Red Summer (1919)

Red Summer

A white gang looking for African Americans during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.
Date	1919
Location	United States
Outcome	Riots between white and black Americans across the United States.

The Red Summer refers to the race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities in the United States during the summer and early autumn of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases many blacks fought back, notably in Chicago, where, along with Washington, D.C. and Elaine, Arkansas, the greatest number of fatalities occurred.

The riots followed postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and white, and competition for jobs among ethnic whites and blacks. The riots were extensively documented in the press, which along with the federal government conflated black movements with bolshevism.

Activist and author James Weldon Johnson, employed since 1916 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a field secretary, coined the term "Red Summer." In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence of that summer.

Context

With the manpower mobilization of World War I and immigration from Europe cut off, the industrial cities of the North and Midwest experienced severe labor shortages. Northern manufacturers recruited throughout the South and an exodus ensued. By 1919, an estimated 500,000 African Americans had emigrated from the Southern United States to the industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the first wave of the Great Migration, which continued until 1940. African-American workers filled new positions in expanding industries, such as the railroads, as well as many jobs formerly held by whites. In some cities, they were hired as strikebreakers, especially during the strikes of 1917. This increased resentment among many working class whites, immigrants or first-generation Americans. Following the war, rapid demobilization of the military without a plan for absorbing veterans into the job market, and the removal of price controls, led to unemployment and inflation that increased competition for jobs.

During the First Red Scare of 1919-20, following the Russian Revolution, anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the United States quickly replaced the anti-German sentiment of the war years. Many politicians and government officials, together with much of the press and the public, feared an imminent attempt to overthrow the US government to create a new regime modeled on that of the Soviets. Authorities viewed with alarm African Americans' advocacy of racial equality, labor rights, or the rights of victims of mobs to defend themselves. In a private conversation in March 1919, President Woodrow Wilson said that "the American Negro returning from abroad would be our greatest medium in conveying bolshevism to America." Other whites expressed a wide range of opinions, some anticipating unsettled times and others seeing no signs of tension.

Early in 1919, Dr. George E. Haynes, an educator employed as director of Negro Economics for the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote: "The return of the Negro soldier to civil life is one of the most delicate and difficult questions confronting the Nation, north and south." One black veteran wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Daily News saying the returning black veterans

"are now new men and world men, if you please; and their possibilities for direction, guidance, honest use, and power are limitless, only they must be instructed and led. They have awakened, but they have not yet the complete conception of what they have awakened to."

W. E. B. Du Bois, an official of the NAACP and editor of its monthly magazine, saw an opportunity: "By the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land." In May, following the first serious racial incidents, he published his essay "Returning Soldiers":

"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 and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land....

We return.

We return from fighting.

We return fighting."

Events

Following the violence-filled summer, in the autumn of 1919, Haynes reported on the events. His report was to be the brief for an investigation of the issues by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He identified 38 separate riots in widely scattered cities, in which whites attacked blacks. In addition, Haynes reported that between January 1 and September 14, 1919, white mobs lynched at least forty-three African Americans, with sixteen hanged and others shot; while another eight men were burned at the stake. The states appeared powerless or unwilling to interfere or prosecute such mob murders. Unlike earlier race riots in U.S. history, the 1919 events were among the first in which blacks in number resisted white attacks. A. Philip Randolph, a civil rights activist and leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, defended the right of blacks to self-defense.

Riots

"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People respectfully enquires how long the Federal Government under your administration intends to tolerate anarchy in the United States?"

-NAACP telegram to President Woodrow Wilson
August 29, 1919

• After the riot of May 10 in Charleston, South Carolina, the city imposed martial law. US Navy sailors led the race riot; Isaac Doctor, William Brown, and James Talbot, all black men, were killed. Five white men and eighteen black men were injured. A Naval investigation found that four U.S. sailors and one civilian—all white men—initiated the riot.
• In early July, a white race riot in Longview, Texas led to the deaths of at least four men and destroyed the African-American housing district in the town.
• On July 3, local police in Bisbee, Arizona attacked the 10th U.S. Cavalry, an African-American unit founded in 1866 and known as "Buffalo Soldiers".
• In Washington, D.C. starting July 19, white men, many in the military and in uniform of all three services, responded to the rumored arrest of a black man for rape with four days of mob violence against black individuals and businesses. They rioted, randomly beat black people on the street, and pulled others off streetcars for attacks. When police refused to intervene, the black population fought back. Troops tried to restore order as the city closed saloons and theaters to discourage assemblies, but a summer rainstorm had more of a dampening effect. When the violence ended, a total of 15 people had died: 10 whites, including two police officers; and five blacks. Fifty people were seriously wounded and another 100 less severely wounded. It was one of the few times in 20th-century riots of whites against blacks when white fatalities outnumbered those of blacks.

The NAACP sent a telegram of protest to President Woodrow Wilson (who had segregated federal offices after his election and instituted discriminatory hiring)):

"...the shame put upon the country by the mobs, including United States soldiers, sailors, and marines, which have assaulted innocent and unoffending negroes in the national capital. Men in uniform have attacked negroes on the streets and pulled them from streetcars to beat them. Crowds are reported ...to have directed attacks against any passing negro....The effect of such riots in the national capital upon race antagonism will be to increase bitterness and danger of outbreaks elsewhere. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People calls upon you as President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the nation to make statement condemning mob violence and to enforce such military law as situation demands."

• In Norfolk, Virginia, a white mob attacked a homecoming celebration for African-American veterans of World War I. At least six people were shot, and the local police called in Marines and Navy personnel to restore order.
• Starting July 27, the summer's greatest violence occurred during rioting in Chicago. The city's beaches along Lake Michigan were segregated in practice. A black youth named Eugene Williams swam into the area on the South Side customarily reserved for whites, was stoned, and drowned. When the Chicago police refused to take action against the attackers, young black men responded violently. Violence between mobs and gangs lasted thirteen days, with white rioting led by the well-established ethnic Irish, whose territory bordered the black neighborhood. The resulting 38 fatalities included 23 blacks and 15 whites. The injured totaled 537, and 1,000 black families were left homeless. Other accounts reported 50 people were killed, with unofficial numbers and rumors reporting more. White mobs destroyed hundreds of mostly black homes and businesses on the South Side of Chicago; Illinois called in a militia force of seven regiments: several thousand men, to restore order.
  At the end of July, the Northeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, at an annual convention, denounced the rioting and burning of negroes' homes then happening and asked President Wilson "to use every means within your power to stop the rioting in Chicago and the propaganda used to incite such." At the end of August, the NAACP protested again, noting the attack on the organization's secretary in Austin, Texas the previous week. Their telegram said: "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People respectfully enquires how long the Federal Government under your administration intends to tolerate anarchy in the United States?"
• August 30–31, the Knoxville Riot in Tennessee broke out over a white mob's gathering because a black suspect was accused of murdering a white woman. A lynch mob stormed the county jail searching for the prisoner. They liberated 16 white prisoners, including suspected murderers. They moved on and attacked the African-American business district, where they fought against the district's black business owners, leaving at least seven dead and wounding more than 20 people.

Will Brown, Victim of Omaha, Nebraska violence

• At the end of September, the race riot in Omaha, Nebraska erupted when a mob of more than 10,000 ethnic whites from South Omaha attacked and burned the county courthouse to force the police to release a black prisoner accused of raping a white woman. They destroyed property valued at more than a million dollars. The mob lynched the suspect, Will Brown, and burned his body. They spread out through the city and attacked black neighborhoods and stores on the north side. After the mayor and governor appealed for help, the government sent Federal troops from a nearby fort to restore order. They were under the command of Major General Leonard Wood, a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.
• On October 1, a race riot broke out in Elaine, Arkansas. Distinctive because it occurred in the rural South, its character shared local resistance to labor organizing and fear of socialism. Black sharecroppers were meeting in the local chapter of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. Planters opposed their efforts to organize for better terms, and the sharecroppers had been warned of trouble. A white man intent on arresting a black bootlegger approached the lookouts defending the meeting, and was shot. The planters formed a militia to attack the African-American farmers. In the riot they killed between 100 and 200 blacks, and five whites also died. Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough appointed a Committee of Seven to investigate. The group was composed of prominent local white businessmen. They concluded that the Sharecroppers Union was a Socialist enterprise and "established for the purpose of banding negroes together for the killing of white people."
  That report generated headlines such as the following in the Dallas Morning News: "Negroes Seized in Arkansas Riots Confess to Widespread Plot; Planned Massacre of Whites Today." Several agents of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation spent a week interviewing participants, but they spoke to no sharecroppers. They also reviewed documents. They filed a total of nine reports stating there was no evidence of a conspiracy of the sharecroppers to murder anyone. Their superiors at Justice ignored their analysis.
  The local government tried 79 blacks, who were all convicted by all-white juries, and 12 were sentenced to death. (As Arkansas and other southern states had disfranchised most blacks at the turn of the 20th century, they could not vote, run for political office, or serve on juries.) The remainder of the defendants accepted prison terms of up to 21 years. Appeals of their convictions went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the verdicts because of trial errors. Federal oversight of defendants' rights was increased as a result.

Chronology

Based on Haynes' report as summarized in the New York Times except as noted.

Date	Place
May 10	Charleston, South Carolina
May 10	Sylvester, Georgia
May 29	Putnam County, Georgia
May 31	Monticello, Mississippi
June 13	New London, Connecticut
June 13	Memphis, Tennessee
June 27	Annapolis, Maryland
June 27	Macon, Mississippi
July 3	Bisbee, Arizona
July 5	Scranton, Pennsylvania
July 6	Dublin, Georgia
July 7	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
July 8	Coatesville, Pennsylvania
July 9	Tuscaloosa, Alabama
July 10	Longview, Texas
July 11	Baltimore, Maryland
July 15	Port Arthur, Texas

Date	Place
July 19	Washington, D.C.
July 21	Norfolk, Virginia
July 23	New Orleans, Louisiana
July 23	Darby, Pennsylvania
July 26	Hobson City, Alabama
July 27	Chicago, Illinois
July 28	Newberry, South Carolina
July 31	Bloomington, Illinois
July 31	Syracuse, New York
July 31	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
August 4	Hattiesburg, Mississippi
August 6	Texarkana, Texas
August 21	New York City, New York
August 30	Knoxville, Tennessee
September 28	Omaha, Nebraska
October 1	Elaine, Arkansas

Responses

"We appeal to you to have your country undertake for its racial minority that which you forced Poland and Austria to undertake for their racial minorities."

-National Equal Rights League to President Woodrow Wilson
November 25, 1919

In September 1919, in response to the Red Summer, the African Blood Brotherhood formed in northern cities to serve as an "armed resistance" movement.

Protests and appeals to the federal government continued for weeks. A letter in late November from the National Equal Rights League appealed to Wilson's international advocacy for human rights: "We appeal to you to have your country undertake for its racial minority that which you forced Poland and Austria to undertake for their racial minorities."

Haynes report

The report by Dr. George Edmund Haynes of October 1919 was a call for national action; it was published in the New York Times and other major newspapers. He noted that lynchings were a national problem, as President Wilson had said in a 1918 speech; from 1889–1918, more than 3,000 people had been lynched; 2,472 were black men, and 50 were black women. Haynes said that states had shown themselves "unable or unwilling" to put a stop to lynchings, and seldom prosecuted the murderers. The fact that white men had been lynched in the North as well, he argued, demonstrated the national nature of the overall problem: "It is idle to suppose that murder can be confined to one section of the country or to one race." He connected the lynchings to the widespread riots that year:

"Persistence of unpunished lynchings of negroes fosters lawlessness among white men imbued with the mob spirit, and creates a spirit of bitterness among negroes. In such a state of public mind a trivial incident can precipitate a riot.

"Disregard of law and legal process will inevitably lead to more and more frequent clashes and bloody encounters between white men and negroes and a condition of potential race war in many cities of the United States.

"Unchecked mob violence creates hatred and intolerance, making impossible free and dispassionate discussion not only of race problems, but questions on which races and sections differ."

Press coverage

Headline of The Gazette, Elaine, Arkansas, 3 October 1919

In mid-summer, in the middle of the Chicago riots, a federal official told the New York Times that the violence resulted from "an agitation, which involves the I.W.W., Bolshevism and the worst features of other extreme radical movements." He supported that claim with copies of negro publications that called for alliances with leftist groups, praised the Soviet regime, and contrasted the courage of jailed Socialist Eugene V. Debs with the "school boy rhetoric" of traditional black leaders. The Times characterized the publications as "vicious and apparently well financed," mentioned "certain factions of the radical Socialist elements," and reported it all under the headline: "Reds Try to Stir Negroes to Revolt."

In response, some black leaders such as Bishop Charles Henry Phillips of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church asked blacks to shun violence in favor of "patience" and "moral suasion." Phillips opposed propaganda favoring violence, and he noted the grounds of injustice to the blacks:

"I cannot believe that the negro was influenced by Bolshevist agents in the part he took in the rioting. It is not like him to be a traitor or a revolutionist who would destroy the Government. But then the reign of mob law to which he has so long lived in terror and the injustices to which he has had to submit have made him sensitive and impatient."

The connection between blacks and bolshevism was widely repeated. In August 1919, the Wall Street Journal wrote: "Race riots seem to have for their genesis a Bolshevist, a Negro, and a gun." The National Security League repeated that reading of events. In presenting the Haynes report in early October, The New York Times provided a context which his report did not mention. Haynes documented violence and inaction on the state level.

The Times saw "bloodshed on a scale amounting to local insurrection" as evidence of "a new negro problem" because of "influences that are now working to drive a wedge of bitterness and hatred between the two races." Until recently, the Times said, black leaders showed "a sense of appreciation" for what whites had suffered on their behalf in fighting a civil war that "bestowed on the black man opportunities far in advance of those he had in any other part of the white man's world." Now militants were supplanting Booker T. Washington, who had "steadily argued conciliatory methods." The Times continued:

Every week the militant leaders gain more headway. They may be divided into general classes. One consists of radicals and revolutionaries. They are spreading Bolshevist propaganda. It is reported that they are winning many recruits among the colored race. When the ignorance that exists among negroes in many sections of the country is taken into consideration the danger of inflaming them by revolutionary doctrine may [be] apprehended.... The other class of militant leaders confine their agitation to a fight against all forms of color discrimination. They are for a program on uncompromising protest, 'to fight and continue to fight for citizenship rights and full democratic privileges.'

As evidence of militancy and Bolshevism, the Times named W.E.B. Du Bois and quoted his editorial in The Crisis, which he edited: "Today we raise the terrible weapon of self-defense....When the armed lynchers gather, we too must gather armed." When the Times endorsed Haynes' call for a bi-racial conference to establish "some plan to guarantee greater protection, justice, and opportunity to negroes that will gain the support of law-abiding citizens of both races," it endorsed discussion with "those negro leaders who are opposed to militant methods."

In mid-October government sources provided the Times with evidence of Bolshevist propaganda appealing to America's black communities. This account set Red propaganda in the black community into a broader context, since it was "paralleling the agitation that is being carried on in industrial centres of the North and West, where there are many alien laborers." The Times described newspapers, magazines, and "so-called 'negro betterment' organizations" as the way propaganda about the "doctrines of Lenin and Trotzky" was distributed to blacks. It cited quotes from such publications, which contrasted the recent violence in Chicago and Washington, D.C. with

"Soviet Russia, a country in which dozens of racial and lingual types have settled their many differences and found a common meeting ground, a country which no longer oppresses colonies, a country from which the lynch rope is banished and in which racial tolerance and peace now exist."

The Times noted a call for unionization: "Negroes must form cotton workers' unions. Southern white capitalists know that the negroes can bring the white bourbon South to its knees. So go to it."

Coverage of the root causes of the riot in Elaine, Arkansas evolved as the violence stretched over several days. A dispatch from Helena, Arkansas to the New York Times datelined October 1 said: "Returning members of the [white] posse brought numerous stories and rumors, through all of which ran the belief that the rioting was due to propaganda distributed among the negroes by white men." The next day's report added detail: "Additional evidence has been obtained of the activities of propagandists among the negroes, and it is thought that a plot existed for a general uprising against the whites." A white man had been arrested and was "alleged to have been preaching social equality among the negroes." Part of the headline was: "Trouble Traced to Socialist Agitators." A few days later a Western Newspaper Union dispatch captioned a photo using the words "Captive Negro Insurrectionists."

Government activity

During the Chicago riot, the press learned from Department of Justice officials that the IWW and Bolsheviks were "spreading propaganda to breed race hated." FBI agents filed reports that leftist views were winning converts in the black community. One cited the work of the NAACP "urging the colored people to insist upon equality with white people and to resort to force, if necessary. J. Edgar Hoover, at the start of his career in government, analyzed the riots for the Attorney General. He blamed the July Washington, D.C., riots on "numerous assaults committed by Negroes upon white women." For the October events in Arkansas, he blamed "certain local agitation in a Negro lodge." A more general cause he cited was "propaganda of a radical nature." He charged that socialists were feeding propaganda to black-owned magazines such as The Messenger, which in turn aroused their black readers. He did not note the white perpetrators of violence, whose activities local authorities documented. As chief of the Radical Division within the U.S. Department of Justice, Hoover began an investigation of "negro activities" and targeted Marcus Garvey because he thought his newspaper Negro World preached Bolshevism. He authorized the hiring of black undercover agents to spy on black organizations and publications in Harlem.

On November 17, Attorney General Palmer reported to Congress on the threat that anarchists and Bolsheviks posed to the government. More than half the report documented radicalism in the black community and the "open defiance" black leaders advocated in response to racial violence and the summer's rioting. It faulted the leadership of the black community for an "ill-governed reaction toward race rioting...In all discussions of the recent race riots there is reflected the note of pride that the Negro has found himself. that he has 'fought back,' that never again will he tamely submit to violence and intimidation." It described "the dangerous spirit of defiance and vengeance at work among the Negro leaders."

Arts

Claude McKay's sonnet, "If We Must Die", was prompted by the events of Red Summer.

See also

• African Blood Brotherhood
• First Red Scare
• Mass racial violence in the United States
• King assassination riots

Further reading

• Dray, Philip, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (NY: Random House, 2002)
• McWhirter, Cameron, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America (NY: Henry Holt, 2011)
• Krist, Gary. City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. New York, NY: Crown Publisher, 2012. ISBN 978-0-307-45429-4.
• Tuttle, William M., Jr., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), originally published 1970