1. THE EMOTIONAL BACKGROUND
Hostile sentiment.—The refusal of Policeman Callahan to arrest Stauber, a white youth accused of throwing stones which resulted in the drowning of Eugene Williams, is regarded as the significant incident precipitating the riot of 1919 (see [p. 4]). Callahan was dismissed from the force, but reinstated. One year later, when questioned by an investigator for the Commission, he gave his racial philosophy freely in the following remarks:
So far as I can learn the black people have since history began despised the white people and have always fought them.... It wouldn't take much to start another riot, and most of the white people of this district are resolved to make a clean-up this time.... If a Negro should say one word back to me or should say a word to a white woman in the park, there is a crowd of young men of the district, mostly ex-service men, who would procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder with me if trouble should come from the incident.
The following is from a letter written by a white employee of Albert Pick & Company:
Negroes in street cars refuse to double up with others of their race, but seem to delight in sitting beside some dainty white girl.
The Thirty-fifth Street cars are crowded by low-grade "plantation niggers" who crowd on at Ashland Avenue via windows and doors, then awkwardly step and fall over passengers; it is maddening. About this time girls from Albert Pick & Company, the Magnus Company, and the tailoring establishments are crowded together breast to breast with Negroes. Often he falls asleep and leans on his white seatmate's shoulder.
Laws should be urged preventing intermarriage.
Assaults upon white women are frequent, but hushed up by fear of newspaper publicity, and the Negro is thus encouraged in his felony.
In cases where a white girl is involved in an assault case by a colored man, the white woman should be shielded, and her name withheld from the newspapers and public, before and after the trial. This will prevent race riots.
A movement is now afoot to declare a silent boycott against employers of colored help.