On The Down Low

Racist have been killing black men, women and children brought over from Africa to be slaves in America since the early 1600’s. History is replete with scores of rebellions by blacks and whites against the scourge of bondage that has plagued mankind since we learned to walk upright in the birthplace of humanity, Africa. But I am about to tell you something that’s been kept on the down low. There have been a few times in the history of racist conflict in America, that during these rebellions more racist were killed and injured than black people. That’s right! It’s not racist one hundred, black people zero, but racist one hundred, black people more than once. Statistically, it doesn’t mean a thing, but a win is a win. One of those wins was in Washington DC. Now when it comes to racist, Hill1News is worse than Tekashi69. We gonna tell it. For those who don’t know who Tekashi69 is, he is the NY rapper who had the choice of ratting on everyone he ever knew or sitting in B.O.P, Stank Dark Hole listening to Nat King Cole’s “Till The End Of Time.” Anywho, I know some of you are a hundred miles away and some of you are thousands of miles away, but I can still hear you say… do tell…

The riots took place during what was called “The Red Summer.” In 1919 the racist was feeling themselves and mounted a sustained attacks on African Americans all across the country. It was just a little over 50 years since the Civil War and a year after WWI. Now, I know some historians record that black people mostly coward and fled, when racist attacked theirs communities and killed their friends and families. But that’s not the truth. In most cases blacks were outgunned and outmanned. Still many of these massacres failed to mention there was black resistance. There were still plenty of guns that black folks had brought back from the Civil War and had purchased during the Reconstruction. The Reconstruction was roughly from the end of the Civil War to just after President Lincoln’s”s death. During those years, there were not many skilled laborers except in the black communities. I mean during those hundreds of years of slavery when the slave masters and the white population in general was sitting back reaping the rewards of someone else’s labor, they never thought of training their own to do those jobs. When most of the ones they had trained perished in the Civil War, it was the recently freed slaves that they counted on to help rebuild the South. Of course after the South was rebuilt and they had time to train their own artisans, well it was back to business as usual.

Okay, I shifted like the lanes on the outer loop of 495. Anyone who lives in the DMV knows what I am talking about. Now back to the story. As usual the newspapers of the day started a rumor about a black man raping a white woman. Back in the day those boys would do anything to sale a paper and when ole Miss Lucy’s cow got out the barn again didn’t work, they went for the tried and true backup, some blackman has violated. Anyway, the story went like this. Washington DC was a hub for successful professional African Americans. Although the city was 75% white at the time, students from Howard University fought to desegregate it. Of course in the early 20th century that worked about as well as a square wheel. Like I said earlier, newspapers of the day did what they could to sell papers and it not surprising that Ned Mclean, publisher and owner of the Washington Post took advantage of the racial unrest during the Red Summer. Now I keep mentioning “Red Summer,” but haven’t defined it yet. The Red Summer happened from the spring of 1919 to the late winter of 1919. Hundreds of African Americans were killed or critically injured, across dozens of cities by white supremacist. The highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where an estimated 100–240 black people, and five white people, were killed. Most of the riots resulted from labor disputes. Veterans who had returned from WWI felt a certain kind of way about sharing the existing jobs with African Americans. To make matters worse, labor bosses also used African Americans as strikebreakers. Any job a white man don’t want, we can get ten blacks to take your place.So you see it was easy for unscrupulous newspapers to whip up racial tensions in this type of atmosphere. Read All About It!! Read All About It!! The Negro’s Are Raping Our Women And Taking Our Jobs!!

Well, they wasn’t that flagrant… come to think of it.. yes they was. It was hard being black in 1919 America, heck it hard being black in 2019 America, but that another story for another time. Okay, so lets continue… You know how it went in those days. It wasn’t the first time that a race riot ensued behind some accusation of a black man sexually assaulting a white woman. It happened on the corner of 15th street and New York Ave NW. Elsie Stephnick, the wife of some government bigwig said she was touch by one of the two negro’s passing her on the street. One of the men was arrested and then released, but the newspapers saw an opportunity and took it. Sensationalist headlines told the story of how a “negro fiend” had gotten away with sexually assaulting a white woman. On the night of July 19, 1919, a mob of White Americans formed and started attacks on several African Americans and African-American homes. Now maybe they didn’t know, but they should have asked somebody…

“Alarmed by the press calling for armed intervention to crush the black population, the city’s black community groups spent $14,000 ($202,000 in 2019) on guns and ammunition in order to defend themselves and their families. Many blacks gathered with guns they had purchased from pawn shops or military rifles black soldiers had brought home from WWI, to make stand at around Seventh and U streets, the black district in the capital’s northwest. There sharpshooters shot at targets while perched on the roof of the Howard Theatre. Many black citizens took to their cars cruising the streets and shooting up white targets. One vehicle driven by Thomas Armstead and five other passengers cruised north along 7th Street, guns blazing. Near M Street, they shot a police horse, hit the hat off a cop’s head before being stopped by a group of police. Armstead and another passenger, 18-year-old Jane Gore, were shot dead, but their companions escaped. When the violence ended, 15–40 people had died: at least 10 white people, including two police officers; and around 5–30 black people. Fifty people were seriously wounded and another 100 less severely wounded. It was one of the few times in 20th-century riots of whites against blacks that white fatalities outnumbered those of black people. – Ackerman, Kenneth (2011). Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919–1920

The violence went of for four days until President Woodrow (Ten Thousand Klans And Counting) Wilson ordered the National Guard to restore order. So that’s the story, but before I go, some of you might wonder why I gave President Wilson the nickname “Ten Thousand Klans And Counting.”

Spurred by hatred of European Catholics, Jewish immigrants and African-Americans and inspired by the silent film Birth of a Nation (in which Klansmen were portrayed as heroes), the Ku Klux Klan had an astounding 3 million members in the 1920s (The U.S. population at the time was just 106.5 million people.) But there were rifts between members from the North and the South, and to bridge that divide—and make their presence known—they gathered in Washington and marched in front of the White House. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Klansmen participated in the event, and wore their ominous cloaks and hats, though masks were forbidden. – Smithsonianmag.com

References:

  • The Washington Post
  • Wikipedia
  • Smithsonian Online


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