July 1919

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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