The familiar injustice of white violence was met by an African American
community with a new mentality.
"There are friends of
the South who, having studied the evolution of the new negro, harbor serious
misgivings. No mere fanciful bugaboo is the new negro. He exists.
More than once I have met him. He differs radically from the timorous,
docile negro of the past. Said a new negro, “Cap’n, you mark my words;
the next time white folks pick on colored folks, something’s going to drop—dead
white folks.” Within a week came race riots in Chicago, where negroes fought
back with surprising audacity."
(“The New Negro": "When He’s Hit, He Hits Back!” Independent,
15 January 1921 an article by Rollin Lynde Hartt, a white Congregational
minister and journalist)
“The white man will
learn in time that he has in this new type of negro a foeman worthy of
his steel. If we are driven to defend our lives, our homes, our rights,
let us do it man-fashion. How better can we die than in defending our lives,
our homes, our rights from the attacks of white men obsessed with the idea
that this world was made for Caesar and his queens?”
(Taken from the Kansas City Call found in "The New Negro": "When
He's Hit, He Hits Back")
Dubois, Hartt, and the Kansas City Call described a new mentality of African Americans. Dubois's editorial was published immediately following the 1919 Chicago Race Riot in an effort to defend the African American retaliation to white violence. The "new negro" would defend themselves and their rights. The violence in the Chicago Riots was significantly more two-sided than previous riots. In the August 1904 riot in Statesboro, Georgia, white mobs beat, whipped and burned alive African Americans, and many blacks left the county (313 Franklin). In the September 1906 riot in Atlanta blacks were beaten and killed and their homes were burned and looted (314 Franklin). Some blacks defended themselves with arms but numerous blacks left. Four blacks were killed and many injured as compared to one white death and few casualties. A slight change occured in the Springfield, Illinois riot in August 1908. An armed white mob invaded African-American homes and businesses resulted in two lynchings of blacks but also four white deaths. The above riots were initiated by whites who invaded African American communities and met some resistance, but white mobs were largely unscathed (317 Franklin).
In comparison to the previous riots in Statesboro, Atlanta, and Springfield, the 1919 Chicago Riot was very costly to whites in deaths and injuries. The riot lasted thirteen days and resulted in thirty-eight deaths and 537 casualties. Fifteen whites were killed and 178 were injured. Similar two-sided riots occured in the Northern towns of Washington D.C. in 1919 and Tulsa, Nebraska in 1921 (351 Franklin).
"In the postwar racial strife the willingness of African Americans to
fight and to die in their own defense injected a new factor into America's
most perplexing social problem. It was no longer the case of one
race intimidating another into submission. Now it was war in the
full sense of the word, and blacks were as determined to win it as they
had been in Europe. The increasing urbanization of blacks, with its
accompanying stimulation of self-respect and racial cohesiveness, had much
to do with the resistance that they offered to their would-be oppressors."
(352 Franklin)
If We Must Die by Claude McKay
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 accursed lot.
If we must
die--oh, 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!
Oh, Kinsmen!
We must meet the common foe;
Though far
outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their
thousand blows deal one deathblow!
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!
(pasted from poets.org)