DC's Red Summer (1919)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s July 21st. This day in Washington, DC, racialized violence is sweeping the city, part of what is known as “Red Summer” around the country.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why DC was a particular kind of powder keg for this kind of violence, given the city’s large and relatively upwardly mobile Black population, which sought to protect itself throughout the summer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day 1919, the tale end of a race riot that engulfed Washington, D.C.
0:16.6	The black community in Washington was under assault in many ways.
0:19.7	Howard University had basically barricaded itself. Other neighborhoods were raising funds to buy
0:25.0	weapons to defend their homes and businesses. There were skirmishes throughout the city between
0:30.3	various groups of citizens, the police, and eventually federal troops.
0:35.0	In the end, this kind of moment that we're marking here, dozens of people had died and it took
0:39.9	about 2,000 federal troops to bring relative peace to Washington, D.C.
0:46.2	Some of the details that we will get into are astounding, as is maybe the location.
0:51.9	This was taking place in the nation's capital and a lot of the
0:54.8	details though feel like something we'd maybe associate from stories and
0:58.7	violence of this era more in the deep south but here to discuss that and what to make of these riots in
1:05.0	1919 Washington DC are as always Nicole Hema of Columbia and Kelly
1:09.6	Carter Jackson of Wellesley hello there
1:11.8	hello Jody. Hey there. So Kelly I
1:15.5	gather you write about this in your forthcoming book. I do. The whole section
1:20.8	about this riot. It's it is wild for sure. So this is the sound of
1:24.9	Kelly moving over into the driver's seat. But no tell me if you agree
1:30.5	with my sort of premise there that like this feels like a story,
1:34.2	unfortunately that you know a lot of the details are fairly common to this era and
1:38.4	racialized violence of this era particularly you know there's an accusation of sexual assault or
	...

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