While conducting research for another potential project, Jesse J. Holland, Washington-based race and ethnicity reporter, read about the upcoming anniversary of the “Red Summer” of 1919 and noticed a startling fact: Few people seemed to know that more than 200 African Americans died at the hands of white rioters across the country 100 years ago.
The series of riots – a stream of violence that stretched from February to October that year – eluded history books and was largely off everyone’s radar.
Holland presented the information to the larger team, and the project took flight. With members of the AP’s beat team strategically scattered across the U.S., the project was an opportunity to leverage AP resources and capitalize on all formats.
The team looked at some the cities where the damage was so deep it left an imprint for many generations. Elaine, Arkansas, a small town nestled in the Mississippi Delta, never recovered and was in the throes of a dispute about the placement of its memorial. The Central desk dispatched Chicago video journalist Noreen Nasir, who challenged herself by not only producing the video and photo content but also writing a powerful text story from Elaine. She also took on a story about the effect that Chicago’s riot had on that city, which remains segregated and hasn’t shaken the cloud of mistrust that hangs over the police department. And in Madison, Wisconsin, Nasir tracked down 107-year-old Juanita Mitchell who shared her memories of the Chicago violence on camera.
Meanwhile, Albuquerque, New Mexico-based reporter Russell Contreras found a little-known story that served as a precursor to Red Summer: the slaughter of 5,000 Mexican Americans from 1910 to 1920 near the Texas-Mexico border. Contreras worked with AP’s research team to locate a descendant of survivors of the 1918 massacre. He teamed up with El Paso staffer Cedar Attanasio, who shot photos and video to tell Arlinda Valencia’s story. Then editors coordinated with Boston video journalist Rodrique Ngowi, who interviewed Monica Muñoz Martinez, the author of “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas,” and an American studies professor at Brown University.
Armed National Guard troops stand among African American men during race riots in Chicago in 1919, the year of the “Red Summer” race riots that spread across the United States. The terror of those days still reverberates in Chicago, a city that continues to grapple with segregation, housing discrimination and deep tension between residents and police.
Chicago History Museum / Jun Fujita Collection via AP
Juanita Mitchell, 107, interviewed in Madison, Wis., June 10, 2019, recalls what it was like to move to Chicago from Louisiana in July of 1919 in the midst of the race riots. Mitchell has trouble remembering some things from her childhood, but the memories of the “Red Summer” remain clear. “I could hear my uncle saying, ‘Here they come.’ And that meant the white folks were coming down the street,” she said.
AP Photo / Noreen Nasir
A mob runs with bricks during the 1919 “Red Summer” race riots in Chicago.
Chicago History Museum / Jun Fujita Collection via AP
A crowd gathers at a house that was vandalized and looted during the 1919 race riots in Chicago. “Red Summer,” as the summer of 1919 came to be known, saw white-on-black violence in big cities like Washington and Chicago and small towns like Elaine, Ark., and Bisbee, Ariz.
Chicago History Museum / Jun Fujita Collection via AP
Arlinda Valencia poses at her home in El Paso, Texas, April 30, 2019, with a portrait of her great-grandfather Longino Flores, who was murdered at the age of 44 by Texas Rangers and U.S. Army soldiers in the Porvenir Massacre of 1918. As the U.S. prepares to remember the 100th anniversary of the “Red Summer” of 1919, some historians and Latino activists say now also is the time to acknowledge the terror experienced by Mexican Americans right before that brutal year.
AP Photo / Cedar Attanasio
Brown University American Studies professor Monica Muñoz Martinez is interviewed at her home in Boston, July 18, 2019, in an image from video. As the U.S. prepares to remember the 100th anniversary of “Red Summer,” historians say the U.S. also must come to terms with the violence experienced by Mexican Americans. Martinez, author of “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas” said families often kept stories of such violence from their children out of fear because the perpetrators and their offspring remained in law enforcement or elected office. But, “Now there's a new generation that's saying, ‘...We need a public reckoning.’”
AP Photo / Rodrique Ngowi
A mound in a field in Wabash, Ark., shown April 13, 2018, is believed by some to be a mass grave of victims of the 1919 massacre in Elaine, Ark. Elaine was the site of one of the largest racial mass killings in U.S. history.
Albert Cesare / Montgomery Advertiser via AP
At a site across from the Phillips County courthouse in Helena, Ark., June 15, 2019, a man works near a monument under construction to honor victims of the 1919 Elaine Massacre. The massacre of African Americans has been largely unrecognized for decades, but some say that will change when the memorial is unveiled in September. It is being chaired by some descendants of the massacre’s perpetrators and victims.
AP Photo / Noreen Nasir
James White, director of the Elaine Legacy Center and an Elaine, Ark., native, sits on a stoop of an abandoned building on Main Street, June 14, 2019. The Legacy Center hopes to turn the building into a museum. White’s grandmother told him about black residents hiding in swamps to escape the violence during the “Red Summer” massacre in 1919.
AP Photo / Noreen Nasir
Residents participate in an evangelical tent revival in a large field in Elaine, Ark. The effects of the violence in Elaine during the “Red Summer” of 1919 and its aftermath endure today. Elaine is still highly segregated: White residents live predominantly on the south side and black residents on the north side.
AP Photo / Noreen Nasir
The series ultimately included four text stories, some hard-to-find historical photos, freshly shot videos and a map to show the bloodshed. All content was displayed on a hub on APNews.com.
The AP was largely alone in this coverage, with several national outlets using the content, including NPR, CNN, PBS and USA Today. The initial tweet was AP’s top for the day, with 3,952 clicks and 2,236 retweets. Engagement by readers and viewers was strong throughout, and the project received a nod from Ellen McGirt in Fortune’s “raceAhead” newsletter.
For taking a little-known event and turning it into a dynamic all-formats project with powerful historic and present-day context that no other news outlet could match, Attanasio, Contreras, Holland, Nasir and Ngowi win this week’s Best of the States award.