who would take up the fight for racial equality decades later. A Brooklyn choral group performed Red Summer-theme songs like "And They Lynched Him on a Tree" in March to commemorate the centennial. "Ethnic cleansing was the goal of the white rioters," said William Tuttle, a retired professor of American studies at the University of Kansas and author of "Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919." “Sensing the failure of the police, the mob became even more contemptuous of authority — two Negroes were attacked and beaten directly in front of the White House.”, Carter G. Woodson, the historian who founded Black History Month in 1926, saw the violence up close. The lessons of Red Summer would reverberate after World War II. All told, at least 1,122 Americans were killed in racial violence over those six years, by Tuttle’s count. The NAACP gained about 100,000 members that year, said McWhirter, author of “Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America.” Soon, blacks were “going to Congress, they’re pressing congressmen and senators to pass anti-lynching legislation. A Brooklyn choral group performed Red Summer-theme songs like “And They Lynched Him on a Tree” in March to commemorate the centennial. Comments. “Red Summer” Author at Carter Library . Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. The Red Summer is the name often applied to a period of time around 1919 when the number of incidents of racial strife increased dramatically. "You have a similar situation where African Americans had done their part to make the world safe for democracy, and black veterans came home, and many of them were alive or had heard the stories of what happened in 1919," Krugler said. “ Blood in Their Eyes is a relentless examination of one of the bloodiest American racial repressions of the 20th century. The New London race riots broke out in 1919, a season of violence throughout the United States known as the Red Summer. "Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender were instrumental in providing an alternate voice that represented why African Americans deserved to be here, deserved equal rights and were, in some cases, justified in fighting," said Kevin Strait, a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The violence didn't start or end in 1919. Black journalists like Wells played an important role in getting the story out. At the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mathieu and author Cameron McWhirter plan to present some of their findings July 30. Red Summer 1919 By John C Abercrombie. ―William M. Tuttle Jr., author of Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children (1993) and Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (2nd ed., 1996). “The city will be drenched in blood,” predicted Washington civil rights lawyer James Cobb. In 1919 alone, violence erupted in such places as New York; Memphis, Tennessee; Philadelphia; Charleston, South Carolina; Baltimore; New Orleans; Wilmington, Delaware; Omaha, Nebraska; New London, Connecticut; Bisbee, Arizona; Longview, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; Norfolk, Virginia; and Putnam County, Georgia. "I heard him groaning in his struggle as I hurried away as fast as I could without running, expecting every moment to be lynched myself.". The fight "in legislatures, courtrooms, and the streets to become full partners in the American democratic experiment" hardly began in 1919, as "Red Summer… Whites turned their anger and frustration on black neighborhoods spreading terror and fear nationwide. An outbreak of racial violence known as the “Red Summer” occurred in 1919, an event that affected at least 26 cities across the United States. “It doesn’t fit into the neat stories we tell ourselves,” said David Krugler, author of “1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back.”. It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago. Shares. The Red Summer of 1919, Explained Ursula Wolfe-Rocca 5/31/2020. Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press "—David Levering Lewis, author of King: A Biography and W.E.B. The violence didn’t start or end in 1919. His grim forecast, made a century ago this month, came true. Chicago History Museum Front page of the Chicago Defender on Aug. 2, 1919, listing the names of those who were slain and injured during the race riots in Chicago. From June to December, twenty-five cities erupted in race violence, with white mobs launching pogroms in an attempt to drive the newly migrated blacks from the South beyond the city limits. The NAACP gained about 100,000 members that year, said McWhirter, author of "Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America." “They knocked her down, beat her over the head with their pistols, kicked her all over the body, almost killed her, then took her to jail,” Wells wrote in her report “The Arkansas Race Riot.” “The same mob went to Frank Hall’s house and killed Frances Hall, a crazy old woman housekeeper, tied her clothes over her head, threw her body in the public road where it lay thus exposed till the soldiers came Thursday evening and took it up.”. “They had caught a Negro and deliberately held him as one would a beef for slaughter, and when they had conveniently adjusted him for lynching, they shot him,” Woodson wrote. Red Summer also marked a new era of black resistance to white injustice, with African Americans standing up in unprecedented numbers and killing some of their tormentors. 1 McWhirter, Cameron. The National Guard was able to restore order to the riot-torn city. “The Germans weren’t the enemy — the enemy was right here at home,” said Harry Haywood in his autobiography, “A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry Haywood.”. Thank you. The Red Summer of 1919 refers to a series of race riots that took place between May and October of that year.Although riots occurred in more than thirty cities throughout the U.S., the bloodiest events were in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. Some count the era of Red Summer as beginning with the deaths of more than two dozen African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917 and extending through the Rosewood Massacre of 1923, when a black town in Florida was destroyed. James Weldon Johnson, field secretary of the NAACP, was the one to name it the “Red Summer.” This “red” was for blood. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/hundreds-of-black-deaths-during-1919s-red-summer-are-being-remembered, “The people who were the icons of the civil rights movement were raised by the people who survived Red Summer.”, “It doesn’t fit into the neat stories we tell ourselves.”, “Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender were instrumental in providing an alternate voice that represented why African Americans deserved to be here, deserved equal rights and were, in some cases, justified in fighting.”, “The Germans weren’t the enemy — the enemy was right here at home.”, What Americans think of Trump’s ‘go back’ to your country tweets, White supremacist sentenced to life in prison for Charlottesville car attack, 10 books besides ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ that tackle racial injustice, WATCH: House panel debates idea of reparations for slavery.