Race Riots During the Red Summer of 1919

Race Riots During the Red Summer of 1919 The Red Summer of 1919 refers to a series of race riots that took place between May and October of that year. Although riots occurred in more than thirty cities throughout the U.S., the bloodiest events were in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. Causes of the Red Summer Race Riots Several factors came into play precipitating the riots. Labor Shortages: Industrial cities in the North and Midwest profited greatly from World War I. Yet, the factories also encountered serious labor shortages because white men were enlisting in World War I and the United States government halted immigration from Europe.The Great Migration: To fulfill these job shortages, at least 500,000 African-Americans moved from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities. African-Americans were also leaving the South to escape Jim Crow laws, segregated schools, and lack of job opportunities.Racial Strife: Working class white workers in Northern and Midwestern cities resented the presence of African-Americans, who were now competition for employment. Riots Erupt in Cities Throughout the South The first act of violence took place in Charleston, South Carolina, in May. For the next six months, riots occurred in small Southern towns such as Sylvester, Georgia and Hobson City, Alabama as well as larger northern cities such as Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Syracuse, New York.  The largest riots, however, took place in Washington D.C., Chicago, and Elaine, Arkansas. Washington DC Riots Between Whites and Blacks On July 19, white men initiated a riot after hearing that a black man had been accused of rape. The men beat random African-Americans, pulling them off of streetcars and beating street pedestrians.  African-Americans fought back after local police refused to intervene. For four days, African-American and white residents fought. By July 23, four whites and two African-Americans were killed in the riots. In addition, an estimated 50 people were seriously injured. The D.C. riots were especially significant because it was one of the only instances when African-Americans aggressively fought back against whites. Whites Destroy Black Homes and Businesses in Chicago The most violent of all the race riots began on July 27. A young black man visiting Lake Michigan beaches accidentally swam on the South Side, which was frequented by whites. As a result, he was stoned and drowned. After the police refused to arrest the young mans attackers, violence ensued. For 13 days, white rioters destroyed the homes and businesses of African-Americans. By the end of the riot, an estimated 1,000 African-American families were homeless, over 500 were injured and 50 people were killed. Arkansas Riot by Whites Against Sharecroppers One of the last but most intense of all the race riots began on October 1 after whites tried to disband the organization efforts of African-American sharecropper organizations. Sharecroppers were meeting to organize a union so that they could express their concerns to local planters. However, the planters  opposed the workers organization and attacked African-American farmers. During the riot in Elaine, Arkansas, an estimated 100 African-Americans and five whites were killed.

These Greco-Roman Curses Were the Best Form of Ancient Revenge

These Greco-Roman Curses Were the Best Form of Ancient Revenge Imagine youve just discovered the one you love has been cheating on you with the laundry girl from down the block. Furious, you want to get your vengeance. But youre not going to sink so low as to kill that young tart, are you? No, youre going to ask the gods to do your work for you! Instead, head to the marketplace and have a scribe write down a curse on a tiny scrap of lead. He asks the powers above - or, as well see, below  - to jinx her bowels. Bury that scrap of lead - pierced with a nail to fix its power- on which the scribe wrote somewhere sacred, and youve achieved your revenge! These mysteriously magical leaden texts were called  defixiones, or curse tablets. On a  defixio,  one would  invoke a god or psychopomp (spirits who carried the message to the underworld) in order to influence an individual, group, or animal against their wills; thus, they’re called binding spells. As noted in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, the focus is not on torment or destruction ... but on laming and putting out of action. In fact, the way the text in defixiones  is set up is legal in nature, a contractual agreement between the gods invoked and the supplicant. Such formulae and phrasings were used in most of the defixiones, regardless of place of origin. These tablets appeared across the Greco-Roman world- and the places it conquered and influenced, from Syria to Britainfrom the Iron Age to the first few centuries A.D. More than 1500 of them have been discovered to date. Many of them have been at  religious locations where temples stood during Greek and Roman times. For example, at Bath in Roman Britain,  defixiones  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹ were deposited in  the watery domains of Sulis Minerva, the protectress of that sanctuary; they were put there because the tablets requested for that goddess to  answer that request. The ones in Britain, especially Bath, mostly dealt with theft and were Romano-British cultural  hybridization at its finest; read more about that here. Other tablets would be placed in graves or pits, presumably because the supplicants were requesting help from infernal spirits or  powers residing in the underworld, like Persephone or Hecate; one would  imagine that, if a curse tablet requested physical harm or death on a person, a grave would be an ideal spot to put that  defixio. Perhaps most significantly, the  defixiones  proved to be some of the few examples we have of writing produced by non-elites in the Greco-Roman world.  They presented a contrast to the writings of many Roman historians that, rather than day-to-day concerns of love and life, concentrated on affairs of conquest and monumental inscriptions that only the rich could afford to set up. Just check out this insane tomb that Romes richest banker built for himself. Cursing Everyone and Everything When wishing for the gods to affect someone negatively in a  defixio, the supplicant might want any number of things, positive or negative, to happen. They could request that a rival be killed or fall sick, or that someone not fall in love with another person. As curse tablet expert Chris Faraone noted in Ancient Greek Love Magic,  these arent technically love spells, since they dont request that somebody fall head over heels for them; instead, it is designed to reduce the competition, by inhibiting the words, the actions, and even the sexual performance of a rival. Or, if a woman isnt into a guy, the supplicant requests that the beloveds movements be restricted so that shed love only him. Heres one example: Seize Euphemia and lead her to me, Theon, loving me with mad desire, and bind her with unloosable shackles, strong ones of adamantine, for the love of me, Theon, and do not allow her to eat, drink, obtain sleep, jest or laugh...Burn her limbs, live, female body, until she comes to me, and not disobeying me. If she holds another man in her embrace, let her cast him off, forget him, and  hate him; but let her feel affection for me... Another prime instance of creepy binding/erotic magic: Spirits of the underworld, I consecrate and hand over to you, if you have any power, Ticene of Carisius. Whatever she does, may it all turn out wrong. Spirits of the netherworld, I consecrate to you her limbs, her complexion, her figure, her head, her hair, her shadow, her brain, her forehead, her eyebrows, her mouth, her nose, her chin, her cheeks, her lips, her speech, her breath, her neck, her liver, her shoulders, her heart, her lungs, her intestines, her stomach, her arms, her fingers, her hands, her navel, her entrails, her thighs, her knees, her calves, her heels, her soles, her toes. Spirits of the netherworld, if I see her wasting away, I swear that I will be delighted to offer a sacrifice to you every year. People also utilized curse tablets to influence pretty much anything they wanted. In order to secure a win, a charioteer paid for inscribed tablets hat requested the gods ensure victory for their team and to destroy their enemies. Check out one that read: Bind the horses whose names and images/likeness on this implement I entrust to you: of the Red (team)... of the Blues. .. Bind their running, their power, their soul, their onrush, their speed. Take away their victory, entangle their feet, hinder them, hobble them, so that tomorrow morning in the hippodrome they are not able to run or walk about, or win or go out of the starting gates, or advance on the racecourse or track, but may they fall down with their drivers... The evidence for curse tablets isnt just archaeological. Literary sources suggest that Emperor Augustuss stepson, Germanicus, one of the most famous generals of his time, died because of poison and a curse; rumor had it that defixiones bearing his name, along evidence of other negative magics, were buried underneath his floorboards.