Red Summer

A narrative history of America's deadliest episode of race riots and lynchings After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country for eight months. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Millions of lives were disrupted, and hundreds of lives were lost. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before. Red Summer is the first narrative history written about this epic encounter. Focusing on the worst riots and lynchings—including those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Omaha and Knoxville—Cameron McWhirter chronicles the mayhem, while also exploring the first stirrings of a civil rights movement that would transform American society forty years later.

Portrays the race riot which left 38 dead, 537 wounded and hundreds homeless in Chicago during the summer of 1919.

Race Riots and Resistance uncovers a long-hidden, tragic chapter of American history. Focusing on the «Red Summer» of 1919 in which black communities were targeted by white mobs, the book examines the contexts out of which white racial violence arose. It shows how the riots transcended any particularity of cause, and in doing so calls into question many longstanding beliefs about racial violence. The book goes on to portray the riots as a phenomenon, documenting the number of incidents, describing the events in detail, and analyzing the patterns that emerge from looking at the riots collectively. Finally and significantly, Race Riots and Resistance argues that the response to the riots marked an early stage of what came to be known as the Civil Rights Movement.

In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn of many local whites, including members of the city's political leadership and police department, who generally sympathized with white Chicagoans and viewed black migrants as a problem population. During Chicago's Red Summer riot, patterns of extraordinary brutality, negligence, and discriminatory policing emerged to shocking effect. Those patterns shifted in subsequent decades, but the overall realities of a racially discriminatory police system persisted. In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans' lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.

Krugler recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I.

In 1919, the city of Knoxville, Tennessee exploded in a firestorm of racial hatred & violence when a black man was accused of murdering a white woman. Knoxville prided itself as a liberal, harmonious community that had sympathized with the North during the Civil War. There had never been a lynching & the black citizens were encouraged to vote. Yet, despite this outward amiability, both blacks & whites were acutely aware of the invisible divide that kept them separate. When one man, fueled by passion, dared to cross that line, he became the catalyst that ignited the ever-present, seething unease into an ugly flame of hatred. It was common knowledge that Maurice Hayes, the handsome light-skinned black owner of a popular nightclub, was the illegitimate son of Knoxville's white mayor. This circumstance, coupled with his involvement with several white women, made him an easy target for the latent racial hostility that fermented beneath the city's sleepy facade. When a white woman was found brutally murdered, despite a glaring lack of evidence against him, Hayes was the only suspect. In the aftermath of the crime, an outraged white community erupted, revealing the ugly hypocrisy & thinly veiled hatred that simmered close to the surface. Vividly documents the racially charged atmosphere of a city gone mad in a true crime chronicle that remains chillingly relevant today.

This haunting debut collection explores a rash of race riots that swept the United States during the summer of 1919. With a tender lyrical quality reminiscent of the blues, Johnson moves through trauma and personal catastrophe to champion the endurance of the human spirit.

After just been released from jail, Leo is re-hired at the paper to write a popular column about crime. Called to the scene of an apparent overdose of a young native man, Leo witnesses some rocks falling out of the body bag, at first he believes they are crack but discovers that the rocks are really diamonds and Leo gets dragged into a deadly conflict between the mining companies and a murderous native street gang.