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 rec