LONGVIEW RACE RIOT OF 1919 LONGVIEW RACE RIOT OF 1919. The
Longview Race Riot occurred during the Red Summer, as May to
October of 1919 has been called. It was the second of twenty-
five major racial conflicts that occurred throughout the United
States during these months. In 1919 Longview, a rural cotton and
lumbering community in Northeast Texas, had a population of
5,700; 31 percent were black. Racial tension was especially high
immediately before the riot because two locally prominent black
leaders, Samuel L. Jones and Dr. Calvin P. Davis, had urged
black farmers to avoid local white cotton brokers and sell
directly to buyers in Galveston. Then an article in the July 10
issue of the Chicago Defender, a sensationalistic nationwide
black newspaper, described the death of a young black man,
Lemuel Walters, in Longview. The article reported that Walters
and an unnamed white woman from Kilgore, Texas, were in love and
quoted her as saying they would have married if they had lived
in the North. Walters, accordin