and it said that the Guard had exhibited extreme inefficiency.
The Washington Evening Mail carried a cartoon which depicted Wilson
standing before a group of Negroes reading an official document
proclaiming that the world should be made safe for democracy. The
caption over the cartoon read "Why not make America safe?"

When the Negro soldiers returned home from Europe, they brought new
experiences and changed attitudes with them. As soldiers, they had been
taught to stand up and fight like men. In Europe, they had been treated
more like men than ever before. The attitude of submissiveness which had
been stamped on the Afro-American community by its slave mentality and
which had been reinforced by the philosophy of Booker T. Washington was
undermined by this new sense of manhood. When a wave of two dozen riots
swept America in the summer of 1919, Negroes fought back as they had not
done in East St. Louis. Riots occurred in places as diverse as Longview,
Texas, Washington, D.C., Omaha, Nebraska, and Chicago, Illinois.

The worst riot of that bloody summer occurred in Chicago. It began when a
young Negro boy, swimming in Lake Michigan, crossed into a section of the
water which had been traditionally reserved for whites. White youths
began throwing stones at him, and he drowned. A later investigation
showed that he had not been hit by any of these rocks. Nevertheless,
this incident triggered the tense racial situation in Chicago into an
explosion. Fighting broke out all over the city. Whites pulled Negroes
from streetcars and beat them openly. The fighting raged for thirteen
days. At least thirty-eight people were killed. Fifteen of these were
white, and twenty-three were Negro. Also, some five hundred people were
injured of which the majority were Negro. Many houses were burned, and it
was estimated that one thousand families were left homeless.

The Klan Revival

While the nation went to war to make the world safe for democracy, many
at home believed that it was still necessary to make America safe first.
These people fell into two groups. There were those within the
Afro-American community who felt that a country which systematically
disenfranchised a large minority group and which also tolerated
widespread discrimination, segregation, and violence against that
minority was not a secure democratic state. At the same time, those who
were responsible for much of this harassment and terror believed that
violence