CHAPTER 8

FRICTION BETWEEN THE RACES

Frequent Occurrence of Clashes and Riots Due to Race Friction-The Springfield Riot of 1908-The Waukegan Riot of 1917-The St. Louis Riots of 1917The Chicago Riot of 1919

IN

N the large cities, racial clashes are very common. They take the form of individual fights, of fights between groups of Negroes and whites, or of gang attacks upon a single individual. Of course, the provocation comes sometimes from the whites and sometimes from the Negroes, but I believe that race clashes in all sections of the country are more often provoked by the whites.

In the Negro quarters there are generally certain streets or neighborhoods which harbor the worst class of Negro criminals, and, in proximity to these Negro quarters, there are generally corresponding centers for the worst type of white criminals. The chief racial dis turbances arise from the contact of these two criminal groups, and from individuals of either group stealing, holding up, and otherwise molesting people not belonging to the criminal class.

Referring to the San Juan Hill in New York City, a policeman said, in 1900, "plain-going, honest Negro longshoremen, on their way home from work have been beaten for a month past by hoodlums along Tenth Avenue and have been left in the gutter for dead." 1

Following a number of white hoodlum attacks upon Negroes, Magistrate Brann remarked:

"It's getting so the colored people have no right in this city. But they'll get justice while I am sitting in this court." 2

In Chicago in February, 1917, a crowd of white boys assembled in front of a tenement house, on Forty-sixth Street, into which a Negro family had moved, and stoned the building, breaking out every window in the upper floors. The police rescued the Negroes, who moved to other quarters.3

In the same city, May 27, 1917, a group of ten white men entered a New York Times.

'New York Sun, quoted in Charlotte Observer, Sept. 23, 1900.

8

Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 53.

saloon on South State Street and, when a Negro came in and called for a drink, one of the white men knocked him down and kicked him out of the door. The Negro picked up some brickbats and the whites followed him and beat him over the head with their revolvers.*

On the night of June 21, 1917, "there were two wanton murders of Negroes by gangs of white hoodlums." 5

Among the racial clashes on a larger scale which rise to the dignity of riots, the following are of the more recent and outstanding:

THE SPRINGFIELD RIOT, AUGUST, 1908

The tension of racial feeling which prepared the atmosphere for the outbreak at Springfield, Illinois, August 14-15, 1908, was occasioned by the murder, several weeks earlier, of C. A. Ballard, a white man, by Joe James, a Negro tramp. One night the Negro James entered the room of Mr. Ballard's daughter. Ballard attacked the Negro and in the struggle received a mortal wound. The Negro fled, but was found next day asleep in a nearby park under the influence of a drug. He was tried and hanged. The feeling over the James affair had hardly abated when the people were aroused by a second report of a Negro outrage upon a white woman. The wife of a street-car conductor declared that on Friday night, August 14, a Negro entered her room, dragged her from her bed to the back yard, and there assaulted her. She said she had attempted to scream but was choked by her assailant, who left her lying unconscious in the garden. Next morning she accused as her assailant a Negro, George Richardson, who had been at work on a neighboring yard the day before the assault. In the afternoon, crowds of 300 or 400 gathered at the jail where Richardson had been incarcerated, and where the Negro James, who had killed Ballard, also occupied a cell. About five o'clock Richardson and James were clandestinely transferred to Bloomington.

After dark the crowd began to demand the two Negroes. After being informed of their removal, some one started the rumor that Harry Loper, a restaurant keeper, had provided the automobile for the Negroes' escape. The crowd rushed to the restaurant. In response to the mob's hootings, Loper appeared at the door with a firearm in his hand. Brickbats began to fly at the plate-glass window, and in a few minutes the restaurant was a complete wreck, as was Loper's automobile, which had been standing in front of it.

* Ibid., p. 54.

* Ibid., p. 55.

"When the mob began to surge through the town, the Fire Department was called to disperse it, but the mob cut the hose. Control having been lost by the sheriff and police, Governor Deneen called out the militia. The mob, by this time very much excited, started for the Negro district through Washington Street, along which a large number of Negroes lived on upper floors. Raiding second-hand stores which belonged to white men, the mob secured guns, axes, and other weapons with which it destroyed places of business operated by Negroes and drove out all of the Negro residents from Washington Street. Then it turned north into Ninth Street.

"At the northeast corner of Ninth and Jefferson Streets was the frame barber shop of Scott Burton, a Negro. The mob set fire to this building," and lynched the proprietor, in the yard back of his shop. "The mob tied a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets. An effort was then made to burn the body, which had been hung up to a tree." The mob next turned north to Madison Street and began firing all the shacks in which Negroes and whites lived in that street.

About two o'clock in the morning a company of militia arrived from Decatur, and, by firing into the mob and wounding two of the men, dispersed it for the time being.

The next night, however, in spite of the arrival of more militia, the mob gathered at the Court House Square, and proceeded to parade the streets. At the corner of Spring and Edwards Streets, a Negro named Denegan, 84 years old, whose offense was that he had been living with a white wife for thirty years, was strung up to a tree across the street. The Negroes became frightened, and began to leave the town, scores being severely beaten before making their escape. Three thousand of them were concentrated at Camp Lincoln. Before the rioting ended, 5,000 militiamen were patrolling the streets. The fatalities of the riot were two Negroes lynched and four white men shot, and seventy-nine persons injured.

When the grand jury took up the question of the assault of the Negro Richardson upon the wife of the street-car conductor, the fact was brought out that on the night of the alleged assault the white woman had been brutally beaten by a white man, and that, wishing to keep the name of the assailant a secret, she made up the story of assault by the Negro Richardson. Confronted with the facts, the woman signed an affidavit exonerating Richardson, who was a man of a family and property, with no criminal record."

Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, pp. 67-71.

THE WAUKEGAN RIOT, MAY, 1917

May 31, 1917, at Waukegan, Illinois, thirty-six miles north of Chicago, a small riot grew out of the act of a Negro boy ten years old, and his sister, in throwing stones at passing automobiles. One of these missiles broke the windshield of an automobile driven by Lieutenant Blazier of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. Later in the day a mob of recruits from the station assembled in front of the house where the offending Negro boy lived, threw stones at it, and broke nearly all the windows. The provost guards rounded up the recruits and sent them back to the station. Two nights later, 150 boys on leave from the station renewed the attack, colliding with the police, who shot and wounded two of them and made several arrests. The crowd of boys followed to the police station and demanded the release of their comrades. The commander of the station arrived in time to prevent further trouble."

THE ST. LOUIS RIOTS, MAY-JULY, 1917

The race riots in East St. Louis, May 28 and July 2, 1917, had a common origin in the competition between Negro and white labor in the industries of that city. The general shortage of labor during the World War caused the industries of East St. Louis to employ a large number of Negro immigrants from the South. During the two years prior to July, 1917, the Negro population of East St. Louis was increased by about 18,000.

In the summer of 1916 there was a strike of 4,000 white men in the packing plants of the city, and the current opinion was that Negroes were used in these plants as strike breakers. About the same time a strike occurred at the Aluminum Ore Company during which the company brought hundreds of Negroes to the city as strike breakers in order to defeat organized labor. This aroused intense hatred of the Negro. "White men walked the streets in idleness and their families. suffered for food and warmth and clothes, while their places as laborers were taken by strange Negroes who were compelled to live in hovels and who were used to keep down wages." The secretary of the Central Trades Labor Union sent out a notice, May 2, calling for a meeting to present to the mayor and council a demand for action to "retard their growing menace (Negro immigrants) and also devise a way to

'Ibid., p. 57. 'Ibid., p. 74.

get rid of a certain portion of those who are already here," declaring that the immigration of the Southern Negro had reached a point where "drastic action must be taken if we intend to work and live peaceably in this community," and that the Negroes were being used "to the detriment of our white citizens by some of the capitalists and a few real estate owners."

The meeting was held May 28, in the City Hall, and a low-type lawyer made an inflammatory speech. That night, following the meeting, a white mob gathered at the police station and clamored for Negro prisoners. "A rumor circulated through the crowd that a white man had just been killed by Negroes, and parts of the crowd left, forming a mob which severely beat a number of Negroes whom it met. The situation was so serious that the mayor called for troops."

"10

A second riot of larger proportions began on the night of July 1, 1917. The hoodlums of both races had been menacing and attacking each other since the riot of May 28. In order to understand how favorable to an explosion the atmosphere was, it is necessary to bear in mind that East St. Louis was a plague spot harboring within its borders "every offense in the calendar of crime." 11 The centers of vice were in two settlements; one known as "Black Valley" and the other "Brooklyn," in both of which were the lowest dens of iniquity frequented by both whites and blacks. On the night above mentioned, a crowd of white roughs drove in an automobile through the "Black Valley," firing indiscriminately into Negro 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 next morning, July 2, the crowds of whites and Negroes resolved themselves into mobs and began a pitched battle. Negro mobs shot white men, and white men and boys, girls and women, began to

9

Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 75.

To Ibid., p. 75.

" Ibid., p. 76.