The situation was made worse in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Black laborers already suffered from a negative reputation in the White working community for their use as low wage-earning strike breakers, or “scabs,” who would keep factories in operation while the employees went on strike. When the war ended many returning servicemen resented that their vacated jobs had been taken, particularly by African Americans. Photograph by Jun Fujita, courtesy of Chicago History Museum, ICHi-65477. National Guard during the 1919 Chicago Race Riots.
In many cases, northern Whites-many of them newly arrived immigrants themselves-did not welcome Black newcomers. By the summer of 1919, approximately 500,000 African Americans had resettled in northern cities. World War I intensified the Great Migration, the mass emigration of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North and Midwest in hopes of escaping the poverty and discrimination of Jim Crow laws. Competition for opportunities in postwar America combined with a radically changed social landscape placed Whites and Blacks in conflict with one another, leading to tragic results. were exacerbated by the discharge of millions of military personnel back to their homes and domestic lives following the end of the war. An outbreak of racial violence known as the “Red Summer” occurred in 1919, an event that affected at least 26 cities across the United States. American servicemen returned from the First World War only to find a new type of violent conflict waiting for them at home.