u/dreadpallex I need your help!
This question, though I enjoy it, poses many difficulties due to the variety of events co-occurring during the 1919-1920 red scare. Demobilization of those within the armed forces returned home to a shortage of jobs (which made some keen on the heavy demand for unionization which was considered "Red" as many of the leaders were connected to either Communism or Socialism). The Great Migration of black southerners to the industrial centers of the North created competition for jobs and racial tension, leading to several race riots--"Red Summer." Underscoring much of this was J. Edgar Hoover and his role in the hunt for "reds," the confusion/ignorance of Americans between the difference of Communism and Socialism (and Americans' lumping the two together erroneously), and the creation of what would become the modern day F.B.I. which investigated "subversive groups" including African Americans, "Reds" (Communists), "Pinks" (Socialists and/or those with Communist leanings), and "Lavenders" (those who we now recognize as belonging to the LGBTQ community). Hoover often attempted to find ties between all of these groups of citizens and created extensive dossiers--many of which began during the 1919-1920 original red scare.
In the interest of keeping things much less long winded, I would love more direction so I can most concisely and appropriately answer your question because I've completed various research of American history on the first and second "Red Scares" (all for a grad level course) and can provide you with a wealth of sources for further reading.
u/dreadpallex Thank you for the direction (and for not asking about labor history because it is so intricate and convoluted [major respect for those who specialize in that])!
For context, a quick recap. The Russian Bolshevik revolution began in 1917, advocating and spreading Communist ideology on a global scale; World War I ended in November of 1918, and those who served abroad (or were enlisted but never deployed) returned home. African Americans who served abroad temporarily escaped the confines of Jim Crow laws in the American South or blatant racism in the North regarding competition for jobs between whites and African Americans, and including those returned from the war. Upon returning to America, some advocated expanded rights which were met with heavy resistance both in the North and South.
"The red scares of the early twentieth century nurtured a similar suspicion of subversive foreign agents on a national and international scale."^(1) Woods begins with a contextualization for the anxieties of the "red menace" infiltrating the population through several communities--immigrants (specifically those from Eastern European countries who often were Jewish), Jews, and African Americans. Especially in the South, a flare up of the old anxieties of slave rebellions and insurrections caused by influence from those outside of the region--grasping for control of power--merged with a new outside threat, that of Communism. Essentially the South (white males in/with power) saw those perpetuating ideas from the Marxist revolution as undermining the control in preventing lasting racial reform.^(2) However, anti-Communist fears were prevalent in the North as well; both dichotomies feared the undermining of capitalist democracy. Lenin did appeal to African Americans, and major industrial cities in the North feared the spread of Communism as their power laid in preventing unionization of employees who called for fairer wages, more humane conditions, and more realistic working hours. The winter of 1918-1919 industrial picket lines (which sometimes turned violent) stoked the fires of fearing Communism.^(3)
New York State Assembly created a committee to investigate those participating in or suspected of Communist activities, including belonging to labor unions or organizations. Clayton Lusk headed this committee, referred to as the "Lusk Committee." Within the report, African Americans were named as a group in which "radical activity had made significant progress...and that a more active program of Communist indoctrination...was soon to come."^(4) One of the more significant race riots occurred in Chicago, July 27, 1919, when Eugene Williams was stoned by a white man and subsequently drowned in Lake Michigan. Williams had floated into the whites-only section. Williams's death resulted in massive riots across Chicago in which the National Guard was deployed.^(5)
In the South the anxieties of Communism resulted in stricter adherence to Jim Crow laws, and to more instances of vigilante "justice." The Elaine Race Riot of October 1919 involved black tenant farmers who formed a quasi-secretive group--Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. Like the fears within industrial centers in the North, the South feared unionization of its tenant laborers in demanding reforms of working conditions and pay. The PFHUA actually sought legal assistance in their demands. White southerners saw the call for autonomy of black laborers as "conspiratorial and alarming."^(6) What amounted to an armed posse attempted to infiltrate the organization, and led to increased fighting and bloodshed within the county. White men from Mississippi and Tennessee joined the fighting, and Arkansas governor Charles Brough sent the National Guard to collect the African American militants. Five whites and twenty-five African Americans died as a result of the rioting. Governor Brough, symbolic of most of the white male controlled South, blamed the riots on the infiltration of the Communist menace from the North, which preyed upon the susceptible African American population (falling back on the pervasive paternalistic attitudes regarding blacks).^(7) Later in the 1920s, industrial unionization fears reached the South when in Alabama the predominantly black Share Croppers' Union accepted the Moscow Congress of the Communist International's ideal of "self-determination of the black belt." Preparation for revolutionary action under Communist leadership was adopted in 1930.^(8)
Race riots continued throughout the decade, and well into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, with one of the most haunting being that of the Tulsa Riots of 1921. The riots involved what was referred to as "Black Wall Street" within the Greenwood suburb of Tulsa. The district included 30 restaurants and 45 groceries and meat markets. The citizens clearly thrived within the auspices of self-determination, that of which both North and South feared because of its loose connection with Communism in America. In response to white militants within Tulsa, those of Greenwood who once served in World War I began training to protect themselves and the community against possible violence. May 30, 1921, a white mob entered the district because a white woman allegedly was whistled at or spoken to in a sexual manner, and the teen was taken to jail. The protection of white female virtue provided a reason to attack Greenwood, but the real, underlying reasoning was to eradicate a prosperous black neighborhood. A mob of armed white and black citizens formed outside the jail, where a shot was fired and fierce violence ensued.^(9) The attack on the Greenwood district resembled a bomb zone. Buildings were completely leveled.^(10)
^(1)Woods, Jeff, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 12.
^(2)Woods, 12.
^(3)Woods, 16.
^(4)Woods, 16.
^(5)https://www.macfound.org/press/grantee-stories/1919-race-riots-still-shape-chicago/
^(6)Woods, 17.
^(7)Woods, 17-18.
^(8)Woods, 19.
^(9)https://www.pbs.org/wnet/boss/video/greenwood-and-tulsa-race-riots-tbkhcr/
^(10)Krehbiel, Randy, Tulsa 1921 Reporting a Massacre, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), 132-133.