WORDS FROM MURPHY BROWNE: THE RED SUMMER OF 1919

African Jamaican poet Claude McKay was born in Clarendon, Jamaica on September 15, 1889 and immigrated to the USA in 1912. He wrote and published "If We Must Die" in 1919 during the "Red Summer."

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On Sunday July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams a 17 year old African American youth was drowned by a White mob. He was with friends in Lake Michigan when they crossed the “imaginary segregation line” between the “White” and “Colored” beach. A White mob drowned the 17 year old by attacking him with rocks/stones. White police officers refused to arrest the White men identified by African American eyewitnesses. Instead the police arrested an African American man about whom a White person complained. This injustice and inequitable treatment while a 17 year old African American lay lifeless after a brutal and vicious attack by a White mob, set off a three day slaughter of African Americans in Chicago. White gangs roamed African American neighbourhoods attacking African American men, women, children and property with the tacit approval of law enforcement who were all White. It was felt that White police engaged in this criminal activity also.

The stoning and killing of Williams occurred after he and a group of friends were on a makeshift raft that drifted into the area White people considered their territory of the Lake Michigan area. Sunday July 27, 1919 was a scorcher supposedly 96 degrees in the shade! African American and White people headed to the beach on that day for relief from the heat. When the White men began to pelt the African American teenagers whose raft had inadvertently drifted into the “White waters” the teenage boys abandoned the raft and swam to safety except Williams who could not swim. His companions could not rescue him from the onslaught of murderous White stoning because their lives would have been endangered. Members of the “Hamburg Athletic Club” a White supremacist Irish-American organization were identified as the instigators of the White mob stoning and killing of Williams.

The summer of 1919 would become known as “Red Summer” because of the amount of African American blood spilt through murderous attacks by Whites throughout the USA. African Americans were attacked and killed by Whites throughout the USA including Washington, D.C.; Knoxville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; Phillips County, Arkansas; Omaha, Nebraska and Chicago, Illinois. The indiscriminate killing of African Americans by Whites prompted African Jamaican poet Claude McKay to write and publish his famous poem “If We Must Die” in which he wrote:

“If we must die—let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”

The poem first published in July 1919 was subsequently published in McKay's 1922 collection “Harlem Shadows.”

McKay who at the time lived in Harlem New York urged African Americans under attack, outnumbered and outgunned, to fight back. The African-American population in Chicago as elsewhere in the USA was outnumbered and outgunned by Whites who had superior weapons and were supported by well-armed White paramilitary organizations.

During that dreadful “Red Summer” when Whites indiscriminately slaughtered African Americans in towns, counties and large cities at least 52 African-Americans were lynched and burned to death. Hundreds of African-Americans were killed and thousands were injured. Tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes and workplaces throughout the USA. African American communities were devastated by the ethnic cleansing of “Red Summer 1919.” White mobs including sailors on leave, immigrant slaughterhouse workers and southern farmers felt free to attack and kill African Americans.

In 2017 although there have not been gangs of Whites targeting African Americans burning their homes and businesses and killing them there has been a decades long targeting of Africans in North America by various police forces. African Canadians are targeted through the egregious practice of “carding” in Toronto and other cities. The most recent atrocity committed against an African Canadian male youth made the news very recently when a White police officer and his brother were charged after they reportedly beat a 19 year old causing extensive damage to his face including the loss of his left eye.

Beginning on July 27, 1919 groups of White people spent three days freely roaming the streets of Chicago dragging African Americans out of their cars, their homes, their workplaces and even off public transportation, beating and killing them at will. That was 98 years ago. With the new American regime in place and some of the bold instances of anti-Black/anti-African racism displayed on YouTube, Facebook and other online venues, caution and vigilance must be exercised to prevent the possibility of a “Red Summer” in the 21^st century.