(Image still from YouTube video of poet Claude McKay reciting “If We Must Die”) The summer of 2015  marks the 96th anniversary of the publication of Harlem Renaissance poet Claude  McKay’s masterful poem, “If We Must Die.” This essay is presented in  commemoration of that literary milestone and in remembrance of the Red Summer  of 1919 that inspired it. There were many good reasons to believe America had entered––or at least was about to enter––a golden era of post-racialism following the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Among them was the election of the country’s first African-American president itself, an increasingly diverse American population, and a sociopolitical landscape made more democratic (in appearance at least) by the various influences of technological innovation. Unfortunately, none of those good noble reasons were able to withstand the onslaught of reality as the number of hate   groups in the country began to increase almost immediately, even while