Before the Tulsa Race Massacre, Black Americans Fought to Survive the Red Summer of 1919

During my posts this year, I’ve written about my current manuscript, Unlawful Orders, scheduled to be published in 2022. This book started as a tribute to one man, Chicago surgeon James B. Williams, his family, his work as a Tuskegee Airman during WWII, and his many contributions to medicine and history. Along the path of researching Dr. Williams, the project grew. At my editor’s suggestion, I expanded the scope to cover more about the contributions of Black soldiers fighting for America in Europe during both World Wars.

 
And that led me to write about what happened to these heroes after they returned home from battle.  Many found the home front fare more dangerous than anything they faced on the battlefield, especially those returning from WWI. Evan as brave Black soldiers with medals on their chests returned home following the 1918 Armistice, a newspaper published an editorial, titled Nip It In the Bud. According to that editorial, there was a problem. “The conditions of active warfare and the regulations of army life have probably given these [Black] men more exalted ideas of their station in life than really exists …” While the services of Black soldiers in the defense of democracy were appreciated, the writer insisted they needed to be schooled in what would and what would not be permitted upon their return to real life.  

Last week was a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, where hundreds of Black Americans, many of them former soldiers who served their country admirably in Europe, were hunted and slaughtered on the streets of what had been known as Black Wall Street. 

 

Library of Congress picture showing a group
 of traumatized Black survivors outside a refugee
 camp set up on the Tulsa fairgrounds

For many people, last week's commemorative news specials were their first time hearing about the event that left survivors interned in refugee camps and the dead dumped in mass graves while rioters confiscated their money and possessions. I first learned about the massacre almost a decade ago. More recently, The Watchmen (2019) and Lovecraft Country (2020) brought the event back to the front of my consciousness. (I don't usually go for horror stories, but I sat through the monsters in Lovecraft Country to reach the Greenwood episode that included an elderly woman burned alive inside her home during the massacre.)   

I chose to add a tribute to the brave veterans of WWI on the pages of Unlawful Orders by adding stories of some of the horrors they endured on the home front. That did not include a recap of the Tulsa Race Massacre. While many of the people killed were veterans, so many race massacres occurred across the United States that I had a problem figuring out how to limit myself to only writing about a few.

(If you are interested in learning more about the Tulsa Massacre, let me offer up an eyewitness account written a survivor, Mary E. Jones Parrish. In Events of the Tulsa Disaster, a book she self-published in 1922,  Mary Parrish details her struggles to keep herself and her child alive during that terrifying event. One of her great granddaughters recently republished the memoir under a new title,  The Nation Must Awake.)  

In the end, I picked three uprisings that occurred in 1919, only months after the Armistice that officially ended WWI was signed and soldiers returned home.  (And, not entirely coincidently, it's the year the subject of Unlawful Orders, Dr. James B Williams, was born.) 

 

Washington Bee, DC, 9/6/1919
(Source: University of Georgia Libraries via
Visualizing the Red Summer digital archive)

The three events I chose to highlight in the early chapters of Unlawful Orders were selected because they  illustrated different responses from the Black American veterans who, only months before, had been fighting for their country and democracy. Because so many Black Americans were slaughtered in 1919, the NAACP used the term Red Summer to describe the period. It's another time  American textbooks seem eager to forget. 

Instead of an enclave of wealthy Black citizens like those in Tulsa's Greenwood district, Elaine, Arkansas was home to a large number of poor Black sharecroppers who wanted to unionize. When white landowners fired into a church where the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) was holding a meeting, some veterans inside pulled out their guns and fired back.  That began the Elaine Massacre. By the end, white vigilantes had killed hundreds of Black men, women and children. Officials proudly proclaimed the dead insurrectionists and charged that not a single one of the slaughtered was an innocent.   

I also picked Chicago because of the home-town connection. Even though I lived here all my life, I had never heard of the events of the summer of 1919. Like many people, I had at least heard about the exploits of the Harlem Hellfighters. I had no idea that an all-black Illinois National Guard regiment  also fought America's enemies during the war. That regiment earned respect on the battlefield and the nickname, Schwarze Teufel or Black Devils. When white mobs invaded their neighborhoods, those veterans grabbed their guns and formed militias to fight back. over almost a week of fighting, black men successfully fought back  the attack. Chicago escaped the massive loss of life that occurred in other areas of the United States. 

I chose to include Washington DC as the final Red Summer attack because of the strength of the resistance there.  White mobs began attacking Black citizens shortly after Independence Day celebrations. The police ordered gun dealers to refuse to sell weapons to Blacks. Black veterans grabbed the weapons they had brought back from their battles in France and formed organized militias for defense. Many of those defenders had served as members of the Red Hand during WWI, so named because they were the "bloody hand that took the Boche [German soldiers] by the throat and made them cry for mercy."  Those men were ready, willing and able to do the same to protect their homes and families. They set up blockages to defend Howard University, others took to the rooftops to protect their neighborhoods from marauding bands.  

 So much has been hushed up and buried like the dead of the Tulsa Massacre. It "never happened", a silence that allowed white men and women to prosper from their actions while Blacks remained silent from fear that speaking of these incidents might incite a repeat. I hope Unlawful Orders joins other books attempting to shed a light on the long-buried history. It really is true that those who do not learn history's lessons are doomed to repeat it's failures.  Here's hoping that cycle comes to an end.