The number of Negroes killed during the riot (twenty-three Negroes and fifteen whites) has been magnified in popular accounts beyond all reasonable limits of credibility. It is popularly believed that more persons were killed than official records indicate. The exaggeration has not been confined to reports involving Negroes. For example, there was a report in circulation that more than seventy-five white policemen were killed during the riot. The rumor was traced to the half-jesting remark of a policeman that, as a member of a benefit organization, he had paid death dues on a number of policemen greater than the total deaths of the riot as popularly estimated at the time. This number was placed at seventy-five. The director of the Civic Bureau of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, writing to a friend in Chicago, asked for authentic information concerning the number of Negroes killed during the riot. He sought the information because, he said, the industrial editor of the Outlook had told him that police officers said that "more than 2,000 Negroes were killed in the race riot," and that a certain labor report placed the number at 1,700. Suspecting that even the latter number was too large, although the police mentioned 10,000 wounded and killed, he wrote for information.
1. AN IMPRESSION STUDY
A special impression study was made with a class of forty-nine students in the University of Chicago, to measure the effect upon them of word-of-mouth rumor, gossip, and newspaper stories concerning the 1919 riot. Specific questions were asked concerning their understanding as to the number of whites and Negroes killed and their source of information. The students ranged in age from twenty to twenty-five years. Each was asked to indicate in the order of their influence upon him the sources of information which gave him his understanding of the magnitude of the riot. The following is a compilation from their statements.
Ten were out of the city at the time and got their information chiefly through newspapers published elsewhere. Their average opinion of the number killed was fifty-five. Thirteen were informed chiefly by second-hand stories quoting relatives who were in Chicago, policemen interviewed, and others, and their general impression of the number killed averaged 209. Thirty-three got their information from newspapers both in and out of the city, and their average impression of the number killed was 115. Twenty-four of those who were residing in Chicago got their information chiefly from newspapers published in the city, and their average impression was that 131 were killed.
A point of interest in comparison is that those who were out of town and read out-of-town newspapers believed seventy-three were killed, while those who got their information through local publications thought 131 were killed. One young woman made this interesting comment:
I think a very conservative estimate of the number killed would be about 450 or 500. My first source of information, newspapers. My father also told me of the affair and he is a medical director of an insurance company and therefore was in a more or less good position to know.
A young man said:
There were at least 200 people killed in the race riot. Sources of information: a policeman who was stationed at Forty-seventh Street and Wentworth, my own direct observations, and conversations with people who live in the Black Belt.
Another young man said:
About 200 were killed. Chief source of information a review of Carl Sandburg's pamphlet, and newspaper stories.