Red Summer of 1919

Red Summer

A white gang hunting African Americans during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.
Date	1919
Location	United States
Outcome	Riots between white and black Americans across the United States.
Deaths	165+

The Red Summer refers to the summer and early autumn of 1919, which was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the United States, as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities and one rural county. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases many black people fought back, notably in Chicago. The highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where five whites and an estimated 100-240 black people were killed; Chicago and Washington, D.C. had 38 and 15 deaths, respectively, and many more injured, with extensive property damage in Chicago.

The riots resulted from a variety of postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and white, and competition for jobs and housing among ethnic white people and black people. In addition, it was a time of labor unrest in which some industrialists used black people as strikebreakers, increasing resentment. The riots were extensively documented in the press, which along with the federal government feared Socialist and communist influence on the black civil rights movement following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They also feared foreign anarchists, who had bombed homes and businesses of prominent business and government leaders.

Civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson coined the term "Red Summer;" he had been employed as a field secretary since 1916 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence of that summer.

With the manpower mobilization of World War I and immigration from Europe cut off, the industrial cities of the North and Midwest experienced severe labor shortages. Northern manufacturers recruited throughout the South and an exodus of workers ensued. By 1919, an estimated 500,000 African Americans had emigrated from the Southern United States to the industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the first wave of the Great Migration, which continued until 1940. African-American workers filled new positions in expanding industries, such as the railroads, as well as many jobs formerly held by whites. In some cities, they were hired as strikebreakers, especially during the strikes of 1917. This increased resentment against them among many working-class whites, immigrants or first-generation Americans. Following the war, rapid demobilization of the military without a plan for absorbing veterans into the job market, and the removal of price controls, led to unemployment and inflation that increased competition for jobs.