1919 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

Race riots erupt in 26 U.S. cities throughout the year, and there are 83 mob lynchings in the South, up from 64 last year, as boll-weevil damage to the cotton crop motivates thousands of unemployed blacks to head North and the revived Ku Klux Klan intensifies its activities. Washington, D.C., has riots July 19 as white soldiers and sailors attack black ghetto sections and a 19-year-old white marine private is shot dead by Theodore Micajah Walker, 25. Walker has gone out looking for the children of friends who have worried about them being away from home in the riot-torn city. A mob has chased him, someone has yelled, "Kill the nigger," someone has hit him with an iron pipe, and Walker has pulled out a revolver that he has carried after being attcked earlier in the summer (an all-white jury convicts Walker of murder). But while Knoxville, Longview (Texas), and Philips County in Arkansas have riots the worst ones in the north are at Omaha and Chicago. Chicago's race riot begins July 27 with the death of a black youth who has been swimming at a Lake Michigan beach strayed into an area tacitly reserved for whites, and is stoned by white beachgoers to the point where he drowns. Police refuse to make any arrests, rumors of various kinds sweep the city, violence breaks out between gangs and mobs of both races in the city's Black Belt, the state militia is called out July 30, but the riot continues for 13 days until law and order can be restored; 15 whites and 23 blacks are left dead, 537 injured, many of them seriously, and 1,000 blacks are left homeless. President Wilson blames the "white race" as the "aggressor" in both the Chicago and Washington riots.

A race riot at Elaine, Arkansas, September 30 leaves as many as 200 dead. How the trouble began will remain in dispute, but whites will claim that a black sharecropper organized a union and incited its members to seize land and kill whites, whereas blacks will claim that they were trying to get their fair share of proceeds from cotton sales and formed a union to obtain an accurate account of how much they were owed by landowners; a white sheriff's deputy is shot dead at a church near the Mississippi Delta town, white mobs from Arkansas and Mississippi take revenge on blacks, four black men are killed while in custody, and Gov. Charles Brough arrives with federal troops to restore order.

The first Feminist Congress opens at New York March 1 with a statement by Crystal Eastman, who reminds her audience that four-fifths of the women in America are "still denied the elementary political right of voting."

A new Belgian electoral law adopted May 9 gives the franchise to certain classes of women.

France's Chamber of Deputies adopts a bill May 9 granting women the right to vote in elections for members of communal and departmental assemblies. Former prime minister Aristide Briand tells reporters, "It is inadmissible that after this war the privileges of women shall be inferior to those of men." French women vote for the first time in legislative elections held November 30, but they will not vote on the same basis as men until 1944.

Sweden's parliament grants suffrage to women May 28, but they will not vote on the same basis as men until 1921.

Dutch women gain the right to vote on the same basis as men.

The Canadian province of New Brunswick grants woman suffrage (see Quebec, 1940; Prince Edward Island, 1942).

The U.S. Senate votes 56 to 25 June 4 to submit a woman suffrage amendment to the states for ratification (see 1918); a "lame duck" House of Representatives has failed by one vote February 16 to pass a woman suffrage bill (see 1920).

Italy's lower house of Parliament votes 174 to 55 September 9 to grant women the right to vote on a limited basis (see 1912; 1928).

Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg grants woman suffrage October 25.

Britain's Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act gives women access to the professions.

Japanese feminist Raicho Hiratsuka of 1911 Bluestocking fame joins with Fusae Ichikawa, 26, to start the organization New Women (Atarashi Onna) with the aim of amending a law that forbids women from listening or responding to political speeches. Daughter of a poor farmer, Ichikawa has managed to get through high school and attend teachers college at a time when only 40 percent of girls went even to elementary school. She taught elementary school and then became a reporter for a newspaper in Aichi Prefecture before coming to Tokyo. Atarashi Onna becomes an obscene term among Japanese men, who throw stones at Raichi Hiratsuka's house (see 1920).

A Chinese crusade against foot binding begins in December (see Xiang Jianyu, 1916).