Pandemics and protests: America has experienced racism like this before

“Riot Sweeps Chicago” should sound and feel intuitively familiar. However, this headline covered the front pages of a newspaper over a hundred years ago. Named the “Red Summer of 1919”, a spate of violence and bloodshed occurred from April to November 1919 with riots, lynchings, and mobs across the country. Hundreds of African American lives were claimed and hundreds more were left maimed and homeless. The most violent episodes occurred in Chicago, IL, Washington, D.C. and Elaine, AR and were precursors for what many are now learning to be the Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa. Read more.