It all relates to the interests of the colored people. If there

is anything which affects the country at large, which also

has either an indirect or a direct influence upon our group,

we feature it, but as a rule most of the news which we gather

is about things which particularly affect colored people.

II. RUMOR

Rumors which significantly affect race relations consist largely of

unfounded tales, incorrectly deduced conclusions, or partial statements

of fact with significant content added by the narrator, all of which are

given easy and irresponsible circulation by a credulous public during

the excitement of a clash. Examples of this type of irritating untruth

were found in the Chicago riot.

The number of Negroes killed during the riot (twenty-three Negroes

and fifteen whites) has been magnified in popular accounts beyond all

reasonable limits of credibility. It is popularly believed that more

persons were killed than official records indicate. The exaggeration

has not been confined to reports involving Negroes. For example, there

was a report in circulation that more than seventy-five white policemen

were killed during the riot. The rumor was traced to the half-jesting

remark of a policeman that, as a member of a benefit organization, he

had paid death dues on a number of policemen greater than the total

deaths of the riot as popularly estimated at the time. This number was

placed at seventy-five. The director of the Civic Bureau of the Seattle

Chamber of Commerce, writing to a friend in Chicago, asked for authentic

information concerning the number of Negroes killed during the riot. He

sought the information because, he said, the industrial editor of the

_Outlook_ had told him that police officers said that "more than 2,000

Negroes were killed in the race riot," and that a certain labor report

placed the number at 1,700. Suspecting that even the latter number was

too large, although the police mentioned 10,000 wounded and killed, he

wrote for information.

1. AN IMPRESSION STUDY

A special impression study was made with a class of forty-nine students

in the University of Chicago, to measure the effect upon them of

word-of-mouth rumor, gossip, and newspaper stories concerning the 1919

riot. Specific questions were asked concerning their understanding as to

the number of whites and Negroes killed and their source of information.

The students ranged in age from twenty to twenty-five years. Each was

asked to indicate in the order of their influence upon him the sources

of information which gave him his understanding of the magnitude of the

riot. The following is a compilation from their statements.

Ten were out of the city at the time and got their information chiefly

through newspapers published elsewhere. Their average opinion of

the number killed was fifty-five. Thirteen were informed chiefly by

second-hand stories quoting relatives who were in Chicago, policemen

interviewed, and others, and their general impression of the number

killed averaged 209. Thirty-three got their information from newspapers

both in and out of the city, and their average impression of the number

killed was 115. Twenty-four of those who were residing in Chicago got

their information chiefly from newspapers published in the city, and

their average impression was that 131 were killed.

A point of interest in comparison is that those who were out of town and

read out-of-town newspapers believed seventy-three were killed, while

those who got their information through local publications thought 131

were killed. One young woman made this interesting comment:

I think a very conservative estimate of the number killed

would be about 450 or 500. My first source of information,

newspapers. My father also told me of the affair and he is a

medical director of an insurance company and therefore was in

a more or less good position to know.

A young man said:

There were at least 200 people killed in the race riot.

Sources of information: a policeman who was stationed at

Forty-seventh Street and Wentworth, my own direct observations,

and conversations with people who live in the Black Belt.

Another young man said:

About 200 were killed. Chief source of information a review

of Carl Sandburg's pamphlet, and newspaper stories.

Another young woman thought that about 150 were killed. She said that

her father maintained an office at Forty-third Street and St. Lawrence

Avenue, which is in the Negro district. Another said:

If I remember correctly, about forty black and white people

were killed and several hundred wounded, and there was a loss

of several thousand dollars worth of property by fire. The

chief information that impressed me was personal experiences.

I witnessed one mob of 2,000 whites take a Negro on the West

Side and burn him to death. The newspaper gave me my information

of atrocities on both sides.

Another stated that he believed the number killed in the race riot in

Chicago was about 275, and continued:

I base my guess on reports of the newspapers, i.e., the dailies

of the city and particularly one weekly paper which in my

opinion is entirely unbiased in such matters, the _Weekly

Socialist_. I personally saw four Negroes lynched and shot to

death.

It might be expected that a fairly balanced type of impression would

come from university students. The effect of rumor stands out from

the examination of this highly selected group. In exaggeration the

word-of-mouth rumors led, followed by rumors circulated by newspapers

and alleged first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses.

Rumors from policemen and relatives placed the average number of persons

killed at 209, the largest average of the lot. This is significant when

taken with the reports given in the foregoing pages which emanated from

policemen. Undoubtedly their experiences were of such a nature as to make

exaggeration easy and plausible. They were living in conditions far from

normal, and their impressions were greatly magnified by the stress and

the excitement of events. The out-of-town students were less affected

by word-of-mouth rumor, and consequently their impressions showed the

smallest average of persons killed.

Personal experiences show more vividly than anything else the

unreliability of much of the testimony from observation that gives such

frequent rise to rumor. One student said he saw a mob of 2,000 whites

take a Negro on the West Side and burn him to death. Records show that

only one Negro was killed on the West Side (Joseph Lovings). He was shot

and stabbed many times, but not burned.[92] Another student "personally

saw four Negroes lynched and shot to death." No Negroes were lynched in

the riot.

2. THE BUBBLY CREEK RUMOR

A persistent rumor during the riot served to provide an explanation of

the unaccounted deaths of the riot. It had plausibility and soon was

accepted and even repeated on the floor of Congress in Washington as a

fact. Bubbly Creek is a small branch of the Chicago River extending to

the Stock Yards. Into it flows a great deal of waste from the slaughter

houses. The surface of the water is thick with the scum of decomposed

substances, hair, and trash. Bodies could be thrown into it and remain

undetected for a long time. A rumor became current that bodies of riot

victims were thrown into this stream. It became so persistent that efforts

were actually made to discover them. Even when no bodies were found, the

rumor did not weaken. Examples of how it cropped up in various ways are

given:

A man told a friend of mine, I can furnish the name of that

man; a man told him that he saw fifty-six bodies taken out of

Bubbly Creek. [A juror in the coroner's inquest.]

I heard the story that 100 men had been taken out of Bubbly

Creek. They used a net and a seine to drag them out. [A. L.

Williams, attorney, before the coroner's jury.]

There is a story that was repeated on the floor of Congress

that numerous colored people were caught down there [at the

Stock Yards] and thrown in Bubbly Creek, and their bodies

never recovered. A congressman from our district down there,

representing our Stock Yards district, told me that on the

floor of Congress it was recently stated that a man with a

dumb-bell in his hand stood there at the big rock entrance of

Exchange Avenue and knocked a half-dozen of these colored men

on the heads as they passed through that rock door there. [A

juror in the coroner's inquest.]

I hear they dragged two or three bodies out of Bubbly Creek.

[A witness before the coroner's jury.]

A meat curer in the superintendent's office of Swift & Company said:

"Well, I hear they did drag two or three out of Bubbly Creek--dead bodies,

that is the report that come in the yards, but personally I never got

any positive evidence that there was any people who was found there."

The _Chicago Daily News_ of July 29, 1919, printed the subheading: "Four

Bodies in Bubbly Creek." The article did not give details, but said:

"Bodies of four colored men were taken today from Bubbly Creek in the

Stock Yards district, it is reported."

In its final report the coroner's jury made a conclusive statement

regarding the Bubbly Creek rumor which stamped it as pure rumor.[93]

3. RIOT RUMORS

The state of mind produced by rumors is manifest in other experiences

of riot. The following is an example:

At Forty-fourth Street and Grand Boulevard, a corner on which the only

Negro family in the block lived at the time of the riot, an elderly

white man clad in a worn dressing-gown, carpet slippers, and a skull

cap, excitedly rushed from his house to the curb and shouted to a crowd:

"They're giving ammunition away to the niggers at the Eighth Regiment

Armory!" The crowd became excited and finally threatened the house of

the Negro family. A cry went up, "Hang the niggers! The niggers in the

house are firing at every white man that passes!" The police searched

the house and found an 1894 model rifle, ammunition, that would not fit,

and a decorated sword. The six Negroes in the house were taken to the

police station.

During the riot a white man was caught crawling beneath a house in which

Negroes lived. In his pocket was found a bottle of kerosene. He confessed

that his mission was arson and justified his intended act by repeating

a rumor then current that Negroes had set fire to the houses of whites

back of the Yards.

One Negro said that a mob of white men knocked a colored woman down,

cut her up frightfully, and then took her baby and dashed its brains out

on the street-car tracks. He was of fair complexion and could easily be

taken for white. He said:

I came upon the mob as they were laughing and shouting. Why I

could have torn every one of the white cusses in a thousand

pieces. Just think, they stood there laughing and shouting

over what they had done. Why every drop of blood in my body

boiled and at that moment I swore to God in heaven that I'd

kill some white man if I swung for it.

This report was not substantiated by wide and thorough inquiry by the

Commission.

_Rumor in the East St. Louis riot._--Under "Myths," hereinafter discussed,

are given stereotyped sex stories circulated to produce antagonistic

sentiment toward Negroes. Many rumors, however, which had no relation

to sex crimes were circulated at the time of the East St. Louis riot.

The following example taken from the testimony before one of the boards

of inquiry pictures the effective use at East St. Louis of a rumor

concerning an imaginary smallpox epidemic:

_Mr. Tower_: Other statements I heard were that people

feared an epidemic of smallpox; that the County Hospital had

been burdened for months with an average of thirty cases of

smallpox.... The whole County became fearful. You could hear

the same discussions away from East St. Louis. People were

inflamed, and their feelings were directed against the big

employers of East St. Louis feeling that they were responsible

for the great influx of Negroes.

4. RUMORS PREDICTING RIOTS

Rumors that persist usually have some plausibility. The series which

follows contains elements of possible truth. Rumors predicting race

riots in Chicago centered about fixed dates on which excitement often

existed each year. Thus July 4, a holiday celebrated with fireworks and

noise in which shots would not be noticed, was the date set in popular

expectation for the Chicago riot that broke out almost three weeks later.

Signs had been posted in Washington Park to the effect that Negroes

would be driven out of the park on that date.

All this expectation undoubtedly caused preparation for trouble. It is

conceivable that this preparation at least accentuated the violence of

the riot which began on July 27.

Hallowe'en night, when ruffians could mask and take reprisals with less

fear of identification or detection than ordinarily, was the next date in

popular expectation. An official report to Washington by a governmental

agency on "Radicalism among Negroes," carried the rumor thus:

... A report was received at this office to the effect that

an uprising of Negroes in Chicago has been planned for the

night of October 31, 1919. This report came in a somewhat

vague form, through children attending schools located in the

colored districts. The Negroes were aroused over a report to

the effect that the white residents of a certain South Side

district were planning to drive out all colored inhabitants.

The police were informed of the situation.

No riot occurred at or near that date.

May 1, 1920, was next rumored as the date when a riot would start

surpassing in violence any that had yet occurred. Labor parades were

planned in Chicago for May 1, 1920. It is also moving day, many residence

leases then expiring. Thousands of Negroes, it was widely said, would be

told to leave Hyde Park. Negroes, it was further said, had no intention

of leaving and would oppose ejection even with force. This rumor was

taken up and circulated by responsible authorities. As early as April

20, 1920, this article appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_:

U.S. SEES RACE RIOTS HERE MAY 1

Warning that race riots may occur in the South Side Negro

districts May 1 was sent yesterday to John H. Alcock, first

deputy superintendent of police, by the army intelligence

department. The exact nature of the warning could not be learned

and no information could be obtained as to the supposed source

of the predicted trouble, but it is expected to arise when

Negro families move into new homes in white sections of the

South Side.

Numerous bombings have given strength to the belief that more

trouble may develop this summer. Official notice to the police

department is said to have been made by E. J. Rowens of the

army intelligence staff.

No comment on the warning could be obtained from Chief of

Police John J. Garrity or Superintendent Alcock. Capt. Michael

Gallery of the Deering St. Station said that he believed such

reports were absurd.

"I have been all through the Negro section of my district

today," said Capt. Gallery. "All is serene and the Negroes are

happy. I do not believe that there will be any trouble this

summer."

Capt. Thomas Caughlin of the Cottage Grove Ave. Station in

whose district the riots started last summer, said he was

always prepared and on the lookout for trouble in his territory.

An inquiry based upon this "May 1" rumor came to the Commission. The

manager of a West Side restaurant told the Commission that a Negro girl

in his employ had asked him whether it would be safe for her to come to

work on that day. Her sister had been warned in a friendly way by white

fellow-waitresses in a downtown restaurant that she should not risk

coming to work that day, "because there is going to be a race riot."

On May 1, as was to have been expected, thousands of persons were armed

and ready for the anticipated clash.

No riots occurred. The report was later denied by the Army Intelligence

Department.

Labor Day, 1920, was next set. Rumors flying fast were picked up by

agents from the state's attorney's office. Reports by these agents from

day to day show the persistence of the rumor. For example:

The U.S. Club which had planned to hold a meeting August 28,

did not hold the meeting because they expected another race

riot on Labor Day.

On August 28, Negroes in the barber shop on ---- State Street

were carrying guns. Many went to Gary and Hammond to stock up

against Labor Day but found that hardware dealers would not

sell.

On August 29 little else was talked about in the Black Belt

outside the coming riot on Labor Day. The statement of Garrity

[chief of police] that an extra cordon of police would patrol

the Black Belt was taken as confirmation of the rumor August

20.

_An averted clash._--Seeley Street on the West Side is a district

where Negroes infrequently go. On the night of May 1, one of the dates

scheduled in rumors and reports for a race riot in Chicago, the daughter

of a pressroom foreman was returning home at night. As she passed an

alley a man grabbed her by the arm and attempted to drag her into the

alley. She managed to struggle away and ran home, reporting the incident

incoherently to her father. Immediately he armed himself and went out

looking for the assailant.

Near the alley where the incident occurred, a lone Negro was standing

dressed in overalls. Across the street was a clubroom in which were a

number of white men. When he saw the Negro his first impulse was to shoot.

The Negro, however, gave no indication of being hunted, but reached into

his pocket, looked at his watch, and continued to stand there.

It occurred to the father that he had not learned from the girl whether

it was a white man or a Negro who had attempted to attack her. He went

back home and asked, and she said it was a white man.

5. RUMORS CONCERNING NEGRO RADICALS

During the country-wide excitement over radicals caused by the activities

of the Department of Justice in the fall of 1919, the Chicago office of

the United States Army Intelligence Bureau sent to Washington reports

concerning Negro organizations. These reports were founded upon scarcely

anything more than suspicion due to lack of information and acquaintance

with the Negro group. One section of a report made in October, 1919, read:

A convention of the colored organization known as the National

Urban League was held in Detroit on October 15, 1919, at which

Eugene Kinkle Jones, Negro agitator, presided. Mr. Jones has

his headquarters at 127 East 23rd Street, New York City. Wm.

D. Haywood was invited to speak at this convention.

The National Urban League is an organization of responsible Negroes and

whites, with branches in thirty-one cities. It numbers among its executive

officers L. Hollingsworth Wood, A. S. Frizzell, Robert R. Moton, Mrs.

Julius Rosenwald, George W. Seligman, and Mrs. Booker T. Washington.

Its avowed purposes are:

1. Try to show social welfare agencies the advantage of co-operation.

2. Secure and train social workers.

3. Protect women and children from unscrupulous persons.

4. Fit workers for work.

5. Help to secure playgrounds and other clean places of amusement.

6. Organize boys' and girls' clubs and neighborhood unions.

7. Help with probation oversight of delinquents.

8. Maintain a country home for convalescent women.

9. Investigate conditions of city life as a basis for practical work.

Concerning the reference to William D. Haywood and E. K. Jones, this

statement was received by the Commission from E. K. Jones:

The National Urban League did hold its annual convention in

Detroit, October 15, 1919. William D. Haywood was not invited

to speak at this convention. Judging from the reference to

Haywood the term "Negro agitator" as applied to myself connotes

a most violently radical strain in whatever methods I might

be using to bring about better conditions for the Negro.

Throughout my ten years' connection with the League, I have

sought by courageous but practical methods to bring to the

Negro an opportunity in American life and have urged Negroes

to measure up in every way along lines of efficiency and be

satisfied with nothing but a square deal and equal opportunity

in our national life.

I have never suggested violence of any kind as a means toward

this end, nor, in fact, has the idea ever arisen in my mind

that this would be an effective means of attaining this end.

From the same Intelligence Bureau report this statement is taken: "Another

recent report states that the National Association for the Advancement

of Colored People with offices at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, is

planning to flood the colored districts with I.W.W. literature."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a

reputable organization of whites and Negroes numbering among its executive

officers Hon. Moorfield Storey, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Arthur E.

Spingarn, Oswald Garrison Villard, Mary White Ovington, and Dr. Charles

E. Bentley. It has no relation with the I.W.W. and has never planned

any distribution of I.W.W. literature.

6. RUMOR WITHIN THE NEGRO GROUP

The _Chicago Advocate_, a Negro paper of an irresponsible, sensational

type, published under large headlines a report of a run on the Lincoln

State Bank. The reason alleged was indignation over the refusal of the

white officials of the bank to lend money on Negro property in Hyde

Park. The bank officials were accused of discrimination in favor of an

organization of men in Hyde Park who were making every effort to keep

Negroes segregated within the "Black Belt." The Pyramid Building and

Loan Association was said to have requested the loan. Since nearly 90

per cent of the depositors of the bank were supposed to be Negroes, the

act was considered an insulting disloyalty to Negroes who supported the

institution.

A number of Negroes, believing that their savings were in danger, rushed

to the bank. Soon there was an actual run, and for several days long

lines of depositors passed through the bank and carried away their

savings. More than $243,000 was withdrawn. The report proved to be without

foundation, and the three largest and most influential Negro newspapers

aided in restoring normal business relations. The president of the bank

charged the head of the Building and Loan Association and the editor of

the newspaper that published the story with responsibility for this rumor.

7. RUMORS OF ATROCITIES

Of the type of rumor which has had effect upon the sentiments of Negroes

concerning the Chicago riot, the following quotations from a pamphlet

entitled _The Chicago Race Riots_, by Austin D. N. Sutton, a Negro,

provide a good example:

In an investigation made personally by me, beginning about

five o'clock Wednesday afternoon, July 30, until far into the

evening, visiting the districts from Forty-seventh Street,

East to Indiana Avenue, West to Wentworth Avenue, South to

Fifty-fifth Street, I found a little short street between

Forty-eighth and Fifth Avenue called Swan Street, that is not

easily located, and very little known by the general public.

Eye-witnesses said that men, women and children were being

attacked and killed and thrown into the sewer, and no account

of their whereabouts has ever been given.

I found about twenty refugees who had been run away from their

homes on Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth and Fifth Avenue, also

Wentworth and Princeton avenues. Their homes had been burned,

and they were made to flee for their lives. I have the names

and addresses of more than one hundred cases investigated, one

more horrible case, where a young colored boy was gasolined

and burned after having been killed and where colored women

in the Stock Yards district were attacked and their breasts

cut off. These things were perpetrated by the whites upon

peaceful law-abiding blacks, some of whom had been residents

for twenty-seven years in that neighborhood.

Thorough inquiries were made by the Commission into these alleged

atrocities, and no evidence was found to show that anyone was "gasolined

and burned" during the riot or that any colored women's breasts were

cut off.

8. RUMORS AND THE MIGRATION

The rumors in circulation in the South at the beginning of the migration

of Negroes to the North were responsible for the presence in Chicago of

many who heard them. It is hard to conceive how the tale that the Germans

were on their way through Texas to take the southern states could have

been believed, yet it is reported that this extravagant rumor was taken

seriously in some quarters.

On the outskirts of Meridian, Mississippi, a band of gypsies was encamped.

The rumor gained circulation that the Indians were coming back to retake

their land, lost many years ago. Further it was declared that the United

States government was beginning a scheme to transport all the Negroes

from the South to break up the Black Belt. Passed from mouth to mouth

unrestrainedly, the tale became an established verity for many Negroes.

It was declared on the word of honor of "one in a position to know"

that the packing-houses in Chicago needed and would get 50,000 Negro

workers before the end of 1917. One explanation of the belief that the

South was overrun with labor agents is the fact that Negroes at the

South saw in every stranger a man from the North looking for laborers

and their families. If he denied it, they thought that he was concealing

his identity from the police, and if he said nothing, his silence was

regarded as affirmation.

Hundreds of disappointments of prospective migrants were traced to the

rumor that a train would leave on a certain date, sometimes after the

presence of a stranger in town; they would come to the station prepared

to leave, and when no agent appeared, would purchase their own tickets to

the North. Wages and privileges in the North were greatly exaggerated.

Some men, on being questioned, supposed that it was possible for any

common laborer to earn $10 a day and that $50 a week was not unusual.

The strength of this belief was remarked by several social agencies

in Chicago which attempted to supply migrants with work. The actual

wages paid, though much in excess of what they had been receiving, were

disappointing. Similarly in the matter of privilege and "rights," it was

later discovered by the migrants that unbounded liberty was not to be

found in the North. Many cases of grotesque misconduct of newly arrived

migrants in Chicago, against which more sober-minded Negroes preached,

possibly had root in exaggerated reports of "freedom and privilege" in

the North which had reached the South.[94]

III. MYTHS

There arise among groups of people various stories with little or no

basis in fact, which, through repetition and unvaried association with

the same persons or incidents, come to be regarded as true. These stories,

when they persist through years and even through generations, are myths.

They are usually the response to a prejudice or a desire.

In general they have some plausible and apparent justification. In turn

they lend stability not only to the beliefs out of which they were born,

but to themselves. Frequently they are the result of the assumption that

because two things happen at the same time they are connected by the

relationship of cause and effect. So long as these stories are uncorrected

they hold and exercise a marked degree of control over personal conduct.

Myths are important in any consideration of the instruments of

opinion-making. Fernand von Langenhove, a Belgian scientist associated

with the Solvay Institute for Sociological Study at Brussels, has made

probably the first researches in this field. He took as his material

the reports spread in Germany by German soldiers concerning the Belgian

priests. These myths, for the most part unfounded, began to spread and

eventually were taken up by German authorities and given the stamp of

official sanction. The reports were investigated and found to be false

and libelous by German authorities themselves. The method by which these

myths arose is thus described in his book _The Growth of a Legend_:

Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange

rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place.

They were reproduced by the press and they soon permeated

the whole of Germany.... Public credulity accepted these

stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without

hesitation and indorsed them with their authority. Even the

Emperor echoed them and, taking them for a text, advanced in

the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the

President of the United States, the most terrible accusations

against the Belgian people and clergy.

... It was the German army which, as we have seen, constituted

the chief breeding ground for legendary stories. These were

disseminated with great rapidity among the troops; the liaison

officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the victualling

posts assured the diffusion of them....

Submitted to the test of the German military inquiry these

stories are shown to be without foundation. Received from the

front and narrated by a soldier who professes to have been

an eye witness, they are nevertheless clothed in the public

view with special authority. Welcomed without control by the

press, the stories recounted in letters from the front appear,

however, in the eyes of the readers of a paper clothed with

a new authority--that which attaches to printed matter. They

lose in the columns of a paper their individual and particular

character.... The statements thus obtain a substance and an

objectivity of which they would otherwise be devoid. Mixed

with authentic news, they are accepted by the public without

mistrust. Is not their appearance in the paper a guaranty of

accuracy?...

All these pseudo-historical publications are, however, only

one aspect of the abundant literary production of the Great

War....

So one finds in this literature of the lower classes the

principal legendary episodes of which we have studied the origin

and followed the development; accommodated to a fiction, woven

into a web of intrigue, they have undergone new transformations;

they have lost every indication of their source; they are

transposed in the new circumstances imagined for them; they

have usually been dissociated from the circumstances which

individualize them and fix their time and place.

The evolution of myths concerning Negroes shows a striking resemblance to

these mentioned by von Langenhove. In this category would fall the myths

concerning Negro mentality, or the closing of the frontal sutures at

the age of fourteen; the "rape myth," or the belief that some character

weakness and inordinate sexual virility in Negroes make them rapists

by nature; and the "insurrection myth," or the recurrent assertion and

belief that Negroes are plotting the downfall of the government. These

are general in their acceptance. They illustrate the tendency of authors

observed by Langenhove in his study "to incorporate new ideas with the

complex old ones and show that they are not surprising and that all

earlier facts tend to prove it." The efforts of some recent writers on

the Negro question may be noted.

In 1895 R. M. Bache[95] made one of the first experimental studies

of the relative mentality of the white, Negro, and Indian races. His

study was based on only ten Negroes. He began with an assumption of the

inferiority of Negroes and was satisfied that he had proved it. In his

tests the whites were slowest in reacting to the visual, auditory, and

electrical stimulation, the Indians were quickest, and the Negroes about

midway between. He deduced from this that the whites were superior,

the Indians next, and the Negroes the lowest of the group. The Negroes

he explained were slower than the Indians because they were of mixed

white and Negro blood and had inherited the effects of slavery, while

the Indians' mode of life compelled them to rely upon quick movement.

Therefore he said the Indian was of a higher race than the Negro. Dr.

Vogt, a German anthropologist, is responsible for the statement: "On

examining the brain of a Negro I find a remarkable resemblance between

the ape and the Negro, especially with reference to the development of

the temporal lobe." He made this deduction from the examination of the

skull of one Hottentot Negro woman.

A. T. Smith made association and memory tests and concluded[96] that the

Negro child was psychologically different from the white child in power

of abstraction, judgment, and analysis. He took a single Negro boy as

typical.

For the purpose of studying myths pertinent to this inquiry instances

were taken from the testimony in race riots, both in East St. Louis and

Chicago. The excerpts which follow illustrate the tendency of myths to

create and give currency to rumors:

NEGROES SECRETING ARMS

I returned in about an hour and learned from Col. Tripp

that it had been reported that Negroes were forming and had

large quantities of arms and ammunition at a saloon on the

northeasterly corner of Nineteenth and Market Avenue; at the

time the small detachment of troops remaining at the City

Hall was loaded into an auto truck and Col. Tripp, Lieut.

Col. Clayton, Chief of Police Ransom Payne and myself, in my

automobile proceeded to the saloon and pool-room located at the

northeasterly corner of Nineteenth Street and Market Avenue,

where it was reported there were large stores of ammunition

and arms.

We accompanied Col. Tripp into the building and found perhaps

fifteen or eighteen Negro men; Col. Tripp ordered them to

surrender arms and there being no ready compliance with the

order, he thereupon ordered them searched and found one man who

had a number of loaded shot-gun shells. [Testimony by Thomas

L. Fekete, Jr., city attorney of East St. Louis, at East St.

Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

NEGROES PLANNING ATTACK

_Question_: Now what happened Tuesday?

_Answer_: Well, Tuesday I spent most of my time in the City

Hall except when we would be sent out on false alarms, calls

from the different parts of the city. That was practically all

of our work there then. There was no rioting on Tuesday, but

they continued calling from different parts of the city that

Negroes were forming and ready to attack, and we would send

men, whenever they were available, out with squads, two squads

of men to investigate, but invariably it was a false alarm.

[Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser at East St. Louis Inquiry into

Conduct of Militia.]

CONCEALING ARMS FOR INSURRECTION

We then searched the building, particularly the dwelling

quarters above these rooms, for arms which it had been alleged

Dr. L. N. Bundy had stored at this place. We found that Dr.

Bundy had sent two cartons of his property to this place for

safe-keeping and on opening the cartons, we discovered that they

contained no firearms or ammunition, but contained automobile

supplies and some stationery. [Testimony by Col. S. O. Tripp

at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

NEGROES ARMING AND PLANNING AN ATTACK

Then we commenced to get reports from different parts of the

city that Negroes were arming, getting ready to attack. One of

the persistent rumors was there were two hundred Negroes armed

around Sixty and Bond streets some place there. That rumor

was so persistent that Col. Tripp ordered me to take Company

B down and investigate it and the police sent one policeman

along to show us the way and show us the place where it was

supposed to be. We got down there within probably three blocks

of the place and the policeman told us we better not get too

close without forming a line of skirmishers, which I did. I

divided the company into two platoons. One platoon under the

Company commander and the other under the first lieutenant, and

we combed that district all through. The policeman deserted

us as soon as we started out and we were all left alone. We

combed all over for an hour or probably more.

_Question_: Who was the commander of Company B?

_Answer_: Captain Eaton. We did not find a single thing except

two Negroes who just came out of a house. We searched them and

they were armed and we arrested them. We brought these back

with us when we came perhaps an hour or an hour and a half

later.

_Question_: Is there anything else that night?

_Answer_: Yes, it was not very long until we got rumors that at

about 27th and 28th and Tudor that the Negroes and whites were

in a pitched battle. That is about two miles I think southeast,

and they asked me to go out and look into the situation and

take a squad of men with me ... we got to Eighteenth and Bond

and we were perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead of the truck and

we were fired upon. We stopped the car and Brown returned the

fire. We could see smoke coming from a vacant lot and by that

time the truck came up and we formed a line of skirmishers

and went through and could not find a single thing.

The Chief of Police was advised, on rumor, that Negroes were

forming in the Black Belt for the purpose of marching on the

whites. In response to this rumor, the witness [Col. S. O.

Tripp], the Acting Mayor [Fekete], and the military officials

left for the seat of the purported mobilization of Negroes,

but found that the report was untrue. The record shows that

during this temporary departure of authorities, military and

civil, acts of lawlessness were being exerted against Negroes

in other sections of the city. [Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser

at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

ARMED AND MASSED ATTACKS BY NEGROES

... As we got to 27th and Tudor I found a first lieutenant of

the Missouri National Guard there. I afterwards found out his

name was Crawley. He had one soldier with him. He called him his

orderly. I think his name was Murphy. There they were perhaps

a dozen young men, about eighteen or twenty, armed with rifles

and were lined up at 28th Street there under trees, that is

behind trees, at least it looked that way in the night, and

perhaps a half a block more north it looked to me two houses

were burning; it was a big fire; they were burning, and they

claimed that the Negroes had been firing at them and they

were returning the fire, and I guess that is where the report

came from. He advised me that it was a little dangerous work

up there and that we had better form a few men, form a line

of skirmishers, and I sent one bunch to the east side of the

fire to see what we could find in there. So I did that. I gave

Capt. Easterday a bunch of men, one detachment, and Lieut.

Brown another, one on each side, and then Lieut. Crawley and

one private went right through the center of it, right next to

the place seemed deserted and we could not find anybody and

we waited for the other detachments to come out and they did

not find anything and I walked around, it seemed on the west

side of the block, between 27th and 28th Streets, and I saw a

couple of fellows sticking their heads up over the fence, the

fence of an old two story brick building, and I hollered. I

thought perhaps it was Lieut. Crawley and waited for him and we

found a bunch of Negroes in there, perhaps twenty-five of them.

Lieut. Crawley and myself lined them up and searched them and

there was not a Negro who had any arms or ammunition, and we

asked if there were any more in the house, and they said this

private came in and already had three of us. So Lieut. Crawley

said if I guard the ones outside he would go inside and run

the rest out, so in the neighborhood of one hundred fifty or

two hundred came out, men, women and children and we searched

all of them but did not find anything on them. [Testimony by

Thomas L. Fekete, city attorney at East St. Louis Inquiry into

Conduct of Militia.]

1. THE RAPE MYTH

It is the common belief among whites that Negroes are rapists by nature.

In this belief are involved the "fear obsession" of Negro men, held by

many white women, fear of the "social equality" bugaboo, condonings of

lynchings, and repressive social restriction as well as attempts at

legislative restraints. The persistency of these assertions and this

belief point to an interesting peculiarity of popular opinion.[97] There

have been cases of rape involving Negroes, but they have contributed no

such preponderance as would justify the wholesale charge against the Negro

race. The tendency is to stress Negro sex offenses as though they alone

constituted almost the whole of revolting crime. The usual proportion of

white sex offenses is lost in the general statistics of crime. In the

South, where it was first persistently asserted that Negro men have an

abnormal tendency to sexual crimes, each crime, or attempted crime, and

in many cases even suspected crime, of this sort has registered itself

in a lynching.

In the twenty-year period between 1883 and 1903 there were lynched in

the South 1,985 Negroes. Rape was assigned as the cause in 675 cases.

In 1,310 cases other causes were given. James Welden Johnson, field

secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People, has prepared figures on lynchings and sex offenses charged to

Negroes which point out the misrepresentation in easy but persistent

charges and the unquestioning acceptance of them by the public. He says:

Whenever the Negro protests against lynching, nearly all

southern newspapers and a great many northern newspapers call

upon him to deprecate the crime which leads to lynching. The

authentic statistics on lynching prove the falsehood on which

this propaganda is based. In the past thirty-five years fifty

Negro women have been lynched. In the twelve-month period,

August, 1918-August, 1919 [when the statement was prepared]

five Negro women were lynched.

LYNCHINGS

===========+===========+==============

| | Number

Years | Lynchings | Charged with

| | Rape

-----------+-----------+--------------

1914-18[98]| 264 | 28

1883-1903 | 1,985 | 675

-----------+-----------+--------------

When the Congressional Committee on Immigration in 1911 made its study

of crime in the United States, an investigation was made of 2,262 cases

in the New York Court of General Sessions, and in that investigation

it was found that the percentage for the crime of rape was lower for

Negroes than for either the foreign-born whites or native whites.

NEW YORK COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS[99]

1911 Rape

Native-born whites .8 per cent

Foreign-born whites 1.8 per cent

Negroes .5 per cent

Contrast these records, bad as they may appear, with the records for New

York County, which is only a part of New York City, and we find that in

this one county in the single year of 1917, 230 persons were indicted

for rape. Of this number, 37 were indicted for rape in the first degree.

INDICTMENTS AND LYNCHINGS FOR RAPE

===============================+========+======================+========

Place | Year | Crime | Number

-------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------

Number indicted by Grand Jury, | 1917 | Rape | 230

New York County | | |

Number of whites indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 37

Grand Jury, New York County | | |

Number of Negroes indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 0

Grand Jury, New York County | | |

Number of Negroes lynched in | {1914} | Charged with rape | 28

entire United States | {1918} | |

-------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------

That is, in just a part of New York City the number of persons

indicted for rape in the first degree was nine more than the

total number of Negroes lynched on the charge of rape in the

entire United States during the period 1914-1918. Among these

thirty-seven persons indicted by the New York County Grand

Jury, there was not a single Negro. The evidence required by

the Grand Jury of New York County to indict a person charged

with rape must be more conclusive than the evidence required

by a mob to lynch a Negro accused of rape.

In Chicago the statistics of sex offenses tell a significant story.

Chicago judges in the criminal courts were questioned by the Commission

on their experience to test the foundation of this belief. Their replies

were practically unanimous. Some of them are given:

_Judge Pam_: You talk about sex cases. Whether you call them

rape cases or crimes against children, I have more serious

rape cases against white than I have against colored people.

The most serious case I had was about ten days ago, and I

sentenced the man to life imprisonment. I never had such a

case involving a Negro.

_Commissioner_: We read a great deal in the papers about rape

in the South. How does the colored man stand on that matter

in comparison to the white man?

_Judge Thompson_: Practically the same.

_Commissioner_: You spoke about crimes involving sex. What

is your experience with regard to whether they are committed

more often by colored persons than whites?

_Judge Trude_: I don't think in Chicago they are committed

more by Negroes than whites.

_Judge Thompson_: In my work with the criminal court I was

astounded at the large number of crimes involving the sexual

abuse of children, but I remember no case in which a colored

defendant was charged with that crime. Almost all other races

were represented, but I don't remember one colored man charged

with the abuse of a child.... I tried many of those cases,

but never tried a colored man for that offense. I would say

the majority of them were slavic or German; practically no

Scandinavian.

_Dr. Adler, State Criminologist_: We had the same thing here

in Chicago of a colored man sent to the penitentiary on a

charge of attempted rape or something of that sort, where the

identification was made by a child of six or eight years who

picked him out in a crowd under suspicion. No such evidence

ought to be accepted. We are perfectly sure, and everybody

else agrees that such evidence is not sufficient to warrant

the action.

2. THE SEX MYTH

_East St. Louis riot._--The records of the Congressional Investigating

Committee contain much evidence of the use of this myth in fomenting

riots. Edward F. Mason, representing the interests of labor, gave a

vivid account of the report that Negro men had committed vicious acts

of assault against white girls in the East St. Louis streets. He stated

further that 200 white women were among the 1,200 persons present at

the meeting on the night of May 28, just prior to the riot, and that

"we brought these girls along to see if we couldn't teach--we wanted to

wake him [the mayor] up. He was in a trance. He couldn't see the thing

like we did."

Alois Towers emphasized in his testimony the sentiment among the whites

of East St. Louis just prior to the outbreak:

Mr. Chairman, yesterday I made the statement that the great

influx of Negroes was responsible for the riot. I want to

try and show some of the feelings that developed after this

great influx of Negroes. It was a terrible feeling in the

air. Everyone felt that something terrible was going to

happen. On the street comers, wherever you went, you heard

expressions against the Negro. You heard that the Negro was

driving the white man out of the locality--by moving into

the white neighborhood--that the whites were being forced out

of their localities. Stories were afloat on the streets and

on the street cars of the worst kind that would inflame the

feelings. For instance, I heard one story so persistently that

I commenced to think later on there might be some truth in it.

First I thought it was just originated by some who might want

to inflame the feelings of the people. I heard stories of this

kind and I heard it no less than a dozen times on the streets

of East St. Louis, that Negroes had made the boast that they

were invited to East St. Louis; that great numbers of white

people were taken away for war purposes; and that _there would

be lots of white women for the Negroes in East St. Louis_....

The whole country became fearful. You could hear the same

discussions away from East St. Louis. People were inflamed and

their feelings were directed against big employers of East

St. Louis, feeling that they were responsible for the great

influx of Negroes.

Of actual assaults against white women there was found no evidence.

Testimony by the mayor before the Military Committee investigating the

conduct of soldiers adds substantiation to this fact:

_Q._: Now did you hear of any other complaints of these colored

men from any source as to their conduct and behavior when

they first came here other than being imported here to work

in large numbers?

_A._: Yes sir.

_Q._: What do you know about it?

_A._: Some complaints that they were sticking up people, holding

up people at night time, and various other police violations.

_Q._: Now were these complaints verified by the records, or

otherwise?

_A._: I think they were, they were arrested and locked up,

got trial and punishment, the usual procedure of the Police

Department and Courts.

_Q._: You keep in pretty close touch with these Police Court

Proceedings?

_A._: Yes sir.

_Q._: So you would say that there were more colored people

arrested and convicted for such offenses as you mentioned than

there were four or two years ago?

_A._: I have not made that comparison, but I would think so.

_Q._: Any other offenses except larceny and robbery?

_A._: No.

_Q._: Any sex outrages?

_A._: No.

_Q._: No complaints or prosecutions that white women were

outraged by colored men?

_A._: No sir.

[Board of Inquiry, East St. Louis, Ill.]

_Washington riot._--The Washington race riot was precipitated by reports

of alleged attacks upon white women by Negroes. These reports were

featured in the daily newspapers with large front-page headlines, and

suggestions were made that probable lynchings would follow the capture

of the Negroes. The series of reported assaults totaled seven. In each

it was claimed that a Negro had assaulted a white woman. When the fury

and excitement of the riot had subsided and the facts were sifted, it

was found that of the seven assaults reported, four were assaults upon

colored women. Three of the alleged criminals arrested and held for

assault were white men, and at least two of the white men were prosecuted

for assaults upon colored women. It further developed that three of the

assaults were supposed to have been committed by a suspect who at the

time of the riots was under arrest.

_Waukegan riot._--A story with the implication that a sex issue was

involved was the significant feature of the riot between marines from

the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, aided by citizens of Waukegan,

and the Negro residents of Waukegan. It is entirely likely that the

outburst was wholly precipitated by the entirely false report that

"Mrs. Blazier, the wife of Lieutenant Blazier," was "attacked" by Negro

boys.[100] Lieutenant Blazier, it developed, was unmarried and had no

woman occupant in the car.

_Chicago riot._--The most atrocious murder of the Chicago riot of 1919 was

precipitated by a report involving an Italian girl. The story circulated

that she had been killed by a Negro. Joseph Lovings, an innocent Negro,

chanced into the neighborhood on a bicycle. He was set upon and murdered.

The coroner found fourteen bullet wounds, many stab wounds, contusion of

the head, and fractures of the skull bones and of the limbs. The report

proved a myth, for no girl was killed by anyone during the riot. The

Negro killed was innocent of any injury, and if a girl was injured it

had not been learned by whom the injury was inflicted. There had been

no previous rioting on the West Side, where the murder was committed,

and no further clashes followed it. The usual report of the burning of

the Negro which followed an assault was also circulated, and this was

false and unfounded.

In the frenzy of the rioting in Chicago a report gained circulation

that white women were being attacked by Negroes. Some reports picked

up by newspapers asserted that women were being shot as the riot grew.

The _Chicago American_ during the riot pertinently made a plea for

cool-headedness and intelligence in receiving reports. In an editorial

it thus importuned the citizenry:

Don't circulate wild stories that tend to infuriate respectable

citizens, both white and black. They are trying to suppress

the hoodlums who have been responsible for all the rioting.

Don't believe every infuriating report you hear, and don't

repeat them to others more credulous than yourself.

Depend on the _American_ to tell you what happened just as

accurately as careful, intelligent reporting will permit.

The most notable instance of inflammatory faking was observed

in one newspaper (not the _American_) yesterday afternoon. It

ran across its front page in big type the heading: "Women Shot

as Riots Grow." It was based on an incoherent, unsubstantiated

rumor which later investigation proved has no foundation.

The same information was received by the _Evening American_

from the detective bureau, where the report was received. The

_American_ published a few lines announcing that the police

had received such reports. Men were rushed out, but the report

could not be verified, and this newspaper withdrew further

publication of the unverified report.

At Chicago Heights a race riot was reported on August 7, 1920. It was

said in the press that a Negro motor-cyclist had run down a Hungarian

boy. The actual report circulated was that a Negro had struck an Italian

girl. The latter report was not true; the first one, contrary to press

reports, did not start a riot. In fact, there was no riot.

In the racial clash of September 20, 1920, the sex myth again arose.[101]

Immediately after one of the Negroes had struck Barrett down, the trio

ran. Few persons actually knew what had occurred. Excitement waxed high

when the wild report flew about that a Negro had attacked a white woman.

A mob of several thousand men, women, and children formed to storm the

church in which they had sought refuge.

An investigator from the Commission, sent out immediately after the clash,

picked up traces of this myth in the sentiments of white residents of

the neighborhood.

There was a story which everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know

concerning trouble on the street-car lines between Negroes and whites.

A middle-aged Irish woman on Union Avenue, who had been with the crowd

at the church, gave the following account of it: "Not long ago, a Negro

knocked a white woman off the cars. It never appeared in the papers. I

never go on the cars where they [Negroes] are. You couldn't get me to

go on a State Street car line."

A barber at Forty-fifth Street and Emerald Avenue said:

There was some trouble the Saturday before Labor Day. A Negro

gave the conductor a dollar bill, and the conductor said

he hadn't change and told him to get off the car. As he was

getting off, he knocked against a white woman, and seven men

in an automobile who were right behind the car saw him and

chased him. They brought him up to the alley right across the

street, beat him up, and cut up his head something awful.

IV. PROPAGANDA

Both whites and Negroes have recognized the value of propaganda as

an instrument of opinion-making. Both employ it, sometimes openly,

sometimes insidiously. Its effects may be unmistakably observed in

much of the literature about the Negro. It is the purpose here to give

attention to certain forms of propaganda now in circulation, with a view

to defining roughly their place in the manufacture of sentiment on the

race question in Chicago. In spite of similarity it would be obviously

unfair to lump all sorts of propaganda, good and bad, under one general

classification. It is possible, however, to classify different types

from the examples which came to the attention of the Commission, as

follows: (1) educational, (2) radical and revolutionary, (3) malicious,

(4) defensive.

1. EDUCATIONAL PROPAGANDA

Propaganda on the race situation with a true educational purpose seems to

be confined largely to organizations composed of both whites and Negroes,

who make joint appeals to both groups. An example is the publicity

campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People. This Association definitely asserts that it can best accomplish

its ends by reaching "the conscience and heart of the American people,"

and publicity is the weapon. The _Crisis_ magazine is the principal organ

of the Association, although the public is reached through various other

channels.

From the report of the Association for 1919, the following figures

covering the circulation of information is obtained: During that year

1,138,900 copies of the _Crisis_ were sold; officers of the Association

traveled 101,009 miles, delivered 286 addresses, including eleven in

Chicago, and contributed nineteen special articles, not including special

releases, of press material to magazines of wide circulation.

2. RADICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PROPAGANDA

A broad basis of appeal to Negroes as a group is provided in their

economic status. Placed by circumstances near the bottom of the industrial

ladder, victims of exploitation, restlessly resentful of practices

employed against them because of class as well as race, it might be

reasoned that they would be vitally interested in a revolution, industrial

if not social. The Industrial Workers of the World has reasoned after

this fashion and, probably because class meant more to it than race,

extended open arms to Negro workers. This appeal was even stronger

in view of the attitude of partial exclusion adopted by many trades

unions. To strengthen its organization, ally with it a restless group,

90 per cent of whom are laborers, while at the same time providing an

unmistakable demonstration of its own disregard for race lines in its

so-called struggle for "industrial freedom," the I.W.W. directed a

definite propaganda toward the Negro group, and founded it upon a very

human desire. Thousands of letters and pamphlets were addressed, "To

the colored workingmen and women," calling them fellow-workers. Excerpts

from one of them follow:

There is one question which, more than any other, presses upon

the mind of the worker today, regardless of whether he be of

one race or another, of one color or another, the question of

how he can improve his conditions, raise his wages, shorten

his hours of labor, and gain something more of freedom from

his master, the owners of the industry wherein he labors.

To the black race, who, but recently, with the assistance

of the white men of the northern states, broke their chains

of bondage and ended chattel slavery, a prospect of further

freedom or _real freedom_ should be most appealing.

For it is a fact that the Negro worker is no better off under

the freedom he has gained than under the slavery from which

he has escaped. As chattel slaves we were the property of

our masters and, as a piece of valuable property, our masters

were considerate of us and careful of our health and welfare.

Today, as wage workers, the boss may work us to death, at the

hardest and most hazardous labor, at the longest hours, at

the lowest pay, we may quietly starve when out of work and the

boss loses nothing by it and has no interest in us. To him the

worker is but a machine for producing profits and when you,

as a slave who sells himself to the master on the installment

plan, become old, or broken in health or strength, or should

you be killed while at work, the master merely gets another

wage slave on the same terms.

We who have worked in the South know that conditions in lumber

and turpentine camps, in the fields of cane, cotton and tobacco,

in the mills and mines of Dixie, are such that the workers

suffer a more miserable existence than ever prevailed among

the chattel slaves before the great Civil War. Thousands of

us have come and are coming northward, crossing the Mason and

Dixon line, seeking better conditions. As wage slaves we have

run away from the masters in the South, but to become the wage

slaves of the masters in the North. In the North we find that

the hardest work and the poorest pay are our portion. We are

driven while on the job, and the high cost of living offsets

any higher pay we might receive.

The only problem then, which the colored worker should consider,

as a worker, is the problem of organization with other working

men in the labor organization that best expresses the interest

of the whole working class against the slavery and oppression

of the whole capitalist class. Such an organization is the

I.W.W., the _Industrial Workers of the World_, the only labor

union that has never, _in theory or practice_, since its

beginning, twelve years ago, barred the workers of any race or

nation from membership. The following has stood as a principle

of the I.W.W., embodied in its official constitution since

its formation in 1905:

"By-Laws. Article I--Section 1

"No working man or woman shall be excluded from

membership in Unions because of creed or color."

If you are a wage worker you are welcome in the I.W.W. halls,

no matter what your color. By this you may see that the I.W.W.

is not a white man's union, not a black man's union, not a

red or yellow man's union, but a _working man's union_. _All

of the working class in one big union._

In the I.W.W. all wage workers meet on common ground. No

matter what language you may speak, whether you were born in

Europe, in Asia or in any other part of the world, you will

find a welcome as a fellow worker. In the harvest fields where

the I.W.W. controls, last summer saw white men, black men and

Japanese working together as union men and raising the pay of

all who gathered the grain. In the great strikes the I.W.W.

has conducted at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the woolen mills,

in the iron mills of Minnesota and elsewhere, the I.W.W. has

brought the workers of many races, colors and tongues together

in victorious battles for a better life.

The foundation of the I.W.W. is _industrial unionism_. All

workers in any division of any industry are organized into an

_industrial union of all_ the workers in the _entire industry_;

these _industrial unions_ in turn are organized into _industrial

departments_ of connecting or kindred industries, while all are

brought together in the _central organization of the Industrial

Workers of the World--one big union of all the working class

of the world_. No one but actual wage workers may join. The

working class cannot depend upon anyone but itself to free it

from wage slavery. "He who would be free, himself must strike

the blow."

When the I.W.W. through this form of _industrial unionism_

has become powerful enough, it will institute an _industrial

commonwealth_; it will end slavery and oppression forever and

in its place will be a world of the workers, by the workers,

and for the workers, a world where there will be no poverty

and want among those who feed and clothe and house the world; a

world where the word "master" and "slave" shall be forgotten;

a world where peace and happiness shall reign and where

the children of men shall live as brothers in a world-wide

_industrial democracy_.

Another pamphlet published a hideous picture of a lynching in the South.

In both of these pamphlets the appeal is about the same and may be

summarized as follows:

The Negro is oppressed. He is subjected to the worst possible

cruelties and indignities. The working men are oppressed.

Negroes have left one slavery for another which is shared

by white workers. Race hatred is played upon by capitalists

to keep the two races apart and thus thwart their efforts at

improving their condition. The I.W.W. union will unite all of

the oppressed of all colors and all languages. One big union

of defensive brotherhood, not only in America but throughout

the world.

3. MALICIOUS PROPAGANDA

Anti-Negro propaganda is not wholly new in the North, but it has usually

been carefully concealed. Recently there have been several conspicuous

instances of open and organized effort to influence the minds of white

persons against Negroes. The slogans, charges, and incriminations

have included, with gross exaggeration, not only all of the actual but

all of the fancied and rumored defects of Negro character. Ignorance

and suspicion, fear and prejudice, have been played upon violently. A

group of South Side real estate dealers and owners, anxious to preserve

exclusively for whites sections of the city known as Hyde Park and

Kenwood, formed themselves into an organization to protect property

values on the assumption that the presence of Negroes depreciated real

estate values. Since they did not own or control enough property to be in

themselves effective, they sought to awaken the white residents to the

"danger that menaced them." Funds were raised, meetings held, a journal

started, bills and posters distributed, and many letters circulated. A

bulletin was widely distributed with this heading:

YOUR RIGHTS AND MINE

A Short Symposium on Current Events as Applied to and Effecting Realty

Values in Kenwood and Hyde Park

It began by disclaiming any desire to foment or foster race antagonism,

but stated its determination to work insistently and persistently along

legal lines for the elimination of undesirables of whatever brand or color

whose residence in this section lowered the value of real estate. The

remainder of the bulletin, however, was devoted to a discussion of the

Negro. A letter to Mayor Thompson from the president of the Association

mentioned the vicious element of Negroes "haranguing about constitutional

rights," aided by the Negro press, claiming social equality, and then

attributed the riot to the scattering of Negroes in white residential

sections. It spoke of a feeling that was rampant because the "legal rights

of Negroes have been placed above his moral obligation to the white

people." The _Chicago Tribune_ was quoted twice and the Chicago Real

Estate Board once on the desirability of segregation. The _Daily News_

afforded a fourth quotation from an article in which three solutions were

advanced--amalgamation, deportation, and segregation. As to amalgamation

the article said: "Every white man would rather see the nation destroyed

than adopt that method."

The _Property Owners' Journal_ became so bitter in its utterances that

the protests of whites forced its discontinuance. A few selections from

the _Journal_ picture the character of the campaign:

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.

THE NEW NEGRO

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 on social equality. Only a few days ago Attorney General

Palmer informed the Senate of the nation of the Negroes'

boldest and most impudent ambition, sex equality.

From the Negro viewpoint sex equality, according to Mr.

Palmer, is not seen as the equality of men and women; it is

the assertion by the Negro of a right to marry any person whom

he chooses, regardless of color. The dangerous portion of

their outrageous idea does not consist in the accident that

some black or white occasionally may forget the dignity of

their race and intermarry. That has happened before; doubtless

it will recur many times. Where the trouble lies is in the

fact that the Department of Justice has observed an organized

tendency on the part of Negroes to regard themselves in such

a light as to permit their idea to become a universal ambition

of the Negro race.

As a corollary to their ambition on sex equality, it is not

strange that they are attempting to force their presence as

neighbors on the whites. The effrontery and impudence that

nurses a desire on the part of the Negro to choose a white as

a marriage mate certainly will not result in making the Negro

a desirable neighbor. That fact alone is enough to determine

the property owners of this district to declare to the Negroes

that they must stay out. As neighbors they have nothing to

offer. "They lived for uncounted centuries in Africa on their

own resources, and never so much as improved the make-up of

an arrow, coined a new word, or crept an inch nearer to a

spiritual religion," and it is a certainty that their tenure

of those unfortunate buildings now occupied by them will not

be improved by a single nail if it is left to the Negro to

provide and drive the nail.

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 in 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.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR HYDE-PARKERS

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. He

abuses his rights and liberties and feels that he is perfectly

safe in doing so for the reason that as he controls this block

of votes he believes that he can practically dictate to the

police department, the city administration and the courts.

Consequently he is bold.

Now then, white property owners and voters, this vote situation

must be corrected. It is time for you to think and ponder.

Remember this, that this Negro vote power could not exist except

for the fact that the candidate who caters to it is traveling

on his belief that the white man will vote the ticket any

way. The white voter is not supposed to think, nor to indulge

in any investigations of a candidate to ascertain whether or

not the candidate is favorable or inimical to his interests.

No, the white voter is supposed to be a blind ass who has no

care for his own interests, who does not know or care to know

of the foul plots against him, who has no knowledge of what

is going on around him, but who simply does as he is told and

walks to the polls as in a dream, having eyes and seeing not,

ears and hearing not, and religiously casts his vote for the

ticket and against his own interests.

Wake up, white voters! Come out of your dream. Open your eyes

and ears. It is high time that you realize what is going on.

Hereafter in local affairs affecting your property and home

interests, there should be only one test of a candidate and

that one should be, "Will his election work for the betterment

of Hyde Park or for its deterioration?"

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.

Some of the slogans of the organization were: "Our neighborhood must

continue white"; "They shall not pass"; "Stay out of Hyde Park"; "We

base our rights on priority, majority and anthropological superiority."

The sentiment was contagious.[102] Other literature of even more

pronounced anti-Negro character followed. An unsigned card was distributed

in large numbers throughout the district during the presidential

campaign, showing a vicious looking Negro and words of warning for family

protection.

The attempt still further to instill fear and bitterness was manifest

in a pamphlet sent, by whom it is not known, to the wives of prominent

white residents of the city and particularly of Hyde Park, entitled _An

Appeal of White Women to American Womanhood_. It was a reprint from an

article in the _New Times_, which in turn reprinted an appeal from the

_German Women on the Rhine_. Although there could be slight connection

between the conduct of colored French colonial troops on the Rhine and

Chicago Negroes, its circulation in Hyde Park possibly helped to fan the

flames of race feeling which had already been so deliberately kindled.

The pamphlet detailed the "bestial ferocious conduct of Negroes against

German women."

4. DEFENSIVE PROPAGANDA

Within the Negro group there are to be found many defensive programs

designed for group protection. They rarely reach the point of organized

effort for the control of opinion. The essence in all appeals is

"protest," which is tacitly understood to be an effective sentiment to

circulate. The most striking illustrations of this type of propaganda are

those which follow definite provocations. The appeal of the propaganda

is directed first to Negroes as a means of cementing the group from

within, and indirectly to the whole group by way of impressing it with

the strength of solidified opposition to insults. One example of this

type will suffice.

Following the bombing of Negro homes and the inauguration of a campaign

of reckless propaganda against Negroes in the interest of exclusive

white residence neighborhoods, Negroes organized the "Protective Circle

of Chicago." The object of this organization was to "oppose segregation,

bombing and the defiance of the Constitution." The admitted method of

combating these objectionable practices was propaganda. The question

on which certain white people living in Hyde Park were greatly wrought

up was that of keeping Negroes out of "white residential districts."

Negroes were classed as "undesirables," and the efforts of the whites

in offensive propaganda were aimed at proving it. Fortunately for the

Negroes, an article appeared in a real estate publication, the _Real

Estate News_, presenting with unusual force an aspect of the neighborhood

dispute favorable to the contention of the Negroes. This was seized

upon by the Protective Circle, and the editor consented to elaborate it.

Twenty-five thousand copies were distributed among Negroes and whites,

residents of the district.

The heading "Solving Chicago's Race Problem," coupled with the fact that

the article had first appeared in a real estate periodical published by

whites, immediately attracted attention. The subheadings of the article

read: "South Side Property Owners Warned against Perils of Boycott

and Terrorism Being Promoted by Local 'Protective Associations,'"

"Conspiracies Violating Civil Rights Act Bring Danger of Heavy Damages

or Imprisonment," "A Complete Analysis of Chicago's Race Movement Proves

It to Be Small Factor in Causing Great Changes in Residential Values,"

and "How Influence of Stock Yards, Railroads, Auto Industry and City

Growth Force Big and Sweeping Changes on South Side of Chicago." One

paragraph of the article, printed in italics, ran:

Any association formed in Chicago for the purpose of, or having

among its aims, refusal to sell, lease or rent property to

any citizen of a certain race, is an unlawful association.

Every act of such an association for advancement of such an

aim is an act of conspiracy, punishable criminally and civilly

in the District Court of the United States. And every member

of such an association is equally guilty with every other

member. If one member hires a bomber, or a thug who commits

murder in pursuance of the aims of the association, all in

the organization may be found guilty of conspiracy to destroy

property or to commit murder, as the case may be.

At a mass meeting held by the Protective Circle at which there were

2,000 Negroes present, $1,000 was collected to advance this propaganda.

As the chairman of the meeting stated:

We wanted to get at the responsibility for these bombings and

intimidations, and we intended to give publicity to the Negro's

side of the story. Papers will not print the Negro's story.

We wanted to get this survey of white and colored property

owned, and whites and Negroes bombed, and send it to every

white person living in Kenwood, and just as we were about to

start on our task, there came like a flash out of the sky

an article by the editor of the _Real Estate News_. It was

a godsend. We have secured thousands of copies of this paper

and are buying more as fast as we can get funds. We intend to

send copies to every white person interested in this question.

V. CONCLUSIONS

The inquiries of this Commission into racial sentiments which characterize

the opinions and behavior of white persons toward Negroes lead us to

the following conclusions:

That in seeking advice and information about Negroes, white persons

almost without exception fail to select for their informants Negroes

who are representative and can provide dependable information.

That Negroes as a group are often judged by the manners, conduct, and

opinions of servants in families, or other Negroes whose general standing

and training do not qualify them to be spokesmen of the group.

That the principal literature regarding Negroes is based upon traditional

opinions and does not always portray accurately the present status of

the group.

Most of the current beliefs concerning Negroes are traditional, and

were acquired during an earlier period when Negroes were considerably

less intelligent and responsible than now. Failure to change these

opinions, in spite of the great progress of the Negro group, increases

misunderstandings and the difficulties of mutual adjustment.

That the common disposition to regard all Negroes as belonging to one

homogeneous group is as great a mistake as to assume that all white

persons are of the same class and kind.

That much of the current literature and pseudo-scientific treatises

concerning Negroes are responsible for such prevailing misconceptions

as: that Negroes have inferior mentality; that Negroes have inferior

morality; that Negroes are given to emotionalism; that Negroes have an

innate tendency to commit crimes, especially sex crimes.

We believe that such deviations from recognized standards as have been

apparent among Negroes are due to circumstances of position rather than

to distinct racial traits. We urge especially upon white persons to exert

their efforts toward discrediting stories and standing beliefs concerning

Negroes which have no basis in fact but which constantly serve to keep

alive a spirit of mutual fear, distrust, and opposition.

That much of the literature and scientific treatises concerning Negroes

are responsible for such prevailing misconceptions as that Negroes are

capable of mental and moral development only to an inferior degree, are

given to an uncontrolled emotionalism, and have a distinctive innate

tendency to commit crimes, especially sex crimes.

CHAPTER XI

SUMMARY OF THE REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION

THE SUMMARY

I. THE CHICAGO RIOT

1. BACKGROUND

In July, 1919, a race riot involving whites and Negroes occurred in

Chicago. For some time thoughtful citizens, white and Negro, had sensed

increasing tension, but, having no local precedent of riot and wholesale

bloodshed, had neither prepared themselves for it nor taken steps to

prevent it. The collecting of arms by members of both races was known

to the authorities, and it was evident that this was in preparation for

aggression as well as for self-defense.

Several minor clashes preceded the riot. On July 3, 1917, a white

saloon-keeper who, according to the coroner's physician, died of heart

trouble, was incorrectly reported in the press to have been killed by a

Negro. That evening a party of young white men riding in an automobile

fired upon a group of Negroes at Fifty-third and Federal streets. In

July and August of the same year recruits from the Great Lakes Naval

Training Station clashed frequently with Negroes, each side accusing

the other of being the aggressor.

Gangs of white "toughs," made up largely of the membership of so-called

"athletic clubs" from the neighborhood between Roosevelt Road and

Sixty-third Street, Wentworth Avenue and the city limits--a district

contiguous to the neighborhood of the largest Negro settlement--were a

constant menace to Negroes who traversed sections of the territory going

to and returning from work. The activities of these gangs and "athletic

clubs" became bolder in the spring of 1919, and on the night of June

21, five weeks before the riot, two wanton murders of Negroes occurred,

those of Sanford Harris and Joseph Robinson. Harris returning to his home

on Dearborn Street, about 11:30 at night, passed a group of young white

men. They threatened him and he ran. He had gone but a short distance

when one of the group shot him. He died soon afterward. Policemen who

came on the scene made no arrests, even when the assailant was pointed

out by a white woman witness of the murder. On the same evening Robinson,

a Negro laborer, forty-seven years of age, was attacked while returning

from work by a gang of white "roughs" at Fifty-fifth Street and Princeton

Avenue, apparently without provocation, and stabbed to death.

Negroes were greatly incensed over these murders, but their leaders,

joined by many friendly whites, tried to allay their fears and counseled

patience.

After the killing of Harris and Robinson notices were conspicuously

posted on the South Side that an effort would be made to "get all the

niggers on July 4th." The notices called for help from sympathizers.

Negroes in turn whispered around the warning to prepare for a riot; and

they did prepare.

Since the riot in East St. Louis, July 4, 1917, there had been others

in different parts of the country which evidenced a widespread lack

of restraint in mutual antipathies and suggested further resorts to

lawlessness. Riots and race clashes occurred in Chester, Pennsylvania;

Longview, Texas; Coatesville, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk,

Virginia, before the Chicago riot.

Aside from general lawlessness and disastrous riots that preceded the riot

here discussed, there were other factors which may be mentioned briefly

here. In Chicago considerable unrest had been occasioned in industry

by increasing competition between white and Negro laborers following a

sudden increase in the Negro population due to the migration of Negroes

from the South. This increase developed a housing crisis. The Negroes

overran the hitherto recognized area of Negro residence, and when they

took houses in adjoining neighborhoods friction ensued. In the two years

just preceding the riot, twenty-seven Negro dwellings were wrecked by

bombs thrown by unidentified persons.

2. STORY OF THE RIOT

Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1919, hundreds of white and Negro bathers

crowded the lake-front beaches at Twenty-sixth and Twenty-ninth streets.

This is the eastern boundary of the thickest Negro residence area. At

Twenty-sixth Street Negroes were in great majority; at Twenty-ninth

Street there were more whites. An imaginary line in the water separating

the two beaches had been generally observed by the two races. Under the

prevailing relations, aided by wild rumors and reports, this line served

virtually as a challenge to either side to cross it. Four Negroes who

attempted to enter the water from the "white" side were driven away by

the whites. They returned with more Negroes, and there followed a series

of attacks with stones, first one side gaining the advantage, then the

other.

Eugene Williams, a Negro boy of seventeen, entered the water from the

side used by Negroes and drifted across the line supported by a railroad

tie. He was observed by the crowd on the beach and promptly became

a target for stones. He suddenly released the tie, went down and was

drowned. Guilt was immediately placed on Stauber, a young white man, by

Negro witnesses who declared that he threw the fatal stone.[103]

White and Negro men dived for the boy without result. Negroes demanded

that the policeman present arrest Stauber. He refused; and at this

crucial moment arrested a Negro on a white man's complaint. Negroes then

attacked the officer. These two facts, the drowning and the refusal of

the policeman to arrest Stauber, together marked the beginning of the

riot.

Two hours after the drowning, a Negro, James Crawford, fired into a group

of officers summoned by the policeman at the beach and was killed by a

Negro policeman. Reports and rumors circulated rapidly, and new crowds

began to gather. Five white men were injured in clashes near the beach. As

darkness came Negroes in white districts to the west suffered severely.

Between 9:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. twenty-seven Negroes were beaten, seven

stabbed, and four shot. Monday morning was quiet, and Negroes went to

work as usual.

Returning from work in the afternoon many Negroes were attacked by white

ruffians. Street-car routes, especially at transfer points, were the

centers of lawlessness. Trolleys were pulled from the wires, and Negro

passengers were dragged into the street, beaten, stabbed, and shot.

The police were powerless to cope with these numerous assaults. During

Monday, four Negro men and one white assailant were killed, and thirty

Negroes were severely beaten in street-car clashes. Four white men were

killed, six stabbed, five shot, and nine severely beaten. It was rumored

that the white occupants of the Angelus Building at Thirty-fifth Street

and Wabash Avenue had shot a Negro. Negroes gathered about the building.

The white tenants sought police protection, and one hundred policemen,

mounted and on foot, responded. In a clash with the mob the police killed

four Negroes and injured many.

Raids into the Negro residence area then began. Automobiles sped through

the streets, the occupants shooting at random. Negroes retaliated by

"sniping" from ambush. At midnight surface and elevated car service was

discontinued because of a strike for wage increases, and thousands of

employees were cut off from work.

On Tuesday, July 29, Negro men en route on foot to their jobs through

hostile territory were killed. White soldiers and sailors in uniform,

aided by civilians, raided the "Loop" business section, killing two

Negroes and beating and robbing several others. Negroes living among

white, neighbors in Englewood, far to the south, were driven from their

homes, their household goods were stolen, and their houses were burned

or wrecked. On the West Side an Italian mob, excited by a false rumor

that an Italian girl had been shot by a Negro, killed Joseph Lovings,

a Negro.

Wednesday night at 10:30 Mayor Thompson yielded to pressure and asked

the help of the three regiments of militia which had been stationed in

nearby armories during the most severe rioting, awaiting the call. They

immediately took up positions throughout the South Side. A rainfall

Wednesday night and Thursday kept many people in their homes, and by

Friday the rioting had abated. On Saturday incendiary fires burned

forty-nine houses in the immigrant neighborhood west of the Stock Yards.

Nine hundred and forty-eight people, mostly Lithuanians, were made

homeless, and the property loss was about $250,000. Responsibility for

the fires was never fixed.

The total casualties of this reign of terror were thirty-eight

deaths--fifteen white, twenty-three Negro--and 537 people injured.

Forty-one per cent of the reported clashes occurred in the white

neighborhood near the Stock Yards between the south branch of the Chicago

River and Fifty-fifth Street, Wentworth Avenue and the city limits, and

34 per cent in the "Black Belt" between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth

streets, Wentworth Avenue and Lake Michigan. Others were scattered.

Responsibility for many attacks was definitely placed by many witnesses

upon the "athletic clubs," including "Ragen's Colts," the "Hamburgers,"

"Aylwards," "Our Flag," the "Standard," the "Sparklers," and several

others. The mobs were made up for the most part of boys between fifteen

and twenty-two. Older persons participated, but the youth of the rioters

was conspicuous in every clash. Little children witnessed the brutalities

and frequently pointed out the injured when the police arrived.

3. RUMORS AND THE RIOT

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 thirteen were white and

seven colored. The true figures were exactly the opposite.

Among the rumors provoking fear were numerous references to the arming

of Negroes. In the _Daily News_ of July 30, for example, appeared the

subheadline: "Alderman Jos. McDonough tells how he was shot at on South

Side visit. Says enough ammunition in section to last for years of

guerrilla warfare." In the article following, the reference to ammunition

was repeated but not elaborated or explained.

The alderman was quoted as saying that the mayor contemplated opening

up Thirty-fifth and Forty-seventh streets in order that colored people

might get to their work. He thought this would be most unwise for, he

stated, "They are armed and white people are not. We must defend ourselves

if the city authorities won't protect us." Continuing his story, he

described bombs going off: "I saw white men and women running through

the streets dragging children by the hands and carrying babies in their

arms. Frightened white men told me the police captains had just rushed

through the district crying, 'For God's sake, arm; they are coming; we

cannot hold them.'"

Whether or not the alderman was correctly quoted, the effect of such

statements on the public was the same. There is no record in any of the

riot testimony in the coroner's office or state's attorney's office of

any bombs going off during the riot, nor of police captains warning the

white people to arm, nor of any fear by whites of a Negro invasion. In

the Berger Odman case before a coroner's jury there was a statement to

the effect that a sergeant of police warned the Negroes of Ogden Park to

arm and to shoot at the feet of rioters if they attempted to invade the

few blocks marked off for Negroes by the police. Negroes were warned,

not whites.

4. CONDUCT OF THE POLICE

Chief of Police John J. Garrity, in explaining the inability of the

police to curb the rioters, said that there was not a sufficient force

to police one-third of the city. Aside from this, Negroes distrusted

the white police officers, and it was implied by the chief and stated

by State's Attorney Hoyne, that many of the police were "grossly unfair

in making arrests." There were instances of actual police participation

in the rioting as well as neglect of duty. Of 229 persons arrested and

accused of various criminal activities during the riot, 154 were Negroes

and seventy-five were whites. Of those indicted, eighty-one were Negroes

and forty-seven were whites. Although this, on its face, would indicate

great riot activity on the part of Negroes, further reports of clashes

show that of 520 persons injured, 342 were Negroes and 178 were whites.

The fact that twice as many Negroes appeared as defendants and twice as

many Negroes as whites were injured, leads to the conclusion that whites

were not apprehended as readily as Negroes.

Many of the depredations outside the "Black Belt" were encouraged by the

absence of policemen. Out of a force of 3,000 police, 2,800 were massed

in the "Black Belt" during the height of the rioting. In the "Loop"

district, where two Negroes were killed and several others wounded, there

were only three policemen and one sergeant. The Stock Yards district,

where the greatest number of injuries occurred, was also weakly protected.

5. THE MILITIA

Although Governor Lowden had ordered the militia into the city promptly

and they were on hand on the second day of the rioting, their services

were not requested by the mayor and chief of police until the evening

of the fourth day. The reason expressed by the chief for this delay

was a belief that inexperienced militiamen would add to the deaths

and disorder. But the troops, when called, proved to be clearly of

high character, and their discipline was good, not a case of breach of

discipline being reported during their occupation. They were distributed

more proportionately through all the riotous areas than the police and,

although they reported some hostility from members of "athletic clubs,"

the rioting soon ceased.

6. RESTORATION OF ORDER

Throughout the rioting various social organizations and many citizens

were at work trying to hold hostilities in check and to restore order.

The Chicago Urban League, Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A., American Red Cross,

and various other social organizations and the churches of the Negro

community gave attention to caring for stranded Negroes, advising them

of dangers, keeping them off the streets and, in such ways as were

possible, co-operating with the police. The packing companies took their

pay to Negro employees, and various banks made loans. Local newspapers in

their editorial columns insistently condemned the disorder and counseled

calmness.

7. THE AFTERMATH

Of the thirty-eight persons killed in the riot:

Fifteen met death at the hands of mobs. Coroner's juries recommended

that the members of the unknown mobs be apprehended. They were never

found.

Six were killed in circumstances fixing no criminal responsibility: three

white men were killed by Negroes in self-defense, and three Negroes were

shot by policemen in the discharge of their duty.

Four Negroes were killed in the Angelus riot. The coroner made no

recommendations, and the cases were not carried farther.

Four cases, two Negro and two white, resulted in recommendations from

coroner's juries for further investigation of certain persons. Sufficient

evidence was lacking for indictments against them.

Nine cases led to indictments. Of this number four cases resulted in

convictions.

Thus in only four cases of death was criminal responsibility fixed and

punishment meted out.

Indictments and convictions, divided according to the race of the persons

criminally involved, were as follows:

================================================

| NEGRO | WHITE

+-------+---------+-------+---------

| Cases | Persons | Cases | Persons

------------+-------+---------+-------+---------

Indictments | 6 | 17 | 3 | 4

Convictions | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2

------------+-------+---------+-------+---------

Despite the community's failure to deal firmly with those who disturbed

its peace and contributed to the reign of lawlessness that shamed Chicago

before the world, there is evidence that the riot aroused many citizens

of both races to a quickened sense of the suffering and disgrace which

had come and might again come to the city, and developed a determination

to prevent a recurrence of so disastrous an outbreak of race hatred.

This was manifest on at least three occasions in 1920 when, confronted

suddenly with events out of which serious riots might easily have grown,

people of both races acted with such courage and promptness as to end

the trouble early. One of these was the murder of two innocent white

men and the wounding of a Negro policeman by a band of Negro fanatics

who styled themselves "Abyssinians"; another was the killing of a white

man by a Negro whom he had attacked while returning from work; and still

another was the riotous attacks of sailors from the Great Lakes Naval

Training Station on Negroes in Waukegan, Illinois.

8. OUTSTANDING FEATURES OF THE RIOT

This study of the facts of the riot of 1919, the events as they happened

hour by hour, the neighborhoods involved, the movements of mobs, the

part played by rumors, and the handling of the emergency by the various

authorities, shows certain outstanding features which may be listed as

follows:

_a_) The riot violence was not continuous hour by hour, but was

intermittent.

_b_) The greatest number of injuries occurred in the district west and

inclusive of Wentworth Avenue, and south of the south branch of the

Chicago River to Fifty-fifth Street, or in the Stock Yards district. The

next greatest number occurred in the so-called "Black Belt": Twenty-second

to Thirty-ninth streets, inclusive, and Wentworth Avenue to the lake,

exclusive of Wentworth Avenue; Thirty-ninth to Fifty-fifth streets,

inclusive, and Clark Street to Michigan Avenue, exclusive of Michigan

Avenue.

_c_) Organized raids occurred only after a period of sporadic clashes

and spontaneous mob outbreaks.

_d_) Main thoroughfares witnessed 76 per cent of the injuries on the

South Side. The streets which suffered most severely were State, Halsted,

Thirty-first, Thirty-fifth, and Forty-seventh. Transfer corners were

always centers of disturbances.

_e_) Most of the rioting occurred after work hours among idle crowds on

the streets. This was particularly true after the street-car strike began.

_f_) Gangs, particularly of young whites, formed definite nuclei for

crowd and mob formation. "Athletic clubs" supplied the leaders of many

gangs.

_g_) Crowds and mobs engaged in rioting were generally composed of a

small nucleus of leaders and an acquiescing mass of spectators. The

leaders were mostly young men, usually between the ages of sixteen

and twenty-one. Dispersal was most effectively accomplished by sudden,

unexpected gun fire.

_h_) Rumor kept the crowds in an excited, potential mob state. The press

was responsible for giving wide dissemination to much of the inflammatory

matter in spoken rumors, though editorials calculated to allay race

hatred and help the forces of order were factors in the restoration of

peace.

_i_) The police lacked sufficient forces for handling the riot; they were

hampered by the Negroes' distrust of them; routing orders and records

were not handled with proper care; certain officers were undoubtedly

unsuited to police or riot duty.

_j_) The militiamen employed in this riot were of an unusually high type.

This unquestionably accounts for the confidence placed in them by both

races. Riot training, definite orders, and good staff work contributed

to their efficiency.

_k_) There was a lack of energetic co-operation between the police

department and the state's attorney's office in the discovery and

conviction of rioters.

The riot was merely a symptom of serious and profound disorders lying

beneath the surface of race relations in Chicago. The study of the riot,

therefore, as to its interlocking provocations and causes, required a

study of general race relations that made possible so serious and sudden

an outbreak. Thus to understand the riot and guard against another,

the Commission probed systematically into the principal phases of race

contact and sought accurate information on matters which in the past

have been influenced by dangerous speculation; and on the basis of its

discoveries certain suggestions to the community are made.

II. THE MIGRATION OF NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH

During the period 1916-18 approximately 500,000 Negroes moved from

southern to northern states. Some cities of the North received increases

in Negro population of 10 per cent to 300 per cent. The Negro population

of Gary, Indiana, increased from 383 in 1910 to 5,299 in 1920, an increase

of 1,283 per cent.

Chicago was in direct line for migrants from the South, especially

along the Mississippi Valley, and received approximately 65,000, who

constituted a large proportion of the increase of 148.5 per cent in

its Negro population in the last decade. These migrants definitely

accentuated existing problems of race contact and brought new problems

of adjustment and assimilation. Southern Negroes with southern manners,

habits, and traditions, and mostly from rural districts, became part of

a northern urban community. Knowledge of the causes of this movement of

Negroes will make easier an understanding of the difficulties following

it. These causes were economic as well as sentimental.

The South was paying to Negroes wages which varied from 75 cents a day

on a farm to $1.75 a day in certain city jobs. For two seasons the boll

weevil, a destructive pest, had been making heavy ravages upon the cotton

crops, ruining thousands of farms and throwing out of employment many

thousands of Negro workers. Lack of capital to carry labor through a

period of poor crops and over the normal intervals between planting and

harvesting largely increased Negro unemployment. Unsatisfactory living

conditions, on plantations and in segregated quarters of southern cities,

stimulated unrest. School facilities for Negro children, described as

lamentably poor even by southerners, increased dissatisfaction with

conditions in the South. The Negro illiteracy in fifteen southern

states was 33.3 per cent as compared with 7.7 per cent for whites. The

appropriations for teachers in the schools of these states on a per

capita basis was $10.32 for each white child, and $2.89 for each Negro

child.

On the other hand, the North was for the first time on a large scale

opening up opportunities for Negroes to earn a livelihood. The cessation

of immigration due to the war and the drawing of workers into military

service created a great demand for labor; and the opening of new

industries and the extension of old ones to meet the demands of the war

provided still greater opportunities. At the same time, these industries

were paying laborers from $3 to $8 per day, and offering shorter hours

and the opportunity for overtime work and bonuses. The North also offered

living accommodations which, although below standard for city dwellers,

were a vast improvement over most of the plantation cabins and frail

frame dwellings of the South. There are no segregated schools in the

North, and Negro children are offered identical school privileges with

white children.

Other causes of the migration, as stated by the migrants and otherwise

confirmed, were: lack of protection from mob violence, injustice in the

courts, inferior transportation facilities, deprivation of the right to

vote, "rough-handed and unfair competition of 'poor whites,'" "persecution

by petty officers of the law," and "persecution by the press."

Between 1895 and 1918, 2,881 Negroes were lynched in the United States,

and more than 85 per cent of these lynchings occurred in the South. The

_Atlanta Constitution_ declared that the heaviest migration of Negroes

was from those counties in which there had been the worst outbreaks

against Negroes.

_How the migration began._--The migration began early in 1916.

Hard-pressed industries in the East, principally in Pennsylvania, imported

Negroes from Georgia and Florida. During July of that year, 13,000 were

carried to Pennsylvania by one railroad company alone.[104] They wrote

back for their families and friends. Reports of high wages and good

treatment, aided by the hysteria of a mass movement, accomplished the

rest.

The migration was first noted in Chicago in 1917. It had been rumored

in the South that the Stock Yards needed 50,000 men; the city had

been regarded by Negroes as a future home since the World's Columbian

Exposition in 1893; it was the great city of mail-order houses, the home

of the _Chicago Defender_, a widely circulated Negro newspaper, the "end

of the railroad line," and the "top of the world" for Negroes. Negro

newspapers gave up their columns to migration news and urged southern

Negroes to go North. The movement soon became a mass movement; with

standards, songs, and watchwords the migrants began arriving in the city

faster than they could be absorbed into the population.

_The arrival in Chicago._--Prior to the migration, the majority of

Negroes in Chicago lived in a fairly limited area on the South Side,

principally between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth streets, Wentworth

Avenue and State Street, and in scattered groups east of State Street

to Cottage Grove Avenue. This area adjoined the old vice area, and many

houses of the vicinity had been abandoned by older Chicago Negroes.

Shortly after the migrants began to arrive, practically all available

houses had been taken and filled to overcrowding. On a single day the

Chicago Urban League found 664 Negro applicants for houses with only

fifty-five dwellings actually available for use by Negroes. At the same

time rents for Negroes were increased by from 5 to 50 per cent.

Meeting actual conditions of life in Chicago brought both exaltation and

disillusionment to the migrants. These were reflected in the schools,

in public amusement places, in industry, and in the street cars. The

Chicago Urban League and the various Negro churches and newspapers

assumed the task of making the newcomers "city folk." The difficulty of

adjustment showed itself in the great differences in habits of life and

employment. Craftsmen had to relearn their trades when thrown amid the

highly specialized processes of northern industries; domestic servants

went into industry; professional men had to re-establish themselves in

a new community.

Many Negroes sold their homes in the South and brought their furniture

with them. Reinvesting in property frequently meant a loss; the furniture

brought was often found to be unsuited to the tiny apartments or the

large abandoned dwellings that they were able to rent or buy.

Change of residence carried with it in many cases change of status.

The "leader" in a small southern community when he came to Chicago was

immediately absorbed into the great, struggling mass of unnoticed workers.

School teachers, male and female, whose positions in the South held

commendable prestige, had to go to work in factories and plants because

the disparity in educational standards would not permit a continuation

of their profession in Chicago.

The migrants visited by the Commission investigators, however, for the

most part gave evidence of satisfaction with their change of home, and

were pleased with the opportunity of voting, of sending their children

to schools, and of higher wages, and with the privilege of participation

in community life. Others felt the pressure of high rents and bad living

accommodations and complained against certain discriminations.

The fact is, however, that few Negroes have returned to the South, even

in response to insistent invitations and offers of free transportation

and better home conditions made by southern states that were left badly

in need of laborers as a result of the migration.

III. THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO

1. DISTRIBUTION AND DENSITY

The Negro population of Chicago, as reported by the Federal Bureau of the

Census, was 44,103 in 1910, and 109,594 in 1920. The increase during the

decade was, therefore, 65,491, or 148.5 per cent. Negroes constituted

2 per cent of the city's total population in 1910 and 4.1 per cent in

1920. The increase in the white population during the decade was 450,047,

or 21 per cent, bringing the number up to 2,589,104 in 1920. Counting

3,007 Chinese, Japanese, and Indians of whom there were 2,123 in 1910,

Chicago's total population in 1920 was 2,701,705.

This growth of the Negro population did not bring into existence any new

large colonies of Negroes, but merely expanded and increased the density

of areas in which they already lived. The areas of Negro residence are

listed under designations arbitrarily given for convenient reference.[105]

1920

SOUTH SIDE

Roosevelt Road--Fifty-fifth St.; Wentworth Ave.--Cottage Grove Ave.

Population: total, 376,171; Negro, 92,901.

_Woodlawn_

Sixty-first St.--Sixty-seventh St.; Eberhart Ave.--Grand Blvd.

Population: total, 8,861; Negro, 1,235.

_Lake Park Avenue Area_

Fifty-third St.--Fifty-seventh St.; Harper Ave.--Lake Park Ave.

Population: Negro, 238.

_Ogden Park Area_

Fifty-ninth St.--Sixty-third St.; Halsted St.--Loomis Blvd.

Population: total, 38,893; Negro, 1,859.

NORTH SIDE

North Ave.--Chicago Ave.; State St.--Larrabee St.

Population: Negro, 1,050.

_Ravenswood_

Lawrence Ave.--Montrose Ave.; Sheridan Road--Ashland Ave.

Population: Negro, 175.

WEST SIDE

Austin Ave.--Washington Ave.; Morgan St.--California Ave.

Population: Negro, 8,363.

MORGAN PARK AREA

107th St.--115th St.; Loomis St.--Vincennes Ave.

Population: Negro, 695.

2. NEIGHBORHOODS OF NEGRO RESIDENCE

_The South Side._--While the main colony of Chicago's Negro population

is located in a central part of the South Side, Negroes are to be found

in several parts of the city, ranging from less than 1 per cent to more

than 95 per cent in proportion to the total population. In some of these

neighborhoods whites and Negroes have become adjusted to one another; in

others they have not. One of these adjusted areas is the so-called "Black

Belt." Because 90 per cent of the Negroes of Chicago live there, it is

usually assumed that the area is 90 per cent Negro. The fact is very

different. The most densely populated section of the South Side area,

between Roosevelt Road and Thirty-ninth Street, Wentworth Avenue and Lake

Michigan, has a population of 54,906 Negroes and 42,797 whites. There

has been no noticeable friction in this area; and even during the riot

few whites living or engaged in business there were molested by Negroes.

Most of the whites killed or injured there came from other sections of

the city. The many large apartment houses and family hotels occupied

by whites are apparently little affected by the presence about them of

many Negroes. Relations in Woodlawn, where the Negro increase has been

relatively large, are for the most part friendly. No clashes have been

reported except in the one instance of a group of white boys who threw

stones at a building in which they saw Negroes. When they were arrested

it developed that they had come from another neighborhood. Following

the stirring up and organization of anti-Negro sentiment in Hyde Park,

an attempt was made to organize white Woodlawn property owners against

the "invasion" of the district by Negroes. This organization was not a

very great success. There have been no bombings in this district, and

no concerted opposition to the presence of Negroes as neighbors. Long,

amicable residence together and the good character of the Negroes as

well as the whites are probably important reasons for the absence of

friction. And it also should be said that in the Woodlawn district the

proportion of Negroes is so small that there has been no occasion for

much controversy over an alleged depreciation of property values on

account of Negro occupancy.

_The West Side._--On the West Side there has been a settlement of

Negroes for many years. Houses are cheaper there than on the South Side;

and although the general level of ordinary workingmen's homes compares

favorably with that on the South Side, there are few abandoned residences

formerly occupied by wealthy persons now available for Negroes. There has

been little friction within this area, in which 9,221 whites and 6,520

Negroes live. West Side Negroes, laborers for the most part, are generally

home-loving, hard-working people, desirous of improving conditions for

their children. Older settlers among them have been able to make their

adjustments without great difficulty, meeting with no serious antagonism

from white neighbors.

_The North Side._--On the North Side, Negroes live among foreign whites

and near a residential area of wealthy Chicagoans. The appearance of

the first Negro residents there occasioned little notice or objection.

They were for the most part house servants living near their work.

This neighborhood has experienced several complete changes in population.

It was first occupied by Irish, then by Swedes, then by Italians, who

are the present neighbors of Negroes. Friendly relations exist between

the Sicilians, who predominate, and their Negro neighbors. Some Negroes

live harmoniously in the same tenements with Sicilians. Their children

play together, and some of the Negro children have learned Sicilian

phrases so that they are able to deal with the Sicilian shopkeepers.

Elsewhere on the North Side the feeling between Italians and Negroes is

not so cordial.

_Non-adjusted neighborhoods._--In other sections the failure of Negro

and white neighbors to adjust themselves mutually has produced the most

serious phases of the Negro housing problem. A general housing shortage

may be relieved by the opening of new neighborhoods or the availability

of houses in various parts of the city, but for Negroes there is less

opportunity for thus relieving the housing shortage because of the

hostility of many white neighborhoods to the presence of Negroes.

White residents immediately south of the old West Side Negro residence

area objected to the moving in of Negroes, sending numerous threatening

letters to the newcomers and otherwise annoying them. In certain sections

of the North Side, Negro residents have been molested. On one occasion

shots were fired at their homes, and at other times warning signs with

pictures of skulls, crossbones, and coffins were posted. In the Lake

Park Avenue area on the South Side, Negroes are limited to a few blocks,

are not permitted to buy, and are discriminated against in practically

all restaurants and amusement places.

West of Wentworth Avenue, adjoining the South Side Negro residence area,

few Negroes live. The residents here are largely Irish working people and

distinctly hostile to Negroes, even to those merely passing through the

neighborhood. This area has many organized gangs and "athletic clubs,"

and its racial antagonisms appear to be traditional.