The Red Summer of 1919 proved that any movement wanting to challenge general American capitalism must endorse anti-racist demands as a fundamental step to the organization of the working class.
The Red Summer of 1919 makes reference to multiple race riots that took place between May and October of 1919. The riots took place in over thirty cities across the United States. The most extreme riots took place in Washington D.C., Chicago, Illinois, and Elaine, Arkansas.
The question at hand: “Would the African-Americans support for the war effort, on the battlefields of Europe and throughout many factories in the United States mean improvement in the status of the Negro as an American citizen?”
The beginning of the First World War brought about
…show more content…
many changes in the United States, especially in the Labor Force. Thousands of Americans were shipped off to aid in the war, creating a major labor shortage. To make up for this loss, whites and African Americans migrated from the south to fill these labor positions. Over 700,000 southern African Americans moved northward, drawn in by the opportunities presented to them in cities such as Chicago and Detroit and to escape the racist "Jim Crow" laws which made the south a dangerous environment for African Americans. This time period is deemed "The Great Migration". Over 2 million southern African Americans migrated to the north in search of a better life. The African Americans were not the only ones who benefited from from The Great Migration, though. The labor that African Americans provided was a great relief to the northern industrial workplaces in need. These industrial workplaces were known to avoid black labor in the past but had no other choice than to hire them out of sheer desperation. Helping in times of need boosted the confidence of African Americans. This migration provided the hope that blacks and whites were becoming equal in the labor force. Having been treated unfairly in the south, African Americans saw this shift in power as a way to prove themselves and their worth in the United States. However, instead of this, African American workers faced only strife. The end of the First World War meant the return of many Americans to the United States. Many whites had come to see that their jobs were taken by African Americans who seemed to be searching "for a larger share of both the nation's democracy and its wealth." The whites, determined to hold on to their power as the dominant race, saw this as a threat and did everything in their power to make sure African Americans stayed below them. This conflict lead to a violent and bloody summer now known as the Red Summer of 1919. This race war is an important time period in the history of the United States for the working class. William Tuttle, author of "Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919", stated, “Lynch mobs murdered seventy-eight black people in 1919, an increase of fifteen over 1918 and thirty over 1917.
Ten of the victims were war veterans, several of them still in uniform.”
The first acts of violence occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, which led to the death and injuries of a few men, all of whom were black. The United States continued on with these race riots as desperation for the whites to keep their title as the dominant race. The most violent of these race riots occurred in Chicago, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas.
On July 27, 1919, an African American named Eugene Williams drowned in Lake Michigan after "violating" the unauthorized segregation of Chicago’s beaches and being stoned to death by a group of whites. This, along with the police’s denial to arrest the man who caused it, set off a week of rioting amid Chicago's gangs. The riots ended on August 3, 1919. 15 whites and 23 blacks had been killed and more than 500 people were injured. Over 1,000 African Americans were also left homeless. During this time, the Ku Klux Klan recovered in the South along with their violent actions, including 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 lynchings in 1919. The Klu Klux Klan also arranged over 200 meetings to increase
…show more content…
enrollment. After the riot, some suggested carrying out laws to legally segregate black and white residence or prevent African Americans from working with whites.
However, these ideas were turned down by liberal voters. Rather, Chicago city officials formed the Chicago Commission on Race Relations to find the source of the riots and find ways to defeat them.
President Woodrow Wilson berated the white race as “the aggressor” in the Chicago riot and efforts were launched to promote racial harmony through voluntary organizations in Congress.
On July 19, 1919, white men initiated a riot after hearing that a black man had been accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. The men beat random African Americans, pulling them off of streetcars and beating them on the streets. African Americans fought back after the police refused to get involved. African American and white residents fought for four days. By July 23, 1919, two blacks and four whites were killed in the riots. In addition, an estimated 50 people were injured.
The Washington D.C. riot was significant because it was one of the only times where African Americans fought back vigorously against the
whites. A 17-year-old African American boy named Francis Thomas said in a statement to the NAACP, "A mob of sailors and soldiers jumped on the streetcar and pulled me off, beating me unmercifully from head to foot, leaving me in such a condition that I could hardly crawl back home." Francis Thomas also said he saw three other African Americans being beaten. "Before I became unconscious, I could hear them pleading with the Lord to keep them from being killed." One of the last but most intense of all the race riots began on September 30, 1919 after whites tried to disband the efforts of the African-American sharecroppers. The sharecroppers were meeting to discuss and organize a union so they could express matters to local planters. However, the planters were in opposition to the worker's organization and attacked the African American farmers. On October 1, 1919, over 200 African Americans and 5 whites were killed. The Irish immigrants in the United States competed in the labor force with the African Americans. Both Irish and African Americans provided cheap labor across America. However, after the Great Migration, African Americans took up the jobs once held by the Irish and were even being used as strikebreakers when the whites refused to work. William Tuttle on using African Americans as strikebreakers: "Although friction and sometimes bloodshed had marked the job competition between Chicago’s whites and blacks for decades, a new seed of racial discord in the city’s labor market was planted at the stockyards in 1894. In that year, masses of packing and slaughterhouse workers conducted a sympathetic strike with Eugene V. Debs’ American Railway Union, and, in the midst of it, black strikebreakers were hired for the first time in the history of the meat packing industry. Although the packers initially disclaimed any intention of adopting this practice, less than a week later black strikebreakers were working, eating and sleeping in the stockyards. Their presence fired racial animosities." With so many conflicts between blacks and whites in the labor force alone, the race riots were an inevitable outcome. Most of the blame for the disorganization of the working class lay with the craft unions' policies. The major form of union organization was craft unionism, represented by the American Federation of Labor craft union leaders, who saw their role as that of maintaining control over the narrow-based unions. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was one of the first organizations to fight for unionism in industries challenging the American Federation of Labor. The IWW organized industry-wide, mindless of race, sex, or other divisions. The AFL, however, who were dominant to the IWW, gave the African Americans only two options: organize in separated unions or remain unorganized. The American Federation of Labor's practices damaged the working class. African Americans were looked at as "garbage" and were called "scabs" by white workers, and many grew hateful to unions. Racial violence has always been a jutting factor in United States history and continues even today. Conflicts between blacks and whites have always been present, but climaxed during the Red Summer. The race riots uncovered the struggles of the laborers following the First World War. Constant attacks, cruel government, and biased media coverage from the whites were aimed at ruining African Americans in the labor force. Nonetheless, the African Americans fought back and continued to strive, providing us with one of the greatest achievements in working class history. The Red Summer of 1919 proved that any movement wanting to challenge general American capitalism must endorse anti-racist demands as a fundamental step to the organization of the working class.
In Erik Gellman’s book Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights, he sets out with the argument that the National Negro Congress co-aligned with others organizations in order to not only start a militant black-led movement for equal rights, but also eventually as the author states they “launch the first successful industrial labor movement in the US and remake urban politics and culture in America”. The author drew attention to the wide collection of intellectuals from the black community, labor organizers, civil rights activists, and members of the communist party, to separate them from similar organization that might have been active at the time. These activists, he argues “remade the American labor movement into one that wielded powerful demands against industrialists, white supremacists, and the state as never before, positioning civil rights as an urgent necessity.” In Gellman’s study of the National Negro Congress, he is able to discuss how they were able to start a number of grassroots protest movements to disable Jim Crow, while unsuccessful in dealing a “death blow to Jim Crow”, they were able to affect the American labor movement.
As it was stated in the book, many factors led up to the race riots of 1919. The single incident was a highpoint. It more or less triggered all of the actions and feelings that were preceded in the years leading up to the riot. It is amazing how the differences of a race can change in a few years. Also the importance of little factors that can lead up to becoming huge and having great implications on actions. For blacks and whites both the riot was just a built up accumulation of hostility that has been going on for quite some time. One thing can be said though that the Chicago incidents seem to be the more ruthless and aggressive when compared to others. It may have been because of the blacks’ resiliency not to lie down and to fight back. A lot of the time it causes even more hostility to brew when compared to a nonviolent approach. Nevertheless, the Chicago riots and the incidents that led up to it were monumental in status.
Or that the racial tensions exploded into riots in many cities, particularly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In addition, frustrations with the political process mounted on both the left and right. Left-wing thinkers attributed problems to the underlying causes of the demonstrations, notably the continuing war in Vietnam and the Government's failure to address racial and social inequalities quickly enough. Right-wing politicians argued that the demonstrators themselves were the problem and blamed the confrontations on indulgent political officials, although most Americans fell between the two. There was a growing feeling that the government's Vietnam policy was not working and that many social injustices went unaddressed. (Chicago Riots Mar the Democratic National
Lynching began when Charles Lynch worked the practice of lynching (Rushdy 24). “It began quickly to spread throughout the rest of the Southern states” (Rushdy 24). Lynching came to bring capital charges against an individual. It was said that African Americas suffered more from the lynchings than white people did. “Although white c...
On July 27, 1919, a young black man named Eugene Williams swam past an invisible line of segregation at a popular public beach on Lake Michigan, Chicago. He was stoned by several white bystanders, knocked unconscious and drowned, and his death set off one of the bloodiest riots in Chicago’s history (Shogun 96). The Chicago race riot was not the result of the incident alone. Several factors, including the economic, social and political differences between blacks and whites, the post-war atmosphere and the psychology of race relations in 1919, combined to make Chicago a prime target for this event. Although the riot was a catalyst for several short-term solutions to the racial tensions, it did little to improve race relations in the long run. It was many years before the nation truly addressed the underlying conflicts that sparked the riot of 1919. This observation is reflected in many of author James Baldwin’s essays in which he emphasizes that positive change can only occur when both races recognize the Negro as an equal among men politically, economically and socially.
World War II presented several new opportunities for African Americans to participate in the war effort and thereby begin to earn an equal place in American society and politics. From the beginning of the war, the black media urged fighting a campaign for a “Double Victory”: a global victory against fascism at the warfront and national victory over racism at the homefront. In spite of the literary and artistic achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, the economic or political gains that the black community expected did not come to light from the African American participation in the First World War. (Perry 89) Thus the black media aimed to obtain that foothold that would bring about racial equality. They emphatically declared that there would be no lessening of racial activism, in order to present a consolidated front to America’s enemies.
Throughout Chicago there were many fights that blacks had to fight. It was not easy for blacks to live in the city because everywhere they went they were faced with whites trying to get them to move out. Led by comedian Dick Gregory, 75 people protested in the Bridgeport neighborhood. As these protestors walked many people of the Bridgeport neighborhood threw eggs and tomatoes, showed Ku Klux Klan signs and shouted, "Two-four-six-eight, we don't want to integrate and Oh, I wish I was an Alabama trooper, that is what I'd really like to be-ee-ee. Cuz if I was and Alabama trooper, I could kill the niggers legally" (Biles, 112).
The quote above is from the British governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore who proclaimed freedom for African American slaves who fought for the British, after George Washington announced there would be no additional recruitment of Blacks in the Continental army in 1776. For numerous free blacks and enslaved blacks, the Revolutionary War was considered to be an essential period in black manifestation. Many public officials (like Dunmore), who initially had not expressed their views on slavery, saw the importance of African Americans and considered them an imperative tool in winning the war. Looking back, it almost seems like an inherent paradox in white America’s desire of emancipation from England while there still enslaving blacks. This concept has different grounds in white’s idea of liberation in comparison to that of the African-Americans. To white Americans, this war was for liberation in a political/economical tone rather than in the sense of the privatized oppression that blacks suffered from. But what started this war and what would this mean for blacks? How did these African Americans contribute to the war effort? What were there some of their duties? How did the white communities perceive them? How did it all end for these blacks? The main topic of this paper is to show how the use African Americans helped the control the outcome of the war while monitoring their contributions.
The Chicago riot was the most serious of the multiple that happened during the Progressive Era. The riot started on July 27th after a seventeen year old African American, Eugene Williams, did not know what he was doing and obliviously crossed the boundary of a city beach. Consequently, a white man on the beach began stoning him. Williams, exhausted, could not get himself out of the water and eventually drowned. The police officer at the scene refused to listen to eyewitness accounts and restrained from arresting the white man. With this in mind, African Americans attacked the police officer. As word spread of the violence, and the accounts distorted themselves, almost all areas in the city, black and white neighborhoods, became informed. By Monday morning, everyone went to work and went about their business as usual, but on their way home, African Americans were pulled from trolleys and beaten, stabbed, and shot by white “ruffians”. Whites raided the black neighborhoods and shot people from their cars randomly, as well as threw rocks at their windows. In retaliation, African Americans mounted sniper ambushes and physically fought back. Despite the call to the Illinois militia to help the Chicago police on the fourth day, the rioting did not subside until the sixth day. Even then, thirty eight
...sa” (60). The commission of Tulsa has been working since 1997 to create a better picture of the violence that led to the destruction the city’s black business district. The magazine the Jet report, “that the commissioners recommended restitution ranging from a memorial and scholarships to direct payments to survivors and their descendants” (9). There is also been a controversy about the number of deaths during the Tulsa race riot. In 1999 historians came to Tulsa trying to find the correct number of deaths. In a Goble-News article historians believe close to 300 people died during the violence of the Tulsa race riot (n.pag.). In all black citizen of Tulsa became very close do to this tragedy that accrued on June 1, 1921.
The punishment of the African American race was harsh; when those punishments were mixed with how they protested for civil rights, it only got worse. Not all the time does one stop and realize that some whites felt the need to help out in some way. Whether they could relate or they just truly had sympathy, these whites helped protest. When someone protests, they express their objection to something. Whether it was more a silent protest or an aggressive protest, punishments to both races were given.
Throughout American history, African Americans have had to decide whether they belonged in the United States or if they should go elsewhere. Slavery no doubtfully had a great impact upon their decisions. However, despite their troubles African Americans made a grand contribution and a great impact on both armed forces of the Colonies and British. "The American Negro was a participant as well as a symbol."; (Quarles 7) African Americans were active on and off the battlefield, they personified the goal freedom, the reason for the war being fought by the Colonies and British. The African Americans were stuck in the middle of a war between white people. Their loyalty was not to one side or another, but to a principle, the principle of liberty. Benjamin Quarles' book, The Negro in the American Revolution, is very detailed in explaining the importance of the African American in the pre America days, he shows the steps African Americans took in order to insure better lives for generations to come.
The Watts riots is one of the most important riots in the many important riots that have occurred in the United States. Thousands of African-Americans, fed up with the horrible police brutality at the time, reacted by battling the police in the streets along with the looting and burning of White-owned stores. The riot was unprecedented, but not unexpected, during a time of great racial tension, with the Civil Rights Movement having become an ever-increasing strain on the country. Police brutality was not the only factor in causing the riot, as there were economic problems in the Black community at the time that also contributed to the unrest. The Watts riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, influenced riots to come in the decades following
Shaskolsky, Leon. “The Negro Protest Movement- Revolt or Reform?.” Phylon 29 (1963): 156-166. JSTOR. U of Illinois Lib., Urbana. 11 Apr. 2004 .
Even after being freed from slavery, black Americans struggled to gain equal rights to whites. There was a large presence of racial violence in the South for hundreds of years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Racism was a large part of Southern life where slavery used to exist. If black Americans committed the smallest crime or inconvenience to a white person, they were brutally beat or lynched. These lynchings were large public events, where communities including small children would gather to view, mock, and beat the lynched blacks. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan became part of the Southern culture. This group persecuted black Americans, beating, lynching, and killing countless black Americans.