A J. C. Leyendecker illustration was on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post this day in 1919, with a veteran recounting his service to two youngsters.
It's a bit odd to see an illustration of this type now, although they were common in the World War One and World War Two time frame. The celebration of military service still occurs, but it tends to occur in movie form much more now, as opposed to illustrations, which was very common then.
Service went on, of course, for troops on occupation duty in Germany.
Germany itself declared a national week of mourning over the terms of the proposed treaty to officially end World War One. The Germans were shocked by the terms. Even some of the press in the United States was a bit shocked for that matter, and acknowledged the terms as severe.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a horrible race riot occurred when sailors from the Charleston Navy Yard went on a rampage directed against blacks in the town. The initial cause was that five sailors felt that they'd been cheated by a single black man, which developed to an all out assault by sailors, and then some white residents, of the town against blacks. The Navy was forced to send in Marines and blue jacket Sailors to put down the riot, which involved over 1,000 sailors and some white civilians. While there were some criminal charges that were filed shortly after the event, they came to nothing as the event had so overwhelmed the police that they were unable to treat the event as a conventional criminal one in their effort to address it.
The Charleston riot was the first of a series of race riots across the United States that year, contributing to the summer of 1919 being called the Red Summer. The country was slipping into a recession which was in turn causing racial tension to rise.
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