Chicago Race Riot of 1919

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The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 was a major racial conflict that began in Chicago, Illinois on July 27, 1919 and ended on August 3.^[1] During the riot, dozens died and hundreds were injured.^[2] It is considered to be the worst of the approximately 25 riots during the Red Summer of 1919, so named because of the violence and fatalities across the nation.^[3] The combination of arson, looting and murder was also the worst race rioting in the history of Illinois.^[4]

The sociopolitical atmosphere of Chicago was filled with ethnic and racial tension caused by competition among many new groups. With the Great Migration, thousands of African Americans from the South had settled next to ethnic neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side, near jobs in the stockyards and meatpacking plants.^[5][6] Post World War I tensions caused frictions between the races, especially in the competitive labor and housing markets.^[7] Overcrowding and increased African American militancy by veterans contributed to the visible racial frictions.^[3] Also, ethnic gangs and police neglect strained the racial relationships.^[7] According to official reports, the turmoil came to a boil after a young African American was struck by a rock and died at an informally segregated beach. Tensions between groups arose in a melee that blew up into days of unrest.^[3]

William Hale Thompson was the Mayor of Chicago during the riot and future iconic Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley rose to prominence following the riots although he never officially acknowledged involvement in the violence.^[5] United States President Woodrow Wilson and the United States Congress attempted to promote legislation and organizations that would decrease the racial discord in America at the time.^[3] Illinois Governor Frank Lowden took several actions at the request of Thompson to quell the riot and promote greater harmony in its aftermath.^[8][9] Several sections of the Chicago economy were shut down for several days during and after the riots.^[8][10] Thompson drew on associations with this riot to influence later political elections.^[11]

Contents 1 Background 2 Riot 2.1 Coroner's inquest 2.2 Ramifications 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Background

Unlike southern cities through the 1960s, Chicago did not segregate most public accommodations.^[2] In fact, according to Walter Francis White, pre-1915 Chicago had a reputation for equitable treatment of African Americans in general.^[7] However, early 20th-century Chicago beaches were segregated.^[12] African Americans had a long history in Chicago, with the city sending its first African-American representative to the state legislature in 1876. There had also been late 19th century tensions between Irish ethnics and African Americans, as most members of both competed among the lower classes.^[13]

Beginning in 1910, thousands of African Americans started moving from the South to Chicago as one destination in the Great Migration, fleeing lynchings, segregation and disfranchisement in states such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. In the south, Ku Klux Klan held 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 in 1919.^[3] With the pull of industrial jobs in the stockyards and meatpacking industry beckoning as European immigration was cut off by World War I, from 1916 to 1919 the African Americans population in Chicago increased 148 percent during the decade from 44,000 to 109,000.^[6][3] African Americans settled in the South Side, where, as their population grew, they pressed up against a neighborhood of ethnic Irish, earlier immigrants, and had to compete against them for jobs and housing. Southern African Americans had followed waves of immigrants from eastern Europe, who also added to the competition and tensions. Ethnic groups established strongly territorial areas in the city and their young men often patrolled against outsiders. Because of agricultural problems, southern whites also migrated to the city, about 20,000 by this period.^[7] The rapid influx of migrants caused overcrowding as a result of a lack of adequate housing.^[3]

The postwar period found tensions rising in numerous cities where populations were increasing rapidly. People from different cultures jostled against each other and competed for space. In 1917, the Chicago Real Estate Board established a policy of block by block segregation. New arrivals in the Great Migration generally joined old neighbors on the South Side, and by 1920, the area held 85% of Chicago's African Americans--middle and upper class and poor.^[5] In the postwar period, veterans of all groups were looking to re-enter the work force. Some whites resented African American veterans. At the same time, African-American veterans exhibited greater militancy and pride as a result of having served to protect their country. They wanted to be treated as full citizens after fighting for the nation.^[3]

In Chicago, ethnic Irish dominated social and athletic clubs that were closely tied to the political structure of the city. Some had acted as enforcers for politicians. They had been the first major group of 19th century European immigrants to settle in the city and had established formal and informal political strength.^[14] In Chicago, white gangs had been attacking African Americans neighborhoods, and the white police seemed little inclined to try to stop them. Meanwhile, newspapers carried sensational accounts of any African American allegedly involved in crime.^[7] An example was the Bridgeport community area which was an ethnic Irish neighborhood just west of the Black Belt. Ethnic Irish had long patrolled their neighborhood boundaries against all other ethnic groups, especially African Americans. A group known as the Hamburg Athletic Club, whose members included a 17-year-old Richard J. Daley, future mayor of Chicago, contributed to gang violence in the area.^[5]

[edit] Riot

The riot lasted for a week and ended only after the government deployed nearly 6,000 National Guard troops, putting an end to the violence on the night of July 30.^[8] Most of the rioting, murder, and arson was concentrated in the city's Black Belt on the South Side, but violent conflict occurred in areas throughout the city, including the Chicago Loop.^[15] The riot left 38 people dead (23 African Americans and 15 whites),^[2] and 537 were injured (two-thirds African Americans). One policeman was killed in the riot.^[6] Approximately 1000 Chicago residents were left homeless after fires destroyed their homes.

Order was restored by an order from Chief of Police John J. Garrity which closed "all places where men congregate for other than religious purposes." Illinois Governor Frank Lowden was urged to create a state committee to study the causation of the riots and proposed forming a committee to write a racial code of ethics and to draw up racial boundaries for activities within the city.^[8] Governor Lowden had authorized the deployment of the 11th Illinois Infantry and its machine gun company, as well as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd reserve militia. These four units totaled 3,500 men.^[9] The Cook County Sheriff deputized between 1000 and 2000 former soldiers to help keep the peace.^[16]

[edit] Coroner's inquest

The Cook County Coroner's Office took 70 day sessions, 20 night sessions and 450 witnesses examinations to collect evidence about the riots.^[17] Their report stated the finding that on July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, a African American youth, drowned after tiring of holding onto a railroad tie. He had been hit by a stone as whites threw rocks at African Americans to drive them away from their part of the water at the 29th Street beach in the city's Douglas community on the South Side. A witness recalled seeing a single white male standing on a breakwater 75 feet (22.9 m) from the raft of the African Americans and throwing rocks at them. Williams was struck in the forehead; he panicked and drowned. The assailant ran toward 29th Street, where a different fight had already started when African Americans tried to use the beach there, in defiance of its tacit segregation.

The rioting escalated when a white police officer refused to arrest the white man who threw the stone at Williams. He instead arrested an African American individual. Anger over this, coupled with Eugene Williams' death, and rumors among both communities, escalated into five days of rioting. Most of the casualties were African American and most of the property damage was in African American neighborhoods. The city quickly closed down the street cars to try to contain the violence. Inflammatory newspaper coverage worked to the opposite effect.^[17] Historians have noted:

"South Side youth gangs, including the Hamburg Athletic Club, were later found to have been among the primary instigators of the racial violence. "For weeks, in the spring and summer of 1919, they had been anticipating, even eagerly awaiting, a race riot," one study found. "On several occasions, they themselves had endeavored to precipitate one, and now that racial violence threatened to become generalized and unrestrained throughout Chicago, they were set to exploit the chaos."^[17]

Early reports detailed injuries to Chicago Police officers and a Chicago fireman.^[18] The conduct of the white police force was criticized during and after the riot. State’s Attorney Maclay Hoyne openly charged the police with arresting African American rioters but refusing to arrest white rioters.^[7] Roaming gangs of Bridgeport whites, who were mostly ethnic Irish, perpetrated much of the violence.^[7] While newspapers carried accounts of African Americans setting fires, "later the office of State Fire Marshall Gamber proved conclusively that the fires were not caused by Negroes, but by whites."^[7] No whites were convicted of any of the murders, and most of the deaths were not prosecuted. One man was prosecuted for Williams' death, the result of rock throwing that had precipitated the riot, but was acquitted.^[6]

[edit] Ramifications

There were broad ramifications for the Chicago economy. The Union Stock Yard, one of Chicago's largest employers, was an example. It had been anticipated that all 15,000 workers would return to work on Monday August 4, 1919.^[8][10] But after arson and mayhem erupted, African-American employees were banned from the stock yard until further notice.^[10] African-American employees were kept out for ten days of work after the riot. On August 8, 1919, about 3,000 non-union African Americans, who comprised about one-fifth of the total African-American employees, showed up for work under the protection of special police, deputy sheriffs, and militia. The white union employees threatened to strike if the use of protective forces was not discontinued.^[19] Many African Americans fled the city as a result of the pandemonium.^[15]

Illinois Attorney General Edward Brundage and State's Attorney Hoyne gathered evidence to prepare for a Grand Jury investigation. The intention was to pursue people of both races and to use the death penalty as necessary.^[20] On August 4, 1919 seventeen indictments against African Americans were handed down. Despite extensive rioting by whites and damage to black areas, no whites were indicted.^[21]

Richard J. Daley was soon elected leader of the Hamburg Athletic Club in Bridgeport. In his long political career, he never confirmed or denied whether he was involved in the violence of the riots. Daley served as the city's mayor and most powerful politician in the Chicago Democratic Machine from 1955 to 1976.^[5]

In 1930, the flamboyant Republican mayor William Hale Thompson invoked the riot in a misleading pamphlet when urging African Americans against voting for the Republican nominee Rep Ruth Hanna McCormick in the United States Senate race for her late husband's seat. She was the widow of Sen. Joseph Medill McCormick as well as the sister-in-law of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick. The McCormicks were a powerful Chicago family whom Thompson opposed.^[11]

United States President Woodrow Wilson pronounced the white participants as the instigators of the prolonged riots in Chicago and Washington, DC. As a result, he attempted to promote greater racial harmony through the promotion of voluntary organizations and through the enactment of legislative improvements by the United States Congress. He did not change the segregation of Federal departments which he had imposed early during his first administration, however. The riot shocked the nation and raised awareness of racial problems. It also demonstrated the new willingness of African Americans to fight for their civil rights despite injustice and oppression.^[3]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Tuttle, William. Race Riot Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (Urbana, IL; University of Illinois Press, 1970)
• Spear, Allan. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto 1890-1920 (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1967)
• Sandburg, Carl. The Chicago Race Riots July 1919 (New York; Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969)
• The Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The Negro in Chicago (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1922)

[edit] External links

• CPL Chicago1919 Race Riots
• Jazz Age Chicago-The Chicago Race Riot of 1919

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