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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.]
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.
| Years | Lynchings | Number 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.
| 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.
| Place | Year | Crime | Number |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number indicted by Grand Jury, New York County | 1917 | Rape | 230 |
| Number of whites indicted by Grand Jury, New York County | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 37 |
| Number of Negroes indicted by Grand Jury, New York County | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 0 |
| Number of Negroes lynched in entire United States | {1914} {1918} |
Charged with rape | 28 |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.