Red Summer

April 18, 2011
In his study of the bloody summer of 1919, when lynching "spread like influenza" across the U.S., McWhirter, staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, focuses most sharply on seven outbreaks of violence notable for their devastation: Charleston, S.C., in May; Longview, Tex., Washington, D.C., and Chicago in July; Knoxville, Tenn., in August; Omaha, Neb., in September; and Elaine, Ariz., in October. McWhirter writes, "his extraordinary summer was forging a new dynamic in race relations. Race riotsâalmost every one started by white mobsâwere nothing new." What was new was black resistance. McWhirter pays detailed attention to the growth of the NAACP as the primary organized political resistance and individual attempts at self-defense, "from lofty oratory to swinging a baseball bat." The author brings a journalist's diligent digging and skillful storytelling to this historical account; behind the names of towns, he takes the reader into the lives of victims who suffered, perpetrators who destroyed, enablers who dawdled, and politicians who profited, as well as those who fought back, making 1919 "a turning point in American race relations." While less local in his treatment than Robert Whitaker's On the Laps of Gods or Harper Barnes's Never Been a Time, both of which cover the "red summer," McWhirter's valuable study, in chronologically examining the outbreaks of violence, may well qualify as "the first narrative history of America's deadliest episode of race riots and lynchings."