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

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

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.