Black WWI Veterans Return to Lynchings and Racial Terror — 'Red Summer' Continues

Black veterans returning from World War I in uniform were targeted for racial violence in the early 1920s. At least ten Black veterans were lynched in uniform in 1919–1921. White supremacists were specifically threatened by the assertion of dignity represented by Black men in uniform who had fought for a country that continued to oppress them. The veterans' willingness to resist violence — crystallized in Claude McKay's 'If We Must Die' — was viewed as insubordination. W.E.B. Du Bois's 1919 editorial 'Returning Soldiers' declared: 'We return fighting. Make way for Democracy!'