Professor of history at the university of minnesota. She is currently just finishing up a faculty fellowship at Harvard FellowshipHarvard Universitys in history. She owned a joint ph. D. In history in African Americans studies at Yale University and specializes in 20th century African American and American History with an emphasis on immigration, war globalization and social movements and political resistance. She is the author of a number of books one of which is out available outside at encourage you to grab a copy while you can. The glory of their deeds, a global history of black soldiers and the great war era. That sage was working on that book as i recall as part of your work at the warren center, was a close to publication . So its almost done. Really sage, is a great friend of ours and were just so delighted to have you back here with us again. Thank you. Please join me in welcoming doctor welcoming dr. Matt how. And joining us tonight is a scholar who has a specialized focus on the red summer of 1919. And the fight of this nation to create a just and equitable society. Is a Staff Reporter for the wall street general, based in atlanta he covers politics, economics, breaking news in other subjects and hes worked in a variety of countries reporting from bosnia, iran, costa rica and other. Places for our purposes, most significantly he is the author of a compelling text read summer, the summer of 1919 and the awakening of black america. So please join me in welcoming cameron. I want to read you just a portion from this book clapping i think this really frames a proportion of our this evening. Just reminds us to silence your devices. laughter so thank you. As 1919 as manys 10,000 whites joy gathered in a field just as not a field outside analysts feel mississippi to watch abound and exhausted black man in John Hadfield as he was hoisted up the branch of a giant sweet gum tree. Vendors sold flags, trinkets and souvenir photographs. Local politicians delivered speeches. Young boys cried into the tree to look down at the wild eyed screaming heart hadfield. Who is a country fair political rally and public murder rolled into one. After world war one, black americans fervently hope for a newlypeace, prosperity inequality. But the civil rights moment was not to be. Instead, the a victory of 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 guest this evening, cameron much border and sage mouth our. clapping well id like to begin by thanking you for being here on such a lovely evening. As cameron no doubt recalls, we are almost to the day of the centenary of the worst of the riots i would say. But the riots had begun at least in the United States for at least a couple of months. There are a couple of things that are reminisces reminiscent of that summer, for me its always the. Whether it was an incredibly hot summer and one of the things that we historians know 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 occur during heat waves. Well i just came here from chicago where we mean many other people were marking the centennial to chicago right which was certainly the most urban riot of these United States that year. It started because of the heat, mainly because of the heat. There was no air conditioning 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. They swam in an area that was sort of near the de facto black beach and the de facto white beach. There wasnt legal segregation in chicago but the raft that they were on the, werent very good swimmers drifted into the white beach and that was in this incredibly tense period, that was all that was needed to spark a massive race riot. Well thats a wonderful place to start actually. That is because one of the things that i argue about this era at large, not just 1919, but not the 19 tens and the 1920s and truthfully well throughout the 21st century, what weve seen this instance of these kids, lets not forget that their children, playing outdoors is that we are reminded that the very idea of leisure is contested. The very idea of belonging is contested so these children do not belong in a peach because free time is is itself segregated. That is that the space where it should be spent. Its not just beaches that are segregated. Whether its officially or by de facto practice but so too are sometimes parks, golf courses, swimming pools, public swimming pools. So in these social spaces become justice charged as the workplace. Neighborhoods in, terms of contested trains for African Americans in term especially in urban spaces. I would go so further and say that when the situation was so charge the smallest instant would lead to tremendous violence and rumor and gossip played a whole role in all of this. In the washington rioted occurs earlier in july of 1919, and a curse there was a whole frenzy of panic attack caused by the media unfortunately caused by the belief that African American men were attacking white women. We dont know exactly what happened but a white woman was were walking down the street and was jostled by two African American men walking the other way. We know that happened. But it became, did you hear about two men raping a white woman . That leads to the mayhem. So in 1920, one just a couple of years later in the worst of all race riots in American History, the tulsa race riots of 1921, it all begins with people bumping into each other in an elevator. So these small spaces where again the complicated relationship across race racial lines in gender lines become aggravated and amplified. Of course, 1919 also reminds us that violence rules on rumor. Violence moves on rumor. It is so often the case that we hear that this happened, that this didnt happen and before you know, no one even remembers why we are fighting in the first place. So kind of like a middle school brawl right . As a reporter today, i cant tell you how constant that a problem remains in terms of trying to deal with whether something is true, whether really happen, its a constant paranoia fear of journalists who. We go to sleep agonizing over that all the time. Lets take a step back for people who might not remember or know what conditions were like at the end of the summer of night a rather at the end of spring of 1919. Thats a great idea. So we have american soldiers starting to come back. Massive amounts yes. Sometimes 100,000 a month. Just coming off of great ships in coastal port cities. They are concerned about a return to normalcy whatever that would mean. So whether thats a return to their jobs, returned to their families, return other social standing, return to the actual physical place from whence they came, and not Everyone Wants to go back from whence they came. We are talking about men who are between the ages for the most part of 18 to 30, not the most stable part of our citizens every. But its true right . And absolutely under studied aspect for me and part of what i read about is that we did not have a language from what we call ptsd. These men have been thrown into the worst of the fighting, the most chaotic of the fighting in the last six months of the war, even no american soldiers did not see the level of destruction that other european troops had experienced over the course of all four years. Nonetheless, you dont have to be in the trenches for four years to know how destabilizing, how devastating it is to witness your friends being torn to shreds. And so we get these guys arriving in philly, in boston, in new york and its like, thanks for coming out. Off you go. That doesnt even yet include how African Americans felt about this expectation that after having crossed the atlantic, after having hurriedly established much of the infrastructure that made it possible for the American Army to fight in europe. Building the camps, building the barracks, building the Railway Lines, feeding people, spending hours loading and unloading ships only to then be treated like gum under one shoe by their own government. I think that the commission didnt help it wasnt as a smoothest see later. Sometimes i had to wait around and that led to a young man, charlestons a classic example, young men Milling Around looking for booze mostly. That was illegal. That riot begins won a bunch of men get five bucks to a guy who says hes gonna go get them some illegal liquor. Like 1 million other hustlers before and after him, he takes off and never comes back and the soldiers riot. I do think you are dead on in everything youre saying. Its really important for people, when i talk to people about 1919, they generally have the impression that america was this victorious power and that everything was great we are about to head into the jazz age and everything is fantastic. In fact, it was a really panicky time for the world but certainly for america. We had people, the bolsheviks had taken over russia, anarchists were sending bombs to politicians, there were a Record Number of strikes around the country, there was a high cost of living it was rising so people were having trouble paying their bills. Soldiers were pouring back into the domestic economy and they couldnt get the job these to have. White and black. In that frothy mess, it was a political cartoon of the time of the globe just sitting in bed biting his nails and all these things were blowing around around a. Said influenza was around the world. It was a real nerveracking time. And all that, three pretty positive things for by African Americans had to happen. But because they happen in this frothy chaos, they were focal points for anti black violence. Soldiers being the most theres also another ingredient in this frothiness that you described and that is that over the course of the war, it started before, but it went from trickle to flood. That is, that African Americans cast down their buckets and headed north. They follow the river and the rivers and Railway Lines to made them possible to vote with their feet as workers. So we get an actual departure of African Americans from the south to Northern Industrial states to replace the workers who had gone off to war. The immigration it got off. But also its important to know that this was nonetheless a concrete choice by African Americans to say after almost 50 years of farming with control over their wages, that they share cropping system is not working. Its a perpetual cycle of poverty. We cannot in fact own and hold on to land. So what will i . Did what is the very fundamental exercise of freedom. . To move. We have one hidden into the. Northern industry turn to the south and it was very advantageous for the owners of factories to have African Americans come up to work for them. First of all, often their wages were suppressed, secondly they were sort of inherent Union Busters because the unions were very reluctant to let African Americans into the unions at that time. See how this perfect situation for the factory owner. He can divide the factory floor, we can ian, bring in cheaper labor. But youre right. Generally for the African Americans, it was a better situation to get away from jim crow. Definitely. But it adds to this 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 their entire place. So black people are to walk in the street with the muck that ran through the streets. What we see are African Americans saying that i will not be moved. You mentioned some black intellectuals and some other important advancement, organizational advancement that was happening during the war. My you tell us a little bit more about the . This title of his top is double either boys was a great intellectual writing about the crisis at that time. He made it clear that the soldiers who had just fought for democracy and were told repeatedly youre fighting to save democracy were gonna come back changed. They were gonna come back demanding a different situation than the one they had left. I thought played a key role in formulating peoples views of what they were expecting when they came back i think the African American soldiers encountered numerous examples of these little incidents in my book. One, they came back were in the uniforms often cause thats the only clothing they had. But when they would get back to the small towns in the south, they would be spit on, they would be yelled at, they would be threatened. In some cases they were killed. The sort of flareups were happening all the time. In my book the, there were lots of letters going back in the u. S. Railroad ministration. Soldiers will be coming back, sleeping in the birth of the Railroad Cars to go home because they were decommission and as soon as they cross the masondixon line, white men in the cars would stand up and say hey, they have to go to the colored car. Another white man, just one instance and say were they say these people just these men just phosphorus in europe. So becomes this really tense moments. Theres another soldier who have quoted in the book who recalls people muttering as he walked on the street in this town in arkansas where hes wearing his uniform. Hes being uppity, hes trying to rise above his station and eventually moves to st. Louis. This is happening all the time in and the intellectuals are capturing this desire to really. The boys settled all. We fought for democracy, there were gonna fight for democracy here. Again, we have to take a step back and think about how we imagine an African American say in 1913. The average american if he say when a African American, they were in overalls, working a farm. 90 of African Americans worked in the south and lived in the south. And were farmers of one type earn. Other so the idea that in just two years of 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. It stood as a greater challenge to getting them back in their place. One of the things we hear is about the french had ruined our knee grows. Theres a lot of concern about americans, especially African Americans suffering from a kind of contagion from having seen the french democracy. From having tasted a life with fewer social and legal barriers. African americans have all these different ways of communicating their refusal to return its funny mention taste. Because when my book came out, i went on a book tour and i was in baltimore i was on a radio show with a journalist who would be unfortunate enough to interview the last living World War Two veteran who happen to be African American in baltimore. The man was very old by the time we interviewed him. And all the man talked about was eating escargot and drinking wine in france. Everybody was doing so nice to him and giving him food all the time. That was the experience that the french people were thrilled that people were coming to fight for them. There are a couple of things here. I have a good friend were having a conversation, he calls me about every three months to ask me how my book is. Going and i say listen youre oppressing the at this stage. But we were talking about how the friendship at ruin the African Americans. One of the things African Americans do to promote and telegraph their awakening is that they start to throw french words into their everyday parlance, their everyday interactions. So as to again change the position analogy that they had. So you might say hey how its gone he might say oh hello share. The other thing African American men do and this is what drives southerners batch it crazy. An excuse my term. Thats a medical. Trump they would name their daughters with french names. And this person called and said oh my aunts have names like just leaner julie. And this is to say that ive been completely transform my contact with france. That transformation is the site of the conflict in the summer of 1919. The walking tour that we just gave in chicago. We began a talkative victory monument and for decades it was the only only monument for an African American soldier and United States. Its a very rugged soldier with a rifle and a bayonet facing south. And i dont think that was unintentional. Hes pointing right at the south. So we are very familiar with mohammed ease alleys stance during the vietnam war. Affiliate kong is never done anything to me. He uses different. Language its important to remember that 50 years before that African Americans were saying the exact same thing. That they were prepared, a fellow philip brand off an africanamerican of the period had the dubious distinction of being dec