In 1919, Chicago was a great industrial city. WWI had just ended, troops were coming home, industry was booming and crime was down. Chicago's mayor, William Hale Thompson, had just been re-elected and was heading an ambitious urban improvement programme. In the hot summer weather, children loved the beach.
For decades the southern rural communities had been home to 90%+ of America’s black population. That number changed greatly in the early C20th; the Great Migration was an exodus that saw millions of African-Americans heading to the urban north, fleeing segregation, discrimination, lynchings and disenfranchisement by a resurgent Ku Klux Klan. The road networks and railway facilitated the great migration of African Americans to safety.
Chicago must have seemed an appealing destination for black migrants. Job opportunities were provided by the city’s huge stockyards and meatpacking plants. This rapid mass internal movement had a significant impact on large industrial cities like Chicago. Between 1909-19, the city’s black population rose from 44,000 to 100,000+, congregating in the City’s cramped South Side. So competition for jobs in the city’s South Side stockyards was especially intense, pitting African Americans against whites, both native-born and immigrants.
White rioters with bricks dragging an African-American man
from his home during the 1919 riots.
Chicago History Museum
One source of rising racial tension was that many African-American workers were not necessarily members of unions. Another was the power of Irish gangs in Chicago. As the first major group of C19th European immigrants to settle in the city, the Irish had established formidable political strength in “their” city.
Amid the post-war insecurity back in the USA, racial and ethnic prejudices were becoming rampant. Thousands of servicemen had returned home from fighting in Europe to find that their jobs in factories, warehouses and mills had been filled by recently arrived Southern blacks and immigrants.
380,000 black ex-soldiers had risked their lives fighting in Europe for freedom & democracy, often with honour. Many of the black soldiers had enlisted believing that a sizeable African-American contribution to the war would advance the cause of civil rights back home. But no. Now they found themselves denied basic rights like decent housing and equality before the law, leading them to greater militancy.
So the Chicago Race Riots were a predictable disaster. In late July 1919 an African-American adolescent, Eugene Williams, waded into Chicago’s Lake Michigan with friends. He swum towards a floating railway sleeper taking him towards a nearby beach. Unfortunately he “violated” a beach that had been declared Whites Only. The white beach-goers signalled their displeasure by barraging Williams with stones. Williams was struck on the forehead, panicked, lost his grip on the sleeper and drowned. When police officers arrived on the scene, they refused to arrest the white man that black eyewitnesses said was responsible.
Reports of the incident spread quickly. An angry crowd of African-Americans arrived, their anger escalating with the police’s biased inaction or incompetence. Over a few hours, a black mob began venting its fury and the white gangsters became ferocious. 27 blacks were beaten, 7 were stabbed and 4 were shot. William’s death sparked a week of rioting, mainly in the South Side stockyard neighbourhood.
After police were unable or unwilling to quell the riots, the mayor reluctantly called in 6,000 Illinois Army National Guards only on the fourth day. The troopers quickly headed into the streets with rifles and bayonets and within 24 hours they had largely restored order. But the shootings and beatings had left 15 whites and 23 blacks dead, and 500+ more injured. Another 1,000 black families were left homeless after rioters burned their homes. Many blacks were rounded up in stockades and tortured. Later 122 blacks, but no whites, were charged with crimes related to the riots.
National Guards keep the peace during the 1919 race riots in Chicago.
Chicago Tribune historical photo
A crowd of men and armed National Guard stand in front of the Ogden Café.
Photograph: Chicago History Museum/
The pain spread in other places. In Washington DC that summer a black man was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. As a result white ex-servicemen roamed a poor black neighbourhood lynching randomly. Soon the city’s blacks fought back, killing whites randomly. The bloodshed continued for four days until 2,000 military servicemen, sent in by President Woodrow Wilson, ended the violence. 39 people died and 100+ had been injured.
Lasting Impact In the aftermath of the rioting, some suggested implementing zoning laws to formally segregate housing in Chicago, or restrictions preventing blacks from working alongside whites in the stock-yards and other industries. Thankfully such measures were rejected by all African-American and moral white voters.
City officials instead organised the Chicago Commission on Race Relations to look into the causes of the riots - institutionalised racism, post WW1 tensions and mass black migration northward. And to find successful solutions. The commission, which included six white men and six black, found several key issues, including competition for jobs, inadequate housing options for blacks, inconsistent law enforcement and pervasive racial discrimination, but changes were slow to come.
In this fraught atmosphere, the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan organisation revived its violent activities in the South, including 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 more in 1919. In that horrible Red Summer of 1919, race riots broke out in many other places.
City officials instead organised the Chicago Commission on Race Relations to look into the causes of the riots - institutionalised racism, post WW1 tensions and mass black migration northward. And to find successful solutions. The commission, which included six white men and six black, found several key issues, including competition for jobs, inadequate housing options for blacks, inconsistent law enforcement and pervasive racial discrimination, but changes were slow to come.
In this fraught atmosphere, the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan organisation revived its violent activities in the South, including 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 more in 1919. In that horrible Red Summer of 1919, race riots broke out in many other places.
When Chicago's South Side/Black Belt was destroyed by arson,
1,000 black citizens were left homeless.
President Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) publicly blamed whites for being the instigators of race-related riots in both Chicago and Washington DC, and introduced efforts to foster racial harmony, including voluntary organisations and congressional legislation. However his track record in race relations throughout his 8 years had been patchy.
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14 comments:
It sounds like a bad year, a tha AND the Spanish Flu!
As you’ll know, here in Oz Indigenous men went to fight in the war and when they returned, returned White diggers were given a gift of land - THEIR land! A few years ago, I saw a stand at the Royal Melbourne Show where the descendants of some of those white servicemen were bragging about their amazing historic settlement. I hurried past, in case I said something I might regret.
Well thank goodness that is all history and race relations now are all good in the US of A. I recently heard a podcast about the late Rodney King and 1992 Los Angeles riots. Nothing changes. It is no wonder black people react in the extreme.
Sue
I am anti-war in any case, but I really did think that war widows and surviving ex-servicemen should have been looked after properly from 1919 on - free hospital care, proper employment, decent housing. Unfortunately white ex servicemen thought only they should have got the jobs and houses!
How nasty the white politicians, police and armed services were.
Andrew
Correct..nothing much has changed .. although the reasons for oppressing African Americans (and other minorities) may have changed over the generations. In the Chinese Massacre of 1871, for example, 20 Chinese workers were hanged in a Los Angeles street. The killers were found guilty of manslaughter but the convictions were soon overturned.
Hello Hels, Race relations--gender equality--global warming--fossil fuel reserves--even historic preservation. These problems are all very old, and a little bit of common sense would go a long way in solving them, but people always wait until the 11th hour, or even later, when too much irreversible damage has been done. Moreover, so many of these problems are motivated by selfishness, inequitable profit lobbies, and just plain meanness.
We need to look on the good side too, but lately the bad news seems to arrive in unwonted abundance.
--Jim
Andrew is right. The police and army never changed. When the Bonus Army ex-servicemen arrived in Washington in 1932 to ask for their bonus war payments, the regular army used tear gas and bayonets to get them out of town. Tear gas had been banned by the Geneva Protocol years earlier, so American newspapers were banned from revealing how many people were gassed to death.
Parnassus
Authoritarian control more than selfishness and meanness. Protest marches and demonstrations were largely organised by people who were desperate about whatever issue was ruining life at the time. Nobody risked having their heads beaten in.. without deep thought. But by calling the citizens "communists, blacks, illegals and rioters", protesters were set apart as thugs who had to be defeated, at any cost.
Student
I had never heard of the Bonus Army but I did know that the use of all chemical weapons in warfare was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol post-WW1 - because the deaths would be horrific.
When the police or army were ordered by the president to end the Bonus Army demonstration, tear gas was used to force compliance, at any cost. They didn't know if the people in the Washington streets were black or white, ex-servicemen or passers-by, adults or children.
It worked.
I do believe most of the world has moved on in its regard for the individual. But it is depressing that we STILL have so much injustice - we should not even be having the conversation.
Mike
I wish that were true. And not just in Black Lives Matter protests... consider the brutality used against the Hongkong citizens' protest marches. So what is the difference now? World wide coverage of police and army oppression of citizens is immediately available via social media!
Hi Hels - in Britain ... it was the women, who realised that the jobs done previously by men needed doing, and did take them on ... who were ousted on the men's return from WW1 ... that created challenges - completely different: I understand.
It's just sad that there are minority groups out there encouraging racism to exist ... and bullies who cannot be civil ... a polite way of expressing my thoughts.
But thanks for the informed article - Hilary
Hilary
the competition for jobs and housing after WW1 must have been VERY intense! So I am sure that any women who had kept the economy going before the men returned.. must have melted away back into their homes silently. It got even worse in 1929. My grandmother worked throughout the Depression because her husband was badly wounded in WW1, and although she loved her job, she had to constantly explain her family's situation to strangers.
But many ex-servicemen could not afford to melt back into their homes silently in 1919 :(
How very disappointing to see the lack of progress in over one hundred years since those riots. Martin Luther King pointed out that rioting had NEVER advanced their cause; progress was only ever made through civil disobedience and peaceful protest.
It is so ingrained into human nature that, if it still exists after 10,000 years since the Agrarian revolution, then it is here to stay...
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bazza
Protests either were not allowed by local authorities or had very little impact on government policy. Thus even if protesters intended to remain totally peaceful, it was too easy for the police or KKK (or similar) to violently change the atmosphere. Why would unemployed men smash the windows of shops that might employ them?
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