Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. In this week's episode about the Memphis massacre,
Speaker 1: we talked about that massacre being part of a pattern.
Speaker 1: While we mentioned some other similar massacres, we really didn't
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on the pattern part. So
Speaker 1: for today's Saturday Classic, we have chosen an episode that
Speaker 1: does spend more time on that. It's our June third,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteenth episode on the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. This year is the one hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the wave of racist violence in the United States that
Speaker 1: came to be known as Red Summer. And we talked
Speaker 1: about this just a little bit in our twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: episode on the Harlem hell Fighters, but that was a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and it was just like a little
Speaker 1: bit in part three of the episode, not really enough
Speaker 1: to do it justice. And honestly, it was a whole summer.
Speaker 1: You could do an entire podcast just on this, but
Speaker 1: with one hundred anniversary, it seemed like a good time
Speaker 1: to return to it. In a lot of ways, the
Speaker 1: violence of Red Summer was a response to two earlier
Speaker 1: and sometimes overlapping events, and those were the Great Migration
Speaker 1: and the return of black soldiers who had fought in
Speaker 1: World War One to the United States. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: neither of these things caused Red Summer. Red Summer was
Speaker 1: a backlash to them. These returning veterans and migrating families
Speaker 1: were not to blame for what happened. But since this
Speaker 1: is part of the historical context, today's episode is going
Speaker 1: to start off with a little bit about those two
Speaker 1: events before getting into the violence that stretch the summer
Speaker 1: and fall. And in case it is not clear, this
Speaker 1: episode includes a lot of violence, including sexual violence. Some
Speaker 1: of it is just particularly horrifying in nature. The Great
Speaker 1: Migration was a mass relocation of Black Americans out of
Speaker 1: the South and into the cities in the north end Midwest.
Speaker 1: It peaked in the mid to late nineteen teens, but
Speaker 1: the same pattern of migration continued for decades afterward. There
Speaker 1: was also migration within the South from rural areas into
Speaker 1: southern cities. Most of the people who were moving had
Speaker 1: been sharecroppers, doing essentially the same work as their enslaved
Speaker 1: ancestors had done, sometimes even on the same land and
Speaker 1: for the same landowners. Sharecroppers rented the land that they
Speaker 1: lived and worked on, and then they paid their rent
Speaker 1: by giving a share of their crop to the landowner.
Speaker 1: But it was almost impossible to make a decent living
Speaker 1: as a sharecropper. Many sharecroppers were in debt to their landlords,
Speaker 1: owing money for things like the tools and supplies that
Speaker 1: they needed to do their jobs. Unscrupulous landlords could make
Speaker 1: this situation much worse. But even if a person's landlord
Speaker 1: was honest and fair, a sharecropper often earned a subsistence
Speaker 1: level living at best. Sharecroppers faced the same threats to
Speaker 1: their livelihoods as any other farmer did, including pests and
Speaker 1: bad weather and fluctuating prices. The bowl weavil, which had
Speaker 1: been introduced to the United States and the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: spread farther and farther into cotton territory in the nineteen teens,
Speaker 1: destroying the crop as it went, and then in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: widespread flooding affected many of the same areas that had
Speaker 1: just been ravaged by weavils. As the Southern economy shifted
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, white farmers had also been caught
Speaker 1: up in this same system of sharecropping. It was exploitive
Speaker 1: regardless of who was doing the farming, but the system
Speaker 1: was stacked most heavily against black sharecroppers, who faced the
Speaker 1: additional hardships of systemic discrimination in racism, including segregation, political oppression,
Speaker 1: and racist violence. In the nineteen teens, black Southerners started
Speaker 1: hearing about new opportunities and a potentially better life in
Speaker 1: the North and the Midwest. This included jobs with better
Speaker 1: wages and better educational opportunities for their children. People heard
Speaker 1: about these opportunities through word of mouth from friends or
Speaker 1: family who had already moved. Word also came through advertisements
Speaker 1: placed by businesses and organizations that were hoping to attract
Speaker 1: new workers to their area. After the United States entered
Speaker 1: World War One, some of these jobs were specifically connected
Speaker 1: to the war effort. Between nineteen fourteen and nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: roughly five hundred thousand Black Americans left the South and
Speaker 1: moved to urban areas elsewhere. In nineteen twenty, m at J.
Speaker 1: Scott described it this way, quote, they were in the
Speaker 1: frame of mind for leaving. They left as though they
Speaker 1: were fleeing some curse. They were willing to make almost
Speaker 1: any sacrifice to obtain a railroad ticket, and they left
Speaker 1: with the intention of staying. This led to labor shortages
Speaker 1: in the South, and sometimes entire communities were abandoned. That
Speaker 1: also dramatically shifted the racial demographics of cities like Detroit, Chicago,
Speaker 1: New York, and Philadelphia. Will be returning to that shift
Speaker 1: in just a bit. The United States became involved in
Speaker 1: World War One as the Great Migration was happening. The
Speaker 1: war directly affected the nation's black citizens as well. After
Speaker 1: the United States declared war on Germany in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: people were eager to enlist in the military. This included
Speaker 1: at least twenty thousand black men who volunteered in April
Speaker 1: and early May. This actually presented a problem for the military,
Speaker 1: though the Marines didn't accept black recruits at all. The
Speaker 1: Navy and the Coastguard technically did, but only in menial roles.
Speaker 1: So overwhelmingly black men were serving in the Army, which
Speaker 1: at least in theory, accepted black men in most areas
Speaker 1: of the service and practice, though the army was racially segregated,
Speaker 1: with only a very few all black units in existence
Speaker 1: at that time, So after the declaration of war on Germany,
Speaker 1: the Army reached its quota for black recruits in just
Speaker 1: about a week. In May of nineteen seventeen, Congress passed
Speaker 1: the Selective Service Act, which required men regardless of race
Speaker 1: to register for the draft. The Army began creating new
Speaker 1: all black units and trained War one class of black
Speaker 1: officers at Fort des Moines in May of nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: sending most black officer candidates after that point to train
Speaker 1: at camps in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, or Panama. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: about three hundred and seventy thousand black men served in
Speaker 1: the US Army in World War One. These men faced
Speaker 1: persistent discrimination during their service. All Black units were often
Speaker 1: assigned to menial work like digging trenches and unloading cargo
Speaker 1: and removing unexploded ordnance. And while it's true that this
Speaker 1: was all work that needed to be done and somebody
Speaker 1: had to do it, disproportionately, the people doing the Army's hardest, dirtiest,
Speaker 1: and most degrading work were black. Black soldiers also experienced
Speaker 1: day to day harassment and discrimination throughout the war. There's
Speaker 1: more about all this in that past episode about the
Speaker 1: Harlem hell Fighters. Support for participation in the war wasn't
Speaker 1: universal within the black community. One line of thought was
Speaker 1: that it made no sense for people to put their
Speaker 1: lives on the line for a country that at best
Speaker 1: treated them as second class citizens. This was especially true
Speaker 1: because the United States had framed its involvement in the
Speaker 1: war as making the world safe for democracy, so it
Speaker 1: seemed hypocritical to fight for a country that was refusing
Speaker 1: to do the same within its own borders. But many
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders and organizations really took the opposite stance,
Speaker 1: arguing that this was a chance for black citizens to
Speaker 1: demonstrate to the rest of the nation that they were
Speaker 1: human beings and patriots worthy of respect who were actively
Speaker 1: making a positive contribution to the nation. The experience of
Speaker 1: military service during the war motivated many of these soldiers
Speaker 1: to actively fight for equal rights after they returned home. W. E. B.
Speaker 1: Du Boys described it this way in the NAACP's magazine
Speaker 1: The Crisis quote, we are returning from war the Crisis,
Speaker 1: and tens of thousands of black men were drafted into
Speaker 1: a great struggle for bleeding France and what she means
Speaker 1: and has meant and will mean to us and humanity,
Speaker 1: and against the threat of German race arrogance. We fought
Speaker 1: gladly into the last drop of blood for America and
Speaker 1: her highest ideals. We fought in far off hope. For
Speaker 1: the dominant Southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington. We fought in
Speaker 1: bitter resignation. And the sedatorial boys went on to describe
Speaker 1: the United States as a shameful land, saying that it
Speaker 1: lynches and disenfranchises its citizens, encourages ignorance, and steals from
Speaker 1: and insults black citizens. He concluded by saying, quote, we return,
Speaker 1: we return from fighting. We return fighting make way for democracy.
Speaker 1: We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah,
Speaker 1: we will save it in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: Or know the reason why. James Weldon Johnson, who coined
Speaker 1: the term red Summer, described it this way in his
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three autobiography, quote, the colored people throughout the
Speaker 1: country were disheartened and dismayed. The great majority had trustingly
Speaker 1: felt that because they had cheerfully done their bit in
Speaker 1: the life war, conditions for them would be better. The
Speaker 1: reverse seemed to be true. Earlier civil rights advocacy had
Speaker 1: tended toward a conciliatory approach, but after the war, Dubois
Speaker 1: and other civil rights leaders were increasingly direct lobbying very
Speaker 1: aggressively for equal rights legislation and for anti lynching laws.
Speaker 1: This advocacy became part of what came to be known
Speaker 1: as the New Negro movement, which was rooted in assertiveness
Speaker 1: and confidence and was also connected to the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 1: Membership in the NAACP really surged from about nine thousand
Speaker 1: members before the war to one hundred thousand afterward. Compounding
Speaker 1: that many of the people who moved from the South
Speaker 1: did not find the North to be what they imagined
Speaker 1: it to be. Many schools, neighborhoods, and public accommodations were
Speaker 1: still segregated by custom, if not by law. Many industries
Speaker 1: were closed to black workers, and many of the ones
Speaker 1: that weren't involved manual labor or service work. Discrimination and
Speaker 1: harassment may have been less overt in in some ways,
Speaker 1: but they were still there. All of this folded back
Speaker 1: into that growing advocacy for equal rights and equal treatment.
Speaker 1: So it was a whole system in which people who
Speaker 1: had moved, or people who had come back from war,
Speaker 1: or people who had done both of those things were
Speaker 1: finding themselves still facing all of this discrimination. And then simultaneously,
Speaker 1: people of all races in the United States were competing
Speaker 1: for scarce jobs and housing. Immediately after the war, the
Speaker 1: first Red Scare was going on, and that created a
Speaker 1: climate of fear of communism and Bolshevism. Also, immediately after
Speaker 1: the war, the nation was very nationalistic and xenophobic, and
Speaker 1: all of this together fed into this backlash that came
Speaker 1: to be known as Red Summer. We'll start talking about
Speaker 1: how it unfolded after a sponsor break. The two main
Speaker 1: hallmarks of Red Summer were lynching and mass violence against
Speaker 1: whole communities of black residents, which were often described as
Speaker 1: race riots. These weren't unique to nineteen nineteen. The same
Speaker 1: types of violence happened before and after Red Summer, but
Speaker 1: during that summer and fall of nineteen nineteen both were
Speaker 1: really at a peak. And although the great migration that
Speaker 1: we just talked about was from the South into urban
Speaker 1: parts of the North and Midwest, these incidents happened all
Speaker 1: over the country. However, details are hard to track down
Speaker 1: for some of these incidents today. At the time, they
Speaker 1: were often reported in both black and white newspapers, although
Speaker 1: with completely different interpretations of the events. The NAACP and
Speaker 1: other civil rights organizations also conducted investigations into as many
Speaker 1: of them as they could, but often there was no
Speaker 1: formal investigation by law enforcement and no official record of
Speaker 1: what actually happened, especially when it came to mob violence.
Speaker 1: Some communities conducted investigations later on or convene truth and
Speaker 1: reconciliation commissions to document what happened and make recommendations for restitution.
Speaker 1: But in cases where that didn't happen at this point,
Speaker 1: the people who remember the events have since died, so
Speaker 1: many details are lost. So we're going to start with
Speaker 1: this pattern of lynching. A lynching is an extra judicial
Speaker 1: murder of someone who has been accused of a crime
Speaker 1: or some other perceived wrongdoing. Anyone can be the victim
Speaker 1: of lynching, although most often in the United States, lynching
Speaker 1: victims have been members of a racial, ethnic, or religious minority.
Speaker 1: In the United States, in the early twentieth century, most
Speaker 1: victims of lynching were black Americans or white Americans who
Speaker 1: had been working for civil rights. In nineteen nineteen, there
Speaker 1: were eighty three recorded victims of lynching, at least eleven
Speaker 1: of whom were veterans of World War One. That was
Speaker 1: up from sixty four in nineteen eighteen. Victims of lynching
Speaker 1: had often been accused of a crime against a white person,
Speaker 1: especially a white woman. Sometimes a crime really had taken place,
Speaker 1: but in other cases the allegations were completely fabricated. Regardless
Speaker 1: of whether anyone had committed a crime, the idea of
Speaker 1: a crime was used as justification for murder. It was
Speaker 1: often the idea of a white woman having been allegedly
Speaker 1: assaulted by a black man, something we talked more about
Speaker 1: in our two parter on the eighteen ninety eight Wilmington
Speaker 1: Coup and one of Red Summer's first incidents, a black
Speaker 1: man named Benny Richards allegedly shot his ex wife and
Speaker 1: her sister on May second, nineteen nineteen. His ex wife died,
Speaker 1: and Richards also allegedly wounded the sheriff and other white
Speaker 1: men who arrived on the scene. We have to say allegedly,
Speaker 1: because Richards was not brought to trial. Instead, a mob
Speaker 1: of between one hundred and three hundred white men apprehended him,
Speaker 1: in part by dumping gasoline into the swampy area surrounding
Speaker 1: his home and setting fire to it to try to
Speaker 1: drive him out. After they captured Richards, the mob hanged him,
Speaker 1: shot his body, and set it on fire. This was
Speaker 1: not a remotely isolated incident, and it was part of
Speaker 1: a pattern in terms of what happened and how it
Speaker 1: played out. On May fourteenth, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, a mob
Speaker 1: of between eight hundred and one thousand people broke into
Speaker 1: the jail and took twenty two year old Lloyd Clay
Speaker 1: out of his cell. Clay had been accused of assaulting
Speaker 1: a white woman named Mattie Hudson. She had been presented
Speaker 1: with a lineup earlier in the day. In two different times,
Speaker 1: she had said that Clay was not the man who
Speaker 1: assaulted her, but after the mob removed him from his cell,
Speaker 1: they asked her one more time to identify him as
Speaker 1: her assailant, and she did. The mob poured oil over
Speaker 1: Clay's head and hanged him over a bonfire while also
Speaker 1: shooting him repeatedly. On May twenty fourth, seventy two year
Speaker 1: old Berry Washington was in jail in Milan, Georgia. Two
Speaker 1: white men had reportedly come into his neighborhood and tried
Speaker 1: to assault to teenage els. Washington had tried to defend
Speaker 1: them and had killed one of the men in the process.
Speaker 1: A local Baptist minister led a mob of roughly one
Speaker 1: hundred white men who abducted Washington from the jail, hanged him,
Speaker 1: and shot him repeatedly. The mob then terrorized the area's
Speaker 1: black residents and looted black owned businesses. On June seventeenth,
Speaker 1: a white mob in Longview, Texas, murdered Lemuel Walters. According
Speaker 1: to reports in white newspapers, he had robbed the home
Speaker 1: of a white woman and assaulted her, but according to
Speaker 1: an article in the Chicago Defender, Walters and this woman
Speaker 1: had been having a consensual relationship. There was a riot
Speaker 1: in Longview shortly thereafter, which started with a white mob
Speaker 1: assaulting a black journalist that they believed had written this
Speaker 1: article in the Chicago Defender, and then burning down his home.
Speaker 1: On June twenty six, a mob lynched John Hartfield of Ellisville, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: on the grounds that he had, according to them, raped
Speaker 1: a white woman. His family members and friends maintained that
Speaker 1: it was because he had a white girlfriend. This lynching
Speaker 1: was announced ahead of time on the front page of
Speaker 1: the Jackson Daily News under the headline John Hartsfield will
Speaker 1: be lynched by Ellisville mob at five o'clock this afternoon.
Speaker 1: On August twenty eighth, a mob dragged Eli Cooper out
Speaker 1: of his home in Cadwell, Georgia. This mob's rational is
Speaker 1: not clear. In some accounts he had made a pass
Speaker 1: at a white woman, and others she had made a
Speaker 1: pass at him. A newspaper report from the time said quote,
Speaker 1: he had been talking for some time in a manner
Speaker 1: that was very offensive to the white people of the
Speaker 1: community in which he resided. He was either hanged or
Speaker 1: shot in a church, and then his body was set
Speaker 1: on fire. A few days later, a mob in Bogolusa,
Speaker 1: Louisiana killed veteran Lucius McCarty, who had been accused of
Speaker 1: trying to rape a white woman. His assailants shot him
Speaker 1: hundreds of times before dragging him behind a car and
Speaker 1: burning his body. On September twenty ninth and thirtieth, three
Speaker 1: black men were lynched in Montgomery, Alabama, over the span
Speaker 1: of about twelve hours. A mob abducted Railias Pfeiffer and
Speaker 1: Robert Krosskey as they were being transported to jail after
Speaker 1: being accused of assaulting a white woman. Pfeiffer was a
Speaker 1: veteran and was reportedly in uniform at the time, the
Speaker 1: mob shot both Pfeiffer and Krossky, and then in a
Speaker 1: separate incident, an officer tried to arrest will Temple and
Speaker 1: two other people for disorderly conduct. Temple resisted arrest, fatally
Speaker 1: shooting the officer and being injured himself in the process.
Speaker 1: A mob murdered him in his hospital ward. And these
Speaker 1: are of course just samples from the eighty three recorded
Speaker 1: lynchings in the summer and fall of nineteen nineteen, and
Speaker 1: there were certainly others that were not recorded. And the
Speaker 1: reason none of the perpetrators are named is that overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: we do not know who they were. It was incredibly
Speaker 1: rare for the perpetrators of lynching to face any kind
Speaker 1: of criminal charges. Sometimes members of law enforcement were even
Speaker 1: part of the lynch mob. Occasionally law enforcement offered a
Speaker 1: reward for information or tried to arrest perpetrators, but when
Speaker 1: that happened, the white community often reacted with outrage. Afterward,
Speaker 1: members of the mob frequently took souvenirs with them from
Speaker 1: the scene, as well as taking photos which were later
Speaker 1: distributed as postcards. These were also not just some random,
Speaker 1: haphazard actions. They were part of a pattern of really
Speaker 1: gruesome racist violence committed by the white community in order
Speaker 1: to terrorize, punish, and humiliate the black community and in
Speaker 1: the minds of the perpetrators quote, keep them in their place.
Speaker 1: The same was true of nineteen nineteen's riots, which we
Speaker 1: will talk about after a break. The other major hallmark
Speaker 1: of Red Summer was mass violence perpetrated by white mobs
Speaker 1: against black people and the neighborhoods where they lived and worked.
Speaker 1: These incidents are often described as race riots, and that's
Speaker 1: a term whose meaning has shifted in various ways over
Speaker 1: the decades, but to many people it suggest that people
Speaker 1: of two or more races were fighting against each other
Speaker 1: as equal aggressors, and that's really not what was happening
Speaker 1: during Red Summer. Often black communities did try to defend
Speaker 1: themselves or fight back, and occasionally black residents went on
Speaker 1: the attack themselves, but overwhelmingly, even when this happened, the
Speaker 1: primary instigators were the white mob. As was the case
Speaker 1: with lynchings, these riots often followed some kind of crime
Speaker 1: or wrongdoing allegedly committed by a black person, usually a
Speaker 1: black man, but often these criminal allegations were completely false
Speaker 1: or the response from the white community was way out
Speaker 1: of proportion to what had really happened, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: the perceived wrongdoing wasn't a criminal act at all. In
Speaker 1: Port Arthur, Texas, a riot followed objections to a black
Speaker 1: man smoking in a streetcar in front of a white woman.
Speaker 1: In multiple instances, the purported transgression was black veterans appearing
Speaker 1: in public in their uniforms. In one of the incidents
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about in a moment, it
Speaker 1: was a response to sharecroppers trying to organize for fairer treatment.
Speaker 1: There were at least twenty six documented examples of these
Speaker 1: riots between April and November nineteen nineteen. You'll see numbers
Speaker 1: that range from like twenty four to thirty. It kind
Speaker 1: of depends on how people are defining the window of
Speaker 1: time and exactly what constitutes a riot. They definitely occurred
Speaker 1: in Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And we're going to talk about three of
Speaker 1: the most notorious. They have a lot of similarities, but
Speaker 1: they also illustrate the range of purported causes. Riots in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Followed rumors of an attack on a white
Speaker 1: woman and were largely carried out by soldiers and veterans.
Speaker 1: In Chicago, Illinois, riots followed a breach of the city's
Speaker 1: unofficial rules about segregation, and in Elane, Arkansas, they followed
Speaker 1: black sharecroppers attempts to organize. We will go chronologically, starting
Speaker 1: with the Washington, d C. Riot, which started on July nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. A black man had been detained and then
Speaker 1: released by Washington, d C Police under suspicion that he
Speaker 1: had assaulted a white woman. The woman was a sailor's wife,
Speaker 1: which led servicemen, sailors, and veterans to try to seek revenge.
Speaker 1: Rumors about this incident spread through the city saloons and
Speaker 1: pool halls, which were a popular hangout for returning veterans.
Speaker 1: Unemployment was a real issue, so as the rumors swirled,
Speaker 1: the people who heard them were mostly unemployed, intoxicated, and frustrated. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: a mob of about four hundred men, many of them drunk,
Speaker 1: made their way southwest into Washington's majority black neighborhoods, gathering
Speaker 1: up improvised weapons as they went, and some of them
Speaker 1: were still in uniform. This mob attacked black residents indiscriminately,
Speaker 1: and police really did very little to respond. When local
Speaker 1: law enforcement did arrive, they mostly arrested the mob's black
Speaker 1: victims rather than the white perpetrators. This first day of
Speaker 1: street fighting bled into more than four days of rioting,
Speaker 1: with mobs of soldiers and sailors attacking people on the
Speaker 1: street and black residents fighting back. More than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty people were physically attacked and at least nine
Speaker 1: people died during the initial wave of fighting, but the
Speaker 1: situation quickly got worse. More than five hundred firearms were
Speaker 1: sold in the city on July twenty first, as black
Speaker 1: residents took up arms to defend themselves because the police
Speaker 1: were not or in some cases to seek restitution for
Speaker 1: the earlier violence. At least fifteen people were killed or
Speaker 1: mortally wounded just on the night of the twenty first,
Speaker 1: ten White five black President Woodrow Wilson finally deployed about
Speaker 1: two thousand troops to try to restore order. By that point, though,
Speaker 1: the city had become so violent that people really thought
Speaker 1: that might not be enough, but the troops got help
Speaker 1: from a heavy rainstorm that drove many of the people
Speaker 1: who had been fighting back indoors. The riot ended on
Speaker 1: May twenty fourth, by which point close to forty people
Speaker 1: had been killed and hundreds injured. The riot ended on
Speaker 1: July twenty fourth, by which point close to forty people
Speaker 1: had been killed and hundreds injured, and then the Chicago
Speaker 1: Riot started just days later on July twenty seventh, nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: after an altercation at a swimming area, and the swimming
Speaker 1: area was not officially segregated, but local white residents thought
Speaker 1: of it as for their use only. First, there was
Speaker 1: an altercation on shore between black residents who wanted to
Speaker 1: use the swimming area and white residents who demanded that
Speaker 1: they leave. As this was happening, a group of boys
Speaker 1: was swimming from a raft and accidentally crossed into the
Speaker 1: white's only part of the lake. Someone threw a rock
Speaker 1: at them and hit seventeen year old Eugene Williams in
Speaker 1: the head. He lost consciousness and drowned. The coroner's jury
Speaker 1: has a slightly different account that he was not struck,
Speaker 1: but that because of the stones being thrown he was
Speaker 1: forced to stay under water until he was just too
Speaker 1: exhausted to keep swimming. When police arrived on the scene,
Speaker 1: white officers refused to arrest the man that black witnesses
Speaker 1: identified as the stone thrower. Increasingly, angry crowds gathered at
Speaker 1: the lake, and then rumors started to spread through the
Speaker 1: city about exactly what had happened, and as rumors tend
Speaker 1: to do, they spiraled as they went. Eventually, a black
Speaker 1: man named James Crawford fired into a group of policemen
Speaker 1: and injured one of them. They returned fire and killed Crawford.
Speaker 1: This led to widespread violence throughout the city that lasted
Speaker 1: until August third. Thirty eight people were killed, fifteen white
Speaker 1: and twenty three black. Five hundred thirty seven were injured.
Speaker 1: Of those, one hundred ninety five were white and three
Speaker 1: hundred forty two were black. White mobs also burned down
Speaker 1: about one thousand homes in Chicago's black neighborhoods. The Chicago
Speaker 1: police force was not at all effective at stopping this violence,
Speaker 1: in part because it was understaffed and in part because
Speaker 1: white officers were biased toward the white rioters. Eventually, six
Speaker 1: thousand troops from the state militia were deployed to try
Speaker 1: to restore order, and then, as had happened in Washington,
Speaker 1: they were helped by a sudden heavy rain. This wasn't
Speaker 1: quite as one sided as many of Red Summer's riots.
Speaker 1: Many of the white residents who were injured or killed
Speaker 1: were in predominantly black neighborhoods when it happened. Some were
Speaker 1: injured or killed when black residents defended themselves, but others
Speaker 1: were white merchants or other business people who worked in
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods and were attacked as people sought restitution for
Speaker 1: earlier violence. As it happened in the later days of
Speaker 1: the Washington d c Riot, an eye for an eye
Speaker 1: mentality developed on both sides. The third riot we're discussing
Speaker 1: took place in a lane, Arkansas, and it was more
Speaker 1: of a massacre than a riot. It started after black
Speaker 1: sharecroppers started trying to organize for better pay. On September thirtieth,
Speaker 1: about one hundred of them met with representatives of the
Speaker 1: Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. They met in
Speaker 1: a church in hoopsbur which was kept under armed guard
Speaker 1: during the meeting, in the hope of preventing the kind
Speaker 1: of violence that had been so common over the previous months.
Speaker 1: In this part of Arkansas. Black residents outnumbered white about
Speaker 1: ten to one, and the white community found this inherently threatening.
Speaker 1: This kind of organizing effort was even more so, especially
Speaker 1: with the presence of armed guards. At about eleven PM,
Speaker 1: some people fired into the church from outside, kind of
Speaker 1: in the shadows where the guards couldn't see them. The
Speaker 1: guards returned fire, and in the process a white man
Speaker 1: named W. A. Atkins was killed. At some point during
Speaker 1: all this, Phillips County Deputy Sheriff Charles Pratt was also wounded.
Speaker 1: In the minds of Elaine's white residence. This transformed the
Speaker 1: meeting from an implicit threat to an armed insurrection actively
Speaker 1: being planned, and it wasn't just rumor. The white press
Speaker 1: reported this supposed insurrection as a fact. Hundreds of white
Speaker 1: residents from around Phillips County traveled to Elaine to deal
Speaker 1: with the supposed threat, and local authorities asked the governor
Speaker 1: to deploy the National Guard. A mob burned down the
Speaker 1: church where the meeting had happened, and together these vigilantes
Speaker 1: and the National Guard troops took hundreds of black residents
Speaker 1: of Elaine into custody and held them in temporary stockades.
Speaker 1: This mob, over the next couple of days, killed at
Speaker 1: least two hundred people. The official toll may have been
Speaker 1: much higher, but there wasn't a formal tally. Walter White,
Speaker 1: assistant secretary of the NAACP, and past podcast subject I
Speaker 1: to b Wells Barnett each investigated what had happened in
Speaker 1: a Lane. Both found that the quote armed insurrection being
Speaker 1: hyped in the white press just simply did not exist,
Speaker 1: and if Elaine's black community had been planning an armed insurrection,
Speaker 1: it seemed as though the death toll logically would have
Speaker 1: been much different. None of the white participants in this
Speaker 1: were ever tried for their roles in this massacre. Instead,
Speaker 1: twelve black men were put on trial and the deaths
Speaker 1: of the five white people who were killed. During the trials,
Speaker 1: a white mob surrounded the courthouse and threatened to lynch
Speaker 1: the men if they were not given the death penalty.
Speaker 1: An all white jury found them all guilty, and the
Speaker 1: judge handed down sentences of death for all of them.
Speaker 1: These twelve were not the only people who were set
Speaker 1: to stand trial. Another sixty five accepted plea bargains. After
Speaker 1: that first wave of convictions and sentencing, the NAACP backed
Speaker 1: a series of appeals that finally made their way to
Speaker 1: the US Supreme Court as Voar versus Dempsey in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes authored the majority opinion
Speaker 1: that the defendant's constitutional rights had been violated. This was
Speaker 1: a major victory for the NAACP and for the civil
Speaker 1: rights of Black Americans in general. After being granted new trials,
Speaker 1: the twelve men were ultimately freed. Red Summer was not
Speaker 1: at all the end of racist violence in the United States.
Speaker 1: We have talked about similar riots and massacres that happened
Speaker 1: afterward on the show before, including the destruction of Greenwood,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma in nineteen twenty one, and the massacre in Rosewood,
Speaker 1: Florida in nineteen twenty three, but they didn't happen with
Speaker 1: the same frequency as they had during the Red Summer.
Speaker 1: We talked at the start of the show about all
Speaker 1: the factors that had primed the United States for all
Speaker 1: this violence. So that leads to the question of why
Speaker 1: did Red Summer end. The economy did start to improve,
Speaker 1: and especially when it came to mob violence, The onset
Speaker 1: of colder winter weather probably tempered things a little bit,
Speaker 1: but a lot of those other factors were still present
Speaker 1: or even growing. The Great Migration was still going on,
Speaker 1: and by the end of it millions of people would
Speaker 1: have moved to cities. This general atmosphere of nationalism and
Speaker 1: xenophobia was still very present. A big part of it
Speaker 1: is that by the fall of nineteen nineteen, the white
Speaker 1: majority had increasingly started to see these incidents as part
Speaker 1: of an unacceptable pattern. There had been elected officials and
Speaker 1: other civic leaders who had denounced the events from the
Speaker 1: very beginning, but these calls became louder and more frequent.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement officials started taking more steps to make sure
Speaker 1: that mobs couldn't just abduct people from the jail to
Speaker 1: lynch them. The white press also started toning down some
Speaker 1: of its rhetoric in terms of criminal allegations against black residents,
Speaker 1: and then across the board, newspapers started taking a less
Speaker 1: sensationalistic and incendiary approach to discussing race related violence. Civil
Speaker 1: rights were organizations also started working toward building more positive
Speaker 1: relations between black and white communities. For example, after the
Speaker 1: Chicago riot, the city established the Chicago Commission on Race Relations,
Speaker 1: which investigated the riot and made recommendations to prevent something
Speaker 1: similar from happening again. It published its report The Negro
Speaker 1: in Chicago, a Study of Race Relations and a Race
Speaker 1: Riot in nineteen twenty two, which included not just a
Speaker 1: thorough investigation of the riot, but also of relationships between
Speaker 1: white and black communities in Chicago. Although not every riot
Speaker 1: led to this sort of investigation, there were other commissions
Speaker 1: and organizations that did the same types of work elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the United States. In other words, the violence didn't
Speaker 1: just play itself out. People actively worked to stop it.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the highlights of highlights is not
Speaker 1: even a good word like low lights. Yes, that's sort
Speaker 1: of a quick look at read Summer. Like I said,
Speaker 1: this could be there could be a whole podcast. It
Speaker 1: would just be about Red Summer that would go on
Speaker 1: for many, many, many episodes, because there were so many
Speaker 1: things that happened, but so many of them follow this
Speaker 1: exact same pattern in terms of like the precipitating event
Speaker 1: and then what transpired, the actions that this like white
Speaker 1: mob took, and then how things usually ended without any
Speaker 1: kind of formal acknowledgment or investigation. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send
Speaker 1: us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows