Question

Mention the factors that contributed to race riots during world war I period.

What are the factors that influenced/affected the decision of African Americans to migrate. What decision would you have made? Stay or go?

Answer 1

In the First World War, the rise of mass manufacturing companies challenged some organisers to create trade unions that would unite all workers — black and white — in big unions. In the brink of the war's end in 1918, these efforts culminated in the Chicago stockyards. The end of the war, however, slowed the economy. Blacks and women were laid off by factories first, mostly to make way for white troops to return.

When Black troops returned to the U.S., they found bigotry to be as powerful as ever — and, in many ways, more powerful. In the army parades, black troops were refused entry. Once demobilised, many were refused employment.

A racial reaction arose as Blacks mobilised to push their claims, and as whites and Blacks fought for jobs and living space in the cities. A white mob in East St. Louis killed 125 Blacks in July 1917, and burned 300 Black houses. In 1919, race riots exploded throughout the country — more than half of them occurring in northern towns.

The Blacks struggled back. Blacks — many of them former soldiers — organised militias to protect the Black community from racial and police violence in the 1919 Chicago riots. Black farmers formed a union in Phillips County, Arkansas, in July 1919, armed themselves and carried out a near-insurrection against white landlords.

Since the 1894 Pullman strike, 1919 saw the strongest pitch of class struggle in the U.S. That year, hundreds of thousands of employees went on strike, battling over all manner of demands — from raising pay to recognising an industry-wide union. The struggles rocked the political elite of the United States. But to push back the challenge from below, it recovered.

In the aftermath of the losses of the working class, the grievances of the workforce with the employers were also directed toward other workforce. Ideas and campaigns on the right-wing started to flourish. Most of their ferociousness was attributed to the race riots and the anti-foreign, anti-radical paranoia of the Red Scare, encouraged and encouraged by bosses and government officials.