On May 29, 1919, an hours-long brawl between Black and white Navy sailors erupted at the Hotel Bristol at 92 Bank Street. With five thousand people surrounding the hotel, the New London police and fire departments were unable to control the crowd without military assistance. Between fifteen and twenty sailors were arrested and dozens of Black sailors severely beaten. The race riot at the Hotel Bristol was one of two in New London that year and one of at least sixteen major riots across the country. Targets of racial violence were often Black servicemen who refused to accept second-class citizenship after serving in World War I. Labor tensions in the Northeast and Midwest during the Great Migration and the stress of a global flu pandemic contributed to the unrest. NAACP field secretary James Weldon Johnson coined the term "Red Summer" to describe the bloody racial violence of 1919.