28 Days of Black Liberation 2025 series
This week, we’ll explore the context and legacy of the Red Summer.
The Red Summer was a time from April to September of 1919 when racist white mobs attacked, killed, and terrorized Black people throughout the country. In some places, local and state government ignored the terror. In others, they took part in it. The feds didn’t do anything for months – and when they did, it was too little too late and the terror had mostly died down.
Slavery had (officially) ended but was within living memory. In the south, the system of sharecropping took its place. White planters made money on nonpayment to Black tenant-farmers and charging high rents, not on selling cotton. They got away with this for years by not giving their tenants written accounts of spending or earnings.
Even though the sharecropping system tried to keep Black people poor and under the control of white planters, Black folks were able to get jobs and afford land, homes, and cars. They were leaving sharecropping and moving North in large numbers to get better jobs. Family members of breadwinners who could now support them could be choosier and refused to work for white bosses because of their rampant sexual assault of Black workers. Free Black people were a threat to cheap labor for bosses, and to white workers who weren’t used to competing with them for jobs. The politicians were afraid that Black activists were inspired by the Russian Revolution to upend the whole racist US society. They spread those fears in the press and made their white audiences afraid too.
Through the terror, Black people got together and fought back. They protested and armed themselves. Black folks around the south had already been buying guns in large numbers to protect themselves against the KKK and were prepared. Veterans used their military weapons and training to form militias to protect their communities, like the vets who stationed themselves as snipers in D.C. and set up blockades around Howard University, an HBCU. In Chicago, one group of vets broke into an armory and stole weapons they used to beat back a white mob. When white store owners barred Black people from buying guns in some areas, folks shipped guns there.
During the month of February GDC honors the legacy of the Black Liberation Struggle. Our program – 28 Days of Black Liberation – seeks to highlight the history, take inspiration, and draw lessons from the Black freedom struggle. The GDC sees the Black Proletariat as the vanguard of the class struggle in the United States – from early rebellions led by enslaved African people to the George Floyd Rebellion. The 28 Days of Black Liberation is a chance to reflect on this history of resistance and continue the revolutionary struggle against white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. Each week we will focus on one event/movement that we think is critical. We will also have events each week to allow for collective discussion and deepening our understanding and revolutionary commitment.