Last week commemorated the centennial of the race massacre in Tulsa, Okla., where a white mob attacked homes and businesses in the predominantly African American area known as Black Wall Street. Though a dark chapter in the American narrative, it was hardly an aberration.
In 1919, America was embroiled in an unprecedented wave of racial terrorism that writer James Weldon Johnson coined as âRed Summer.â White mobs indiscriminately attacked African Americans across the nation, resulting in death and the annihilation of African American property and businesses that left thousands homeless.
African American post-World War I expectations of equality fueled white social fears. Moreover, industrialists routinely used Blacks as strikebreaking pawns to threaten white workers who were fighting for better working conditions, further stoking racial resentment.