WWI & the Red Summer

These pages are currently under construction but in the meantime I highly recommend Collective Punishment: Mob Violence, Riots, and Pogroms Against African American Communities (1824 – 1974). A crowd-sourced, interactive map, Collective Punishment documents anti-black mass violence, focusing on mobs and riots instead of lynching.

General discussion/news coverage of race relations during WWI & the Red Summer:

Jump down to list of riots

The Augusta Chronicle, August 2nd, 1919

A typical response among white southern legislators was to contrast race riots in the North with supposedly peaceful race relations in the South. However, as this juxtaposition of articles indicates, things were not peaceful in the South either.

PDF: Red Summer Augusta Chronicle 08021919

McClure’s Magazine, January issue, 1920

This article in McClure’s offers a national perspective, interpreting the spate of violence as a crisis, or ‘cataclysm.’

PDF: Red Summer McClure’s Jan 1920

The New Republic analyzed how World War I militarized American culture, leading to the growth and normalization of a variety of patterns of systemic violence, both private and public, which continued long after the war was over.

The New Republic, “Applied Violence,” August 31st, 1921

PDF: Applied Violence New Republic 08311921

---

Accounts of Specific Riots

1914

Oconee County, SC & Hartwell, GA

1916

August 8th – Mobile, AL

1917

May 28th – East St. Louis, MO; Chester, PA; Philadelphia, PA

July 12th – Bisbee, AZ

July 27th – Houston, TX

1918

August 17th – Camp Merrit, NJ

December – Green River, WY

1919

January 22nd – Bedford Cty., TN

February 8th – Blakeley, GA

March 4th – Memphis, TN

April 10th – Morgan Cty., WV

April 15th – Mullen, GA

May 10th – Charleston, SC; Sylvester, GA

May 29th – Putnam Cty., GA

May 31st – Monticello, MS

June 13th – New London, CT; Memphis, TN

June 27th – Annapolis, MD; Macon, MS

July 3rd – Bisbee, AZ

July 5th – Scranton, PA

July 6th – Dublin, GA

July 7th – Philadelphia, PA

July 8th – Coatesville, PA

July 9th – Tuscaloosa, AL

July 10th – Longview, TX

July 11th – Baltimore, MD

July 15th – Port Arthur, TX

July 19th – Washington, DC

July 21st – Norfolk, VA

July 23rd – Darby, PA

July 26th – Hobson City, AL

July 27th – Chicago, IL

July 28th – Newberry, SC

July 31st – Bloomington, IL; Syracuse, NY; Philadelphia, PA

August 4th – Hattiesburg, MS

August 6th – Texarkana, TX

August 21st – New York City, NY

August 29th – Ocmulgee, GA

August 30th – Knoxville, TN

September 28th – Omaha, NE

October 1st – Elaine, AR

October 31st – Corbin, KY

November 19th – Centralia, WA

1920

January 20th – Dumas, AR

May 21st – Fayetteville, NC

June 18th – Duluth, WI

July 24th – Bedford, NY

August 5th – Springfield, IL

November 2nd – Ocoee, FL

1921

May 31st – Tulsa, OK

1923

Rosewood, FL