Blue Bicycle will welcome Wall Street Journal reporter Cameron McWhirter Wed., Sept. 28, 4-6 pm signing his new book Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America (Henry Holt, 2011, hb. 352 pp. $32.50).
McWhirter offers the first narrative written history of the deadly summer of 1919, when a wave of antiblack riots swept the country. After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality, believing that their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them equal rights. However, the racial unrest that rolled across the United States continued to deny them the equality they had been promised at the end of the Civil War. With a knack for story-telling and scrupulous historical research, McWhirter tells of the riots, lynchings, and public slaughters that ensued from April to November of 1919, paving the way for the American Civil Rights Movement.
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