1919: Returning from War and the Red Summer

1900-1999: A New Divide
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

As Black veterans returned from war and Black communities thrived despite the constant threat of lynching, White resentment grew, leading to race riots and massacres in cities across the U.S. Fighting to defend their lives and livelihoods, hundreds of Black men, women, and children lost their lives, businesses, and homes.

What’s important to know?

  1. Renewed Conviction: Black veterans from World War I returned home with a renewed commitment to demand treatment as equal human beings.

  2. Defending Ourselves: Lynchings continued and White aggression went unstopped by the Federal and State governments. Black leaders debated among themselves the degree to which Black communities should respond with violence to stop the violence being perpetrated against them.

  3. Red Summer: Throughout the summer of 1919, lynchings, massacres, and the destruction of millions of dollars of Black property occurred against Black communities across the United States.

  4. The Advocacy of James Weldon Johnson: James Weldon Johnson led the effort to advocate for the passage of the Dryer Anti-Lynching Bill which would have forced the Federal Government to intervene in cases where state and local governments refused to hold perpetrators responsible for lynching.

1: Renewed Conviction

At the conclusion of World War I, White and Black men returned to their homes to find change — change at home and change within themselves.

Black veterans returned with renewed conviction to fight for their rights after experiencing life in a foreign country free from the racial profiling present in the U.S. They took pride in their service and rejected second-class treatment. This experience, combined with the New Black confidence coming out of the Harlem Renaissance, created a momentum and conviction behind Black activism that offended many Whites who still expected Black deference. Historian David A. Davis (2008) explained the emerging challenges rising in American society:

“In this social and artistic context, African American writers invoked the trope of the African American soldier, the person who incontrovertibly deserves equal citizenship, in juxtaposition with images of lynching, the radical denial of human rights, to make a case for civil rights. This juxtaposition leads to an aesthetic of lynching images that pushes a progressive agenda, fusing the artistic and social ends of the New Negro movement” (p. 477).

Historian Nell Irvin Painter pushed the argument further, when she wrote, "the senseless carnage of the First World War dealt white supremacy a tremendous blow by demonstrating to African American Americans that liberty and democracy were causes worth personal and collective sacrifice” (p. 478).

2: Defending Ourselves


1922 NAACP advertisement attempted to raise awareness about the lynching epidemic and the proposed Dyer anti-lynching bill.

Image Source: Wikipedia

While African American communities responded to each incident in their own ways, throughout the summer of 1919 the willingness of Black communities to fight to defend themselves, their families, and their property was much more public. W. E. B. Du Bois seemed to suggest that this was the only option available to returning veterans. As Davis noted, Du Bois, while not arguing for outright armed rebellion noted that equality, despite their war service, “would not be granted magnanimously” (Davis, 2008, p. 484).

Historian Jonathan Coit (2012) noted about trying to understand these events:

“African Americans participated in the riot in a myriad of ways, and events were fluid and unpredictable. Violent acts spanned a continuum from spontaneous responses to more organized interventions. Moreover, African Americans not only committed aggressive violence, but also fought among themselves about the boundaries of legitimate violence. Based on their divergent interpretations of the events of the riot, black leaders found ample support for different and even contradictory political programs. Black radicals argued that armed defense exposed the irrelevance of established black leaders” (p. 225).

3: Red Summer

The following is a list of the more well-known events that occurred in 1919 (but it is not comprehensive).

 

  • April 13: Riot of Jenkins County resulted in 6 Black deaths and the destruction of the Carswell Grove Baptist Church and 3 Black Masonic Lodges (McWhiter, 2011).

  • May 10: Charleston riot injured 5 White and 18 Black men; 3 Black men were murdered. After an investigation, the Navy determined that four U.S. sailors along with a civilian (all White men) started the riot (McWhiter, 2011).

  • July: In the town of Longview, 4 Black men were murdered and the African-American housing district was destroyed (Durham, Jr, 1980).

  • July3: White Bisbee policemen attacked the all Black 10th U.S. Calvary unit known as the “Buffalo Soldiers,” which resulted in 6 people being shot (Voogd, 2008).

  • July 14: Two hundred White boys between the ages of 16-19 opened fire on Black people gathered in Garfield Park, wounding multiple African Americans, including a 7 year old girl. (The Chattanooga News).

  • July 19-23: White men, many of whom served in the military, spent four days rioting and enacting violence against Black people in the city of Washington, D.C. When the local police refused to intervene, the Black population fought back. President Woodrow Wilson eventually called in the National Guard to restore order. In total, 10 White people and 5 Black people were killed. 50 people were seriously wounded and another 100 less seriously (Krugler, 2009, p. 49).

  • July 21: White men attacked African American veterans of World War I during a homecoming celebration in Norfolk. Six African Americans were shot. (McWhirter, 2008).

  • July 27-August 12: A young Black man was murdered for swimming into a White portion of Lake Michigan and when the police refused to arrest the murderers, violence erupted that lasted for 13 days. White mobs destroyed hundreds of Black homes and businesses on the South Side of Chicago. After the governor called in a militia of 7 regiments, the rioting stopped. In total, 1,000 Black families lost their homes, 23 Black people and 15 White people died, and 527 people were injured (Coit, 2012, p. 230).

  • August 30-31: In Knoxville, after a Black man was arrested on suspicion of murdering a White woman a White lynch mob overran the jail. They also attacked the Black business district, where they killed seven African Americans and wounded 20 (Paine, 2007).

  • September 28-29: 10,000 White people attacked and burned the county courthouse. They lynched a Black man accused of raping a White woman, burned his body, and then attacked Black neighborhoods on the north side of Omaha. In total, it is estimated that they destroyed over a million dollars worth of property. The governor had to ask the federal government to send in U.S. Army troops to stop the violence (Taylor, 1998).

  • September 30: When Black sharecroppers tried to organize for more favorable conditions violence broke out. White men from across the region gathered, formed their own militia, and attacked Black residents of the county of Elaine for two days. The militia killed between 100-237 Black people. Five White people died in the attacks as well. The investigation and trial that subsequently came after - blamed the sharecroppers for the violence, argued they were socialists, and sentenced 12 of the 79 Black people on trial to death.

  • November 13: A mob of 300 White men attacked Black residents in Wilmington, Delaware after an attempt to lynch three Black suspects in a gun-store robbery (Voogd, 2008).

 

Students

Want to learn more? Watch the video below about the Red Summer of 1919.

Video from Crash Course Black American History.

4: The Advocacy of James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

Image Source: The Library of Congress 

Many Black activists spoke out, wrote their Congressmen, and engaged in extensive organizing to fight the ongoing lynching and the frequent massacres occurring during the Red Summer. James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was one of those leaders. Credited for crafting the phrase “the red summer,” he organized peaceful protests seeking to draw more attention to the increasing vigilantism that was seizing the nation.

In 1920, he lobbied tirelessly to support the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill. The bill passed the House of Representatives but was blocked by Southern Senators and was never signed into law (Francis, 2014).

He said of the legislation, “The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill did not become a law but it made the floors of Congress a forum in which facts were brought home to the American people as they had never seen before” (Washington et al, 1989, 56).

“The organization most in need of sympathy, is that century-old attempt at government of, by and for the people, which today stands before the world convicted of failure.”
— James Weldon Johnson after the Senate refused to pass the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill into law

Community Members

Leonidas C. Dyer, Republican representative from Missouri, sponsor of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.

Image Source: Wikipedia

Did you know? The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was put forward by Representative Leonidas C. Dryer from St. Louis, Missouri.

Dryer was born in Warren County, Missouri and attended Central Wesleyan College and then received his law degree from the Washington University in St. Louis.

Dryer represented the 12th District in Congress, a mostly African American district. He served in Congress from 1911 until 1933. (Biographical Directory, U.S. Congress).

Dryer worked with James Weldon Johnson on the anti-lynching bill after the horrific East St. Louis Riot of 1917 (Washington et al, 1989, p. 56).

Your Turn

What role did World War I have in changing the mentality of the African Americans regarding defending themselves with violence if necessary? How did the rise of Black intellectuals and artists contribute to this?

    • While St. Louis did not experience the same type of riots other cities did in the summer of 1919, the East St. Louis Riot of 1917 represented the same type of massacre and violence so typical of these race riots. Read more about the 1917 East St. Louis Riot here.

    • Read about Representative Dryer from the U.S. Congress Biographical Directory here.

    • Balto, S. (2019). Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. University of North Carolina Press.

    • Francis, M. M. (2014). Anti-Lynching Legislation and the Sinking of the Republican Ship in Congress. In Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (pp. 98–126). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Paine, D.F. (2007). "Race and Murder in Knoxville, 1919: The Trials of Maurice Mays,"Tennessee Bar Journal Vol. 43, No. 3 (March 2007), pp. 28-33.

    • Wells, I. B. (2020, reprint) Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. University of Chicago Press.

    • Williams, C. (2023). The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    • Coit, J. S. (2012). “Our Changed Attitude”: Armed Defense and the New Negro in the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 11(2), 225–256. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23249074

    • Davis, D. A. (2008). Not only war is hell: World war I and african american lynching narratives. African American Review, 42(3), 477-491,795. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/not-only-war-is-hell-world-i-african-american/docview/209806703/se-2

    • Durham, Kenneth R. Jr (1980) "The Longview Race Riot of 1919," East Texas Historical Journal: Vol. 18: Iss. 2, Article 6. Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol18/iss2/6

    • Francis, M. M. (2014). Anti-Lynching Legislation and the Sinking of the Republican Ship in Congress. In Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (pp. 98–126). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Krugler, D. F. (2009). A Mob in Uniform: Soldiers and Civilians in Washington’s Red Summer, 1919. Washington History, 21, 48–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25704908

    • The Chattanooga news. [volume] (Chattanooga, Tenn.), 14 July 1919. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038531/1919-07-14/ed-1/seq-1/>

    • McWhirter, C. (2012). Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. St. Martin’s Griffin.

    • Norvell, S. B., & Tuttle, W. M. (1966). Views of a Negro During “The Red Summer” of 1919. The Journal of Negro History, 51(3), 209–218. https://doi.org/10.2307/2716062

    • Paine, D.F. (2007). "Race and Murder in Knoxville, 1919: The Trials of Maurice Mays,"Tennessee Bar Journal Vol. 43, No. 3 (March 2007), pp. 28-33.

    • Taylor, Q. (1998). In Search Of The Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998, pp. 193 and 205.

    • Voogd, Jan (2008). Race Riots and Resistance: The Red Summer of 1919. Peter Lang.

    • Washington, B. T., Moffat, T., Bryan, W. J., Du Bois, W. E. B., Johnson, J. W., Shaw, G. B., Handy, W. C., Coolidge, C., Rockefeller, J. D., Randolph, R. G., Spingarn, J. E., Rosie, Bethune, M. M., & Jim. (1989). A REPRESENTATIVE SELECTION OF JAMES WELDON JOHNSON’S CORRESPONDENCE. The Langston Hughes Review, 8(1/2), 45–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26432878. (Quote also from this article.)

    • “Rep. Leonidas Dyer.” Govtrack.us

    • “Dyer, Leonidas Carstarphen, 1871-1957.” bioguide.congress.gov

Stephanie Brizee
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