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

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

During the working days included between November 15 and 20, our attendance record is 1,073 job seekers with only 131 openings. One month ago the attendance figure was 571 persons for the equal period (259 men and 312 women).

Our labor reports for May, 1920, indicated an attendance of 941 males and 739 females; about 1,000 orders for male help and about 500 for female help; there were 722 placements for males and 371 for females. The total attendance was 1,680; orders, 1,500; placements, 1,093.

A casual survey including most of the leading industries ... shows a general decline and a letting off of workers. Some few report difficulty in keeping their present forces.

There have been some complaints of discrimination against colored workers, but few comparatively.... Most industries are keeping their proportionate share of Negroes. In some instances the proportion has been slightly increased....

During the week, workers have registered from cities in states from Mississippi to Michigan. Detroit predominates, where the automobile industries show a marked depression.

Women's work presents a very discouraging outlook. Hundreds of needle workers are out of employment by the closing of many of the smaller shops which employed colored girls. The Women's Trade Union League reports many workers unemployed, due to the slowness of the trade. Immigrant white girls are said to be consuming much of the work offered to domestics.... Colored women seem in most cases as reluctant as ever to accept domestic employment.

The present unemployment problem is probably as serious as any the League has known. What shall become of the army of jobless men is a problem serious and perplexing.

As a result of the necessity of reducing costs in response to depressed business conditions, managers of establishments employing both white and Negro workers may be tempted to pit Negro and white workers against each other, paying Negro labor less than white labor as a means of forcing down wages or undermining labor-union organizations. Such attempts would certainly be conducive to increased racial animosity. On the other hand, managers who are hostile to Negro labor may take advantage of the change in the labor situation by discharging Negroes indiscriminately, replacing them with white workers.

During the period of business depression which had already begun, both white and Negro workers seemed certain to lose some of the advantages which they had gained as a result of the labor shortage caused by the war. After the industrial depression has passed, discrimination against the Negro, to whatever extent it may exist, will make the recovery of lost ground more difficult for Negro workers than for white workers. In considering the question of race discrimination, it is evident that the Negro who has lived in the North for a number of years feels keenly the fact that color bars even the most capable members of his race from the hope of promotion to executive or administrative positions, while prejudice on the part of persons in authority prevents the rank and file of Negroes from developing the degree of efficiency which they could develop if they knew their efforts would be judged on merit alone. Where advancement is precluded by color, the incentive supplied by recognition of effort is lacking.

One door of escape from the discouraging prospects held out in industries managed by white men, where there is no chance for promotion to executive positions, is the opportunity for an increasing number of the more ambitious Negroes to enter business among members of their own race. According to Black's Blue Book (1919-20) there were over 1,200 Negro business houses and professional offices in Chicago in 1920. Among others, the list included five banks, forty dentists, fifteen druggists, twenty-four employment agencies, six hotels, three insurance offices, forty-eight real estate offices, eleven newspapers and magazines, 106 physicians, seventy lawyers, 161 barber shops and billiard rooms, and 120 hairdressing parlors. Although the list of Negro business men in Chicago is growing rapidly, it must necessarily remain but a small percentage of the total Negro population. The great majority of Negroes gainfully occupied will continue to be employees in industry. Therefore the fact that a large number of Negroes feel that discrimination is practiced and that, no matter what abilities they show, they can "go so far and no farther" in industries managed by white men is of great importance in any consideration of race problems. These men are the more thoughtful, aspiring members of their race, and their opinion accordingly carries more weight than the opinion of an equal number of care-free Negroes who may consider that the high wages of the present are an offset for all handicaps. Negroes who feel keenly the injustice of unequal opportunities are the ones to seek expression in Negro newspapers and magazines with the aim of arousing widespread resentment against race discrimination. Men who frequently would not resent discrimination directed against themselves are stirred to resentment by well-told recitals of injustice to others. Specific instances may seem to be of trifling importance, but in being retold they reach an ever-widening audience, which is constantly growing more race conscious.