Thread by @MateuBird

The Spanish Flu pandemic passed through three waves from spring 1918 to early summer 1919. Comparisons have been made between it and #Covid19. But few know what happened in the United States as the pandemic faded in early-to-mid 1919. #historyrhymes 1/12

Let’s set the stage. In 1915, one year after the start of World War I, D.W. Griffith released Birth of a Nation, which tells the story of how southern whites founded the Ku Klux Klan and took their country back after the Civil War. #historyrhymes 2/12

One of the triumphant last scenes depicts the mounted Klansmen in pitched battle successfully preventing blacks from voting. #historyrhymes at the 3-hour mark. (Notice the white actors in blackface) bit.ly/3eNdHgL 3/12

Inspired by the film, a group of white men in Georgia marched at the end of the same year to the top of Stone Mountain and founded the second Klan #historyrhymes - cue #ThisIsAmerica by Stone Mountain native Childish Gambino/Donald Glover bit.ly/2TY5oql 4/12

During WWI, the Great Migration started. Northern cities recruited rural blacks to work in their factories. The Blues & Jazz went to Chicago & New York – and later West. Absorb Jacob Lawrence’s visual narrative. History also reverberates bit.ly/3ez96hW 5/12

WWI ends in 1918, just as the Spanish Flu emerged. Nobody knows for sure where. European trenches? Kansas? But historians agree, not Spain. (A Black Legend reprise. But that’s a different history of European racism bit.ly/3eBrMgU) #historyrhymes 6/12

The ending war & spreading pandemic spurred an economic downturn. White & black soldiers returned. Blacks (and immigrants) had “white” jobs, and there were less jobs to be had. Competition fueled conflict. See the late Janet Abu-Lughod amzn.to/36KPZyA #historyrhymes 7/12

The poor are usually the most affected during epidemics, but the opposite happened for blacks in the US. We don’t know why bit.ly/2zDcQAk Yet with Jim Crow, the healthier blacks couldn’t take certain jobs bit.ly/2XJCj32 History doesn't always rhyme 8/12

Stage set. In April 1919 in South Georgia, a white mob attacked black property. Two white officers and four blacks died. The “Red Summer” had begun. // In February, 2020 in South Georgia, Ahmaud Aubrey was chased and shot while jogging #historyrhymes nyti.ms/2XkkPv5 9/12

In May 1919 in Charleston, SC, a black man supposedly pushed a white Navy officer off the sidewalk. A riot started. // In June 2015, a 21-year-old white man walks into a black church in Charleston and kills 9. In #ThisIsAmercia #historyrhymes at 1:40 bit.ly/2TY5oql 10/12

The violence spread. “The Red Summer refers to the race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities in the United States during the summer and early autumn of 1919.” Chicago, the biggest home of black & foreign migrants, was the worst, map at bit.ly/3eDPb18 11/12

Yesterday’s @nytimes “The demonstrations have spread to at least three dozen cities across the country.” Minneapolis, with a legacy of black migration and 1 in 10 foreign migrants, has been the worst. If history rhymes, what awaits the US in the summer of 2020? 12/12