Red Summer of 1919 - The Causes

"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?" ~ Telegram to President Woodrow Wilson, August 1919

James Weldon Johnson

The summer of 1919 contained an unprecedented number of attacks on African American communities throughout the country, with over 50 lynchings during the year and thousands of people killed. NAACP Field Secretary James Weldon Johnson called it the "red summer", referring to both the the bloodshed and the "red scare" fear in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution that fueled the violence.


With World War I and immigration restrictions causing labor shortages, by 1919 an estimated 500,000 African Americans had moved from the South to northern urban areas to work in factories in the first wave of the Great Migration. Returning soldiers and a post-war recession led to a scarcity of jobs and increasing tension between the races. 


Wartime legislation had also created a repressive national atmosphere. The Immigration Act of 1917 enabled the deportment of suspected anarchists without due process, and widened the definition of anarchy. The Sedition Act of 1918 banned the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language" about the U.S. government, flag or or armed forces. Any organized protest by African Americans about labor practices or other justice issues was assumed to be influenced by labor unions or leftist groups.

J. Edgar Hoover

Leading government investigations was J. Edgar Hoover, head of the General Intelligence Division of the Bureau of Investigation (not known as the FBI until 1935). He targeted African American activists such as Marcus Garvey and A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who advocated the right of African Americans to self-defense.


Others also spoke out on protecting themselves. In an editorial in Crisis magazine W. E. B. DuBois wrote, "Today we raise the weapons of self-defense... When the armed lynchers gather, we too must gather armed." The summer of 1919 marked the first time that African Americans consistently fought back against oppression. 


This is the first of a three-part series on the Red Summer of 1919. Further posts will detail events in cities across the country.