Red Summer


(Clockwise from the top)
A white gang hunting African Americans during the Chicago race riot • An inflammatory newspaper headline during the Elaine race riot • Body of Will Brown after being burned by a white mob during the Omaha race riot • Motorcycle involved in the Washington, D.C. race riot • Article about the Putnam County arson attack • Soldiers with a black resident during the Washington, D.C. race riot

Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.

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Washington race riot of 1919

Part of Red Summer


Coverage of the riots in Washington, D.C. on July 23, 1919

The Washington race riot of 1919 was civil unrest in Washington, D.C. from July 19, 1919, to July 24, 1919. Starting July 19, white men, many in the armed forces, responded to the rumored arrest of a black man for rape of a white woman with four days of mob violence against black individuals and businesses. They rioted, randomly beat black people on the street, and pulled others off streetcars for attacks. When police refused to intervene, the black population fought back. The city closed saloons and theaters to discourage assemblies. Meanwhile, the four white-owned local papers, including the Washington Post, fanned the violence with incendiary headlines and calling in at least one instance for mobilization of a "clean-up" operation. After four days of police inaction, President Woodrow Wilson ordered 2,000 federal troops to regain control in the nation's capital. But a violent summer rainstorm had more of a dampening effect. When the violence ended, 15 people had died: at least 10 white people, including two police officers; and around 5 black people. Fifty people were seriously wounded and another 100 less severely wounded. It was one of the few times in 20th-century riots of whites against blacks that white fatalities outnumbered those of black people.[6] The unrest was also one of the Red Summer riots in America.

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Lost Riot

Thirty years ago this week, Washington burned. Seventy-nine years ago this summer, the city bled. Why we shouldn't forget the riots of 1919.

MICHAEL SCHAFFER APR 3, 1998 12 AM

Late on the Monday night of July 21, 1919, James E. Scott came back to Washington from a weekend out of town. His train pulled into Union Station right around midnight.

The World War I veteran had picked a good time to get away. D.C. was in the midst of an unusually hot summer, even by its own swampy standards. Humidity hung in the air over the train yard and must have lingered under the high ceiling of the opulent railway station.

During that long, sewery summer, another kind of heat had been beating down on the city as well. The war had temporarily ballooned Washington's population and opened up thousands of new jobs. But now that it was over, all kinds of folks were still around, trying to hang on. Stories about a crime wave filled the newspapers. The news ratcheted up the pressure in the sweltering city, most dangerously along the city's precarious racial fault line.

The reports, written with lurid and inflammatory flair, suggested that black rapists were menacing D.C.'s white women. In response, white Washingtonians were forming posses. Talk of bringing back the lynchings of yore filled the air. Race relations were in a downward spiral nationwide—riots had already hit Charleston, S.C., and Longview, Texas—and the tense, nasty capital city was no exception. Scott knew about the trouble, of course, but he had no idea what he was in store for upon his return.

Stepping off the train, Scott walked out of the station and waited outside for the first of the streetcars that would carry him homeward.

He took the Rock Creek Bridge line trolley up New Jersey Avenue to Florida Avenue. At 7th Street NW, Scott got off to wait for a transfer. About five minutes later, a streetcar bound for the Brightwood neighborhood arrived, rumbling up through deserted midnight streets. Scott and a uniformed Army captain—one of the endless stream of demobilized soldiers hanging around postwar D.C.—boarded the northbound car and headed off.

It was only after he got on the second streetcar that Scott noticed anything unusual. Seventh and Florida lay near the heart of black D.C. Yet this evening, the weary traveler didn't see a single other African-American aboard the trolley.

Scott paid his fare and headed toward a vacant seat. But a soldier stuck his arm out and stopped him. "Where are you going, nigger?" he asked. Stammering, Scott replied that he was only going to sit down. But by then, his words were being drowned out by the other passengers.

"Lynch him," said one.

"Kill him," said another.

"Throw him out of the window," said a third.

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