Red Summer

McWhirter (Wall Street Journal) details spontaneous antiblack violence during what James Weldon Johnson called "the Red Summer," a lengthy season colored crimson by blood, which characterized the U.S. aftermath of World War I, filled with change and tensions. In addition to well-documented incidents in Chicago and Washington, DC, McWhirter explores the violent actions in cities such as Charleston, Knoxville, and Omaha and smaller communities like Carswell Grove, GA, where his story begins and ends. African Americans, awakened by the newly formed NAACP and their participation in a war presumably waged to safeguard democracy, were confronted by a backlash of hate. McWhirter contends that for the first time they fought off their white attackers in an organized fashion and sought redress for their grievances. Nascent incremental legal and political dismantling of institutionalized racism followed this worst outburst of lynching in U.S. history. A slow pivot away from prejudice, along with black cultural and literary movements, encouraged the nation to reexamine its social relations as a whole.