Race Riots Matter the Lack of Attention for the 1919 Red Summer Race Riots by White Newspapers, the NAACP and Scholars
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Race Riots Matter The lack of attention for the 1919 Red Summer race riots by white newspapers, the NAACP and scholars Ishany Sherany Gaffar MA American Studies Thesis Dr. Eduard van de Bilt University of Amsterdam 2017-2018 “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” - Henry David Thoreau “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” - James Baldwin “Geduld en volharding zijn de sleutels der overwinning.” - R. M. A. K. Gaffar 1 Index The Red Summer of 1919 ................................................................ 3 The Red Summer of 1919 ...................................................................................................... 3 Media coverage during the Red Summer ................................................................................ 5 NAACP actions during the 1919 riots .................................................................................... 7 My thesis ................................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter one: “Did you read it in the newspapers?” ........................ 13 1.1 May 10, 1919: Race Riot in Charleston, South Carolina .............................................. 13 1.2 June 13, 1919: Race Riot in Memphis, Tennessee & New London, Connecticut ........ 17 1.3 July 3, 1919: Race Riot in Bisbee, Arizona ................................................................... 18 1.4 July 21, 1919: Race Riot in Norfolk, Virginia .............................................................. 21 1.5 July 23, 1919: Race Riot in New Orleans, Louisiana .................................................... 22 1.6 August 21, 1919: Race Riot in New York, New York City ........................................... 24 1.7 October 1, 1919: Race Riot in Elaine, Arkansas .......................................................... 25 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter two: All race riots are equal? ............................................. 30 2.1 The NAACP before 1919 ............................................................................................. 30 2.2 The NAACP fight for eight race riots of the 1919 Red Summer ................................... 32 2.3 The NAACP during 1919 ............................................................................................. 38 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 40 Chapter Three: Race riots can’t stand alone ................................... 43 3.1 How many? What to call them? Who to blame? ............................................................ 43 3.2 The Red Summer as starting point for the Civil Rights Movement ............................... 46 3.3 White newspapers, black NAACP and interracial scholars? .......................................... 48 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 51 Conclusion .................................................................................... 53 Bibliography .................................................................................. 55 Appendix 1 .................................................................................... 59 Appendix 2 .................................................................................... 63 2 The Red Summer of 1919 More than 20 race riots in six months’ time throughout America ‘Lynching is an important aspect of racial history and racial inequality in America, because it was visible, it was so public, it was so dramatic, and it was so violent.’1 These words were spoken by social justice activist Bryan Stevenson during a 2014 interview about his fight for social justice for the African American community. Stevenson has never made a secret of his belief that the race riots African Americans had to endure during the past centuries play a vital role in the subsequent high rate of death sentences among African Americans in the South. Although Stevenson points out the openness and visibility in which these race riots occurred many stories about these cruelties are still unheard. The now well-known Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, which left more than 300 deaths and 10.000 homeless, was rarely mentioned in American history for over 70 years. The last decade of the twentieth century saw the 1921 Tulsa race riot further investigated and brought under wider attention. This same pattern could be noticed for the 1919 Red Summer in which more than 25 race riots occurred in only 6 months’ time. Over the past decade scholars have taken more interest in the 1919 Red Summer. However, their studies show the lack of documentation about the 1919 race riots. Whereas one could understand why 1919 white Americans would want to cover up these riots, it seems odd African Americans have not documented these riots properly. Moreover, scholarship about the 1919 Red Summer has been focused on a small part of these riots, leaving many riots undiscussed while claiming to discuss the 1919 Red Summer. The Red Summer of 1919 When it comes to race riots and lynching the Tulsa Riot (1921), the Rodney King riot (1992), the Detroit riot (1943) and the riots evolving after the dead of Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) seem part of our common knowledge. Not many people know about the approximately 26 riots between June and October 1919, labeled as the Red Summer. Interracial clashes and African American resistance were not new at the beginning of the 20th century but the growing number of these incidents throughout the South, their occurrence in northern cities and the effort of 1Alex Carp, “Bryan Stevenson: Walking with the Wind”, Guernica, accessed April 3, 2017, https://www.guernicamag.com/walking-with-the-wind/. 3 black public figures to shape Americans’ understandings of them indeed were. The Red Summer was the result of black people not accepting the idea of white supremacy anymore and the white population saw this as the overthrowing of the existing racial order. In this climate, more than 25 race riots occurred during 1919. William Tuttle, the nation’s leading scholar on racial violence in 1919, created awareness about the race riot in Chicago. The Chicago race riot is one of the seven biggest race riots of 1919 together with Longview, Washington D.C., Knoxville, Omaha, Phillip County and Charleston. These seven riots have gotten the most attention when it comes to the Red Summer. Yet, the Red Summer has been mostly used as part of a macrohistory instead of a microhistory. Scholars have used the 1919 Red Summer in their research of race riots in the 20th century. There has also been much interest in the relation between the Red Summer and the Red Scare: scholars focused on the question whether Marx’s communist manifesto echoed loudly in African American actions and discussed the possible consequences of the South linking the New Negro Movement to a communist conspiracy.2 However, most research has been focused on the 1919 race riots as a joint event, crucial to understand the New Negro Movement. Ann Collins, in All Hell Broke Loose (2012), argues that “the race riots have been acts of political violence and reveal much about American cultural attributes of freedom and repression”.3 According to Collins, the occurrence of race riots in 1919 is based on three factors: structural factors, cultural framing and precipitating events. The structural factors are events in the American landscape that led to great changes between black and white Americans. Collins names the Great Migration, Jim Crow Laws, reluctant authorities and the fight and return of black soldiers after World War I as the most important structural factors. Collins is not the only scholar who sees a significant role for these events in the outbreak of the Red Summer, especially the return of black soldiers in 1918.4 As President Woodrow Wilson encouraged American soldiers to ‘fight for democracy’ oversees many black soldiers were ready to continue fighting for democracy back in America. The New Negro Movement was born and this scared white 2 Barbara Foley, Spectre of 1919. Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro (University of Illinois Press: Illinois, 2003); Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare. Segregation and Anti-communism in the South, 1948-1968 (LSA Press: Louisiana, 2003). 3 Ann Collins, All Hell Broke Loose. American Race Riots from the Progressive Era through World War II (ABC-CLIO: California, 2012), introduction. 4 Cameron McWirther, Red Summer 1919. The Summer of 1919 and The Awakening of Black America (Henry Holt and Company: New York, 2011); Jan Voogd, Race & Resistance. The Red Summer of 1919 (Peter Lang Publishing: New York, 2008); David F. Krugler, 1919, The Year of Racial Violence. How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2014); Kidada E. Williams, They Left Great Marks on Me. African Americans Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I (New York University Press: New York, 2012). 4 Americans to the point that racial violence intensified. The precipitating event has an individual character for every riot and can be seen as the catalyzer that started the riot. Yet, according to Collins, a riot always