Black Birds in the Sky

by Brandy Colbert

  Not even six months later, on December 6, 1920, the New York Times reported that “an unidentified Negro . . . was taken from the Hughes County [Oklahoma] jail” the previous evening “by a mob of about fifty men and hanged to a telephone pole.” His alleged crime? Raping a sixty-seven-year-old white woman. According to the report, deputy sheriffs found him about a mile from the woman’s house, and the man “fired on the officers.” His lynched body was later found “riddled with bullets,” at least three of which came from the arresting officers. In the one hundred years since his murder, the lynching victim has been referred to only as “unnamed” or “unidentified.”

  Any Oklahomans paying attention—but especially Black Americans—were well aware that the Oklahoma lynchings of 1920 did not bode well for the future. They knew the worst was yet to come.

  In fact, it had already begun.

  If we must die, let it not be like hogs

  Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

  While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

  Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

  If we must die, O let us nobly die,

  So that our precious blood may not be shed

  In vain; then even the monsters we defy

  Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

  O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

  Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

  And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

  What though before us lies the open grave?

  Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

  Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

  —“If We Must Die,” Claude McKay, July 1919

  3

  Fighting for Survival

  Two years before the Tulsa massacre, the United States was host to more than three dozen so-called race riots—a collection of events that would come to be known as the Red Summer, a term created by James Weldon Johnson, a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While race riots sound as if they were acts of violence that broke out between different racial groups, they’re more complicated than that. In actuality, race riots were often coordinated attacks against Black communities by white mobs who felt they needed to take justice into their own hands for perceived or fabricated offenses. When Black people fought back to defend themselves, the story was often twisted and called a riot, rather than the blatant attacks that they were.

  The early 1900s were a time of major change for Black Americans. Fed up with their unequal treatment and lack of opportunities in the South, many packed up their belongings and moved their families to the North, Midwest, and West. Known as the Great Migration, an estimated six million Black Americans left Southern states between 1915 and 1970 to start new lives. Before this mass exodus, 90 percent of Black Americans lived in the Southern states in which they or their ancestors had been enslaved; now they headed to cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, which were facing labor shortages in manufacturing and industrial jobs. Though families were sometimes able to make the trip together, other people were forced to travel alone to find employment and a place to stay; once someone had settled into their new home, their family and friends often joined them, resulting in vast increases of the Black population throughout the United States.

  Although, historically, racism is often painted as a Southern problem, many Black people were treated just as poorly after they migrated to the North. They may have escaped the Jim Crow laws that kept everything from restaurants to water fountains to schools “separate but equal,” but Northern cities were not free of bigotry. White people weren’t always eager to see Black people in their neighborhoods or working beside them, and they didn’t hide it. But Black people continued to move out of the South in droves, for opportunities that ranged from regular employment to voting without intimidation or violence.

  The main reason for the labor shortage in the North was the Great War, or what we know today as World War I. Employers often hired immigrants to fill jobs at factories, steel mills, and railroads, but due to fewer Europeans moving to the United States during the war, these jobs remained open. And Black people were more than willing to scoop them up as they began their new lives in the North.

  Additionally, millions of Americans traveled overseas to fight after the United States entered World War I in 1917. President Woodrow Wilson, who declared war on Germany that April, said, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Not just Europe, but the world—which included the United States, and should have, therefore, included its Black citizens, who’d been working tirelessly for equality at home. Not everyone believed in the cause; some found it hypocritical that a country that didn’t treat Black Americans equally would ask them to fight on its behalf. Still, hundreds of thousands of Black Americans served their country in World War I, hopeful that things would change back home soon, too.

  Despite being enslaved for centuries, then segregated and treated as second-class citizens, Black Americans have fought for the United States in every war in which it’s participated. And during World War I, in particular, Black Americans felt they had something to prove. The Civil War had been about fighting for freedom, but now they were fighting for respect. Signing up to serve their country would show they were loyal to the United States—that they were patriots, just like the white men joining the military beside them.

  At the start of the war, Black men could serve in one of four all-Black regiments: the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry. Although Black people were allowed to serve in several positions throughout the army, most African American soldiers were assigned to service units, which were more labor-intensive. Earning a role in combat was nearly unheard of for Black Americans until the War Department finally created two primarily Black combat divisions in 1917: the Ninety-Second Division, which was made up of military officers as well as those who’d been drafted, and the Ninety-Third Division, which mostly comprised National Guard units hailing from Chicago, Cleveland, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington, DC. That same year, the army also established an all-Black training camp for officers in Des Moines, Iowa, which trained more than twelve hundred men in its first class but closed soon after, due to the War Department concluding the instruction was “poor and inadequate.”

  Despite the fact that they were allowed to hold prestigious positions in the army, Black Americans were still treated poorly. Black officers were disrespected by white men of lower rank who refused to salute them, and they were turned away from officers’ clubs. Black soldiers often had to wear decades-old uniforms for months on end, were forced to sleep outside in tents rather than the barracks—buildings used to house servicemen—where white soldiers slept, and had to eat outside during the colder months because they were not allowed to sit in the mess halls. However, though they received the least amount of respect, they continued to work hard to prove they deserved to be serving their country.

  The combat soldiers were treated somewhat better than the laborers, though they faced their own challenges. The Ninety-Second Division was forced to train at separate locations (rather than all together, as a cohesive group) before heading overseas because, according to the Army Historical Foundation, the War Department was worried about racial uprisings if they all trained together. The Ninety-Second Division also had to endure lies about their performance on the battlefield by racist white American officers. Composed of about fifteen thousand officers and soldiers, the Ninety-Second Division was known as the Buffalo Soldiers; fighting primarily in France, they were awarded several medals and honors from the French military. But they were not the first Black combat troops to fight in France—that honor was held by the Ninety-Third Division. Its 369th Infantry, also known as the Harlem Hellfighters, fought in major operations throughout France, received a military award from the French army, and formed a band that became popular throughout Europe, introducing the continent to Ameri
can jazz music. The Black Devils, or the 370th Infantry, received multiple military awards as well, including Distinguished Service Crosses, a Distinguished Service Medal, and a French military award. It was also the only Black regiment to include all Black officers. The 372nd Infantry received a French military award for its fearless combat skills and its actions during an operation that was integral to ending the war.

  Back home, Black women were also instrumental to the First World War. Through the National Association of Colored Women—founded by Ida B. Wells-Barnett—they led rallies, raised more than $5 million in war bonds, and lent emotional support to African American soldiers.

  According to author and critic Harper Barnes, the “first major race riot of the World War I period” occurred in East St. Louis, Illinois, in July 1917—and many attribute it directly to tensions caused by the Great Migration. White workers at the Aluminum Ore Company had gone on strike that spring, but instead of meeting the workers’ terms, the company replaced the white laborers with Black employees who were new to town and willing to do the work. In May, resentful workers began filing “formal complaints”—most of them likely false or exaggerated in scope—about Black people, and after a report that a Black man with a gun had attempted to rob a white man in the city, mobs of white people began beating African Americans in the streets. They even took to their cars, organizing drive-by attacks to shoot into houses and stores in Black neighborhoods. These drive-bys were spurred by false news reports in local papers that Black Americans were committing crimes, some as serious as rape—and white people had taken it upon themselves to seek justice.

  The National Guard was eventually called in to help stop the violence, but the troops were sent home in June, and the attacks resumed. On July 1, after a white man driving a Model T fired shots into houses where Black people lived, some African Americans shot at another Model T cruising through the neighborhood. What they didn’t know was that the two men in the second car weren’t there to terrorize them—they were, instead, undercover police officers in an unmarked car who were there to look into the drive-by that had occurred earlier.

  The fact that the people who’d shot at them had made a mistake to protect their neighborhood didn’t matter—the Black community in East St. Louis would pay the price. Over three days in early July, dozens of people were killed by a white mob. Official reports say that thirty-nine of them were Black, a total that included children—though some reports state that as many as one hundred Black people were killed. Hundreds more were injured as they were yanked off streetcars and beaten with clubs. Fire was used as a weapon, too; the structures the mob set ablaze amounted to nearly $375,000 worth of damages—the equivalent of several millions of dollars today—and destroyed the livelihood of the Black community.

  The massacre, along with recent lynchings in Memphis, Tennessee, and Waco, Texas, prompted a relatively new group called the NAACP to organize the Negro Silent Protest Parade. Held on July 28, 1917, in New York City, the parade drew nearly ten thousand protesters from across the country. In attendance was activist, writer, and educator W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, author of the poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” which was later set to music by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and became known as the Black National Anthem.

  Organized by the NAACP, the Negro Silent Protest Parade, held on July 28, 1917, in New York City, protested the recent spate of lynchings and murders in Waco, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; and East St. Louis, Illinois. Nearly ten thousand protesters marched silently down Fifth Avenue, including co-organizers James Weldon Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois.

  * * *

  Pray for the Lady Macbeths of East St. Louis

  Protest signs have long been a clever, concise, and effective way to call for desired social change. During the Negro Silent Protest Parade organized by the NAACP in 1917, marchers carried signs bearing messages such as:

  YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD

  MOTHERS, DO LYNCHERS GO TO HEAVEN?

  MR. PRESIDENT, WHY NOT MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY?

  PRAY FOR THE LADY MACBETHS OF EAST ST. LOUIS

  The last sign may not make as much sense today as it did to people back then. The National Humanities Center defines “Lady Macbeths” as the white women in East St. Louis who shouted encouragement to the mob that was beating and killing the Black community, much like the woman who encouraged her husband to carry out violence and murder in the Shakespeare play Macbeth. In some cases, they took their participation a step further, joining the men in attacking Black people during the massacre.

  According to the newspaper the Cleveland Advocate, these white women “pursued the [Black] women who were driven out of the burning homes with the idea . . . of inflicting added pain, if possible. They stood around in groups, laughing and jeering, while they witnessed the final writhings of the terror and pain” of the victims. The protest sign, then, can be seen as a facetious take on the situation, or perhaps a sincere call to be magnanimous and show compassion for the women who, though often portrayed as passive or submissive, were just as guilty as their white male counterparts.

  * * *

  The NAACP, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations, was itself founded as a response to a race riot that took place nine years before the East St. Louis massacre, in a city nearly one hundred miles north: Springfield, Illinois. In August 1908, word began to circulate there that a Black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. A white mob quickly gathered in front of the city jail, where they demanded the police turn over a Black suspect who had been arrested for the alleged crime, as well as another imprisoned Black man who was being held on a charge of murdering a white railroad engineer. Prepared for the possibility of a mob, the Springfield police had managed to sneak the Black men from the jail and drive them out of town to avoid what would surely have been a double lynching.

  The white mob was furious that they wouldn’t get their chance with the prisoners—and in response, they incited a riot. Over the next few days, they destroyed property of the white man who’d provided the car to transfer the Black men out of town; looted and destroyed a Black business district in downtown Springfield; and lynched two Black men, one who was elderly. Troops were sent in to help curb the violence, but white people continued to attack Black Springfieldians over the next few weeks. When it was all over, the white mob had killed six people—four white, two Black—and injured dozens of others; caused property damage that amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars; and displaced more than forty Black families whose homes they had burned.

  The white rioters, well aware that they had caused such violence in the town where President Abraham Lincoln once lived, reportedly shouted, “Lincoln freed you, now we’ll show you where you belong!” Historians have identified a pattern in that the rioters would attack and loot the homes of successful Black people—business owners, real estate workers, and government employees. The two Black men they killed had been financially successful homeowners. An unnamed Black woman, who had been a child at the time of the riot, later said, “See, the people that they harmed and hurt were not really the no-gooders. They were very busy hurting the prominent. . . . There was a great deal of animosity toward any well-established Negro who owned his house and had a good job.”

  Fed up with lynchings and other anti-Black violence and behavior, a group of white people organized a meeting to discuss how to stop the racial injustice that was sweeping the country. About sixty people attended, both white and Black—including W. E. B. Du Bois, journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Black suffrage and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell—and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was born. The mission of the NAACP was to “ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of minority group citizens of the United States, and eliminate race prejudice.” Further, the organization sought to “remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.”r />
  W. E. B. Du Bois

  In 1910, the group set up a national office in New York City and established a board of directors. That same year, Du Bois, who was the only Black member of the NAACP’s original executives, founded The Crisis, the organization’s official journal, which covered such issues as the war and lynchings; later, he briefly published The Brownies’ Book, an edition for children that was also the first periodical exclusively created for Black American youth. Three years after its founding, the NAACP had set up branch offices in major cities such as Boston, St. Louis, and Detroit. Its membership grew exponentially, ballooning from nine thousand members in 1917 to ninety thousand just two years later, spread across three hundred branches.

  The NAACP would be instrumental in many civil rights lawsuits, such as Guinn v. United States, the 1915 case that struck down Oklahoma’s anti-Black grandfather clause. The group also fought to ban The Birth of a Nation, the racist film that praised the Ku Klux Klan and inspired its resurgence. About the film, NAACP national secretary May Childs Nerney, who was white, wrote: “If it goes unchallenged it will take years to overcome the harm it is doing. The entire country will acquiesce in the Southern program of segregation, disenfranchisement, and lynching.”