Finishing up a faculty fellowship at stanford. She earned a joint ph. D. From yale and specializes in 20th century american and African American history with an emphasis on immigration, war, race, globalization, social movements and political resistance. Shes the author of a number of books. One of which is available outside and id encourage you to grab a copy while you can. But an upcoming book as well. The glory of their deeds, a global history of black soldiers and the great war era. And sage was working on the book, if i recall, as part of your work at the warren center. Are we close to publication . I started when i was five. She started when she was five, so its almost done. I am, yes. Sage is a great friend of ours. Were delighted to have you back here with us again. Join us in welcoming dr. Mathieu. And joining us tonight is the scholar who also has a specialized focus on the red summer of 1919, and the fight of this nation to create a just and equitable society, cameron mcwhitter is covers breaking news and other subjects and has worked in a variety of countries reporting from bosnibosnia, irad other places. For our purposes hes the author of a compelling text red summer the summer of 1919 and the awakening of black america. Please join me in welcoming cameron. I want to read a portion of his book. If you would just listen, this really frames i think our conversation this evening. Just reminds us to silence your devices. So thank you. A reading from camerons book, on june 26th, 1919 as many as 10,000 whites gathered in a field in mississippi to watch a bound, exhausted and wounded black man named John Hatfield as he was hoisted up the branch of a giant sweet gum tree. Vendors sold flags, and souvenir photographs. Local politicians delivered speeches. Young boys crowded in the tree to look down at the wildeyed screaming hartfield. It was a country fair, political rally, and public murder rolled into one. After world war ii black americans hoped far new ep pock of peace, proser thety and equali equality, but this civil rights moment was not to be. Instead the victory evaporated to be replaced by the worst spate of antiblack 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. Friends, please welcome our guests this evening, camer. Id like to begin by thanking you on being here on such a lovely evening. As cameron no doubt recalls, we are almost to the day at the sen ten ri of the worst of the riots, id say, but the riots had begun at least in the United States for at least a couple of months. There were a there are a couple of things that are reminiscent of that summer. For me, its always the weather. It was an incredibly hot summer. And one of the things that we historians know is that when there is a spike in the heat, we start smacking each other around. And its no surprise that most of these race riots occurred during heat waves. Can you i just came here from chicago where we me and many other people were marking the centennial of the chicago riot which was the worst urban riot in the United States that year. And it started because of the heat. People there was no airconditioning at that time. And five young teenage African American men snuck through the white neighborhoods of chicago to get to the south side beach, and they went swimming. And they swam in an area that was sort of near the de facto black beach, and the de facto white beach. It was not there wasnt legal segregation in chicago, but the raft they were on, they werent very good swimmers, drifted into the white beach, and that was in this tense period all that was needed to spark a massive race riot. Thats a wonderful place to start. One of the things i argue about this era at large, so not just 1919 but 1910 and 1920, what we see in this instance of these kids who theyre children playing outdoors, is that we are reminded that the very idea of leisure is contested. The idea of belonging is contested. Right . So these children do not belong on that beach, because flree tie is itself segregated as is the space where the free time should be spent. Its not just beaches that are segregated but sometimes parks, golf courses, swimming pools, public swimming pools. So in these these social spaces become just as charged as the workplace, neighborhoods, in terms of contested terrains when it comes to belonging for African Americans. Especially in urban spaces. And i would go farther and say the smallest when the situation was so charged, the smallest incident would lead to tremendous violence, and a rumor and gossip played a huge role in all of this in the washington riot which occurs early in july of 1919, it occurs when there was a whole friendenzy of panic produced by the media of belief that African American men were attacking white women. And a white woman we dont know exactly what happened, but a white woman was walking down the street and was jostled by two African American men walking the other way. We know that happened. Right. But that became did you hear about two men raping a white woman. That leads to mayhem. So in 1921 a couple years later in the worst of all race riots in American History, the tulsa race riot of 1921, it all begins with people bumping into each other in an elevator. These small spaces where, again, the complicated relationship across race, racial lines and across gender lines become aggravated or amplified. Of course, 1919 also reminds us that violence moves on rumor. Violence moves on rumor. So it is so often the case that we hear that this happened and that didnt happen and before you know it, no one even remembers why were fighting in the fist place. So kind of like a middle school brawl. Right . And as a reporter today, i cant tell you how constant a problem that remains in terms of trying terms of trying to deal with whether or not something is true, if something happened, it is a constant paranoia and fear of journalist. We go to sleep agonizing over that all of the time. Lets take a step back and not know, rather, at the spring at the end of 1919. So we have american soldiers starting to come back massive amounts. Sometimes 100,000 a month. From great ships on american and coastal port cities. They are concerned about a return to normalcy, whatever that could mean. So whether or not that is a return to their jobs, return to their families, return to their social standing. Return to the physical place from which they came, and not Everyone Wants to come back. From once they came. Were talking about men who are between the anyoges of 18 to 30. Not the most stable part of our citizenry. Its true. And absolutely under studied aspect for me, and part of what i write about, is that we did not have a language for what today we call ptsd. These men were thrown into the worst of the fighting. The most chaotic of the fighting in the last six months of the war. Even though american soldiers did not see the level of destruction that other european troops had experienced in the course of all four years, none the less you dont have to be in the trenches for four years to know how destabilizing and how devastating it is to witness your friends being torn to shreds. So we get these guys arriving, right . In philly, boston, newport news, its like thanks for coming ut. That doesnt even include how africanamericans felt about this expectation that after having crossed the atlantic and accomplishing the infrastructure, to fight in injury, building the camps, the b barricks, feeding the people, only to then be treated like gum under one shoe by their own government. That decommissioning also felt if wasnt as smooth as see you later sometimes. Sometimes they had to wait arou around. That lead to men waiting around looking for booze. And a bunch of men five 5 to a guy that says hell go get them liquor and he takes off and never comes back and the soldiers riot. U i think youre dead on in everything youre saying. When i talk to people they generally fear like theyre victorio victorious, it was a panicky time. We had people who, they took over russia. There was bombs going to poll suggestions. There was a Record Number of strikes. The high cost of living was rising. They were pouring back into the domestic economy and they could not get the jobs they used to have. And in that frothy mess, there was a political picture, there was things swirling around a mans head, he was biting his nails, and that was influenza that was sweeping the world. Because these things happened in a frothy chaos, they were focal points for antiblack violence. So we also get, there is also another greent in this mess that you described, and that is over the course of the war, it started before, but it went from trickle to flood. That africanamericans cast down their buckets and headed north, right . They followed the rivers and the railways. And we get a departure of africanamericans from the south to the Northern Industrial cities to replace the workers that had gone off to war. Immigration was cut off, and it is important to neat this was, none the less, a concrete choice to say that after almost 50 years of farming with control over their wages that the sharecropping system is not working. It is a perpetual cycle of poverty. We cannot hold on to land. What will i do . What is the very fundamental exercise of freeze . To move. One key addendum to that is northern industry turned to the south and it was very advantageous for the owners of vak ti factories to have africanamericans come work for them. Often their wages were suppressed. Secondly they were inherent union busters. So you had a perfect situation for the factory owner. He would weaken the unions, bring in cheaper labor, but youre right. But generally for africanamericans it was a better situation to get away from jim crow definitely. It adds to the idea that after the war we have to get those people back into their place, get out of my neighborhood, get out of my workplace. Get out of my army, off of my streetcar, off of me beach. It is a very physical set of contacts. We might refer to them as micro aggressions. One of the things i enjoy with my students is having them look at newspapers from the period. Especially in north carolina, white women went around stabbing people with their umbrellas. And some black women are also fighting back. They do this because the sidewalk is a contested space and they want to reclaim that as their entitled place. So black people should walk in the street with the muck that ran in the streets. Africanamericans are saying i will not be moved. You mentioned some other important advancements. Yeah, this title of this talk is that we return fighting and this is great writing for the crisis at that time. And he made it loud and clear that the soldiers that had just fought for democracy, and were told that youre fighting to save democracy, were going to come back changed and were going to come back demanding a different situation than the one they left. That, i think, played a key role in formulating peoples views of what they were expecting when they came back. I think the africanamerican soldiers encountered i have numero numerous incidents in my book. They came back wearing their uniforms. But when they would get back to the small towns in the south, they would be spit on, yelled at, they would be threatened. In some cases they were killed. These flare ups were happening all of the time. I remember in my book there was lots of letters going back and forth in the u. S. Rail way administration. Sold juiers would be coming baco sleep in the Railroad Cars to go home and once they crossed the m mason dixson lion line, they woy they have to go to the colored car. And then they would say they just fought for us in europe. It becomes a very tense moment. There is a soldier that i have quoted in the book that recalls people muttering as he walked down the street in arkansas. He is trying to rise above his station, and he is moving to st. Louis and he says i felt safer in the trenches than in arkansas. The intellect yuals are returni. So, can again, we have to take a step back and think about how we imagined an africanamerican in 1913. The average american, if youre saying africanamerican theyre wearing overalls working on a farm. A overwhelming majority are formers of one type or another. So the idea that in just two years in American Intervention in the war we would move them from overalls to an officers uniform with gleaming metals confirming their power was absolutely incendiary for a lot of american people. And it stood as a greater challenge to getting them, again, back in their place into we hear about how the french ruined our negros, right . There is a lot of concern about americans, especially africanamericans, suffering from a kind of contagion from having seen french democracy and having tasted a life with fewer social and legal barriers. And africanamericans have all of these different ways of communicating their refusal. Its funny you mention taste. I went on a tour in baltimore, and i was on the radio with a journalist that interviewed the last living world war ii living veteran in baltimore who was africanamerican. He was very old by the time he interviewed, and all he talked about was eating escargo, wine, bred, a bread, and they were being so kind. The french people were thrilled that people were coming to fight for them. There is a couple things here. I have a good friend, he calls me every three months to to ask me how my book is coming. But we were talking about how the french ruined the africanamericans, right . And to telegraph their awakening, they start to throw french words into their every day interactions. So to change the positionalty that they have. You would not say hay, how is it going, you would say hello, cher. The other thing that africanamerican will do and this will drive southerners bat shit crazy. Sorry for the language. That is a medical term. They would name their kids with french names. I realized that all of my great aunts have names like jocelyn or jew julie. And that transportation is the site of the conflict in the summer of 1919. In the walking tour we just gave in chicago we started the talk at a victory monument that for many decades it was the only africanamerican monument to the soldier in the United States. He is rugged, and he has a rifle and a bayonet, and he is facing south. Were very familiar with muhammad alis stance, and he says they have never done anything to me. 50 years before that africanamericans were saying the same thing. They were prepared. An africanamerican man from the period was declared by j. Edgar hoover as the most dangerous negro in america. He says im prepared to fight in alabama, but not in france. I have no battle there. I value democracy. What we see after the war is that same vision comes back. Were very familiar with return fighting. Short but powerful jab penned by w. E. B. Dubois. That poems last lines, if we must die, let us be with our backs pressed to the wall, dieing but fighting back. It becomes so transgressive after world war i that he is branded a communist and almost deported, but in world war ii churchill returns to that language to galvanize britain. The anecdote is important to go into. He is a railroad porter, and he is traveling with his friends, young black men at the time, and theyre going from town to town. Every time the door opens they dont know if there is a riot. Again rumor and newspaper that were usually a day late is all they had. Theyre running to their hotels. He started carrying a gun. He was terrified and he is so nerve racked, he goes into a bathroom and scrawls out this sonnet. Some of his friends start crying and he sends it off to a little magazine that publishes it it, and then it is published all over. It doesnt ever mention race, but everybody knew what it was about. To the point where there was white senators in the senate saying i think it was included in hoovers reports. Fighting back was seditious. And a threat to democracy at its core. The summer of 1919 is also a period when americans are afraid of their own shadows. We are worried that having exposed ourselves to europeans and their provincial wars, that we will, in fact, bring back that kind of instability in the United States. All of a sudden, everyone is a potential community ist, right . It becomes suspicious behavior to speak german in public. In iowa they try to pass a law saying english is the official language. They become very worried about how people would get into the minds of otherwise naive africanamericans. That plays a role over and over again. The Media Coverage is very, very poor. Many of the rumors end up in print. It gives it a so lid so lidt t narrator certainly the leading organization of that year was the naacp which was, their position was pretty simple. It was that were american citizens and we deserve the same rights and were going to fight to do that in the courts and how we vote, and were against open violence. So were going to fight on those fronts and that was considered to the point where texas shut down the naacp, and when the head came to visit austin to try to unravel this mess, he was beaten in broad daytime into a bloody pulp by a mob that included a judge and other law officials. So it really, if you read, there was a big report that hoover, produced for that year. It has cotons of communist materials. And it switches to publication. Africanamerican quotes from africanamerican publications that are, i mean, we would read them today and think that they should have rights. But at the time it was just, you know, really contested. Red summer means were literally seeing red as they suggested for the blood running through the streets, and also because of all of the red scare, the communists everywhere. And this idea that they would target africanamericans and infect the notions that challenge the core of a hierarchy that worked as well for the north as the south. So, i shall bring him up on the screen. I developed a man crush nor guy, he is an awesome dude. He is one of those dudes, he wrote lift every voice and sing. He wrote poetry, a novel, he wrote amazing essays. And he is doing all of this amazing work. And he was tapped and he says i want you to ko come to the naacp and work with me. That organization had been founded after a riot in springfield, illinois. It was dominated by white do gooders. It was not lead at that time. And he says it might hurt my writing if i do that because i wont have time. He says, he is too busy, he is giving peach after peach after peach. He is recruiting to the south. You think this is malcolm x, or Martin Luther king, and it is all what the Civil Rights Movement has to deal with in the 50s and the 60s. We have other people whose voices are very important on your left is a journalist from boston. And he is very active in denouncing birth of a nation and the kind of violence that it is advocating in the United States. On the right is another renaissance man in many ways, but far more insufferable. So we talked about this briefly, what is meant by the red summer, bombings, fires, rage, these are all very worry some daily occurrences for americans. And they seem to indicate that the war has crossed the pond, right . That the mood in europe may have reached the United States. It is very important to remember that race riots did not occur just in the United States. They started in europe as early as 1915. They begin in european medical hospitals. What an obvious place to see. The white soldier, the black soldier, do we segregate or not . The british, the french, the germans, they all had stances on this. As a result we see a lot of fighting and racialized violence. We also get violence in european port cities where colonial and africanamerican and white soldiers are pouring in at alarming rates and with a great sense of urgency. So in 1718 we start to get race riots namely in western france. We get them immediately after the war in welsh and british camps. Also as far as glasgow where allied troops and american troops are stockpiled and waiting for the ships that could carry them home. With ports frozen they cant go as quickly as possible. With influenza striking so many soldiers were very concerned about putting 10,000 soldiers on one ship and having so many die at sea or so many get sick on the way, which certainly happens. A concern about american contact. So white southerners who are in europe start these riots and in the European Press we get accounts of soldiers saying things like well, you europeans thought you were so great. And incapable of racial strife, but when you have no rules you have people that dont know their place and sense we have to get involved and have these riots. It is very interesting reading. And then we have all of this fighting that occurs on the very ships bringing back these veterans. In the case of canada and its black soldiers, theyre so concerned about this fiery mood that they have their black soldiers remove their uniforms while at seat. I want to say one other thing about uniforms. One of the reasons theyre encouraged to keep their uniforms for 30 to 90 days after returning is so that a grateful nation can bestow its gifts and thanks, right . And they can be anything from food to sex. To booze to words. So when we require that soldiers take away, or we rip off their uniforms, its in part to say we owe you know thanks. What did you do to e ration these contributions. Im going to move quickly. A fight over labor, a fight over housing especially in urban spaces. A fight over racial equality and civil rights. Whose rights . Who gets to define this democracy. And of course the time honored trough decision, interracial sex, a universal paranoia. White women and their sexual choices, right . If she is with someone who are is not you that means she chose, hopefully, that someone that is not you and that alone could be a contested moment. This is just a quick list, and not even a full one of the various locations where we see race riots in 1919. Hawaii, mexico, hon dduras. Common tractors in my research, heat and leisure. Migration and housing crunches. They would be ripped off when they would sell their cotton at the cotton beggins. Cotton prices were through the roof that year, and they were doing fairly well relatively. So you see more sharecropper families buying land. You see more sharecroppers buying cars. These are flash points. You see that black guy driving down the street in a brand new car . When i begin my book with a small riot in the middle of not even a town, just a small black church in part of georgia, and when the mob riots, they burn t the church down, and they destroy the mans car if is very important for them. Cars, then, like now, are the second largest expenditure that anyone will make. It is one ofclining value. They make a point of destroying victorolas down. It is also why they talk about bombing caravans. People would throw bombs around or oil and setting things ablaze. This is a map of some, just some of the places that witnessed a level of violence that warran d warranted that made it on to the pages of local newspapers, right . But 34 or 37 riots occurred in 1919 alone and these sites do not account for the daily microaggressions. And also just there is a lot of lynchings that took place in the south that we will never know about. Speaking of, this is a map of lynchin lynchings, you know, just in the south, but important to remember they didnt occur just in the south. A and. And they werent all africanamericans. The vast majority were. They were often times, jewish italian labor activities, hispanic, homosexuals, and women. It is not the only way that it is made clear their lives are in danger. You know, we have to remember that between 1917 and easily 1927 theyre on the run for different reasons. This is a short but not complete list of some of the key race riots that we get in the immediate years after the war. And so yeah, july 27th to august 3rd, this is when chicago is aflame over these race riots. Here is just an example of the chicago defenders front page. And you know interestingly they could not publish the paper because they were cut off fr from the owner of the defender has to drive to indiana where they would publish it. So you would get a sense that knob happen nothing happened. You have to look into the middle of august for the retelling of this rash of riots. This was international not just chicago news. This is another chicago newspaper. One of the things that i write about is how the summer of 1919 really changed the military presence in africanamerican communities. When we had a race riot in omaha, tanks and machine guns are brought in. Tanks are the emblem of world war i. That whats we associate with no mans land france. Not downtown hom thomaha, right . So i find this photo absolutely delicious in its potential. What is happening between these two guys . Right . Then there is a child on the side that is like this is juicy. He is probably a little kid selling newspapers. But there is the lunchroom that we know will become a site of civil rights protest. And who stands down . Who stands down . Here, you want to talk about chicago . I mean i think this is that might be washington. But it is important to note that after the chicago riot, the Africanamerican Community wanted the militia to come in because they were be sieged. There is no food, water, or medicine getting in. They were overwhelmed and the nurses and the staff were exhausted. And they needed people to bring supplies in. And it was 100 degrees. It is boiling hot. There are white dangs moving around the perimeter and black gangs moving within it looking for white victims. It becomes a chaotic place where they want order restored. And when the militia finally shows up, they do exactly that. They restore order very quickly. They point bayonets and then the mobs vanish. Here is a truck with milk and bread in chicago, and it has to be with armed guards. Even if that is a good military for instan presence, a safe guard, that sees africanamericans as a criminalized population, we forget that these weapons are not there to keep africanamericans in place, but rather to protect them. They respect a hard er group. Yeah, you have a hardenning of neighborhoods. This is my neighborhood, your neighborhood, it is ball kkiniz. It is. And there is a strong belief that the original richard daley, the mayor of the city of chicago was in the riots participating. If anyone knows chicago, that would not be too surprising. So center your inner white midwesterner for a moment. What are we afraid of . This is what were afraid of. This is what were afraid of, right . Young, healthy, africanamerican that we decided didnt know how to use weapons before they went to europe but of course they did. We trained them on other whites with the intent to kill. And we told them they were doing it for democracy. They were very worried that this could quickly turn against us. That is the anxiety that is being stoked. That is the rue nor being stoked. And so scenes like this, a parade starting a soldiers return, you will note the famed griffons, the lionlions, i don know. This could take over the south. So a very harm hand is needed. This is exactly what we have to remember. So, i am going to read a little quote from chester franklin. And he wrote, he wrote an argue called the new negro. And he said we believe that self preservation is the first law of name. That the time of cringing is over. That really somums up the red summer, but he, i want to point out one other thing into a black journal i journalist he informs chicago, and he discusses an africanamerican that comes back from france, and a mob comes up and starts attacking him, and the troll ri cars moved on electrical lines. So all you had to do was pull the cord off and it was dead. So thats what they do. He has to run out and he is running, suddenly, a man coming home from work, he is running for his life. He loses his coat. He is terrified and the crowd is creaming get the nword. Theyre chases him. And he finally escapes when he sees kaminsky park. He knows he made it to the safe area and he says the injustice of the whole thing overwhelmed me. The ten months that i spent in month hads it been in vain . What had i done to deserve such treatment. There is an n word, lets get him, the words keep ringing in his rears. He was so. And he was just fighting to make the world safer for democracy. It is a fight that continues. It begins, it is oom apply if ied in 1919, but it does not end. All of the racial problems ended at that point. We would like to open the floor to your questions and were happy to stay if you are. And afterward if anyone wants to ask us anything. Any questions would be great. So you are welcome if youre able to come down to either mic or im happy to come to you as well. Thank you for this great piece of history. I have two questions, but im going to ask just one, im trying to figure out which one i want to ask. You mentioned j. Edgar hoover. Recently a year or two ago the fbi put out a report about either black extremists, something dc so in your as a historian, do you think that the black community is still being looked at that way by our government . You have to develop a sense of humor when you work on war and genocide. So sometimes i look at the surveillance records, theyre all very, very ed about the movement of ideas and the movement of black bodies that incorporate these ideas, right . There is a whole set of paper work, and new language that develops in the war and even more so afterwards. Sometimes i feel like the best thing that happened to africanamerican newspapers was jay edgar hoover. Some that we would not have but for their presence in the surveillance records. I tell my students that we might well revere muhammad ali, malcolm x, and roman romanticiz we think that are. So i think there is still a concern and an anxiety about what black people think. And a need to explain it away, to blame, you know, to have a zenophobic concern about them. At the end of the day refuse to believe that they are africanamericans own critiques about how democracy fails them in their daily lives. I dont think that i hope that answers your question. I dont think it is stopped or will any time soon. I would point out, also, a lot of critique in reports that i read, early on the fbi was not official, but they were starting to create a group, but their assessments in what is happening in the streets of chicago are way off. A lot of rumors that were spread that africanamericans broke into the armory, and they had 10,000 guns, and whites were murdered hundreds of people and dumping them into a creek. They put that into the reports and that never happened. There is a lot of bad assessment that is. Sometimes it is blatent job protection. Now i have to take what skills i have and use them to demonize a different set of people. Our next question comes from the center. You had a map up earlier and it denoted the various parts of the world where all of these riots were taking place. I want to make sure that im clear. Was there any one definitive incident in all of those locations that triggered it, or is it just the overall climate that you were talking about . So i had to speed through it, and that is where this is cams wheel house. Each place as a different man fes station of its anxiety, if you will. Maybe work plays a different role as a stimulant or catalyst. When in doubt always say some white girl got some attention, that one never fails. So i start my book in a small town in georgia, but of course there was incidents before that, but but that gains the attention of the naacp in new york. Then they have a giant forum. Im trying to push for federal lynching legislation in new york. Then cherylston. There are incidents we have a pointer. Super fancy. Okay, wow, look at me. Charleston is really the first major urban riot. And ironically it is the best handled. The naval commander and the major of the city immediately Work Together to shut it down. Even in the deep south they shut it down. So unfortunately that is not repeated. So then you have incidents popping up all over. Bisby arizona is interesting. Buffalo soldiers are brought to a fourth of july parade and it becomes a shootout. So you have washington dc. Everyone in the country is saying what the hell is going on with our country. Washington is really important internationally because you have i found german and japanese articles when they say this is the leading democracy in the United States and the world . They are having a riot outside of the white house. They said this is insane. One day they might have a black president. It is horrific. So as we point out in the beginning, newspaper after newspaper, panicked headlines. That is an important place to add who more things, and arkansas is the worst. It is written, increasingly referred to as a pilgrim. That happens in september. Geez, now i did it. Too much tech. There we go, all right, i fixed it. It is really basely a massacre. Part of the reason from is that amplification is you heard what happened in dc . So its hike everybody has to get involved and with each race riot means a greater response to it. And more people in the streets. And there are accounts of, you know, people especially here, women, fighting each other off with pots and pans. What do i tell my students, this is a real frenzied violence. So yeah, it is a real, and again this doesnt even the full extent of that summer, i hope that answered your question, thank you. Well take our next question on the right . It shows nothing happened, is that because it is low key . I think it is safe to say there was probably tension here, but not massive race riots. They did not have an sdunt liex you had in omaha. Why . Pure luck. Also by 1919, certainly by the fall of 1919, we start to realize theyre messy. So the europeans who could barely suffer to begin with their like well well, if it isnt mr. Democracy. Cant even handle his own mess, right . So that is and secondly the idea that we need to shut them down quickly. If that means bringing in the military, we will. If it means increasing the police force, we will. So if we look only for these little fabulous orange explosions, we miss all of the other ways of women stopping each other on sidewalks, right . Small scale exercises. Ill come back here and i will give a four hour lecture about why Woodrow Wilson was a terrible president if you want, just two sentences, well more than two, but throughout this mess, as this rolled across the country, he is focused on the league of nations. And this is embarrassing. And you have africanamerican leaders and others writing him, pleading with him. You have to Say Something here. You have to interject. I only found one speech where he makes a passing reference to these troubles that are messy, and we should not do that, while he is on the stump for the league of nations, but he would not take any serious action. Our next question is coming from the back. Okay. I was also really interested in this map and the list of riots. What im interested in is the language of it. I was wondering, with the examples you give it sounds more like white terrorism. I was wondering. That was language used at the time by the way. Yeah, just wondering what really was the name of all of those. Were there bad people on both sides or is it just a terrorism and then like a defense or a uprising kind of a thing . Overwhelm amount of violence that summer that was antiblack violence. There was many instances where blacks fought back. There was no instances i can think of where blacks initiated the violence. I think people tend to be and then, so people tend to think of they are different. And you bring up a good point, i think people get hung up on the terminology a lot. Well, you know, this is i was thinking about this as i flew in here. This has been bugging me so im going to fire off a little bit about it. People want to see historys often as hitler versus ghandi, and thats not everybody involved in all of these things was a human being. And if youre a human being and people are marching down your street breaking windows, you might pick up brick. People fought back. There was black gangs because three blocks over there was white gangs, so when the trouble started they were causing violence, too. You were going to get it, but at the same time it was a massacre. And the lynching in mississippi was or riffic. I think we miss a lot, we use a white and black bianary. We see it in chicago. White women are just as involved and theyre just as violent. And theyre just as engaged in making their leaving their stamp in this white black battle. So if we look at these riots through the lens of gender, my students get very uncomfortable. They think the ladies are in the jazz clubs getting lit. Women are very powerful in the clan that gets resurgence at this time. The clan is not even the worst at this point. My favorite is the National Association for the advancement of white people. It is a real thing but it comes later. So women and children are involved. Older people are involved. It is a neighborhood brawl. If youre rioting and gat gathering a mob in vicksburg, mississippi. They did a really precise drill down investigation. So you get to see they would include a jewish kid, a jermger kid, and they could all become white. Sometimes it is immigrants, sometimes it is soldiers. Its not just one factor. And that is part of what makes these battles so complicated and at the same time so telling. But it is usually antiplaque initiated. This is our second to last question. I want to know what the terrible things were that happened in arkansas. What happened in arkansas and mississippi. Well, arkansas was, you know, i was talking about sharecroppers and how they did relatively well that year. So a lot of sharecroppers in various parts of the south tried to organize to create a collective where they would go to the cotton gins and say this is our price. They started to hold meetings, and they would hold the meeting in arkansas, and white police show up and the shooting starts. And some white officers are killed. That sets off a white posse rooming the county killing people for days. They rounded up a bunch of africanamerican share toppers, beat them bloody, and had them confess to e a grand conspiracy that was never really defined that there was a lot to kill every white person in the county. That was challenged by the naacp and others. And those men who were on death row after trials that lasted minutes were all exonerated and let go. Who here has had the great pleasure of raising a teenager . Own, im in the trenches. There is nothing more cocky than a teenager who gets their first paycheck, right . Now they think you dont have the same power over them. They dont need your wallet. Whether you like it or not it changes the way you respond. So think about how worrisome p. Never mind in court, but in public. And so the fact that they were trying to gain control over the value of their labor, how bolshevik, by saying, not only has cotton gone up, but we know it cant continue to go up because we no longer need cotton for uniforms and tents and cotton, et cetera, for bandages, et cetera. So we want to make money now. And what we start to see, especially in these small rural areas, i mean the Land Ownership is real and huge but not so gigantic that it would destabilize the south economy but it doesnt take a lot to seem like it is an idea that might catch on. So im sorry, one second. In elaine what we get is not just the africanamericans organizing as cotton farmers but they also have money. And having access to cash is very hard in the southern economy at this time. And we see that there is a success among africanamericans in the forms of buildings that so when you build your church, when you add an attachment to your home and you get that other car. And what we get with just as much veracity after world war i is an urge to erase, right, burn to the ground, these tropes of success, again squeezing back into your place. And i tell my students pick a date and an africanamerican newspaper and there is a church going up in flames. Why . Because after you build your own house, you have money left over to build a church and we need that church to go. And why the church . Because it is where meetings were held. And oftentimes in small towns it is where the guns were stashed. So, again, in 63, 64, birmingham and other locations were attacking black churches because they had been sites of protest for over 50 years. I just didnt want to miss your question regarding mississippi. I wont go into a long story but it is horrific. A man was and i give a full chapter to it because there are many lynching that takes place that year but that lynching was particularly horrific. All are horrific, of course. But a man was accused of sexually assaulting a white women, that is a constant accusation that they would make, right. Well never know if it was true or not. Because he ran away, because they were going to kill him, posse found him, shot him fatally, but then they brought a doctor in, kept him alive for 24 hours so they could lynch him and let everyone know to come to the party. And that was not very common. This was published in the newspaper, not there was a lynching yesterday, there will be a lynching tomorrow. Come to the lynching. To the point where the naacp sent a emergency telegram to the governor of mississippi saying you have you have to so this. This is a killing. And that man hasnt been accused of the crime. And the response was if youre going to rape a white woman, what are you going to do. There was no trial, let alone an accusation that was formally made in court that and they proceeded to shoot him to bits and sold pieces of his body. There were postcards made of the event. People gave speeches as we heard from the beginning. So it was really sort of this horrific public display. Our last question is on the right. I dont mind taking both. Its up to you. We will end with this question and then well be available in the lobby for additional questions. Dr. Mathieu, how do you see the Cultural Climate of the red summer impacting suffrage of africanamerican women . Thats a great yes, you could repeat your question for the audience please and then ill stall. Just kidding. How do you see the Cultural Climate of red summer impacting suffrage of africanamerican women . Super. Thank you for that. I think that it is important for us to remember that africanamerican women and the one who comes immediately to mind is ida b. Wells, right, were also journalists. They were sounding the alarm. Wells was at the forefront in terms of warning africanamericans and the country at large about lynching and the ways in which we legitimize it by trying to say these were necessary responses because of acts of sexual aggression against white women. So africanamerican women are during the war lynched, often times for defending their husbands. There is a great, great newspaper piece from, i believe it is atlanta, where on the one hand a woman whose name im for getting right now, 18 years old is lynched violently and on the same day that were praising an africanamerican soldier named Henry Johnson for having fought off these german trench attacks. And so, again, this idea that you could be perfectly safe against the worst army at the time, right, the image of the worst most violent transgressive army but not safe in your home trying to defend your own husband. So i think that africanamerican women who had already been very much involved in the black church, who had already understood the import of suff suffrage. It is not like they come around at the end to the idea that women need a voice. They too had been fighting for that voice. They too had been building organizations and networks and alliances that allowed them to articulate their political concerns. Africanamerican women are very involved in prohibition. Right. Dubois is a tea tolder he could have used the drink once in a while. That is a tea tolder. Im a hypocritical meat eater. If there is a bone im all in there. But if there is a bone but so any way there were ways black women were rallying for the lives of their loved ones and understanding that the ballot box is as important a space. There is an author i enjoy greatly, david sesalsxi and he writes about a chap names Abraham Galloway and just a fabulous character. But any way, he talked about how he learned about civil rights from his black grandmother who as a child would march him down to the voting booth in charleston, and she would pack a gun in her purse to let him know that you need to fight for your right to protect your rights. And the right to vote is an Important Pillar of reconstruction, ideology for africanamericans. But it works hand in hand with the gun, with education, with the church. And so armed resistance is talked about with africanamericans as a kind of point to which a point where africanamericans get angry in the 60s and just start burning shit down, right. And why we have to have nonviolence as a legitimate option, it is because armed resistance was a perfectly viable option. And in 1919 we see this with the veterans coming back and making a claim for them as citizen soldiers who are prepared to defend not only immediate lives but those of their communities. So in chicago, in the sea and in omaha, we get these reports, sometimes exaggerated but even times true of africanamerican soldiers setting up a perimeter on the roofs of buildings to defend their communities, no differently than they would have needed to do in any of the other points along the western front. And sort of to your point, there was this, so that weve talked about a lot of horrific things that happened, but the ultimately answer was africanamericans werent going to be stuffed back into that space. In the rural south, in the city, certainly not in the cities of chicago and washington. It didnt work. And for men and women, africanamerican men and women, things have forever changed. And so right after, here comes the harlem renaissance, which women participated in, and you just see this, theyre not going back into their station. Theyre not going back. Ill add one last thing and ill be done. And that is that we forget that africanamerican women were the ones who rode into africanamerican newspapers, these columns. So when you look at black newspapers, there are always local news, right. And so they are the ones who are reporting what theyre seeing from the window. Theyre the ones saying i lost my good pan against the head of this kid who thought he could burn my house. So it is their voices that wee see through the newspapers and through organizations even if they are overlooked as women as the intellectual and organizational muscle in various postwar organizations. But they could not have worked. Madam cj walker used much of her fortune to fight the suffrage you asked about. So thank you again for being here with us this evening. [ applause ] youre watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend, and on holidays too. Only on cspan3. August 6th marked the 75th anniversary of the ato theic bombing of hiroshima, japan. The u. S. Dropped a second atomic bomb on nagasaki three days later. Japanese em por ear hirohito announced surrender on august 15th, 1945, with the formal surrender ceremony taking place on september 2nd aboard the uss missouri in tokyo bay ending world war ii. American history tv and cspans washington journal were live to look at the strategic situation in the war leading up to the bombings. President Harry Trumans decision to use the new weapon and the legacy of those atomic attacks. Next youll hear from ian toll, author of twilight of the gods, war in the western pacific, 1944, 1945 anded in an hour by Harry Trumans grandson, Clifton Truman daniel. A short time