On this night during the Red Summer of 1919, rumors spread that police have arrested a black man for assaulting a white woman. Hundreds of white sailors, soldiers, and Marines armed with clubs and lead pipes — many just home from World War I — pour into black neighborhoods, beating people in the street while police stand by.

The next day, the Washington Post runs a front-page bulletin urging "every available service man" to mass downtown for a "clean-up" that will make the previous nights' violence "pale into insignificance."

Black residents — many veterans themselves, and armed — defend their besieged neighborhood. 2,000 federal troops are deployed. At the end of four days, at least 15 people are dead; white fatalities outnumber black fatalities.

Nobody is meaningfully prosecuted.