100 years ago, white mobs across the country attacked black people. And they fought back

[Judi Lynn]

100 years ago, white mobs across the country attacked black people. And they fought back
By Christina Maxouris, CNN

Updated 5:04 PM ET, Sat July 27, 2019

(CNN)Thelma Shepherd was riding back to her Chicago apartment on July 27, 1919, when her streetcar came under attack. Black and white men hurled rocks at each other and at the passing vehicle. The 19-year-old who had recently left the South for a job in the bustling city didn't know it, but she had witnessed one of the most violent clashes of the "Red Summer."

The drivers made no stops and dropped all the passengers off at the end of the line, her granddaughter, Claire Hartfield, remembers her saying years later.

"She was new to the city," Hartfield recalls. "She wasn't really aware of the tensions that had been building. She was just enjoying some of the excitement of being in a really big city.

"It was an ... eye-opener for her."

But other passengers on the next routes weren't lucky enough to escape.

"Street-car routes, especially transfer points, were thronged with white people of all ages," a 1922 report by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations says. Black passengers were dragged out to the street, beaten and kicked.

More:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/27/us/red-summer-1919-racial-violence/index.html?cid=web-alerts&nsid=79664450

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1. K&R n/t

[Mosby]

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[dalton99a]

3. They were also fighting back against false media reports that blacks were the ones inciting violence

They were also fighting back against false media reports that blacks were the ones inciting violence and also fought for justice in biased courts.

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One of the deadliest tragedies of Red Summer was in Elaine, Arkansas.

On September 30, as sharecroppers met to unionize against low wages, law enforcement officers drove by at night and claimed their car broke down. Soon, shots were fired.

It's still not clear who fired first, but white men used the rumors of an uprising to crush the sharecroppers' resistance. Hundreds of white men flocked from surrounding cities and states.

In the days that followed, white mobs swarmed the streets armed with rifles and more than 500 soldiers arrived to deal with "alleged black insurrectionists," the University of Arkansas Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture says.

When blacks began running toward the troops to surrender, they were shot and killed.

The military reported about 20 African American deaths at the time, the university says. Similar estimates were given by local papers.

Today, the riots are known as the "Elaine Massacre" and one of the bloodiest racial conflicts in the nation.