Mar 21, 2013 - Sale 2308

Sale 2308 - Lot 281

Price Realized: $ 3,840
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
RED SUMMER (CIVIL RIGHTS--RACE RIOTS.) Omaha's Riot, 1919. In Story & Picture. Copiously illustrated. 26 pages. Oblong 12mo, original printed wrappers, stapled; heavily creased where folded in half; post WWI pulp paper toned and fragile. (Omaha: Beacon Press, 1919)
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Additional Details

A rare survival of a questionable souvenir recording of one of America's bloodiest race riots, coming in the autumn of the deadly "Red Summer" of 1919. Federal investigators later said that "a clash was imminent owing to ill-feeling between white and black workers in the stockyards." The number of blacks in Omaha had doubled during the decade 1910-1920, as they were recruited to work in the meatpacking industry. This fact did not go unnoticed by competing white labor. In 1910 Omaha had the third largest black population among the new western cities that had become destinations following the Reconstruction "Exodus." The Omaha Race Riot took place during September 28-29, 1919, and resulted in the lynching of Will Brown, a black worker; the death of two white men; the attempted lynching of the mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of whites who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. It followed more than 20 race riots in major industrial cities of the United States during the "Red Summer of 1919."