May 1, 1919. A Red May Day

May 1, May Day, has long been associated with the far left as its the International Workers Holiday.  In 1919, with Communism on the rise everywhere, May 1 was notably Red everywhere.

The evening Casper newspaper  noting the riots in Cleveland as well as the anarchist bombing campaign.  This paper also discussed the acquisition of property with a future eye towards social services.  Costa Rica and Mexico were trying to get into the League of Nations, the paper also noted, but weren't admitted due to political instability.

In the United States, the Communist Party USA was founded, rapidly gaining membership (while always remaining a minor political party) in the wake of the decline of the Socialist Party in the United States, which had come under the eyes of the law for its opposition to World War One. 

The CPUSA would have its glory years, if they could be called that, in the 1920s and the 1930s, during which it not only was a serious, if minor, political party, but during which it was also an organ for espionage for the Soviet Union.  It never had more than 80,000 members at its peak.  It's role as an arm of the efforts of the NKVD were already known, if not fully appreciated, by some who tried to bring it to the government's attention by the 1930s, and indeed a precursor to what later became known as the McCarthy Hearings actually occurred in the late 1930s and focused on some of the same people who would be examined later, but it was not until the end of World War Two when the full horrors of Communism in Russia were revealed that the CPUSA really started to decline to the trivial, where it remains today.

In Cleveland riots occurred on this day, springing from a Socialist march that was supported by Communist and Anarchist.  The imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs was the spark that ignited that flame.  There were about two deaths as the result of the riot, and about forty injuries.

In Winnepeg construction workers went on strike.  It would soon expanded to be a general strike.

In Bavaria, German forces, supported by Freikorps, breached the Communist defenses in Munich bringing the Bavarian Soviet Republic to an end.

Cheyenne was having an air show on this day in 1919.

In the U.S. the news was also still breaking about the anarchist bombing campaign that had been started but detected.  The campaign would revive later.  It wasn't connected with any other radical group, although it likely had the appearance of that to the general public at the time.

All of this would contribute to making the summer of 1919 the "Red Summer", as it was termed by James Weldon Johnson.  It would also fuel an ongoing "Red Scare" that had commenced during World War One.  With the summer beginning the way that it was, that the scare would occur was pretty predictable.  And in fact, the far left of 1919 was not only radical, but seeing a fair amount of global success.  It's chances of success in the United States were frankly slim and always would be, but the combination of the news produced a predictable reaction.