Not only did action once under way make interference hazardous, but it brought into the mob circle a greater number of participants and increased its energy. Five men jerked a trolley from the wires; ten men boarded the car; twenty-five men chased and beat the routed Negroes. The mob action grew faster than the increase in numbers. Ideas suggested by individual members were quickly carried out in the action of all. The mob as a whole and the individuals in it increased in fury, and a normal street crowd was often turned from peaceful assemblage to brutal murder.
A sharp diversion of attention sometimes caused the dispersal of mobs. An unexpected revolver shot was the most effective means of such diversion. Here are some instances:
When Thomas Joshua, a Negro boy, was shot by Police Lieutenant Day, a throng of Negroes came on the run from State Street. The officers, terrified, escaped in a taxi, leaving their own automobile behind. The mob attempted to make this car suffer vicariously for the escaped police officers. Other policemen on the scene had difficulty in holding them back. Two shots were heard on Federal Street. Immediately the crowd ceased its clamoring, left the automobile, and apparently lost all thought of Lieutenant Day and ran to Federal Street.
In the first mob of the riot, that at Twenty-ninth Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, Negroes and policemen were struggling in a mass in the middle of the street. A shot was fired by James Crawford, and the mob dispersed from that corner.
A mob chased a Negro off a street car on Thirty-ninth Street near Wallace. A policeman with presence of mind followed the group into the alley, fired a few shots in the air, and the crowd ran.
In no case where an unexpected shot was fired did it fail to scatter the mob, but shooting which was part of the mob's own action did not seem to have the same effect.
The course of one riotous mob can be traced in the activities of a certain group of five white boys who linked up with the riot excitement. They met at the corner of Sixty-third Street and Ingleside Avenue at 8:30 Monday evening. While they were trying to decide which movie to attend, a taxi driver informed them of a riot at Forty-seventh Street. They took the "L" to Forty-seventh Street and joined the mob. From then until 2:00 a.m. they were active in mobs which assaulted Negroes at several points. Two were beaten at Forty-seventh Street and the elevated railway. The mob then proceeded to Fifty-first Street, but the police drove it back and it moved on to Indiana Avenue and Forty-third Street, where a deputy sheriff held it off. Returning here later it attacked a street car, beat a Negro, and then moved south on Indiana Avenue, jerking trolleys from wires and assaulting passengers. At Forty-fifth Street a shot fired by a police sergeant scattered it toward Forty-third Street.
There the mob met Lieutenant Washington, a Negro ex-soldier, who, with five Negro companions, was obliged to walk across town because car service had been discontinued on account of the rioting. Lieutenant Washington, testifying before the coroner's jury, gave this account of the affair:
After we crossed Grand Boulevard I heard a yell, "One, two, three, four, five, six," and then they gave a loud cheer and said, "Everybody, let's get the niggers! Let's get the niggers," and we noticed some of them crossed the street and walked on up even with us. The rest of them were about ten or fifteen feet north ... there were about between four and six men ... crossed the street and got in front of us ... just before we got to Forrestville Avenue, about twenty yards, they swarmed in on us.
After this attack, in which Lieutenant Browning was shot, and Clarence Metz, a white boy, was killed by a stab wound inflicted by Lieutenant Washington in self-defense, the mob moved on to Grand Boulevard, preceded by the rumor that it intended to attack the homes of Negroes. A shot from a house grazed a white lad, and the crowd went on, leaving the police to come and arrest the Negroes who had fired.