In addition was the growth of residential segregation after the World
War bought greater discrimination and segregation in many northern communities
that has ever had them. In cities like Chicago, earlier blacks blamed the mass
of Southern newcomers, with their awkward and unrefined ways, for the more
intense prejudice that all blacks faced. . James Weldon Johnson, a black writer
and NAACP official coined the summer of 1919 the Red summer. These attacks
against blacks began Charleston, South Carolina. What started as a disturbance
between white sailors and blacks extended when white sailors charged into the
black district. Two Blacks died and several white sailors were hurt before the
violence ended. By the middle of the summer, Chicago 5000 public employees
decided to strike. During intense labor dispute, a young black boy swims across
an imaginary color line. Whites stoned him to death as a police officer just
looks on. Black mobbed the police officer, and the worst riots of the summer.
Crowds of armed whites roamed the black section of Chicago on foot and cars,
firing upon blacks recklessly. Blacks strike back, killing all the whites that
firing a machine from a truck that as driving through the neighborhood Whites
attacked blacks and blacks return the attack whites. The riots in the city lasts
for five days. By the time it ended, more than 500 were injured and 38 people
were dead. Everyone had notice that blacks had fought back Chicago and East St.
Louis riots were much different because most of the victims were black.However,
in the Chicago riots blacks were more violent. It was the first the closest
thing to a race war that everyone could remember. Other race riots that summer
was in the nation capital. The Washington Post had run untrue stories the full
summer of white women being attacked by black men. After this report, white
solders and marines began to attack blacks men and women. During the riots, this
newspapers publish battle plans and meeting places.
Like in any riot city, the police were ineffective to control the crowd.
After the riot, the truth comes out. This newspaper admits the assault that been
reported and that had started the whole mess had been verbal. The Chicago
Defender reported that youngest generation of black men are not content to move
along the line of least resistance as their sires. George Hayes, a black
economist, and director of Negro economics in the United States Department of
Labor traced the shuffling off the coil of servility to the war and the
migration of blacks out of the South. For the first time, Haynes said, blacks
really understood what liberty meant and the United States was face to face with
the new Negro. The one fact that stands out in each of these riots is the
initial violence came from whites. In addition, while there was no unanimous
plan, some elements of white society were deeply unset by the changes taking
place in the conditions of black people. Many wanted to see blacks remain
servitude, perhaps a new form of slavery. The riots serve the same duty as
lynching and terror tactics, for years the means of upholding the social class
system. The only change is that the disorders from lynching is the fact that, to
a greater degree than before, blacks responded by fighting back. The new
migration bought blacks to the North. In addition, when they arrive found more
freedom than they had ever known. This would lead to aggressive black leaders.
Whatever the inequities in the North, the South was twice as worse. These riots
presented a serious problem for the local, state, and federal government because
federal troops were required to stop the riots in Washington. In the fourth
instance, the Charleston riots. Marines from the local navel base was used to
asset the police. The Chicago riot had state troops or national guardsmen to
restore order. As the list of rioting grew worse, it become clearer that the
local police could not keep up with this type of trouble and federal force was
often required. The right for African Americans to pursuit their dreams of
happiness did not come easy. The hard work came from every color and religion.
This work for equality began slowly opening an unknown amount of people also
disagreed with the discrimination, but these people could not speak out. They
fear for their jobs, their homes and mostly for their lives. Primary Sources
Rudyard Kipling , The White Burden, McClure 's Magazine ( Feb. 1899) Herbert
Spapiro, White Violence and Black Response from Reconstruction to Montgomery,
University of Massachusetts Press Amherst 1988 L. Alex Swan, The Politics of
Riot Behavior, University Press of America 1980 Neal Irvin Painter, Standing at
Armageddon, The United States 1877 to 1919, W.W. Norton & Company 1989 August
Meier, From Plantation to Ghetto: an interpretive history of American Negroes,
New York, Hill and Wang, 1966 William M. Tuttle, Race Riots: Chicago in the red
summer of 1919, New York, Athenaeum, 1970
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