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During the summer of 1919 racial tensions had come to all time high, apparent in the 35 riots that took place during the summer. Riots in Chicago, Houston, and North Carolina challenged the role of race in America. Blacks pushed the status quo of these communities, such as the Chicago citizens who refused to be regulated to a certain beach, or Houston soldiers who would not tolerate their second class status. These Americans, in particular the Houston soldiers, allude to a change in race relationship, on the part of blacks, but also reinforce the discriminatory Jim Crow policies accepted throughout the nation.

In an editorial published within the Chicago Defender, Another Angle of the Trouble, Abbot proposes an alternative causes behind the Red summers riots. Individual acts of violence may have been the ignition to racial tensions in America, but it was the primary cause that rallied entire communities into lawless mobs. The racial tensions present throughout America at the end of World War 1 were caused by the widespread belief in African American inferiority. These claims maintained a racial hierarchy, diminished the validity of law and order, and lost the support of otherwise loyal citizens.

In an attempt to maintain control over African Americans southern whites embraced forms of domestic terrorism though lynching and other methods of mob violence in order to keep the issue of race continuously present in the public mind. Justifying these acts as necessities to “keep the Colored man in his place and to prevent Negro domination”, whites maintain power by appealing to popular sentiments defining blacks as violent and out of control (Smith, 47). This popular support allowed almost free reigns of violence against blacks furthe...

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...fering Blacks protection the nation gave the impression that “the government under which we are expected live … if necessary, to die, does not offer them the protection commensurate with that devotion and loyaly”7 (Abbot, 1919). The consequence of this cannot be afforded by the nation. America cannot risk losing one eight of its population to lawlessness and treason.

During a very contentious time American increasingly resorted to racial violence causing civil unrest on a large scale. What resulted were riots that engulfed the nation into racial tension. In a September 1919 article Abbot claims that the underlying cause of this hated came from the widespread belief in Black inferiority. This claims negatively resulted in the maintaining a racial hierarchy, diminished the validity of law and order, and lost the support of otherwise loyal African American citizens.