An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging

The Red Summer of 1919

The Red Summer of 1919 described the catastrophic racial violence that unfolded during the months of demobilization. At least 25 episodes of racial unrest occurred nationwide, often involving white backlash to Black veterans or Black workers in war industries. At least 100 lynchings were reported while the U.S. was at war, and an estimated 83 followed in 1919.

 In Washington D.C., white soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilians attacked African Americans after rumors spread of a “Negro Crime Wave,” beginning with an attack on a white woman. In Chicago, a Black boy drowned after white youths hurled rocks at him for violating the unofficial segregation on the shores of Lake Michigan. Riots followed, leaving 15 white people and 23 Black people dead. An estimated 500 were injured and 1,000 people lost their homes, predominantly Black families who lived on the South Side where the uproar was concentrated.

NAACP Press Release: “ASK GOVERNOR IF HE APPROVES OF MURDER,” 1919

NAACP Press Release: “ASK GOVERNOR IF HE APPROVES OF MURDER,” 1919 James Weldon Johnson Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

While the large majority of vigilantism targeted African Americans, white mobs occasionally attacked immigrants, Jews, and labor radicals. In one case from April 1918, a German-born coal miner in Illinois was cornered by a mob and bound with an American flag. The crowd swelled to over 500 as the man was dragged through the streets and lynched, his body raised and dropped three times: “one for the red, one for the white, one for the blue.”

Pamphlet: Race riots in their international aspects

Claris Edwin Silcox (1888– ?). “The Race Riots in Their International Aspect:  A Sermon Preached by Claris Edwin Silcox in the United Congregational Church, Newport, R.I. [1919?].

The NAACP focused its energies on researching and reporting lynching in an effort to lobby for federal anti-lynching legislation. Their efforts resulted in the Dyer Bill, anti-lynching policy that passed in the House in 1922 but was shot down by Southern filibuster in the Senate. Politicians would equivocate on anti-lynching legislation for years, but President Harding’s response at the time was emblematic: although he supported the bill, he also accepted an honorary membership to the Ku Klux Klan while anti-lynching was being debated on the floor.

Pamphlet: Thirty Years of Lynching-1919

Report: NAACP publication, “Thirty Years of Lynching” in the United States.

Papers: Article on Chicago Race Riots in relation to war

“Chicago Will Rise, Greater Than Ever, Despite Her Slanderers.” Chicago Evening American, August 2, 1919. NAACP Clipping on Chicago Race Riots, Red Summer Archive.