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Abstract
African-Americans have fought in all American wars from the Revolution to the present. On November 11, 1918 the Armistice was signed ended WWI. African -American troops who had faced discrimination prior to the war, in spite of their courage during the war returned to the hostility of a racist society. Anti-black race riots broke out in twenty six American cities. In 1918, fifty-eight lynching took place, ten victims in uniform A year later in 1919, seventy-seven blacks were lynched. This essay explores the Washington Race Riot that also occurred in 1919.
Introduction
The impact of WWI was a turning point in African American history, a theme that is taught in grade eleven of the California History Social Science Framework. "In this course, students examine major developments and turning points in American history from the late nineteenth century to the present. One of the themes that is emphasized is 'the movement toward equal rights for racial, ethnic, and religious minorities'."1 When the war broke out in Europe in 1914, immigration to the United States was restricted which created severe labor shortages in northern cities. Rural blacks flocked to the north in search of economic and social opportunities. Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) effectively institutionalized Jim Crow segregation that denied blacks equal protection under the law and condoned vigilante mob justice. As a result blacks fled north. This movement, The Great Migration saw 500,000 black southerners between 1914 and 1920 leave rural areas of the south transforming the cultural landscapes of cities such as Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and New York.
Though racial discrimination, sub-standard housing, job discrimination and white hostility welcomed rural blacks, they were, "no longer subjected to the indignities of Jim Crow and the constant threat off racial violence, southern migrants experienced a new sense of freedom. The Great Migration marked a significant moment in the economic, political, social, and cultural growth of modern black America."2 This migration coupled with African American participation in WWI, laid the foundation for black's struggle for full citizenship.
Unfortunately, most black Americans still lived in a racist cauldron. The United States has a tragic history of race riots since the earliest slave rebellion of Nat Turner to the New York City draft riots in1863 where over 300...