Herald-Examiner, July 29:
Several thousand men stoned the old Eighth Regiment Armory in the heart of the riot zone, doors were burst in, and hundreds of guns with ammunition taken by the mob. Police rushed to the scene firing into the mob and finally drove it from the armory. According to reports more than 50 persons were shot or otherwise injured.
Refutation of this statement is found in the testimony of Police Captain Mullen before the coroner's jury in the Eugene Williams case:
I received a rumor that the soldiers [referring to Negro soldiers of the Eighth Regiment] had gone over to the armory for the sole purpose of breaking in and getting rifles. I dispatched two patrol wagons full of men; after arriving there, we found out they had been there and broke some windows, but they found out there were no weapons in there.
Another type of fear-provoking rumor current in street crowds reported the force and the aggressive plans of the opposing race. Some of these rumors, current among Negro crowds, were to the effect that a white mob was gathering on Wentworth Avenue ready to break into the "Black Belt"; that a white mob was waiting to break through at Sixtieth and Ada streets; that a white mob was ready to advance upon Twenty-seventh and Dearborn streets. The first of these rumors had its effect upon the inception of the Angelus riot, and the second so aroused the fears of Negroes that when a white mob led by young white boys did step over the "dead-line" boundaries established by the police, guns were immediately turned upon them, and one of the invaders was killed. Of the third rumor, Police Lieutenant Burns said:
... an old colored man came to me ... and said that the colored people on Dearborn Street in the 2800 block were moving out in fear of a white mob coming from across the tracks from across Wentworth Avenue.... On the southwest corner of Twenty-eighth and Dearborn I found a number of colored men standing in front of a building there. They had pieces of brick and stone in their pockets and were peering around the corner west on Twenty-eighth Street apparently in great fear.
Among the whites fear was not so prevalent. A fear-producing rumor was revealed, however, in the examination of two deputy sheriffs who fired on a Negro. The deputies had heard that Negroes were going to burn up or blow up factories in the district which they were patrolling. When a dark form was seen in an alley, panic seized both deputies, and they emptied their revolvers at an innocent Negro who lived in the adjoining house.
Chief among the anger-provoking rumors were tales of injury done to women of the race circulating the rumor. The similarity of the stories and their persistence shows extraordinary credulity on the part of the public. For the most horrible of these rumors, telling of the brutal killing of a woman and baby (sometimes the story is told of a Negro woman, sometimes of a white) there was no foundation in fact. The story was circulated not only by the newspapers of both races, but was current always in the crowds on the streets. Here is the story as told in the white press:
Chicago Tribune, July 29:
There is an account of "two desperate revolver battles fought by the police with colored men alleged to have killed two white women and a white child."