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

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

In connection with the industrial phase of the situation, it should be remembered that the war had cut off the normal supply of foreign labor, and that not a few white workers had left East St. Louis for other industrial centers. Most of the Negro migrants were unskilled workers, and their competition was, therefore, with the unskilled white workers. One witness before the Congressional Committee expressed the view that the labor shortage in East St. Louis prior to the riot certainly did not justify the great influx of Negroes, but it is of record that most of the newcomers got profitable employment in unskilled occupations.

The employers were fighting unions of any sort, whether of whites or Negroes. Unions were seeking membership of Negroes as well as whites in the hope that the use of Negroes as strike breakers might be prevented. Whether union men or not, the white workers resented the influx of Negro workers who might take their jobs. The inevitable consequence was friction between whites and Negroes.

The Congressional Committee laid great stress upon corrupt politics as the leading cause of the riots of July 2. It disclosed an almost unbelievable combination of shameless corruption, tolerance of vice and crime, maladministration, and debauchery of the courts. The report says that East St. Louis for many years was a plague spot, harboring within its borders "every offense in the calendar of crime" and committing openly "every lapse in morals and public decency." Politicians looted its treasury, gave away valuable franchises, and elected plunderers to high office. Graft, collusion with crime and vice, and desecration of office were openly and deliberately practiced. Criminals were attracted and welcomed, and the good people of the community were powerless. Owners of large corporations and manufacturers pitted white against black labor, giving no thought to their thousands of workmen living in hovels, the victims of "poverty and disease, of long hours and incessant labor."

The mayor, continues the report, was a tool of dishonest politicians, the electorate was "debauched," the police were a conscienceless bunch of grafters, and the revenue of the city was largely derived from saloons and dens of vice.

Several officials and politicians of high standing were singled out by the Committee for especial condemnation as the "brains of the city's corruption."

A great deal of the city's crime and vice was concentrated in what is known as "Black Valley." This was the section in which the Negroes lived, but much of the vice and crime was promoted and practiced by vicious whites. There was much mixing of whites and Negroes in the vilest practices.

Similar conditions existed in the town of Brooklyn near by, with about 3,000 people, of whom only about fifty were white. Its dens of iniquity were notorious and were the resort of many white people. So openly operated were these resorts that the Congressional Committee reported that in the Brooklyn high school "24 out of 25 girls who were in the graduating class went to the bad in the saloons and dance halls and failed to receive their diplomas."

Not only were conditions of this sort demoralizing and degrading for the decent Negroes, but the sanitary conditions were likewise extremely bad. Some of the houses in the Negro districts had not been painted for fifteen years and were in a state of great disrepair. Their setting consisted largely of pools of stagnant water and beds of weeds. At one period during the migration Negroes were coming in so fast that even these miserable housing conditions were inadequate, and some of them were forced to live in sheds. In one instance sixty-nine newcomers were found living in one small house. Whenever houses were vacated by white people and rented to Negroes, the rental price was largely increased, sometimes doubled.

After reviewing the corruption in East St. Louis, the report of the Congressional Committee discussed the riot. It described the condition of affairs on the night of July 1, 1917, when the second and most serious outbreak occurred. An automobile (some witnesses said two) went through the Negro section of the city, its occupants firing promiscuously into homes. This aroused fierce resentment among the Negroes, who organized for defense and armed themselves with guns. The ringing of the church bell, a prearranged signal for assembling, drew a crowd of them, and they marched through the streets ready to avenge the attack. A second automobile filled with white men crossed their path. The Negroes cursed them, commanded them to drive on, and fired a volley into the machine. The occupants, however, were not the rioters but policemen and reporters. One policeman was killed and another was so seriously wounded that he died later.

Thousands viewed the riddled car standing before police headquarters. The early editions of the newspapers gave full accounts of the tragedy, and on July 2 the rioting began. Negro mobs shot white men, and white men and boys, girls and women, began to attack every Negro in sight. News spread rapidly and, as excitement increased, unimaginable depredations and horrible tortures were committed and viewed with "placid unconcern" by hundreds. Negro men were stabbed, clubbed, and hanged from telephone poles. Their homes were burned. Women and children were not spared. An instance is given of a Negro child two years old which was shot and thrown into a doorway of a burning building.