Red Summer, April 1919-September 1919

During the spring and summer of 1919, white urban residents across the nation violently targeted Black communities. Over 24 cities in the North and South witnessed racial violence driven by economic and social pressures caused in part by industrialization, a contracting postwar economy, and the Great Migration, which drew hundreds of thousands of African Americans to Southern and Northern metropolises. Spanning January 1919 to January 1920, A.F.L. correspondence captures the labor movement’s reaction to the tensions that drove the violence and its aftermath.