Topic: Histories of Resistance
Materials:
Mitrani – Ch. 8 Rise of Chicago Policing
Code Switch Podcast- Chicago’s Red Summer with Eve Ewing
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Schedule
○ Quiz next class!
■ Open note
■ The study guide has been released
■ Short answer, identification, definition
■ No screens - bring physical notes
■ Bring a pen
○ No sections this week
○ Memo due on Monday (prompt posted Thursday)
Team project homework
○ Teams are expected to bring a list of 5-8 topics they are interested in researching
○ Make topics specific
Guiding Question: What can we learn about the development of policing and histories of
resistance if we study Chicago?
○ Haymarket Riot of 1886?
○ Red Summer of 1919?
Last lecture
○ Development of modern police in the North - shaped by brutality and corruption
○ History of corruption and brutality is well documented
○ After each investigation that revealed corruption and brutality a series of reforms
were put forward to address the issues - cyclical pattern
Why is it important to examine the history of policing in the US?
○ Kaba - if we could reform the police, it would have been done already
■ The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the
public and the police
■ Efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms have failed for
nearly a century
■ There has never been a time in the US when police did not exercise
violence against Black people
Chicago - Haymarket Riot
○ Leading up to the riot there was a nationwide movement for an 8-hour workday
■ Federal law already stipulated an 8-hour workday, but there was no
enforcement of this law
■ Illinois workers required workers to sign a waiver to work more than 8
hours in order to be hired
■ Labor organizers working to achieve an 8-hour workday - Albert Parsons,
Lucy Parsons
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Lucy Parsons - “I am an anarchist”
■ Labor organizer, anarchist
■ Anarchy - state of being without political rule
■ Call to the abolition of oppressive governments
○ May 3 - protest at Mccormick reaper works
■ Strikers and strike breakers fighting - police called to the scene, shoot at
and beat strikers
■ 2 strikers died
■ Owners had planned to starve out the strikers, and relied on strike
breakers and police response
○ May 4 - protest at Haymarket square
■ 130ish police showed up with riles
■ Someone threw a dynamite arm
■ Police shoot into crowd randomly
■ 4 workers and 1 police officer killed
■ Language of riot - who was rioting?
○ May 5 - Martial law declared
■ Anti-union and anti-labor suppression by the government
■ 8 labor organizers tried for death of police officer
■ Albert Parsons hanged, other organizers sentenced to hard labor, died in
prison, 1 pardoned
○ Haymarket riot led to new development of policing
■ Anti-police sentiment among workers (before riot)
■ Protests galvanized anti-police sentiment
■ Workers witnessed police violence against strikers
■ Local and national press transformed the Chicago police into heros presented as guardians of order, heroes
■ Government and police developing positive relationship through the police
■ Police and press repressing labor organizers from sharing their side of the
story
■ Flood of donations to the police - private individuals and businesses
■ Police Benevolent Organizations - unions but not labor unions
■ Statues to police, pensions for retired officers
○ Years after the riot - Chicago police image as “great men standing against the
forces of disorder”
■ Shift to the right politically - candidates who ran on platforms of law and
order usually won elections
■ Police force grows - added more than 300 men in two years (a third
larger)
■ “Proven that it was an essential institution for meeting the threat posed by
wage workers”
■ “Defender of property and order from the threat of revolution”
Why are we studying histories of resistance?
○ Too often are victims of violence are described as passive
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■ The violence “happened to them”
○ Who gains from framing victims as passive? What institutions are maintained?
○ Dr. Foreman → writing about slavery
■ Changes in terminology to support resistance
○ President’s Commission on Slavery and the Univerity - Teresa Sullivan
■ “Jefferson wanted to create a Harvard in Virginia that would respond to
“southern needs””
Chicago - Red Summer
○ Chicago 1919 - diverse, white ethnic immigrants, African Americans
■ Great Migration - the movement of African Americans from the south to
the north after the civil war
○ Significant competition for working-class jobs
○ WW1 veterans returning from the war - Black veterans
○ Eugene Williams
■ Goes to Lake Michigan and inadvertently drifts into “white waters”
■ George Stobber - throws rocks at Eugene until he falls off the raft and
drowns
■ Police called - refuse to take George Stobber into custody
■ Resulting race riot
○ What is a “race riot”?
■ White men and boys shooting and committing violence against any Black
person they see on the street
■ Start fires and destroy Black businesses and homes
■ Police do nothing
○ How did the riot end?
■ Black Veterans broke into an armory to get weapons and ended the riot
■ 1,000 Black homes were burned
○ Red Summer - race riots occurred in many other cities across the US
■ Some riots were organized by the KKK, some by non-affiliated white folks
■ White supremancist terrorism
○ Eve Ewing - sociologist and author from Chicago
■ Book of poetry on the red summer in Chicago
■ Poems have the potential to create visceral empathy
■ Poetry as a tool for teaching and learning, makes events more real