Red Summer of 1919 - Nationwide Rioting

"It was the most horrendous sight I'd ever seen . . . We locked the plant, went downstairs, and drove home in silence. My hands were wet and there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man dangling at the end of a rope." ~ Actor Henry Fonda, witness to Omaha lynching at age 14

Will Brown, lynched in Omaha

Like the events in Chicago described yesterday, what happened in Omaha on September 28, 1919 also grew from labor unrest at the local stockyards and conflicts with European immigrants. With over 10,000 African Americans, Omaha had one of the largest black populations west of the Mississippi. Earlier that week Will Brown had been arrested for allegedly raping a white woman. A mob of 4000 set fire to the courthouse and demanded that Brown be turned over to them. He was hanged nearby, then his body was dragged though the streets and burned. National guard troops arrived early the next morning to stop further violence.


Another attempted lynching led to a death toll some estimates place at over 100 in Knoxville on August 30. Although the suspect had been moved to Chattanooga for his safety, the rioters dynamited the jail, taking confiscated whiskey and firearms. Violence spread throughout the city.Two platoons of National Guardsmen arrived quickly but could not restore order until the next day. Dozens of arrests were made of white men who took part but all were acquitted.

Front Page of Arkansas Gazette

Even more deadly was the Elaine Massacre in eastern Arkansas beginning September 30 with unconfirmed deaths as high as 200. It began with a confrontation between sherriff's deputies and African American sharecroppers who were gathered to demand equal treatment from landowners. Rumors quickly spread about their intent, and white men from surrounding areas in Arkansas and Mississippi poured in to put down the revolt. Federal troops where called in and were responsible for a number of the African American deaths. The violence ended with the arrest of between 250 and 300 African Americans. Of that number, twelve were sentenced to death but their sentences were overturned due to the efforts of the NAACP Field Secretary James Weldon Johnson and attorney Scipio Jones.

369th Infantry Regiment, World War I
"Harlem Hellfighters"

The return of over 350,000 African American troops from World War I was a major factor in the events of the summer. After fighting for their country these men found it difficult to readjust to life in Jim Crow America and their presence increased white repression. Outbreaks in Washington DC, Charleston, and Bisbee, Arizona stemmed from conflicts involving African American sevicemen. Cameron McWhirter's recent book Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America traces this and other causes.

If We Must Die, by Claude McKay


If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Red Summer of 1919 - Chicago

"...Racial feeling, which had been on a par with the weather during the day, took fire shortly after 5 o'clock when white bathers at the 29th street improvised beach saw a colored boy on a raft paddling into what they termed 'white' territory. ~ Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1919

National Guardsmen surround suspect in Chicago

In addition to bloody labor strikes earlier in the year, the summer of 1919 had over 30 violent race riots. Although those in Knoxville, Tennessee and Elaine, Arkansas were more deadly, none were as widespread or long-lasting as the one in Chicago which began on Sunday, July 27. 

The city had seen its African American population grow from 44,000 to 109,000 in the previous decade as stockyard and factory owners advertised throughout the south for workers. Another 20,000 white southerners had emigrated as well. With veterans returning from World War I this led to a housing shortage and fierce competition for jobs, especially between African Americans and recent European immigrants. 

Seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams was on a raft in Lake Michigan when he crossed into water in front of the beach used by white bathers. A group of youths began throwing rocks at him and one, allegedly thrown by George Stauber, hit him in the head. He fell off the raft and the white youths prevented anyone from going to his rescue. When police arrived the only arrest they made was of one black man. Fights broke out at the beaches and quickly spread to adjacent areas of the city.

Much of the violence was from roving gangs of Irish American youth seeking victims to attack. These groups were organized as Athletic Clubs throughout the city. Future Mayor Richard J Daley was a member of one, the Hamburg Athletic Club. Daly, 17 at the time of the riot, did never confirm or deny his participation.

By the middle of the week, heavy rains and the presence of 6000 National Guardsmen ended most of the violence, although sporadic outbreaks lasted nearly two weeks. Another 3500 troops were brought in to keep the peace, along with between 1000 and 2000 veterans who were deputized. There had been 38 fatalities, 23 of whom were African American, and 537 injured. Fires left about 1000 people homeless. 


Some civic leaders suggested immediate segregation in housing and workplaces as a solution to the racial problems, but the majority took a more long-range approach with the formation of the Chicago Committee on Race Relations to study the issues leading to the riot. Their report, which took two years to complete, focused on the underlying causes of racism and the competition for housing and jobs.

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.

Charles S. Johnson

"There is no domestic problem in America which has given thoughtful men more concern than the problem of the relations between the white and the Negro races." ~ The Negro in Chicago, 1922

The leading African American sociologist of his generation, Charles Spurgeon Johnson was born on July 24, 1893 in Bristol Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond and a doctorate from the University of Chicago where he studied under Robert E. Park. His studies were interrupted by World War I. He served in France in the 103rd Pioneer Infantry Division and achieved the rank of sergeant major.

In the aftermath of the 1919 riots he served on the Chicago Commission on Race Relations and co-authored the commission's report, published as the 700-page book The Negro in Chicago. Although critics felt the report did not place adequate responsibility for the riot on the white Jim Crow-era culture of the day, it has prevailed as the classic model of race relations reports.

From 1922 to 1928 Johnson was research director for the National Urban League in New York. During this time he founded and edited the league's Opportunity magazine, at the time a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance. He also edited the anthology Ebony and Topaz, containing the works of the premier poets, essayists and social scientists of the times.

Wanting to return to the South and to academic life, in 1928 he became chairman of the sociology department of Fisk University in Nashville and in 1946 he became Fisk's first African American president. He established the Fisk Institute of Race Relations, the first "think tank" at a historically black university, and published several books on the culture of the South with the most notable being Shadow of the Plantation (1934) and Growing Up in the Black Belt  (1940). He was able to attract faculty members such as Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and Aaron Douglas.

In 1930 Johnson was part of a three-man League of Nations team investigating labor practices in Liberia. He later served as a consultant to President Hoover's Conference on Negro Housing and under President Roosevelt served on the TVA and consulted with the Department of Agriculture on farm tenancy. After World War II he was part of a UNESCO delegation sent to Japan to make recommendations about the country's educational system.

Johnson was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He died in Nashville on October 27, 1956 at the age of 63.