The “Spirit of Revolt”: A Reappraisal of Black Veterans in Chicago’s Red Summer

Abstract

For over a half-century, historians have maintained a consensus that Black World War I veterans played central, even leading, roles in armed self-defense during the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. Evidence adduced in support of this claim has, however, been noticeably thin. We present a spatial analysis of wartime military records that lends credibility to this consensus. We supplement this analysis with a comprehensive examination of how Black soldiers’ ubiquitous physical and symbolic presence in Chicago’s Black Belt during and after the war forced the city’s African American community to daily confront the dissonance between expectations of postwar racial rapprochement and the reality of continued racial oppression. As a result, by the time of the riot Black Chicagoans were primed to embrace an increasingly assertive ethic of armed self-defense in the face of white aggression.