Cameron McWhirter: "Red Summer"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-18/cameron-mcwhirter-red-summer
White mob hunts for blacks on Chicago's South Side
Courtesy Chicago History Museum
The summer of 1919 was a bloody one in the U.S. Antiblack riots and lynchings swept the nation from April until November. A field organizer for the NAACP dubbed it the “Red Summer.” World War I had just ended, and black soldiers returned home hoping to finally gain equal rights. Instead they found hostility. But for the first time, blacks organized and fought back. In civil rights history, the summer’s events are often forgotten. But in his new book, “Red Summer,” journalist Cameron McWhirter examines the summer’s violence and how it influenced the civil rights movement.
Guests
Cameron McWhirter
reporter, The Wall Street Journal.
Comments
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Does Mr. McWhirter have a sense of whether white veterans participated same as, less than or more than the general population - in both the antiblack and the anti-union violence. How did the white veterans treat returning black soldiers?
Cameron, you don't sound like a WSJ reporter when discussing this material. "They wanted the cheap labor" doesn't seem a likely theme in a contemporary economic analysis. I guess things never change as far as "free speech and free press." I read the WSJ sometimes. I'll seek out your writings.
Entire towns were massacred in Florida and North Carolina around this time.
They ran out of Native Americans and started on other oppressed groups. And here we are overseas still killing en masse to obtain resources. Our heritage is racist and genocidal for business reasons: Manifest Destiny and exceptionalism mean death for many.
A comment about the KKK as well as the involvement of various fraternal organizations is key to this time period.
There is a spectacular book by Dennis Lehane called the given day that goes very deeply into that year with the Boston police strike at center stage of all these surrounding events. Did this author read this novel?
IleanaDU: Remember that the armed forces were segregated and remained so until near the end of WWII. The kind of violence and bloodthirst generated by propaganda for war did not disappear when WWI ended. Look for violence from our oil war veterans in the coming decade. There are demigogues already in place to lead it, and the economic and social stresses are being purposely intensified by wealthy interests to divide the populace for social control.
Cameron said,"You can hear Martin Luther King say the same words as Johnston." And his quote pertains to both eras and to the need for war as a profit center for elite interests. Naturally they label all who question or resist communist or today "terrorist."
There was a 1916 lynching in TX that is equally horrific to the one the author discussed in Mississippi. It is covered in detail in
The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students Texas A & M University)
"In 1916, a crowd of ten to fifteen thousand cheering spectators watched as seventeen-year-old Jesse Washington, a retarded black boy, was publicly tortured, lynched, and burned on the town square of Waco, Texas. He had been accused and convicted in a kangaroo court for the rape and murder of a white woman. The city's officials watched Washington's torture and murder and did nothing. Nearby, a professional photographer took pictures to sell as mementos of that day. "
Postcards of this hanging on the court house square became collectors items as did specific body parts from Jesse Washington which were kept in jars of alcohol and displayed in saloons and homes for many years afterward.
I recommend this book to your listeners as it covers in detail the racial history of McLennan Co. Tx., the work of the NAACP which sent a white woman "Elisabeth Freeman, to travel to Waco to investigate, and the evidence she gathered and gave to W. E. B. Du Bois provided grist for the efforts of the NAACP to raise national consciousness of the atrocities being committed and to raise funds to lobby anti-lynching legislation. "
Melody Kelly
I found it interesting that the mobs you describe also attacked government buildings and took actions in lieu of government. I'm curious how much of the mob's motivation represents decades later dissatisfaction with the outcome of the Civil War and its local rights issues, increase in federal power, etc? Or were the issues more immediate economic discontent? Or simply racism?
Steve
Alexandria, VA
I am hoping there will be some discussion of how Woodrow Wilson's racism played a role in the riots. Also, some discussion of the film Birth of a Nation would be interesting.
What about the Elaine, Arkansas Race Massacres of 1919?
Some consider it the most deadly racial confrontation in the history of the United States.
John Gibson
Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center
When speaking of the "Red Summer" people often cite riots and strife in urban industrialized areas. Please have your guest speak the massacre that occurred in Elaine, Arkansas during september 1919. It is a rural agrarian society from which I came.
Although Wlson was definitely no paragon of racial tolerance, (hee also supported the racist film Birth of a Nation) wasn't the fact that Wilson's delayed reaction to the Washington DC riots because he was incapacitated and basically unable to govern the country?
Rafael
I was born and raised in Phillips County, Arkansas. Sadly, the effects of that massacre still linger there today. The book "American Congo:The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta" clearly illustrates this.
Dear Diane,
The chilling events of Red Summer 1919 regarding the horrendous brutality of white terrorism endured by African Americans bring me to tears. While certainly not in defense of the majority, I understand that their predatory treatment stemmed from a centuries-long conditioning of white superiority & black inferiority; which in many ways, is still persistent.
Do either you or your guest (and fellow listeners of course) believe that much of this white supremacist conditioning remains a prevalent factor today, as it stealthily continues to pervade much of the various forms of media (movies, radio, magazines, books, etc.,)?
Thanks
Diane Rehm Show, thank you very much presenting this important subject. I have met many Americans in my life who deny that white racial bias still exists in America. If there is anything clear from Obama's presidency, it is that racial bias is rampant. I find it common to encounter things like a bumper sticker with a figure urinating on Obama's name and letters to the local paper reporting a white man screaming at an older white woman for having an Obama campaign sticker on her car. Not only is racism not gone since Obama's election, its ever-present nature is being called on to oppose moving this country forward. Thanks very much for this book and exposing the truth about some people in our nation.
The most chilling and accurate, first person account was written by William English Walling -- for a publication called The Independent -- a few days after the riot in 1908.
I have the account hotlinked at www.penningthoughts.com in my column on the Race Riot in Lincoln's Home Town.
I was fascinated and disgusted and ashamed at the vicious racism Walling reports hearing from nearly every person he encounters. His account of the destruction and the horror brought upon the black citizens of Springfield on the 'East Side,' which remains 'the black side of town,' sickened me, and made me wonder how much of that latent racism exists today.
Please read Walling's report. If PenningThoughts.com is not available, just Google Walling and Springfield Race Riot and Independent.
This was an excellent report. As a black man who was a child during the 1960's in North Carolina, I experienced some of the racial problems that you described. Your story did a good job of relating some of that time periods racism to today's anti-Obama racism. I will definitely be reading the book.
the kkk were democrats, don't forget it.
Just to correct one factual error stated by a caller: contrary to what the caller said, Obama did, in fact, carry no fewer than three southern states: Virginia (first time to a Democrat since 1964), North Carolina (first time going blue since 1976), and Florida. Obviously, the bias against him on racial grounds is probably strongest in the South, but it is not true that he was completely shut out of electoral votes in the region.
Most history books refer to this very violent page in american history as the BLOODY SUMMER or BLOODY RIOTS OF 1919. i am curious as to why the author chose to name his book 'RED SUMMER" true enough blood is red but it is not as graphic as the use of the term blood which flowed through the cities and towns of america.
If the author happens to read this inquiry, i would appreciate a response.
Most history books refer to this very violent page in american history as the BLOODY SUMMER or BLOODY RIOTS OF 1919. i am curious as to why the author chose to name his book 'RED SUMMER" true enough blood is red but it is not as graphic as the use of the term blood which flowed through the cities and towns of america.
If the author happens to read this inquiry, i would appreciate a response.
Interesting book and conversation, but this book has been written -- over and over again. Nothing McWhirter discussed hasn't appeared in other books by well-known historians -- Eric Arnesen, William Tuttle, George Frederickson, Robin Kelly, Kevin Boyle, and on and on. He even took his title from Tuttle, whose book is titled Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919.
It's not at all clear form this conversation what M. is adding to what we know. If he's not adding anything new, then he should acknowledge that. Journalists who do history need to admit up front that they are popularizers, not historians.
Interesting book, but it has been written -- over and over again. Nothing McWhirter discussed hasn't appeared in other books by well-known historians -- Eric Arnesen, William Tuttle, George Frederickson, Robin Kelly, Kevin Boyle, and on and on. He even took his title from Tuttle, whose book is titled Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919.
It's not at all clear form this conversation what M. is adding to what we know. If he's not adding anything new, then he should acknowledge that. Journalists who do history need to admit up front that they are popularizers, not historians.
Good question: in fact white veterans played a large role in the violence in many of the riots. Washington, D.C., was the key example. The American Legion, which just began that year, also played a role in anti-labor violence.
Mr. Howard,
Thanks much for your comments and insights. Economic interests clearly fueled/exacerbated the violence in 1919.
--Cam McWhirter
Mr. McCormick,
I have not read Lehane's novel but I am familiar with the Boston police strike (and Calvin Coolidge's rise to fame). This was part of the labor chaos that year.
--Cam McWhirter
Steve,
Good point. Much of the 1919 violence was motivated by issues that I do not believe related to the states rights issues of the civil war. Certainly mobs in Omaha, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. cared little about the Civil War's outcomes.
Regards,
Cam McWhirter
Rafael,
Thanks for your comment.
Woodrow Wilson did not have his debilitating stroke until the fall of 1919. The Washington riot occurred in July.
Regards,
Cam McWhirter
Barbara,
Thanks for your question (and apologies for my delayed response). The book is called Red Summer because that is the phrase James Weldon Johnson gave the period. He called is red because it was so bloody.
Regards,
Cam McWhirter
Not sure what your point is here, however, I consider this a work of narrative history that covers a period not explored before in depth. Great books have been written about some of the episodes in the Red Summer, but only some. There have been good books about Chicago and Arkansas. However little has been written about Washington, Omaha, Knoxville, Arizona, Charleston, the lynchings of 1919, the NAACP's role that summer, etc. Mr. Tuttle, who was a great help in my research, wrote a great work on the Chicago riot of that summer, but he urged me to write the larger story. Mr. Boyle's book, Arc of Justice, is also a great book, but focuses on a period after 1919 and on one case in Detroit.
Regards,
Cam McWhirter