A Killing Season

There have been many atrocities involving the story of the African American struggle. One of the most horrifying of such was a dreadful wave of lynching and anti-Negro violence that permeated the very fiber of America during the year 1919.

Lynching was so pervasive that James Weldon Johnson labeled it the "Red Summer”. During this year, race riots started by whites, inflicted devastation upon blacks across the nation. Let’s be clear there were many race riots but the difference this time was that blacks fought back!

Red Summer refers to the summer and fall of 1919, in which race riots exploded in a number of cities in both the North and South. The three most violent episodes occurred in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. On the afternoon of July 27, 1919, a stone throwing melee between blacks and whites began after a black youth mistakenly swam into territory claimed by whites off the 29th Street beach in Chicago. Amidst the mayhem, Eugene Williams, a black youth, drowned.

When a white police officer refused to arrest the white men involved in the death, and instead arrested a black man, racial tensions escalated. Fighting broke out between gangs and mobs of both races with violence escalating with each incident, and for 13 days Chicago was in a state of turmoil. By the time the riot ended, 23 blacks and 15 whites were dead, 537 injured, and 1,000 black families were left homeless. The Chicago riot was part of a national racial frenzy of clashes, massacres, and lynching’s. All of the incidents were initiated by whites.

In Washington, D.C., from July 19 to 23, four whites and two blacks were killed; whites were astonished that blacks dared to fight back. The NEW YORK TIMES lamented the new black militancy: "There had been no trouble with the Negro before the war when most admitted the superiority of the white race."

A "Southern black woman," as she identified herself, wrote a letter to THE CRISIS, praising blacks for fighting back. "The Washington riot gave me a thrill that comes once in a life time ... at last our men had stood up like men. ... I stood up alone in my room ... and exclaimed aloud, 'Oh I thank God, thank God.' The pent up horror, grief and humiliation of a life time -- half a century -- was being stripped from me."

From October 1-3, a race war exploded in Phillips County, Arkansas. On the night of September 30, a small group of black men and women were gathering a rural church to organize a sharecroppers' and tenant farmers' union -- the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. When two white law enforcement officers arrived at the church, one later claiming they were looking for a bootlegger, shots were exchanged. One white officer was killed and the other wounded.

As word of the shootings spread throughout the county, the local sheriff sent out a call for men "to hunt Mr. Nigger in his lair." The call went out to Mississippi to come to the aid of white men in Phillips County. Hundreds of armed men jumped into trains, trucks, and cars and, crossing into Arkansas, fired out of windows at every black they saw. Some said that if it was black and moving, it was target practice.

Frank Moore, one of the farmers at the church, saw the massacre as it unfolded: "The whites sent word that they was comin down here and kill every nigger they found. There were 300 or 400 more white men with guns, shooting and killing women and children." Soldiers from the United States Army eventually restored order, although some claimed the military participated in the killings. By the time the shooting ended, 25 blacks and five whites were listed as officially dead.

Many blacks believed that perhaps as many as 200 were killed, their bodies dumped in the Mississippi River or left to rot in the canebrake. The white establishment charged that blacks had formed a secret conspiracy to rise up and overthrow the white planters, take their land and rape their women. No evidence was ever produced to substantiate the charge.

This inhumane treatment was so blatant that civic and religious organizations began to speak out against lawless groups. One of the main opponents of lynching was the Federated Black Catholics under the guidance of Thomas Wyatt Turner. Turner was a supporter of civil rights and a devout Catholic born in Charles County, Maryland, Turner was a graduate of Howard University. Before he accepted the teaching position at Howard, he was the secretary of Baltimore's NAACP. However, his voice was not heard.

I could go on until all of the ink in the world is gone but what would be the point! Because history has recorded that the American Dream was more like a nightmare for people of color and minorities. So I will stop here and simply ask that you look into your soul and ask it: If you or I can see history lived which is known to be true – changed? How can you, we, or anyone believe anything history has ever told us?

And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective!

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"Just a Season"
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Legacy – A New Season is Coming!

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