In the past year, film-maker Bayeté Ross Smith has traveled across the country, trying to find the exact locations where Black people were brutally attacked and killed a century ago. He wanted to make films that showed his viewers that they are living on top of a history of racial violence that was rarely taught or discussed.
He started by studying pictures of white mobs climbing buildings, destroying neighborhoods and killing Black people – all part of a white backlash to the progress Black Americans made after the first world war. Incidents of racial terror were so numerous in the summer of 1919 that it was given a name: Red Summer.
The images look like they’re from another era. But when Smith saw pictures of the Capitol insurrection in January 2021, he couldn’t help but notice the parallels between those images and the ones he was studying.
“The juxtaposition was almost uncanny,” he said. “To see that happen in this day and age is just a reminder of how we’re not that far from the violence and the motivations for the violence that happened 100 years ago.”
Over the past year, Smith has collaborated with the Guardian to create 360 immersive videos that overlay photos from the race massacres on top of modern day footage. Smith traveled to seven cities that experienced racial violence a century ago: Tulsa, Oklahoma; Elaine, Arkansas; Omaha, Nebraska; East St Louis, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Washington DC; and Chicago, Illinois.
As he concludes the project, we asked him about his experience retracing the steps of this oft forgotten history and what he learned.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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When did you first hear about the racial violence against Black Americans after the first world war?
I grew up in a pretty politically and historically aware family, and I attended a historically Black college. But I did not know about these massacres until I was much older.
It was some time in college that I heard about Tulsa and the Chicago massacre of 1919. But I had not heard of a lot of these other incidents. I did not learn about it in high school or middle school. And then I didn’t hear about the Elaine massacre until I was in my mid-30s, and that’s when I learned about the Red Summer as well. I didn’t hear about East St Louis and Houston until my late 30s.
Why did you want to create 360 immersive videos to tell these stories?
These events are often not discussed, are often not taught and, to a large extent, they’ve been rendered invisible for more than 100 years.
I wanted to create the feeling of standing on a site and seeing these streets that, if you live in that area, you’ve walked or driven by many times – and help draw a direct connection that we’re standing and living on top of very troubling, challenging history that has been intentionally avoided, and removed from the larger historical narrative about the United States of America.
What was it like to stare at these black and white photos of horrific events that happened 100 years ago, and then go back to that exact location of the incident?
It was actually pretty revelatory – maybe that’s a strong word. But it was really profound to be at these sites after studying all this and to see them as real places and see real people who live there now, on top of this grand history, that’s pretty horrific.
We tried to match the shots as closely as possible to the photos. So I’m really looking at these scenes and looking at where everything would have been. You can see how different these places are now, but also how much the same they are. In Arkansas, for example, the Phillips county courthouse is still that same building. All the officers and folks there were showing me that if you look right here, you can still see there’s still some buck shots from 1919.
Being in these places where you knew there was this level of intensity and violence, it really was a reminder of what human beings can be capable of for really very foolish reasons. For example, in Omaha, they destroyed the courthouse and destroyed downtown to kill one guy who was already arrested. He’s already arrested! He was going to probably stand trial. The charges were pretty flimsy to begin with, but, yeah.
Some of these towns were really tiny rural towns. What was their reaction to a New York film-maker coming in and wanting to tell that story? Did the locals know about the racial violence that you were there to tell a story about?
Me and Jimmie Briggs, who did a lot of the writing for the series, were in Elaine for about a week. After the first couple of days, everyone knew who we were. So we’d be walking around, filming and shooting and doing some research. And they were like, “It’s the guys from New York!”
A lot of times in these places, the Black people knew about the incidents, particularly if they were older. And a lot of times, the white people didn’t know. But most people who aren’t Black weren’t that aware of those events, with the exception of Omaha. And I think because Omaha was so well documented and one of the major newspapers in Omaha published a front page story about what happened.
In the middle of this project, the Capitol insurrection happened on 6 January, and we saw supporters of Donald Trump breaking into the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn the election results. What were your thoughts when you saw what was happening?
I immediately looked at the images, and I saw a parallel with the Omaha race riot in 1919. The juxtaposition was almost uncanny – at the Capitol, scaling walls to get into buildings and forcing their way in, while law enforcement and security was trying to keep them out. And law enforcement was just overwhelmed by these mass numbers of people. And you see the exact same thing in 1919 Omaha. You see people climbing the side of the courthouse, getting in. They’re carrying cans of gasoline, setting fires to different rooms.
To see that happen in this day and age is just a reminder of how we’re not that far from the violence and the motivations for the violence that happened 100 years ago, which have a lot to do with identity and race issues related to white supremacy. It’s the idea of who gets to have access to the resources and the social systems that allow them to build a better life for themselves in the United States.
One of the theses of your project was that the legal system did not – and could not – protect Black Americans because racism was codified into our laws. That’s a core tenet of critical race theory, which not only examines how racism operates in society at large, but also how it’s baked directly into US laws.
In the past year, conservatives have attacked the teaching of critical race theory in schools. So what would you say to someone who opposes the teaching of critical race theory?
I would ask them why they think understanding the truth about our country and our society is not a good thing for us to understand. It’s pretty clear that there’s a substantial history of racial bias, racial bigotry, hate and violence. It’s actually pretty extraordinary that people from so many different racial backgrounds were still able to come here and be successful, in spite of the racism and white supremacy.
I would ask them why they don’t think that learning an accurate truth about our past and studying how we have functioned around race is something that isn’t useful. It seems like it puts us in a position to better understand how we got to where we are as a society – the good things and the bad things.
I would say if we want to love our country, then we have to love it like adults. We can’t love it like children and only look at things that make us comfortable and not address the things that make us uncomfortable. Racism and anti-Blackness has always held this country back from being as great as it possibly could be. Not learning about it and understanding it does everyone a disservice, even white people – and one could argue, especially white people.
A friend of mine said you see a prime example of how racism is self defeating when you look at the opioid crisis. If we had been willing to look at addiction as a public health issue early on when it was more Black people and brown people facing this challenge – if we had looked at it as a public health issue and cared about those groups of people – we would already have the infrastructure in place to respond to the opioid crisis. We’re doing all of us a disservice.
