During War World I, there were still racial violence going on in the United States. Foner gives examples of several racial violence in his book. Black people got killed or lynched unfairly not only in the North, but also in the South. According to Foner said, for example,  in Chicago in 1919, a black teenager got drowned by white bathers just because he accidentally crossed the unofficial dividing line between black and white beaches on Lake Michigan. During the year of 1919 in Chicago, “more than 250 persons died in riots in the urban North”.