Portland Public Library

Red summer, the summer of 1919 and the awakening of Black America, Cameron McWhirter

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-338) and index

mapsplatesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Red summer

bibliography

671491689

Cameron McWhirter

the summer of 1919 and the awakening of Black America

On June 26, 1919, as many as 10,000 whites gathered in a field just outside Ellisville, Mississippi, to watch a bound, exhausted, and wounded black man named John Hartfield as he was hoisted up the branch of a giant sweet gum tree. Vendors sold flags, trinkets, and souvenir photographs. Local politicians delivered speeches. Young boys crowded in the tree to look down at the wild-eyed, screaming Hartfield. It was a country fair, political rally, and public murder rolled into one. After WWI, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. But this civil rights moment was not to be. Instead the euphoria of victory evaporated to be replaced by the worst spate of anti-black violence. Labeled the Red Summer, the riots and lynchings would last from April to November 1919, claiming hundreds of lives. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before, introducing the first stirrings of the civil rights movement that would change America forever. - Back coverA narrative history of one of America's deadliest episodes of race riots and lynchings traces how black Americans were brutally targeted by anti-black uprisings that culminated in hundreds of deaths and set the stage for the civil rights movement