By a joint committee of blacks and whites that riot has been discussed and that makes the discussion the more valuable.
In that great city of two and a half million of inhabitants, after ten days of riot, bloodshed, arson and murder, in response to the appeal of representative citizens, Governor Lowden appointed an emergency committee to study the underlying causes of the riot of 1919 and to make recommendations. According to the Census of 1920 there were then in Chicago 109,458 Negroes. The chairman of the committee was Edgar A. Bancroft, a leading lawyer, subsequently appointed by President Coolidge Ambassador to Japan. The vice chairman was Dr. Francis W. Sheppardson, at one time of the University of Chicago. The most prominent Negro on the Committee was Robert S. Abbott, proprietor of the greatest and most influential Negro paper in the United States, The Chicago Defender. The report was published in 1922. It indicates 38 persons killed in the riot, 15 whites and 23 Negroes. Of the 527 injured, 178 were white, 342 Negroes, the race denomination of 17 not being established.
For the 38 deaths, there were nine presentments for murder returned, four persons being convicted.
While it is stated that the merciless bombing of Negro households was due to a systematic campaign conducted by the press against Negroes buying properties to one side of the district in which 90 per cent of the Negro population reside, that they moved, (on account of their increase), towards the side to which they did go, rather than in the opposite direction, the report says—
“may be explained partly by the hostility which the Irish and Polish groups had often shown to Negroes.”[393]
That Negroes were killed deliberately, as a business measure, in response to propaganda against them simply as Negroes, is an unavoidable conclusion. Extracts from “The Property Owners Journal” show that again and again there was an attempt to appeal to a “Higher Law” than the law of the land. It seems to have been the law of greed. Here is an extract:
“Any property owner who sells property anywhere in our district to undesirables is an enemy to the white owner and should be discovered and punished.... The Negro is using the Constitution and its legal rights to abuse the moral rights of the white.”[394]
Following this hypocritical appeal, 58 houses, bought by Negroes, were bombed, the residence of Jesse Binga, a Negro banker having been bombed six times without breaking down his firm determination to stand the storm. The house of a Negro woman was bombed three times. Her home had been attacked in the riots and the front door battered down; but, upon calling on the police, she and her husband were by them arrested, altho’ later acquitted. The report charges gross and continuous exaggeration during the riot, in which it is distinctly stated that the Chicago Tribune led, although it is also stated, that the paper owned by one of the committee, in one instance, could hardly have been surpassed. That this last statement should have been made, speaks volumes for the fairness of the committee and the member of the committee thus concurring with the stricture on himself. It also states, of the paper published by Robert S. Abbott, “The Defender”:
“It is probably no exaggeration to say that the Defender’s policy prompted thousands of restless Negroes to venture North, where there were assured of its protection and championship of their cause.”[395]
The Governor in his FOREWORD states that the report shows “that the presence of Negroes in large numbers in our great cities is not a menace in itself.” Incidents cited showed high courage and efficiency on the part of Negro policeman and the exhibition of a stern sense of duty controlling race prejudice.