Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Fry and Tracy. Before we get to the show today,
Speaker 1: we have a little business to talk about an upcoming
Speaker 1: live show. We were lucky enough to be invited to
Speaker 1: participate in Great Conversations at Gettysburg, which is a series
Speaker 1: of programs that they have there that draw on the
Speaker 1: themes of Gettysburg. And that's going to take place on
Speaker 1: June at the rough House History Center and it's free.
Speaker 1: You can just go see us chat. There is cool
Speaker 1: programming going on all day long. That day, we are
Speaker 1: going to have our live podcast, which is called Fearless,
Speaker 1: Feisty and Unflagging the Women of Gettysburg at four pm.
Speaker 1: But if you're up for a day of interesting history,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of other stuff to check out
Speaker 1: that day, so coming see us. Uh So, now to
Speaker 1: the topic at hand. This year is the hundredth anniversary
Speaker 1: of the wave of racist violence in the United States
Speaker 1: that came to be known as Red Summer. And we
Speaker 1: talked about this just a little bit in our episode
Speaker 1: on the Harlem hell Fighters. But that was a long
Speaker 1: time ago, and it was just like a little bit
Speaker 1: in part three of the episode, not really enough to
Speaker 1: 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 the Hundreds anniversary, it seemed like a good time
Speaker 1: to return to it. Uh. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: the violence of Red Summer was a response to two
Speaker 1: earlier and sometimes overlapping events, and those were the Great
Speaker 1: Migration and the return of Black soldiers who had fought
Speaker 1: in World War One to the United States. And to
Speaker 1: be clear, neither of these things caused Red Summer. Red
Speaker 1: Summer was a backlash to them. These returning veterans and
Speaker 1: migrating families were not to blame for what happened. But
Speaker 1: since this is part of the historical context today's episode,
Speaker 1: is it going to start off with a little bit
Speaker 1: about those two events before getting into the violence that
Speaker 1: stretched the summer and fall. And in case it is
Speaker 1: not clear, this episode includes a lot of violence, including
Speaker 1: sexual violence. Some of it is just particularly horrifying in nature.
Speaker 1: The Great Migration was a mass relocation of Black Americans
Speaker 1: out of the South and into the cities in the
Speaker 1: north and Midwest. It peaked in the mid to late
Speaker 1: nineteen teens, but the same pattern of migration continued for
Speaker 1: decades afterward. There was also a migration within the South
Speaker 1: from rural areas into southern cities. Most of the people
Speaker 1: who were moving had been sharecroppers, doing essentially the same
Speaker 1: work as their enslaved ancestors had done, sometimes even on
Speaker 1: the same land and for the same landowners. Sharecroppers rented
Speaker 1: the land that they lived and worked on, and then
Speaker 1: they paid their rent by giving a share of their
Speaker 1: crop to the landowner. But it was almost impossible to
Speaker 1: make a decent living as a sharecropper. Many sharecroppers were
Speaker 1: in debt to their landlords, owing money for things like
Speaker 1: the tools and supplies that they needed to do their jobs.
Speaker 1: Unscrupulous landlords could make this situation much worse. But even
Speaker 1: if a person's landlord was honest and fair, a sharecropper
Speaker 1: often earned a subsistence level living at best. Sharecroppers faced
Speaker 1: the same threats to their livelihoods as any other farmer did,
Speaker 1: including pests and bad weather and fluctuating prices. The bowl weevil,
Speaker 1: which had been introduced to the United States in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, spread farther and farther into cotton territory
Speaker 1: in the nineteen teens, destroying the crop as it went,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen fifteen, widespread flooding affected many of
Speaker 1: the same areas that had just been ravaged by weevils.
Speaker 1: As the Southern economy shifted after the Civil War, white
Speaker 1: farmers had also been caught up in this same system
Speaker 1: of sharecropping. It was exploited regardless of who was doing
Speaker 1: the farming, but the system was stacked most heavily against
Speaker 1: black sharecroppers, who faced the additional hardships of systemic discrimination
Speaker 1: in racism, including segregation, political oppression, and racist violence. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen teens, black Southerners started hearing about new opportunities
Speaker 1: and a potentially better life in the North and the Midwest.
Speaker 1: This included jobs with better wages and better educational opportunities
Speaker 1: for their children. People heard about these opportunities through word
Speaker 1: of mouth from friends or family who had already moved.
Speaker 1: Word also came through advertisements placed by businesses and organizations
Speaker 1: that were hoping to attract new workers to their area.
Speaker 1: After the United States interered World War One, Some of
Speaker 1: these jobs were specifically connected to the war effort. Between
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen and nineteen twenty, roughly five hundred thousand Black
Speaker 1: Americans left the South and moved to urban areas elsewhere.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty, Emmett J. Scott described it this way, quote,
Speaker 1: they were in the frame of mind for leaving. They
Speaker 1: left as though they were fleeing some curse. They were
Speaker 1: willing to make almost any sacrifice to obtain a railroad ticket,
Speaker 1: and they left with the intention of staying. This led
Speaker 1: to labor shortages in the South, and sometimes entire communities
Speaker 1: were abandoned. That also dramatically shifted the racial demographics of
Speaker 1: cities like Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. Will be
Speaker 1: returning to that shift in just a bit. The United
Speaker 1: States became involved in World War One as the Great
Speaker 1: Migration was happening, and the war directly affected the nation's
Speaker 1: black citizens as well. After the United States declared war
Speaker 1: on Germany in nineteen seventeen, people were eager to enlist
Speaker 1: in the military. This included at least twenty thousand black
Speaker 1: men who volunteered in April and early May. This actually
Speaker 1: presented a problem for the military, though the Marines didn't
Speaker 1: accept black recruits at all. The Navy and the Coast
Speaker 1: Guard technically did, but only in menial roles. So overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: black men were serving in the Army, which at least
Speaker 1: in theory, accepted black men in most areas of the
Speaker 1: service and practice, though the Army was racially segregated, with
Speaker 1: only a very few all black units in existence at
Speaker 1: 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 one class of black officers
Speaker 1: at Fort des Moines in May of nineteen seventeen, sending
Speaker 1: most black officer candidates after that point to train at
Speaker 1: camps in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, or Panama. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: about three hundred seventy thousand black men served in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army in World War One. These men faced persistent discrimination
Speaker 1: during their service. All black units were often assigned to
Speaker 1: menial work like digging trenches and unloading cargo and removing
Speaker 1: unexploded ordinance. And while it's true that this was all
Speaker 1: work that needed to be done and somebody had to
Speaker 1: do it, disproportionately the people doing in the army's hardest, dirtiest,
Speaker 1: and most degrading work, we're 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 Hellfighters. Support for participation in the war wasn't universal
Speaker 1: within the black community. One line of thought was that
Speaker 1: it made no sense for people to put their lives
Speaker 1: on the line for a country that at best treated
Speaker 1: them as second class citizens. This was especially true because
Speaker 1: the United States had framed its involvement in the war
Speaker 1: as making the world safe for democracy, so it seemed
Speaker 1: hypocritical to fight for a country that was refusing to
Speaker 1: do the same within its own borders. But many civil
Speaker 1: rights leaders and organizations really took the opposite stance, arguing
Speaker 1: that this was a chance for black citizens to demonstrate
Speaker 1: to the rest of the nation that they were human
Speaker 1: beings and patriots worthy of respect who were actively making
Speaker 1: a positive contribution to the nation. The experience of military
Speaker 1: service during the war motivated many of these soldiers to
Speaker 1: actively fight for equal rights after they returned home. W E. B.
Speaker 1: Du Boys described it this way in the in double
Speaker 1: a CPS magazine, The Crisis. Quote we are returning from
Speaker 1: war the Crisis, and tens of thousands of Black men
Speaker 1: were drafted into a great struggle for bleeding France and
Speaker 1: what she means and has meant and will mean to
Speaker 1: us and humanity, and against the threat of German race arrogance.
Speaker 1: We fought gladly into the last drop of blood for
Speaker 1: America and her highest ideals. We fought in far off
Speaker 1: hope for the dominant Southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington. We
Speaker 1: fought in bitter resignation. And the sedatorial Boys went on
Speaker 1: to describe the United States as a shameful land, saying
Speaker 1: that it lynches and disenfranchises at citizens, encourages ignorance, and
Speaker 1: steals from and insults Black citizens. He concluded by saying,
Speaker 1: quote we return, we return from fighting. We return fighting
Speaker 1: make way for democracy. We saved in France, and by
Speaker 1: the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United
Speaker 1: States of America. Or know the reason why. James Weldon Johnson,
Speaker 1: who coined the term. Read Summer described it this way
Speaker 1: in his nineteen thirty three autobiography quote, the colored people
Speaker 1: throughout the country were disheartened and dismayed. The great majority
Speaker 1: had trusting lye felt that because they had cheerfully done
Speaker 1: their bit in the war, conditions for them would be better.
Speaker 1: The reverse seemed to be true. Earlier civil rights advocacy
Speaker 1: had tended toward a conciliatory approach, but after the war,
Speaker 1: du Boys and other civil rights leaders were increasingly direct,
Speaker 1: lobbying very aggressively for equal rights legislation and for anti
Speaker 1: lynching laws. This advocacy became part of what came to
Speaker 1: be known as the New Negro movement, which was rooted
Speaker 1: in assertiveness and confidence and was also connected to the
Speaker 1: Harlem Renaissance. Membership in the Double a CP really surged
Speaker 1: from about nine thousand members before the war to a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand afterward. Compounding, many of the people who moved
Speaker 1: from the South did not find the North to be
Speaker 1: what they imagined it to be. Many schools, neighborhoods, and
Speaker 1: public accommodations were still segregated by custom, if not by law.
Speaker 1: Many industries were closed to black workers, and many of
Speaker 1: the ones that weren't involved manual labor or service work.
Speaker 1: Discrimination and harassment may have been less overt 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 Double a
Speaker 1: c P and other civil rights organizations also conducted investigations
Speaker 1: into as many of them as they could, but often
Speaker 1: there was no formal investigation by law enforcement and no
Speaker 1: official record of what actually happened, especially when it came
Speaker 1: to mob violence. Some communities conducted investigations later on or
Speaker 1: convened truth and reconciliation commissions to document what happened and
Speaker 1: make recommendations for restitution, but in cases where that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: at this point, the people who remember the events have
Speaker 1: since died, so many details are lost. So we're going
Speaker 1: to start with this pattern of lynching. A lynching is
Speaker 1: an extra judicial murder of someone who has been accused
Speaker 1: of a crime or some of their perceived wrongdoing. Anyone
Speaker 1: can be the victim of lynching, Although most often in
Speaker 1: the United States, lynching victims have been members of a racial, ethnic,
Speaker 1: or religious minority. In the United States, in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, most victims of lynching were black Americans or
Speaker 1: white Americans who had been working for civil rights. In
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, there were eighty three recorded victims of lynching,
Speaker 1: at least eleven of whom were veterans of World War One.
Speaker 1: That was up from sixty four in nineteen eighteen. Victims
Speaker 1: of lynching had often been accused of a crime against
Speaker 1: a white person, especially a white woman. Sometimes a crime
Speaker 1: really had taken place, but in other cases the allegations
Speaker 1: were completely fabricated. Regardless of whether anyone had committed a crime,
Speaker 1: the idea of a crime was used as justification for murder.
Speaker 1: It was often the idea of a white woman having
Speaker 1: been allegedly assaulted by a black man, something we talked
Speaker 1: more about in our two parter on the eight ninety
Speaker 1: eight Wilmington's Coup and one of Red Summer's first incidents,
Speaker 1: a black man named Benny Richards allegedly shot his ex
Speaker 1: wife and her sister on May second, nineteen nineteen. His
Speaker 1: ex wife died and Richards also allegedly wounded the sheriff
Speaker 1: and other white men who arrived on the scene. We
Speaker 1: have to say allegedly because Richards was not brought to trial. Instead,
Speaker 1: a mob of between one hundred and three hundred white
Speaker 1: men apprehended him, in part by dumping gasoline into the
Speaker 1: swampy area surrounding his home and setting fire to it
Speaker 1: to try to drive him out. After they captured Richards,
Speaker 1: the mob hanged him, shot his body, and set it
Speaker 1: on fire. This was not a remotely isolated incident, and
Speaker 1: it was part of a pattern in terms of what
Speaker 1: happened and how it played out. On May fourteenth and Vicksburg, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: a mob of between eight hundred and one thousand people
Speaker 1: broke into the jail and took twenty two year old
Speaker 1: Lloyd Clay out of his cell. Clay had been accused
Speaker 1: of assaulting a white woman named Maddie Hudson. She had
Speaker 1: been presented with a lineup earlier in the day, and
Speaker 1: two different times she had said that Clay was not
Speaker 1: the man who assaulted her, but after the mob removed
Speaker 1: him from his cell, they asked her one more time
Speaker 1: to identify him as her assailant, and she did. The
Speaker 1: mob poured oil over Clay's head and hanged him over
Speaker 1: a bonfire while also shooting him repeatedly. On May seventy,
Speaker 1: two year old Berry Washington was in jail in Milan, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Two white men had reportedly come into his neighborhood and
Speaker 1: tried to assault two teenage girls. Washington had tried to
Speaker 1: defend them and had killed one of the men in
Speaker 1: the process. A local Baptist minister led a mob of
Speaker 1: roughly one white men who abducted Washington from the jail,
Speaker 1: hanged him, and shot him repeatedly. The mob then terrorized
Speaker 1: the area's black residents and looted black owned businesses. On
Speaker 1: June sevente a white mob in Longview, Texas, murdered Lemuel Walters.
Speaker 1: According to reports in white newspapers, he had robbed the
Speaker 1: home of a white woman and assaulted her, but according
Speaker 1: to an article in The Chicago Defender, Walters and this
Speaker 1: woman had been having a consensual relationship. There was a
Speaker 1: riot in long View shortly thereafter, which started with a
Speaker 1: white mob assaulting a black journalist that they believed had
Speaker 1: written this article in the Chicago Defender, and then burning
Speaker 1: down his home. On June, a mob lynched John Hartfield
Speaker 1: of Ellisville, Mississippi, on the grounds that he had, according
Speaker 1: to them, raped a white woman. His family members and
Speaker 1: friends maintained that it was because he had a white girlfriend.
Speaker 1: This lynching was announced ahead of time on the front
Speaker 1: page of the Jackson Daily News under the headline John
Speaker 1: Hartsfield will be lynched by Ellisville mob. At five o'clock
Speaker 1: this afternoon. On August, a mob dragged Eli Cooper out
Speaker 1: of his home in Caldwell, Georgia. This mob's rationale 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 Bogaloosa,
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 nine, and thirty three
Speaker 1: black men were lynched in Montgomery, Alabama, over the span
Speaker 1: of about twelve hours. A mob abducted Rayleius Phifer and
Speaker 1: Robert Crosskey as they were being transported to jail after
Speaker 1: being accused of assaulting a white woman. Phifer was a
Speaker 1: veteran and was reportedly in uniform at the time. The
Speaker 1: mob shot both Phifer and cross Key, and then, in
Speaker 1: a separate incident, an officer tried to arrest Will Temple
Speaker 1: and two other people for disorderly conduct. Temple resisted arrest,
Speaker 1: fatally 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 eight three recorded
Speaker 1: lynchings in the sum Are in fall of nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: and there were certainly others that were not recorded. And
Speaker 1: the reason none of the perpetrators are named is that
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly we do not know who they were. It was
Speaker 1: incredibly rare for the perpetrators of lynching to face any
Speaker 1: kind of criminal charges. Sometimes members of law enforcement were
Speaker 1: even part of the lynch mob. Occasionally law enforcement offered
Speaker 1: a reward for information, or tried to arrest perpetrators, but
Speaker 1: when 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 nine nineteen riots, which we
Speaker 1: will talk about after break. The other major hallmark of
Speaker 1: Red Summer was mass violence perpetrated by white mobs against
Speaker 1: 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, that suggests 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 complete, lee false,
Speaker 1: or the response from the white community was way out
Speaker 1: of proportion to what it really happened, and in some
Speaker 1: cases the perceived wrongdoing wasn't a criminal act at all.
Speaker 1: In Port Arthur, Texas, a riot followed objections to a
Speaker 1: black man smoking in a street car in front of
Speaker 1: a white woman. In multiple instances, the purported transgression was
Speaker 1: black veterans appearing in public in their uniforms. In one
Speaker 1: of the incidents that we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: a moment, it was a response to sharecroppers trying to
Speaker 1: organize for fairer treatment. There were at least twenty six
Speaker 1: documented examples of these riots between April and November. You'll
Speaker 1: see numbers that ranged from like twenty four to thirty.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on how people are defining the
Speaker 1: window of time and exactly what constitutes a riot. They
Speaker 1: definitely occurred 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 woman,
Speaker 1: and we're largely carried out by soldiers and veterans. In Chicago, Illinois,
Speaker 1: riots followed a breach of the city's unofficial rules about segregation.
Speaker 1: And in Elane, Arkansas, they followed black sharecroppers attempts to organize.
Speaker 1: We will go chronologically, starting with the Washington d C Riot,
Speaker 1: which started on July nineteenth, nineteen nineteen. A black man
Speaker 1: had been detained and then released by Washington d C
Speaker 1: Police under suspicion that he hit assaulted a white woman.
Speaker 1: The woman was a sailor's wife, which led servicemen, sailors,
Speaker 1: and veterans to try to seek revenge. Rumors about this
Speaker 1: incident spread through the city saloons and pool halls, which
Speaker 1: were a popular hangout for returning veterans. Unemployment was a
Speaker 1: real issue, so as the rumors swirled, the people who
Speaker 1: heard them were mostly unemployed, intoxicated, and frustrated. Ultimately, a
Speaker 1: 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 fifty
Speaker 1: people were physically attacked and at least nine people died
Speaker 1: during the initial wave of fighting, but the situation quickly
Speaker 1: got worse. More than five hundred firearms were sold in
Speaker 1: the city on July twenty one, as black residents took
Speaker 1: up arms to defend themselves because the police were not
Speaker 1: or in some cases to seek restitution for the earlier violence.
Speaker 1: At least fifteen people were killed or mortally wounded just
Speaker 1: on the night of the twenty one ten white and
Speaker 1: five black President Woodrow Wilson finally deployed about two thousand
Speaker 1: 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 rain storm that drove many of the
Speaker 1: people who had been fighting back indoors. The riot ended
Speaker 1: on May twenty four, by which point close to forty
Speaker 1: people had been killed and hundreds injured. The riot ended
Speaker 1: on July twenty four, by which point close to forty
Speaker 1: people had been killed and hundreds injured. And then the
Speaker 1: Chicago riots started just days later on July nineteen, after
Speaker 1: an altercation at a swimming area, and the swimming area
Speaker 1: was not officially segregated, but local white residents thought of
Speaker 1: it as for their use only. First, there was an
Speaker 1: altercation on shore between black residents who wanted to use
Speaker 1: the swimming area and white residents who demanded that they leave.
Speaker 1: As this was happening, a group of boys was swimming
Speaker 1: from a raft and accidentally crossed into the whites only
Speaker 1: part of the lake. Someone through a rock at them
Speaker 1: and hit seventeen year old Eugene Williams in the head.
Speaker 1: He lost consciousness and drowned. The coroner's jury has a
Speaker 1: slightly different account that he was not struck, but that
Speaker 1: because of the stones being thrown, he was forced to
Speaker 1: stay underwater until he was just too exhausted to keep swimming.
Speaker 1: When police arrived on the scene, white officers refused to
Speaker 1: arrest the man that black witnesses identified as the stone thrower. Increasingly,
Speaker 1: angry crowds gathered at the lake, and then rumors started
Speaker 1: to spread through the city about exactly what had happened,
Speaker 1: and as rumors tend to do, they spiraled as they went. Eventually,
Speaker 1: a black man named James Crawford fired into a group
Speaker 1: of policemen and injured one of them. They returned fire
Speaker 1: and killed Crawford. This led to widespread violence throughout the
Speaker 1: city that lasted until August. Three thirty eight people were killed,
Speaker 1: fifteen white and twenty three black. Five hundred thirty seven
Speaker 1: were injured. Of those, one ninety five were white and
Speaker 1: three hundred forty two were black. White mobs also burned
Speaker 1: down about one thousand homes in Chicago's black neighborhoods. The
Speaker 1: Chicago police force was not at all effective at stopping
Speaker 1: this violence, in part because it was understaffed and in
Speaker 1: part because white officers were biased toward the white rioters. Eventually,
Speaker 1: six thousand troops from the state militia were deployed to
Speaker 1: try 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 and I for an Eye,
Speaker 1: mentality developed on both sides the Third Riot were discussing
Speaker 1: it took place in a lane, Arkansas, and it was
Speaker 1: more of a massacre than a riot. It started after
Speaker 1: black sharecroppers started trying to organize for better pay. On September,
Speaker 1: about a 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 Hoopspur, 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 the Lane's white residence, this transformed
Speaker 1: the meeting from an implicit threat to an armed insurrection
Speaker 1: actively being planned, and it wasn't just rumor. The white
Speaker 1: press reported this supposed insurrection as a fact. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: white residents from around Phillips county traveled to a Lane
Speaker 1: to deal with the supposed threat, and local authorities asked
Speaker 1: the governor to deploy the National Guard. A mob burned
Speaker 1: down the church where the meeting had happened, and together
Speaker 1: these vigilantes and the National Guard troops took hundreds of
Speaker 1: black residents of a Lane into custody and held them
Speaker 1: in temporary stockades. This mob, over the next couple of days,
Speaker 1: killed at least two hundred people. The official toll may
Speaker 1: have been much higher, but there wasn't a formal tally.
Speaker 1: Walter White, assistant secretary of the n w a c P,
Speaker 1: and past podcast subject it to b Wells Barnett each
Speaker 1: investigated what had happened in the lane. Both found that
Speaker 1: the quote armed insurrection being hyped in the white press
Speaker 1: just simply did not exist, and if Elane's black community
Speaker 1: had been planning an armed insurrection, it seemed as though
Speaker 1: the death toll logically would have been much different. None
Speaker 1: of the white participants in this were ever tried for
Speaker 1: their roles in this massacre. Instead, twelve black men were
Speaker 1: put on trial, and the deaths of the five white
Speaker 1: people who were killed during the trials, A white mob
Speaker 1: surrounded the courthouse and threatened to lynch the men if
Speaker 1: they were not given the death penalty, and all white
Speaker 1: jury found them all guilty, and the judge handed down
Speaker 1: sentences of death for all of them. These twelve were
Speaker 1: not the only people who were set to stand trial.
Speaker 1: Another sixty five accepted plea bargains. After that first wave
Speaker 1: of convictions and sentencing, the Double A CP backed a
Speaker 1: series of appeals that finally made their way to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court as More versus Dempsey in nine. Justice Oliver
Speaker 1: Wendell Holmes authored the majority opinion that the defendants constitutional
Speaker 1: rights had been violated. This was a major victory for
Speaker 1: the Double A c P and for the civil rights
Speaker 1: 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, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: in and the massacre in Rosewood, Florida in n three,
Speaker 1: but they didn't happen with the same frequency as they
Speaker 1: had during the Red Summer. We talked at the start
Speaker 1: of the show about all the factors that had primed
Speaker 1: the United States for all this violence, So that leads
Speaker 1: to the question of why did Red Summer end. The
Speaker 1: economy did start to improve, and especially when it came
Speaker 1: to mob violence, the onset of colder winter weather probably
Speaker 1: tempered things a little bit, but a lot of those
Speaker 1: other factors were still present or even growing. The Great
Speaker 1: Migration was still going on, and by the end of
Speaker 1: it millions of people would have moved to cities. This
Speaker 1: general atmosphere of nationalism and xenophobia was still very present.
Speaker 1: A big part of it is that by the fall
Speaker 1: of nineteen nine, the white majority had increasingly started to
Speaker 1: see these incidents as part of an unacceptable pattern. There
Speaker 1: had been elected officials and other civic leaders who had
Speaker 1: denounced the events from the very beginning, but these calls
Speaker 1: became louder and more frequent. Law enforcement officials started taking
Speaker 1: more steps to make sure that mobs can't just abduct
Speaker 1: people from the jail to lynch them. The white press
Speaker 1: also started toning down some of its rhetoric in terms
Speaker 1: of criminal allegations against black residents, and then across the board,
Speaker 1: newspapers started taking a less sensationalistic and incendiary approach to
Speaker 1: discussing race related violence. Civil rights organizations also started working
Speaker 1: towards building more positive relations between black and white communities.
Speaker 1: For example, after the Chicago riyot, the city established the
Speaker 1: Chicago Commission on Race Relations, which investigated the riot and
Speaker 1: made recommendations to prevent something similar from happening again. It
Speaker 1: published its report The Negro in Chicago, A Study of
Speaker 1: Race Relations and a Race Riot in ninety two, which
Speaker 1: included not just a thorough investigation of the riot, but
Speaker 1: also of relationships between white and black communities in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Although not every riot led to this sort of investigation,
Speaker 1: there were other commissions and organizations that did the same
Speaker 1: types of work elsewhere in the United States. In other words,
Speaker 1: the violence didn't just play itself out. People actively work
Speaker 1: to stop it. So that's sort of the highlights of
Speaker 1: highlights is not even a good words like low lights. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's sort of a a quick look at Red Summer.
Speaker 1: Like I said, this could be there could be a
Speaker 1: whole podcast that would just be about Red Summer that
Speaker 1: would go on for many, many, many episodes, because there
Speaker 1: were so many things that happened, but so many of
Speaker 1: them follow this exact same pattern in terms of like
Speaker 1: the precipitating event and then what transpired, the actions that
Speaker 1: this like white mob took, and then how things usually
Speaker 1: ended without any kind of formal acknowledgement or investigation. Do
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of listener, may you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do, and it's a little happier we've talked about today.
Speaker 1: This is from Kathleen. Kathleen says, hi too. I'm a
Speaker 1: huge fan of the podcast. Y'all have been such a
Speaker 1: source of joy, and I've learned so much over the years.
Speaker 1: I had to write in after the Julian of Norwich episode.
Speaker 1: I have a master's degree in theology and she was
Speaker 1: such a source of comfort during graduate school. It was
Speaker 1: kind of funny listening to the episode because I could
Speaker 1: look around my living room and see quite a bit
Speaker 1: of Dame Julian's swag. I have a statue, a framed
Speaker 1: quote of all Shelby Well and an icon. I've attached
Speaker 1: a photo of the icon. Y'all covered so much great
Speaker 1: stuff about her. I was rooting Mother Christ, Mother Christ,
Speaker 1: and then you went there. I don't know about the
Speaker 1: historic veracity of it. I'm guessing it's just a legend,
Speaker 1: but there's some speculation that Julian's companion was a kitty,
Speaker 1: and so in the weird circles I move in, she
Speaker 1: has become the unofficial patron saint of cats. When my
Speaker 1: beloved cat died suddenly, the first thing I did was
Speaker 1: head to the bookstore at the Cathedral of St. Philip
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and purchase a statue of Julian cradling a
Speaker 1: cat in her arms. I have to say, there are
Speaker 1: times when hanging out with a cat and only dealing
Speaker 1: with people through a window sounds like a life I
Speaker 1: can get on board with. When I saw the icon,
Speaker 1: I had to get it. It's Julian hanging out with
Speaker 1: a kitty who bears a striking resemblance to my cat Francis,
Speaker 1: who's named after Saint Francis, despite being the least saintly
Speaker 1: feline ever. I thought you might appreciate the kitty connection
Speaker 1: to my favorite mistic Thank you so much for all
Speaker 1: your hard work on the podcast, Kathleen. Thank you so much, Kathleen.
Speaker 1: I had meant to get into cats a little bit
Speaker 1: in the podcast and then forgot it. Slash also had
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: to get in there. Um, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: like stained glass windows that have Julian with a cat
Speaker 1: or depictions of Julian with a cat. She's associated with
Speaker 1: cats a lot, and that's one of those things that
Speaker 1: seems to be an association that developed later. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in her writing or other people's accounts of
Speaker 1: her that mentions a cat. And that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: she didn't have a cat. It's just one of the
Speaker 1: many things about her that's been sort of like associated
Speaker 1: with her, even though we know very very little about
Speaker 1: her personal life and how she lives. So thank you again, Kathleen.
Speaker 1: I also can tell totally see the appeal of just
Speaker 1: hanging out with a cat and not having people around.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
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Speaker 1: our website which is missed in History dot com and
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Speaker 1: Holly and I have ever worked on together. UH searchable
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