1919

The summer and fall of 1919 saw anti-Black race riots in at least 25 American cities — Washington DC, Chicago, Elaine Arkansas, Omaha, Knoxville, Longview Texas, Charleston South Carolina, and others — making it the bloodiest period of racial violence in American history outside of the Civil War era. At least 97 Black Americans were lynched that year alone, including 10 veterans still in military uniform. The NAACP's James Weldon Johnson named it the 'Red Summer.' The violence was a direct response to Black military service, Great Migration, and demands for equality.

On July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, a Black teenager, drowned in Lake Michigan after white beachgoers threw rocks at him when he drifted toward the white beach at 29th Street. Police refused to arrest the white man identified as responsible. The incident ignited 13 days of riots in which 38 people were killed (23 Black, 15 white), 537 were injured, and more than 1,000 Black families were made homeless when their homes were burned. Irish gangs from the 'athletic clubs' were primary aggressors. Illinois National Guard was eventually called. The riot cemented residential segregation patterns that persisted for a century.

Black sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas had organized the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America to negotiate cotton prices collectively. On September 30, 1919, white men fired into a union meeting at a church; return fire killed one white man. White mobs and federal troops then spent five days hunting and killing Black residents — estimates range from 100 to 237 Black deaths, with only 5 white deaths acknowledged. Twelve Black men were sentenced to death and 67 to long prison terms. The NAACP appealed; in Moore v. Dempsey (1923) the Supreme Court held the trials unconstitutional — one of the first times federal courts reviewed state criminal proceedings for due process violations.

As Black veterans returned from WWI — where over 380,000 Black Americans had served — many were attacked while still in uniform. At least ten Black veterans were lynched in 1919, several still in their military uniforms. Sergeant Wilbur Little was beaten to death in Blakely, Georgia after appearing in public in his uniform. Daniel Mack was lynched in Sylvester, Georgia. The attacks reflected white anxiety about Black men asserting equal citizenship through military service. France had treated Black American soldiers as equals; white Southerners were determined to reimpose subordination.

In The Crisis magazine, W.E.B. Du Bois published 'Returning Soldiers,' one of the most radical editorials of his career, calling on Black veterans not to accept second-class status after fighting for democracy abroad. 'We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face... We return fighting.' The editorial was monitored by the Justice Department as potentially seditious. It defined the militant consciousness of the New Negro generation.

In The Crisis magazine, W.E.B. Du Bois published 'Returning Soldiers,' calling on Black veterans not to accept second-class status after fighting for democracy abroad. 'We return fighting.' The editorial was monitored by the Justice Department as potentially seditious. It defined the militant consciousness of the New Negro generation.

Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay published 'If We Must Die' in The Liberator in July 1919, directly responding to the Red Summer massacres. The sonnet's call — 'If we must die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot' — articulated an ethos of armed, dignified resistance that defined the New Negro movement. The poem circulated in Black communities across the country and was later, without attribution, read by Winston Churchill to Congress to inspire British resistance against Nazi Germany.

By 1919, Harlem, New York had become the center of Black American intellectual, cultural, and political life, concentrated by the Great Migration and by New York's somewhat less restrictive racial environment. The NAACP's headquarters, A. Philip Randolph's Messenger, Marcus Garvey's Negro World, and W.E.B. Du Bois's Crisis all operated from New York. Harlem hosted political debates, cultural events, and organizing that would define the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The concentration of Black talent, capital, and institutions created conditions for the most significant flowering of Black American culture since Reconstruction.

By 1919, Harlem had become the center of Black American intellectual, cultural, and political life. The NAACP's headquarters, A. Philip Randolph's Messenger, Marcus Garvey's Negro World, and W.E.B. Du Bois's Crisis all operated from New York. Harlem hosted political debates, cultural events, and organizing that defined the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

The Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America was organized by Black sharecroppers in Phillips County, Arkansas in 1919 to collectively negotiate cotton prices. Led by Robert Hill, it had attracted hundreds of members by the fall. Their peaceful economic organizing was the direct provocation for the Elaine Massacre, which killed 100-237 Black residents.

The Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America was organized by Black sharecroppers in Phillips County, Arkansas in 1919 to collectively negotiate cotton prices with planters and obtain better contracts. Led by Robert Hill, it had attracted hundreds of members by the fall. Their organizing was the direct provocation for the Elaine Massacre, in which white mobs and federal troops killed 100-237 Black residents. The response to their peaceful economic organizing — massacre and mass imprisonment — illustrated the violent enforcement of racial economic hierarchy.

Over four days in July 1919, white mobs — largely composed of white servicemen and sailors — rampaged through Washington DC attacking Black residents. The riots were inflamed by inflammatory headlines in Washington newspapers about alleged Black attacks on white women. At least 15 people were killed. Black veterans from WWI fought back, and Black residents in the Shaw neighborhood mounted organized armed defense. President Wilson refused to intervene for days. The violence shocked the country given its location in the capital.

During the Washington DC riots of July 1919, Black residents — many of them veterans just returned from WWI — organized armed resistance, buying out gun store supplies and fighting back against white mobs. The counterattack surprised white attackers and was credited with preventing a larger massacre. Claude McKay later wrote his famous sonnet 'If We Must Die' in direct response to the Red Summer attacks, calling for armed dignity in the face of mob violence.

Will Brown, a Black meatpacking worker in Omaha, Nebraska, was accused of raping a white woman. A mob of thousands stormed the courthouse, shooting the mayor when he attempted to stop them, dragged Brown from his cell, shot him hundreds of times, hanged him from a traffic light pole, burned his body, and then dragged the charred corpse through downtown streets. The riot destroyed Black-owned businesses and homes. President Wilson dispatched federal troops. The Omaha Bee newspaper had published inflammatory coverage blaming a 'black crime wave' for weeks preceding the riot.

Sergeant Wilbur Little returned to Blakely, Georgia from WWI in his military uniform. Local white men warned him not to wear the uniform in public. He continued to wear it. A white mob beat him to death. His murder was among the most documented of the cases of Black veterans killed for wearing their uniform after WWI — the uniform symbolized the claim to equal citizenship that white Southerners were determined to deny. No one was prosecuted for his murder.

Claude McKay's 1919 sonnet 'If We Must Die,' written in response to the Red Summer of 1919 massacres, called explicitly for armed resistance: 'Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack / Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!' Published in The Liberator, the poem circulated widely among Black Americans and later was quoted by Winston Churchill (without attribution) to rally the British during World War II. It represented the emergence of a militant Black literary voice that rejected the accommodationist tradition and asserted the right to self-defense.

In the aftermath of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, Governor Frank Lowden appointed a biracial Chicago Commission on Race Relations that spent two years investigating the causes. Its 1922 report, 'The Negro in Chicago,' documented in exhaustive detail the discrimination in employment, housing, schools, and the criminal justice system that created the conditions for the riot. It was one of the first government documents to treat systemic racism as a policy problem requiring systemic solutions — though its recommendations were almost entirely ignored.

In Longview, Texas, a white mob attacked Black neighborhoods after the Chicago Defender published a story — written by Dr. Calvin Davis — about a Black man lynched for a consensual relationship with a white woman who had allegedly wanted to marry him. Whites hunted for Davis and attacked Black homes. Black residents, organized and armed, fought back, wounding several attackers. The governor sent state rangers, who arrested Black defenders rather than white aggressors. The case illustrated both the coordinated nature of Red Summer violence and the Black community's capacity for organized armed resistance.

John Shillady, the white executive secretary of the NAACP, traveled to Austin, Texas to protest official attempts to shut down the Texas NAACP chapter. He was seized on the street by a mob that included a county judge and a constable, and severely beaten. Texas authorities refused to prosecute. The federal government took no action. Shillady wrote: 'I am less confident than heretofore of the speedy success of the NAACP's full program and of the probability of overcoming, within a reasonable period, the forces opposed to Negro equality.' He resigned as executive secretary shortly after.

During the Red Summer of 1919, white mobs attacked Black residents of Knoxville, Tennessee over two days following the arrest of a Black man accused of killing a white woman. Two people were killed and the National Guard deployed. White soldiers and civilians ransacked Black businesses and homes in the Vine Hill neighborhood. The riot fit the pattern of Red Summer violence: war veterans, racial anxieties, labor competition, and inflammatory newspaper coverage combining to produce mass anti-Black violence.

White mobs attack Black communities in dozens of cities; Black veterans and residents fight back.