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

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

The director of Ogden Park took the part of a Negro boy set upon by a white gang during the 1919 riot and rescued by the police, though they did not keep the mob from killing the Negro. He advocated the formation of "square-deal" clubs to defend innocent people from hoodlums. "Members would be bound to fight for the square deal—whites against white hoodlums and blacks against black hoodlums," he said. "Until both races will act, the lawless elements will continue to cause trouble."

It is possible in some cases, such as those in which the "athletic clubs" are involved, to find out the identity of boys who molest Negroes, but, according to the testimony of several park directors, it is absolutely impossible to control these boys because the courts will not convict them. The director of Armour Square stated:

I have had boys taken down to the courts time after time, and now my policeman refuses to take them down to the court any more, because he is reprimanded when he brings them in.... One of our attendants was shot through the lung and is now absolutely incapacitated for work, and the policeman was reprimanded because he had kept the boy in jail two nights. When it came to trial, they had already seen somebody and the policeman got the reprimand.

There was a general feeling among park representatives that the presence of a director with a proper attitude toward the problem was the greatest factor in bringing about amicable relations within the park, but there was considerable difference of opinion as to whether the park management could or should attempt to influence the surrounding neighborhood. The West Chicago Commission representative said that there was no instructor at Union Park the first year it was open, and that considerable segregation and undesirable conduct on the part of both whites and Negroes resulted. Since then, there had always been a director in charge, and a very harmonious mingling of the two races had been brought about on the playground. He believed that a similar relationship could be brought about within the recreation building by a director with the right personality, if adequate facilities were provided.

The Seward Park director did not consider it a proper function of a recreation center to try to direct the community life outside it.

The director of Armour Square felt that she could do nothing to promote Negro activities there. She did not approve of the suggestion of turning over Armour Square to the Negroes as the best way of solving the problem. She thought this would result in ill feeling and trouble, since there was a well-established tradition that the whites should use Armour Square to the fullest extent. But since the Negroes had no such recreation center as Armour Square available to them, she believed that a new center with full equipment should be started in a neighborhood part white and part Negro with the understanding that it should be a Negro recreation center where the whites were welcome if they wished to come. She thought that white people would patronize such a recreation center and, with careful leadership, would mingle with the Negroes on friendly and peaceable terms.

Two recreation-center directors favored entirely separate recreational facilities for Negroes with whites excluded. One of these was the director of Fuller Park, who told the Commission that he had made every effort to get Negroes to come to the park, and that he considered it part of his duty to go out into the neighborhood and try to get Negroes to use the park. "Separate parks and playgrounds for colored people are advisable," he said, "not because one group is any better than the other, but because they are different. Human nature will have to be remodeled before racial antipathy is overcome."

The director of Hardin Square, another recreation center little used by Negroes, though it is near the main Negro area, believed that separate facilities for each race would be the best solution of the problem. He did not encourage Negroes to come to Hardin Square. The policeman at the park also believed that "you can't make the two colors mix." This policeman said he knows a group of young men in the district, mostly ex-service men, who would "procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder with me if a Negro should say one word back to me or should say a word to a white woman." He thought it would not take much to start another riot, and that the white people of the district would resolve to make a "complete clean-up this time." This policeman is the one whose failure to arrest a white man accused of stoning the Negro boy, Williams, at the Twenty-sixth Street Beach was an important factor in precipitating the riot in 1919.

The director of Moseley Playground, who was born and raised in that vicinity, said there had been antagonism between the two races in that neighborhood for thirty years. He believed that separate recreation facilities would be impracticable because the taxpayers could not be divided in such a way that they would not be paying for fields their children could not use.

The director of Seward Park thought that it might be arranged in the small parks to give special hours to Negro groups. This would meet what he believed to be the desire of the Negroes to be by themselves and also the objection of the white girls who had protested against having Negro girls in the same gymnasium classes with them.