Some people may very well think that racial riots in America are of somewhat recent vintage, such as we saw in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charlotte in recent years; but before that, there were also riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittals of the police officers in regard to the Rodney King beating; and well back in the 1960s, there were riots in many cities, including Detroit, Newark, as well as Los Angeles, again. Though many people are familiar with those riots, it must be said, that these were not the first racial riots in America, for there were also some very violent racial riots in 1919.
During America's entrance into World War I, plenty of white as well as black soldiers were deployed overseas in order to fight that war, of which, blacks overseas though segregated from their own fellow countrymen of the white race, nobly fought and supported their allies in those battles; of which, blacks found that in many cases, the animus of whites towards blacks often displayed back home, was in many cases notably reduced, and that the European attitude towards those of color, was far more progressive than the narrow-minded bigotry so often suffered at home.
Beginning in and around 1916, blacks in southern States, recognizing the futility of their being forever second class citizens of those States, began their great migration up north, of which, because of the necessity of gearing up for World War I there were plenty of industrial jobs so needed for people, even those of color, within those factories, and once provided with the opportunity to work, blacks proved their able worth, day-by-day. So too, upon the armistice so being signed and thereby ending World War I, the soldiers so deployed overseas, returned back to their homeland. Those soldiers, especially of color, expected to be greeted with some degree of respect and appreciation by their homeland, but found instead, in many cases, the same historic disrespect that thereby discounted their sacrifice and their value, this of which the accepting of such was found to be a bitter pill that they no longer would be so acquiescent in swallowing. Further exacerbating the situation, white soldiers returning home, were dismayed that jobs that they once held, were being labored upon by black hands, and further compounding their consternation, the wages that they were expecting, were being undercut by this new color labor, and tensions did so rise.
In the summer of 1919, a black teenager who was swimming, was stoned and thereupon drowned after violating the unwritten rule of segregation on Lake Michigan. This thereby served as the tinderbox, for the racial riots in Chicago to be stoked and thereby fully enflamed into a conflagration, and of which, these riots soon spread to Washington DC, Knoxville, Texas, Arkansas, and Nebraska. As might be expected, in an era in which blacks had no power, no justice, no guns, and were vastly outnumbered by those whites that had all of those very things in abundance, the results thereof from those riots were blacks doing most of the bleeding, most of the dying, and having their homes do most of the burning down. In the end, there wasn't any fair justice served back in 1919, and there still sure isn't much fair justice being served here, 100 years later.