I heard the story that 100 men had been taken out of Bubbly Creek. They used a net and a seine to drag them out. [A. L. Williams, attorney, before the coroner's jury.]
There is a story that was repeated on the floor of Congress that numerous colored people were caught down there [at the Stock Yards] and thrown in Bubbly Creek, and their bodies never recovered. A congressman from our district down there, representing our Stock Yards district, told me that on the floor of Congress it was recently stated that a man with a dumb-bell in his hand stood there at the big rock entrance of Exchange Avenue and knocked a half-dozen of these colored men on the heads as they passed through that rock door there. [A juror in the coroner's inquest.]
I hear they dragged two or three bodies out of Bubbly Creek. [A witness before the coroner's jury.]
A meat curer in the superintendent's office of Swift & Company said: "Well, I hear they did drag two or three out of Bubbly Creek—dead bodies, that is the report that come in the yards, but personally I never got any positive evidence that there was any people who was found there."
The Chicago Daily News of July 29, 1919, printed the subheading: "Four Bodies in Bubbly Creek." The article did not give details, but said: "Bodies of four colored men were taken today from Bubbly Creek in the Stock Yards district, it is reported."
In its final report the coroner's jury made a conclusive statement regarding the Bubbly Creek rumor which stamped it as pure rumor.[93]
3. RIOT RUMORS
The state of mind produced by rumors is manifest in other experiences of riot. The following is an example:
At Forty-fourth Street and Grand Boulevard, a corner on which the only Negro family in the block lived at the time of the riot, an elderly white man clad in a worn dressing-gown, carpet slippers, and a skull cap, excitedly rushed from his house to the curb and shouted to a crowd: "They're giving ammunition away to the niggers at the Eighth Regiment Armory!" The crowd became excited and finally threatened the house of the Negro family. A cry went up, "Hang the niggers! The niggers in the house are firing at every white man that passes!" The police searched the house and found an 1894 model rifle, ammunition, that would not fit, and a decorated sword. The six Negroes in the house were taken to the police station.
During the riot a white man was caught crawling beneath a house in which Negroes lived. In his pocket was found a bottle of kerosene. He confessed that his mission was arson and justified his intended act by repeating a rumor then current that Negroes had set fire to the houses of whites back of the Yards.