The Heat of a Red Summer: Race Mixing, Race Rioting in 1919 Knoxville Paperback

In 1919, the city of Knoxville, Tennessee exploded in a firestorm of racial hatred and violence when a black man was accused of murdering a white woman.

Knoxville prided itself as a liberal, harmonious community that had sympathized with the North during the Civil War. There had never been a lynching and the black citizens were encouraged to vote. Yet, despite this outward amiability, both blacks and whites were acutely aware of the invisible divide that kept them separate.

When one man, fueled by passion, dared to cross that line, he became the catalyst that ignited the ever-present, seething unease into an ugly flame of hatred.

It was commonly known that Maurice Hayes, the handsome light-skinned black owner of a popular nightclub, was the illegitimate son of the Knoxville’s white mayor. This circumstance, coupled with his involvement with several white women, made him an easy target for the latent racial hostility that fermented beneath the city’s sleepy facade. When a white woman was found brutally murdered — despite a glaring lack of evidence against him — Hayes was the only suspect.

In the aftermath of the crime, an outraged white community erupted, revealing the ugly hypocrisy and thinly veiled hatred that simmered so close to the surface.

The Heat of a Red Summer is a story rich in human drama, crackling suspense and provocative social insights. Robert J. Booker vividly documents the racially charged atmosphere of a city gone mad in a true crime chronicle that remains chillingly relevant today.