1919: Chapter Three

During the United States’ participation in World War I, some 370,000 African American men served in the armed forces. Included among their ranks were all-black units such as the Harlem Hellfighters and the Eighth Illinois National Guard that fought with extraordinary courage and great distinction.

Hundreds of thousands of African American men and women worked long hours in defense factories throughout the nation to supply the military with arms, provisions, and more.

“Though no complete and accurate records on the eight months of violence were [ever] compiled,” author Cameron McWhirter has written, “at least 25 major riots erupted and at least 52 black people were lynched...."

It was a unique eight months in American history, and before it was over, it was made even more historic by an unprecedented development.

It was a bold statement made in the face of antiblack prejudices that, by 1919, had become an ingrained part of the American culture.

It was also made at a time when significant changes were about to take place in the physical landscape of the United States, changes that would have great bearing on the Red Summer.

Along with all these motivations, perhaps the most deeply felt reason why more than half a million black Americans migrated northward was articulated by Richard Wright, a young black man destined to become an internationally acclaimed author.

Among those lynched were individuals who had committed the “crime” of refusing to yield their vehicle on a road; neglecting to use a proper form of address; refusing to step off a sidewalk; using profane language; using an improper title for, arguing with, insulting, or otherwise not showing deference to a white person.

It will never be known exactly how many African Americans were lynched in 1919 or in the years preceding or following that pivotal year.

Unemployed whites bitterly resented those blacks who had managed to find jobs.

The papers’ headlines were incendiary: “13 SUSPECTS ARRESTED IN NEGRO HUNT”; “POSSES KEEP UP HUNT FOR NEGRO”; “HUNT COLORED ASSAILANT”; “NEGRO FIEND SOUGHT ANEW.”

Alarmed at what they feared was about to happen, Washington’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent a letter to the city’s four daily newspapers warning them that they were “sowing the seeds of a race riot by their inflammatory headlines.”

As the third day of the riots began, some leaders, black and white, horrified by what had taken place thus far, began to seek ways to bring the mayhem and slaughter to an end.

More alarmed than ever, Washington’s black citizens began to retaliate. For the first time, white mobs were met by black mobs as they patrolled the streets.

He ordered more than two thousand federal troops into the streets of DC to quell the riots.

With the heavily armed troops patrolling the streets, the bloodshed and mayhem began to abate.

During the next two years, vigilante groups of whites had responded violently, bombing twenty-six homes and killing twenty-seven blacks.

Williams was well aware of this, but as he paddled along holding on to a railroad tie, he inadvertently floated across the “line.”

For the next ten days, Chicago would remain a battle zone, with sporadic incidents of violence taking place throughout the city.

Although the exact toll of death and destruction would never be known, at least 50 people were killed; more than 540 men, women, and children were injured; and more than 1,000 black families were left homeless.

It was called sharecropping, and it involved black families raising and harvesting crops for white landowners in exchange for a humble place to live and a meager share of the crops.

On the night of September 30, 1919, some one hundred African American sharecroppers attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a black church three miles north of Elaine, Arkansas. They hoped that by joining the union, they would receive better pay for the cotton they raised for their white landlords.

Hundreds of white veterans, recently returned from fighting in Europe, having been told that a conspiracy to murder white planters had begun, joined the posse.

But as author Cameron McWhirter has written, “In 1919, blacks began to broadly challenge the long-held premise that they must exist in this country as inferiors.”

In the years immediately following the events in Washington, Chicago, and Elaine, it became increasingly clear that, rather than be diminished by the riots, African Americans were emboldened by them.

In the years immediately following the events in Washington, Chicago, and Elaine, it became increasingly clear that, rather than be diminished by the riots, African Americans were emboldened by them.

Voter suppression measures have also included efforts to prohibit people who need to vote early from doing so by requiring people to live in a precinct for at least twenty-eight days before voting and prohibiting emailing absentee ballots to voters.

Over the last decade, many states have passed and implemented laws that make it harder for Americans to vote—restrictions that are often tailor-made to disenfranchise people of color and low-income voters.

These voter suppression efforts have had a massive effect, depressing turnout in the elections of 2014 and 2016.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Voter Participation Center, and other organizations have become actively involved in litigation and other activities aimed at ridding the nation of these voter suppression measures.

Today, the fight goes on, and at the forefront of this struggle is a movement known as Black Lives Matter.

BLM began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African American teenager Trayvon Martin.

On the night of February 26, 2012, Martin had engaged in an altercation with Zimmerman, who was the neighborhood watch coordinator for the Sanford, Florida, gated community in which the confrontation took place.

When, on November 24, 2014, it was announced that the St. Louis County Grand Jury had decided not to indict Wilson for the fatal shooting, Ferguson became the source of mass protests.

During the Great Migration, many African Americans settled in a section of New York City called Harlem. Among them were highly talented black writers, artists, photographers, musicians, poets, and scholars, many of whom had been profoundly influenced by how African Americans, for the first time, stood up against the violence and outrages that were hurled against them throughout that tumultuous summer.