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

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

State's Attorney Hoyne justified this action by saying that the Police Department brought in Negroes only, and until they arrested whites, he was limited to proceedings against Negroes.

The coroner's jury on November 3, 1919, reported as follows:

Our attention was called strikingly to the fact that at the time of race rioting, the arrests made for rioting by the police of colored rioters were far in excess of the arrests made of white rioters. The failure of the police to arrest impartially, at the time of rioting, whether from insufficient effort or otherwise, was a mistake and had a tendency to further incite and aggravate the colored population.

This seeming discrimination in arrests naturally deepened Negro distrust and lack of confidence in the police. Testimony was taken by the Commission on the plans and action of the Police Department during the riot period, since the Commission felt that the distribution of forces and the methods used by the department to meet such an emergency were matters of first importance.

Chief of Police Garrity testified that there were 3,500 policemen in the department at the time of the riot, and that he had "practically every policeman in the city of Chicago down there," indicating Thirty-fifth Street and Rhodes Avenue as "practically in the heart of the district where the most trouble was." The widest distribution from that center, he said, was over an area bounded by Lake Michigan, Ashland Avenue, Van Buren Street, and Sixty-ninth Street.

The heaviest concentration of police, however, was in the "Black Belt." The Stanton Avenue Police Station at Thirty-fifth Street and Rhodes Avenue is at about the center of the most congested Negro residential area. Asked how many policemen were assigned to that vicinity (the area from Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth streets), Chief Garrity said, "We had in the neighborhood of 2,800 men in that territory." Later the chief said only "the necessary sergeants and one or two men at each station were held back for emergency calls" in all other parts of the city. This means that four-fifths of the total police force was concentrated there.

Although there is no direct testimony as to the existence of flying squadrons of police, yet such bodies appear to have been operating. Probably the most important of these was the patrol under Police Captain Mullen, who said that his territory extended from Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth streets and from the lake to the Rock Island tracks, or roughly the "Black Belt." Chief Deputy Alcock[9] sent eighty-eight policemen into this district on Sunday afternoon, twenty-five more at midnight, and fifty more on Monday morning.

In describing the disposition of police details, Chief Garrity said: "They were routed by him [Alcock] according to conditions existing in different districts. Some districts might have a hundred men in the block and in the next block there might be only ten, according to what conditions were." Forces were moved from one point of disturbance to another by means of patrol wagons on request of local commanders.

The 2,800 policemen in the "Black Belt" were under the command of Chief Deputy Alcock with headquarters in the Stanton Avenue Station. He "used his discretion in the number of men assigned to the different points and the handling of them in the different territories."

Riot orders were given by Chief Garrity as follows: "Wherever possible suppress the riot and restore peace"; "the second day I ordered a dead line on Wentworth Avenue and Twenty-second Street to, I think, Sixty-third Street"; "instructions were that 'you will allow no colored people to go across to the west and no white people to go across to the east.'" Cabarets, saloons, and public places were ordered closed, and all large gatherings of either whites or Negroes were prohibited from Van Buren to Sixty-ninth streets and from Ashland Avenue to the lake. The chief added, "Closing clubrooms and everything in the district west of Wentworth Avenue as well as east of it." A general policy was adopted of search and seizure of persons suspected of carrying weapons on the street, and of houses from which firing came. Captain Mullen testified before the coroner's jury at the Eugene Williams inquest that on July 29 Chief Deputy Alcock lined up the policemen in front of the Stanton Avenue Station and gave them their orders. They were told to "preserve the peace; that was all."