The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

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]