Red Summer refers to a series of approximately 25 “anti-black riots” that erupted in major cities throughout the nation in 1919, including Houston, Texas; East St. Louis and Chicago, Illinois; Washington, D.C.; Omaha, Nebraska; Elaine, Arkansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Charleston, South Carolina.In 1919 African American veterans returned home from World War I. They expected the same rights they had fought and bled for in Europe, however, their expectations were not met. African Americans couldn’t accept the situation, they said “We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.”
Black veterans wearing their military uniforms in public, black children swimming in the white section of Lake Michigan, black sharecroppers in Arkansas organizing for better wages and working conditions — all these things provoked white mob terror.For example, on July 27, 1919, an African-American teenager violated the unofficial segregation of Chicago’s beaches. Being stoned by a group of white youths, he drowned in Lake Michigan. His death, and the police’s refusal to arrest the white man whom eyewitnesses identified as causing it, sparked a week of rioting between gangs of black and white Chicagoans. When the riots ended on August 3, 15 whites and 23 blacks had been killed and more than 500 people injured; moreover, an additional 1,000 black families had lost their homes when they were torched by rioters.In fact, white mobs were never punished. Researchers estimate that in 10 months more than 250 African Americans were killed in about 25 riots across the U.S. According to William Tuttle, author of “Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919”, the goal of the white rioters was ethic cleansing. He believed that “They wanted to kill as many black people as possible and to terrorize the rest until they were willing to leave and live someplace else.” It’s important to note, that despite the events of the Red Summer, 1.2 million black men would enlist in World War II.
All in all, the bloodshed of the summer of 1919 didn’t put the end to mass violence against black Americans but it was a shift in the way black people responded to white violence, a great step towards equality.
I found the examples and situation you presented in your post to be particularly compelling. The fact that they let the white men go was outrageous to me, yet at the time must have been expected. Apparently did the police not only let the white men go, but arrested a black man for claiming that the police did nothing in defense of the black teenager stoned. The amount of violence conducted during that is appalling, one can only imagine being targeted at the time. The pictures you included I feel drive the point home you could say. The second one especially caught my attention of how gruesome the circumstances got and how unapologetic some white people were to what was was happening
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2019/03/02/remembering-the-red-summer-of-1919/
I thought you did a great job explaining how African Americans had begun exercising their rights more freely after fighting in World War I by describing the labor unions that began to form, the protests, and the fact that the black war veterans had started wearing their uniforms in public, conveying the idea that America was their country too (along with white people). You could also add how white people had no evidence against the black men when charging them with rape or murder, which demonstrated that black people had no rights and were killed or lynched by white mobs as a result of racism and stereotypical thinking.
ReplyDeleteSources - https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_red.html
I thought that the example of an event that kicked off part of the Red Summer across America was really interesting. Some other events across the country that sparked their own "Red Summer" included the burning of Carswell Grove's church since he was a successful black sharecropper, as well as the court case of Omaha. Omaha was a black man accused of attacking a white woman. During his trial, a white mob stormed into the courthouse, dragged him outside, and murdered him. I feel that this example shows how inefficient and sometimes supportive local authorities were with racist sympathies, partially allowing for such white mobs to grow.
ReplyDeletehttps://time.com/5636454/what-is-red-summer/
I found your explanation and summarization of the situation and really interesting. I was specifically interested by when you mentioned African-American veterans returning home from the First World War. I remembered watching a video on their treatment during the war and after reading what you wrote I decided to do more research on it. For African-Americans fighting in the war, they were segregated into separate fighting regiments. One of the if not the most famous regiment was the 369th Infantry Regiment, or the Harlem Hellfighters as they are more commonly referred to as. They were rewarded the Croix de Guerre (War Cross or Cross of War in English) by the French government for the courage during a battle. More important to the topic of racism, they were assigned to fight with the French because many white Americans didn't want to fight alongside them, reflecting the attitudes of the times, and reflective of the treatment they would face when they returned home, the same attitudes that would lead to the Red Summer of 1919. They similarly had to use French helmets and weapons but kept their American uniforms.
ReplyDeleteSources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/who-were-the-harlem-hellfighters/
https://www.military.com/history/fighting-for-respect-african-american-soldiers-wwi.html