For decades (and probably centuries) white supremacists have staged attacks and the variant on black and brown people — some so important to history yet they often go untacked about. In this Revisiting History article, we explore the summer of 1919 in the United States — otherwise known as the Red Summer.
During much of that year (Spring; Summer, and Fall) hundreds of deaths occurred across the United States. But before you go thinking that it was due to something like the measles, think again, in fact the cause couldn’t be anymore different. According to historians at the University of Southern California, hundreds of African American people were killed at the hands of white supremacists for much of that year.
Fact: In Elaine Arkansas, more than 150 deaths occurred in total including 5 white children.
White people at the time did not want to live or be around black people, so as a result, they took to the streets of America committing coordinated and specific attacks against innocent black communities (coast to coast). The battle for housing; medical care access, and jobs between ethnic European Americans and African Americans had single-handedly created a war.
A war that had turned people against each other for no other reason than the fact white people assumed black people “were seen as bette by some” or “taking” from a white person. A feat that all still reigns true decades later in 2019.
At the time that the “Red Summer” was underway, some estimated 500,000 African American people migrated from the south (what would be modern day Tennessee; Atlanta, the Carolinas (think those areas) to the Northern areas (think Boston; New York, and the like). The migrations caused an influx of African Americans taking and
WHAT STARTED IT ALL?
During the year 1919, you’ve got to remember that that was still a time in which blacks and whites were still not allowed to be near each other. But during this year, after the mobilisation of World War I and Euro migration totally cut off — northeastern regions experienced industrial level shortages (across employment sectors and the like) that left them reeling for employees.
Fun fact: During the year 1919, the President Woodrow Wilson and his government felt that the “negro” indeed was the most “violent” thing one could possibly encounter. In fact he even felt that a “negro” who had been abroad was the greatest unsettling thought to America. Overall, his government felt that the fight for equality; fair pay, and the like (as we are still doing in modern day) was an outright attempt to overthrow the United States government.
An attempt that he and his government saw as an attempt to create a new government and a new social order — one that would eventually make whites a complete and near total minority.
For more information on the Red Summer and the crippling tragedies it hit America with — visit this link.
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