Red Summer, Cameron McWhirter
Red Summer, Cameron McWhirter
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Red Summer
The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America

Author: Cameron McWhirter

Narrator: L.J. Ganser

Unabridged: 12 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/12/2019


Synopsis

A narrative history of America's deadliest episode of race riots and lynchings.

After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War.

Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti–black riots and lynchings swept the country for eight months. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Millions of lives were disrupted, and hundreds of lives were lost. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before.

Red Summer is the first narrative history written about this epic encounter. Focusing on the worst riots and lynchings—including those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Omaha, and Knoxville—Cameron McWhirter chronicles the mayhem, while also exploring the first stirrings of a civil rights movement that would transform American society forty years later.

About Cameron McWhirter

Cameron McWhirter is a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He was awarded a Nieman Foundation Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard in 2007. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mary on January 04, 2012

Very well-written. How did we miss so much in history class? Or, more exactly, why was so much not included in high-school history class?......more

Goodreads review by Bryan on August 24, 2015

This is an excellent, harrowing, and inspiring account of American race riots in 1919. The bulk of Red Summer traces horror after horror through that year, as white Americans attacked blacks across the country. In Chicago, Washington DC, Knoxville, Omaha, and small towns from Arkansas to Georgia sim......more

Goodreads review by Tamora on September 03, 2011

In 1919 America was terrified of anarchists, workers' strikes, socialists, communists, the arrival of Prohibition, and black soldiers--men who were used to fighting--returning to the country after WWI. Riots and lynchings broke out in unusually bloody numbers that year all over the country, and a lo......more

Goodreads review by Christopher on June 10, 2021

Cameron McWhirter's Red Summer chronicles, in graphic detail, the outbreak of racial violence which swept across America in 1919, from full-fledged riots to lynching and distressingly casual murders. McWhirter examines the fraught context of these events: World War I had recently ended, with its rhe......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on January 07, 2021

When I saw a book titled Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 my first thought was it was going to be about the anarchist bombings that were commonplace that year. Then I read the second part of the title and realized it was going to be on a topic I knew very little about. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 a......more