1919
Samuel Gompers of the America Federation of Labor delivers an address to the Federation's annual conference in Atlantic City, where he vows to remove "every class and race distinction" from the movement and pledges himself to the total abolition of all discrimination in union membership. Gompers professes to see a new era in the struggle for black rights "as well as an advance in the history of political and economic liberty in
America." However, Gompers does not support antidiscrimination resolutions at the AFL conventions of 1921 and 1924.
1919
Membership of the NAACP approaches 100,000 despite attempts in some areas, such as Texas, to make it illegal. During the second half of the year, there are 75 lynchings and 27 race riots, the most severe are in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Charles Evans Hughes, leading jurist and defeated Presidential candidate, supports the NAACP efforts to have lynching outlawed.
1919
The West Virginia State Supreme Court rules blacks should be admitted to juries.
1919
W. E. B. DuBois organizes the first Pan-African Congress at the Grand Hotel in Paris. DuBois says. "The Natives of Africa must have the right to participate in the government as fast as their development permits." Jazz and ragtime sweep the French capital. A representative of the Casino de Paris comes to New York to assemble an orchestra of 50 blacks.
1919
Edward R. Stettinius Sr. resigns from government service and
rejoins J.P. Morgan and Company as a full partner, He remains in Europe and
continues to coordinate massive purchases. Stettinius and Henry P. Davison,
another Morgan partner in New York, establish the Foreign Commerce Corporation
to engage in financing trade to rebuild Europe after the war.
1919
Lanz von Liebenfels, now living in Budapest, is almost
executed on Easter Sunday by a Communist firing-squad during the Hungarian
revolution. It seems significant that his linking of antisemitism and
anti-Bolshevism date from this period. (Roots)
1919
Jean Monnet, an acquaintance of Colonel Edward Mandell House, is appointed as Deputy Secretary of the new League of Nations. After WWII Monnet will become known as the "Father of Europe."
1919
French and British scientists seek to exclude German scientists
from international meetings. Albert Einstein -- a Jew traveling with a Swiss
passport -- remains an acceptable German envoy. His political views as a
pacifist and a Zionist pitted him against conservatives in Germany, who had
branded him a traitor and a defeatist. The public success accorded his theories
of relativity evoked savage attacks during the 1920s by anti-Semitic physicists
such as Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard.
1919
General Edmund Allenby is promoted to field marshal and is made
a peer. He takes the title of Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe.
Megiddo is the old battlefield of Armageddon in Palestine. (See September 19,
1918)
1919
Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist and patriot, becomes the
first Premier of Poland.
1919
Polish armed forces capture much of Lithuania and the
Ukraine. Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski aims to establish a
Polish-Lithuanian-Belorussian federation allied with an independent Ukraine. It
will soon lead to the Polish-Soviet War of April-October 1920.
1919
Violent antisemitic attacks in Hungary kill 300 Jews.
1919
Lady Astor, an American originally named Nancy Witcher
Langhorne, wins her husband's seat and becomes the first woman member of the
British House of Commons. She will continue to serve until 1945.
1919
The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes a
national prohibition on the sale and possession of alcoholic beverages.
1919
Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Petrograd party organization, is
appointed head of the Communist International (Comintern).
1919
British troops massacre demonstrators at Amritsar in India.
1919
Johannes Baum's New Thought publishing house moves to
Pfullingen. (Spirits in Rebellion; Roots)
1919
Dietrich Eckart begins publishing the nationalist weekly "Auf
Gut Deutsch," which attacks the Versaille treaty, Jewish war
profiteers, Bolshevism, and Social Democracy. Among its earliest contributors
are Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg. (Wistrich I)
1919
English aviators Alcock and Brown make the first nonstop
transatlantic flight.
1919
The majority of Allied troops leave Russia. Several factors
force them to leave: soldiers that refuse to fight against Soviet Russia and
demand to be sent home, a mutiny in the French Black Sea squadron, the growing
might of the Red Army, and the failure to achieve a quick victory. Yet another
factor is the "Hands Off Soviet Russia" movement in the West.
(Polyakov)
1919
Russian-American anarchist Emma Goldman is deported to the
Soviet Union.
1919 January 1919 January-February Hitler returns to Munich from Traunstein and
is again quartered in the List Regiment barracks.
1919 January 1
Karl Maria Wiligut (Weisthor) is discharged with the rank of colonel from the Austrian army, after serving almost 40 years. (Roots)
1919 January 5
The German Worker's Party (DAP) party is formally founded in Munich at the Furstenfelder Hof tavern by Anton Drexler and others. Drexler's constitution is accepted by 24 men, mostly from the locomotive works where Drexler is employed, and he elected chairman. Drexler is also an active
member of the Thule Society (Germanenorden). (Drexler, 12 March, 1935; Michael Lotter, 19 October, 1935; Roots)
1919 January 6
Theodore Roosevelt dies at Sagamore Hill, his Oyster Bay, N.Y., home.
