Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America

by Cameron McWhirter

A narrative history of America's deadliest episode of race riots and lynchings After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country for eight months. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Millions of lives were disrupted, and hundreds of lives were lost. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before. Red Summer is the first narrative history written about this epic encounter. Focusing on the worst riots and lynchings—including those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Omaha and Knoxville—Cameron McWhirter chronicles the mayhem, while also exploring the first stirrings of a civil rights movement that would transform American society forty years later.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Race, African American, Politics, Crime

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 19, 2011

About the author

Cameron McWhirter is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He was awarded a Nieman Foundation Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard in 2007. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. "

Reviews

[Mary Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-written. How did we miss so much in history class? Or, more exactly, why was so much not included in high-school history class?

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent, harrowing, and inspiring account of American race riots in 1919.

The bulk of Red Summer traces horror after horror through that year, as white Americans attacked blacks across the country. In Chicago, Washington DC, Knoxville, Omaha, and small towns from Arkansas to Georgia similar stories unfolded, beginning with accusations of criminal misdeeds by black men. White mobs assembled and set to work, lynching, destroying buildings, or rampaging through black-populated areas and simply killing at will.

The worst case was in Elaine, Arkansas, where whites killed *several hundred* black people with utter impunity. That state's governor blessed the event, and sent troops to finish the slaughter. Local authorities concocted a myth of black insurrection, which newspapers local and national then bought into and promulgated.

What made 1919 different from previous racist violence was that a significant number of black men were WWI veterans, freshly returned from Europe, trained in war and not very willing to accept abuse. McWhirter makes a convincing case that blacks resisted whites as they never had since 1865, often taking up arms. Resistance also took the form of national organizations; the NAACP emerges as one of the book's collective heroes.

Several points emerge which have interesting implications for our understanding of early 20th-century America. First, that many in authority assumed blacks resisting white violence were part of left-wing political movements ("'Race riots seem to have for their genesis a Bolshevist, a Negro, and a gun', the Wall Street Journal declared", 160), but the record shows only tenuous connections at most. We can imagine historical counterfactuals where the IWW succeeded in winning both a larger membership and managed to integrate races across labor, but that didn't occur in 1919. Which didn't stop the FBI, respectable journalists, etc. from seeing a synthetic Red/black/Black menace.

Second, progressives often supported the white racist perspective. For example, one Chicago lawyer and progressive "legitimized a widely held view among white Democrats and progressives that blacks had caused the fighting", when the opposite was true (154). Arkansas governor Charles Brough "considered himself forward-looking... He supported a woman' right to vote, praised education..." (220) He also helped lead the terrible Elaine slaughter.

The Wilson administration comes off very badly (not a surprise to a Wilson-disliker like myself. President Wilson, always fond of racism, simply ignored the violence and rising death toll throughout the year. Attorney general Palmer of Palmer Raids fame (or notoriety) took pains in a major public report to connect black resistance to Marxist and anarchist political causes, a connection which simply didn't exist: "If this report serves to give substantial appreciation of the dangerous spirit of defiance and vengeance at work among the Negro leaders, and, to an ever-increasing extent, among their followers, it shall have accomplished its purpose" (240) And "[o]nce again, the white press embraced this story line." I'll pass by without comment the specter of the nation's attorney general getting basic facts wrong and throwing his support to violent racism, when not engaged in exiling hundreds without trial.

The last bit of Red Summer follows echoes of that year's events up through the present. A final chapter argues for black resistance in 1919 laying the groundwork for the post-WWII civil rights movement. A moving coda tracks down descendants of one especially chaotic atrocity, showing both the power of memory and the durability of its repression. Mcwhirter ends on a note of optimism, celebrating black people's strength and the gradual reduction of white racism.

McWhirter writes with economy and controlled fury, meticulously sourcing every item of each event. He describes scenes like the lynching of John Hartfield in clear, excruciating, even cold detail:

Lynchers cut off Hartfield's fingers. They let him angle from a branch, then they shot him. They burned the corpse. The extrajudicial killing took place promptly at 5 p.m., as was publicized in advance in publications from New Orleans to New York...
Those who could have stopped it did not. Those who wanted to stop it could not. (68)

The prose is perfectly accessible throughout.

Strongly recommended.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cameron McWhirter's Red Summer chronicles, in graphic detail, the outbreak of racial violence which swept across America in 1919, from full-fledged riots to lynching and distressingly casual murders. McWhirter examines the fraught context of these events: World War I had recently ended, with its rhetoric of “making the world safe for democracy”; many African-Americans who had served in the war took it seriously, distressed to find white Americans no more eager to coexist before. This coincided with the first Red Scare, with Americans on guard against any form of activism (however modest or moderate) as a harbinger of Communist revolution. Then the violence began: riots in Charleston, Knoxville and Omaha; the massacre of hundreds of Blacks in Elaine, Arkansas (an atrocity rivaling the more famous Tulsa riot two years later); clashes between armed gangs of Blacks and whites in Chicago and DC, with authorities seemingly helpless (or unwilling) to intervene. Respectable white society (not least President Wilson, distracted by the League of Nations battle, incapacitated by a stroke and at any rate, sympathetic to segregation) respond with platitudes about racial harmony at best, and victim blaming at worst. Black Americans, on the other hand, become increasingly militant and willing to fight back: W.E.B Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barrett challenging the Federal government to outlaw lynching and dismantle segregation; William Monroe Trotter and James Weldon Johnson, urging resistance and self-reliance; Marcus Garvey, beginning a quixotic but extremely influential Black separatist movement. McWhirter’s structure is somewhat uneven: he’ll zoom in for a detailed account of a specific riot or lynching, then pull back in the next chapter to take in a broader view of a given event’s ripples throughout broad society. But the core of the book is impressively immersive, combining official reports, eyewitness accounts and a detailed, reportorial prose style that allows views to judge the horrors of 1919 for themselves. McWhirter views the year as an important catalyst in the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps overstating his case by several decades; but it’s clear that Black activism was stimulated by leaders and common people deciding they would no longer stand idly by against a society that wanted them oppressed or dead. A harrowing account of a divided, violent era.

[Tamora Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1919 America was terrified of anarchists, workers' strikes, socialists, communists, the arrival of Prohibition, and black soldiers--men who were used to fighting--returning to the country after WWI. Riots and lynchings broke out in unusually bloody numbers that year all over the country, and a lot of things changed.

I didn't know that originally the NAACP was led by whites. During the course of this summer, the NAACP not only tripled its size and spread across the nation, but its leadership became black. This book paints more vividly than anything I've read Woodrow Wilson's complete indifference to the plight of black people in this country. Despite repeated requests for him to send federal troops to riot sites where state governors refused to send state troops, and despite repeated requests to him and to Congress for anti-lynching legislation, Wilson said and did nothing at all.

This book isn't for those who are easily triggered by violence. There are photos of grinning whites standing over the battered and burned dead as if they were at a party, and there are descriptions of hunts for fleeing blacks and lynchings conducted as public celebrations. Even the idea that the blacks might fight back--and many did--brought many whites to commit atrocities against those who had nothing to do with it. 1919 was not a proud year for whites.

[C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a detailed look at race relations in America (mostly 1870-1960’s) the history of mob violence, lynchings, hatred, politics, and the bottom of human mind. The level of hatred for someone who has done nothing against you is shameful.

Hearing how and why the violence, mob reactions, failed judicial system, old-boy politics, military involvement (machines guns, random and sometimes systematic killings of African American men, women, and children) were allowed to continue was appalling. The racial politics stretched across the country into France, and other war zones.

What sticks with me most, beyond the killings of full families, is the level of morbid cruelty. The fact that humans can single someone or a whole race out, feel justified in mutilating, burning, ripping apart a body and then take trophy pieces, tells me of the human mind is darker than most people can even imagine. Mind you that these are so-called “Christians, God-fearing, and civilized people.”

This book is important to help keep our eyes open and on alert to holding each other accountable as our brothers keeper. We cannot stand by and allow racism, murder, abuse of hatred to become the norm in any society. This book is necessary to prevent repeated atrocities and to make us look at ourselves in truth. Society can fall quick if it allows any of its citizens to be treated less than another citizen. Equality must be maintained, and life must have meaning.

I have so many emotions, questions and thoughts on this book. Read it, learn from it and let it sink into your heart. You cannot afford to look away and think you are safe because it did not affect you or anyone who looks like you. It does, it did, it will, and it can.

[Marcus Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lynching – it’s amazing to me to think that at one point in our nation’s history that a mob of men could overpower a jail, with little effort, drag off its imprisoned, mutilate them then kill them. All with no recourse.

Amazing.

The summer of 1919 saw the worst of this with widespread riots in the south and the north and even in DC. But something unprecedented happened. Blacks began fighting back. Intensely. Jim Crow was still highly in effect but with many Black soldiers returning from WWI, the idea of fighting for a country that distinguished your rights began permeating the Black community. A quest for equal citizenship began. Uprooting the NAACP and Marcus Garvey to help change the mindset of many Blacks eager for change. This strive for equality definitely increased the terror and mob mentality of those intent on mainstaying the staus quo but I’m thankful that it didn’t deter our forefather’s resolve.

I found this read compelling for its ability to take you back in time and feel the pressures mounting. You can sense the tension and racism that was throughout . But more importantly, it’s the pride you experience knowing how the movement began and ends. In each riot and lynching, Blacks ultimately lost. Riots produced hundreds dead with vast amounts of property damaged leaving many displaced and homeless in addition to afraid for their lives. With no government intervention, the soul of America deemed Blacks second class citizens but throughout, Blacks didn’t give up. They stood their ground, fought, died, persevered, migrated and ultimately prevailed.

A highly recommended read emphasizing ‘yes’, we still have a ways to go but ‘yes,’ we have come a long way.

[Donna Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very difficult book to read. The year 1919 was one of incredible unrest between blacks and whites. Returning black soldiers, meeting scorn and derision, were no longer accepting if second class citizenship. The rise of the NAACP helped black communities to consider protecting themselves. Highlighting riots in cities such as Charleston, Cleveland, Washington DC, Chicago, and Omaha, the author Cameron McWhirter, is able to trace the growing determination of blacks. Some riot cities had populations that were 60% black, but Omaha had a 1% black population. Almost all of the massive number of riots were started by whites. The black response was becoming a matter of "striking back" but was interpreted by whites as "an uprising" or a "revolution." Unfortunately, President Wilson was a racist, and his assistant in the Justice Department was Edgar J Hoover, who blamed violence and strikes on black subversives. However, by the end of 1919, there were several incidents of white union members protecting black workers. "Although 1919 was a high-water mark of race riots and lynchings, such mass violence continued for years afterward." 1919 was important because it marked "the beginning of the dismantling of institutional prejudice and inequity that marred American society." Unfortunately, 1919 also spawned increased KKK membership. It is important to view history in order to understand the present.

[VerJean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read, but so glad I found it.
(don't remember what pointed me to this book, that I had to get thru interlibrary)
There's some difficult gore, made most difficult due to the horror of how humans can treat one another. I know this is factual, but found it extremely difficult to comprehend the inhumanity of whites and white crowds brutally torturing and killing fellow humans simply because of their black skin color.
Maybe today's brutalities aren't so unusual after all; while we hear more about it, yet not as brutal as these events.
And this was in 1919 - LESS THAN 100 years ago.
My Grandparents were youngsters, my nearest & dearest friend was born less than 10 years later.
Takes your breath away to think about it.
Also a bit difficult to follow all the individuals traced as the founders of organizations and the many individuals involved in attempting to make the necessary changes. Well written, but there are a lot of facts to follow.
Read through to the very end - Interesting twist brings a conclusion of sorts to the opening story of one of the first events that started the bloodshed of 1919.

[Steven McCord · Rating 5 out of 5]

In general, I think, many people chose to ignore the past because brings with it truly challenging messages for those of us living in the present. My experience reading about the Summer of 1919 was no exception to this rule; it was difficult to endure the new found knowledge of what Americans (specifically whites) did to their African American brethren at this specific time in history. I think we could all take lessons from books like this which demonstrate the lowest potential of humanity and group thinking. Only in the knowledge of what there can be can we chose more clearly to take actions how they should be taken.

[Britain · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, I believe any American should read up on the summer of 1919. It illustrates a crucial point in American history that is often not highlighted or even mentioned.

The book itself is well-written. Using Joe Ruffin's story from start to finish gave a nice narrative to the incidents making up the Red Summer.

[Lynn Hogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-Opening

A readable historical introduction to a troubling, volatile period in America’s fraught race relations. Focuses on major white-fueled race-based riots, but treats a number of lesser known ones as well.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting... learned a number of things I did not know... the things that we are never taught when we learn history in school.

[Joe Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

When white mob violence threatened black communities nationwide a race of people stood up and denounce the ativity and fought back

[Scott Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Audiobook) This was a tough, but important and enthralling work to read. This year, America spent a lot of press and effort to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our landing on the Moon. It was a moment of national pride and should be honored as such. Yet, when we look at history, we can’t only just focus on the good. We must also acknowledge the ills. This year was the 100th anniversary of the Red Summer, when the US faced multiple race-inspired fights/engagements/riots/massacres between African-Americans and White Americans.

From major cities such as Washington D.C., Chicago, Omaha to smaller towns in the South and Midwest, the summer of 1919 saw multiple acts of violence between the races. For the African-Americans, many of whom had returned from fighting against the Germans and Central Powers, the fight for freedom overseas only exacerbated their segregated status back home. For White America, the return of the African American soldiers, along with change in America during and after World War I saw their previous status under threat, with concerns that their place of unquestioned superiority in America was in peril.

It is in the environment that McWhirter offers a narrative about the various “riots” that came to define that hot and difficult summer. Across the nation, it would often take only a spark (an accusation of rape to fighting over what part of a beach is “white” and “colored”) that triggered mass rioting. There are lynchings galore during this time, where the torture and murder of an American is turned into a spectacle worthy of the Roman Coliseum. It is a time of overt racism, when white authorities worked to put the African-American in their place. The domestic terrorist organization of the Ku Klux Klan, once defeated, starts to see a significant rebirth, driven by the 1st blockbuster The Birth of A Nation and resentment of the rise of the African-American from military service and economic advancement in the war economy. The number of dead (mostly African-Americans) totals in the hundreds, if not thousands, during this dark year.

Yet, it was also a time when African-Americans started to fight back. From political and social organizations (with the strengthening of the NAACP) to African-Americans arming themselves to protect their property and lives, the dark times of 1919 saw the rise of African-Americans looking to fight for their rights and honor. It is this concept that McWhirter ends the work. While the tragedies of 1919 claimed many innocent lives, it also set the stage for the Civil Rights movements of the second half of the 20th century.

This is a timely and important work. It is not always fun to read, and it should infuriate all Americans who read this. So many men, driven by personal ego, racism and political calculations, could have mitigated or stopped the violence, yet they chose not to act. Many African-American men, from common workers to journalists, risked life, limb and prosperity to fight the injustice and bring accounts of the terror to the world. Some political leaders (white) sacrificed their political lives and their personal health and safety to fight for justice. Unfortunately, these sacrifices did not always result in true justice, but the fight was worth the acts.

Perhaps there are better overall histories, but this work is one that is important to read, no matter what the format. I only knew a few things about this time, but I am glad I listened to this work, even if it was painful at times. The reader does a good job with the material. A must read/listen at least once in an American’s lifetime...especially now, 100 years on, when, unfortunately, racial violence is still very much a part of America.

[Mike Lund · Rating 5 out of 5]

informative and well written.

An informative and well written book on a little known period in American history. The period called "Red Summer" ran between April to November 1919. At least 25 major race riots and mob action erupted across the country. There were 83 documented lynchings with at least 76 being Black people. Historical events don’t happen in a vacuum. The author attempts to present the facts while giving some context. He postulates that the events of Red Summer triggered an awakening that would lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill of 1965 and continues on today.

The nation was in Historic turmoil in 1919. “Red Summer” was just one of many historic events. There were more labor strikes in 1919 than any other year in America. The Communist take over of Russia triggered a communist activist bombing spree that created a “Red Scare”. Women activists finally got the 19th ammendment passed giving women the right to vote. The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act passed starting prohibition. John Alcock and Arthur Brown were the 1st aviators to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. The 2nd wave of the Spanish Flue killed thousands of Americans. The White Sox threw the World Series. I would consider reading a good overview book such as “1919 The Year That Changed America” by Martin Sandler, (183 pages) before Red Summer just to get a feel of how it fits within everything that was happening.

[GinnyP · Rating 5 out of 5]

An account of the violence against African Americans in 1919 across the U.S. Blacks who came home from WWI expected to be given respect and rights that they'd earned defending the country. It was not to be; in April in Carswell Grove, Georgia, violence broken out, leaving behind bodies, burned, lynched, and shot. A chain reaction continued for most of the year; atrocities were committeed against African Americans solely because of their skin color. President Wilson refused to acknowledge the mob violence and killings, saying nothing and taking no action to calm the nation. While black men, women, and even children were persecuted, tortured, and killed, in 1919 the resolve in the African American community was awakened; a change was coming, but not until the end of the year, and into early 1920, were laws proposed and passed to make not just the South, but North as well, a safe(R) place to be dark-skinned. Those changes laid the foundation for the passage over 40 years later of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. A well-written book about a time not to be forgotten or trivialized.

[Michael Linton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a must read to understand America. This was a pivotal point in Amercan history in regards to race relations. It covers many events that happened that summer: white mobs accusing a black person, then lynching the accused with torture, then the Blacks fighting back and riots ensued. It was a growing movement among Blacks to fight back due to the rise of the NAACP and the soldiers coming back from the war. It does mention Tulsa massacre which we learned about last year. But apparently it wasn't just discovered.

[Daniel Koch · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw a book titled Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 my first thought was it was going to be about the anarchist bombings that were commonplace that year. Then I read the second part of the title and realized it was going to be on a topic I knew very little about. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America is not an easy read emotionally.

Sure the story of the rise of the NAACP was positive (Walter White is particularly bad ass), but the race riots that took place that year as emboldened black soldiers returned from serving overseas in France is sobering to say the least.

In location after location white mobs murdered, ransacked and brutalized black citizens with reckless abandon. Supported by a biased press (that eagerly believed the white folks and claimed blacks were inspired by leftist agitators), and rigged judicial system the perpetrators largely got away with it.

That year, just about anything would set off the white hordes - accusations of black people committing crimes, changing demographics, black people standing up for their rights, big businesses using black workers as scabs during union strikes, black people simply existing, anything really. The results were often deadly and always violent.

I had heard of the Chicago riot previously but only vaguely. The race riots of 1919 were all new to me but the outcomes sadly very familiar. One new aspect to all of the lynching and abuse was that this time around black citizens fought back. It's a very engaging read.

I am not surprised that I didn't learn about the race riots in school growing up. Hell, we barely covered World War I, and then skipped ahead to the great depression with a blip of coverage on the Spanish Influenza. There was no mention in school that in Omaha, NE white mobs lynched a black man accused of rape, riddled his body full of gunshots, took grisly photos posing next to the mangled corpse, set the corpse on fire and then kicked the burnt out husk of his torso down the street like a soccer ball. Oh and that was after trying to lynch the white mayor for speaking out against them.

This history is important because it reminds us that when people say "This isn't who we are" after a racist episode those people are naive at best and liars at the worst. This is who we are, this is who we've always been, but hopefully not who we want to be any longer.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone said this book was really boring but to be honest if we didn't have to annotate it, I think I would have found it really interesting
Also, how have I never know about this before
The re-writing and covering up of history never fails to amaze me

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I think there are more thrilling historical writers than McWhirter(he tends to pile fact upon fact, mini-biography upon mini-bio,event upon event, in a predictable rhythm), the sum of this book is inarguably great. The growth of the NAACP, during a summer in which blacks were lynched and race riot followed riot in larger number than seen before, is the anchor of this book;the organization came to life because blacks unexpectedly , in the experience of White America, fought back, in full, against the violence perpetrated upon them.The first World War "grew" black veterans who had been treated as indisputable human beings (MEN, without qualification) on the battlefields and foreign soil of Europe and who upon return to the Jim-crowed, segregated, bigoted, "stay in your place" America of 1919, refused to abide by the old rules.The anger and courage of these vets caught fire in big and small towns across the country when they and other blacks were attacked for percieved violations of the color line. Painfully, step by step, McWhirter shows us how the rebellion of a few and the right-mindedness of some others, allowed the US to inch away from the rigid lines of color and power.McWhirter, drop by drop, bit by bit, allows us to visualize that painful, bloody evolution(the evolution which has led to a black man holding the highest office in the land) to gather momentum. I admit feeling a bit disappointed by his, measured staid prose, until he reached the final chapters, in which he ties the death of one of the earliest murder victims to the life of that man's grandson.Any book which brings me to unexpected tears with its insight is welcome and will not be forgotten. Life comes full circle;the dream is fulfilled and yes,Martin, free at last,free at last.I encourage anyone interested in America's "original sin", slavery, to read this painful but redemptive chronicle.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last black U.S. congressman left in 1901, while in the North, black power was restricted to a few urban areas. The 1917 St. Louis Riot spawned a cartoon asking President Wilson when he would make America safe for democracy? WWI enlisted 367,710 black men, most were put in crappy supply jobs, but those who got to fight “acquitted themselves well.” In 1919, the Defender was the nation’s largest black newspaper and reached into the deep South. It defended black rights, encouraged northern migration and criticized Jim Crow. Dubois noted however that every black person “was a veteran of racial prejudice.”

In 1919, the white community in Macon, Georgia found themselves in a tizzy! Their local school had accidentally chosen the same colors as the local black school. The horror. This led to both sides carrying guns, which I’m sure the children at both schools enjoyed. “In the South that June, lynchings occurred every several days, as they had in May. Mobs grabbed blacks accused of crimes and slaughtered them before large, cheering crowds.” On June 26th in Ellisville, Mississippi, 10,000 whites with the collective IQ of a toaster oven assembled placing their little boys up in the nearby trees to see the last moments of John Hartfield’s life. To make it abundantly clear their actions had no connection to justice, the mob cut his fingers off, let him dangle, and then shot him with 2,000 bullets. One grinning man said, “I’ve got a finger!” – his photographs of the lynching sold out quickly – the grinning man wasn’t through talking: “Ain’t nobody can buy this finger, I cut it off’n him myself. Gosh, but that nigger was tough – He screamed like a woman when I done it, the yeller.” Wow... The governor ended up blaming the lynching, not on that sadistic grinning sociopath or the mob, but on the French, whose Revolution had put thoughts of equality in black people’s heads.

Modern day racists say lynching was usually a response to black rape, but facts show that “only 14 of the 77 black men lynched in 1919 were accused of assaulting a white woman.” In Macon, a group of prominent blacks were beaten and suddenly forced to leave town in June. In Cleveland, in June, a group of fifty white men and boys “stoned black schoolchildren riding on a streetcar to the swimming ponds at Garfield Park.” Explain that one. Or this news report: “As news of the white man’s death spread, almost every black man in Laurens County spent the night cowering in the swamp.” Drive-by shootings in 1919 were called “terror cars”. News spread fast that blacks in Washington DC in 1919 were fighting back. So, then you ended up with both sides there carrying: razors, clubs, bats, bricks, lead pipes, knives, and pistols. “Mobs pelted streetcars with bricks.” One black guy had merely just taken his girl home when the crowd saw him and yelled, “Catch the nigger” and “kill the nigger” and gave chase. 2,000 soldiers disperse across Washington DC including tanks with machine guns from Fort Meade.

The Red Summer solidifies black political activism – You’ve got the Defender, The Crisis, the NAACP, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells and Paul Robeson as voices of reason. “Blacks began to broadly challenge the long-held premise that they must exist in this country as inferiors.” They began fighting back. Southern sheriffs could never find enough blacks to send to prison to meet the needs of Southern agriculture and Industry. Sharecropping broke down during the great migration north. Chicago needed cheap menial labor and few immigrants were arriving to go there. And so, companies sent agents to the South to recruit black farmers. These black workers were not intended to be unionized; as many as 40,000 southern blacks were used as strikebreakers by Steel corporations, housed in barracks to keep them away from the strikers. Chicago’s 1919 Race Riot kills 23 blacks and 15 whites, and over 2,000 homes and apartments are damaged. Again, the news to both sides was clear – blacks were fighting back. Large-scale white violence could be met with large-scale black violence. The Nebraska lynching of Willie Brown night photographs are chilling. The Knoxville white mob of 5,000 destroys a building in town and steals and destroys so much of value so fast, in reading the story you realize the power of the mob. The mob didn’t travel to that building to see justice, but to vent hate, greed and avarice. W.E.B. Dubois thought Marcus Garvey was a “charlatan”.
Nebraska had a race riot in 1919 which is surprising because it was only 1% black. Actor Henry Fonda saw it at age 14 and remarked, “while his feet were still dancing in the air, they riddled his body with bullets. It was the most horrendous sight.” “Mothers with babes in their arms pushed forward to see the body. A few women fainted, but more shouted with glee.” “Two small girls with pails full of stones walked through the crowd handing them out”. “Some onlookers waved American flags”. “Firefighters arrived but the mob cut their hoses.” “After the fire died down, people kicked the torso down the street.” This is the same America that runs to see movies like Saw. A nation marinated in blatant racial violence that still “shouts in glee” at the misfortunes of others.

A black veteran returns: “one man seeing his service stripes said aloud: ‘there is another overseas nigger. I guess he knows it all.” Said that black veteran later, “I felt safer in the trenches than in Arkansas.” The Elaine Massacre (death toll - hundreds) was “nothing less than an anti-black massacre”. “No forensic accounting of what happened in Elaine was ever done.” After a whole bunch of blacks, but no whites, were later indicted for murder, Ida Wells-Barnett asked, “If this is democracy, what is bolshevism?” A reporter found the cause of the Elaine violence to be white backlash to black sharecroppers trying to create a black-owned cooperative society – an early kind of Cooperation Jackson. That same reporter was lucky to leave Elaine alive and had received a tip to leave fast, which he did by boarding the next train without a ticket. He found out then from the racist conductor that whites had come to the town for his lynching.

The white people of Corbin, Kentucky “evicted almost its entire black population in one night.” Two white men in black face had done a robbery, and instead of looking for two whites, three hundred whites threw 200 black residents on boxcars in the middle of the night headed to Knoxville. “Corbin must hang her head in shame”, wrote one woman. However, that same year, a white woman in Shady Dale, Georgia said, “There’s no managing the neegahs now, they’s got so biggity since the war.” James Weldon Johnson back then head of the NAACP, had a voice sometimes like MLK sometimes more like Malcolm X. For him it was clear, resistance was here, blacks had fought back and would never again tamely submit. 1919 wasn’t finished yet, in November, Paul Booker gets soaked in gasoline and shot to death “as he writhed in flames.” That same day in Mississippi, a marshal had to drive at excessive speeds with his prisoner to get away from “two carloads of lynchers”. The events of 1919, led quite a few blacks to refuse to sing the national anthem. “What could blacks hope for?”

There are no plaques or cenotaphs anywhere in the U.S. today to mark “the racial violence of 1919.” Cameron points out it is strange, but Jefferson Davis may have also freed the slaves by his act of Southern Secession while using slavery as the reason. Cameron says that the events of 1919, shifted the discussion of race for good. A small telling Heinrich Boll-like detail in the book was a black laundress telling of Klansmen bringing their robes to her store to be cleaned. I cannot imagine having to clean those robes knowing they would be worn again after cleaning. She learned you could tell the Grand Dragon’s robe though; his was made from contoured sheets.

[Kira Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to hear, but need to know

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

That it took me several months to read this volume about the summer of 1919 in the United States is no reflection on the author nor his work. I was new to everything in this book, and it took time to absorb, process, and come to terms with Cameron McWhirter's "disagreeable" history. (His word, in the acknowledgements.)
I grew up in the 1960s, a time of racial advances and racial turmoil. Yet I knew little of the back story of the Civil Rights movement that dominated the news of my formative years. We never learned this history in schools. And today, many parts of the country refuse still to allow any of this to be taught.
Returning World War I veterans faced many challenges, including wide-scale labor unrest. For Black veterans, who anticipated a new respect in recognition for their WWI service, returning to being treated as unequal citizens in every way was intolerable. When white people forcibly pushed Black people down, Black people began to fight back.
Lynchings became news because new organizations like the NAACP recorded and publicized these horrors. White mobs trying to lynch black men before they could be tried in court for often trumped up crimes with scant evidence, now met armed resistance from Black communities. Race riots in cities across the country, including Washington D.C., Chicago, Knoxville, and Omaha, as well as in smaller communities, lasted several days, with authorities struggling to regain civil control. New immigrants from Europe and elsewhere jockeyed for economic advantage against Blacks migrating from the South, creating new stresses and explosive conflict. The Federal government either did nothing, or, under the Communist-obsessed J. Edgar Hoover, attributed Black unrest to "radical infiltration."
In the aftermath of riots, often the only arrests were of Black citizens, ignoring that most riots were started by white mobs attempting extrajudicial, vigilante "justice."
McWhirter's research has depth and breadth, spanning a full year of racial and labor unrest, as well as legal, social, literary and journalistic sources, to offer a comprehensive picture of the horrors of anti-Black sentiment carried to extremes, even as Black people seized the moment to begin to build political influence. I appreciated the way McWhirter book-ended his tale with the Ruffin family, whose ancestors suffered early in 1919, but whose descendants rose to power and prominence.
Anyone interested in learning about the roots of the modern Civil Rights movement should read this book. It is eye-opening, shocking, and yet hopeful.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

FINALLY FINISHED OMFG. ok finally reviewing. obviously this book took a lot of research and time to write and brought a lot of important and under represented information to light, but the way it was presented? absolutely not it. i did not like the way this book was written at all; it would bring up one person and go on a tangent on that person’s background and story for three pages when that information was totally irrelevant to the other content in the chapter. what this book really needs are subsections, not only to break up the chapters so that said rambling tangents don’t occur, but also to make the book seem like it’s moving faster. it was so dense and such a slow read, and all the info presented could definitely have been introduced in more varied and intriguing ways, it felt so so repetitive

[William Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America somewhat challenging to read but not for reasons that one might expect. The writing is not challenging; on the contrary, it is a straight forward presentation of factual information. The length of the book is not intimidating; not including the Notes, Bibliography or Index sections, it extends for a mere 274 pages. Nor is the topic is insignificant; rather, it covers an important aspect of 20th century history in the United States.

The challenge can be laid to the fact that Red Summer batters at the reader's emotions—or at least should. While reading of atrocities committed by racists throughout the nation 100 years ago is distressing in and of itself, the realization that such attitudes and hostility still exist is even more disheartening. This troubling observation is not part of McWhirter's book but is readily apparent to any reader who follows current events or browses Facebook diatribes. Red Summer is not only history but is also revealing of current attitudes still held by far too many. Each page of Red Summer not only teaches of the turmoil of 1919 but also challenges 21st century society to examine its current beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Let's just say that this is not a relaxing read.

As an example of how applicable the book is to U.S. culture in 2019, an observation on page 63 bears our notice: “White fear of losing preeminence pervaded American culture” in 1919. Today, one hundred years on, we see the same fear manifested in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment and in verbal attacks against non-white female progressives in the U.S. Congress. Chapter 10 describes the anti-black rioting in Longview, Texas in July 1919, and as recently as 1998, 79 years later, a white resident in that East Texas town called police to check on a black man who was committing the offense of walking along a public sidewalk in a neighborhood in which he “did not belong” (my personal observation).

Other parallels in U.S. culture of a century ago and today exist as well, including the realms of politics and economics. Then, white opponents of the NAACP and other organizations dedicated to the advancement of the nation's black citizens screamed that they were Socialist or Bolshevik, part of the “Red Scare” propaganda ballyhooed by Senator Joseph McCarthy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In the same vein, today's reactionaries decry progressives in identical terms (though “Bolshevik” has rather dropped out of favor).

Reporting on Omaha, Nebraska's lynchings, a children's magazine, The Youth's Companion, wrote “In every part of the country men are drifting further and further from sanity and self-control and orderly behavior.” (Page 205) Sounds rather descriptive of 21st century social media postings, does it not?

I was initially concerned that Red Summer might be rife with errors such as that on page 11, which identifies a man named Scott as an “arresting officer” whereas he was actually the prisoner of officers Brown and Stephens. Fortunately, this gaffe, which somehow escaped both the author and the proofreaders, was not repeated and was the sole mistake that I noted. If one can tolerate the dismay of realizing that civilization has not progressed very far in the last hundred years, Red Summer is an important book to read, both for its history and for its reminder that humanity still has vast room for improvement. Reading this book may also constitute one small step in helping to counter one deficiency in U.S. culture as noted by author Ralph Ellison and quoted on pages 269 and 270 of Red Summer: “At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.” I suggest that no one waste the opportunity to learn more about U.S. history and culture (then and now) by skipping McWhirter's Red Summer.

[Kevin Kizer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh man, an intense book about the intense year of 1919 when, in general, blacks started to fight back against the lynchings and racism they faced. A lot of this was fueled by black veterans returning from WWI. They were treated like heroes in Europe but came home to almost total oppression. Not a book to read if you are already depressed.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrifying, gut-wrenching account of ignorance and hatred run amuck. But also, an uplifting account of people fighting back and fighting for their right to be afforded the same rights as white society. Well researched account of an awful part of this country's story.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A vivid, unsettling, deeply researched chronicle of the worst anti-Black racial violence since Reconstruction that engulfed the United States, in the north and south, in large cities and rural areas, in 1919.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not aware of the events of the summer of 1919 or their significance to the history of US race relations and The Civil Rights movement until I read this book. Very good history book about severely neglected events.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible telling of the violence against African Americans in 1919 and how it lead to an increase in civil rights protests later. Detailed and fast flowing, this was one of the best histories I have read of this time. Very unbiased and affecting.