THE CHICAGO RACE RIOT OF 1919
A Documentary Source Problem
Even in comparison with the social turbulence of the early 1930s, or the late 1960s, the year
1919 still ranks as one of the most violent, ferocious, and anxiety-ridden years of TwentiethCentury America.
World War I had just ended the previous November (1918), and in response to public demand,
the government rapidly demobilized 4,700,000 soldiers and sailors, of which approximately
400,000 were blacks.
After World War I began in Europe in the summer of 1914, a shortage of factory workers in
American industry rapidly appeared as the allies (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy) began
purchasing huge volumes of goods and munitions from American suppliers. And, after the
United States itself joined the war in 1917, the economy was stressed by two interlocking
developments: on the one hand, demands for resources from the U.S. military, and its allies,
grew exponentially; at the same time, however, the labor force necessary to produce those
resources declined, as the government began drafting a large segment of the work force young men - into the armed forces.
The demand for workers (primarily in the industrial North) produced a massive migration of
southerners, blacks and whites, to northern cities, which led to rapid social changes in a
relatively short period of time (the war lasted just 19 months after the U.S. joined it).
During the war, northern employers sent agents to the South - and saturated the region with
ads, leaflets, flyers, and pamphlets - to entice workers to come north for lucrative work in
manufacturing.
Industrial businesses paid some of the best wages in the country, and for those without family
connections, or an education, in early Twentieth-Century America, a manufacturing job could
be the ticket to modest prosperity.
Such work, however, was frequently closed to black Americans. The critical labor shortage of
the war years put a temporary end to that infamous practice. Consequently, some of the most
widely read newspapers in the nation’s black community - such as the Chicago Defender urged blacks to move North, where they could get higher wages for their labor and live in an
environment where racial policies were less oppressive.
The unions that struggled to organize industrial workingmen, to give them greater negotiating
leverage with employers, generally excluded blacks from their membership - white
workingmen, even in the North, usually resisted racial equality in the workplace, often
ferociously. And employers - who well-understood white working men’s racial prejudices frequently used blacks as strikebreakers to break unions, which further embittered white
workingmen against their employers, and blacks, alike, and produced frequent violent incidents
throughout the late 19th Century and well into the 20th.
As large numbers of white veterans mustered out of military service in 1919, they found that
competition for employment in many northern cities was more intense than before the war,
largely because of the migration from the South to the North during the war (whites as well as
blacks), and that made many of those veterans angry. For many northern whites, economic
competition from blacks for well-paying manufacturing jobs came as a shocking and bitter
surprise, which many of them deeply resented – many whites believed that there was
something fundamentally wrong with a society in which blacks could compete with whites for
the same jobs. Of course, blacks considered such an environment as a basic minimum
requirement for any society that claimed to be based on fair, just treatment of individuals.
In addition to the racial tension that became more pronounced during and after the war,
hostility between employers and employees had also become more common by 1919. During
World War I, the federal government, for the first time, heavily regulated the economy,
particularly relationships between employers and employees; it had done so to reduce the kind
of labor/capital conflict that before the war had frequently led to strikes and workplace violence,
which, of course, by their nature, reduce production. The federal government regulated the
workplace, not to make it more just, but to keep production levels as high as possible (by
suppressing labor conflicts).
When the war ended, employers looked forward to emancipation from government regulation,
while, at the same time, many working people hoped to retain some of the gains they had
made during the war – such as collective bargaining agreements and de facto recognition of
unions by employers. Working people also believed, generally, that they had disproportionately
borne many of the economic burdens and sacrifices of the war, compared to their employers.
Labor regulation and high wartime (and postwar) inflation imposed severe hardships upon
working people with very limited resources; many believed that they were entitled to some
wage increases after the war, to compensate them for wartime sacrifices.
But union leaders expected that employers would move quickly to abolish collective bargaining
agreements and de facto recognition of union organization that government had forced on
them – once the root cause of government regulation (the war) was eased. In this volatile
atmosphere of mutually incompatible objectives – and mistrust - there were over 3,600 strikes
across the country in 1919, involving more than 4 million workers.
Moreover, in 1917 and 1918, a number of anti-capitalist socialist revolutions broke out, first in
Russia, and then others in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and a number of other European
nations. In March 1919, delegates to the Third Communist International (a world-wide
convention of socialists and communists, held in Moscow) declared that Communists around
the globe would launch a world-wide proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism in a
cataclysm of violence, and replace it with socialism.
When a number of bombs targeted U.S. government officials in May 1919, many politicians
and leading figures, particularly in the American business community, were unalterably
convinced that a homegrown “Bolshevik” revolution was imminent, and they were determined
to stamp it out, by whatever means necessary. By the summer of 1919, a form of mass
hysterical paranoia spread rapidly across the country - historians label it, the "Red Scare."
In this episode, US, state, and local governments roughed-up, deported, imprisoned and
generally otherwise harassed radicals for a variety of real and imagined threats against the
public welfare and safety. In addition to government assaults on radicals, vigilante attacks on
suspected radicals by private citizens and groups (often encouraged or even organized by
businesses and local authorities) escalated throughout 1919.
This atmosphere of mutual antagonism and distrust between working people and employers
was particularly acute in Chicago. By late July of 1919, more than 250,000 workers were either
on strike, threatening to strike, or locked out by their employers in the city. 30,000 of these
individuals were union workers in the stockyards, whose leaders submitted wage and benefit
demands to the meat packers on July 26th, along with a threat to strike if their terms were not
met within 48 hours.
Their employers, however, were in no mood for compromise. Businessmen, and many other
Americans, felt the country was at a pivotal moment in its history, a turning point that would
determine the destiny of the nation as a socialist or capitalist country.
Given the Communist revolution in Russia and the fear that communism was attempting to
spread revolution all over the world, many rather conservative Americans believed it was time
for a titanic national effort to smash radical anti-capitalist organizations and labor unions once
and for all, to ensure that restrictions on property owners’ rights to do with their businesses as
they saw fit were completely unacceptable in the United States. More than any previous period
in the country’s history, these Americans in 1919 were more likely to believe that working
people and the organizations that represented them were mortal enemies of “the American
way.”
In the context of these historical forces - inflation, labor unrest, hysterical paranoia, the
economic and social disruption that resulted from rapid military demobilization, racial tension
brought on by wartime social change - outbreaks of violence occurred in many communities
across the nation. In July, 1919, a major race riot broke out in Washington, D.C, and several
other smaller riots, and a sudden multitude of lynchings of suspected radicals (some of them,
black war veterans), made headlines across the country.
Competition for jobs in the summer of 1919 was particularly acute in Chicago. July 27, that
summer, was a particularly hot Sunday afternoon in Chicago. Many of the city's residents went
to improvised beaches along the shore of Lake Michigan for relief from the heat. These
beaches were racially segregated, not by law, but by common practice and social tradition.
Late in the afternoon of the 27th, Eugene Williams, one of a group of young black men playing
on a raft, floated across the vaguely defined line that separated white and black beach bathers
near 29th street. A few whites began throwing rocks at him from "their" beach; one object hit
him, and he quickly disappeared under the water. His companions attempted to rescue him, as
did a number other black males who had gathered at the edge of the white beach, but were
allegedly obstructed in their efforts by a group of white males. Williams was dead before
anyone could reach him.
Furthermore, a white police officer refused to arrest a white man whom many blacks believed
had thrown the fatal projectile that killed Williams.
This incident touched off a week of rioting and racial violence in Chicago that left 38 people
dead, 537 injured, and over 1,000 people "homeless and destitute."
The documents that follow recount some of the contemporary interpretations of the origins of
the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. But, more than that, they provide a window into the general
turmoil across the country during the "Red Summer” of 1919 as well as the racial antagonism
that plagued the Chicago, and the U.S., at that time.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT- PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION!!!!!
Your task in this assignment is simple to state: write a history of the origins of the
Chicago Race Riot of 1919.
Prepare for writing the paper by reading (and then rereading) the documents until you have a
knowledgeable command of them. You should also consult the textbook for insight into the
causes and consequences of the events in 1919.
In an essay of at least 5 typed pages, double spaced, 1" margins, write an interpretive account
of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, based on your analysis and interpretation of the documents
in this collection. USE THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT SET, THE INTRODUCTION TO THIS
DOCUMENT SET, AND THE TEXTBOOK FOR THE COURSE, AS SOURCES TO WRITE
YOUR ACCOUNT.
Since there are many more issues and facts in these documents than you can possibly include
in a 5 page paper, do not attempt to discuss all of them. Concentrate on writing a coherent
interpretation of the major events, supporting your conclusions with relevant facts and
examples from the documents.
Begin by reading through the documents several times. After you begin to get the feeling that
you have a good general command of the documents, consider how to reconstruct the major
forces and factors in a way that makes sense of the diversity of sources and in a way that
specifically identifies the most important elements. Above all, your paper should demonstrate a
clear understanding of the major origins of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.
Consider the documents in this packet as kind of puzzle. In the broadest sense, your task in
this paper assignment is to arrange the pieces of the puzzle so that they make sense - that is,
so that they help you explain WHAT happened, WHY it happened, WHO were the important
figures in this event, WHERE the events took places, and WHEN the most significant events
occurred. Above all, be sure to make the historical forces in this incident clear!
Your essay should include numerous examples and evidence drawn directly from documents
provided in this package.
ESSAYS MUST CONTAIN EVIDENCE DRAWN FROM THE DOCUMENTS,
THOUGHTFULLY COMPOSED AND ORGANIZED, IN ORDER TO SUCCESSFULLY
COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT!
In short, construct an account that makes the most sense to you based on the available
evidence.
Rules of Composition
Each essay should also possess an introductory paragraph, a body, and a conclusion.
The introduction should provide just that - an introduction to the topic you're going to examine.
A good introduction provides a thesis statement (a sentence or sentences that decisively state
an argument or position that you will develop and demonstrate in your essay) and a brief
statement of the main points you intend to develop in your essay.
The body should be composed of several paragraphs that support your thesis and main points
of your essay. Above all, the body provides the EVIDENCE that proves your thesis. More than
any other single criteria, your work will be judged on the quantity and quality of the evidence
you provide and your analysis of it. So you should devote most of your time to assembling and
intelligently examining evidence.
Good essays will provide numerous pieces of evidence from the documents to support the
argument. Poor essays will provide little or no evidence drawn from the documents.
For the purposes of the essays you will be writing, the term "evidence" includes examples
and major ideas drawn from the documents. Thus your essays should contain numerous
quotations drawn specifically from the documents.
The conclusion can be constructed in a variety of ways: it may be a brief summary of the main
points of your essay; it may also be a restatement of your thesis; but the best conclusion is one
that demonstrates the historical significance of the issue at hand and your analysis of it.
Papers will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
1. Organization, logic, coherence (that is, intro, thesis, body, conclusion, etc.).
2. Content (quantity and quality of evidence, analysis, command of subject matter).
3. Grammar, syntax, spelling.
FINALLY, YOUR ACCOUNT SHOULD BE AS FLAWLESSLY AND GRACEFULLY WRITTEN
AS YOU CAN MAKE IT!
A Warning on Sources
These documents should be the only source upon which you base your paper. Do not write a
paper based on sources other than those that are provided for you here! There are numerous
other accounts on Pullman available in the library and on the web. But they are based on other
- or additional evidence, and they would be more likely to confuse you than to help you in
working with this specific, limited set of documents. In any case, your grade on this assignment
will depend on how well you analyze and interpret the documents in this collection!
A Warning on Plagiarism
What is plagiarism? Plagiarism is literary thievery. It is the use of somebody else’s material
(as if it were your own) in a paper or an essay without giving credit to the author. The following
are examples of the criteria that will be used in this class to identify plagiarism:
Plagiarism is a serious offense (and I treat it seriously). It can lead to dismissal from the
college and severe long-term consequences for completing a college or university education in
the United States.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER BEFORE WRITING
How will you construct your history? It’s a tricky task, because you face the difficult challenge
of making sense of, and explaining, the very complex causes of this racial conflagration.
Therefore, to help you figure out the causes, consider the questions below while you’re
studying the documents.
1. How would you explain the background and causes of the striking events of the first postwar
year?
2. There were numerous causes of the riot. How would you weigh the significance of the
various causes? Is there one "central" cause more than the rest? Several of equal importance?
Or a hierarchy of causes?
3. What conditions, or "factors," or forces in the situation in Chicago reinforce, or interact
significantly, with others to produce a situation with a potential to create a devastating riot?
4. To what extent were the causes of the riot unique to Chicago? Were there some that weren’t
unique to Chicago?
5. What intimations do you find of the survival or rejection of the diverging philosophies of
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois in the black community in Chicago?
6. Are changes in "ideas" of the culture and society at large important to the causes of the riot?
If so, what might have brought about changes in these ideas?
7. How do you assess the relative importance and interaction of economic, political,
ideological, and social forces in creating the historical context in which the riot occurred?
The questions above are meant to help you get figure out the documents.
Your central object should be to explain to your reader as persuasively and convincingly as
possible (in an articulate, elegant essay), the origins of the Chicago riot of 1919.
Confine your analysis to 5 double-spaced typed pages. Assume that these documents form
the sum total of the evidence which you have been able to uncover (though you may also
include “evidence” from the textbook as well).
DOCUMENT #1
Chicago Daily Tribune - July 28, 1919
...Racial feeling, which had been on a par with the weather during the day, took fire shortly
after 5 o'clock when white bathers at the 29th street improvised beach saw a colored boy on a
raft paddling into what they termed “white” territory.
A snarl of protest went up from the whites and soon a volley of rocks and stones were sent in
his direction. One rock, said to have been thrown by George Stauber, of 2904 Cottage Grove
Avenue, struck the lad, and he toppled into the water.
Colored men who were present attempted to go to his rescue, but they were kept back by the
whites, it is said. Colored men and women, it is alleged, asked Policeman Dan Callahan of the
Cottage Grove station to arrest Stauber, but he is said to have refused.
Then, indignant at the conduct of the policeman, the Negroes set upon Stauber and
commenced to pummel him. The whites came to his rescue and then the royal battle was on.
Fists flew and rocks were hurled. Bathers from the colored 29th street beach were attracted to
the scene of the battling and aided their comrades in driving the whites into the water.
Then they turned on policeman Callahan and drove him down 29th street. He ran into a drug
store at 29th street and Cottage Grove Avenue and phoned the Cottage Grove police station.
Two wagon-loads of cops rolled to the scene, and in a scuffle that ensued here, Policeman
John O'Brien and three blacks were shot.
Riot calls were sent to the Cottage Grove Avenue station and more reserves were sent into the
black belt. By this time the battling had spread along Cottage Grove Avenue and outbreaks
were conspicuous at nearly every corner.
Meanwhile the fighting continued along the lake....
In less than half an hour after the beach outbreak, Cottage Grove Avenue and State Street
from 29th, south, to 35th, were bubbling cauldrons of action. When the situation had gotten
beyond the control of the Cottage Grove police, Acting Chief of Police, Alcock, was notified. He
immediately sent out a call to every station in the city to rush all available men to the black belt.
Before they arrived, colored and white men were mobbed in turn. The blacks added to the
racial feeling by carrying guns and brandishing knives. It was not until the reserves arrived that
the rioting was quelled.
News of the afternoon doings had spread through all parts of the south side by nightfall, and
whites stood at all prominent corners ready to avenge the beatings their brothers had received.
Along Halsted and State streets, they were armed with clubs, and every Negro who appeared
was pummelled.
DOCUMENT #2
Chicago Defender, August 2, 1919.
Editor’s note: the Defender was a weekly newspaper whose customers were primarily black,
and with wide circulation in the southern states, as well as in Chicago, where it was published August 2 was the 7th day of the riots.
“Ghastly Deeds of Rioters Told"
Provident Hospital, 36th and Dearborn Streets, situated in the heart of the ‘black belt’, as well
as other hospitals in the surrounding districts, are filled with the maimed and dying....
...Following the Sunday affray, the red tongues had blabbed their fill, and Monday morning
found the thoroughfares in the white neighborhoods thronged with a sea of humans everywhere - some armed with guns, bricks, clubs, and, an oath. The presence of a black face
in their vicinity was the signal for a carnival of death.... In all parts of the city, white mobs
dragged - from surface cars - black passengers wholly ignorant of any trouble, and set upon
them...
Rioters operating in the vicinity of the stockyards, which lies in the heart of white residences
west of Halsted street, attacked scores of workers - men and women alike - returning from
work. Stories of these outrages began to flutter into black vicinities and hysterical men
harangued their fellows to avenge the killings - and soon they, infected with the insanity of the
mob, rushed through the streets, drove high-powered motor cars or waited for street cars,
which they attacked with stones. Shortly after noon, the traffic south of 22nd Street and north
of 55th Street, west of Cottage Grove Avenue and east of Wentworth Avenue, stopped with the
exception of trolley cars. Whites who entered this zone were set upon with unmeasurable [sic]
fury.
Policemen employed in the disturbed sections were wholly unable to handle the situation.
When one did attempt to carry out his duty he was beaten and his gun taken from him. The
fury of the mob could not be abated. Mounted police were employed, but to no avail.
Tiring of street fights, rioters turned to burning and looting. This was truly a sleepless night,
and a resume of the day's happenings nourished inclination for renewed hostilities from
another angle. The homes of blacks isolated in white neighborhoods were burned to the
ground and the owners and occupants beaten and thrown unconscious in the smoldering
embers. Meanwhile rioters in the "black belt" smashed windows and looted shops of white
merchants on State Street....
Workers thronging the loop district to their work were set upon by mobs of sailors and marines
roving the streets and several fatal causalities have been reported. Infuriated white rioters
attempted to storm the Palmer House [a prominent Chicago hotel] and the post office where
there are a large number of employees, but an adequate police force dispersed them and later
the men were spirited away to their homes in closed government mail trucks and other
conveyances. White clerks have replaced our clerks in the main post office temporarily, and
our men have been shifted to outlying post offices. The loop violence came as a surprise to the
police. Police reserves had been scattered over the south side rioting districts, as no outbreaks
had been expected in this quarter.
DOCUMENT #3
The Survey (a national weekly periodical) - August 9, 1919.
...The fury spread like wild-fire, first back in the "black belt" where safeguards disappeared as
rapidly as the perils to life and property increased. Workers in the stockyards, 10,000 or more
of whom are Negroes, were at first guarded as they entered and left, but few of them could get
to their work when rioting made passage through the streets unsafe and the street-cars were
completely stopped by the carmen's strike. Groups and crowds gathered, grew and loitered.
Gangs of white and black hoodlums appeared and ran amuck. Armed men of either color
dashed through the district in automobiles, and beyond, firing as they flew. Two white men,
wounded while shooting up the district, were found to carry official badges, one being thus
identified as in the United States civil service and the other as a Chicago policeman. White
men firing a machine gun from a truck were killed. White and Negro policemen were in turn
attacked and badly beaten by mobs of the opposite color. The torch followed attacks upon
Negro stores and dwellings, scores of which were set on fire.
At last the mayor, recognizing the inadequacy of the police force to cope with the situation,
called upon the governor for the assistance of the state troops, seven regiments [about 5,0007,000 soldiers] of which are at this writing in Chicago under arms, five [regiments] of them on
patrol duty in the most disturbed district. While a suspension of organized hostilities has thus
been secured, sniping continues. Like a prairie fire the flames of hatred leap over all such
barricades to other parts of the city, not only where Negroes live and work, but in some
instances where they are passing through the thoroughfares, more thronged than ever by
pedestrians and vehicles while all streetcars were strike-bound. A colored soldier wearing a
wound stripe on his sleeve was beaten to death while limping along one of the main streets.
He was heard to exclaim, "This is a fine reception to give a man just home from the war. One
cannot but wonder what might have happened if any of these outrages had occurred a day or
two before when a Negro regiment of Chicago men, 1,800 strong, carrying their rifles, marched
through these same streets on their way direct from France to the demobilization camp....
Editor’s note: In World War I US soldiers who had been wounded in combat against the
enemy were awarded a decoration for display on the arms of their uniforms, officially identified
as “Wound Chevrons” - soldiers generally referred to these decorations unofficially as “wound
stripes.” And civilians, as well as soldiers, after the war generally displayed great respect and
regard for individuals with “wound stripes.”
DOCUMENT #4
Excerpt, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, “The Negro in Chicago,” 1922
Wild rumors were in circulation by word of mouth and in the press throughout the riot and
provoked many clashes. These included stories of atrocities committed by one race against
the other. Reports of the numbers of white and Negro dead tended to produce a feeling that
the score must be kept even. Newspaper reports, for example, showed 6 per cent more whites
injured than Negroes. As a matter of fact, there were 28 per cent more Negroes injured than
whites. The Chicago Tribune on July 29 reported twenty persons killed, of whom 13 were white
and seven colored. The true figures were exactly the opposite.
Editor’s note: The Chicago Commission on Race Relations was created by Illinois State
Governor, Frank Lowden, to study the causes of the riot. The commission studied the riot and
its cause for a little over two years, and then published an extensive report.
DOCUMENT #5
Excerpt, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, “The Negro in Chicago,” 1922.
It is a singular fact that militia [state troops] activities were principally against gangs of
hoodlums, and the majority of those gangs were composed of white youths. Said one
commander, “Rowdies of the white population tried to get through the lines and had to be
arrested. At one time a heavy truck or two loaded with white gangsters attempted to break
through the militia but was checked.”
DOCUMENT #6
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, “The Negro in Chicago,” 1922 – excerpt from Grand
Jury report, included in the larger report.
The authorities employed to enforce the law should thoroughly investigate clubs and other
organizations posing as athletic and social clubs, which are really organizations of hoodlums
and criminals formed for the purpose of furthering the interest of local politics. In the opinion of
this jury, many of the crimes committed in the "Black Belt" by whites and the fires that were
started back of the Yards, which, however, were credited to the Negroes, were more than likely
the work of the gangs operating on the Southwest Side under the guise of these clubs, and the
jury believes that these fires were started for the purpose of inciting race feeling by blaming
same on the blacks. These gangs have apparently taken an active part in the race riots, and
no arrests of their members have been made, as far as this jury is aware.
DOCUMENT #7
Walter White of the NAACP in, The Crisis, a national Black monthly, edited by W.E.B. DuBois,
October, 1919.
....With the exception of the Daily News, all of the papers of Chicago have played up in
prominent style with glaring, prejudice-breeding headlines every crime or suspected crime
committed by Negroes. Headlines such as “NEGRO BRUTALLY MURDERS PROMINENT
CITIZEN,” “NEGRO ROBS HOUSE,” and the like have appeared with alarming frequency and
the news articles beneath such headlines have been of the same sort....
.... For a long period prior to the riots, organized gangs of white hoodlums had been
perpetrating crimes against Negroes for which no arrests had been made, These gangs, in
many instances, masqueraded under the name of “Athletic and Social Clubs,” and later direct
connection was shown between them and incendiary fires started during the riots. Colored
men, women, and children had been beaten in the parks.... All of these cases had caused
colored people to wonder if they could expect any protection whatever from the authorities.
Particularly vicious in their attacks was an organization known locally as “Regan's Colts.”
DOCUMENT #8
Population of Chicago, 1910-1920, US Census.
1910
1920
% Increase
All residents
2,185,283
Black residents
2,701,705
44,103
24%
109,458
148%
DOCUMENT #9
State of Birth for Negroes Living in Illinois, 1910-1920; from US Census.
Area of Birth
1910 %
Illinois
Middle West (except Illinois)
Northeast
Upper South and Border
Lower South
West
Not specified and born abroad
1920 %
35,917
8,299
33.2
7.7
1,610
44,140
40.8
15,906
14.7
269
1,980
1.8
44,130
11,638
1.5
0.2
24.4
6.4
2,403
59,519
32.9
60,855
33.6
658
1,826
1.0
1.3
0.4
DOCUMENT #10
Census Tracts (neighborhoods) in Chicago with Highest Negro Percentage, 1910-1920, US
Census.
1910
Tract No.
1920
% Negro
295
336
292
288
373
296
264
278
333
330
61.0
58.0
54.9
53.5
47.3
42.2
32.7
29.9
25.1
21.8
Tract No.
% Negro
341
338
339
344
343
337
342
432
382
388
86.6
84.8
84.5
83.8
82.8
81.6
78.3
77.2
76.3
75.6
DOCUMENT #11
Distribution of Negroes by Census Tracts, Chicago, 1910-1920, US Census.
Number of Census Tracts
% Negro in Tract
None
Under 1%
30-50%
Over 50%
1910
1920
94
135
249
3
4
264
12
16
DOCUMENT #12
Walter White, NAACP leader, The Crisis, a national Black monthly, edited by W.E.B. DuBois,
October, 1919.
Prior to 1915, Chicago had been famous for its remarkably fair attitude toward colored citizens.
Since that time, when the migratory movement from the South assumed large proportions, the
situation has steadily grown more and more tense. This was due in part to the introduction of
many Negroes who were unfamiliar with city ways and could not, naturally, adapt themselves
immediately to their new environment. Outside of a few sporadic attempts, little was done to
teach them the rudimentary principles of sanitation, of conduct or of their new status as
citizens under a system different from that in the South. During their period of absorption into
the new life, their care-free, at times, irresponsible, and sometimes even, boisterous, conduct
caused complications difficult to which to adjust. But equally important, though seldom
considered, is the fact that many Southern whites have also come into the North, many of
them to Chicago, drawn by the same economic advantages that attracted the colored
workman.... These have spread the virus of race hatred and evidences of it can be seen in
Chicago on every hand.
DOCUMENT #13
Editorial, Chicago Daily Tribune, "The Unsettling Race Problem" - March, 1919
... Regardless of what may be considered the justice of the claims of the races, the fact
undeniably is that white and black will not mix in quantity. For this reason ... the remedy seems
obvious: there must be a plan upon which the races can live socially distinct but industrially
cooperative.
We are not disposed to think that the mass of Negroes want social equality in the full sense of
the term. The Tribune has had many intelligently composed letters from Negroes disclaiming
any such desire. We believe the Negroes want the opportunity to develop their own society. If
this is true, there ought not to be widespread objection to social segregation, directed by
themselves and upon the theory of wholesome living conditions. But against what we think is
an inherent disregard for exact social equality, there is appearing a very insidious propaganda
among the Negroes. Whether it is being circulated as a radical irritant, calculated to disturb
political conditions, or merely is the parlor philosophy of eager, sociological transcendentalists,
there is not means of determining.
The propaganda urging agitation for social equality may have every opportunity under the law
and under what ought to be human justice, but while fortified by what ought to be, it flies in the
face of what is....
DOCUMENT #14
Dr. Scarborough, black educator, op-ed piece, in Chicago Defender, August 30, 1919
...The spirit of the Negro who went across the seas - who was in action, and who went “over
the top” - is by no means the spirit of the Negro before the war. He is altogether a new man,
with new ideas, new hopes, new aspirations and new desires. He will not quietly submit to
former conditions without a vigorous protest, and we should not ask him to do so. It is a new
Negro that we have with us now, and may we not hope also that we have new white men? ...
When that horde of crude, unlettered and uncultured Negroes was brought from the South drafted against their will - disfranchised and representing nothing - when they were thrust into
the cantonment to be converted into soldiers, little did the War Department think that it was a
creating a new race problem that would have to be dealt with later. This act transformed these
men into new creatures - citizens of another type - that which they could not get in times of
peace, came to them in times of war....
Editor’s note: “in action” was a term that emerged during World War I to refer to combat – as
in, “my son was wounded ‘in action’ at Chateau Thierry.” Also, “over the top” was a phrase
used by soldiers in World War I to refer to the moment when soldiers leapt from the relative
safety of a trench, “over the top,” out into the terrifying and dangerous open ground where
enemy fire could cut them down – going “over the top,” then, was a test of individual courage
and character, and saying that a man went “over the top,” abandoning the safety of the trench,
was a compliment to his courage and character.
DOCUMENT #15
William Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot, (1970) description of the Hyde Park region in South Chicago,
1919.
"The directions in which the black belt could expand were few: ... To the north were many of
the city's factories and businesses. Although the district was rundown, prices were far beyond
the reach of the ordinary house-hunter because of the industrial potential of the property. To
the west, across Wentworth Avenue, were the Irish, whose hostility excluded blacks from that
market. This hostility was so intense that the population in one Irish-dominated neighborhood
bordering on Wentworth would tolerate only twenty-nine blacks out of 3,762 residents, while in
the neighborhood just on the other side of Wentworth, 1,722 out of 3,711 residents were black.
To the east, the blacks could move into the limited area between Wabash Avenue and Lake
Michigan. But as soon as they occupied this, the only direction for sizable expansion was
southward - to the neighborhood of Hyde Park and Kenwood.
Being immediately adjacent to the black belt, Hyde Park was the inevitable destination of
numerous blacks. Also important, Hyde Park was a deteriorating neighborhood, one whose
homes blacks could afford.... For twenty to thirty years, property values had declined because
of the odors of the stockyards, the smoke and soot of the Illinois Central trains, the conversion
of large homes into apartment buildings and flats, and the fear of an "invasion" of blacks from
nearly areas.... During the war [World War I] residential construction largely ceased in Chicago
as elsewhere. In the early months of 1918, the first effects of a housing shortage, which was
soon to be acute, were felt. The demands of whites for dwellings began to exceed the supply.
Ugly interracial competition for homes broke out..."
Editor's note: The Hyde Park-Kenwood Association was one of a number of white property
owner's associations in the area, most of which had originally been formed to carry out
community development and beautification projects. Many of these associations in "contested
areas," during World War I, began to concentrate their efforts on forcing out blacks already
living in their neighborhoods and on preventing any new black residents from entering. Toward
that end, the Hyde Park-Kenwood Association published a booklet, titled, Property Owner's
Journal.
DOCUMENT #16
Excerpt, Property Owner's Journal - a booklet published by the Hyde Park-Kenwood
Association and circulated among white property owners in the Hyde Park and Kenwood
districts in Chicago, March, 1919.
What a reputation for beauty Chicago would secure if visitors touring the city would see crowds
of idle, insolent Negroes lounging on the South Side boulevards and adding beauty to the
floricultural display in the parks, filling the streets with old newspapers and tomato containers
and advertising the Poro-system for removing the marcelled kinks from Negro hair in the
windows of the derelict remains of what had once been a clean, respectable residence.
Negroes are boasting, individually and through the colored press, that the old order of things
for the Negro is changing and that a new condition is about to begin. As a result of the boastful
attitude, the Negro is filled with bold ideas, the realization of which means the overturning of
their older views and conditions of life. The Negro is unwilling to resume his status of other
years; he is exalting himself with idiotic ideas about social equality....
...Keep the Negro in his place, amongst his people, and he is healthy and loyal. Remove him,
or allow his 'newly discovered importance to remove him from his proper environment, and the
Negro becomes a nuisance.' He develops into an overbearing, inflated, irascible individual,
overburdening his brain to such an extent about social equality that he becomes dangerous to
all with whom he comes into contact; he constitutes a nuisance of which the neighborhood is
anxious to rid itself. If the new Negro desires to display his newly acquired veneer of
impudence, where it will be appreciated, we advise that they parade it in their own district.
Their presence here is intolerable.
As stated before, every colored man who moves into Hyde Park knows that he is damaging his
white neighbor's property. Therefore, he is making war on the white man. Consequently, he is
not entitled to any consideration and forfeits his right to be employed by the white man. If
employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes who reside in Hyde Park to the
damage of the white man's property, it would soon show good results….
The Negro should be consistent. As he segregates his vote and casts it all together in one
block, so he should live altogether in one block.
Editor's note: “Marcelled kinks” in the document above was a term used in the early 20 th
century to describe African Americans’ exceptionally curly hair, and “the Poro-system” referred
to a popular commercial chemical product that straightened African American customers’ hair.
DOCUMENT #17
Dr, Willis Huggins, Chicago public schools teacher and editor of what was called in that era a
“colored weekly” - in Literary Digest, August 9, 1919, "Why the Negro Appeals to Violence."
The basis of the trouble is this: the large employers of labor who lured my people to the North
with high wages, and the city of Chicago itself, have been derelict in providing housing for
them.
It is impossible to put 80,000 people where 50,000 lived before in utter congestion. Politicians
who wanted to be sure of their political futures have not looked with displeasure upon the
crowding of my people in a given district so that 85% of their vote might invariably be safely
held under control.
Unscrupulous landlords and real-estate dealers have taken advantage of the shortage of
houses to gouge my people, both when they rent and when they buy. My people in Chicago
have always had to pay $5.00 and up, in excess of what white tenants have paid, and that, too,
minus the care of building and grounds that was given to white tenants. Negro real-estate
agents have been as instrumental in bringing this situation about as white agents have.
Few of my people have moved into white blocks for the sheer braggadocio of being in such a
community. They have moved in because white people were willing to sell or rent, because
they wanted to avoid the congestion in the Second Ward, and lastly, because they are
American citizens.
DOCUMENT #18
New York Times - Sunday, August 4, 1919
... In Chicago, as elsewhere, negro families of the better class have always been ambitious to
get into better homes and better surroundings. This has been one of the chief causes of
complaint. The entrance of colored residents into high-class white neighborhoods has always
been met with protests, and sometimes with threats. Sometimes real estate operators were
back of these invasions. They hoped to profit from rising real estate values. A study of the
negro housing problem in Chicago made by the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
revealed that colored tenants paid disproportionately higher rent for their apartments which, as
a rule, were in poorer repair than those of their immigrant neighbors.
DOCUMENT #19
Maclay Hoyne, Illinois State Attorney, in Literary Digest, August 9, 1919,
"Why the Negro Appeals to Violence."
First Cause - City Hail organized leaders, black and white, have catered to the vicious
elements of the negro race for the last six years, teaching them that law is a joke and the
police can be ignored if they have political backing. The decent colored element is as much
incensed as whites at the catering to colored gamblers and panderers. Negro politicians have
even threatened the discharge of white police officers who made arrests of favored and
protected black grafters."
Second Cause - the continued enormous importation from the South of ignorant negroes, who,
on arriving here, listened to these teachings and have thrown off all restraint.
Third Cause - Insufficient housing for increasing Negro population. The negroes have invaded
many residence districts hitherto confined to whites.
Remedy - Immediate increase of police force, declaring of martial law, and searching of
buildings in Black Belt and removing firearms, deadly weapons, and other ammunition now,
stored there in large quantities. There should be some scheme of segregation to which a
majority of negroes will themselves assent.
DOCUMENT #20
Editorial, New York Times, Sunday, August 3, 1919
...The advance guard of the colored race which moved into white neighborhoods was the
better class of negro families, who sought to escape the steady encroachment of the
undesirable element of their own race. They had no desire to antagonize their white neighbors.
Their relations had always been friendly. But they were between two tires. Pressing always
behind them was the influx of a lawless element of their own race. Few of the newcomers from
the South brought negro women with them, and some Chicago observers hold the absence of
home life among them partly accountable for the present trouble....
DOCUMENT #21
Walter White, NAACP, The Crisis, October, 1919.
"Much has been written and said concerning the housing situation in Chicago and its effect on
the racial situation.... Although many Negroes had been living in 'white' neighborhoods, the
increased exodus from the old areas created an hysterical group of persons who formed
'Property Owners Associations' for the purpose of keeping intact white neighborhoods.
Prominent among these was the Kenwood-Hyde Park Property Owners' Improvement
Association, as well as the Park Manor Improvement Association. Early in June, the writer,
while in Chicago, attended a private meeting of the first named at the Kenwood Club House, at
Lake Park Avenue and 47th street. Various plans were discussed for keeping the Negroes in
'their part of the town,' such as securing the discharge of colored persons from positions they
held when they attempted to move into 'white' neighborhoods, purchasing mortgages of
Negroes buying homes and ejecting them when mortgage notes fell due and were unpaid, and
many more of the same calibre [sic].... In a number of cases during the period from January,
1918, to August, 1919, there were bombings of colored homes and houses occupied by
Negroes outside of the "Black Belt." During this period no less than twenty bombings took
place, yet only two persons have been arrested and neither of the two has been convicted,
both cases being continued.
DOCUMENT #22
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, “The Negro in Chicago,” 1922.
Mrs. Gertrude Harrison, Negro, living alone with her children, contracted to buy a house at
4708 Grand Boulevard. In March, 1919, she moved in. She immediately received word that
she had committed a grave error. She and her children were constantly subjected to the
insulting remarks both of her immediate neighbors and passers-by.
On May 16, 1919, a Negro janitor informed her that neighbors were planning to bomb her
house. She called up the Forty-eighth Street police station and told of the threatened danger.
The officer answering the telephone characterized her report as "idle talk" and promised to
send a man to investigate. The regular patrolman came in and promised to "keep an eye on
the property," but there were ten blocks in his beat. A special guard was secured and paid by
Mrs. Harrison when it was learned that one would not be furnished by the police.
The following night, May 17, her house was bombed while the patrolman was “punching his
box” two blocks away and the special watchman was at the rear. A detail of police was then
provided both at the front and rear. The following night a bomb was thrown on the roof of the
house from the window of a vacant flat in the adjoining apartment house. The flat from which
the bomb was thrown had been unlocked to admit the bombers and locked again. The police
failed to question either the persons living in the apartment or those leaving it, immediately
after the explosion.
DOCUMENT #23
Chicago Whip (a new black weekly newspaper in Chicago in 1919), June 28, 1919.
The Whip informs you, the whites, that the compromising peace-at-any-price Negro is rapidly
passing into the scrap heap of yesterday and being supplanted by a fearless, intelligent Negro
who recognizes no compromise but who demands absolute justice and fair play.
...WE ARE NOT PACIFISTS. THEREFORE WE BELIEVE IN WAR. BUT ONLY WHEN ALL
ORDERLY CIVIL PROCEDURE HAS BEEN EXHAUSTED AND THE POINTS IN QUESTION
ARE JUSTIFIABLE.... THE BOMBERS WILL BE BOMBED."
DOCUMENT #24
Speaker at Hyde Park-Kenwood Association meeting, May 5, 1919, quoted in Chicago
Commission on Race Relations, “The Negro in Chicago,” 1922.
Why I remember fifteen or twenty years ago that district down here at Wabash Avenue and
Calumet was one of the most beautiful and highest-class neighborhoods of this great city. Go
down there today and see the ramshacke broken-down and tumbledown district. That is the
result of the new menace that is threatening this great Hyde Park district. And then tell me
whether there are or not enough red-blooded, patriotic, loyal, courageous citizens of Hyde
Park to save this glorious district from the menace which has brought too much pain and so
much disaster to the district to the south of us.
You cannot mix oil and water. You cannot assimilate races of a different color as neighbors
along social lines. Remember this: That order is heaven's first law.
DOCUMENT #25
South Side real estate dealer, quoted in Chicago Daily News, summer, 1919.
We want to be fair. We want to do what is right, but these people will have to be more or less
pacified. At a conference where their representatives were present, I told them we might as
well be frank about it, "You people are not admitted to our society," I said. Personally I have no
prejudice against them. I have had experience of many years dealing with them and I'll say this
for them: I have never had to foreclose a mortgage on one of them. They have been clean in
every way and always prompt in their payments. But, you know, improvements are coming
along the lake shore, the Illinois Central, and all that; we can't have these people coming over
here. Not one cent has been appropriated by our organization for bombing or anything like
that.
DOCUMENT #26
William M. Tuttle, Jr. Race Riot (1970), account of stockyards strike in Chicago in 1903 and
1904, and teamsters' strike of 1905.
The AMCBW (Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen) had launched its strike in
the face of a depression. Outside the stockyards each morning as many as 5,000 men stood in
line to replace the strikers....
Despite the hopelessness of the strike, the arch villains to emerge from the defeat were the
packers and their strikebreakers, especially the black ones. One observer estimated that
upward of 18,000 blacks served as strikebreakers, with almost 1,400 arriving in one trainload.
Although these figures probably were exaggerated, to white workers the disturbing presence of
the blacks seemed to be everywhere....
...It was another strike, the bloody teamsters' strike of 1905 that made more indelible the image
of blacks as a “scab race.” Lasting over 100 days, the strike resulted in close to twenty deaths
and over 400 serious injuries. Just days after the teamsters struck in April, trainloads of black
men began streaming into Chicago.... In this dispute, unlike the stockyards strike of eight
months before, the hostility of striking whites toward strikebreaking blacks had been
generalized into hatred for the black race as a whole; any black man was a potential target. In
addition, no longer did mob assaults violate just one district; ... racial violence spread
throughout the city, but it was especially prevalent in the blue-collar neighborhood to the west
of the black belt. “You have the negroes in here to fight us,” the teamsters' president told the
employers' association, “and we answer that we have the right to attack them wherever found.”
The strike failures .... haunted union members, and it was rumored that the packers wanted a
strike (in September 1917) and had imported an enormous labor reserve of blacks to break it
and crush unionization. And, indeed, it seemed to workers to be a fact, though a much
disputed one, that employers were importing black laborers from the rural South.
Editor's Note: The “packers” were the major employers of black labor in Chicago, although
many blacks also worked in the steel industry, on the railroads, in other industries, and private
service. Between 10,000 and 12,000 blacks worked in the stockyards, comprising nearly 30
percent of the stockyards’ labor force in 1919. In July, 1919, 90% of the whites in the
stockyards were union members, but 75% of the black workers were excluded from the union,
despite a recent organizing drive aimed at increasing black union membership. Among black
stockyard workers, 90% of the Northern-born workers were union members, but very few of
the Southern-born workers had joined. Also, employers had frequently used black workers to
help break strikes, such as the Pullman railroad car cleaners strike in Chicago in 1916, or the
Hotel waiters in 1918, or the Corn Products Refinery workers in early July, 1919. Meanwhile, a
brief strike by 10,000 workers in the stockyards in mid-July 1919 had ended after only one day,
while union leaders prepared a set of demands to present to the packers on July 26 th, with a
threat of a strike within 48 hours. Unemployment levels in the city, particularly among black
workers, remained high in mid-1919.
DOCUMENT #27
Walter White, "The Causes of the Chicago Race Riot," The Crisis, October, 1919.
With regard to economic competition, the age-long dispute between capital and labor enters.
Large numbers of Negroes were brought from the South by the packers and there is little doubt
that this was done in part so that the Negro might be used as a club over the heads of the
unions.... On the other hand, the Negro workman is not at all sure as to the sincerity of the
unions themselves.... The Negro is torn between “the devil and the deep blue sea.” He feels
that if he goes into the unions, he will lose the friendship of the employers. He knows that if he
does not, he is going to be met with the bitter antagonism of the unions....
DOCUMENT #28
Editorial, The New Majority, Chicago Federation of Labor weekly publication, August 9, 1919.
Proclamation Concerning the Race Riots by the Chicago Federation of Labor
The profiteering meat packers of Chicago are responsible for the race riots that have disgraced
the city.
It is the outcome of their deliberate attempt to disrupt the labor union movement in the
stockyards. Their responsibility is shared by the daily newspapers, which are kept subsidized
by the extravagant advertising contracts of the packers, particularly the Tribune and the Herald
and the Examiner.
These same meat packers can solve the problem if they will and put a stop to the trouble, but it
can be done only in one way, if it is not to break out again at a future date more violently than
before. The packers know that way. They have been told what it is and they are doing nothing
about it.
Ever since organized labor first started to unite the stockyards’ employes [sic] the packers
have fought with every weapon at their command the efforts of these workers.
Discriminating against union men, they have fired them and hired nonunion men in their
places. [In the past] the principle recruiting points for nonunion workers have been in the
South, and nonunion colored workers have been brought here in great numbers just as they
are being brought here now by the railroads, or were, up to the outbreak of the race riots.
These colored men and women are not brought here for their own improvement, but are
enslaved at low wages and have been used by the packers to undermine union conditions.
Organized labor has no quarrel with the colored worker: workers, black and white, are fighting
the same battle. The unions met the action of the packers by starting to organize the colored
workers. As soon as this work commenced, the packers started to fight the unions with foul
tactics. They subsidized Negro politicians and Negro preachers and sent them out among the
colored men and women to induce them not to join the unions.... They had a YMCA secretary
on their staff, and the two present aldermen of the second ward participated actively in this
campaign of the packers.
Their purpose in this, which during the last several weeks has borne bitter fruit, was to play
upon race prejudice and create dissension between whites and blacks, which would prevent
the colored workers from joining the unions and prejudice the white workers against them for
that reason. Notwithstanding their efforts, the colored workers came into the union in large
numbers.
At every opportunity the packers and their hirelings fanned the fires of race prejudice and the
fires of prejudice between strikebreakers and organized workers, hoping for the day to arrive
when white union men would refuse to work beside unorganized colored men, so that the
union men, white and black, could be discharged and nonunion men, white and black, put in
their places, until the spark came that ignited the tinder piled by the packers and the race riots
ensued.
...It stands to the credit of the union workers of Chicago that neither black nor white union men
participated in the rioting, despite the lying accounts published daily by the kept press....
"The rioting subsided and then someone fired the homes of hundreds of white workers back of
the yards and these homes were burned to the ground. The newspapers and the police, jointly
tools of the packers, tried to convince the citizens that colored workers had set fire to these
homes....
The fires were set Saturday morning. The nonunion colored workers were to go back with
machine guns surrounding them Monday morning. What fiend can have devised a more
diabolical plot? These gentlemen said they were trying to quiet the race trouble....
Editor’s note: union people used the term, “kept press,” to refer newspapers that supported
business in struggles between working people and businesses.
DOCUMENT #29
William Z. Foster, radical labor organizer, testifying before the Chicago Commission on Race
Relations, circa, 1920
We found in the steel industry that the colored worker was very unresponsive to organization.
The same was true in the packing industry. Let me give you first what steps we took in the
packing industry in Chicago in 1917, the big campaign, which resulted in the organization of
men. The first meeting we had we sat around a table and talked it over, and we realized that
there were two big problems, the organization of the foreign worker and the organization of the
colored worker. We shortly dismissed the problem of organizing the foreign worker, but we
realized that to accomplish the organization of the colored worker was the real problem. When
we went into the packing-house situation we were determined to organize the colored worker if
it was humanly possible to do so, and I think I can safely say that the men who carried on that
campaign realized fully the necessity for the organization of the colored worker, not wholly, or
at least not only, from the white man's point of view, but from his own point of view to a certain
extent. In other words, we were not altogether materialistic. We like to think that we were a
little bit altruistic in the situation. There was a total employment of twelve or fourteen thousand
(Blacks).
We found that we had tremendous opposition to encounter. ...But the more we tried to help the
colored worker the more intense the opposition was, because there was a force working
against us ... it is a fact that some of the organizers were actually afraid to go around to some
of these saloons and poolrooms where they congregated because of the agents of the packers
... and they felt their lives were in danger.... Out in the Stock Yards we could not win their
support. It could not be done. They were constitutionally opposed to unions.... The reason the
colored man gave for not joining you will find in the circular, "Beware of the White Man's
Union," that the only way that they can ever make any headway in the industry is to stick in
with the boss and then where there is a strike to step in and take the jobs that are left there....
DOCUMENT #30
Hyde Park-Kenwood Association, Property Owners' Journal, circa, May, 1915.
Their solid vote is the Negroes' great weapon. They have a total vote in Chicago of about
40,000. This total vote is cast solid for the candidate who makes the best bargain with them.
When both our principal political parties are split, and when each of them has two or more
candidates in the field, this solid block of 40,000 becomes a possible power and might be able
to defeat or elect a candidate.
This vote situation is the foundation of the Chicago Negro's effrontery and his evil design
against the white man's property. He feels that he holds the balance of power and that he can
dictate the policy of any administration that happens to be elected by his controlling black vote.
He therefore becomes arrogant, insulting, threatening.
...The Negro should be consistent. As he segregates his vote and casts it all together in one
block, so he should live together all in one block.
DOCUMENT #31
The Survey (a national weekly periodical), August 9, 1919.
...With the possible exception of Philadelphia, there is probably no city in America with more of
political trickery, chicanery and exploitation than Chicago.
Against the united and bitter opposition of every daily newspaper in Chicago, William Hale
Thompson was elected again as mayor, due, as it was claimed, to the Negro and German
vote. While it is not possible to state that the anti-Thompson element deliberately brought on
the riots, yet it is safe to say that they were not averse to its coming. The possibility of such a
clash was seen many months before it actually occurred, yet no steps were taken to prevent it.
The purpose of this was to secure a two-fold result. First, it would alienate the Negro set from
Thompson through a belief that was expected to grow among the colored vote when it was
seen that the police force under the direction of the mayor was unable or unwilling to protect
the colored people from assault by mobs. Secondly, it would discourage the Negroes from
registering and voting and thus eliminate the powerful Negro vote in Chicago. Whether or not
this results remains to be seen. In talking with a prominent colored citizen of Chicago, asking
why the Negroes supported Thompson so unitedly, his very significant reply was, “The Negro
in Chicago, as in every other part of America, is fighting for the fundamental rights of
citizenship. If a candidate for office is wrong on every other public question except this, the
Negroes are going to vote for that man, for that is their only way of securing the things they
want and that are denied them.”
The value of the Negro vote to Thompson can be seen in a glance at the recent election
figures. His plurality was 28,000 votes. In the second ward it was 14,000 and in the third
101,000. The second and third wards constitute most of what is known as the "Black Belt."
A contributing cause was the woeful inefficiency and criminal negligence of the police
authorities of Chicago, both prior to and during the riots. Prostitution, gambling, and the illicit
sale of whisky flourish openly and apparently without any fear whatever of police
interference....
DOCUMENT #32
From New York Times, Sunday, August 3, 1919
Thompson had been mayor only a short time when evidence was apparent that there was no
lid so far as the Black Belt was concerned. From other sections of the city white men and
women of the old underworld who had experienced some long, lean years flocked to the
neighborhood. White men brought saloons and cabarets, and pushed negroes to the front as
their ostensible owners. Soon the Black Belt became known as the district where everything
“went.”
All-night cabarets were jammed with whites and blacks until the morning sun streaked the sky
over Lake Michigan. In other parts of the city saloons and cabarets closed at 1 a.m., but
automobiles lined the curbs for blocks all night in the Black Belt, and late comers stood in line
for hours outside some of the more notorious “black and tan” cabarets waiting for a chance to
get inside. Jazz bands filled the air with syncopated sound, while in the cabarets whites and
blacks intermingled in carousal. It was here that the “shimmy” dance is said to have originated.
The rattle of dice and the click of poker chips were seldom stilled in the heart of this district.
Gambling was conducted on a business basis. A “syndicate” was formed, and no independent
could operate successfully in that district without its approval. These gambling games were run
under the name of “clubs,” but a fat bankroll gained easy admission to them.
... The newspapers of Chicago repeatedly exposed conditions in the Black Belt. Members of
the City Council sometimes denounced it. Reformers visited the all-night cabarets and wrote
long reports about them. Numerous complaints were made to the police. Conditions finally
became so notorious that the all-night cabarets were closed. For a few weeks the Black Belt
was quiet, except for the gambling games, which were seldom molested.
Then came vice in a new form: in the shape of clubs, which were in reality dance halls. These
new places had no liquor licenses, although most of them sold intoxicants, and they didn't
open their doors until midnight or 1 a.m. They caught the crowds, which surged out of the
cabarets at closing hour and held them until sunrise.... They were openly conducted for a long
time without being molested, but early in 1918 the City Council passed an ordinance which put
a damper for a time on the night life of the city.
Last Spring, however, the Mayorality election came around again. Mayor Thompson was a
candidate for re-election and was re-elected. The Black Belt did its duty.
When the primary campaign opened, the lid was tossed overboard. Resorts which had been
closed reopened. The Black Belt became again the centre of night activities.... In the last few
months conditions in the Black Belt have been almost unprecedented. Men who have traveled
the country over say that nowhere in the United States have they witnessed such scenes as
they saw in the notorious “black and tan” resorts on the South Side in Chicago.
DOCUMENT #33
The Survey (a national weekly periodical), August 9, 1919.
...Community morals are recognized as responsible for much personal immorality of the most
dangerous type. For years the segregated vice district was forced upon this residential section
where Negroes practically had to live. Since the break-up of segregated vice, the vicious
resorts and practices which were permitted to survive have been tolerated and protected by
the city administration where the population was weakest and most helpless in protecting itself.
Gambling, which is suppressed almost everywhere else, is allowed to run wide-open there....
The political depravity which is responsible not only for the failure to prevent, but for the actual
promotion of such conditions, is directly chargeable to a situation which has existed not only in
Chicago but in East St. Louis and everywhere else where racial necessity is exploited as a
partisan asset. The most eminent Negro physician and surgeon in Chicago publicly charges
that the present situation is possible, “By reason of the fact that the two colored alderman are
responsible to white politicians rather than to the voters who elected them; that the colored
people have simply been sold out by colored leaders who are in the hands of white politicians.”
DOCUMENT #34
From the New York Times, Sunday, August 3, 1919
...The Second Ward in Chicago is the heart of the Black Belt. Eighty per cent of the voters in
this ward are black. White men represented this ward in the City Council until 1915, but now
both aldermen are negroes.
Two men control most of the negro vote in Chicago, They are Congressman Martin B. Madden
of the First Illinois District and George F. Harding, former Alderman, later State Senator, and
now City Controller.
It was the balance of power held by the negroes and swung by Harding that gave William Hale
Thompson, more widely known as a pro-German than for his kindness to negroes, the
nomination for Mayor of Chicago in the spring of 1915. Harding had represented the Second
Ward of Chicago for eight years. He retired and permitted Oscar De Priest, a negro, to be
elected. In return for this favor the negroes swept the Mayorality nomination into Thompson's
lap. Thompson won the nomination by a margin of a few hundred votes.
De Priest became one of the chief floor leaders of the City Council for the Thompson
administration. His public career was cut short by his indictment in connection with the alleged
collection of tribute in the Black Belt, but he was later acquitted. Another negro succeeded him.
Then the Second Ward negroes grew bold, demanded both seats in the City Council, and got
them.
In his campaign for the nomination and election in 1915 Thompson catered to the negro
voters. After his election he rewarded many of their leaders with jobs.
So openly did the Thompson crowd treat with the negroes that somebody dubbed the City Hall,
“Uncle Tom's Cabin.”...
Editor's Note: An “Uncle Tom” is a pejorative term, common in the 19th and 20th centuries, for
a black man who gains favorable treatment from powerful whites, by supporting the interests of
those whites, frequently against the interests of other blacks.
DOCUMENT #35
The Literary Digest, August 9, 1919.
Maclay Hoyne, Illinois State Attorney, reports that “large quantities of firearms, deadly
weapons, and ammunition” were stored by negroes in Chicago's Black Belt, that negroes had
been “arming themselves for months” before the recent “race war” began, that an outbreak of
negro violence in Chicago had been planned for July 4 and that “a secret organization” is
counseling the negroes to “obtain what they regard as social equality, by force if necessary.”
Unless Mr. Hoyne is mistaken, something altogether new has developed in the negroes’
psychology. For years they pinned their faith to the spelling-book, then for years they pinned it
to the bank-book; now, as if convinced that neither education nor material prosperity could
advance their cause, they appear to be putting their trust in brute strength. They will fight. In
Washington's “race war” negroes were frequently the aggressors. So also in Chicago. This
“changed attitude” as a Chicago Negro puts it, would seem to have been the underlying cause
of the Chicago riots...
Editor's Note: A race riot had broken out in Washington, D.C., on July 19, 1919. Six people
were killed and over a hundred injured in four days of rioting before 2,000 federal troops
restored order on the evening of July 22nd.
DOCUMENT #36
Chicago Defender, editorial, August 2 "Reaping the Whirlwind."
The recent race riots at Washington resulting in the death of a number of white and colored
citizens, followed by similar occurrences in Chicago, are a disgrace to American civilization.
One does not have to seek very far to find the underlying cause. It is not chargeable, as some
writers think, to the general unrest now sweeping the world. Nor are we witnessing anything
new in these disgraceful exhibitions of lawlessness. America is known the world over as the
land of the lyncher and of the mobocrat. For years she has been sowing the wind and now she
is reaping the whirlwind. The Black worm has turned. A Race that has furnished hundreds of
thousands of the best soldiers the world has ever seen is no longer content to turn the left
cheek when smitten upon the right.
The Younger generation of black men are not content to move along the line of least
resistance as did their sires. For his awakening, however, the color madness of the American
white man is alone responsible. Not content with inflicting upon him every form of humiliation
that could be devised at home, he carried his infamous color propaganda to Europe. With the
close of the war the returning soldiers brought back the most harrowing tales of abuses at the
hands of the American military contingent. The stories have carried across the land and have
inflamed our people as few things have done.
We have little sympathy for lawlessness, whether those guilty of it be black or white, but it
cannot be denied that we have such in the way of justification for our attitude. Under the
promise of a square deal, our boys went cheerfully into the service of the country, hoping that
the aftermath of the struggle would find our people in an improved social and industrial
condition. All of our speakers and writers held this view and kept it constantly before our youth
as an inducement to enlist. Industrially our position has undoubtedly been benefitted by the
war. Socially it has grown decidedly worse. On all sides we have been made to feel the
humiliating pressure of the white man's prejudice.... In Chicago it was a case of limiting our
sphere to metes and bounds that had neither the sanction of the law nor sound common
sense. In both bases we resented the assumption. Hence the race riots.
DOCUMENT #37
William Howard Taft (former U.S. President 1909-1913), Chicago Daily News, "Causes of
Race Riots," circa, August, 1919.
Negro leaders are divided into two classes. There are those who feel as deeply as they can
the injustice and heart misery arising from race prejudice, and they would restrain as far as
possible by legislation and executive action such injustice. But they believe that the real way to
ameliorate conditions is to educate the negro for life by vocational and character training, and
by thus increasing his value to his community and himself to moderate and neutralize the
prejudice. They deprecate much the inflaming of the souls of colored men against the white
race, even when there are facts justifying indignation and a deep sense of wrong.
There are other negroes, educated men, who with no restraint have poured out their agony of
soul and sense of outrage in addresses and editorials and roused fellow negroes as they never
have been roused before. The lynchings, those horrible exhibitions of blood lust against which
all good people are joining in apparently hopeless protest, have led to desperation among the
blacks. The retired negro soldier, used to arms, returning from the war environment, resenting
the ingratitude he sees in all of this, is prompted to “direct action” to remedy his wrongs.
DOCUMENT #38
Walter White, NAACP leader, The Crisis, opinion piece, October, 1919
...the new spirit aroused in Negroes by their war experiences enters into the problem. From
Local Board No. 4, embracing the neighborhood in the vicinity of State and 35th Streets,
containing over 30,000 inhabitants, of which fully ninety per cent are colored, over 9,000 men
registered and 1,850 went to camp. These men, with their new outlook on life, injected the
same spirit of independence into their companions, a thing that is true of many other sections
of America. One of the greatest surprises to many of those who came down to “clean out the
niggers” is that these same “niggers” fought back. Colored men saw their own kind being
killed, heard of many more and believed that their lives and liberty were at stake. In such a
spirit most of the fighting was done.
Editor’s Note: When White remarks that “over 9,000 men registered and 1,850 went to camp,”
he was stating that 9,000 men registered for the draft, and 1850 actually served in the armed
forces during World War I, from that district of Chicago, Local Board No. 4.