During the earlier part of 1918 I sat in what was known as the criminal jury branch. That is the branch to which were assigned all criminal cases in the municipal court where the defendants demanded a trial by jury and were not tried at the police station. Among them were cases involving violations of what is known as the civil-rights law, where a colored man had a druggist or the proprietor of a moving picture or legitimate theater arrested for refusing to serve him soda water or refreshments at the drug store or to furnish him admission by ticket at a movie or legitimate theater, or if he did furnish him admission by selling him a ticket, limiting the ticket which he would sell to some undesirable portion of the house or to the gallery and not to the main floor, claiming that the theater was crowded downstairs and that there were no seats.
I suppose I tried during the early part of 1918 and the summer of 1919 probably a half-dozen of those civil-rights cases. In every one of them that I tried, there was virtually a clear case against the defendant. The jury in every instance was practically a white jury, or may have had one or two colored men. Notwithstanding that I gave very positive and clear instructions as to what the law was—to wit, that they were entitled to equal rights and privileges in public places and that if the jury believed from the evidence that the plaintiff was not accorded such right, there was a violation of the law and the defendant should be punished, and after elaborate argument by counsel for both the prosecution and the defendant (and by parenthesis I may say in all of these cases the state's attorney prosecuted vigorously), the jury, notwithstanding the plain evidence and the instructions of the court, went out and in about such time as it would take them to sign the verdict and return to court, would bring in a verdict of "Not Guilty."
Of course in the criminal court in a case of that kind, the jury is the judge of both the law and the fact. Therefore, I was not in a position to grant a new trial. The white jury simply say that law was not the law in Illinois or they would not convict under such circumstances, and having once acquitted the man the court and the state were without any remedy. Now I have always thought that was unjust.
It was his opinion that those Negroes who did bring cases into court made a mistake in prosecuting them from a criminal standpoint. It seemed to be, in his opinion, hopeless for Negroes to assert their rights through the criminal courts.
Another judge of long experience in the Chicago courts expressed the view that few Negroes brought in cases involving discrimination. He thought that especially the better class of Negroes would not bring them because of the unpleasantness involved and because the damages obtained in most cases would not pay the attorney's charges. "Most Negroes," he said, "have found out by experience what the actual feeling is and act accordingly, trying to avoid unpleasant experiences as much as possible. Although there would be no trouble in getting a verdict in any clear case, the amount obtained would not compensate for the trouble involved." He did not believe that any jury would convict a white defendant on a criminal charge of discrimination. A prominent Negro attorney, who formerly held a responsible state office, in giving his general experience said:
In cases involving only Negroes on each side, both judges and juries will act squarely between them; in cases involving white defendants and Negro plaintiffs, the tendency is to give considerably less credibility or weight to Negro testimony; in cases involving Negro defendants and white plaintiffs, the tendency is to give more weight to white testimony.
He stated further that in discrimination cases, where the law had been clearly violated, there was usually no difficulty in getting a verdict and damages for $25 and up, but that he did not care much about handling such cases and Negroes did not care to push them, because they were unpleasant and expensive.
II. "BLACK AND TAN" RESORTS
The intimate association of Negroes and whites in the cabarets of the South Side has occasioned frequent and heated protests. Negro men are there seen with white women and white men with Negro women. Although mixed couples constitute somewhat less than 10 per cent of the patronage, this mingling is used to characterize all of the association there. These resorts, with their liquor selling and coarse and vulgar dancing, are highly dangerous to morals and established law and order, and a nuisance to the neighborhoods in which they are located. They are used as amusement places, both by white couples living in other sections of the city and by Negro couples who live near them. In fact, although many of the resorts are patronized by an equal number of whites and Negroes, the actual mixed couples are few. The habitués of these resorts are usually of an irresponsible type of pleasure seekers, and frequently they are vicious and immoral. Newspapers and several of the civic agencies have violently criticized these places as a menace, but in their attacks the emphasis has usually been shifted from the menace to morals to that of arousing sentiment against the mingling of races. The police on numbers of occasions have been urged to close the places in which this form of association took place. In most cases they have not done so, stating as their reason that, although mingling was undesirable, there was no law prohibiting such contacts, and that evidence of violations of such laws as those concerning liquor selling or decency would be necessary to warrant their closing.
During 1920 the Negro press began a series of attacks on violations of law and against the immoral resorts in the Negro residence areas, including the so-called "black and tan" cabarets, some of which were the most notorious violators. This was followed by similar attacks from the white local newspapers. The emphasis in the white papers, however, was on the race mingling. An extract from one of the articles in a white paper is given: