Red Summer & Civil Unrest – Legends of America

Okay, here’s a rewrite of the provided article, aiming for a more casual and engaging tone. I’ve tried to maintain accuracy while making it feel less like a formal historical report and more like a conversation.

Red Summer & Civil Unrest: When America Burned

Okay, so picture this: it’s 1919, the end of World War I. Everyone’s trying to get back to normal, right? But for African Americans in the United States, "normal" was already a pretty messed-up situation. And things were about to get a whole lot worse. We’re talking about the "Red Summer," a period so brutal it’s hard to wrap your head around.

As one history professor, Saje Mathieu, put it, the folks who were out there fighting for civil rights later on? A lot of them were raised by people who actually lived through the Red Summer. That gives you an idea of how deeply it impacted the community.

The name "Red Summer" itself came from James Weldon Johnson, a civil rights activist with the NAACP. "Red" because, well, there was a lot of bloodshed. We’re talking about some of the worst white-on-black violence in American history erupting all over the place.

It wasn’t just in the Deep South, either. Sure, places like Elaine, Arkansas (we’ll get to that one, it’s particularly awful), saw terrible events. But it was also happening in cities you might not expect – Annapolis, Maryland; Syracuse, New York; even Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

The scale of it is just staggering. Hundreds of Black people – men, women, kids – were murdered. Burned alive, shot, hanged, beaten to death. Thousands lost their homes and businesses, torched and destroyed by angry white mobs. Imagine having to flee your entire life, knowing you could never go back.

So, What Was the Deal?

To really understand the Red Summer, you have to go back a bit. Think about the era after the Civil War, the Reconstruction period. For a little while, Black Americans were making progress – gaining political power, legal rights, the ability to vote. But that didn’t last. By 1877, Reconstruction was basically dead.

The old power structures came roaring back. Voting rights were suppressed, segregation became the law of the land (thanks, Plessy v. Ferguson!), and the gains of Reconstruction were systematically dismantled. It would take until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the desegregation of the military after World War II to start seriously reversing this stuff.

On top of this, you had the Great Migration. Hundreds of thousands of Black people left the South in the early 20th century, heading to the Northeast, Midwest, and West. They were trying to escape the constant violence, the lynchings, and the Jim Crow laws that made life in the South unbearable. And let’s not forget the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan – those guys were definitely not helping.

People like Ida B. Wells-Barnett were out there fighting against the lynchings, writing about the horrors in her newspaper and books. And organizations like the NAACP, founded in 1909 by Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell, and others, were battling segregation and injustice head-on.

World War I created even more tension. With troops mobilized and immigration from Europe cut off, industries in the North and Midwest needed workers. So, they recruited in the South, and the Great Migration really took off. Black people were hoping for a better life, but a lot of white people in the North weren’t exactly thrilled to see them coming.

In 1917, you already had violent outbreaks in places like East St. Louis and Houston. The stage was set for something even bigger.

The Spark That Lit the Fire

After the war ended, things got even more complicated. Soldiers came home looking for jobs, but the economy was struggling. Price controls were lifted, leading to inflation. Suddenly, there was intense competition for work, and a lot of white veterans resented Black people who had taken jobs while they were away fighting.

Black workers were often seen as "scabs" – strikebreakers who would work for lower wages and undermine unions. And with the Russian Revolution still fresh in people’s minds, some officials even started suspecting Black workers of being secret Bolsheviks or anarchists. Talk about paranoia!

By 1919, an estimated half a million Black people had moved North. And let’s be honest, a lot of white Northerners – including recent immigrants themselves – weren’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat. The anti-black riots were fueled by all this post-war tension: demobilization, economic downturn, job competition, and housing shortages.

The press played a role, too. They extensively covered the riots, and the government was worried about socialist and communist influence on the civil rights movement. They were also freaked out by anarchists who were bombing the homes and businesses of prominent figures. It was a powder keg waiting to explode.

Dr. George Edmund Haynes, who worked for the Labor Department, even said that the return of Black soldiers to civilian life was one of the "most delicate and difficult questions confronting the Nation." He wasn’t kidding.

The Summer of Blood

So, what actually happened during the Red Summer? Well, it was a series of horrific events that stretched across the country. Here’s just a taste of what went down:

• April 14, 1919, Carswell Grove, Georgia: A race riot at a Black church left six people dead, including two white officers and four Black men. The church was burned to the ground.
• Late April, University of Maine: Two Black brothers were hunted down by a mob of their fellow students, tarred and feathered, and humiliated. No one was arrested.
• May 2, Georgia: A Black farmer who killed his ex-wife was hunted down and killed by a posse of hundreds.
• May 10, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: A riot broke out over housing.
• May 10, Charleston, South Carolina: Over 1,000 white sailors went on a drunken rampage, attacking Black citizens and businesses. Three Black men were killed. Martial law was declared.
• May 15, Vicksburg, Mississippi: A white mob broke a Black man out of jail, hanged him, and burned him in the city center.

And that was just May. The violence continued throughout the summer, with riots and lynchings in Longview, Texas; Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; and countless other places.

In July, the Washington D.C. riots were particularly brutal. White men, many of them in military uniforms, attacked Black people and businesses for four days. The police did little to stop them, and Black residents fought back in self-defense. By the time the National Guard was called in, 15 people were dead.

The Chicago race riot in late July was even worse. It started when a Black teenager swam into a "white" area of Lake Michigan and was stoned to death. The police refused to arrest the attackers, and the riot spread like wildfire. For 13 days, white mobs terrorized Black neighborhoods, destroying homes and businesses. The state militia had to be called in. In the end, 38 people were dead, hundreds were injured, and thousands of Black families were left homeless.

Elaine, Arkansas: A Massacre

But perhaps the most horrific event of the Red Summer was the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas. Black sharecroppers were trying to organize a union to get better deals from white landowners. The landowners didn’t like that one bit.

When a group of sharecroppers held a meeting, they were ambushed by gunfire. Fighting broke out, and the white landowners formed a militia to put down what they called an "insurrection." Hundreds of white people descended on Elaine, attacking Black residents at random. Black people were indiscriminately gunned down in the streets.

The governor sent in Army troops, who ended up contributing to the violence. It’s estimated that between 100 and 237 Black people were killed, along with five white people. The local authorities arrested 79 Black people and convicted them in all-white juries. Twelve were sentenced to death.

The Aftermath

The Red Summer finally died down in the fall of 1919. But the damage was done. Hundreds of African Americans were dead, thousands were injured, and countless families were displaced.

But the Red Summer also had a profound impact on the civil rights movement. It galvanized Black people to defend themselves and their communities. It reinvigorated organizations like the NAACP. It inspired a new generation of activists and leaders who would fight for racial equality in the decades to come.

It’s important to remember that the Red Summer wasn’t just about fringe white supremacist groups. It was about ordinary white people, veterans, and civilians, who were willing to participate in violence against Black people. And it was about local, state, and federal officials who often turned a blind eye to the violence or even encouraged it.

The Red Summer was a dark chapter in American history. It’s a reminder of the deep-seated racism that has plagued this country for centuries. And it’s a reminder of the courage and resilience of African Americans who have fought for equality in the face of incredible adversity.

The NAACP saw its membership balloon by about 100,000 that year. Black people started running for Congress, lobbying for anti-lynching laws, and fighting back in the courts.

The Red Summer was a brutal wake-up call. It showed just how much work needed to be done to achieve racial justice in America. And it inspired a generation to keep fighting.