Red Summers--How racist propaganda inspired riots in America's biggest cities

Hundreds of miles apart, two of the worst instances of racially motivated attacks in American history occurred within days of each other during the 1919 Red Summer.

Twenty-two-year-old Elsie Stephnick, the spouse of a white, US navy aviator was allegedly assaulted by two Black men near 15th Street NW and New York Avenue on 19 July in Washington DC. At the time, the four major white-owned newspapers, including the Washington Post, were publishing increasingly sensationalistic articles framed to instigate white violence against Washington’s Black community. White veterans and civilians began randomly beating and detaining Black residents in the street and on public transportation. Carter G Woodson, founder of “Black History Month” and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University, witnessed a mob grab a Black pedestrian and shoot him to death. “They had caught a Negro and deliberately held him as one would a beef for slaughter, and when they had conveniently adjusted him for lynching, they shot him,” Woodson recounted.


Refusing to declare martial law to stop the riot, President Woodrow Wilson eventually relented and activated troops stationed nearby. In the interim, Black people took control of their safety, buying $14,000 worth of weapons to repel white invaders. Guns and ammunition were bought in DC stores, pulled from closets where they had been stored after the first world war, and covertly transported from Maryland. Sharpshooters positioned themselves on rooftops watching for white drivers entering Black neighborhoods, and civilians remained on alert behind partially drawn curtains. By the time troops, and heavy summer rain, stopped the fighting on 24 July, an estimated 15 people were killed – 10 of them white – and 50 people were critically wounded.

Three days later on 27 July, the death of 17-year-old Eugene Williams in Chicago at the hands of George Stauber, a white European immigrant, led to what many historians considered the worst racial unrest of the Red Summer. Floating in Lake Michigan on a 14ft x 9ft raft built with a group of friends, Williams inadvertently drifted into a swimming area near 29th Street unofficially considered to be “whites only”. Stauber spotted Williams in the white swimming area and threw stones in his direction, striking the teen and causing him to drown. The responding police officer, Daniel Callahan, refused to arrest him, despite the protestations of Black beachgoers and onlookers. When a Black officer attempted to do so other white officers prevented him and instead detained the Black witnesses, lighting the spark for mass violence.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/21/chicago-dc-race-riot-propaganda-360-video