William Monroe Trotter was one of the most significant civil rights leaders in Amerian history, yet he is little remembered today.

Trotter crossed the Atlantic on the SS Yarmouth as assistant cook--a strange position for a Harvard graduate with two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Trotter's father James Monroe Trotter fought in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Afterward, he served as the first Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a lucrative position where he earned a small fortune. James' only son William would inherit both wealth and influence, but James insisted that this privilege should be employed to fight for African-American rights.

In 1899, William Monroe Trotter married Geraldine Pindell, known by friends and family as Deenie. She was passionate about civil rights as her husband.

A year after his marriage, Trotter decided to fulfill the mission laid upon him by his father by publishing a newspaper, The Guardian. The weekly was dedicated to exposing racial issues across the United States.

In 1905, Trotter, along with W.E.B. DuBois and several other black leaders, founded The Niagara Movement to advocate for civil rights and counter the message of the Tuskegee Machine. The organization collapsed within two years, largely because Trotter was so difficult to work with.

In 1909, DuBois joined other activists to establish the NAACP with much the same aims. Trotter rejected the group, which he saw as dominated by white donors and leaders and too timid to tackle real issues. In response, he founded his own organization, which in time would take the name the National Equal Rights League, or NERL.

The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation prompted immediate reaction from both the NAACP and Trotter's NERL. But those reactions took different forms. The NAACP focused on legal challenges and attempts to disprove the historical accuracy of the movie. The NERL organized public protests intended to demonstrate the depth of African-American opposition to whites.

Among the protests Trotter organized was this one in Boston Common. The photo is extremely poor quality, but you can get a sense of the size of the crowd.

At another Trotter-organized event, 11 protestors were arrested for disturbing the peace. Trotter was among them.

At the end of the Great War, a dozen or so other delegates were elected to present an appeal for equal rights and justice to the Peace Conference. Among them were Trotter and Madam C J Walker. Walker has an incredible story--she built her business selling cosmetics and hair care products to African-American women into one of wealthiest and most successful in the country.

At the same time Trotter was trying to get to Paris to present his appeal, W.E.B. Du Bois was organization the Pan-African Congress, which included representatives from African nations and the African diaspora.

When Trotter returned home from Paris, Red Summer had begun. Trotter focused on creating a new organization that would help African-Americans defend themselves, using force against force.

The ABB ceased to be a secret in 1921 when the armed response of African-Americans during the Tulsa Race Massacre horrified white Americans. The ABB was accused of conspiracy with all of the usual suspects of the era, including the Reds and the Wobblies. In this case, the Reds, were, in fact, a factor. Within a few years, the ABB had been absorbed by the American Communist Party.

As these images show, whole blocks of Tulsa were burned to the ground, including the entire Greenwood Neighborhood, known as the "Negro Wall Street." It's unknown how many people died in Tulsa

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter by Kerri K. Greenidge — Greenidge's book was my essential guide during this episode. I highly recommend the book. Trotter fought far more battles than I had time to describe, and Greenidge does a fantastic job of placing his life in the context of the time and place.
• "The Legacy of a Radical Black Newspaperman" by Casey Cep, The New Yorker
• Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
• "Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist — even by the standards of his time" by Dylan Matthews, Vox
• "The Crisis," NAACP, January 1915 — This issue of "The Crisis" contains Trotter's description of his 1915 encounter with Woodrow Wilson, as well as several responses. The article begins on pages 119. It's also worth look at the other articles for insight into the time.
• "The Birth of a Nation: How the fight to censor D.W. Griffith’s film shaped American history." by Dorian Lynskey, Slate
• "The Black Activist Who Fought Against D. W. Griffith’s 'The Birth of a Nation'" by Richard Brody, The New Yorker
• W.E.B. Du Bois, "Close Ranks," Editorial from "The Crisis"
• A Letter From Camp Devens | American Experience — At the height of the flu pandemic, one of the doctors at Boston's Camp Devens wrote a letter to a friend and fellow physician describing his experience. Deenie Trotter was a regular visitor at the camp, where she visited with soldiers, until she died of influenza in October 1919.
• Africa and World War I | World War I | DW
• The First World War and its consequences in Africa | UNESCO
• Home | Thugs and Miracles — Ben's podcast is a huge amount of fun and a great look at the wild and wacky kings and queens of France. Highly recommend you check it out!

Chicago's beaches in 1919 were not segregated by law, but any attempt by African-Americans to stand up to convention could prompt harsh and sudden violence. This is the white beach on the South Side, which started around 29th street.

The beach used by African-Americans was a few blocks north, around 25th street. The two beaches were divided by a rocky inlet--and as five teenaged boys discovered that July, the line between them was all to easy to cross.

In the South, the Jim Crow system enforced the segregation of all public places. African-Americans couldn't eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, sit in the same movie theaters, use the same restrooms, or even drink the same water as whites.

Ida B. Wells had not intended to take on the cause of lynching until her friend Thomas Moss was dragged out of jail and shot in a railyard. Her investigation into lynching was a bombshell that shattered the Southern narrative about racial violence.

You can read Wells' original report, titled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases," online.

General Pershing likely never intended the 369th Infantry Regiment, the Harlem Hellraisers, to fight on the front lines, but under pressure from the Allies he turned them over to French command. They served with courage and distinction and won the respect and admiration of the entire French nation.

Private Henry Johnson fought off a 24-man German patrol alone while wounded. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre--but received no medals from his own country.

James Reese Europe served as the 369th's regimental band leader. A brilliant musician, conductor, composer, and arranger, he brought jazz to France.

Author W.E.B. DuBois electrified readers of the NAACP magazine The Crisis with his essay "Returning Soldiers," which urged African-American veterans to fight racism at home. You can read the essay online.

Riots broke out in early summer in Charleston, South Carolina; Longview, Texas; and Washington, D.C. This sort of scene was happened frequently--black men were dragged out of trolley, as well as seized walking down the street or yanked out of businesses to be beaten by a white mob.

Poet Claude McKay wrote "If We Must Die" in 1919 in the same spirit as Du Bois' "Returning Soldiers." It was a call for African-Americans to stand up and defend themselves against white attacks. You can read the poem online or listen to Ice-T read it.

During the Chicago riot, bands of white men prowled the city looking for African-Americans. Here a group of men are running through a black neighborhood.

Order was finally restored when the state militia arrived. Generally, the soldiers were impartial and prevent further attacks on African-Americans, but encounters between white troops and black men were still fraught.

The riot in Omaha, Nebraska drew an enormous crowd, estimated at anything from 5000 to 15,000. Here you can see some of that mob surrounding the Omaha courthouse, which they eventually set alight.

Newspapers across Arkansas ran headlines about the supposed uprising of African-Americans in Phillips County.

Conductor and intelligence agent Water H. Loving submitted a report to the Department of War that explained that socialist, communist, and labor organizers had nothing to do with the violence in 1919; rather, African-Americans had decided enough was enough. His report was shelved and ignored.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Red Summer by Cameron McWhirter — McWhirter's book was my primary source for this episode, and I highly recommend it for the in-depth context and masterful storytelling.
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration: Isabel Wilkerson: 8580001042800: Amazon.com: Books — Wilkerson's book has won every award under the sun, and it should probably win more. It is brilliant and moving and heartbreaking and a must-read.
• "Ida B Wells: the unsung heroine of the civil rights movement" by David Smith, The Guardian
• "Against All Odds: A new play and photo exhibition call attention to Ida B. Wells and her brave fight to end lynching in America" by Clarissa Myrick-Harris, Smithsonian Magazine
• "The Arkansas race riot" by Ida B. Wells-Barnett via the Internet Archive
• "THE N.A.A.C.P. and the Struggle for Anti-Lynching Legislation, 1897-1917" by William F. Pinar, Counterpoints, on JSTOR — This article is behind a paywall, but you may be able to access it through your library. It is an excellent resource on the role of the NAACP in anti-lynching legislation.
• Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
• "One Hundred Years Ago, the Harlem Hellfighters Bravely Led the U.S. Into WWI," by Eric Trickey, Smithsonian Magazine
• World War I and Great Migration, US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
• "Race Riots of 1919 - The Red Summer" ESRI Map Journal  
• Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots -- A Series of Community Conversations
• In Their Own Words: The 1919 Race Riot
• Opinion | The Forgotten History of America’s Worst Racial Massacre - The New York Times
• "I'll Just Stand and Wring My Hands and Cry" by Ed Ware — This song was written by Ed Ware, one of the twelve men from Phillips County while sitting on death row. It's an old and scratchy recording, but deeply moving.

A. Mitchell Palmer's home was devastated when a bomb exploded at his front door on the night of June 2, 1919. If Palmer had been at his usual spot in the library, he likely would have been killed.

This is another view of the blast damage. Notice that all of the windows and the door were blown out.

Eugene V. Debs serves as a case study of pre-war opinions about socialism. As leader of the Socialist Party in America, he was considered leftist, but not radical--until the Russian Revolution changed attitudes about anyone or anything related to communism. For saying basically the same things he had been saying for years, Debs was tried under the Sedition Act in 1919 and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Many Americans believed in the progression laid out literally step by step in this political cartoon. Disturbances such as strikes would lead inevitably to Bolshevism and chaos.

The majority of people believed that immigrants were mostly or wholly responsible for radicalism in the United States. It seemed the easiest solution was that proposed by the 1918 Immigration Act: deport them all.

To be fair, not everyone believed the Reds were an imminent threat. While many political cartoons fed the fear, others mocked it, like this example, which pointed to the hysterical tone of the Overman Report.

When A. Mitchell Palmer took the job of Attorney General in March, he was among the moderates. Everything changed when his house was blown up--and really, you can hardly blame him.

Palmer placed the young but well-liked and hard-working J. Edgar Hoover in charge of intelligence for his Red hunt. Hoover quickly gained the trust of his boss and ultimately managed all of the planning and operations details of the November and January raids.

After the November 7th raids, 249 people were deported to Russia. The sailed on the Buford, a ship that Hoover arranged to borrow from the war department. It became known as the Soviet Ark.

Up to ten thousand people were rounded up in the January 2nd, 1920 raids. Individuals were arrested, searched, and held without warrants, often in deplorable conditions.

Deportation hearings began almost immediately. This is a photo of men waiting to be called for hearings at Ellis Island. It was an incredibly fraught situation. Many of the suspected radicals had lived in the United States for decades. They had families and children--and their children had often been born in the U.S. and were therefore citizens.

Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post insisted on full constitutional protection for those rounded up in the Palmer Raids and ended up dismissing the majority of cases. He infuriated Palmer, who arranged for him to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Post's testimony was a major factor in Palmer's downfall.

After all was said and done and the panic subsided, the anarchists struck again. The 1920 Wall Street Bombing left 38 dead and hundreds wounded. It was likely the work of the anarchists, who still had not been captured.

Historic Newspapers

If you are not familiar with the fantastic resource that is the Library of Congress Chronicling America site, let me introduce it to you. It contains scanned newspapers from across the country and the decades.

Click here to find the results of a search of headlines nationwide on June 3rd, 1919, the morning after the bomb attacks. It's fascinating to compare the headlines and see what else was considered important that day.

Then have fun looking up more dates and more newspapers. You'll probably be there some time.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• YOUNG J. EDGAR: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920 by Kenneth D. Ackerman — I relied heavily on Ackerman's book, which provides an excellent overview of the events of 1919-1920 and fantastic insight into the main players.
• Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America by Ann Hagedorn — Hagedorn's book continues to be incredibly useful and insightful.
• Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner — Weiner's book extends far beyond the Red Scare, but its treatment of the events of 1919-1920 is excellent.
• When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals by Adam Hochschild, The New Yorker — The New Yorker had great timing with this excellent article about the Palmer Raids and the role of Louis F. Post in turning the tide.
• "To the American people; report upon the illegal practices of the United States Department of Justice" - via HathiTrust Digital Library — The entire report on of the National Popular Government League is available online, and is fascinating just to dip into, even if you don't want to read the entire thing.
• Watch The Bombing of Wall Street | American Experience | Official Site | PBS — The PBS series "American Experience" presented a fantastic overview of the 1920 bombing of Wall Street that I highly recommend.