It was the summer of 1919. World War I, the stimulus of the first wave of the Great Migration, was over. Munitions plants had shut down, the factories that lured black southerners were now letting workers go, the country was on the verge of recession, not able even to imagine the actual Depression that was brewing. The migrants, hemmed in and living on top of one another, even as more of them arrived, pressed against the white neighborhoods on their borders and were met with death threats and bombings when they ventured to the other side.
