Hundreds of black deaths in Red Summer ignored century later

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Hundreds of black deaths in Red Summer ignored century later

By JESSE J. HOLLAND
July 23, 2019

America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened.

It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago. Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. Thousands saw their homes and businesses burned to the ground and were driven out, many never to return.

It was branded “Red Summer” because of the bloodshed and amounted to some of the worst white-on-black violence in U.S. history.

Beyond the lives and family fortunes lost, it had far-reaching repercussions, contributing to generations of black distrust of white authority. But it also galvanized blacks to defend themselves and their neighborhoods with fists and guns; reinvigorated civil rights organizations like the NAACP and led to a new era of activism; gave rise to courageous reporting by black journalists; and influenced the generation of leaders who would take up the fight for racial equality decades later.

“The people who were the icons of the civil rights movement were raised by the people who survived Red Summer,” said Saje Mathieu, a history professor at the University of Minnesota.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/d7830d62a99f4cdd8f0a0d08cefb92c5


In this 1919 photo provided by Chicago History Museum, a crowd of men and armed National Guard stand in front of the Ogden Cafe during race riots in Chicago. Red Summer, as the summer of 1919 came to be known, saw white-on-black violence in big cities like Washington and Chicago and small towns like Elaine, Ark., and Bisbee, Ariz. (Chicago History Museum/The Jun Fujita negatives collection via AP)


A white gang hunting African Americans during the Chicago race riot of 1919

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Thanks for the post

Never heard of this aspect of post WWI America. There was the Red Scare of course, and the flu epidemic, and corporate America closing ranks against socialists. Even the great read "The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State" (Weinstein) does not mention racial events or the Red Summer.

I think some things are so disturbing, and so toxic, with potential for further strife, that they are buried by history, or by the news media. For example, the dissolution of the American Bund still has relatively little online reference, a dozen articles at most. Communities that were hotbeds supporting Nazis are barely mentioned, and most interest in the subject petered out in the 1950s. Maybe anti-communism was a bigger fish to fry. Red Summer might be such a forgotten period of history.