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The Chicago Commission on Race Relations
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Title: The Negro in Chicago
A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot
Author: The Chicago Commission on Race Relations
Release Date: June 17, 2018 [EBook #57343]
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The following variant spellings are noted, but were left unchanged:
instalment and installment
whisky and whiskey
instal and install
pretense and pretence
The footnotes for markers 41 and 73 are missing.
Several table totals are incorrect. Two numbers were corrected,
Table XIV: Late Entering, Doolittle, Negro corrected to 190.
Total white students, Smyth: 57
All other numbers were left as in the original.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
signs=.
THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI
[Illustration: CHICAGO RACE RIOT--BEGINNING OF THE RIOT
WHITES AND NEGROES LEAVING TWENTY-NINTH STREET BEACH AFTER THE
DROWNING OF EUGENE WILLIAMS]
THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO
A STUDY OF RACE RELATIONS
AND A RACE RIOT
BY
THE CHICAGO COMMISSION ON
RACE RELATIONS
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT 1922 BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All Rights Reserved
Published September 1922
Second Impression January 1923
Third Impression March 1923
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix
LIST OF MAPS x
FOREWORD BY HONORABLE FRANK O. LOWDEN xiii
INTRODUCTION xv
THE PROBLEM xxiii
CHAPTER I. THE CHICAGO RIOT, JULY 27-AUGUST 2, 1919 1-52
Background of the Riot 2
The Beginning of the Riot 4
Chronological Story of the Riot 5
Factors Influencing Growth of the Riot 9
Gangs and "Athletic Clubs" 11
Types of Clashes 17
Crowds and Mobs 22
Rumor 25
Police 33
Militia 40
Deputy Sheriffs 43
Restoration of Order 43
Aftermath of the Riot 46
Outstanding Features of the Riot 48
CHAPTER II. OTHER OUTBREAKS IN ILLINOIS 53-78
Clashes in Chicago preceding the Riot of 1919 53
Racial Outbreaks in Waukegan, May 31 and June 2, 1920 57
The "Abyssinian" Affair, June 20, 1920 59
The Barrett Murder, September 20, 1920 64
The Springfield Riot, August 14-15, 1908 67
East St. Louis Riots, May 28, and July 2, 1917 71
CHAPTER III. THE MIGRATION OF NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH 79-105
Economic Causes of the Migration 80
Sentimental Causes of the Migration 84
Beginning and Spread of Migration 86
The Arrival in Chicago 93
Adjustments to Chicago Life 94
Migrants in Chicago 97
Efforts to Check Migration 103
CHAPTER IV. THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO 106-151
Distribution and Density 106
Neighborhoods of Negro Residence 108
Adjusted Neighborhoods 108
Non-adjusted Neighborhoods 113
Neighborhoods of Organized Opposition 115
Bombings 122
Trend of the Negro Population 135
Outlying Neighborhoods 136
The Negro Community 139
Commercial and Industrial Enterprises 140
Organizations for Social Intercourse 141
Religious Organizations 142
Social and Civic Agencies 146
Medical Institutions 150
CHAPTER V. THE NEGRO HOUSING PROBLEM 152-230
General Living Conditions 152
Why Negroes Move 154
Room Crowding 156
Rents and Lodgers 162
How Negro Families Live 165
A Group of Family Histories 170
Physical Aspects of Negro Housing 184
Neighborhood Improvement Associations 192
Efforts of Social Agencies 193
Negroes and Property Depreciation 194
Financial Aspects of Negro Housing 215
Negroes as Home Owners 216
Financial Resources of Negroes 227
CHAPTER VI. RACIAL CONTACTS 231-326
Legal Status of Negroes in Illinois 232
Discrimination in Public Schools 234
Contacts in Chicago Public Schools 238
Physical Equipment of Schools 241
Retardation in Elementary Schools 256
Contacts in Recreation 271
Contacts in Transportation 297
Contacts in Other Relations 309
"Black and Tan" Resorts 323
Cultural Contacts 325
Contacts in Co-operative Efforts for Race Betterment 326
CHAPTER VII. CRIME AND VICIOUS ENVIRONMENT 327-356
Criminal Statistics 328
The Negro in the Courts 332
Bureau of Identification 335
Probation and Parole 335
Institutional Inquiry 338
Negro Crime and Environment 341
Views of Authorities on Crime among Negroes 345
CHAPTER VIII. THE NEGRO IN INDUSTRY 357-435
Employment Opportunities and Conditions 357
Increase in Negro Labor since 1915 362
Classification of Negro Workers 364
Wages of Negro Workers 365
Women Employees in Industrial Establishments 367
Railroad Workers 369
Domestic Workers 370
Employers' Experience with Negro Labor 372
Negro Women in Industry 378
Industries Excluding the Negro 391
Relations of White and Colored Workers 393
Future of the Negro in Chicago Industries 400
Organized Labor and the Negro Worker 403
Policy of the American Federation of Labor and
Other Federations 405
Unions Admitting Negroes to White Locals 412
Unions Admitting Negroes to Separate Co-ordinate
Locals 417
Unions Excluding Negroes from Membership 420
The Negro and Strikes 430
Attitude and Opinions of Labor Leaders 432
CHAPTER IX. PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS 436-519
A. OPINIONS OF WHITES AND NEGROES
Beliefs Concerning Negroes 437
Primary Beliefs 438
Secondary Beliefs 443
Background of Prevailing Beliefs Concerning Negroes 445
Types of Sentiments and Attitudes 451
The Emotional Background 451
Abstract Justice 454
Traditional Southern Background 456
Group Sentiments 456
Attitudes Determined by Contacts 457
Self-Analysis by Fifteen White Citizens 459
Public Opinion as Expressed by Negroes 475
Race Problems 478
Abyssinians 480
A Negro and a Mob 481
Defensive Policies 484
Race Consciousness 487
Opinions of Fifteen Negroes on Definite Racial Problems 493
Are Race Relations Improving? 494
Opinions on Solution 495
Social Adjustments 502
Negro Problems 505
Defensive Philosophy 508
Segregation and Racial Solidarity 509
Opinion-making 514
CHAPTER X. PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS 520-594
B. INSTRUMENTS OF OPINION-MAKING
The Press 520
General Survey of Chicago Newspapers 523
Intensive Study of Chicago Newspapers 531
Newspaper Policy Regarding Negro News 547
The Negro Press 556
Classification of Articles 557
Negro Newspaper Policy 563
Rumor 568
Myths 577
Propaganda 587
Conclusions 594
CHAPTER XI. SUMMARY OF THE REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF
THE COMMISSION 595-651
The Chicago Riot 595
The Migration of Negroes from the South 602
The Negro Population of Chicago 605
Racial Contacts 613
Crime and Vicious Environment 621
The Negro in Chicago Industries 623
Public Opinion in Race Relations 629
Opinions of Whites and Negroes 629
Factors in the Making of Public Opinion 634
The Recommendations of the Commission 640
APPENDIX 652
Biographical Data of Members of the Commission 652
The Staff of the Commission 653
Epitome of Facts in Riot Deaths 655
Table Showing Number of Persons Injured in Chicago Riot
by Date and by Race 667
INDEX 669
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
WHITES AND NEGROES LEAVING TWENTY-NINTH STREET BEACH iii
CROWDS ARMED WITH BRICKS SEARCHING FOR A NEGRO 12
WHITES STONING NEGRO TO DEATH 12
THE ARRIVAL OF THE POLICE 12
SCENES FROM FIRE IN IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD 16, 22, 28
NEGROES LEAVING WRECKED HOUSE IN RIOT ZONE 16
WRECKED HOUSE OF A NEGRO FAMILY IN RIOT ZONE 28
NEGROES AND WHITES LEAVING THE STOCK YARDS 28
NEGROES BEING ESCORTED TO SAFETY ZONE 34
SEARCHING NEGROES FOR ARMS IN POLICE STATION 34
NEGROES BUYING PROVISIONS BROUGHT INTO THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD 40
THE MILITIA AND NEGROES ON FRIENDLY TERMS 40
NEGRO STOCK YARDS WORKERS RECEIVING WAGES 44
BUYING ICE FROM FREIGHT CAR 44
MILK WAS DISTRIBUTED FOR THE BABIES 48
PROVISIONS SUPPLIED BY THE RED CROSS 48
PROPAGANDA LITERATURE USED BY "ABYSSINIANS" 60
AFTER THE "ABYSSINIAN MURDERS" 64
TYPICAL PLANTATION HOMES IN THE SOUTH 80
NEGRO FAMILY JUST ARRIVED IN CHICAGO 92
NEGRO CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 92
RACIAL CONTACTS AMONG CHILDREN 108
A SAVINGS BANK IN THE NEGRO RESIDENCE AREA 112
CHILDREN AT WORK IN A COMMUNITY GARDEN 112
DAMAGE DONE BY A BOMB 128
A NEGRO CHORAL SOCIETY 136
OLIVET BAPTIST CHURCH 140
ST. MARK'S M.E. CHURCH 140
TRINITY M.E. CHURCH AND COMMUNITY HOUSE 146
SOUTH PARK M.E. CHURCH 146
PILGRIM BAPTIST CHURCH 146
THE CHICAGO URBAN LEAGUE BUILDING 150
THE SOUTH SIDE COMMUNITY SERVICE BUILDING 150
HOMES OWNED BY NEGROES ON SOUTH PARK AVENUE 188
AN ABANDONED RESIDENCE IN THE PRAIRIE AVENUE BLOCK 188
HOMES OCCUPIED AND IN PART OWNED BY NEGROES 194
HOMES OCCUPIED BY NEGROES ON FOREST AVENUE 202
REAR VIEW OF HOUSES OCCUPIED BY NEGROES ON FEDERAL STREET 202
MOSELEY SCHOOL 242
FARREN SCHOOL 248
WENDELL PHILLIPS HIGH SCHOOL 252
A TYPICAL SCHOOL YARD PLAYGROUND IN A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD 276
BEUTNER PLAYGROUND 280
FIELD HOUSE EQUIPMENT AT BEUTNER PLAYGROUND 280
NEGRO ATHLETIC TEAM IN CITY-WIDE MEET 280
FRIENDLY RIVALRY 280
ARMOUR SQUARE RECREATION CENTER 286
BEUTNER PLAYGROUND 286
A NEGRO AMATEUR BASEBALL TEAM 292
NEGRO WOMEN AND GIRLS EMPLOYED IN A LAMP-SHADE FACTORY 378
NEGRO WOMEN EMPLOYED ON POWER MACHINES 380
NEGRO WOMEN AND GIRLS IN A LARGE HAT-MAKING CONCERN 384
OFFICERS OF THE RAILWAY MEN'S BENEVOLENT INDUSTRIAL
ASSOCIATION 410
LIST OF MAPS
FACING
PAGE
THE CHICAGO RIOT 8
DISTRIBUTION OF NEGRO POPULATION, 1910 106
DISTRIBUTION OF NEGRO POPULATION, 1920 110
PROPORTION OF NEGROES TO TOTAL POPULATION, 1910 116
PROPORTION OF NEGROES TO TOTAL POPULATION, 1920 120
HOMES BOMBED 124
NEGRO CHURCHES 144
SOCIAL AGENCIES 148
HOMES OF WHITE AND NEGRO EMPLOYEES 154
TYPES OF NEGRO HOUSING 184
A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD 212
RECREATION FACILITIES 272
TRANSPORTATION CONTACTS, MORNING 7:00 TO 9:00 300
TRANSPORTATION CONTACTS, EVENING 4:00 TO 6:00 300
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION, 1916 342
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION, 1918 342
RESORTS 346
INDUSTRIAL PLANTS 360
FOREWORD
There is no domestic problem in America which has given thoughtful men
more concern than the problem of the relations between the white and
the Negro races. In earlier days the colonization of the Negro, as in
Liberia, was put forward as a solution. That idea was abandoned long ago.
It is now recognized generally that the two races are here in America
to stay.
It is also certain that the problem will not be solved by methods of
violence. Every race riot, every instance in which men of either race
defy legal authority and take the law into their own hands, but postpones
the day when the two races shall live together amicably. The law must
be maintained and enforced vigorously and completely before any real
progress can be made towards better race relations.
Means must be found, therefore, whereby the two races can live together on
terms of amity. This will be possible only if the two races are brought
to understand each other better. It is believed that such understanding
will result in each having a higher degree of respect for the other,
and that such respect will form the basis for greatly improved relations
between the races.
The Commission on Race Relations, composed of distinguished
representatives of both races, has made the most thorough and complete
survey of the race situation that I have seen anywhere. While its field
of study was necessarily limited to Chicago, the conditions there may
be regarded as fairly typical of conditions in other large cities where
there is a large colored population.
The report does not pretend to have discovered any new formula by which
all race trouble will disappear. The subject is too complex for any such
simple solution. It finds certain facts, however, the mere recognition
of which will go a long way towards allaying race feeling. It finds that
in that portion of Chicago in which colored persons have lived longest
and in the largest numbers relatively there has been the minimum of
friction. This is a fact of the first importance. For it tends to show
that the presence of Negroes in large numbers in our great cities is
not a menace in itself.
There is one recommendation (No. 31) to which I desire to call special
attention: that a permanent local commission on race relations be created.
When as Governor of Illinois I withdrew troops from Chicago after the
riots, I was not at all persuaded that all danger of their recurrence
was past. I kept observers from the Adjutant General's office on the
ground to watch for any signs of fresh trouble. The Commission on Race
Relations was appointed, and conditions at once began to improve. The
activities of this Commission, composed of the best representatives of
both races, were, as I believe, the principal cause for this improved
condition.
Causes of friction, insignificant in themselves, but capable of leading to
serious results, were discovered by the Commission and by its suggestion
were removed in time to avoid grave consequences. Gross exaggerations
of some fancied grievance by either the one race or the other were
examined into and were found to rest upon nothing else than idle rumor
or prejudice. In the light of truth which the Commission was able to
throw upon the subject, these grievances disappeared. In other words,
misunderstanding, which had been so prolific a source of trouble between
the races, was greatly reduced.
The report contains recommendations, which, if acted upon, will make
impossible, in my opinion, a repetition of the appalling tragedy which
brought disgrace to Chicago in July of 1919.
Men may differ as to some of the conclusions reached, but all fair-minded
men must admit, I think, that the report of the Commission on Race
Relations is a most important contribution to this important subject.
FRANK O. LOWDEN
INTRODUCTION
On Sunday, July 27, 1919, there was a clash of white people and Negroes
at a bathing-beach in Chicago, which resulted in the drowning of a
Negro boy. This led to a race riot in which thirty-eight lives were
lost--twenty-three Negroes and fifteen whites--and 537 persons were
injured. After three days of mob violence, affecting several sections
of the city, the state militia was called out to assist the police in
restoring order. It was not until August 6 that danger of further clashes
was regarded as past.
To discuss this serious situation and means of preventing its recurrence,
a group of eighty-one citizens, representing forty-eight social, civic,
commercial, and professional organizations of Chicago, met on August 1,
1919, at the Union League Club. Mr. Charles W. Folds, president of the
Club, presided. Brief addresses were made by Mr. H. H. Merrick, president
of the Chicago Association of Commerce, Dr. Graham Taylor, Miss Harriet
Vittum, Major John S. Bonner, Mr. Charles J. Boyd, and Rev. William C.
Covert.
Resolutions were passed and given to the press, and the following letter
to the Governor of Illinois was authorized:
_To His Excellency, Frank O. Lowden_
_Governor of Illinois_
DEAR SIR: A meeting was held today at the Union League Club
to take up the matter of the present race riots.
This meeting was attended by 81 representatives of 48 prominent
civic, professional and commercial organizations, such as
Chicago Medical Association, Chicago Bar Association, Federation
of Churches, Association of Commerce, Packing House Industries,
Urban League, Woman's City Club, Chicago Woman's Club, Foreign
Language Division, representing foreign-born population, etc.
A resolution was adopted unanimously, appointing the undersigned
as a committee to wait upon you and ask that you appoint at
your earliest convenience an emergency state committee to study
the psychological, social and economic causes underlying the
conditions resulting in the present race riot and to make such
recommendations as will tend to prevent a recurrence of such
conditions in the future.
The committee would welcome an opportunity to meet you at any
time convenient to yourself and to talk over with you details
and give you such information as has been gathered through
these various organizations.
Respectfully,
CHARLES W. FOLDS
GRAHAM TAYLOR
WILLIAM C. GRAVES
HARRIET E. VITTUM
T. ARNOLD HILL
FELIX J. STREYCKMANS
In response to this and other urgent requests by various citizens and
organizations, and pursuant to his personal knowledge of the situation
derived from investigations made by him in Chicago during the period of
the riot, Governor Lowden announced on August 20, 1919, the appointment
of a Commission on Race Relations, consisting of twelve members, six from
each race, as follows--Mr. Bancroft being designated by him as chairman:
Representing the white people: Edgar A. Bancroft, William Scott Bond,
Edward Osgood Brown, Harry Eugene Kelly, Victor F. Lawson, Julius
Rosenwald.
Representing the Negro people: Robert S. Abbott, George Cleveland Hall,
George H. Jackson, Edward H. Morris, Adelbert H. Roberts, Lacey Kirk
Williams.[1]
In announcing the appointment of this Commission, Governor Lowden made
public the following statement:
I have been requested by many citizens and by many civic
organizations in Chicago to appoint a Commission to study
and report upon the broad question of the relations between
the two races. These riots were the work of the worst element
of both races. They did not represent the great overwhelming
majority of either race. The two are here and will remain here.
The great majority of each realizes the necessity of their
living upon terms of cordial good will and respect, each for
the other. That condition must be brought about.
To say that we cannot solve this problem is to confess the
failure of self-government. I offer no solution of the problem.
I do know, however, that the question cannot be answered by
mob violence. I do know that every time men, white or colored,
take the law into their own hands, instead of helping they
only postpone the settlement of the question. When we admit
the existence of a problem and courageously face it, we have
gone half-way toward its solution.
I have with the utmost care, in response to the requests above
set forth, appointed a Commission to undertake this great
work. I have sought only the most representative men of the
two races. I have not even asked them whether they had views
as to how the question could be met. I have asked them only
to approach the difficult subject with an open mind, and in
a spirit of fairness and justice to all. This is a tribunal
that has been constituted to get the facts and interpret them
and to find a way out. I believe that great good can come out
of the work of this Commission.
I ask that our people, white and colored, give their fullest
co-operation to the Commission. I ask, too, as I have a right to
ask, that both races exercise that patience and self-restraint
which are indispensable to self-government while we are working
out this problem.
During an absence of the chairman, due to ill health, Governor Lowden
requested Dr. Francis W. Shepardson, director of the State Department
of Registration and Education, to serve as acting chairman. On Mr.
Bancroft's return and at the Commission's request, the Governor appointed
Dr. Shepardson a member and vice-chairman of the Commission.
The Commission's first meeting was held on October 9, 1919. Nine other
meetings were held during the remainder of that year to canvass the
possible fields of inquiry, and to provide for the organization of
studies and investigations.
The Commission was seriously handicapped at the outset by a complete
lack of funds. The legislative session of 1919 had ended before the riot,
and the next regular session was not to convene until January, 1921. The
Commission felt that it could not with propriety seek to raise funds on
its own appeal. To meet this situation a group of citizens offered to
serve as a co-operating committee to finance the Commission's inquiry and
the preparation and publication of its report. This Committee, consisting
of Messrs. James B. Forgan, chairman, Abel Davis, treasurer, Arthur
Meeker, John J. Mitchell, and John G. Shedd, gave effective aid, being
most actively assisted by Messrs. R. B. Beach and John F. Bowman, of the
staff of the Chicago Association of Commerce. Without the co-operation of
these gentlemen and the resulting financial assistance of many generous
contributors the Commission could not have carried on its work. It here
expresses its most grateful appreciation.
The Commission organized its staff, inviting Mr. Graham Romeyn Taylor, as
executive secretary, and Mr. Charles S. Johnson, as associate executive
secretary, to assume charge of the inquiries and investigations under
its direction. They began their work on December 7, 1919.
While the Commission recognized the importance of studying the facts of
the riot, it felt that even greater emphasis should be placed on the
study and interpretation of the conditions of Negro life in Chicago
and of the relations between the two races. Therefore, after a brief
survey of the data already collected and of the broad field for its
inquiries, it organized into six committees, as follows: Committee on
Racial Clashes, Committee on Housing, Committee on Industry, Committee
on Crime, Committee on Racial Contacts, Committee on Public Opinion.
Along all these lines of inquiry information was sought in two general
ways: through a series of conferences or informal hearings, and through
research and field work carried on by a staff of trained investigators,
white and Negro. Thus both races were represented in the membership of
the Commission, in its executive secretaries, and in the field and office
staff organized by the executive secretaries.
It is not without significance that in securing office quarters the
Commission found several agents of buildings who declined to make a
lease when they learned that Negroes as well as whites were among the
prospective tenants. They stated their objections as based, not upon
their own prejudices, but upon the fear that other tenants would resent
the presence of Negroes. Office space at 118 North La Salle Street was
leased to the Commission by the L. J. McCormick estate, beginning February
1, 1920. When these offices were vacated, May 1, 1921, the agents of
the estate informed the Commission that no tenant of the building had
complained of the presence of Negroes.
By March 1, 1920, the staff of investigators had been organized and
was at work. The personnel was recruited as far as possible from social
workers of both races whose training and experience had fitted them for
intelligent and sympathetic handling of research and field work along
the lines mapped out by the Commission.[2]
The period of investigations and conferences or informal hearings lasted
until November, 1920. The work of compiling material and writing the
various sections of the report had begun in October, 1920. Including its
business meetings and thirty conferences the Commission held more than
seventy-five meetings; forty of these were devoted to the consideration
of the text of the report.
The executive secretaries with their staff collected the materials
during 1920, and soon after presented the first draft of a report. This
was considered and discussed by the Commission in numerous sessions,
and the general outlines of the report were decided upon. Then a second
draft, in accordance with its directions, was prepared by subjects, and
a copy was submitted to each member of the Commission for suggestions
and criticisms. Afterward the Commission met and discussed the questions
raised by the different members, and determined upon the changes to
be made in substance and form. After the entire report had been thus
revised, the Commission in many conferences decided what recommendations
to make. These recommendations, with a summary of the report, were then
prepared, and were reviewed by the Commission after they had been sent
to each member. After full consideration they were further revised and
then adopted by the Commission. In all these conferences upon the report,
all of the Commissioners, with one exception, conferred frequently and
agreed unanimously. Mr. Morris, on account of his duties as a member of
the Constitutional Convention, did not attend any of these conferences
upon the report, summary, or recommendations, and does not concur in them.
The Commission received the cordial assistance of many agencies,
organizations, and individuals. The Chicago Urban League placed at its
disposal a large amount of material from its files. It also gave a leave
of absence to the head of its Department of Research and Investigation,
Mr. Charles S. Johnson, the Commission's associate executive secretary.
Many citizens, representing widely divergent lines of interest, who
were invited to attend conferences held by the Commission, gave most
generously of their time and knowledge. The L. J. McCormick estate
donated three months' office rent. Messrs. George C. Nimmons & Company,
architects, contributed valuable services, including study and supervision
by Frederick Jehnck of their office, in preparing maps and charts
designed to present most effectively data collected by the Commission.
The Federal Bureau of the Census made available advanced data from the
1920-21 censuses. Superintendent Peter A. Mortensen and many principals
and teachers in the Chicago public schools co-operated in the extensive
studies of race relations in the schools; and the Committee of Fifteen
provided a report showing important facts in the study of environment
and crime. The various park boards, many municipal, county, and state
officials, superintendents and others connected with industrial plants,
trades-union officers, and leaders in many civic and social agencies
greatly facilitated investigations in their respective fields. To all
these the Commission returns sincere thanks. But, perhaps, the greatest
debt of gratitude is due Mr. Ernest S. Simpson, who generously and
devotedly gave his spare time for many months to the editing of this
report.
The Commission's letter to Governor Lowden summarizing its work, and
his answer follow:
January 1, 1921
_Honorable Frank O. Lowden_
_Governor of Illinois_
SIR: Following the race riot in Chicago in July and August,
1919, in which fifteen white people and twenty-three Negroes
were killed and very many of both races were injured, you
appointed us as a Commission on Race Relations "to study and
report upon the broad question of the relations between the
two races." We have completed the investigations planned as
a basis for this study, and are now preparing a final report
of our findings, conclusions and recommendations. This report
will soon be ready.
The Commission began its work in October, 1919, and for eleven
months has had a staff of investigators assisting it in its
activities. While devoting much effort to the study of the
Chicago riot as presenting many phases of the race problem,
the Commission has placed greater emphasis upon the study of
the conditions of life of the Negro group in this community,
and of the broad questions of race relations. It therefore
organized itself into six committees on the following subjects:
Racial Clashes, Housing, Industry, Crime, Racial Contacts,
and Public Opinion.
In these fields the Commission's work has been done along two
main lines:
(_a_) a series of conferences, at which persons believed to
have special information and experience relating to these
subjects have been invited to give the Commission the benefit
of their knowledge and opinions;
(_b_) research and field work by a trained staff of
investigators, both white and Negro, to determine as accurately
as possible, from first-hand evidence, the actual conditions
in the above fields.
The series of conferences, numbering thirty, covered a wide
range of topics, such as: the race riot of 1919 as viewed by
the police, the militia, the grand jury, and state's attorney;
race friction and its remedies; contacts of whites and Negroes
in public schools and recreation places; special educational
problems of Negro children; Negro housing, its needs, type, and
financing, and its difficulties in mixed areas; Negro labor
in relation to employers, fellow-workers, and trade unions;
Negro women in industry; the Negro and social agencies; Negro
health; Negroes and whites in the courts and in correctional
institutions; and the Negro and white press in relation to
public opinion on race relations.
Of two hundred and sixty-three persons invited, one hundred
and seventy-five attended these conferences and presented
their information and views. They represented both races and
various groups and viewpoints; they included educators and
teachers, real estate men, bankers, managers of industrial
plants, housing experts, trades-union leaders, social workers,
physicians, park and playground directors, judges, clergymen,
superintendents of correctional and other institutions, police,
militia, and other public officials, and newspaper editors.
The research and field work done by the staff of investigators
covered in general the same broad range. The character is
indicated by a bare outline of the work in the six main fields:
Racial Clashes: 1919 Chicago riot, seventeen antecedent
clashes; three minor clashes in 1920; brief comparative study
of Springfield riot in 1908 and East St. Louis riot in 1917.
Racial Contacts: In schools, transportation lines, parks,
and other recreation places; contacts in mixed neighborhoods;
adjustment of southern Negro families coming to Chicago; survey
of Negro agencies and institutions.
Housing: Negro areas in Chicago and their expansion 1910-1920;
274 family histories showing housing experience, home life,
and social back-ground, including families from the South; 159
blocks covered in neighborhood survey; financing Negro housing;
depreciation in and near Negro areas; 52 house bombings,
1917-1920.
Industry: Data covering 22,448 Negroes in 192 plants; 101 plants
visited; quality of Negro labor; the widening opportunities and
chance for promotion studied; special study of trades unions
and the Negro worker.
Crime: Police statistics of arrests and convictions of Negroes
and selected nationalities compared and analyzed for six
years[3]; also juvenile court cases; 698 cases (one month) in
three police courts studied, including detailed social data on
Negro cases; also 249 sex cases (two years) in criminal court;
record of eleven penal institutions; environmental survey of
Negro areas.
Public Opinion: Files of white and Negro newspapers studied
to analyze handling of matters relating to race relations;
study of rumor and its effects, and of racial propaganda of
white and Negro organizations.
We believe that the large volume of information collected
will prove, when properly set forth, of great value not only
in Chicago but in other communities where public-spirited
citizens are endeavoring to establish right relations between
the two races. This end can be attained only through a more
intelligent appreciation by both races of the gravity of the
problem, and by their earnest efforts toward a better mutual
understanding and a more sympathetic co-operation.
Hoping that our appreciation of the trust you have reposed in
us may appear in some measure in the aid our report may give
toward working out better race relations, we are,
Very respectfully yours,
(Signed by members of the Commission and its Executive
Secretaries)
* * * * *
STATE OF ILLINOIS
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
SPRINGFIELD
January 3, 1921
MY DEAR MR. BANCROFT:
I have received and read with great interest your letter of
January 1st transmitting to me a detailed statement of the
work of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations appointed by
me after the race riot in Chicago in 1919, which is signed by
yourself as chairman and by the other members of the Commission.
I am greatly pleased to know that the Commission has been
able to accomplish so much through its investigations and
that there has been such hearty co-operation on the part of
many citizens to make the inquiry in this important field as
valuable as possible.
I shall look forward with more than ordinary interest to the
appearance of the completed report in printed form. I suggest
that the Commission arrange for its publication as soon as
possible in order that your findings and recommendations may
be made available to all students of race relations in our
country.
I desire to express to you and through you to the members
of the Commission my great appreciation of the service which
you have rendered to the people of Chicago and of Illinois in
connection with the Commission. I have been advised from time to
time of your continuing interest, your fidelity in attendance
upon the meetings of the Commission, and your earnest desire
to render as accurate a judgment as possible.
Yours very sincerely,
(Signed) FRANK O. LOWDEN
HON. EDGAR A. BANCROFT
_Chairman, Chicago Commission on Race Relations_
In accordance with Governor Lowden's suggestion the Commission herewith
presents its report, with findings and recommendations, hoping that
it may prove of service in the efforts to bring about better relations
between the white and Negro races.
THE PROBLEM
The relation of whites and Negroes in the United States is our most grave
and perplexing domestic problem. It involves not only a difference of
race--which as to many immigrant races has been happily overcome--but
wider and more manifest differences in color and physical features.
These make an easy and natural basis for distinctions, discriminations,
and antipathies arising from the instinct of each race to preserve its
type. Many white Americans, while technically recognizing Negroes as
citizens, cannot bring themselves to feel that they should participate
in government as freely as other citizens.
Countless schemes have been proposed for solving or dismissing this
problem, most of them impracticable or impossible. Of this class are such
proposals as: (1) the deportation of 12,000,000 Negroes to Africa; (2)
the establishment of a separate Negro state in the United States; (3)
complete separation and segregation from the whites and the establishment
of a caste system or peasant class; and (4) hope for a solution through
the dying out of the Negro race. The only effect of such proposals is to
confuse thinking on the vital issues involved and to foster impatience
and intolerance.
Our race problem must be solved in harmony with the fundamental law of
the nation and with its free institutions. These prevent any deportation
of the Negro, as well as any restriction of his freedom of movement
within the United States. The problem must not be regarded as sectional
or political, and it should be studied and discussed seriously, frankly,
and with an open mind.
It is important for our white citizens always to remember that the Negroes
alone of all our immigrants came to America against their will by the
special compelling invitation of the whites; that the institution of
slavery was introduced, expanded, and maintained in the United States
by the white people and for their own benefit; and that they likewise
created the conditions that followed emancipation.
Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in
our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is
responsible for its continuance; and every citizen, regardless of color
or racial origin, is in honor and conscience bound to seek and forward
its solution.
Centuries of the Negro slave trade and of slavery as an institution
have created, and are often deemed to justify, the deep-seated prejudice
against Negroes. They placed a stamp upon the relations of the two races
which it will require many years to erase. The memory of these relations
has profoundly affected and still affects the industrial, commercial,
and social life of the southern states.
The great body of anti-Negro public opinion, preserved in the literature
and traditions of the white race during the long, unhappy progress of
the Negro from savagery through slavery to citizenship, has exercised
a persistent and powerful effect, both conscious and unconscious, upon
the thinking and the behavior of the white group generally. Racial
misunderstanding has been fostered by the ignorance and indifference of
many white citizens concerning the marvelous industry and courage shown
by the Negroes and the success they have achieved in their fifty-nine
years of freedom.
The Negro race must develop, as all races have developed, from lower
to higher planes of living; and must base its progress upon industry,
efficiency, and moral character. Training along these lines and general
opportunities for education are the fundamental needs. As the problem
is national in its scope and gravity, the solution must be national.
And the nation must make sure that the Negro is educated for citizenship.
It is of the first importance that old prejudices against the Negroes,
based upon their misfortunes and not on their faults, be supplanted with
respect, encouragement, and co-operation, and with a recognition of their
heroic struggles for self-improvement and of their worthy achievements
as loyal American citizens.
Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual
and equal, and that their interests in the common good are identical;
that relations of amity are the only protection against race clashes;
that these relations cannot be forced, but will come naturally as the
leaders of each race develop within their own ranks a realization of
the gravity of this problem and a vital interest in its solution, and
an attitude of confidence, respect, and friendliness toward the people
of the other race.
All our citizens, regardless of color or racial origin, need to be taught
by their leaders that there is a common standard of superiority for them
all in self-respect, honesty, industry, fairness, forbearance, and above
all, in generous helpfulness. There is no help or healing in appraising
past responsibilities, or in present apportioning of praise or blame.
The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and
an understanding of the facts of the problem--a magnanimous understanding
by both races--is the first step toward its solution.
CHAPTER I
THE CHICAGO RIOT
JULY 27-AUGUST 2, 1919
Thirty-eight persons killed, 537 injured, and about 1,000 rendered
homeless and destitute was the casualty list of the race riot which broke
out in Chicago on July 27, 1919, and swept uncontrolled through parts
of the city for four days. By August 2 it had yielded to the forces of
law and order, and on August 8 the state militia withdrew.
A clash between whites and Negroes on the shore of Lake Michigan at
Twenty-ninth Street, which involved much stone-throwing and resulted in
the drowning of a Negro boy, was the beginning of the riot. A policeman's
refusal to arrest a white man accused by Negroes of stoning the Negro
boy was an important factor in starting mob action. Within two hours the
riot was in full sway, had scored its second fatality, and was spreading
throughout the south and southwest parts of the city. Before the end came
it reached out to a section of the West Side and even invaded the "Loop,"
the heart of Chicago's downtown business district. Of the thirty-eight
killed, fifteen were whites and twenty-three Negroes; of 537 injured,
178 were whites, 342 were Negroes, and the race of seventeen was not
recorded.
In contrast with many other outbreaks of violence over racial friction the
Chicago riot was not preceded by excitement over reports of attacks on
women or of any other crimes alleged to have been committed by Negroes.
It is interesting to note that not one of the thirty-eight deaths was of
a woman or girl, and that only ten of the 537 persons injured were women
or girls. In further contrast with other outbreaks of racial violence,
the Chicago riot was marked by no hangings or burnings.
The rioting was characterized by much activity on the part of gangs of
hoodlums, and the clashes developed from sudden and spontaneous assaults
into organized raids against life and property.
In handling the emergency and restoring order, the police were effectively
reinforced by the state militia. Help was also rendered by deputy
sheriffs, and by ex-soldiers who volunteered.
In nine of the thirty-eight cases of death, indictments for murder
were voted by the grand jury, and in the ensuing trials there were four
convictions. In fifteen other cases the coroner's jury recommended that
unknown members of mobs be apprehended, but none of these was ever found.
The conditions underlying the Chicago riot are discussed in detail
in other sections of this report, especially in those which deal
with housing, industry, and racial contacts. The Commission's inquiry
concerning the facts of the riot included a critical analysis of the
5,584 pages of the testimony taken by the coroner's jury; a study of the
records of the office of the state's attorney; studies of the records of
the Police Department, hospitals, and other institutions with reference
to injuries, and of the records of the Fire Department with reference to
incendiary fires; and interviews with many public officials and citizens
having special knowledge of various phases of the riot. Much information
was also gained by the Commission in a series of four conferences to
which it invited the foreman of the riot grand jury, the chief and other
commanding officers of the Police Department, the state's attorney and
some of his assistants, and officers in command of the state militia
during the riot.
_Background of the riot._--The Chicago riot was not the only serious
outbreak of interracial violence in the year following the war. The same
summer witnessed the riot in Washington, about a week earlier; the riot
in Omaha, about a month later; and then the week of armed conflict in a
rural district of Arkansas due to exploitation of Negro cotton producers.
Nor was the Chicago riot the first violent manifestation of race
antagonism in Illinois. In 1908 Springfield had been the scene of an
outbreak that brought shame to the community which boasted of having
been Lincoln's home. In 1917 East St. Louis was torn by a bitter and
destructive riot which raged for nearly a week, and was the subject
of a Congressional investigation that disclosed appalling underlying
conditions.
This Commission, while making a thorough study of the Chicago riot, has
reviewed briefly, for comparative purposes, the essential facts of the
Springfield and East St. Louis riots, and of minor clashes in Chicago
occurring both before and after the riot of 1919.
Chicago was one of the northern cities most largely affected by the
migration of Negroes from the South during the war. The Negro population
increased from 44,103 in 1910 to 109,594 in 1920, an increase of 148 per
cent. Most of this increase came in the years 1916-19. It was principally
caused by the widening of industrial opportunities due to the entrance
of northern workers into the army and to the demand for war workers
at much higher wages than Negroes had been able to earn in the South.
An added factor was the feeling, which spread like a contagion through
the South, that the great opportunity had come to escape from what they
felt to be a land of discrimination and subserviency to places where
they could expect fair treatment and equal rights. Chicago became to
the southern Negro the "top of the world."
The effect of this influx of Negroes into Chicago industries is reviewed
in another section of this report.[4] It is necessary to point out here
only that friction in industry was less than might have been expected.
There had been a few strikes which had given the Negro the name of "strike
breaker." But the demand for labor was such that there were plenty of
jobs to absorb all the white and Negro workers available. This condition
continued even after the end of the war and demobilization.
In housing, however, there was a different story. Practically no new
building had been done in the city during the war, and it was a physical
impossibility for a doubled Negro population to live in the space
occupied in 1915. Negroes spread out of what had been known as the "Black
Belt" into neighborhoods near-by which had been exclusively white. This
movement, as described in another section of this report, developed
friction, so much so that in the "invaded" neighborhoods bombs were thrown
at the houses of Negroes who had moved in, and of real estate men, white
and Negro, who sold or rented property to the newcomers. From July 1,
1917, to July 27, 1919, the day the riot began, twenty-four such bombs
had been thrown. The police had been entirely unsuccessful in finding
those guilty, and were accused of making little effort to do so.
A third phase of the situation was the increased political strength gained
by Mayor Thompson's faction in the Republican party. Negro politicians
affiliated with this faction had been able to sway to its support a large
proportion of the voters in the ward most largely inhabited by Negroes.
Negro aldermen elected from this ward were prominent in the activities
of this faction. The part played by the Negro vote in the hard-fought
partisan struggle is indicated by the fact that in the Republican primary
election on February 25, 1919, Mayor Thompson received in this ward
12,143 votes, while his two opponents, Olson and Merriam, received only
1,492 and 319 respectively. Mayor Thompson was re-elected on April 1,
1919, by a plurality of 21,622 in a total vote in the city of 698,920;
his vote in this ward was 15,569, to his nearest opponent's 3,323, and
was therefore large enough to control the election. The bitterness of
this factional struggle aroused resentment against the race that had so
conspicuously allied itself with the Thompson side.
As part of the background of the Chicago riot, the activities of gangs of
hoodlums should be cited. There had been friction for years, especially
along the western boundary of the area in which the Negroes mainly live,
and attacks upon Negroes by gangs of young toughs had been particularly
frequent in the spring just preceding the riot. They reached a climax
on the night of June 21, 1919, five weeks before the riot, when two
Negroes were murdered. Each was alone at the time and was the victim
of unprovoked and particularly brutal attack. Molestation of Negroes
by hoodlums had been prevalent in the vicinity of parks and playgrounds
and at bathing-beaches.
On two occasions shortly before the riot the forewarnings of serious
racial trouble had been so pronounced that the chief of police sent
several hundred extra policemen into the territory where trouble seemed
imminent. But serious violence did not break out until Sunday afternoon,
July 27, when the clash on the lake shore at Twenty-ninth Street resulted
in the drowning of a Negro boy.
_The beginning of the riot._--Events followed so fast in the train of
the drowning that this tragedy may be considered as marking the beginning
of the riot.
It was four o'clock Sunday afternoon, July 27, when Eugene Williams,
seventeen-year-old Negro boy, was swimming offshore at the foot of
Twenty-ninth Street. This beach was not one of those publicly maintained
and supervised for bathing, but it was much used. Although it flanks
an area thickly inhabited by Negroes, it was used by both races, access
being had by crossing the railway tracks which skirt the lake shore. The
part near Twenty-seventh Street had by tacit understanding come to be
considered as reserved for Negroes, while the whites used the part near
Twenty-ninth Street. Walking is not easy along the shore, and each race
had kept pretty much to its own part, observing, moreover, an imaginary
boundary extending into the water.
Williams, who had entered the water at the part used by Negroes, swam
and drifted south into the part used by the whites. Immediately before
his appearance there, white men, women, and children had been bathing in
the vicinity and were on the beach in considerable numbers. Four Negroes
walked through the group and into the water. White men summarily ordered
them off. The Negroes left, and the white people resumed their sport.
But it was not long before the Negroes were back, coming from the north
with others of their race. Then began a series of attacks and retreats,
counter-attacks, and stone-throwing. Women and children who could not
escape hid behind débris and rocks. The stone-throwing continued, first
one side gaining the advantage, then the other.
Williams, who had remained in the water during the fracas, found a
railroad tie and clung to it, stones meanwhile frequently striking the
water near him. A white boy of about the same age swam toward him. As
the white boy neared, Williams let go of the tie, took a few strokes,
and went down. The coroner's jury rendered a verdict that he had drowned
because fear of stone-throwing kept him from shore. His body showed no
stone bruises, but rumor had it that he had actually been hit by one of
the stones and drowned as a result.
On shore guilt was immediately placed upon a certain white man by several
Negro witnesses who demanded that he be arrested by a white policeman
who was on the spot. No arrest was made.
The tragedy was sensed by the battling crowd and, awed by it, they
gathered on the beach. For an hour both whites and Negroes dived for
the boy without results. Awe gave way to excited whispers. "They" said
he was stoned to death. The report circulated through the crowd that
the police officer had refused to arrest the murderer. The Negroes in
the crowd began to mass dangerously. At this crucial point the accused
policeman arrested a Negro on a white man's complaint. Negroes mobbed
the white officer, and the riot was under way.
One version of the quarrel which resulted in the drowning of Williams
was given by the state's attorney, who declared that it arose among
white and Negro gamblers over a craps game on the shore, "virtually
under the protection of the police officer on the beat." Eyewitnesses
to the stone-throwing clash appearing before the coroner's jury saw
no gambling, but said it might have been going on, but if so, was not
visible from the water's edge. The crowd undoubtedly included, as the
grand jury declared, "hoodlums, gamblers, and thugs," but it also included
law-abiding citizens, white and Negro.
This charge, that the first riot clash started among gamblers who were
under the protection of the police officer, and also the charge that the
policeman refused to arrest the stone-thrower were vigorously denied by
the police. The policeman's star was taken from him, but after a hearing
before the Civil Service Commission it was returned, thus officially
vindicating him.
The two facts, the drowning and the refusal to arrest, or widely
circulated reports of such refusal, must be considered together as
marking the inception of the riot. Testimony of a captain of police
shows that first reports from the lake after the drowning indicated that
the situation was calming down. White men had shown a not altogether
hostile feeling for the Negroes by assisting in diving for the body of
the boy. Furthermore a clash started on this isolated spot could not
be augmented by outsiders rushing in. There was every possibility that
the clash, without the further stimulus of reports of the policeman's
conduct, would have quieted down.
_Chronological story of the riot._--After the drowning of Williams, it
was two hours before any further fatalities occurred. Reports of the
drowning and of the alleged conduct of the policeman spread out into
the neighborhood. The Negro crowd from the beach gathered at the foot
of Twenty-ninth Street. As it became more and more excited, a group of
officers was called by the policeman who had been at the beach. James
Crawford, a Negro, fired into the group of officers and was himself shot
and killed by a Negro policeman who had been sent to help restore order.
During the remainder of the afternoon of July 27, many distorted rumors
circulated swiftly throughout the South Side. The Negro crowd from
Twenty-ninth Street got into action, and white men who came in contact
with it were beaten. In all, four white men were beaten, five were
stabbed, and one was shot. As the rumors spread, new crowds gathered,
mobs sprang into activity spontaneously, and gangs began to take part
in the lawlessness.
Farther to the west, as darkness came on, white gangsters became active.
Negroes in white districts suffered severely at their hands. From 9:00
P.M. until 3:00 A.M. twenty-seven Negroes were beaten, seven were stabbed,
and four were shot.
Few clashes occurred on Monday morning. People of both races went to
work as usual and even continued to work side by side, as customary,
without signs of violence. But as the afternoon wore on, white men and
boys living between the Stock Yards and the "Black Belt" sought malicious
amusement in directing mob violence against Negro workers returning home.
Street-car routes, especially transfer points, were thronged with white
people of all ages. Trolleys were pulled from wires and the cars brought
under the control of mob leaders. Negro passengers were dragged to the
street, beaten, and kicked. The police were apparently powerless to cope
with these numerous assaults. Four Negro men and one white assailant
were killed, and thirty Negro men were severely beaten in the street-car
clashes.
The "Black Belt" contributed its share of violence to the record of
Monday afternoon and night. Rumors of white depredations and killings
were current among the Negroes and led to acts of retaliation. An aged
Italian peddler, one Lazzeroni, was set upon by young Negro boys and
stabbed to death. Eugene Temple, white laundryman, was stabbed to death
and robbed by three Negroes.
A Negro mob made a demonstration outside Provident Hospital, an
institution conducted by Negroes, because two injured whites who had
been shooting right and left from a hurrying automobile on State Street
were taken there. Other mobs stabbed six white men, shot five others,
severely beat nine more, and killed two in addition to those named above.
Rumor had it that a white occupant of the Angelus apartment house had shot
a Negro boy from a fourth-story window. Negroes besieged the building.
The white tenants sought police protection, and about 100 policemen,
including some mounted men, responded. The mob of about 1,500 Negroes
demanded the "culprit," but the police failed to find him after a search
of the building. A flying brick hit a policeman. There was a quick massing
of the police, and a volley was fired into the Negro mob. Four Negroes
were killed and many were injured. It is believed that had the Negroes
not lost faith in the white police force it is hardly likely that the
Angelus riot would have occurred.
At this point, Monday night, both whites and Negroes showed signs of
panic. Each race grouped by itself. Small mobs began systematically in
various neighborhoods to terrorize and kill. Gangs in the white districts
grew bolder, finally taking the offensive in raids through territory
"invaded" by Negro home seekers. Boys between sixteen and twenty-two
banded together to enjoy the excitement of the chase.
Automobile raids were added to the rioting Monday night. Cars from which
rifle and revolver shots were fired were driven at great speed through
sections inhabited by Negroes. Negroes defended themselves by "sniping"
and volley-firing from ambush and barricade. So great was the fear of
these raiding parties that the Negroes distrusted all motor vehicles
and frequently opened fire on them without waiting to learn the intent
of the occupants. This type of warfare was kept up spasmodically all
Tuesday and was resumed with vigor Tuesday night.
At midnight, Monday, street-car clashes ended by reason of a general
strike on the surface and elevated lines. The street-railway tie-up
was complete for the remainder of the week. But on Tuesday morning
this was a new source of terror for those who tried to walk to their
places of employment. Men were killed en route to their work through
hostile territory. Idle men congregated on the streets, and gang-rioting
increased. A white gang of soldiers and sailors in uniform, augmented
by civilians, raided the "Loop," or downtown section of Chicago, early
Tuesday, killing two Negroes and beating and robbing several others.
In the course of these activities they wantonly destroyed property of
white business men.
Gangs sprang up as far south as Sixty-third Street in Englewood and in the
section west of Wentworth Avenue near Forty-seventh Street. Premeditated
depredations were the order of the night. Many Negro homes in mixed
districts were attacked, and several of them were burned. Furniture
was stolen or destroyed. When raiders were driven off they would return
again and again until their designs were accomplished.
The contagion of the race war broke over the boundaries of the South
Side and spread to the Italians on the West Side. This community became
excited over a rumor, and an Italian crowd killed a Negro, Joseph Lovings.
Wednesday saw a material lessening of crime and violence. The "Black
Belt" and the district immediately west of it were still storm centers.
But the peak of the rioting had apparently passed, although the danger
of fresh outbreaks of magnitude was still imminent. Although companies
of the militia had been mobilized in nearby armories as early as Monday
night, July 28, it was not until Wednesday evening at 10:30 that the
mayor yielded to pressure and asked for their help.
Rain on Wednesday night and Thursday drove idle people of both races
into their homes. The temperature fell, and with it the white heat of
the riot. From this time on the violence was sporadic, scattered, and
meager. The riot seemed well under control, if not actually ended.
Friday witnessed only a single reported injury. At 3:35 A.M. Saturday
incendiary fires burned forty-nine houses in the immigrant neighborhood
west of the Stock Yards. Nine hundred and forty-eight people, mostly
Lithuanians, were made homeless, and the property loss was about $250,000.
Responsibility for these fires was never fixed. The riot virtually ceased
on Saturday. For the next few days injured were reported occasionally,
and by August 8 the riot zone had settled down to normal and the militia
was withdrawn.
_Growth of the riot._--The riot period was thirteen days in length, from
Sunday, July 27, through Thursday, August 8, the day on which the troops
were withdrawn. Of this time, only the first seven days witnessed active
rioting. The remaining days marked the return toward normal. In the
seven active days, rioting was not continuous but intermittent, being
furious for hours, then fairly quiescent for hours. The first three
days saw the most acute disturbance, and in this span there were three
main periods: 4:00 P.M. Sunday till 3:00 A.M. Monday; 9:00 A.M. Monday
till 9:00 A.M. Tuesday; noon Tuesday till midnight. This left two long
intervals of comparative quiet, six hours on Monday and three hours on
Tuesday. On the fourth day, Wednesday, there were scattered periods of
rioting, each of a few hours' duration. Thus Monday afternoon to Tuesday
morning was the longest stretch of active rioting in the first four days.
For the most part the riot was confined to the South Side of the city.
There were two notable exceptions, the district north and west of the
south branch of the Chicago River and the "Loop" or downtown business
district. A few isolated clashes occurred on the North Side and on the
extreme West Side, but aside from these the area covered was that shown
on the accompanying outline map.
For the purposes of discussion it is convenient to divide the riot area
into seven districts. The boundaries in some instances are due to the
designation of Wentworth Avenue by the police as a boundary west of
which no Negroes should be allowed, and east of which no whites should
be allowed.
I. "Black Belt." From Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth, inclusive;
Wentworth Avenue to the lake, exclusive of Wentworth;
Thirty-ninth to Fifty-fifth, inclusive; Clark to Michigan,
exclusive of Michigan.
II. Area contested by both Negroes and whites. Thirty-ninth
to Fifty-fifth, inclusive; Michigan to the lake.
III. Southwest Side, including the Stock Yards district;
south of the Chicago River to Fifty-fifth; west of Wentworth,
including Wentworth.
IV. Area south of Fifty-fifth and east of Wentworth.
V. Area south of Fifty-fifth and west of Wentworth.
VI. Area north and west of the Chicago River.
VII. "Loop" or business district and vicinity.
In the district designated as the "Black Belt" about 90 per cent of
the Negroes live. District II, the "contested area," is that in which
most of the bombings have occurred. Negroes are said to be "invading"
this district. Extension here instead of into District III, toward the
Stock Yards neighborhood, may be explained partly by the hostility which
the Irish and Polish groups to the west had often shown to Negroes.
The white hoodlum element of the Stock Yards district, designated as
III, was characterized by the state's attorney of Cook County, when he
remarked that more bank robbers, pay-roll bandits, automobile bandits,
highwaymen, and strong-arm crooks come from this particular district
than from any other that has come to his notice during seven years of
service as chief prosecuting official.[5]
In District IV and V, south of Fifty-fifth Street, Negroes live in small
communities surrounded by white people or are scattered through white
neighborhoods. District VI has a large Italian population. District VII
is Chicago's wholesale and retail center.
[Illustration: THE CHICAGO RIOT
JULY, 27 TO AUGUST, 8, 1919]
On only one day of the riot were all these districts involved in the race
warfare. This was Tuesday. On Sunday Districts I, III, and IV suffered
clashes; on Monday all but District VI were involved; on Tuesday the
entire area was affected; on Wednesday District VII was not included,
and District VI witnessed only one clash; on Thursday District IV was
again normal, and Districts II, V, and VII were comparatively quiet;
during the remainder of the week only the first three districts named
were active.
The worst clashes were in Districts I and III, and of those reported
injured, 34 per cent received their wounds in the "Black Belt," District
I, and 41 per cent on the Southwest Side, in the district including the
Stock Yards, District III.
Factors contributing to the subsidence of the riot were the natural
reaction from the tension, efforts of police and citizens to curb the
rioters, the entrance of the militia on Wednesday, and last, but perhaps
not least, a heavy rain.
The longest period of violence without noticeable lull was 9:00 A.M.
Monday to 9:00 A.M. Tuesday. On Tuesday the feeling was most intense, as
shown by the nature of the clashes. Arson was prevalent on Tuesday for
the first time, and the property loss was considerable. But judging by
the only definite index, the number of dead and injured, Monday exceeded
Tuesday in violence, showing 229 injured and eighteen dead as against
139 injured and eleven dead on the latter day. While it is apparent
that no single hour or even day can be called the peak of the riot, the
height of violence clearly falls within the two-day period Monday, July
28, and Tuesday, July 29.
The change in the nature of the clashes day by day showed an increase in
intensity of feeling and greater boldness in action. This development
reached its peak on Tuesday. Later came a decline, sporadic outbursts
succeeding sustained activity.
_Factors influencing growth of the riot._--After the attacks had stopped,
about 3:00 A.M. Monday, they did not again assume serious proportions
until Monday afternoon, when workers began to return to their homes, and
idle men gathered in the streets in greater numbers than during working
hours. The Stock Yards laborers are dismissed for the day in shifts.
Negroes coming from the Yards at the 3:00 P.M., 4:00 P.M., and later
shifts were met by white gangs armed with bats and clubs. On Tuesday
morning men going to work, both Negro and white, were attacked.
The main areas of violence were thoroughfares and natural highways between
the job and the home. On the South Side 76 per cent of all the injuries
occurred on such streets. The most turbulent corners were those on State
Street between Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth, on Cottage Grove Avenue at
Sixty-third Street, on Halsted Street at Thirty-fifth and Forty-seventh
streets and on Archer Avenue at Thirty-fifth Street. Injuries at these
spots were distributed as follows:[6]
Injuries Deaths
State Street--
at Thirty-first 7
between Thirty-first and Thirty-fifth 2
at Thirty-fifth 9 1
between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-ninth 19 2
at Thirty-ninth 3
Cottage Grove Avenue--
at Sixty-third Street 8
Halsted Street--
at Thirty-fifth 8
at Forty-seventh 5
Archer Avenue--
at Thirty-fifth Street 7
Streets which suffered most from rioting were--
State 61 6
Thirty-fifth 50 5
Forty-seventh 32 2
Halsted 32
Thirty-first 29 1
The street-car situation had an effect upon the riot both before the
strike and after it. Because of a shortage of labor at the time, the
surface-street-car company had put on a number of inexperienced men.
This may account for the inefficiency of some crews in handling attacked
cars.
An example is the case of Henry Goodman who was killed in an attack on a
Thirty-ninth Street car. The car was stopped at Union Avenue by a truck
suspiciously stalled across the tracks. White men boarded the car and
beat and chased six or eight Negro passengers. When asked under oath
to whom the truck directly in front of him belonged and what color it
was, the motorman replied, "I couldn't say." When asked what time his
car left the end of the line and whether or not he had seen any Negroes
hit on the car, he answered, "I didn't pay any attention." The motorman
said he made a report of the case, but it could not be found by anyone
in the street-car company's office. The conductor of this car had been
given orders to warn Negroes that there was rioting in the district
through which the car ran. He did not do this. He ignored the truck. No
names of witnesses were secured. The motorman was an extra man and had
run on that route only during the day of the attack.
In the case of John Mills, a Negro who was killed as he fled from a
Forty-seventh Street car, the motorman left the car while Negroes were
being beaten inside it. Neither motorman nor conductor took names of
witnesses or attempted to fix a description of the assailants in mind.
When B. F. Hardy, a Negro, was killed on a street car at Forty-sixth
Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, the motorman and conductor offered no
resistance and did not get names or descriptions.
The testimony of the conductor and motorman on a car attacked at
Thirty-eighth Street and Ashland Avenue was clear and showed an attempt
to get all information possible. They secured names of witnesses. One
member of the crew had been in the service of the Chicago Surface Lines
for ten years, and the other for twelve years.
The tie-up of the street railways affected the riot situation by forcing
laborers to walk, making them more liable to assault in the hostile
districts, by keeping many workers from jobs, turning out on the streets
hundreds of idle men, and by increasing the use of automobiles.
Tuesday morning two white men were killed while walking to work through
the Negro area, and two Negroes were killed while going through the
white area.
Curiosity led the idle to the riot zone. One such was asked on the witness
stand why he went. "What was I there for? Because I walked there--my
own bad luck. I was curious to see how they did it, that is all."
Under cover of legitimate use gangs used motor vehicles for raiding.
Witnesses of rioting near Ogden Park said trucks unloaded passengers on
Racine Avenue, facilitating the formation of a mob. On Halsted Street
crowds of young men rode in trucks shouting they were out to "get the
niggers." An automobile load of young men headed off Heywood Thomas,
Negro, and shot him, at Taylor and Halsted streets, as he was walking
home from work.
Beside daily routine and the street-car situation, the weather undoubtedly
had an influence in the progress of the riot. July 27 was hot, 96 degrees,
or fourteen points above normal. It was the culmination of a series of
days with high temperatures around 95 degrees, which meant that nerves
were strained. The warm weather of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday also
kept crowds on the streets and sitting on doorsteps until late at night.
Innocent people trying to keep cool were injured when automobiles raced
through the streets, the occupants firing to right and left. Wednesday
night and Thursday it rained. Cool weather followed for the rest of the
week.
_Gangs and "athletic clubs."_--Gangs and their activities were an
important factor throughout the riot. But for them it is doubtful if the
riot would have gone beyond the first clash. Both organized gangs and
those which sprang into existence because of the opportunity afforded
seized upon the excuse of the first conflict to engage in lawless acts.
It was no new thing for youthful white and Negro groups to come to
violence. For years, as the sections of this report dealing with
antecedent clashes and with recreation show, there had been clashes
over baseball grounds, swimming-pools in the parks, the right to walk
on certain streets, etc.
Gangs whose activities figured so prominently in the riot were all white
gangs, or "athletic clubs." Negro hoodlums do not appear to form organized
gangs so readily. Judges of the municipal court said that there are no
gang organizations among Negroes to compare with those found among young
whites.
The Stock Yards district, just west of the main Negro area, is the home
of many of these white gangs and clubs; it is designated as District III
in the discussion of the riot growth. The state's attorney, as already
indicated (see p. 8), referred to the many young offenders who come from
this particular district. A police detective sergeant who investigated
the riot cases in this district said of this section, "It is a pretty
tough neighborhood to try to get any information out there; you can't
do it." A policeman on the beat in the district said, "There is the
Canaryville bunch in there and the Hamburg bunch. It is a pretty tough
hole in there."
There was much evidence and talk of the political "pull" and even
leadership of these gangs with reference to their activities in the
riot. A member of "Ragen's Colts" just after the riot passed the word
that the "coppers" from downtown were looking for club members, but that
"there need be no fear of the coppers from the station at the Yards for
they were all fixed and told to lay off on club members." During the
riot he claimed they were well protected by always having a "cop" ride
in one of the automobiles so everything would be "O.K." in case members
of the gang were picked up. Another member of the club said he had been
"tipped off by the police at the Yards to clean out and keep away from
the usual hangouts because investigators were working out of Hoyne's
and out of Brundage's offices, and were checking up on the activities
of the 'Ragen's' during the riot."
The foreman of the August grand jury which investigated the riot cases
said in testifying before the Commission:
The lead we got to investigate the Forty-seventh Street
district was from an anonymous letter stating that Ragen had
such influence in the Forty-seventh Street police station that
these individuals were allowed to go without due process of law.
I didn't believe that was a fact in this particular instance.
We did learn that Ragen was a great power in that district and
at the time of our investigation we learned that some of the
"Ragen's Colts" had broken into the police station and pried
open a door of a closet where they had a good deal of evidence
in the nature of weapons of prisoners concealed, and they got
all of this evidence out of there without the police knowing
anything about it.
The station referred to is at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets. Gangs
operated for hours up and down Forty-seventh Street, Wells, Princeton,
Shields, and Wentworth avenues and Federal Street without hindrance from
the police.
[Illustration: CROWDS ARMED WITH BRICKS SEARCHING FOR A NEGRO]
[Illustration: WHITES STONING NEGRO TO DEATH
Actual photograph of the killing of a Negro by the mob shown above
after chasing him into his home.]
[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF THE POLICE
He was knocked from the stairway by a brick. Two men are here shown
hurling bricks at the dying Negro.]
A judge of the municipal court said in testimony before the Commission:
"They seemed to think they had a sort of protection which entitled them
to go out and assault anybody. When the race riots occurred it gave them
something to satiate the desire to inflict their evil propensities on
others."
Besides shouting as they rode down the streets in trucks that they
were out to "get the niggers," they defied the law in other ways. When
the militia men came on the scene on the fourth day of the riot, they
testified to trouble with these gangsters. One of the colonels testified
before the Commission: "They didn't like to be controlled. They would
load up heavy trucks with rowdies and try to force through the lines.
They'd come tooting their horns and having back pressure explosions like
gatling guns."
Some of the "athletic club" gangsters had criminal records. L---- W----
was accused of being one of the leaders of the gang around Forty-seventh
and Wells streets. He himself said boastfully, "I have been arrested
about fifteen times for 'disorderly' and never was arrested with a knife
or a gun." Several witnesses said they had seen him during the riot
one night leading the mob and brandishing a razor and the next night
waving a gun. He was not arrested. D---- H----, seventeen years old,
was identified as being active in the rioting near Forty-seventh Street
and Forrestville Avenue. His defense was that he was not closer to the
Negro assaulted than across the street, but because he was arrested the
year before for a "stick-up" people looked "funny" at him when anything
happened. R---- C---- was accused of having been implicated in the arson
cases on Shields Avenue. When his mother was interviewed, she said she
knew nothing of the rioting, but said her son was at the time in the
county jail, "but not for that." W---- G---- was identified many times
as having taken part in the arson on Wentworth Avenue. He was indicted
for both arson and conspiracy to riot. Two years before the riot he had
been arrested for larceny.
All who discussed gangs before the Commission said that most of the
members were boys of seventeen to twenty-two years of age. Witnesses
before the coroner's juries testified to the youth of the participants
in mobs. Many of the active assailants of street cars were boys. In the
case of the Negro Hardy who was killed on a street car, it was said that
the murderers were not over twenty years, and many were nearer sixteen.
In the raids in the Ogden Park district the participants were between
the ages of fifteen and twenty. The raid just west of Wentworth Avenue,
where a number of houses were much damaged, was perpetrated by boys of
these ages. The attacking mob on Forty-third Street near Forrestville
Avenue, was led by boys of eighteen to twenty-one. The only two hoodlums
caught participating in the outrages in the "Loop," the downtown business
district, were seventeen and about twenty-one. Most of those arrested on
suspicion in the arson cases were taken before the boys' court. Negroes
involved in many cases as assailants were also youthful. The young Negro
boys who killed Lazzeroni were fourteen to eighteen; those who killed
Pareko and Perel were about sixteen.
A member of "Ragen's Colts" is said to have boasted that their territory
extended from Cottage Grove Avenue to Ashland Avenue and from Forty-third
Street to Sixty-third Street. At Sixty-third Street and Cottage Grove
Avenue they were said to have attacked a colored man in a restaurant and
thrown him out of the window. It was reported that trucks of a downtown
store, each carrying about thirty men, yelling that they were "Ragen's
Colts" and that "Ragen's bunch" were going to clean out the community,
came to Sixtieth Street and Racine Avenue. Some of the boys who took part
in the assault upon Negroes at Sixtieth and Ada streets were reputed to
be members of "Ragen's Colts." The club, according to some of its own
members, operated with automobiles from which they managed to "bump off
a number of Niggers." A truck driver said he had driven some "Ragen's
Colts" to Forty-seventh and Halsted streets, where they "dropped" four
or five people, then he drove them back to the "Ragen's Colts" clubhouse
at Fifty-second and Halsted streets. "And," he says, "they had plenty
of guns and ammunition." State's Attorney Hoyne, however, said that no
evidence could be found that "Ragen's Colts" had a store of arms. Members
of the Illinois Reserve Militia reported that they had been threatened
by "Ragen's Colts" that they would be picked off one by one when they
got off duty.
One of the most serious cases of rioting in which members of "Ragen's
Colts" were reported to be implicated was the raid upon Shields Avenue,
where there were nine houses occupied by Negroes. At 8:30 Tuesday evening
200 or 300 gangsters started at one corner and worked through the block,
throwing furniture out of windows and setting fires. A white man who
owned a house on this street which he rented to Negroes says that after
the raid several young men warned him, "If you open your mouth against
'Ragen's' we will not only burn your house down but we will 'do' you."
The Lorraine Club, according to five witnesses, was also implicated in
arson and raids upon homes of Negroes. Their operations, according to
reports, were on Forty-seventh Street and on Wells Street and Wentworth
Avenue between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth streets. Negroes were
chased, guns were fired, windows broken, front doors smashed in, furniture
destroyed, and finally homes were burned. All Negro families were driven
out. The attack was planned, and news of its imminence spread abroad in
the morning. Rioting started in the afternoon of July 29, and culminated
late that night. There was no interference from the police at any time.
It was said that one of the leaders of the gang who had an express and
coal yard carried away furniture in his wagon. Another was recognized
as a youth who had shot a Negro woman during the afternoon. They are
reported to have attacked an undertaker and friends who came to remove
the body of a dead Negro. Three of the rioters were arrested upon the
identification of several people, but two were released in the municipal
court, and the third had a "no bill" returned before the grand jury.
One was released because no witnesses were present to prosecute him.
The witnesses said they were not notified.
A member of the Lorraine Club denied that his club had anything to do
with this riot, but said it was Our Flag Club that did the "dirty work."
Our Flag Club is located farther east on Forty-seventh Street near Union
Avenue. When John Mills was dragged from a street car at this point and
killed, a policeman recognized several of the club's members in the crowd,
but vouchsafed the opinion that they were not part of the aggressive
mob, "for they did not run as did the others when the patrol came down
the street." Another policeman said he had never had any trouble with
the club.
Eight members of the Sparklers' Club were seen at the fire at 5919
Wentworth Avenue, a building in which two Negro families lived. The
arson is reported to have been planned in a neighboring cigar store.
One of the boys put waste soaked in gasoline under the porch and ran.
Two of them threw oil in the building and two others lit it. It took
three attempts to make a fire at this place. Each time it was started
the Fire Department put it out. Two of the boys are declared to have
stolen phonograph records and silverware from the house. A lad not a
member of the club was with them at the fire. Afterward one of the boys
warned him, "Watch your dice and be careful or you won't see your home
any more." Six boys were held for arson, in connection with this affair;
one was discharged in the boys' court, and the cases of two others were
nolle prossed. In connection with their arrest the _Chicago Tribune_ of
August 15, 1919, said:
Evidence that organized bands of white youths have been making a
business of burning Negro dwellings was said to have been handed
to Attorney General Brundage and Assistant State's Attorney
Irwin Walker.... Chief of Police Garrity, also informed of the
Fire Marshal's charges, declared several so-called athletic
clubs in the Stock Yards district may lose their charters as
a result.
A report about the Aylward Club was to the effect that as the Negroes
came from the Stock Yards on Monday, a gang of its members armed with
clubs was waiting for them and that each singled out a Negro and beat
him, the police looking on.
The names of a number of gang ringleaders were reported by investigators.
For illustration, L. Dennis, a Negro of 6059 Throop Street, was attacked
on the night of Monday, July 28, by a mob led by three roughs whose
names were learned and whose loafing place was at Sixty-third Street and
Racine Avenue. A mob of thirty white men who shot Francis Green, Negro,
eighteen years old, at Garfield Boulevard and State Street had a club
headquarters in the vicinity of Fifty-fourth Street and their "hangout"
was at the corner of Garfield Boulevard and State Street.
Other clubs mentioned in riot testimony before the coroner's jury, but
not in connection with riot clashes, are the Pine Club, the Hamburgers,
the Emeralds, the White Club, Favis Grey's, and the Mayflower. The
police closed the clubs for a period of several months after the riot.
There were then in existence a number of Negro gambling clubs, and the
state's attorney declared that it was the colored gamblers who "started
this shooting and tearing around town," and that "as soon as they heard
the news that the boy Williams was drowned, they filled three or four
machines and started out to shoot."
A saloon-keeper near Wabash Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, one of the
leaders of these colored gamblers, was identified by a white woman as
being in an automobile with five other Negroes exhorting colored men to
riot after the drowning of Williams. The next day he was arrested in an
automobile with other colored men who were said to be shooting into the
homes of white people. They were arrested but were discharged by Judge
Barasa at the Stock Yards court.
Police raids were made on some of the "Black Belt" clubs on August 23.
At the Ranier Club, 3010 South State Street, two revolvers, one razor,
one "black-jack," seven cartridges, one cattle knife, and one ordinary
knife were found. At the Pioneer Club, 3512 South State Street, eight
guns, four packages of cartridges and twenty-four knives were taken.
A raid at 2700 South State Street netted four guns, one hunting-knife,
and fifty-eight cartridges and bullets.
The foreman of the grand jury which investigated the riots discussing
the "athletic" and "social" clubs before the Commission, said:
Most of them were closed immediately after the riots. There
were "Ragen's Colts," as they were known, concerning whom
the grand jury were particularly anxious to get something
concrete, although no evidence was presented that convicted
any of the members of that club. There were the Hamburgers,
another athletic club, the Lotus Club, the Mayflower, and
various clubs. These were white clubs.
Asked if they really were athletic clubs, he replied:
I think they are athletic only with their fists and brass
knuckles and guns. We had Mr. Ragen before the grand jury,
and he told us of the noble work that they were doing in the
district, that Father Brian, who had charge of these boys,
taught them to box and how to build themselves up physically,
and they were doing a most noble work, and you would think
that Ragen was a public benefactor. During the deliberations of
this grand jury a number of anonymous letters were written with
reference to "Ragen's Colts," and most of the explanations of
the fact that they failed to put their names on these letters
were that they were afraid they would lose their lives.
The grand jury included in its report this reference to the gang and
club phase of the riot:
The authorities employed to enforce the law should thoroughly
investigate clubs and other organizations posing as athletic
and social clubs which really are organizations of hoodlums and
criminals formed for the purpose of furthering the interest
of local politics. In the opinion of this jury many of the
crimes committed in the "Black Belt" by whites and the fires
that were started back of the Yards, which, however, were
credited to the Negroes, were more than likely the work of the
gangs operating on the Southwest Side under the guise of these
clubs, and the jury believes that these fires were started
for the purpose of inciting race feeling by blaming same on
the blacks. These gangs have apparently taken an active part
in the race riots, and no arrests of their members have been
made as far as this jury is aware.
[Illustration: SCENES FROM FIRE IN IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD "BACK OF THE
YARDS"]
[Illustration: NEGROES UNDER PROTECTION OF POLICE LEAVING WRECKED HOUSE
IN RIOT ZONE]
The coroner's jury which conducted inquests into the thirty-eight riot
deaths said:
The suggestion has also been made that race hatred and tendency
to race rioting had its birth and was fostered in the numerous
social and athletic clubs made up of young men and scattered
throughout the city. We doubt this, but if in part true, it
calls for the inspection and control of such clubs. These
clubs are here, they are popular, they take the place of
the disappearing saloon and poolroom. Properly governed and
controlled, they should be encouraged and fostered and, when
necessary, disciplined.
Hoodlums are the nucleus of a mob--the young, idle, vicious,
and in many instances degenerate and criminal, impatient
of restraint of law, gather together, and when fortified
by sufficient numbers, start out on a mission of disorder,
law-breaking, destruction, and murder. Mobs, white or colored,
grow about a nucleus of this character.
_Types of clashes._--Racial outbreaks are often characterized by hangings,
burnings, and mutilations, and frequently the cause given for them
is a reported Negro attack upon a white woman. None of these features
appeared in the Chicago riot. An attempted hanging was reported by a
white detective but was unsubstantiated. A report that Joseph Lovings,
one of the Negroes killed in the riot, was burned, was heralded abroad
and even carried to the United States Senate, but it was false. The
coroner's physicians found no burns on his body.
Reports of assaults upon women were at no time mentioned or even hinted
at as a cause of the Chicago riot, but after the disorder started reports
of such crimes were published in the white and Negro press, but they
had no foundation in fact.
Of the ten women wounded in the Chicago riot, seven were white, two
were Negroes, and the race of one is unknown. All but one of these ten
injuries appears to have been accidental. The exception was the case of
Roxy Pratt, a Negro woman who, with her brother, was chased down Wells
Street from Forty-seventh by gangsters and was seriously wounded by a
bullet. No cases of direct attacks upon white women by Negro men were
reported.
The Commission has the record of numerous instances, principally during
the first twenty-four hours, where individuals of opposing races met,
knives or guns were drawn, and injury was inflicted without the element
of mob stimulus.
On Monday mobs operated in sudden, excited assaults, and attacks on
street cars provided outstanding cases, five persons being killed and many
injured. Nicholas Kleinmark, a white assailant, was stabbed to death by
a Negro named Scott, acting in self-defense. Negroes killed were Henry
Goodman at Thirtieth and Union streets; John Mills, on Forty-seventh
Street near Union; Louis Taylor at Root Street and Wentworth Avenue;
and B. F. Hardy at Forty-sixth Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. All died
from beatings.
Crowds armed themselves with stones, bricks, and baseball bats and scanned
passing street cars for Negroes. Finding them, trolleys were pulled off
wires and entrance to the cars forced. Negroes were dragged from under
car seats and beaten. Once off the car the chase began. If possible,
the vanguard of the mob caught the fleeing Negroes and beat them with
clubs. If the Negro outran the pursuers, stones and bricks brought him
down. Sometimes the chase led through back yards and over fences, but
it was always short.
Another type of race warfare was the automobile raids carried on by young
men crowded in cars, speeding across the dead line at Wentworth Avenue
and the "Black Belt," and firing at random. Crowded colored districts,
with people sitting on front steps and in open windows, were subjected
to this menace. Strangely enough, only one person was killed in these
raids, Henry Baker, Negro.
Automobile raids were reported wherever colored people had established
themselves, in the "Black Belt," both on the main business streets and
in the residence sections, and in the small community near Ada and Loomis
streets in the vicinity of Ogden Park.
These raids began Monday night, continued spasmodically all day Tuesday,
and were again prevalent that night. In spite of the long period, reports
of motorcycle policemen show no white raiders arrested. One suspected
raiding automobile was caught on State Street Tuesday night, after
collision with a patrol wagon. One of the occupants, a white man, had
on his person the badge and identification card of a policeman assigned
to the Twenty-fourth Precinct. No case was worked up against him, and
the other men in the machine were not heard of again in connection with
the raid.
Most of the police motorcycle squad was assigned to the Stanton Avenue
station, which was used as police headquarters in the "Black Belt."
Several automobile loads of Negroes were arrested, and firearms were
found either upon their persons or in the automobile.
In only two cases were Negroes aggressively rioting found outside of
the "Black Belt." One of these was the case of the saloon-keeper already
mentioned, and the other was that of a deputy sheriff, who, with a party
of other men, said they were on the way to the Stock Yards to rescue
some beleaguered members of their race. It is reported that they wounded
five white people en route. Sheriff Peters said he understood that the
deputy sheriff was attacked by white mobs and fired to clear the crowd.
He was not convicted.
"Sniping" was a form of retaliation by Negroes which grew out of the
automobile raids. These raiding automobiles were fired upon from yards,
porches, and windows throughout the "Black Belt." One of the most serious
cases reported was at Thirty-first and State streets, where Negroes
barricaded the streets with rubbish boxes. Motorcycle Policeman Cheney
rammed through and was hit by a bullet. His companion officer following
was knocked from his machine and the machine punctured with bullets.
After the wounding of Policeman Cheney and Sergeant Murray, of the Sixth
Precinct, policemen made a thorough search of all Negro homes near the
scene of the "sniping." Thirty-four Negroes were arrested. Of these,
ten were discharged, ten were found not guilty, one was given one day in
jail, one was given five days in jail, one was fined and put on probation,
two were fined $10 and costs, one was fined $25; six were given thirty
days each in the House of Correction, and one, who admitted firing twice
but said he was firing at one of the automobiles, was sentenced to six
months in the House of Correction. His case was taken to the appellate
court.
Concerted retaliatory race action showed itself in the Italian district
around Taylor and Loomis streets when rumor said that a little Italian
girl had been killed or wounded by a shot fired by a Negro. Joseph
Lovings, an innocent Negro, came upon the excited crowd of Italians. There
was a short chase through back yards. Finally Lovings was dragged from
his hiding-place in a basement and brutally murdered by the crowd. The
coroner reported fourteen bullet wounds on his body, eight still having
bullets in them; also various stab wounds, contusions of the head, and
fractures of the skull. Rumor made the tale more hideous, saying that
Lovings was burned after gasoline had been poured over the dead body.
This was not true.
This same massing of race against race was shown in a similar clash
between Italians and Negroes on the North Side. The results here, however,
were not serious. It was reported in this last case that immediately after
the fracas the Negroes and Italians were again on good terms. This was
not true in the neighborhood of the Lovings outrage. Miss Jane Addams, of
Hull-House, which is near the scene of Lovings' death, testified before
the Commission that before the riot the Italians held no particular
animosity toward Negroes, for those in the neighborhood were mostly from
South Italy and accustomed to the dark-skinned races, but that they were
developing antipathy. In the September following the riot, she said the
neighborhood was still full of wild stories so stereotyped in character
that they appeared to indicate propaganda spread for a purpose.
The gang which operated in the "Loop" was composed partly of soldiers and
sailors in uniform; they were boys of from seventeen to twenty-two, out
for a "rough" time and using race prejudice as a shield for robbery. At
times this crowd numbered 100. Its depredations began shortly after 2:00
A.M. Tuesday. The La Salle Street railroad station was entered twice,
and Negro men were beaten and robbed. About 3:00 A.M. activities were
transferred to Wabash Avenue. In the hunt for Negroes one restaurant was
wrecked and the vandalism was continued in another restaurant where two
Negroes were found. One was severely injured and the other was shot down.
The gangsters rolled the body into the gutter and turned the pockets
inside out; they stood on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Adams Street
and divided the spoils, openly boasting later of having secured $52, a
diamond ring, a watch, and a brooch.
Attacks in the "Loop" continued as late as ten o'clock Tuesday morning,
Negroes being chased through the streets and beaten. Warned by the
Pinkerton Detective Agency, business men with stores on Wabash Avenue
came to protect their property. The rioting was reported to the police
by the restaurant men. Policemen rescued two Negroes that morning, but
so many policemen had been concentrated in and near the "Black Belt"
that there were only a few patrolmen in the whole "Loop" district, and
these did not actively endeavor to cope with the mob. In the meantime
two Negroes were killed and others injured, while property was seriously
damaged.
Tuesday's raids marked the peak of daring during the riot, and their
subsidence was as gradual as their rise. For the next two days the
gangs roamed the streets, intermittently attacking Negro homes. After
Tuesday midnight their operations were not so open or so concerted. The
riot gradually decreased in feeling and scope till the last event of a
serious nature occurred, the incendiary fires back of the Stock Yards.
While there is general agreement that these fires were incendiary, no
clue could be found to the perpetrators. Negroes were suspected, as all
the houses burned belonged to whites. In spite of this fact, and the
testimony of thirteen people who said they saw Negroes in the vicinity
before or during the fires, a rumor persisted that the fires were set by
white people with blackened faces. One of the men living in the burned
district who testified to seeing a motor truck filled with Negroes said,
when asked about the color of the men, "Sure, I know they were colored.
Of course I don't know whether they were painted." An early milk-wagon
driver said that he saw Negroes come out of a barn on Forty-third Street
and Hermitage Avenue. Immediately afterward the barn burst into flames.
He ran to a policeman and reported it. The policeman said he was "too
busy" and "it is all right anyway." One of the colonels commanding a
regiment of militia said he thought white people with blackened faces had
set fire to the houses; he got this opinion from talking to the police
in charge of that district.
Miss Mary McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement, which is
located back of the Yards, said in testimony before the Commission:
I don't think the Negroes did burn the houses. I think the
white hoodlums burned them. The Negroes weren't back there,
they stayed at home after that Monday. When we got hold of
the firemen confidentially, they said no Negroes set fire to
them at all, but the newspapers said so and the people were
full of fear. All kinds of mythical stories were afloat for
some time.
The general superintendent of Armour & Company was asked, when testifying
before the Commission, if he knew of any substantial reason why Negroes
were accused of setting fires back of the Yards. He answered:
That statement was originated in the minds of a few individuals,
radicals. It does not exist in the minds of the conservative
and thinking people of the community, even those living in
back of the Yards. They know better. I believe it goes without
saying that there isn't a colored man, regardless of how
little brains he'd have, who would attempt to go over into the
Polish district and set fire to anybody's house over there.
He wouldn't get that far.
The controlling superintendent of Swift & Company said he could not
say it from his own experience, but he understood there was as much
friction between the Poles and Lithuanians who worked together in the
Yards as between the Negroes and the whites. The homes burned belonged
to Lithuanians. The grand jury stated in its report: "The jury believes
that these fires were started for the purpose of inciting race feeling
by blaming same on the blacks."
The methods of attack used by Negroes and whites during the riot differed;
the Negroes usually clung to individual attack and the whites to mob
action. Negroes used chiefly firearms and knives, and the whites used
their fists, bricks, stones, baseball bats, pieces of iron, hammers.
Among the white men, 69 per cent were shot or stabbed and 31 per cent
were beaten; among the Negroes almost the reverse was true, 35 per cent
being shot and stabbed and 65 per cent beaten. A colonel in charge of
a regiment of militia on riot duty says they found few whites but many
Negroes armed.
_Arms and ammunition._--The foregoing figures and statements gave some
color to the belief persistent during and after the riot that Negroes
had stores of arms and ammunition. A lieutenant of police testified
before the coroner's jury that he had known in advance that the riot was
coming because "there were guns in every house out there; I knew they
were there for a purpose." He said he had heard that Negroes had been
advised to arm themselves and defend their homes, that the Constitution
of the United States provided for that. The state's attorney said before
the Commission that prior to the riot he had received reports from
detectives of private agencies stating the same thing. He was informed
that Negroes readily got firearms from Gary, Indiana, and that porters
on the Pullman trains brought them in from outside places. He further
stated: "I am very definitely assured of the fact that they were arming
and that there were more arms and weapons grouped in that general district
loosely termed the 'Black Belt' than any place else, and my information
is that conditions are that way now."
During the riot there were frequent rumors that Negroes had broken into
the Eighth Regiment Armory for guns and ammunition, but all these rumors
were proved false.
Since the riot many tales have been told of stores of arms brought in by
Pullman porters and by white prostitutes. Mexicans were reported to be
assisting Negroes in the manufacture of bombs and hand grenades. Lists
of addresses where ammunition was being stored have been gathered by
detectives, but not verified.
The same sort of rumors are found circulating among the Negroes in regard
to the arming of whites. It is said that such and such white men have
great boxes of guns and ammunition in the cellars of their homes, and
that white men are forming shooting clubs for the purpose of attacking
Negroes in the event of another riot. There are also widely believed
stories that a department store sold guns to white people before the
riot but refused to sell to Negroes. It was said that pawn shops sold
to white people without permits from the police.
_Crowds and mobs._--It may be observed that a crowd is merely a gathering
of people while a mob is a crowd with its attention so strongly fixed
upon some lawless purpose that other purposes are inhibited and it
acts along the line of the one purpose. During the riot many crowds of
curiosity seekers were transformed into vicious mobs when exciting rumors
circulated and the suggestion of vengeance was made by leaders. Such
suggestion was frequently accompanied by some daring act, stimulated by
the excitement.
The mob in its entirety usually did not participate actively. It was
one in spirit, but divided in performance into a small active nucleus
and a large proportion of spectators. The nucleus was composed of young
men from sixteen to twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. Sometimes
only four would be active while fifty or 150 looked on, but at times
the proportion would be as great as twenty-five in 200 or fifty in 300.
Fifty is the largest number reported for a mob nucleus. This was in the
case of John Mills and five other Negroes who were beaten, dragged off
a Forty-seventh Street car and chased, Mills being killed. Here there
were three degrees of crowd formation. First came the nucleus of fifty
active men who did the beating, chasing, and killing. Closely aiding
and abetting them were 300 or 400 others. After the Negroes had been
forced off the car and were being hunted through the neighborhood a
crowd of about 2,000 gathered and followed the vanguard of attackers and
spectators. These were present out of morbid curiosity, but sufficiently
imbued with the spirit of the mob not to interfere with the outrages.
The fact that children were frequently a part of mobs is one of the
thought-provoking facts of the Chicago riot. Psychologists say that
impressions made upon the child mind are forces which mold adult character
to a great extent. A number of children, some not more than four or
five years old, swarmed in front of the Forty-seventh Street car in the
John Mills case and effectively blocked it while men climbed aboard and
sought out the Negroes. Children, often witnesses of mob brutality, ran
to where Negro victims had fallen and pointed them out to the policemen
who came up after the mobs had dispersed.
There were others, still children in mind, Negro boys of fifteen, accused
of murders. The enormity of their acts faded in the joy of describing
their weapons. "Fat had a club; it looked like a police club," said one,
"it had leather on it." "And the gun had a little picture of an owl on
the side of it," said another describing a patched-up weapon that brought
down a white laboring-man who left a widow and eight children.
[Illustration: SCENES FROM FIRE IN IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD "BACK OF THE
YARDS"]
[Illustration: SCENE FROM FIRE IN IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD "BACK OF THE
YARDS"]
Among the spectators of mob violence were men, women, and children of
all ages; they included tradesmen, craftsmen, salesmen, laborers. Though
the spectators did not commit the crimes, they must share the moral
responsibility. Without the spectators mob violence would probably have
stopped short of murder in many cases. An example of the behavior of
the active nucleus when out of sight of the spectators bears this out.
George Carr, Negro, was chased from a street car. He outstripped all but
the vanguard of the mob by climbing fences and hiding in a back yard.
This concealed him from the rest of the crowd, who by that time were
chasing other Negroes. The young men who followed Carr left him without
striking a blow, upon his mere request for clemency. In regard to the
large non-active elements in the crowds, the coroner said during the
inquest, "It is just the swelling of crowds of that kind that urges them
on, because they naturally feel that they are backed up by the balance
of the crowd, which may not be true, but they feel that way." Juror
Ware said, "If sightseers were lending their aid and assistance--" Juror
Dillon interrupted and finished, "they ought to be punished."
Often the "sightseers" and even those included in the nucleus did not
know why they had taken part in crimes the viciousness of which was not
apparent to them until afterward. A mere attempt to cover up participation
would have called forth excuses in testimony, but their answers show
irritation at the questioning, an inability to appreciate the situation,
or complete bewilderment. These excerpts from the testimony before the
coroner's jury are examples:
Henry Woodman, in the mob at Sixtieth and Ada streets: "I don't know.
I didn't have any grudge against them [the Negroes]. But they [the mob]
seemed to have it in for the colored people. That is all."
Edward Klose, in the mob in front of 1021 South State Street: "I followed
the crowd, and I was in there because I was in there; they all bunched
around and what could I do?"
One of the boys in the mob at Forty-third Street and Forrestville Avenue:
"I just wanted to see how things were getting along. We wanted to see
what the riot looked like."
Another of this same crowd: "I was following the rest. I wanted to see
what they were going to do."
Another from the same mob: "When they started to grab them [the Negroes]
in the lot, I rushed over directly to the conflict, by the colored men,
thinking I would see more on that side."
Mobs got under way for the commission of atrocities by having the direct
suggestion put to them by one of the leaders. With minds already prepared
by rumors circulating wherever crowds gathered, it was easy to arouse
action. A street car approaching and the cry, "Get the niggers!" was
enough. Prompt action clinched the idea, and the emotion of the attack
narrowed the field of consciousness. War cries aided in keeping emotion
at fever heat. "Get the nigger!" "Kill the black ---- of a ----!" "Kill
him!" These were always an incident of mob action.
Counter-suggestion was not tolerated when the mob was rampant. A
suggestion of clemency was shouted down with the derisive epithet,
"Nigger lover!" Silenced objectors made no further effort to thwart mob
action. There are no records of such persons notifying the police or
persisting in their remonstrances. Those whose objections took the form
of action against the mob met with violence. A white man, an instructor
in music at the University of Chicago, saw several white men attack a
Negro who was waiting for a street car at Sixty-third Street and Cottage
Grove Avenue. Without trying verbal remonstrance he struck out at them.
His glasses were knocked off, and he was thrown into the middle of the
street and left unconscious.
Not only did action once under way make interference hazardous, but
it brought into the mob circle a greater number of participants and
increased its energy. Five men jerked a trolley from the wires; ten men
boarded the car; twenty-five men chased and beat the routed Negroes. The
mob action grew faster than the increase in numbers. Ideas suggested by
individual members were quickly carried out in the action of all. The
mob as a whole and the individuals in it increased in fury, and a normal
street crowd was often turned from peaceful assemblage to brutal murder.
A sharp diversion of attention sometimes caused the dispersal of mobs. An
unexpected revolver shot was the most effective means of such diversion.
Here are some instances:
When Thomas Joshua, a Negro boy, was shot by Police Lieutenant Day,
a throng of Negroes came on the run from State Street. The officers,
terrified, escaped in a taxi, leaving their own automobile behind. The
mob attempted to make this car suffer vicariously for the escaped police
officers. Other policemen on the scene had difficulty in holding them
back. Two shots were heard on Federal Street. Immediately the crowd ceased
its clamoring, left the automobile, and apparently lost all thought of
Lieutenant Day and ran to Federal Street.
In the first mob of the riot, that at Twenty-ninth Street and Cottage
Grove Avenue, Negroes and policemen were struggling in a mass in the
middle of the street. A shot was fired by James Crawford, and the mob
dispersed from that corner.
A mob chased a Negro off a street car on Thirty-ninth Street near Wallace.
A policeman with presence of mind followed the group into the alley,
fired a few shots in the air, and the crowd ran.
In no case where an unexpected shot was fired did it fail to scatter the
mob, but shooting which was part of the mob's own action did not seem
to have the same effect.
The course of one riotous mob can be traced in the activities of a certain
group of five white boys who linked up with the riot excitement. They
met at the corner of Sixty-third Street and Ingleside Avenue at 8:30
Monday evening. While they were trying to decide which movie to attend,
a taxi driver informed them of a riot at Forty-seventh Street. They took
the "L" to Forty-seventh Street and joined the mob. From then until 2:00
A.M. they were active in mobs which assaulted Negroes at several points.
Two were beaten at Forty-seventh Street and the elevated railway. The
mob then proceeded to Fifty-first Street, but the police drove it back
and it moved on to Indiana Avenue and Forty-third Street, where a deputy
sheriff held it off. Returning here later it attacked a street car, beat
a Negro, and then moved south on Indiana Avenue, jerking trolleys from
wires and assaulting passengers. At Forty-fifth Street a shot fired by
a police sergeant scattered it toward Forty-third Street.
There the mob met Lieutenant Washington, a Negro ex-soldier, who, with
five Negro companions, was obliged to walk across town because car service
had been discontinued on account of the rioting. Lieutenant Washington,
testifying before the coroner's jury, gave this account of the affair:
After we crossed Grand Boulevard I heard a yell, "One, two,
three, four, five, six," and then they gave a loud cheer and
said, "Everybody, let's get the niggers! Let's get the niggers,"
and we noticed some of them crossed the street and walked on
up even with us. The rest of them were about ten or fifteen
feet north ... there were about between four and six men ...
crossed the street and got in front of us ... just before we
got to Forrestville Avenue, about twenty yards, they swarmed
in on us.
After this attack, in which Lieutenant Browning was shot, and Clarence
Metz, a white boy, was killed by a stab wound inflicted by Lieutenant
Washington in self-defense, the mob moved on to Grand Boulevard, preceded
by the rumor that it intended to attack the homes of Negroes. A shot from
a house grazed a white lad, and the crowd went on, leaving the police
to come and arrest the Negroes who had fired.
Mob action in planned attacks was more daring, but not more dangerous.
Robbery was occasionally an accompaniment of spontaneous attack, but arson
never. Whether or not some of the organized raids could readily have
been stopped by the police, and the mobs dispersed, remains unproved.
No attempt was made either in the "Loop" district, in the Forty-seventh
and Wells streets districts or in the Sixty-ninth and Elizabeth streets
district to check the depredations.
_Rumor._--Rumor was often the first step in crowd formation and often
opened the way for the sharp transformation of a crowd into a mob. The
circulation of rumors was partly due to natural repetition, often with
increasing embellishment, by one person to another of what he had heard
or read. The desire to tell a "big story" and create a sensation was no
doubt an important factor. With so much bitter feeling there was also
considerable conscious effort to provoke vengeful animosity by telling
the worst that the teller had heard or could imagine about the doings
of the opposite race. The latter type of rumor circulation especially
fed the riot from the beginning to the final clash. It continues to be
a constant menace to the friendly relations of the races.
Newspapers were often supplied a source of rumor material through mistake
in fundamental facts, due either to misinformation or exaggeration.
In considering the newspaper handling of riot news, it should be borne in
mind that the task was most difficult during a period of such excitement
and such crowding of events. Further it must be considered that white
reporters might very justifiably avoid the risk of seeking news where
crowds of Negroes had been roused to a high pitch of resentment against
whites. There were doubtless instances in which news was secured from
sources ordinarily trustworthy, but inaccurate during the riot. On the
other hand, it must be recognized that in a time of such excitement the
effect of sensational news on the popular mind is generally accentuated,
and the responsibility for careful handling of news is correspondingly
greater. Where bias is as pronounced as in a race riot it is of the
utmost importance that essential facts be stated correctly.
TABLE I
========================================================================
| NUMBER OF INJURED |FACTS AS LATER OBTAINED FROM
| AS REPORTED BY THE | POLICE, STATE'S ATTORNEY,
| "TRIBUNE" AND |HOSPITAL REPORTS, AND OLIVET
DATE | "HERALD-EXAMINER" | BAPTIST CHURCH, COVERING
| DURING THE FIRST | EACH DAY
| FOUR DAYS OF RIOT |
+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------
| White| Negro| Total| White| Negro|Unknown| Total
----------------------+-------------------------------------------------
July 27 | 29 | 19 | 48 | 10 | 31 | 5 | 46
July 28 | 64 | 60 | 124 | 71 | 152 | 6 | 229
July 29 | 62 | 72 | 134 | 55 | 80 | 4 | 139
July 30 | 40 | 21 | 61 | 20 | 20 | 2 | 42
+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------
Total | 195 | 172 | 367 | 156 | 283 | 17 | 456
+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------
Percentage of total | 53 | 47 | 100 | 34 | 62 | 4 | 100
----------------------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+------
Reports of numbers of dead and injured tended to produce a feeling that
the score must be evened up on the basis of "an eye for an eye," a Negro
for a white, or vice versa. A most unfortunate impression may be made
upon an excited public, Negro and white, by such erroneous reporting
as the following, in which newspapers, although they understated rather
than exaggerated the number of injuries, reported that 6 per cent more
whites were injured than Negroes, when the fact was that 28 per cent
more Negroes were injured than whites.
The _Tribune_ of July 29 in a news item said that before 3:00 A.M.,
July 29, twenty persons had been killed, of whom thirteen were white
and seven colored. The truth was that of twenty killed, seven were white
and thirteen colored.[7]
The _Daily News_ of July 29 gave the starting-point of the riot as the
Angelus clash, referring to it as "the center of the trouble." The same
item mentioned the spread to the Stock Yards district. The fact was
that the assault upon street cars in the Stock Yards district Monday
afternoon and rumors of further brutalities there helped to start the
Angelus riot Monday evening.[8]
The _Tribune_ of July 30 stated that "the Black Belt continues to be
the center of conflict." Up to July 30 the "Black Belt" had witnessed
120 injuries, while the district west of Wentworth Avenue had had 139.
For the entire riot period the "Black Belt" furnished 34 per cent of the
total number of injuries, and the district west of Wentworth Avenue 41
per cent.
Exaggeration in news reports, when popular excitement is at a high pitch,
is peculiarly dangerous. For the very reason that the essential fact
seems authenticated by the simultaneous appearance of the gist of the
report in several papers, the individual reader is the more inclined to
believe such exaggerations as may appear in his favorite journal.
Cases of exaggeration could be adduced from every Chicago newspaper,
but a typical one is the report in the _Chicago Daily News_ of July 29
concerning the killing of Harold Brignadello, white. This item said:
Four women and nine men are held at the South Clark Street
Station after their arrest at 1021 South State Street, where
they had a formidable arsenal.
Harry Signadell [_sic_], 35, white, died on the way to St.
Luke's Hospital shortly before noon after his bullet-riddled
body had been picked up by the police in front of 1021 South
State Street, where a colored woman and 20 other Negroes had
barricaded themselves and were shooting at all whites who
passed the place.
Other persons arrested included Kate Elder, 26 years old, who
gave her home as the State Street address. In all, four women
and nine men were made prisoners at the raid on the place
which was found to be an arsenal for the Negro rioters. Two
revolvers, two rifles, an axe, several knives, and several
hundred rounds of ammunition, including 38 and 48 [_sic_]
calibre cartridges, were discovered piled up near the window
from which the Negroes had been shooting.
Patrolman John Hayes, of the South Clark Street Station, heard
the shots fired by the Negroes who were firing from the house
and saw the spurts of fire from their rifles and revolvers
whenever whites ventured to pass the place. An unknown white
man, a victim of the Negroes' bullets, was found lying on the
sidewalk. He was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital where he died.
The facts of this case, as reported by the coroner's jury are as follows:
... Harold Brignadello ... came to his death on the 29th day
of July, A.D. 1919, at St. Luke's Hospital from shock and
hemorrhage due to a bullet wound in the chest cavity.
[NOTE.--"a bullet wound," not "bullet-riddled."]
We find the deceased while standing at the southwest corner
of State and Taylor ... was shot and wounded by a bullet fired
from the revolver held in the hand of one Emma Jackson who was
standing at an open window on the second floor of the premises
at 1021 South State Street.
Testimony shows that just prior to the shooting, said premises
had been stoned by a mob of white men.
We, the jury, recommend that the said Emma Jackson, said Kate
Elder, said John Webb, said Ed. Robinson, and said Clarence
Jones be held to the grand jury upon a charge of murder until
discharged by due process of law.
[NOTE.--Two women and three men, not "four women and nine
men," nor yet "a colored woman and 20 other Negroes." They
were indicted by the grand jury but found not guilty.]
We believe from the evidence that the police have sufficient
information as to the identity of some of said white men to
warrant arrest, and we recommend such action be taken.
[NOTE.--No arrests of men in the white mob were made.]
The testimony further showed that there were 150 white men in the mob
grouped in front of 1021, and four of the men were stoning the house at
the time Emma Jackson fired into their midst.
Only one gun was found and no stores of ammunition, instead of "a
formidable arsenal," or a "barricade" or "an arsenal for Negro rioters,"
or "two revolvers, two rifles, an axe, several knives, and several hundred
rounds of ammunition, including 38 and 48 [_sic_] calibre cartridges ...
piled up near the window from which the Negroes had been shooting." The
one gun was hidden in a niche in the skylight.
Following are examples of rumors current during the riot and disseminated
by the press and by word of mouth, grouped on the basis of the emotions
which they aroused--vengeful animosity, fear, anger, and horror:
_Daily News_, July 30. Subheadline: "Alderman Jos. McDonough Tells How
He Was Shot at on South Side Visit. Says Enough Ammunition in Section
to Last for Years of Guerrilla Warfare":
[NOTE.--The reference in the headline to the large amount of ammunition
is repeated in the text, but not elaborated or explained.]
An alderman in an account of his adventures says the Mayor
contemplates opening up 35th and 47th streets in order that
colored people might get to their work. He thinks this would
be most unwise for, he states, "They are armed and the white
people are not. We must defend ourselves if the city authorities
won't protect us." Continuing his story, he describes bombs
going off, "I saw white men and women running through the
streets dragging children by the hands and carrying babies in
their arms. Frightened white men told me the police captains
had just rushed through the district crying, 'For God's sake,
arm. They are coming, we cannot hold them.'"
[Illustration: WRECKED HOUSE OF A NEGRO FAMILY IN RIOT ZONE]
[Illustration: NEGROES AND WHITES LEAVING THE STOCK YARDS]
The point here is not whether the alderman was correctly quoted, but the
effect on the public of such statements attributed to him. There is no
record in any of the riot testimony in the coroner's office or in the
state's attorney's office of any bombs exploded during the riot, nor
of police captains warning white people to arm, nor of any fear on the
part of whites of a Negro invasion. In the Berger Odman case before the
coroner's jury there is a statement that a police sergeant warned the
Negroes of Ogden Park to arm and to shoot at the feet of rioters if they
attempted to invade the few blocks marked off for Negroes by the police.
_Herald-Examiner_, July 28. Subheadline: "Negroes Have Arms":
A man whose name is withheld reported to the _Herald-Examiner_
that Negroes had more than 2,000 Springfield rifles and an
adequate supply of soft-nosed bullets. R. R. Jackson, alderman
from the second ward, brands the story as untrue.
This statement is not substantiated.
_Herald-Examiner_, July 29:
Several thousand men stoned the old Eighth Regiment Armory in
the heart of the riot zone, doors were burst in, and hundreds
of guns with ammunition taken by the mob. Police rushed to
the scene firing into the mob and finally drove it from the
armory. According to reports more than 50 persons were shot
or otherwise injured.
Refutation of this statement is found in the testimony of Police Captain
Mullen before the coroner's jury in the Eugene Williams case:
I received a rumor that the soldiers [referring to Negro
soldiers of the Eighth Regiment] had gone over to the armory
for the sole purpose of breaking in and getting rifles. I
dispatched two patrol wagons full of men; after arriving there,
we found out they had been there and broke some windows, but
they found out there were no weapons in there.
Another type of fear-provoking rumor current in street crowds reported
the force and the aggressive plans of the opposing race. Some of these
rumors, current among Negro crowds, were to the effect that a white mob
was gathering on Wentworth Avenue ready to break into the "Black Belt";
that a white mob was waiting to break through at Sixtieth and Ada streets;
that a white mob was ready to advance upon Twenty-seventh and Dearborn
streets. The first of these rumors had its effect upon the inception of
the Angelus riot, and the second so aroused the fears of Negroes that
when a white mob led by young white boys did step over the "dead-line"
boundaries established by the police, guns were immediately turned upon
them, and one of the invaders was killed. Of the third rumor, Police
Lieutenant Burns said:
... an old colored man came to me ... and said that the colored
people on Dearborn Street in the 2800 block were moving out in
fear of a white mob coming from across the tracks from across
Wentworth Avenue.... On the southwest corner of Twenty-eighth
and Dearborn I found a number of colored men standing in
front of a building there. They had pieces of brick and stone
in their pockets and were peering around the corner west on
Twenty-eighth Street apparently in great fear.
Among the whites fear was not so prevalent. A fear-producing rumor was
revealed, however, in the examination of two deputy sheriffs who fired
on a Negro. The deputies had heard that Negroes were going to burn up
or blow up factories in the district which they were patrolling. When
a dark form was seen in an alley, panic seized both deputies, and they
emptied their revolvers at an innocent Negro who lived in the adjoining
house.
Chief among the anger-provoking rumors were tales of injury done to
women of the race circulating the rumor. The similarity of the stories
and their persistence shows extraordinary credulity on the part of the
public. For the most horrible of these rumors, telling of the brutal
killing of a woman and baby (sometimes the story is told of a Negro
woman, sometimes of a white) there was no foundation in fact. The story
was circulated not only by the newspapers of both races, but was current
always in the crowds on the streets. Here is the story as told in the
white press:
_Chicago Tribune_, July 29:
There is an account of "two desperate revolver battles fought
by the police with colored men alleged to have killed two
white women and a white child."
It is reported that policemen saw two Negroes knock down a
woman and child and kick them. The Negroes ran before the
police could reach them.
_Herald-Examiner_, July 29:
Two white women, one of them with a baby in her arms, were
attacked and wounded by Negro mobs firing on street cars....
A colored woman with a baby in her arms was reported at the
Deering Police Station, according to this item, to have been
attacked by a mob of more than 100 white men. When the mob
finally fled before the approach of a squad of police both the
woman and child were lying in the street beaten to death, "it
is said."
_Daily News_, July 29:
Another man is held at the Stock Yards station charged with the
murder of a white woman in West 47th Street and Wentworth....
The Negroes, four in number, were arrested at East 39th and
Cottage Grove Avenue, this afternoon by the detective. They are
believed to be the ones who seriously wounded Mrs. Margaret
Kelley, white woman, at W. 47th and Wentworth. She was shot
in the back and may die. The names of those under arrest were
not given out.
[NOTE.--"Murder" changed to "seriously injured" in the main
story. Mrs. Mary Kelly was shot in the arm according to the
police report and not in the back.]
The men arrested for the shooting were Henry Harris and Scott Brown,
deputy sheriffs, and four others according to the records of the state's
attorney. Sheriff Peters says of the case, that Harris was charged with
shooting someone, but when the case came up the charge was dropped.
Sheriff Peters was convinced that Harris was innocent.
_Daily News_, July 29. Headline, given place of first importance in the
pink section: "Women Shot as Riots Grow." Columns 7 and 8 of first-page
white section are headed, "Attack White Women as Race Riots Grow. Death
Roster Is 30."
The item reads: "Race rioters began to attack white women this afternoon
according to report received at the Detective Bureau and the Stock
Yards Police Station." The article continues, that Swift & Company had
not received any such reports of attacks on their women employees. But
farther on the item gives an account of a Swift & Company truck filled
with girl employees fired upon by Negroes at Forty-seventh Street and
the Panhandle railroad. The driver was reported killed and several of
the girls injured.
The juxtaposition of "Death roster is 30" and "Attack white women"
gives a wrong impression. The "several girls injured" at Forty-seventh
Street evidently refers to the case of Mrs. Mary Kelly. The records of
the state's attorney's office also show that Josephine Mansfield was
supposed to have been wounded by Harris, _et al._, but the charge was
dropped. She was wounded in the shoulder, according to the police report.
_Daily News_, July 30:
Alderman McDonough described a raid into the white district the
night before by a carload of colored men who passed Thirty-fifth
Street and Wallace "shouting and shooting." The gunmen shot
down a woman and a little boy who stood close by.
[NOTE.--No record of such a case.]
Here is the "injury done to women" story as it appeared in the Negro press:
_Chicago Defender_, August 2:
An unidentified young woman and three-months-old baby were
found dead on the street at the intersection of Forty-seventh
and Wentworth. She had attempted to board a car there when
the mob seized her, beat her, slashed her body to ribbons,
and beat the baby's brains out against a telegraph pole. Not
satisfied with this one rioter severed her breasts and a white
youngster bore it aloft on a pole triumphantly while the crowd
hooted gleefully. The whole time this was happening several
policemen were in the crowd but did not make any attempt to
make a rescue until too late.
Concerning all of these stories it may be stated that the coroner had
no cases of deaths of women and children brought before him. There was
nothing in the police reports or the files of the state's attorney or
hospital reports or the reports of Olivet Baptist Church, which would
give any foundation for reports of the killing of a woman and child,
white or Negro.
There were other rumors which had the same anger-producing effect as
reports of attacks on women. A notable case of this kind was the fatal
clash at the Angelus, an apartment house for white people at Thirty-fifth
Street and Wabash Avenue, on Monday, July 28 (see p. 6). The trouble
here grew from four o'clock in the afternoon until it culminated in
the shooting at 8:00 P.M. The excitement was stimulated by the rapid
spread of various rumors. It was said that a white mob was gathering
at Thirty-fifth Street and Wentworth Avenue, only a few blocks from the
colored mob which was massed on Thirty-fifth Street from State Street to
Wabash Avenue. The rumor was that the white men are armed and prepared
to "clean up the 'Black Belt.'" Another rumor had it that a Negro's
sister had been killed while coming home from the Stock Yards where she
worked. Finally came the rumor that a white person had fired a shot
from the Angelus building, wounding a colored boy. The rumor quickly
went through the crowd swarming around the building, but no one heard
or saw the shooting. A search of the building disclosed no firearms.
Police Sergeant Middleton, Negro, described the situation as "everybody
trying to tell you something and you couldn't get anything." Another
Negro policeman said it was "just a rumor that went around through the
crowd and everybody was saying, 'He shot from that window'; I would go
to that window and the crowd would say, 'That is the window over there.'"
The anger-provoking power of rumor was seen in the ensuing clash. About
1,500 Negroes massed on one corner of Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash
Avenue, and about 100 policemen grouped themselves at the intersection
of the two streets. At the sight of a brick flying from the Negro mob the
police fired a volley into the midst of the mob. More shots came quickly
from both sides. Four Negroes were killed, and many were injured, among
both the Negroes and the police.
The Angelus rumor appeared as follows in a Negro newspaper, the _Chicago
Defender_, August 2: "White occupants of the Angelus apartments began
firing shots and throwing missiles from their windows. One man was shot
through the head but before his name could be secured he was spirited
away."
In the case of Joseph Lovings, a Negro killed by an Italian mob, press
reports that were entirely false tended strongly to provoke the anger
of Negro mobs. For example:
_Herald-Examiner_, July 30: "He had been shot, stabbed and gasoline had
been thrown on his body which had been set afire. The police extinguished
the fire and took the body to the County Morgue."
_Tribune_, July 30: "This report says that he was stabbed and shot
sixteen times, then his body saturated with gasoline and set afire."
The coroner's jury in commenting on this rumor said: "It gives us
satisfaction to say that this rumor, from our investigation, is false
and unsubstantiated."
Among the horror rumors one finds such examples as the story of the white
man who stood at the entrance to Exchange Avenue and knocked down half a
dozen Negroes as they came by. This was current in the Stock Yards and
was told by one of the workers at the inquest on the body of William
Dozier, Negro, killed in the Yards. Another rumor had it that a Negro
woman nicknamed "Heavy" had partly slashed off the head of a white man.
This was picked up by a detective circulating among white people living
in the "Black Belt."
But chief among horror rumors was the Bubbly Creek rumor, which took
this form in the press:
_Daily News_, July 29. Subheadline: "Four Bodies in Bubbly Creek." The
article does not give details but says, "Bodies of four colored men
were taken today from Bubbly Creek in the Stock Yards district, it is
reported."
This was one of the most persistent rumors of the riot, and intelligent
men were found repeating it in half-credulous tones. A meat curer,
talking 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 came to the Yards, but personally I never got
any positive evidence that there was any people who was found there."
A juror on the coroner's panel said: "A man told a friend of mine--I
can furnish the name of that man--a man told him that he saw fifty-six
bodies taken out of Bubbly Creek. They made a statement they used a net
and seine to drag them out."
Mr. Williams, Negro attorney, said he was told that the bodies of 100
Negroes had been found in Bubbly Creek.
In its final report, the coroner's jury made this conclusive statement
regarding the Bubbly Creek rumor:
Bubbly Creek has been the favorite cemetery for the undiscovered
dead, and our inquiry has been partly directed to that
stream. In our inquiry we have been assisted by the Stock
Yards officials and workers, by adjacent property owners and
residents, by private detective bureaus, the Police Department,
Department of Health, State's Attorney's office, by observing
and intelligent colored citizens, and by other agencies, and
we are firmly of the opinion that these reports, so widely
circulated, are erroneous, misleading, and without foundation
in fact, the race riot victims numbering thirty-eight, and
no more, nor are there any colored citizens reported to us as
missing.
Rumor, fermenting in mobs, prepares the mob mind for the direct suggestion
impelling otherwise law-abiding citizens to atrocities. Another more
insidious and potentially more dangerous result is the slow accumulation
of feeling which builds between the white and Negro the strongest barrier
of race prejudice.
_Police._--There has been much criticism of the manner in which the
riot was handled by the authorities, but it may be pointed out that the
riot was not quelled until at least four groups of peace guardians had
taken part in handling it. The two most important groups were the police
and the militia; the others were composed of deputy sheriffs and Negro
ex-soldiers.
Testimony before the coroner's jury and in hearings before this Commission
throws considerable light on the actions of the Police Department as
a whole during the riot, its methods in meeting the unusual situation,
and on the conduct of individual policemen. First-hand information and
opinion was obtained from Chief of Police Garrity and State's Attorney
Hoyne.
The police had two severe handicaps at the outset of the rioting. The
first, as declared by Chief Garrity, was lack of sufficient numbers
adequately to cope with the situation. The coroner's jury found that "the
police force should be enlarged. It is too small to cope with the needs
of Chicago." The grand jury added: "The police force is also inadequate
in numbers, and at least one thousand (1,000) officers should be added
to the existing force." This number approximates the need urged by Chief
Garrity, who, when asked before the Commission as to the sufficiency of
his force, answered: "No. I haven't sufficient force. I haven't got a
sufficient force now to properly police the city of Chicago by one-third."
Militia officers and other police officials held the same general opinion.
The second handicap, distrust of white policemen by all Negroes, while
implied and not admitted by Chief Garrity, was frankly explained by
State's Attorney Hoyne. He said before the Commission: "There is no
doubt that a great many police officers were grossly unfair in making
arrests. They shut their eyes to offenses committed by white men while
they were very vigorous in getting all the colored men they could get."
Leaders among the Negroes clearly indicate that discrimination in arrest
was a principal cause of widespread and long-standing distrust. Whether
justified or not, this feeling was actual and bitter. This distrust
had grown seriously during the six months preceding the riot because no
arrests were made in bombing cases. State's Attorney Hoyne said before
the commission: "I don't know of a single case where the police have
apprehended any man who has blown up a house."
Charles S. Duke, a well-educated and fair-minded Negro, gave his reaction
to the bombings when he said that he did not "believe a Negro would have
been allowed to go unpunished five minutes." Mrs. Clarke, Negro, said
her house was bombed three times, once while a plain-clothes policeman
was inside waiting for bombers, but no arrests were made. One suspect
was put under surveillance but was not held.
The trial of the three Negro policemen before the Merit Committee
of the Police Department because they refused to use the "Jim Crow"
sleeping-quarters in a police station doubtless added to race feeling,
particularly in view of the publicity it received in the "Black Belt."
Negro distrust of the police increased among the Negroes during the
period of the riot. With each clash a new cause for suspicion seemed to
spring up. The most striking instance occurred on the first afternoon
when Policeman Callahan refused to arrest the white man whom the Negro
crowd accused of causing the drowning of Williams, the Negro boy. This
refusal has been called the beginning of the riot because it led to mob
violence of grave consequences. However that may have been, the fact
remains that this refusal was heralded broadcast by the Negroes as the
kind of action they might expect from the police.
Typical of the minor tales which laid the foundation for the Negroes'
bitterness toward this white policeman are the following:
1. Kin Lumpkin, Negro, was beaten by a mob on the "L" platform at
Forty-seventh Street, as he was going home from work. The policeman
arrested Lumpkin and had him booked for rioting. No other arrests were
made. Lumpkin was held from July 28 to August 1.
2. Two policemen, one of them Officer McCarty of the Twenty-sixth
Precinct, witnessed the beating of Wellington Dunmore, Negro, of 4120
South Campbell Avenue, but, according to the victim, refused to assist
him.
3. John Slovall and brother, Negroes, were beaten and robbed by whites
in sight of a white policeman. No arrests were made. The officer did
not even call for aid.
4. While looking for his mother at Thirty-first and State streets
on Tuesday, July 29, Wm. F. Thornton, Negro, 3207 South Park Avenue,
asked a policeman to take him home. The officer took him to the police
station and locked him up. Another Negro applied for protection, but the
police searched him, clubbed him, and when he ran, the sergeant told
another policeman to shoot him. The policeman obeyed and the man fell
under the "L" station. He was picked up by the same patrol wagon that
took Thornton to the Cottage Grove Police Station. The officer, Bundy,
arrested Thornton.
[Illustration: NEGROES BEING ESCORTED BY POLICE TO SAFETY ZONE FROM THE
NEIGHBORHOOD OF FORTY-EIGHTH STREET AND WENTWORTH AVENUE]
[Illustration: SEARCHING NEGROES FOR ARMS IN POLICE STATION]
A report on 229 Negroes and whites accused of various criminal activities
disclosed the fact that 154 were Negroes and seventy-five were whites.
The state's attorney reported eighty-one indictments against Negroes and
forty-seven against whites after all riot cases were cleared up. These
figures show that twice as many Negroes appeared as defendants and twice
as many were indicted as whites.
At first glance these figures indicate greater riot activity on the
part of Negroes, and therefore one would expect to find twice as many
whites injured as Negroes. But out of a total of 520 injured persons
whose race was definitely reported, 342 were Negroes and 178 whites.
The fact that twice as many Negroes appeared as defendants and twice
as many were injured as whites suggests the conclusion that whites were
not apprehended as readily as Negroes.
Herman M. Adler, state criminologist of Illinois, testifying before
the Commission, expressed the belief that the police showed much more
readiness to arrest Negroes than whites because the officers thought
they were "taking fewer chances if they 'soaked' a colored man."
Negro distrust of police and courts seems to have been confirmed by the
action of the state's attorney's office in bringing only Negro riot cases
before the grand jury. This body, however, took a stand for fair play
and justice for both sides, and though its action may have been novel,
it was effective. In its final report, the grand jury said:
This jury has no apology to offer for its attitude with
reference to requesting the state's attorney to supply it with
information of crimes perpetrated by whites against blacks
before considering further evidence against blacks. This
attitude gave rise to the reports in the press that this grand
jury "had gone on a strike." As a matter of fact, its position
was merely a suspension of hearing further cases of crimes
committed by blacks against whites until the state's attorney
submitted evidence concerning the various crimes committed by
whites against blacks. The reason for this attitude arose from
a sense of justice on the part of this jury. It is the opinion
of this jury that the colored people suffered more at the hands
of the white hoodlums than the white people suffered at the
hands of the black hoodlums. Notwithstanding this fact, the
cases presented to this jury against the blacks far outnumber
those against the whites.
State's Attorney Hoyne justified this action by saying that the Police
Department brought in Negroes only, and until they arrested whites, he
was limited to proceedings against Negroes.
The coroner's jury on November 3, 1919, reported as follows:
Our attention was called strikingly to the fact that at the time
of race rioting, the arrests made for rioting by the police
of colored rioters were far in excess of the arrests made of
white rioters. The failure of the police to arrest impartially,
at the time of rioting, whether from insufficient effort or
otherwise, was a mistake and had a tendency to further incite
and aggravate the colored population.
This seeming discrimination in arrests naturally deepened Negro distrust
and lack of confidence in the police. Testimony was taken by the
Commission on the plans and action of the Police Department during the
riot period, since the Commission felt that the distribution of forces
and the methods used by the department to meet such an emergency were
matters of first importance.
Chief of Police Garrity testified that there were 3,500 policemen in the
department at the time of the riot, and that he had "practically every
policeman in the city of Chicago down there," indicating Thirty-fifth
Street and Rhodes Avenue as "practically in the heart of the district
where the most trouble was." The widest distribution from that center,
he said, was over an area bounded by Lake Michigan, Ashland Avenue, Van
Buren Street, and Sixty-ninth Street.
The heaviest concentration of police, however, was in the "Black Belt."
The Stanton Avenue Police Station at Thirty-fifth Street and Rhodes
Avenue is at about the center of the most congested Negro residential
area. Asked how many policemen were assigned to that vicinity (the area
from Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth streets), Chief Garrity said, "We had
in the neighborhood of 2,800 men in that territory." Later the chief
said only "the necessary sergeants and one or two men at each station
were held back for emergency calls" in all other parts of the city. This
means that four-fifths of the total police force was concentrated there.
Although there is no direct testimony as to the existence of flying
squadrons of police, yet such bodies appear to have been operating.
Probably the most important of these was the patrol under Police Captain
Mullen, who said that his territory extended from Twenty-second to
Thirty-ninth streets and from the lake to the Rock Island tracks, or
roughly the "Black Belt." Chief Deputy Alcock[9] sent eighty-eight
policemen into this district on Sunday afternoon, twenty-five more at
midnight, and fifty more on Monday morning.
In describing the disposition of police details, Chief Garrity said:
"They were routed by him [Alcock] according to conditions existing in
different districts. Some districts might have a hundred men in the
block and in the next block there might be only ten, according to what
conditions were." Forces were moved from one point of disturbance to
another by means of patrol wagons on request of local commanders.
The 2,800 policemen in the "Black Belt" were under the command of Chief
Deputy Alcock with headquarters in the Stanton Avenue Station. He "used
his discretion in the number of men assigned to the different points
and the handling of them in the different territories."
Riot orders were given by Chief Garrity as follows: "Wherever possible
suppress the riot and restore peace"; "the second day I ordered a
dead line on Wentworth Avenue and Twenty-second Street to, I think,
Sixty-third Street"; "instructions were that 'you will allow no colored
people to go across to the west and no white people to go across to the
east.'" Cabarets, saloons, and public places were ordered closed, and
all large gatherings of either whites or Negroes were prohibited from
Van Buren to Sixty-ninth streets and from Ashland Avenue to the lake.
The chief added, "Closing clubrooms and everything in the district west
of Wentworth Avenue as well as east of it." A general policy was adopted
of search and seizure of persons suspected of carrying weapons on the
street, and of houses from which firing came. Captain Mullen testified
before the coroner's jury at the Eugene Williams inquest that on July
29 Chief Deputy Alcock lined up the policemen in front of the Stanton
Avenue Station and gave them their orders. They were told to "preserve
the peace; that was all."
Police records of clashes were incomplete and often inaccurate. This
was in part due, and naturally so, to the stress of the moment. In many
cases the station lists of injured were far from complete and in few
instances were the names of witnesses given. Even the dates and hours
of clashes were loosely recorded. Persons arrested were frequently
not booked at all, while on the other hand it was not uncommon to find
innocent persons charged with serious offenses. Henry Scholz, policeman
of the Twenty-sixth Precinct, threw much light on police records while
being examined in connection with certain automobile arrests:
They were all discharged, booked for "disorderly," because
we couldn't find the guns in the mix-up. It was the first or
second day down there and they were bringing them in right
and left, and I suppose in the mix-up they mislaid the guns,
or put them away somewhere, or booked them to someone else.
We held them about a week trying to find the guns and trying
to find the officers that got the guns.
It is important to know how the distribution and routing of police
affected the general riot situation. As already shown four-fifths of the
police forces were concentrated in the "Black Belt." This undoubtedly
both weakened police forces elsewhere and also prevented or delayed
reinforcements in outside districts. Only 34 per cent of the total number
of reported injuries occurred in the area of concentration. Negro hatred
of the police is worth mentioning again here, especially since many of
the deaths and injuries occurred during clashes between white policemen
and Negro mobs.
That other districts where danger existed were poorly protected is shown
by the fact that fatal clashes occurred there without interruption by the
police. The most conspicuous case is noted in the "Loop" atrocities on
July 29, where two Negroes, Hardwick and Williams, were killed, several
were injured and robbed, and business property of whites was damaged. A
police sergeant said that only three officers and one sergeant were in
the district on the night of July 28-29. In the Stock Yards district,
where 41 per cent of the injuries and several deaths occurred, there
is no record of an attempt by the police to increase the riot forces.
In this district gang raids by whites were practically beyond control.
On July 28 B. F. Hardy, a Negro, was killed at Forty-sixth Street and
Cottage Grove Avenue. Sergeant Clancy later testified that there were
no policemen in this district until after the trouble. The foreman of
the grand jury investigated the activities of the Deering Street Station
under Police Captain Gallery. He says: "They didn't have a sufficient
number of policemen to handle the situation. If I remember correctly,
he had eight patrolmen covering a district of any number of square miles."
In spite of the concentration of police in the "Black Belt" some parts
of that area seem at times not to have been properly guarded. Several
serious clashes occurred there after the police arrived in force. Theodore
Copling, Negro, was shot to death at Thirtieth and State streets in the
heart of the "Black Belt" on July 30. This had been a riotous corner for
three days, yet no policemen were at hand. The nearest was a detective
sergeant on Twenty-ninth Street between Federal and State streets. Samuel
Banks, Negro, was shot and killed near the corner of Twenty-seventh
and Dearborn streets on July 30 at 11:00 P.M., yet Lieutenant Burns, in
charge of this district, testified at the inquest that twelve to fourteen
officers were at Twenty-seventh and Dearborn streets immediately before
the shooting.
It was undoubtedly the relatively large number of clashes which the
police were unable to prevent that led the coroner's jury to recommend
that "(6) there should be organization of the force for riot work for
the purpose of controlling rioting in its incipient stages."
The conduct of individual policemen received much adverse criticism
from the Negroes. This was to be expected in the circumstances, but
disregarding the general prejudice of which white officers were accused,
certain cases of discrimination, abuse, brutality, indifference, and
neglect on the part of individuals are deserving of examination.
Abusive and brutal treatment was complained of by Horace Jennings, 3422
South Aberdeen Street. He reported to the state's attorney's office
that Policeman G----, of the Grand Crossing Station, approached him,
as he lay wounded by a mob attack, with the words, "Where's your gun,
you black ---- of a ----? You damn niggers are raising hell"; that the
officer hit him on the head, and he did not regain consciousness until
some time later in the Burnside Hospital; and he further charged that
Gallagher took a purse containing $13 when he searched him.
Three Negroes were rescued by the police from a white mob of twenty-five
or thirty men. Scott, one of the Negroes, was taken from the street car
on which all three were riding, by the command of a policeman to "come
out of there, you big rusty brute, you. I ought to shoot you," and was
given a blow on the head. According to a witness he was again struck by
the policeman as he was pushed into the patrol wagon. He was subjected
to rough treatment at the jail and was kept incommunicado from July 28
to August 4, not being permitted to notify his wife or an attorney. None
of the twenty-five or thirty white rioters was arrested. There was some
evidence of fear on the part of the police to arrest rioting whites.
Fear by policemen of Negroes is also disclosed. George Crumm, white, 124
East Forty-sixth Street, informed the state's attorney's office that he
was beaten by a Negro mob, got police assistance, and pointed out the
rioters, but the police "didn't seem to want to interfere any."
On several occasions policemen left the scene of riots on questionable
excuses while the rioting was in progress. Of the three mounted policemen
at Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue who rushed to the spot where a
mob was attacking Otterson, two accompanied the automobile of Otterson
to the hospital. The mob was not quelled or dispersed. When the house
of William O'Deneal, Negro, 4742 Wells Street, was attacked, the police
took O'Deneal to the station and left the mob to sack and burn his house.
At the killing of William Dozier, Negro, all three police officers who
responded to notice of an attack by a white mob of 300 or more, left
in the same patrol wagon. The names of witnesses were not taken. It was
the custom for all to accompany the wagon, according to Officer McDonough.
Political "pull" exercised with the police on behalf of rioters has been
indicated. It was noted that one of "Ragen's Colts" said an officer of
the Stock Yards Station "tipped them off" to stay away from their club
because Attorney General Brundage's office was out investigating them.
Indifference both to extreme lawlessness during the riot and to the
procedure of the inquest marked the examination of Captain of Police
Mullen before the coroner's jury. He was in command of twelve mounted men
and between sixty-three and 100 men on foot at Thirty-fifth Street and
Wabash Avenue when a clash between the police and a Negro mob occurred.
While it appears to be the fact that he left just before the heavy firing
to telephone from a saloon one block away, yet the building he was in
was struck by bullets. The following excerpt from the inquest speaks
for itself:
_Q._: What time did the shooting take place at the building
known as the Angelus Building? What time did that occur? Was
there any shooting at that building?
_Mullen_: Not that I heard.
_Q._: Had there been any shooting done there that evening
around ... before you left?
_Mullen_: Not to my knowledge.
_Q._: When was the shooting done, and where were you?
_Mullen_: What do you mean shooting?
Three men were killed and many injured at Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash
Avenue at this time. Firing broke out near-by almost immediately.
_Q._: There were some shots fired at Thirty-fifth and State,
Captain, at eight that night, right after the volley was fired,
we have absolute evidence.
_Mullen_: Well, you may have, but I have not.
Yet Captain Mullen was in command of the police who killed two more men
and inflicted other wounds when the Negroes ran before the police advance.
_Militia._--The rapid growth of the riot both in violence and
territorially created such alarm among the authorities and the public
that the question of its control became a matter of paramount concern
to the community. Before twenty-four hours had elapsed requests were
made to the local authorities for the militia. The representations were
based on insufficiency of police forces and were strongly urged before
the chief of police.
Chief Garrity steadily refused to ask for troops, in spite of his
repeated statement that the police force was insufficient. He gave as
his reason the belief that inexperienced militiamen would add to the
deaths and disorders. Mayor Thompson supported the chief's refusal until
outside pressure compelled him to ask the governor for aid. On the other
hand the chief deputy of police was quoted by State's Attorney Hoyne
as having said at the outbreak of the riot that the police would not
be able to handle the situation, and that troops were needed. In this
he was supported by Mr. Hoyne. From observation of conditions on the
first three days of the riot, the chief of staff of the troops, Colonel
Ronayne, concluded that the police were insufficient in numbers, that no
improvement was apparent in the general situation, and that therefore
the troops were necessary. He saw no reason, however, for putting the
city under martial law. Other military men were of the same opinion.
During all of this time Governor Lowden kept in close touch with the
situation from his quarters at the Blackstone Hotel. When the riot
appeared to be subsiding he started to keep an appointment out of town
but, on hearing that there was a renewal of violence, returned to the city
on a special train. When the request was made for the active co-operation
of the troops he acted with promptness.
The troops themselves were clearly of high caliber. For the most part
they were in home service during the war and were older men than are
ordinarily found in militia organizations. They "usually came from
the higher type of business men, men of affairs, men that knew how to
think," as one of their commanding officers described them. They were
all American-born.
[Illustration: NEGROES UNDER PROTECTION OF POLICE AND MILITIA BUYING
PROVISIONS BROUGHT INTO THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD IN WAGONS]
[Illustration: THE MILITIA AND NEGROES ON FRIENDLY TERMS]
The militia discipline was of the best. Not a single case of breach of
discipline was reported to the regimental commanders. No guardhouse was
necessary during the riot, a remarkable commentary on troop conduct.
The militia had been given special drills in the suppression of riots
and insurrections for a year and a half previous to this occasion, and
were, in the estimation of their commanding officer, "probably better
prepared for riot drill than any troops ever put on duty in the state."
The activities of the militia did not begin as early as many citizens
wished. Though troops began to mobilize in the armories on Monday night,
July 28, they were not called to actual duty on the streets until
10:30 P.M., Wednesday, July 30. When called to active duty they were
distributed in the areas of conflict. Between 5,000 and 6,000 troops
were called out. This number was made up entirely of white troops from
the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Infantry, Illinois National Guard, and
from the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Reserve Militia regiments of
the militia. Colored troops who had composed the Eighth Regiment were
not reorganized at that time, and therefore none participated.
Distribution of troops was determined not by the militia command but
by the police, because the city was not under martial law, the civil
authority being merely insufficient, not broken. The Third Infantry
covered the territory from Thirty-first to Thirty-eighth streets and
from State to Halsted streets; Eleventh Infantry from Thirty-ninth to
Forty-seventh streets, and from State to Halsted streets; Tenth Infantry
from Forty-eighth to Fifty-fifth streets (later extended to Sixty-third
Street by details from the First Infantry), and from Cottage Grove to
Stewart avenues. The First, Fourth, and Ninth Infantry were held in
reserve. Detachments responded to calls from the chief of police in
districts outside these areas. Headquarters for the commanding general
and his chief of staff were in the Congress Hotel at the northern boundary
of the riot zone.
The orders under which the militia operated did not have the authority
of martial law. The purpose of the orders was to effect a thorough
co-operation with the police only, and not to take over any duties
other than the preservation of law and order. Except in this respect,
civilian routine remained undisturbed. The method of co-operation
put the commanding officer of a regiment in absolute control, within
the limits above described, in his district. The police reduced their
number to normal requirements by removing their reserves as soon as the
militia moved in. The patrolmen then went about on ordinary duties in
the districts. Persons arrested by the militia were turned over to the
police.
Responsibility for the preservation of law and order rested on the
regimental commanders. Careful instructions were given troops for
preventing violence: they were to act as soldiers in a gentlemanly
manner; they were furnished with arms to enable them to perform their
duties; they were to use the arms only when necessary; they were to use
bayonet and butt in preference to firing, but if the situation demanded
shooting, they were not to hesitate to deliver an effective fire. Above
all, the formation of mobs was to be prevented.
The manner in which the militia was received by various elements in the
communities where stationed is illuminating. Police officers were glad
that the troops came to relieve them. Two policemen on duty with a patrol
exclaimed, when they heard the militia had come in force, "Thank God!
We can't stand up under this much longer!" The police at Cottage Grove
Avenue said, "We are tickled to death to see you fellows come in; you
have never looked so good to us before!" A regimental commander said his
organization was "welcomed into the zone, of course, by everybody, and
I'd say especially by the colored people." A similar report came from
another regimental commander.
But there was some show of hostility to the troops. Hoodlums fired on
some detachments when they first came in, and Colonel Bolte reported a
hatred for the troops by "the Hamburg Athletic Club, the Ragen's, and
the Emeralds, and a whole bunch of them over there who didn't like to
be controlled!" Volunteer ex-service men with no legal status, but who
aided the police at the time, and deputy sheriffs with overseas training
ridiculed the militia with such taunts as, "Tin soldiers!" The effect of
this attitude on the populace necessitated the arrest of some disturbers
and the removal of unauthorized persons from the streets.
It is a singular fact that militia activities were principally against
gangs of hoodlums, and the majority of these gangs were composed of
white youths. Said one commander, "Rowdies of the white population tried
to get through the lines and had to be arrested." "At one time a heavy
truck or two loaded with white gangsters attempted to break through the
militia but was checked." Plenty of trouble "with the Ragen's and other
similar organizations" was reported by yet another commander.
The militia unquestionably prevented mob formations, raids, and "sniping."
They checked marauders still in search of prey. In many cases they
prevented the initial moves of lawlessness by taking stations at critical
points long before raiders arrived.
There was a marked contrast between the militia and the police. The
troops were under definite orders; commanders had absolute control of
their forces and knew at all times where and how many effectives were
available. Precision and promptness of movement was the rule. Reserves
were always at hand. Discipline was always good. Only one person, a
white man, was killed by the troops. Whatever other restraining causes
contributed, it is certain that the riot was not revived after the troops
were posted.
Most of the troops were withdrawn on August 8.
_Volunteers._--Many Negro ex-service men, formerly members of the old
Eighth Regiment (Negro) of the Illinois National Guard, donned their
uniforms, armed, and offered their services to the police and militia.
The militia on duty found that these Negro volunteers had no authority
or military status and consequently ordered them to disband, which they
did.
Before the troops were called out, however, a determined effort was
made by one Britton, white police reserve, to organize ex-soldiers for
volunteer service. He said as many as thirty-five joined him. They were
denied permits to carry weapons but are reported to have done so. It
was these men who used an automobile, driven with the mufflers open, to
clear the streets.
Evidence of the use of liquor was noticed among these men during their
active period. Some were involved in the killing of Samuel Banks, Negro;
some in the robbery of a restaurant and in misdeeds of a minor character.
Following the implication of individuals among them in these crimes,
numbers of the ex-soldiers were arrested by the police, but were released
by order of Chief Garrity on account of the assistance many of them had
rendered the department and because of representations of business men
who felt that the arrests were unjust.
_Deputy sheriffs._--In addition to police, militiamen, and volunteers,
another group composed of specially recruited deputy sheriffs, appeared
in the riot zone as preservers of the peace. They were sworn in by
Sheriff Peters, of Cook County, after citizens had appealed to him, he
said, to quell the riot. In regard to their formation, numbers, orders,
and duties, the sheriff had this to say:
I advertised for ex-service men to serve as deputy sheriffs. A
thousand or more applied. They were all men who had returned
from the war and were out of work. I hired 500 of them, kept
them in the army uniforms, and instructed them to shoot to
kill any disturbers or rioters. The presence of these men and
the show of authority thereby made was effective, and the riot
was quelled.
Fifteen thousand dollars was spent on this force.
It appears that these deputies came on the scene toward the end of the
riot week and at once fell into disfavor with the militia, whom they
ridiculed as "tin soldiers" in much the same manner as did the volunteers.
Two regimental commanders of militia said the special deputies "did
not behave in a very pleasant manner" and "in the majority of instances
were no good." The sheriff was notified to call them in and they soon
disappeared. There is no record of organized methods of procedure or of
their activities.
_Restoration of order._--Long before actual hostilities ceased, and even
before the arrival of the militia, various agencies, in addition to the
police, were at work trying to hold lawlessness in check and restore
order. Efforts of citizens of both races helped greatly in bringing
about peace. As long as the rioting was in progress thousands of Negroes
were cut off from their employment. The Stock Yards workers especially
were affected, since Negroes living east of Wentworth Avenue would have
been forced to go to work on foot through the district in which the
worst rioting occurred. The hostilities also cut off the food supply
in the main riot areas. The dealers in the "Black Belt," principally
Jewish merchants, became alarmed lest temporary lack of funds due to the
separation from work and wages should lead Negroes to loot their stores.
On August 1, the various packing companies made the unpaid wages of
Negro employees available for them by establishing pay stations at the
Chicago Urban League at 3032 Wabash Avenue, the Wabash Avenue Young Men's
Christian Association at 3763 Wabash Avenue, the South Side Community
Service House at 3201 South Wabash Avenue, and the Binga State Bank,
Thirty-eighth and State streets. Approximately 6,000 employees were paid
in this way. Banks within the district made small temporary loans to
stranded persons, sometimes without security. The cashier of the Franklin
State Bank at Thirty-fifth Street and Michigan Avenue said that he had
made loans of more than $200 to Negroes in sums of $2 and $3 on their
simple promise to pay, and that every dollar had been repaid.
All the local newspapers in their editorial columns took a vigorous
stand against disorder, urged the people to be calm and avoid crowds,
and were insistent that those responsible for rioting should be brought
to justice. The _Tribune_, for example, published editorials under the
following captions: "Regain Order and Keep It," "Sane Men and Rioters,"
"This Is No Holiday," "The Facts of the Riot," and "Penalties for
Rioters." All of these articles were calm appeals for tolerance, sanity,
and dispassionate inquiry for the facts. The _Evening American_, in an
editorial entitled "This Is Chicago's Crisis; Keep a Cool Head," said:
Chicago is facing its crisis today.
In one great section of the city law and order for the time
being seem to have been flung to the four winds. White men and
colored men are shooting one another down in the streets for
no earthly cause except that the color of their faces differs.
These mobs are not representative of whites or blacks. They
are the hoodlums of both races. But the law abiding whites
and blacks are innocent victims.
Hotheads and smoking gun barrels have almost wrested the rule
from the keepers of the peace.
It is worse than a calamity, this race rioting. It is a deadly,
ghastly scourge, a dire contagion that is sweeping through a
community for no reason except that mob violence is contagious.
It is up to the cool-headed men of Chicago to settle the great
difficulty. It is up to the serious-minded business men of the
city to get together and find a solution to a problem which
has become so serious.
To meet violence with violence is but making matters worse.
Gun toting at a time like this only adds fuel to the fire
already raging.
Reason is the solution. It is mightier than the six-gun. How it
is to be exerted is for the level-headed citizenry to decide,
and decide at once.
Hardly an hour passes that more names are not added to the
already long list of slain in the South Side rioting.
There is no time to be lost. Other matters must be put aside
for the moment and a solution reached for Chicago's greatest
problem.
[Illustration: NEGRO STOCK YARDS WORKERS CUT OFF FROM WORK RECEIVING
WAGES
Photograph taken at temporary pay station established at the Y.M.C.A.
by packing companies.]
[Illustration: BUYING ICE FROM FREIGHT CAR SWITCHED INTO NEGRO RESIDENCE
AREA]
Labor unions also took a hand in the efforts toward peace. Unionists
of both races were exhorted to co-operate in bringing about harmonious
relations, and meetings for this purpose were planned by trade-union
leaders, as described in the section of this report dealing with the
Negro in industry. Probably the most effective effort of union labor was
the following article in the _New Majority_, the organ of the Chicago
Federation of Labor, prominently displayed:
FOR WHITE UNION MEN TO READ
Let any white union worker who has ever been on strike where
gunmen or machine gun have been brought in and turned on him
and his fellows search his memory and recall how he felt. In
this critical moment let every union man remember the tactics
of the boss in a strike when he tries by shooting to terrorize
striking workers into violence to protect themselves.
Well, that is how the Negroes feel. They are panic-stricken
over the prospect of being killed.
A heavy responsibility rests on the white portion of the
community to stop assault on Negroes by white men. Violence
against them is not the way to solve the vexed race problem.
This responsibility rests particularly heavy upon the white
men and women of organized labor, not because they had anything
to do with starting the present trouble, but because of their
advantageous position to help end it. Right now it is going
to be decided whether the colored workers are to continue to
come into the labor movement or whether they are going to feel
that they have been abandoned by it and lose confidence in it.
It is a critical time for Chicago.
It is a critical time for organized labor.
All the influence of the unions should be exerted on the
community to protect colored fellow-workers from the unreasoning
frenzy of race prejudice. Indications of the past have been
that organized labor has gone further in eliminating race
hatred than any other class. It is up against the acid test
now to show whether this is so.
Various social agencies took steps to help in the emergency and restore
order. The American Red Cross has a branch at Thirty-fifth Street and
Michigan Avenue. As soon as the rioting became serious a special relief
headquarters was established here, and food was distributed to needy
families cut off from work. The Urban League was used as a headquarters
for the distribution of food.
The Urban League had for several years, through its employment bureau,
handled a large proportion of the city's Negro labor supply and was
conversant with difficulties likely to result from the rioting. It made
food surveys of the entire Negro area, printed and distributed thousands
of circulars and dodgers urging Negroes to stay off the streets, refrain
from dangerous discussions of the riot, and co-operate with the police in
every way to maintain order. The League sent telegrams to the governor
and mayor suggesting plans for curbing disorder, organized committees
of citizens to aid the authorities in restoring order, and served as a
bureau of information and medium of communication between the white and
Negro groups during the worst hostilities.
The Young Men's Christian Association was similarly active within the
area of its efforts. Religious bodies, ministers' associations, and
individual ministers exerted their influence over their respective
groups by advising the citizens to "keep cool," "hold their heads," and
generally to let the authorities settle the riot. Negro business men and
one Negro alderman sent wagons through the streets bearing large signs
which advised Negroes not to congregate on streets, engage in arguments,
or participate in any way in the disorders. The signs further stated
that people would be advised when it would be safe to return to work.
Other persons went about speaking on street corners urging co-operation
with the police and militia. Appeals by officials and leading citizens
were published in the white and Negro papers, carrying similar advice.
During the riot a committee of citizens representing forty-eight social,
civic, commercial, and professional organizations met at the Union League
Club and petitioned the governor to take steps to quiet the existing
disorder and appoint a commission to study the situation with a view to
preventing a repetition of it. As a result of this appeal followed by
similar urgings by many committees, the present Chicago Commission on
Race Relations was appointed and began its work.
_Aftermath of the riot._--After the restoration of order community
activities were superficially the same as before the riot, but under
the surface there remained a deepened bitterness of race feeling which
spread far beyond the time and territorial limits of the riot itself.
All the deep-seated causes of friction which had developed so largely
from the failure to work out an adjustment of the increased Negro
population due to the migration were and are still present, undiminished
in influence. Consciousness of racial difference and more or less
unconscious fear and distrust were increased and spread by the riot.
Among the whites this was evidenced by the general belief that Negroes
were gathering stores of arms and ammunition. Among the Negroes a growing
race solidarity has been marked. There is a greater lack of confidence
in the white man's law and machinery of protection. Continued bombings
of Negro houses in mixed areas and failure to apprehend the culprits no
doubt strengthen this attitude.
Reports of various Negro gatherings held soon after the riot show this
to be the case. Many Negroes frankly urged their brothers that they must
arm themselves and fight if attacked. At one meeting a Negro is reported
to have said:
The recent race riots have done at least one thing for the
colored race. In the past we Negroes have failed to appreciate
what solidarity means. We have, on the contrary, been much
divided. Since the riot we are getting together and devising
ways and means of protecting our interests. The recent race
riots have convinced us that we must take steps to protect
ourselves. Never again will we be found unprepared. It is
the duty of every man here to provide himself with guns and
ammunition. I, myself, have at least one gun and at least
enough ammunition to make it useful.
The riot furnished the gang and hoodlum element a chance to indulge
in lawlessness. Fear of death and injury may help to hold that element
in check. But it cannot be argued that fear of punishment is much of a
factor, for very few convictions of rioters were secured.
Quick justice would have been a salutary means of curbing tendencies
to riot, according to both the coroner's jury and the grand jury. The
coroner's jury said: "One remedy for race rioting is a speedy conviction
and punishment of those guilty, regardless of race or color, giving
all concerned a fair and impartial hearing." Its eighth recommendation
reads: "Above all, a strict enforcement of the law by public officials,
fair and impartial, will do more than any other agency in restoring
the good name of Chicago, and prevent rioting from any cause from again
disturbing the peace of our city."
The August, 1919, grand jury said: "This jury feels that in order to
allay further race prejudice and to prevent the re-enactment of shameful
crimes committed during the recent riots, efficient, prompt, and fearless
justice on the part of the judiciary be meted out to the guilty ones,
whether they be white or black."
In a fair consideration of whether swift and impartial justice was meted
out, it must be noted that it was extremely hard to secure evidence
sufficient for successful prosecution. Police attention upon arriving
at the scene of a clash was directed more to removing the injured than
apprehending the guilty. Where attempts were made to search out the
offenders, it was next to impossible to get results on account of the
keen race consciousness which made Negroes disclaim knowledge of Negro
culprits and white people deny seeing specific white men act aggressively.
Many of the crowds were neighborhood gatherings and leaders were often
the sons of neighbors.
In most of the riot cases brought before the state's attorney's office
the same difficulty was experienced. Whole blocks of residents were
subpoenaed and accurately described the assaults, but failed entirely to
recognize any of the assailants. The grand jury found the same obstacle.
The foreman, referring to the kind of testimony brought before that body
by Negroes on complaints against whites, said: "... they [the grand
jury] usually found it to be hearsay testimony. Some other individual
told them about So-and-So. That a crime had been committed there was no
question, but to get at the root of it was absolutely impossible."
In spite of these difficulties, those familiar with the riot situation
believe that more arrests of active rioters might have been made
and more convictions obtained. A study of the riot deaths shows that
justice failed to be as swift and sure as the coroner's and grand juries
recommended. The blame for this failure is variously placed on the police,
state's attorney, judge, or jury, according to the prejudice of the one
attempting to fix blame, or his connection with any of these agencies.
The fact remains that the punitive results of the legal processes were
too negligible to furnish a proper deterrent to future rioters.
Of the thirty-eight persons whose death constituted the riot's principal
toll--
Fifteen met death at the hands of mobs. The coroners' jury recommended
that the members of the unknown mobs be apprehended. None were ever found.
Six were killed under circumstances establishing no criminal
responsibility: three white men were killed by Negroes in self-defense,
and three Negroes were shot by policemen in the discharge of their duty.
Four Negroes lost their lives in the Angelus riot. The coroner made no
recommendations, and the cases were not carried farther.
Four cases--two Negro and two white--led to recommendations from
the coroner's jury for further investigation of certain persons, but
sufficient evidence was lacking for indictments.
Nine cases resulted in indictments, four of which led to convictions.
Thus in only four cases was criminal responsibility for death fixed and
punishment meted out to the guilty.
Indictments and convictions are divided according to the race of the
persons criminally involved as follows:
====================================================
| Negro | White
----------------+-------+---------+-------+---------
| Cases | Persons | Cases | Persons
+-------+---------+-------+---------
Indictments[10] | 6 | 17 | 3 | 4
Convictions | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2
----------------+-------+---------+-------+---------
There is evidence that the riot of 1919 aroused many citizens of both
races to a quickened sense of the suffering and disgrace which had come
and might come again to the community, and developed a determination to
prevent a recurrence of so disastrous an outbreak of race hatred. This
was manifest, as another section of this report shows, in the courage and
control which people of both races displayed on at least two occasions
in 1920 when confronted suddenly with events out of which serious riots
might easily have grown.
[Illustration: MILK WAS DISTRIBUTED FOR THE BABIES]
[Illustration: PROVISIONS WERE SUPPLIED BY THE RED CROSS TO HUNDREDS OF
NEGRO FAMILIES]
This examination of the facts of the riot reveals certain outstanding
features, as follows:
1. The riot violence was not continuous, hour by hour, but was
intermittent.
2. The greatest number of injuries occurred in the district west of
Wentworth Avenue, inclusive of Wentworth, and south of the Chicago
River to Fifty-fifth Street, or, broadly speaking, in the Stock Yards
district. The next greatest number occurred in the so-called "Black
Belt," Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth streets, inclusive, Wentworth to
the lake, exclusive of Wentworth; Thirty-ninth to Fifty-fifth streets,
inclusive, Clark Street to Michigan Avenue, exclusive of Michigan.
3. Organized raids occurred only after a period of sporadic clashes and
spontaneous mob outbreaks.
4. Main thoroughfares witnessed 76 per cent of the injuries on the South
Side. The streets which suffered most severely were State, Halsted,
Thirty-first, Thirty-fifth, and Forty-seventh. Transfer corners were
always centers of trouble.
5. Most of the rioting occurred after working hours. This was particularly
true after the street-car strike started.
6. Gangs, particularly among the young whites, formed definite nuclei
for crowd and mob leadership. "Athletic clubs" supplied the leaders of
many gangs.
7. Whites usually employed fists and clubs in their attacks upon Negroes;
Negroes used firearms and knives in their attacks.
8. Crowds and mobs engaged in rioting were usually composed of a small
nucleus of leaders and an acquiescing mass of spectators. The leaders
were young men, usually between sixteen and twenty-one. Dispersal was
most effectively accomplished by sudden, unexpected gun fire.
9. Rumor kept the crowds in an excited, potential mob state. The press
was responsible for wide dissemination of much of the inflammatory matter
in spoken rumors, though editorials calculated to allay race hatred and
help the forces of order were factors in the restoration of peace.
10. The police lacked sufficient forces for handling the riot; they were
hampered by the Negroes' distrust of them; routing orders and records
were not handled with proper care; certain officers were undoubtedly
unsuited to police or riot duty.
11. The personnel of the militia employed in this riot was of an unusually
high type. This unquestionably accounts for the confidence placed in
them by both races. Riot training, definite orders, and good staff work
contributed to their efficiency.
12. The machinery of justice was affected by prejudices and political
rivalries.
From their reviews of the evidence brought before them, the coroner's
jury and the grand jury presented analyses of the riot, and each made
recommendations of a remedial sort. These recommendations follow:
CORONER'S JURY RECOMMENDATIONS
1. We believe that a representative committee of white and
colored people, working together, could suggest and bring
about the necessary and advisable changes.
2. In specifically attacking the housing situation: The
correction of the evil by enlarging the living quarters and
placing them in a better sanitary state would in part solve
the difficulty. We believe voluntary segregation would follow
and to a considerable extent remove one cause of unrest.
This is a matter that might well be considered by the Real
Estate Board and by improvement clubs and organizations of
property owners in the South Division, and by the Health
Department.
3. In regard to the "athletic clubs": Properly governed and
controlled they should be encouraged and fostered and, when
necessary, disciplined.
4. Hoodlumism evokes this comment: Citizens of Chicago, make
your hoodlum element amenable to law, break up and destroy
hoodlumism as you would a pestilence. It is our belief that
this element can be brought under control of the law, and it
must be done if we are to remove the danger of rioting from any
cause. Vicious hoodlumism, entirely aside from race hatred,
was present in practically all of the thirty-eight killings,
known as race riots.
5. We earnestly urge that fathers and mothers teach their
children the lesson of remaining at home when rioting occurs,
and furthermore, they should be kept occupied, as idleness
and bad association often cause young people to become bad
men and women.
6. One remedy for race rioting is a speedy conviction and
punishment of those guilty, regardless of race or color, giving
all concerned a fair and impartial hearing.
7. Tolerance must be practiced between both white and colored in
the discussion of the race problem, practiced in our everyday
intercourse, in public conveyances, and in meetings of all
kinds.
8. Our attention was called strikingly to the fact that at the
time of race rioting the arrests made for rioting by the police
of colored rioters were far in excess of the arrests made of
white rioters. The failure of the police to arrest impartially
at the time of rioting, whether from insufficient effort or
otherwise, was a mistake and had a tendency to further incite
and aggravate the colored population.
9. In cases of murder it is of the utmost importance that
expert criminologists should arrive on the scene at the
earliest possible moment, and that a complete examination may
be made of the scene of the murder before the body is removed
or handled, and while the necessary evidence for conviction
may be obtained, which otherwise may be lost or destroyed. We
have found in the riot cases many instances where the removal
of bodies by inexperienced men, in some cases police officers,
destroyed valuable evidence.
We heartily concur with Coroner Hoffman as to the fact that
Chicago badly needs a permanent murder-investigation squad,
which the coroner planned and has so persistently advocated
in the past. We believe that this squad should be equipped
with motor vehicles and subject to call at any hour of the
day or night. This squad should consist of six or more trained
policemen, working in relays of eight hours, a photographer,
a finger-print expert, a coroner's physician and chemist, the
coroner or deputy coroner, and a state's attorney. In addition
thereto, two trained policemen from the police department
precinct wherein the murder occurred, and a representative
of the City News Bureau. This squad should be available for
immediate service, and it should be the duty of the police at
the scene of the murder to allow no one to handle the body or
enter premises where murder occurred until the arrival of the
squad.
10. The police force should be enlarged. It is too small to
cope with the needs of Chicago, and under the present living
conditions the policeman's pay is entirely inadequate and
should be substantially increased.
Superannuated and incapacitated members of the police force
should be retired under a proper and satisfactory pension
system.
There should be organization of the force for riot work, for
the purpose of controlling rioting in its incipient stages.
GRAND JURY RECOMMENDATIONS
1. It is reasonable to believe that the colored people, if
provided with proper housing facilities and an area sufficient
in extent, would voluntarily segregate themselves. The present
neighborhood known as the "Black Belt" could, by reasonable
public improvement, assisted by our leading public citizens,
be made a decent place to live in for a much larger population
than it now accommodates.... This movement should enlist the
financial and moral support of the industries employing large
numbers of the black race.
2. Facilities for bathing, playgrounds, police protection,
better housing and neighborhood conditions, are matters
deserving the earnest attention of the proper authorities.
3. The employment of the colored people is imperative to the
welfare of this community. Discriminating against the Negro,
or, in other words, failure to give him an opportunity to make
an honest livelihood after having induced him to migrate to
this section of the country, simply adds to the already far
too great number of hoodlums that infest our city.
4. This jury feels that in order to allay further race prejudice
and to prevent the re-enactment of shameful crimes committed
during the recent riots, efficient, prompt, and fearless
justice on the part of the law-enforcing officers, as well
as on the part of the judiciary, be meted out to the guilty
ones, whether they be white or black.
5. ... There is a lack of co-operation and harmony among the
agencies of law enforcement, which impairs their efficiency,
leads to miscarriages of justice, and wastes the public funds.
6. The parole law should be amended so that a criminal once
paroled and subsequently arrested may not a second time be
paroled.
7. The efficiency of the police force would be further greatly
increased by the co-operation of the judiciary in refusing to
grant wholesale continuances without carefully scrutinizing the
results thereof when members of the police force are required
to act as witnesses.
8. The police department is in need of a thorough
house-cleaning. Every officer, no matter what his position
is, who fails in his full duty should be dismissed. Grafters
and those who allow themselves to be dominated by political
influences, who are paid to protect the lives and property of
our citizens, should be dismissed and punished to the fullest
extent of the law.
9. It is the opinion of this jury that the police force is
also inadequate in numbers, and at least one thousand (1,000)
officers should be added to the existing force.
10. Policemen who have arrived at the age where their usefulness
is a matter of the past should be pensioned, notwithstanding
their present number, and notwithstanding the fact that the
pension fund is already taxed to its utmost. The needed funds
for this purpose should be provided.
11. ... payment of salaries to public officers commensurate
with the increased cost of living.
12. The authorities employed to enforce the law should
thoroughly investigate clubs and other organizations posing
as athletic and social clubs which really are organizations
of hoodlums and criminals formed for the purpose of furthering
the interest of local politics.
13. The jury also finds that vice of all kinds is rampant in
the "Black Belt," and a thorough cleaning up of that district is
absolutely essential to the peace and welfare of the community.
14. Political influence to a large extent is responsible for
the brazenness with which the Chicago bum, pickpocket, and gun
and hold-up man operates. It is also the opinion of the jury
that the indeterminate-sentence law frequently operates in a
miscarriage of justice, and it is our opinion that the court
should fix the sentence of offenders at the time of their
conviction.
15. Because of the large number of young boys involved in the
rioting, the jury recommends the resumption of the activities
of the Y.M.C.A., the Knights of Columbus, and Salvation Army,
as well as other similar organizations....
CHAPTER II
OTHER OUTBREAKS IN ILLINOIS
I. MINOR CLASHES IN AND NEAR CHICAGO
1. CLASHES IN CHICAGO PRECEDING THE RIOT OF 1919
The race riot of 1919 in Chicago was preceded by a long series of
more or less serious clashes between whites and Negroes. Some of these
are discussed in the section of this report dealing with contacts in
recreation. Others are here described to show the development of friction
and conflict leading up to the 1919 riot. Two brutal and unprovoked
murders of Negroes by gangs of white hoodlums preceded the riot by only
a few weeks.
In many of the antecedent clashes a conspicuous part was played by gangs
or clubs of white boys and young men. These operations frequently showed
organization, and the gangsters were often armed with brass knuckles,
clubs, and revolvers.
Some of the earlier clashes, however, did not have their origin in gang
activities. For instance, it may be that the resentment by whites of
the coming of Negroes into their neighborhood inspired the crowd of boys
between twelve and sixteen years of age who, in February, 1917, stoned
a four-flat building at 456 West Forty-sixth Street. Two Negro families
moved into the two second-floor flats of this building. The next afternoon
about 100 boys from nearby schools stoned the building. The two Negroes
attempted to remonstrate but were driven back. One of them reached the
office of the agent of the building, who notified the police. A patrol
wagon responded, but the boys had disappeared. After it had gone the
boys reappeared and renewed the stoning. Every window in the upper part
of the building was broken. On a second riot call Captain Caughlin and
Lieutenant James McGann and a squad of police rescued the Negroes, who
shortly afterward sought other quarters.
Detectives learned the identity of thirty of the boys, some of whom
confessed. With their parents they were compelled to appear at the Stock
Yards police station and pay for the damage inflicted.
The death of a white man, wrongly thought to have been murdered by
Negroes, led to rioting on the night of July 3, 1917, in which a party of
white men in an automobile fired upon a group of Negroes at Fifty-third
and Federal streets. Apparently no one was hit. Earlier in the evening
Charles A. Maronde, a saloon-keeper at 5161 South State Street, had been
found dead following an altercation with Negroes whose passage through
his premises had irritated him. Two shots were fired, but it was not
proved whether by Maronde or by the Negroes. A coroner's jury found that
he had died of heart disease.
In July and August, 1917, there were minor outbreaks of trouble between
Negroes and naval recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.
In some instances recruits and in others Negroes were reported to be
the aggressors.
When organized gangs took part in clashes the results were more serious.
A typical case started in the Kohler saloon at South State and Fifty-first
streets on May 27, 1919, two months before the riot.
A group of about ten white men entered the saloon together. When a Negro
came in and called for a drink, one of the whites knocked him down and
kicked him out of the front door. Arming himself with brickbats, the
Negro called on the whites to come out. The gang crossed to another
saloon on the opposite corner, and when they left it shortly afterward,
they carried revolvers. They then beat the Negro, cutting his head. Dr.
Homer Cooper, whose office is above the Kohler saloon, and one of his
patients, Michael Pantaliono, witnessed the affray.
Roscoe C. Johnston, a Negro plain-clothes man who had been on the police
force only four days, was told of the trouble by a citizen and found
the gang in the second saloon. As he approached, Mart. Flannigan drew
a revolver. Johnston called two plain-clothes men, who chanced to be
outside, to summon a patrol wagon, then followed the gang back to the
Kohler saloon and disarmed and arrested Flannigan. Johnston found three
automatic revolvers behind the bar in the saloon and arrested three more
of the men for carrying concealed weapons. Later six more of the men
were taken when the patrol wagon returned to Kohler's, including Patten,
the bartender.
The cases of these ten men were dismissed when they came to trial a
week later before Judge Grant; lack of evidence was the reason given.
Flannigan explained that he carried the gun to protect himself while
taking money to the bank. These young men were said by onlookers to be
members of "Ragen's Colts."
"Ragen's Colts" were frequently identified with lawlessness and specific
clashes before and during the riot. They are typical of the gangs and
"athletic clubs" which were responsible for much disorder, including
attacks upon Negroes. This organization was sponsored by Frank Ragen,
a politician whose record and methods have long offended the decent
citizenship of Chicago. As a member of the Board of Cook County
Commissioners, he allied himself with a spoils-seeking majority against
which two or three public-spirited members waged a courageous struggle.
His participation in the Board's deliberations was marked by such conduct
as the hurling of a large record book and inkwells at members who opposed
the "ring."
As part of his political following he gathered about him the young
hoodlums who make up an important element of the club on which he bestowed
his name. Ragen's influence has often been able to protect the "Colts"
from punishment for criminal acts, including the persecution of Negroes.
Other "athletic" and "social" clubs, though not so notorious, have been
of a like nature. Miss Mary McDowell, head resident of the University
of Chicago Social Settlement, told the Commission that she knew of five
such clubs composed of young men between seventeen and twenty-two:
Especially before the war they were always under obligation
to some politician for renting a store and paying the initial
expenses of their clubs. That's what started them, and it has
come to be quite the fashion to get an empty store with big
panes of glass on which they like to put their names. I am
speaking now of "back of the Yards" conditions.
The Ragen Club is mostly Irish-American. The others are from
the second generation of many nationalities. I don't think
they have deliberate criminal desires. I think they get into
these ways, and then they are used and exploited often by
politicians.... It is about the most dangerous thing that
we have in the city. Whether the police could not stop them
at the time of the riot on the Monday when they went down
Forty-seventh Street with firearms showing in their hands in
autos (a young man living with us can give you his affidavit
on it) and shouting as they went, "We'll get those niggers!" I
don't suppose anybody would want to say, but the fact remains
that nobody did stop them. They went across Halsted Street
towards State Street. Four policemen were there and they never
stopped them at all.
Miss Jane Addams, of Hull-House, also described to the Commission the
way in which the ward politicians are responsible for these clubs. She
said:
The politicians have had a new trick the last few years all
over the city. They pay rent, as Miss McDowell said, for clubs
of boys below the voting age. The politician used to take
care of the young voter and the boy nearly a voter, but now
he comes down to boys of thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and
begins to pay their rent and give them special privileges and
keeps the police off when they are gambling. The whole boy
problem is very much more mixed up with these--I won't call
them gangs, but they are clubs with more or less political
affiliations. They are not always loyal to their political
boss, but he expects them to be and they are, more or less.
The gangs and "athletic clubs" became more boldly active in the spring
of 1919. On the night of June 21, five weeks before the riot, there
were two wanton murders of Negroes by gangs of white hoodlums. One of
the Negroes was Sanford Harris, the other Joseph Robinson. There is
no evidence that either had been offensive in any way, yet they were
deliberately killed by gangs. There is evidence that the gangs in the
neighborhoods of these crimes had spread such fear among Negro residents
that murders of this kind were not unexpected.
Harris lived on Dearborn Street between Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh
streets. About 11:30 P.M. on June 21 he escorted from his home to a
street car at State and Fifty-seventh streets a woman friend who had
been calling on his wife. A Negro man, woman, and child alighted from
this car, and Harris walked behind them west on Fifty-seventh Street on
his way home. A number of white youths approached the man, woman, and
child, one of the gang saying, "Let's get that nigger," referring to the
man. Because of the child's presence they were allowed to pass unmolested.
Then the gang caught sight of Harris, who started to run across a vacant
lot toward his home. A shot was fired and Harris fell after going a short
distance. He died at the Cook County Hospital from peritonitis due to
the bullet wound.
A woman living near Fifty-seventh and Dearborn streets caught hold of
one of the gang who had a pistol in his hand. A plain-clothes policeman
appeared, and she called upon him to arrest the gangster who, she said,
had shot Harris. The detective merely asked how she was able to pick out
the man who had fired the shot. Apparently he ignored the fact that the
man held a revolver in his hand, nor does it appear that he even looked
to see whether it had been recently discharged.
A Mrs. T----, who lived above the saloon at the northwest corner of State
and Fifty-seventh streets, had witnessed the assault on Harris from her
back porch. When other plain-clothes men came upon the scene, she told
them that the gang had hidden under the viaduct on Fifty-seventh Street
west of Dearborn, but there were no arrests and apparently no attempts
to make any.
Earlier the same evening, an altercation had taken place between a number
of white boys from sixteen to twenty years of age and Thomas Johnson,
a Negro who, with a Mrs. Moss, conducted a store next to a saloon at
State and Fifty-seventh streets. The boys had been loafing outside the
door and using foul language. Johnson remonstrated with them and finally
got a stick and started after them. A number of other Negroes aided in
driving off the boys, who, as they left, threatened to "get a gang and
come back and get you." It is thought that this was the gang that killed
Harris.
Joseph Robinson, the other Negro killed that same night, had lived at
514 West Fifty-fourth Place. He was forty-seven years of age, a laborer
for the Union Coal Company, and had a wife and six children, the oldest
seventeen years of age. He was attacked by a gang at Fifty-fifth Street
and Princeton Avenue, apparently without provocation, and received knife
wounds in the back and left leg. He died from shock and hemorrhages on
June 23.
A man named Morden, who lived at 5713 Drexel Avenue, testified at the
Robinson inquest that he had met a gang of from fifteen to thirty men
at Fifty-fifth Street and Shields Avenue about a block from Princeton
Avenue. He said the gang was walking rapidly east and divided to pass
him. He was not far away when Robinson was attacked. The Negro had
evidently been coming in the opposite direction, west on Fifty-fifth
Street (Garfield Boulevard) and the assault began the instant he met
the gang. Morden heard a shot fired and saw Robinson stagger across
the street to a candy store. He saw several men rush forward and help
Robinson in the door as the gang scattered. Morden declared that several
of the gang carried clubs, and that he saw several of these during the
assault.
Nicholas Gianakas, who conducted the candy store at 5458 Princeton
Avenue, into which the wounded man had run, testified that he heard the
shot and saw people outside running in all directions. He saw Robinson
coming in the door with blood running off him. Presently Robinson got
up and went outside to sit on the curb. Gianakas called up the police
station for an ambulance. He saw no weapons in the hands of any of the
crowd outside and recognized none of them. He heard people saying that
a mob had come from "the Yards."
Peter Paul Byrne, a patrolman, testified that he had been called from
his beat at Fifty-fifth and State streets by a man in an automobile, who
drove him to the candy store. There he also telephoned for an ambulance,
then went out and rounded up "some kids" on suspicion. There was a big
crowd around, he said, men, women, and children.
One man testified at the inquest that an acquaintance spoke of having
seen a Greek run out of the candy store and hit Robinson on the head
with a hammer or hatchet. But this acquaintance, when called to testify,
denied the story.
Captain Caughlin, in charge of the police of that precinct, testified
that a number of men had been arrested on suspicion, but all of them
had been discharged because none of them knew anything about the matter.
People had been running in every direction, he said, there had been a good
deal of commotion, and he seemed to think it would have been virtually
impossible for the police to find any of the guilty persons.
C. L. McCutcheon, a Negro railway postal clerk, living at 517 West
Fifty-fourth Place, testified at the inquest that he had been threatened
by mobs, that a gang over on the boulevard had so terrorized the fifteen
or twenty "colored boys" in the neighborhood for a long time that none
of them dared to go about alone; that he himself had two boys who would
not go on Halsted Street for $10 a trip.
Following the killing of Harris and Robinson notices were posted along
Garfield Boulevard and some neighboring streets saying that the authors
of the notices would "get" all the "niggers" on July 4, 1919. These
notices also called for help from sympathizers. They predicted that
there would be a street-car strike on the appointed day, and that then
they expected to run all Negroes out of the district. Some witnesses
at the inquest stated that the Negroes of the district, who up to that
time had done nothing to protect themselves, were advised by friendly
whites to "prepare for the worst," as trouble could scarcely be avoided.
2. RACIAL OUTBREAK IN WAUKEGAN
May 31 and June 2, 1920
Waukegan, Illinois, thirty-six miles north of Chicago and near the Great
Lakes Naval Training Station of the United States Navy, was the scene
of two riotous attacks during the nights of May 31 and June 2, 1920,
on a lodging-house for Negroes, by bands of recruits on leave from the
Naval Training Station. No lives were lost, and only two persons were
hurt, neither of them seriously.
These outbursts scarcely classify as race riots. The chief motive seems
to have been a desire for excitement on the part of young and active
naval recruits.
The Sherman House was a dilapidated place on Genesee Street, the main
street of the town. It had been abandoned by whites and was run as a
lodging-house for thirty or thirty-five unmarried Negroes, chiefly factory
workers. On the first floor was a poolroom and soft-drink "parlor,"
which some of the naval recruits had patronized.
A mischievous Negro boy of ten years, George Taylor, was primarily
responsible for the outbreaks. On the afternoon of May 31 he and his
little sister had been throwing stones at passing automobiles in Sheridan
Road. One of these missiles broke the wind shield of an automobile driven
by Lieutenant A. F. Blazier, an officer at the Great Lakes Station,
who allowed this fact to become known to some of the recruits at the
station. Late that evening an unorganized mob of recruits assembled at
the Sherman House and threw stones, breaking nearly all the windows.
The mob was rushed by all the available police in Waukegan, who took
six prisoners. One reported incident was the chasing of a Negro by half
a dozen bluejackets and marines and his rescue by the police.
Provost guards from the Naval Station rounded up the rioters and took
them back to Great Lakes, thus ending the outbreak.
Two nights later, or June 2, 150 boys on leave from the Naval Training
Station renewed the attack. They gathered in a ravine near the hotel and
at ten o'clock they poured forth, led by a sailor carrying an American
flag. The police had been warned and were ready with reinforcements.
About seventy-five feet from the lodging-house the police ordered the
attackers to halt; no attention was paid to the command, and they fired
their riot guns in the air, wounding two marines who were some distance
away. Hand-to-hand fighting ensued, during which the police seized the
flag and arrested two marines. The Great Lakes boys gathered about the
police station and demanded their comrades.
Commander M. M. Frucht, executive officer of the Naval Station, who
had already been sent to Waukegan by Commandant Bassett, appeared at
the door and quieted the crowd with a promise that all concerned would
have a square deal. He also advised them to return at once to the Naval
Station.
The police released the two prisoners and gave back the flag. Two hundred
provost guards from the Naval Station arrived in motor trucks while the
crowd was at the police station.
Waukegan youths, evidently banded together for the purpose, searched the
house of Edward Dorsey, Negro, at 905 Market Street, on the night of
June 5. Ten of them, ranging from seventeen to twenty-two years, were
arrested. They said they had heard that five white persons were held
prisoners in Dorsey's home and that it was their intention to effect a
rescue. It was asserted that a number of provost guards accompanied the
crowd to the Dorsey house.
The general spirit of the people of Waukegan regarding Negroes may be
judged from a proclamation by Mayor J. F. Bidinger, in which he disclaimed
for the people of the city any intention to harass the Negro. Referring
to reports that some of the white people of the town had participated
in the disturbances, the mayor said: "In the first they did not, and
in the second in no great numbers. Hoodlums generally run true to form
and seldom overlook ready-made opportunity to manifest their peculiar
taste in deviltry. Hence the mixing of a few of them into these fracases
signifies nothing in so far as our general public is concerned."
Observers agreed with the mayor that the disturbances were not race
riots. In this connection his proclamation said:
Now it is a definitely ascertained fact that no adult Negro was
even remotely connected with the first stone-throwing; that
the colored people did not then retaliate and have not since
sought to retaliate in even the smallest measure; and that all
the episodes have consisted simply of an attack upon people
who have been as inoffensive throughout the entire affair as
they could well be. All of which I submit stamps this affair
as an example of disorderly conduct indeed, but not as a race
riot.
3. THE "ABYSSINIAN" AFFAIR
Sunday afternoon, June 20, 1920, a small group of Negroes styling
themselves "Abyssinians" ended a parade of their "order" in front of
a café at 209 East Thirty-fifth Street frequented by both whites and
Negroes. After a brief ceremony one of the leaders produced an American
flag and deliberately burned it. He then began to destroy a second flag
in the same manner. Two white policemen remonstrated with the men but
were intimidated by threats and a brandishing of revolvers. They left
immediately to notify police headquarters. Patrolman Owens, Negro,
arrived as a second flag was lighted. Rushing up to the leader who held
the burning flag in his hands and remonstrating with the group for their
disloyalty, he was immediately shot and wounded. Robert Lawson Rose, a
sailor on leave from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, protested
against the destruction of the flag and he too was shot; he staggered
into the doorway of a cigar store at 207 East Thirty-fifth Street. Some
of the parade leaders got rifles from a closed automobile which had
followed the parade and was standing near by, and fired into the cigar
store. One of these bullets killed Joseph Hoyt, a clerk in the store.
The sailor, Rose, also died from his wound. In all about twenty-five
shots were fired during the fracas, and several persons were injured.
The men who did the shooting escaped but were arrested later. Crowds
attracted by the demonstration quickly dispersed when the shooting began,
and from then on there was virtually no disorder except for attacks at a
railroad station on three Negro ministers who were returning to the city
and knew nothing of the shooting. Nine Negroes were arrested and held to
the grand jury. One of them was Grover Cleveland Redding, thirty-seven
or thirty-eight years of age, who was the "prophet" of the "Abyssinian"
order in Chicago. Redding, who had admitted the shooting of Rose, was
held with Oscar McGavick for murder, and the others as accessories after
the fact.[11]
The exact reason for this flag-burning has not been disclosed, although
it was apparently intended to symbolize the feeling of the "Abyssinian"
followers that it was time to forswear allegiance to the American
government and consider themselves under allegiance to the Abyssinian
government.
The guns used in the shooting were found by the police in a garage,
together with the regalia of the "Abyssinians," and much of their printed
matter and other effects.[12]
The "Abyssinian" affair might easily have been turned into another great
outbreak such as that of July, 1919. But the police, profiting by their
experience of the previous year, were vigilant. They had organized an
emergency force which was quickly mobilized and put in service in the
district. Moreover, there was evident such a feeling of restraint on
the part of both whites and Negroes that they combined to hunt down the
offenders.
Indicative of this spirit of co-operation to prevent racial conflict,
and helpful to it, was the careful handling of the matter by the press.
Practically every newspaper gave prominence to the way in which the two
races worked together to this end, and all dwelt on the courageous action
of the Negro policeman. A picture printed in the _Herald-Examiner_ the
following morning showed people of the two races fraternizing after the
shooting. The _Daily News_ in reporting the affray said that only the
co-operation of the white and Negro merchants of the district stopped the
disturbance; that rowdies in the neighborhood were ready for a fight,
but that "the better class of whites and Negroes worked directly with
the police to stop any such trouble as a recurrence of the rioting last
summer, which occurred in the same neighborhood."
To understand the "Abyssinian" affair an acquaintance with other
characters, certain group propaganda and movements, is necessary. The
"Back to Africa" movement, which lent fervor and enthusiasm to the
development of lawlessness and wanton killing by this group of unlettered
Negroes, has been in progress for more than two years. The Black Star
Steamship Line and the Universal Improvement Association, headed by a
Negro, Marcus Garvey, a British subject, were organized to establish
commercial relations with Africa. To arouse interest and secure funds
for the enterprise, sentiment has been created among Negroes for the
developing of sections of Africa where they may govern themselves and
build up their own institutions and commerce. The movement has gained
thousands of adherents; although the language of its appeals has
frequently been extreme, it has engaged in no dangerous or unpatriotic
activities. Its connection with the tragic incident lies in the
implication that "Back to Africa" means away from the land of unfair
treatment, and thus suggests contempt for the United States.
[Illustration: PROPAGANDA LITERATURE USED BY "ABYSSINIANS" IN
RECRUITING FOLLOWERS]
The "Star Order of Ethiopia and Ethiopian Missionaries to Abyssinia"
appears to be an illegitimate offspring of the Universal Improvement
Association and the Black Star Steamship Line. The visit of the Abyssinian
Mission to this country a year ago to renew a treaty between their country
and the United States probably served as an added suggestion. The leaders
of the movement were Redding, secretary of the order; Joseph Fernon,
called the "Great Abyssinian," and his son, "The Prince." Together with
a "Dr." R. D. Jonas, a white man who for several years has engaged in
sundry activities among Negroes, they organized this movement among a
class of Negroes too ignorant to exercise restraint over their racial
resentments.
Emotionalism was aroused and a semi-religious twist was given through
their appeals, which played more or less injudiciously on the desire of
Negroes to improve their economic status and to escape from what some
of them regard as oppression, either in this or in other countries. One
or two other similar organizations are making such an appeal, not only
to Negroes in this country, but to other dark-skinned races throughout
the world. It is sought to weld them all together into a great nation.
Glittering promises are set before the illiterate element of the Negro
race, which has responded sufficiently to fatten the purses of some, at
least, of the "prophets."
Redding was one of these "prophets." He was influenced by the white man,
"Dr." R. D. Jonas, and had purchased from him the robe or toga which he
wore during the parade of June 20. According to those who knew both men,
he had first "stolen Jonas' thunder" and the following out of which the
"Star Order of Ethiopia" had been manufactured. Having lost this, Jonas
was willing to sell the regalia.
Jonas, it appears, had been promoting one movement after another among
illiterate Negroes for six or seven years. At one time he conducted a
co-operative store on State Street, in which he sold shares. He was often
an orator at street gatherings and had been arrested a number of times.
When Alexander Dowie of Zion City died, Jonas is said to have attempted
to put himself into the vacant position. After the East St. Louis riots
he appeared in Chicago in an express wagon with signs indicating that
he was collecting funds for the Negroes of East St. Louis.
During the afternoon of the shooting, Jonas had been the principal speaker
at a small, orderly meeting of Negroes in Johnson's Hall, 3516 South
State Street, at which he had launched a campaign for Mayor Thompson as
a third-party candidate for president of the United States. The Mayor,
he said, was the only man who could be trusted "to carry out Roosevelt's
work" and put through the treaty with Abyssinia which expired in 1917.
He also referred to the efforts of the Jews to return to Palestine and
of the Irish to free themselves from British domination, and suggested
the desirability of a coalition of the Negro, Jewish, and Irish races.
Redding's hold on many of the Negroes was partly due to the fact that
he is a Negro and claims to be a native of Abyssinia, whereas Jonas is
a white man.
Quite evidently the "Back to Abyssinia" movement was used as a means
for exploiting credulous Negroes. For one dollar they could purchase
an Abyssinian flag, a small pamphlet containing a prophecy relating to
the return of the black-skinned people to Africa, a copy of a so-called
treaty between the United States and Abyssinia, and a picture of the
"Prince of the Abyssinians." Likewise when the propaganda had begun
to take root, one might sign a blank form which would commit him to
return to "my motherland of Ethiopia" in order that he might fill any
one of forty-four positions, such as electrical engineer, mechanical
draftsman, civil engineer, architect, chemist, sign-painter, cartoonist,
illustrator, traffic manager, teacher, auto-repairing, agriculture, and
poultry-raising. The blank itself was headed:
STAR ORDER OF ETHIOPIA
AND
THE ETHIOPIAN MISSIONARY TO ABYSSINIA
"A Prince shall come out of Egypt. Ethiopia shall soon stretch
out her hands to God."--Ps. 68:31.
This is to certify that my name was given to Elder Grover Redding,
Missionary to Abyssinia, to show to my brothers in my motherland that
I am with them, heart and soul.
Oh, Wonderful Land, God remembers Thee. He shall deliver Thee from under
the heels of Thy Oppressors. He remembers when Asia condemned Him, and
Europe put Him to death, and it was Africa who haven him until King
Herod was dead. It was Africa's son who helped Bare his Cross up to
Calvary. There was Africa's son the Apostle Phillip met, and he carried
the Gospel to Thy land. It was Thee whose Queen came to King Solomon to
prove him with hard questions. Ethiopia, Thou was first on Earth; Thou
shall be last, for Jehova has spoken it. (See Scrip: Zeph. 3:8, 9, 10;
Isa. 18 Chap.; Ps. 68:30, 31.)
STAR ORDER OF ETHIOPIA
AND
ETHIOPIAN MISSIONARY TO ABYSSINIA
This is to certify that I have signed my name as an Ethiopian in
America in sympathy with our motherland Ethiopia. I henceforth
denounce the name of Negro which was given me by another race.
At this point the applicant declares himself ready at any time needed
to fill any of the positions in a list below, which he has checked
and which he is qualified to fill. Blank space appears then for name,
address, present occupation, city, state, and county. At the bottom
appears the name of George Gabriel, described as "Abyssinian" linguist and
native of Abyssinia, together with that of Grover C. Redding, secretary
and missionary. The applicant is requested to mail the blank to 1812
Thirteenth Street, Washington, D.C., in care of Mrs. Dabney, or 115 W.
138th Street, New York City, care of Charles Manson, or Joseph Goldberg,
Jaffa, Palestine.
The immediate inspiration of the Abyssinians, as previously suggested,
was a visit to this country, more than a year before, of a delegation
from Abyssinia, which had concerned itself with a renewal of the old
treaty. It is pointed out that the chief reason why Negroes should be
interested in this treaty is that they might use it to overthrow "Jim
Crow" laws in certain states. Under this treaty Abyssinians had been
guaranteed the right to travel at will in the United States under the
protection of the federal government. Men like Redding had evidently
interpreted this to mean that under such a treaty the United States
would be bound to interfere in behalf of Abyssinians, if they should be
discriminated against under a "Jim Crow" law.
Redding, however, had some sort of biblical interpretation for his
movement. He maintained that his mission was indicated in the Bible. He
quoted from the Scriptures these words: "So shall the King of Assyria
lead away the Egyptian prisoners, the Ethiopian captives, young and old,
to the shame of Egypt." Asserting that the Ethiopians do not belong here,
and that they should be taken back to their own country, he construed a
biblical passage as meaning that the time of their bondage in a foreign
country should be the expiration of a 300-year period. This period,
he said, began in 1619, when Negroes were first taken for purposes of
slavery from Africa to America. He said that the burning of the flag
was the symbol indicated to him through these biblical passages, and
the sign that Abyssinians should no longer stay in this country.
As to the flag of Abyssinia, he had interpreted it thus: "The red means
the blood of Christ; the green, the grass on which he knelt for you
and me; the yellow for the clay. The Ethiopian flag is better known as
'Calvary's flag.'"
Jonas, from whom Redding had obtained these ideas of a Negro Utopia in
Africa, claimed that he had introduced to President Wilson the Abyssinian
delegation which had come to this country. He claimed the credit for
having taken Redding into his home and cared for him several years ago
at the behest of Mrs. Jonas, who had told him that he was a "smart young
fellow."
The ceremonies and manifestations of the "Abyssinians" were marked by
such fanaticism that responsible Negroes repudiated them and condemned
the leaders along with other criminals and exploiters of the ignorant
Negroes. The _Negro World_, organ of the Universal Improvement Association
and Black Star Line, carried the following article.
Appalled by the violence aroused on Sunday night, when an
American flag was burned and two men were killed by the
Abyssinian zealots, colored leaders of the Middle West have
begun a systematic campaign to eliminate white exploitation
among the Negroes and to bring about better racial co-operation.
The Chicago police announced today that all the men wanted in
the case, except two, are under arrest. They also promised that
the career of Grover Cleveland Redding, self-styled "Prince of
Abyssinia," and identified as a ringleader in the affair, will
enter a new phase tomorrow when the frock-coated suspect is
formally charged with murder, accessory to murder and rioting.
Oscar McGavick, one of the men sought, was arrested in
Pittsburgh today. "Bill" Briggs and Frank Heans were taken
into custody here. This leaves the police list with only two
names, the Fernons, father and son. "Dr." R. D. Jonas, known
on the South Side as a professional agitator, was released
today, no evidence having been found of his direct connection
with the shooting. Federal officials are investigating him.
According to the opinions of some of the leaders among
Chicago Negroes the "Abyssinian movement," from which Sunday
night's trouble indirectly resulted, is a legitimate and
valid enterprise. It is but one of the manifestations of that
bubbling activity which today characterizes the colored people
of America in their struggle for race progression.
The trouble lies, they claim, in a group of exploiters and
mountebanks, who, unauthorized by real leaders in the movement,
have seized upon it as a medium for personal gain. In Chicago
two of these were Jonas and Redding, it is claimed.
Pertinent on this point also is the stand taken by the _Chicago Defender_,
among the most influential of the Negro publications, concerning the
Abyssinians, which said editorially:
We warn all agitators, whether they be white or black, that
this paper, standing as it does for law and order, for justice
to all men, for that brotherhood without which no country
can long prosper, and for the better element of our twelve
millions, that we condemn their disloyalty and will do all in
our power to aid the constituted authorities in crushing them.
The burning of the American flag by a group of self-styled
Abyssinians at 35th St. and Indiana Avenue last Sunday evening,
as a means of showing their contempt for the United States,
and the resultant murders that followed in the wake of this
demonstration, instead of accomplishing the end desired by these
malcontents, acted as a boomerang. Every black face portrayed
indignation. Every black arm was lifted to strike a blow at
these law-breakers. This is our home, our country, our flag,
for whose honor and protection we will give our last drop of
blood. With all our shortcomings it can never truthfully be
said that we are disloyal or unpatriotic.
The real problem indicated by the "Abyssinian" affair is how to prevent
self-seekers from playing upon the superstitions and emotions of ignorant
Negroes, to the harm of others and the disturbance of the peace.
4. THE BARRETT MURDER
The murder of a white man, Thomas J. Barrett, by a Negro on September
20, 1920, is not particularly significant in itself. But it was committed
in the heart of the district where some of the worst rioting took place
in 1919, it created a situation which might easily have developed into
another serious riot, and it affords an example of prompt and effective
police handling.
[Illustration: AFTER THE "ABYSSINIAN MURDERS"
Photograph taken at Thirty-fifth Street and Indiana Avenue, where both
races co-operated to maintain order.]
Forty-seventh and Halsted streets is the intersection of two main
thoroughfares used by Negroes returning home from work in the Stock
Yards. The neighborhood is one where gangs of hoodlums have attacked
Negroes, and is thickly settled with people who have shown considerable
antagonism toward Negroes.
Barrett, who was a motorman on the Chicago surface lines, was killed
shortly after seven o'clock in the evening. He had had his shoes shined
at the stand of William Sianis, 4720 South Halsted Street, and had
purchased a newspaper at Halsted and Forty-seventh streets at about 7:00
P.M. About the same time three Negroes came out of the yards of Ready &
Callaghan on Halsted Street between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh, and
one of these Negroes went to the news stand seeking a newspaper in which
to roll up his overalls. In an encounter with these Negroes, Barrett
was fatally stabbed, dying before he reached a hospital. His head was
nearly severed from his body.
The Negroes, pursued by a rapidly increasing crowd of whites, ran north
nearly a block on Halsted Street. They turned into a vacant lot and went
through alleys until they emerged on Forty-fifth Street near Emerald
Avenue, evidently trying to work their way east to the main Negro
neighborhood. The crowd, however, had thickened so rapidly that they
took refuge in St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, just east of Lowe Avenue.
The mob was checked by the appearance and quieting remarks of Father
Thomas M. Burke, pastor of the church. He told them that the Negroes
had sought sanctuary, that there were laws to punish them, and that it
was not the province of a mob to wreak summary vengeance.
Meanwhile the police were already arriving. A patrol wagon had left
the Stock Yards station about seven o'clock, and followed the pursuing
crowd. Acting Lieutenant Bullard telephoned at once to Chief Garrity,
and extra police were quickly thrown into the neighborhood to control
the crowd.
Samuel C. Rank, lieutenant of police at the Thirteenth Precinct station,
Forty-seventh Place and Halsted Street, had received the alarm about
seven o'clock. He sent five detectives and followed shortly after to
the scene of the disturbance. He went into the church with Sergeant
Brown and three detectives. Lieutenant Rank forced a number of the mob
to leave the church and locked the doors. Captain Hogan, of the Tenth
Police Precinct, and Chief Garrity arrived about this time. The three
Negroes were taken through a rear entrance to a patrol wagon in the alley
and removed to the Hyde Park police station, a considerable distance away.
The crowd in front of the church had grown by this time to 3,000 or 4,000.
In order to quiet them they were again addressed by Father Burke, who
told them the Negroes had been removed from the church. They dispersed
about 10:30 P.M.
Profiting by the experience of 1919 Chief Garrity made prompt use of
prearranged plans to check all such disorders in their incipiency. He
immediately closed saloons and "clubs" in which young hoodlums were
accustomed to gather. He had the police patrol the streets by twos. He
drew a "dead line" to prevent Negroes from entering the district. With
his forces well organized and distributed, he set up headquarters at
the Stock Yards Precinct station and spent the night there, with Captain
Westbrook, commander of the second battalion of police, Captain Hogan,
and Lieutenant Ira McDonnell, of the Desplaines Street station. Street
cars and automobiles approaching the police "dead line" were stopped
and all Negro passengers warned off. Street gatherings were broken up
and people were searched for weapons. People were also kept moving in
the streets. This display of force undoubtedly had its quieting effect.
Nevertheless, a stray Negro was here and there attacked despite the
vigilance of the police.
During the five or six hours following the murder, racial street fights
occurred at Forty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue. A mob stormed a house
at 229 East Forty-fifth Street, attempted to burn it and did considerable
damage. Frank Gavin, a white man, 1509 Marquette Road, was shot in the
back during the mobbing of a Negro at Fifty-third Street and Racine
Avenue. Hoodlums pulled Negroes from street cars and beat them. A Negro
who had been dragged from a car at Thirty-ninth and Emerald Avenue, was
rescued by several white women after he had been severely beaten with
clubs. A man and a small boy, Negroes, were attacked by a gang at Fuller
Park, Forty-fifth Street and Shields Avenue. At Forty-seventh and Halsted
streets three Negroes were taken from a car and slugged, and two others
had a similar experience at Forty-seventh Street and Union Avenue. Frank
Stevens, a white man, 3738 Langley Avenue, was badly injured by a crowd
of Negroes at Thirty-ninth Street and Normal Avenue.
Precautions were continued next day for the protection of Negroes working
in the Stock Yards, and frequenting the district where the disorders had
occurred. This district ran as far west as Racine Avenue and as far east
as Prairie; as far north as Thirty-second Street and as far south as
Fifty-third Street. Negroes working at the Stock Yards had police escorts
to and from their work, and the car lines on Halsted and Forty-seventh
and Thirty-fifth streets, and on Racine Avenue, which are much used by
the Negroes, were especially guarded. Only one clash was recorded the
following day. By six o'clock Wednesday morning, thirty-seven hours
after the murder, the special police concentration was discontinued.
Nine persons in all were reported injured during this disturbance.
Nine men were arrested, including the three Negroes whom Barrett had
encountered. These three were: Samuel Hayes, forty years old, 519
East Thirty-fifth Street; Henry Snow, thirty-two years old, 517 East
Thirty-fifth Street; and Frank Gatewood, forty-three years old, 3446
Prairie Avenue.
Witnesses at the inquest differed as to whether there was any provocation
for the stabbing of Barrett. Only one of them testified that he heard
any of the four persons say anything. This was Carl Duwell, a printer,
466 West Twenty-fourth Place, who had just alighted from a Halsted Street
car. He said that Barrett was following the three colored men and seemed
to be threatening them, saying "You want to fight?" One of the Negroes
suddenly turned and struck at Barrett, slashing his throat. The Negroes
had been walking fast, with Barrett following a few feet behind them.
After he was struck, Barrett staggered a few feet to the curb and fell.
Barrett's widow said he was not in the habit of carrying weapons, but
it was current talk that he had been arrested a number of times for
street fights with Negroes. He had been a policeman in the service of
the South Park Commission, and was an ex-soldier. William Sianis, at
whose stand Barrett had his shoes shined just before the murder, said
that Barrett was apparently sober. Neighborhood gossip was to the effect
that Barrett had been drinking at McNally's saloon at Forty-seventh and
Halsted streets. Also Duwell's testimony indicated that Barrett had been
drinking.
According to Police Captain Hogan, when the Negroes were arrested in the
church, knives were found on the persons of two of them. One of these,
Sam Hayes, admitted to the police at that time that he had stabbed a
white man at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets. His story was that when
he asked the newsboy at the corner for a newspaper in which to wrap his
overalls, Barrett threatened him and then struck him, and the stabbing
followed.
During the night following the murder, Chief of Police Garrity issued a
statement which was published conspicuously in the morning newspapers, and
was most effectively worded to prevent misunderstanding of the incident
and avert use of it to inflame racial hostility. The statement began:
There has been no race riot. The killing at Forty-seventh and
Halsted streets was merely a street-corner fight. There was
grave danger that it would be followed by serious trouble.
Precautionary measures were taken at once to forestall the
recurrence of the riots, with the destruction of life and
property, of last summer.
This was followed by a detailed account of the special measures and
distribution of police to handle the situation.
II. THE SPRINGFIELD RIOT
August 14-15, 1908
The race riot at Springfield, Illinois, in August, 1908, which cost the
lives of two Negroes and four white men, is an outstanding example of the
racial bitterness and brutality that can be provoked by unsubstantiated
rumor or, as in this case, by deliberate falsehood. The two Negro victims
were innocent and unoffending. They were lynched under the shadow of
the capitol of Lincoln's state, within half a mile of the only home he
ever owned, and two miles from the monument which marks the grave of
the great emancipator.
A second fundamental factor in the Springfield riot situation was the
fertile field prepared by admittedly lax law enforcement and by tolerance
in the community of vicious conditions, the worst of which were permitted
to surround the Negro areas.
The spark which touched off the explosion was the old story of the
violation of a white woman by a Negro, and not until the damage had been
done was its falsity confessed by the woman who had told it.
On the night of Friday, August 14, 1908, according to her story, Mrs.
H----, wife of a street-railway conductor, was asleep in her room. She
was alone in the house. She declared that a Negro entered, dragged her
from her bed to the back yard, and there committed the crime. She said
she had attempted to scream but was choked by her assailant, who left
her lying unconscious in the garden.
A Negro, George Richardson, who had been at work on a neighboring lawn
the day before the attack, was accused by Mrs. H---- and was arrested
when he returned to work the next morning. He was placed in the county
jail and on August 19 he was indicted.
During inquiry by a special grand jury certain facts were disclosed
concerning Mrs. H--'s character, and she admitted that, though she had
been brutally beaten by a white man on the night indicated, Richardson
was not present and had no connection with the affair. She admitted that
she had not been raped. For reasons known only to herself, she wished
to keep the name of the real assailant a secret, and therefore she had
accused Richardson. She signed an affidavit exonerating him. Richardson
had no criminal record. He and two of his family were property owners
in Springfield.
While Richardson was in custody and before he was exonerated, feeling
against him was intensified because of the murder, three or four weeks
before, of Clergy A. Ballard, a white man, by Joe James, a Negro tramp,
who was a drug and whiskey addict. James had been taken from a freight
train and placed in jail for thirty days and had been released on the
night of the crime. He was charged with entering the room of Ballard's
daughter, Blanche, at night. Ballard grappled with him, but James broke
away and ran. In the struggle Ballard was mortally injured. James was
found asleep in a park near the Ballard home about noon the next day,
under the influence of a drug. He was tried and hanged, and his body
was taken back to Mississippi by his mother for interment. Rev. Mr.
Dawson, spiritual adviser of James, stated that James declared he had
no knowledge of the crime.
Springfield was, therefore, in a receptive mood when, on the morning
of Friday, August 15, it got the first rumors concerning the attack
on Mrs. H----. Richardson had been taken before her and partially
identified. In the afternoon, when it became known that he had been
arrested, crowds gathered about the jail. They seemed good-natured
rather than blood-thirsty. It was also known that James, accused of the
Ballard murder, occupied a cell in the jail. The sheriff preserved order
through the afternoon, no effort being made to disperse the crowd of
300 or 400 persons. About five o'clock Richardson and James were taken
in an automobile to Sherman, north of Springfield, and there they were
transferred by train to Bloomington.
About 7:00 P.M. leadership began to develop in the mob about the jail.
The leaders demanded the two Negroes, but were finally convinced by the
sheriff that they were not in the jail. Then the story spread that Harry
Loper, a restaurant keeper, had provided the automobile in which the men
had been removed. The crowd rushed to the restaurant five blocks away.
In response to the mob's hootings Loper appeared in the doorway with
a firearm in his hand. About 8:30 P.M. someone threw a brick through a
plate-glass window and in a few minutes the front of the restaurant had
been smashed out. Then followed the complete wrecking of the restaurant,
as well as the owner's automobile, which had been standing in front.
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.
From that point it went a block farther north to Madison Street and then
turned east and began firing all the shacks in which Negroes and whites
lived in that street.
Burton, the first victim of the mob's violence, was lynched 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 to a tree. This was at two o'clock in the morning.
About this time a company of militia arrived from Decatur, Illinois, and
proceeded through Madison Street to Twelfth Street, where the mob was
engaged in mutilating Burton's body, riddling it with bullets. The mob
was twice ordered to disperse, and the militia fired in the air twice.
The third time the troops fired into the ankles and legs of the mob. At
least two of the men in the mob were wounded and the mob quickly gave way.
By this time the Negroes were badly frightened and began leaving town.
Meanwhile, Governor Deneen had sent for more troops, including two
regiments from Chicago. Before the rioting ended 5,000 militiamen were
patrolling the streets of Springfield. On Saturday morning the militia
began to arrive in force, including detachments from Chicago. This was a
comparatively quiet day, but that night another Negro was lynched within
a block of the State House. The mob gathered on the Court House Square
and marched south on Fifth Street to Monroe, west on Monroe to Spring,
and south on Spring to Edwards. At the southeast corner of Spring and
Edwards streets a Negro named Donegan and his family had lived for many
years. Donegan was eighty-four years old and owned the half-block of
ground where he lived. He was found sleeping in his own yard and was
quickly strung up to a tree across the street. Then his throat was cut
and his body mutilated. The troops interfered at this point and cut down
the man, taking him in an ambulance to the hospital, where he died the
following morning. Donegan's only offense seems to have been that he had
had a white wife for more than thirty years. He bore a good reputation,
and the mob had found no reason for lynching him.
Abe Raymer, who was supposed to have been the leader of the mob, was
charged with the murder of Donegan, but was released.
As an example of the disorder which occurred Friday evening, it is
narrated that Eugene W. Chafin, Prohibition candidate for the presidency,
was delivering an address on the east side of the public square. A
Negro pursued by the mob ran toward the speaker's stand from Fifth and
Washington streets, where he had been pulled from a street car. Two
men helped him to the speaker's stand, while Chafin at the front of the
platform threatened to shoot into the crowd. Although he had no revolver
he made a motion toward his hip pocket. During the mêlée before gaining
the platform the Negro drew a knife from his pocket and slashed several
white men. When he had escaped from the rear of the platform, missiles
flew in the direction of Mr. Chafin, one of them hitting him on the head.
Four men were rounded up who had been blacked up to resemble Negroes and
had been firing on soldiers during the night in an effort to substantiate
the assertion that the Negroes did not welcome the soldiers.
Sunday was quiet. No effort was made to reorganize the mob. The whole
city was as if under martial law. The saloons were shut and every place
of business was closed at 9:00 P.M.
The people who took part in the mob violence had no grievances against
the Negroes. They were hoodlums and underworld folk. Many of the hoodlums,
according to one observer, were less than twenty years old.
During the rioting four white men were killed. They were: Louis Johnson,
of 1208 East Reynolds Street, whose body was found at the foot of the
stairs leading to the barroom in Loper's restaurant. He was shot through
the abdomen; John Colwell, of 1517 Matheny Street, who died at St. John's
Hospital; J. W. Scott, of 125 East Adams Street, who was shot in the
lungs; Frank Delmore, who was killed by a stray bullet.
Seventy-nine persons were injured. The property destroyed included Loper's
restaurant and automobile, Scott Burton's barber shop, the Delmonico
saloon, and one block of houses between Tenth and Eleventh streets,
which were burned, with all their contents. Scores of families were
left destitute. Many Negroes were severely beaten before they were able
to escape from the district. Numbers of these homeless colored people
swarmed to neighboring towns and to Chicago. Three thousand of them were
concentrated at Camp Lincoln, the National Guard camp grounds. Some of
the refugees were cared for at the arsenal.
Current comment concerning the riots suggested political corruption and
laxity of law enforcement as important underlying causes of the riots. An
assistant state's attorney in Springfield charged that saloons had long
been violating the law, and that the law was not generally enforced as
it ought to be. He cited these conditions as responsible in large measure
for the rioting and murders. Pastors in their sermons on the riot focused
attention on the way in which vicious elements were permitted to flout
the law with impunity. This comment came so generally and insistently
from those conversant with the situation that the _Chicago Daily News_
was led to remark editorially upon the responsibility of the public
authorities of Springfield. It said:
Vice and other forms of law breaking have been given wide
latitude here. The notoriety of Springfield's evil resorts
has been widespread.
A mob which murders, burns and loots, is a highly undesirable
substitute even for a complacent city administration. It is
a logical result, however, of long temporizing with vice and
harboring of the vicious. When a mob begins to shoot and hang,
to destroy and pillage, there is instant recognition on the
part of responsible persons of the beauty of law enforcement
and of general orderliness.
On the Sunday following the riots some Springfield saloon-keepers took
advantage of the fact that large crowds of sight-seers had come to
town to open their places, in violation of the order by Mayor Reece to
remain closed. Some of them were arrested for defiance of the mayor's
proclamation to remain closed until order had been restored.
By Monday or Tuesday order was pretty well restored in Springfield. Some
of the National Guard troops were kept on duty for several days. Almost
100 arrests were made, and a special grand jury returned more than fifty
indictments.
III. EAST ST. LOUIS RIOTS
May 28 and July 2, 1917
Following a period of bitter racial feeling, frequently marked by open
friction, a clash between whites and Negroes in East St. Louis, Illinois,
occurred on May 28, 1917, in which, following rumors that a white man
had been killed by Negroes, a number of Negroes were beaten by a mob
of white men. This outbreak was the forerunner of a much more serious
riot on July 2, in which at least thirty-nine Negroes and eight white
people were killed, much property was destroyed by fire, and the local
authorities proved so ineffective and demoralized that the state militia
was required to restore order. A Congressional Committee investigated
the facts of the riot and the underlying conditions, which included
industrial disturbances and shameful corruption in local government.[13]
The coroner of St. Clair County in which East St. Louis is situated, held
thirty-eight inquests, as a result of which it was found that twenty-six
of these deaths had been due to gun-shot wounds, four to drowning, four
to burns, two to fractured skulls, one to hemorrhage of the brain, and
one to pneumonia after a fracture of the thyroid cartilage. Hundreds
of persons were estimated to have been more or less seriously injured,
seventy having been treated in St. Mary's Hospital. It has been impossible
to get an accurate accounting of the deaths and injuries. One man who
had taken a deep interest in the situation estimated that from 200 to
300 Negroes were killed.
About 200 people were arrested. Some of these were released, some were
charged with rioting and conspiracy, and others with arson. Two white
women were tried for conspiracy and rioting, and fined $50.00. Ten Negroes
were convicted of rioting and murder. Indictments of 104 white persons
grew out of the immediate activities of the rioters. Three policemen
were among those indicted for murder in connection with firing upon
Negro bystanders. In this same group of assailants were seven soldiers
who were court-martialed. No finding in their cases has been announced.
Three white men were indicted for murder in connection with a raid upon
a street-car load of Negro passengers in which a father and son were
killed, a mother was wounded severely, and a little daughter escaped.
Twenty-six men, two of them Negroes, were indicted for arson.
The effort to bring the guilty to justice was commented upon and
summarized by this Congressional Committee as follows:
Assistant Attorney General Middlekauf had active charge of the
prosecutions growing out of the riot, and he showed neither
fear nor favor. Capable, determined, and courageous, he allowed
neither political influence nor personal appeals to swerve
him from the strict line of duty.
As a result of these prosecutions by the attorney general's
office 11 Negroes and 8 white men are in the State penitentiary,
2 additional white men have been sentenced to prison terms,
14 white men have been given jail sentences, 27 white men,
including the former night chief of police and three policemen,
have pleaded guilty to rioting and have been punished.
These convictions were obtained in the face of organized,
determined effort, backed with abundant funds, to head off the
prosecutions and convictions. In the case of Mayor Mollman
there seems to have been an open, paid advertising campaign
to slander and intimidate the attorney general.
The burned area of the city was on Fifth Street, Broadway, Walnut
Street, Eighth Street, Eleventh Street and Bond Avenue, as well as "the
Flats" on Seventh Street, between Division and Missouri avenues. This
latter area was that occupied by Negroes. There were 312 buildings and
forty-four railroad cars totally or partially destroyed, with a total
loss of $393,600.
The riots in East St. Louis may be traced, more or less directly, to a
number of causes, the influence of each being apparent.
Without doubt conditions resulting from the migration of a large number
of Negroes from the South, a movement which was more or less general at
that time, account in large measure for the riots, but also involved in
it all are the facts that there had been industrial friction, and that
the city was flagrantly misgoverned.
The Congressional Committee observed an effort to shift the blame from one
element to another. The labor interests sought to place responsibility for
the riots upon the employers, who, they said, had brought great numbers of
Negroes to East St. Louis in order that they might more readily dominate
the employment situation. The employers, on the other hand, thought the
blame rested upon the city and county administration because of laxity
in law enforcement, exploitation of Negroes for political purposes, and
all sorts of political corruption, including the "protection" of vice and
crime. The political ring sought to dodge responsibility by emphasizing
economic and industrial causes of the outbreak.
Whatever may have been the conditions resulting from the influx of
Negroes, they were undoubtedly actuated by a desire to improve their
condition. Some 10,000 or 12,000 Negroes had come to St. Clair County
from the South during the winter of 1916-17. During the year and a
half preceding the riot, the number of such migrants was estimated at
18,000, although it was reported that many had returned during the winter
of 1916-17, because of the unaccustomed cold climate. It is certain
that this influx severely taxed the housing accommodations of East St.
Louis, which were of the insanitary and inadequate nature that so often
characterizes urban districts in which the Negroes find that they must
live. The report of the Congressional Committee on this point says:
It is a lamentable fact that the employers of labor paid too
little heed to the comfort or welfare of their men. They saw
them crowded into wretched cabins without water or any of the
conveniences of life, their wives and children condemned to
live in the disreputable quarters of the town, and made no
effort to lift them out of the mire. The Negroes gravitated
to the insanitary sections, existed in the squalor of filthy
cabins and made no complaint, but the white workmen had a
higher outlook, and failure to provide them with better homes
added to their bitter dissatisfaction with the burdens placed
upon them by having to compete with black labor.
It is likewise in evidence that special inducements were offered to the
southern Negroes to come to East St. Louis, as well as to other industrial
centers in the North. Advertisements were placed in southern newspapers,
offering employment at wages far in excess of those paid in the South. Low
railroad rates were offered, and in some instances during this general
migration the railroads are said to have transported Negroes free in
order that they might be employed by the railroads. Failures of crops
in the South, floods and ill treatment of Negroes there, coupled with
the hope that they would find fairer treatment in the North, as well as
better wages and living conditions, were the direct causes of migration.
After this had become fairly general it was further stimulated by Negroes
who had come North, and who wrote home painting northern conditions in
glowing colors.
From the industrial point of view it should be noted that in the summer
of 1916 there had been a strike of 4,000 white men in the packing-plants
of East St. Louis. It was asserted that Negroes were used in these plants
as strike breakers. A report on the Negro migration by the United States
Department of Labor states that when the strike was ended Negroes were
still employed, and some of the white men lost their positions. It says
further: "The white leaders undoubtedly realized that the effectiveness
of striking was materially lessened by this importation of black workers."
Furthermore, it is stated in the report of the Congressional Committee
that the Aluminum Ore Company, during a strike, brought hundreds of
Negroes to the city as strike breakers in order to defeat organized
labor, "a precedent which aroused intense hatred and antagonism, and
caused countless tragedies as its aftermath. The feeling of resentment
grew with each succeeding day. 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."
In May, 1917, a strike followed demands which had been made upon
the Aluminum Ore Company by the "Aluminum Ore Employees' Protective
Association." These related to alleged injustices and discriminations
said to have been practiced against the employees. The company failed
to comply with these demands, and a thousand white workers struck.
Closely related to this situation was a notice sent to the delegates of
the Central Trades Labor Union by the secretary of the Union, dated May
23, which declared that the immigration of the southern Negro had reached
a point where "drastic action must be taken if we intend to work and to
live peaceably in this community." This notice declared that these men
were being used "to the detriment of our white citizens by some of the
capitalists and a few real estate owners." It called a meeting to present
to the mayor and city council a demand for action to "retard this growing
menace, and also devise a way to get rid of a certain portion of those
who are already here." The notice read further: "This is not a protest
against the Negro who has long been a resident of East St. Louis, and
is a law abiding citizen."
This meeting was held on May 28 in the auditorium of the city hall and
was attended not only by the labor men but also by a large number of
other persons. The Congressional Committee refers to one of the speakers
at this meeting as "an attorney of some ability and no character." The
report of the Committee says that he virtually advised the killing of
Negroes and burning of their homes. The report says further:
He was not authorized to speak for those who went there to
protest against the lawlessness which disgraced the city and
the presence of thousands of Negroes who it is claimed were
taking the places of the white workmen, but his inflammatory
speech caused many of his hearers to rush into the street and
to resort to acts of violence.... He was in full sympathy with
the action of the mob. They followed his advice and the scenes
of murder and arson that ensued were the logical result of
his utterances.
That night, May 28, following the meeting, a crowd of white people
assembled in front of 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. The trouble subsided, however. It is important
to note that from this time until the riot of July 1-2, no effort was
made to strengthen the police force nor were any other steps taken to
control the situation.
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.
On the night of July 1, Mayor Mollman telephoned to the Adjutant General
of Illinois saying that the police were no longer able to handle the
situation and requesting that the militia be sent. Both the police and
the militia are severely censured by the Congressional report for gross
failure to do their duty. The police, says the report, could have quelled
the riot instantly, but instead they either "fled into the safety of
cowardly seclusion or listlessly watched the depredations of the mob,
passively and in many instances actively sharing in the work."
In all, five companies of the Illinois National Guard were sent to East
St. Louis. Some of them arrived on the morning of July 2, the first at
8:40 A.M. These forces were in command of Colonel S. O. Tripp. Concerning
the conduct of the militia, the Congressional Committee reported in
strong terms, singling out Colonel Tripp for especial condemnation. It
said that he was a hindrance instead of a help to the troops; that "he
was ignorant of his duties, blind to his responsibilities and deaf to
every intelligent appeal that was made to him."
The troops, in the estimation of the Committee, were poorly officered and
in only a few cases did their duty. The report states that "they seemed
moved by the same spirit of indifference or cowardice that marked the
conduct of the police force. As a rule they fraternized with the mob,
joked with them and made no serious effort to restrain them."
Many instances are given of active participation and encouragement of
the mob in its murders, arson, and general destruction.
The only redeeming feature of the activities of the militia, according
to the Congressional Committee, was "the conduct, bravery, and skill
of the officer second in command, whose promptness and determination
prevented the mob from committing many more atrocities."
By eight o'clock of the evening of July 2 there were seventeen officers
and 270 men on duty, and by July 4 the force had increased to thirty-seven
officers and 1,411 men. On the evening of July 2 the fury of the mob
had spent itself, and the riot subsided.
The behavior of the troops was condemned not only by the Congressional
Committee but by citizens generally, and a special inquiry was made
into their conduct by the Military and Naval Department of the State of
Illinois. Witnesses to dereliction on duty on the part of the soldiers
were examined and commanding officers of troops were asked to testify and
explain specific acts of violence and neglect of duty. In all seventy-nine
persons were examined. Although the charges against the soldiers in
a large number of cases were serious and sufficient to warrant the
criticism which they received, identification of individuals guilty of
these acts was difficult. This probably accounts for the fact that only
seven court-martials resulted from the inquiry. The commanding officer,
though severely censured by the Congressional Committee, was exonerated
by this inquiry.
CHAPTER III
THE MIGRATION OF NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH
I. INTRODUCTION
During the period 1916-18 approximately a half-million Negroes suddenly
moved from southern to northern states. This movement, however, was not
without a precedent. A similar migration occurred in 1879, when Negroes
moved from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, and North
Carolina to Kansas. The origin of this earlier movement, its causes, and
manner resemble in many respects the one which has so recently attracted
public attention.
The migration of 1916-18 cannot be separated completely from the steady,
though inconspicuous, exodus from southern to northern states that has
been in progress since 1860, or, in fact, since the operation of the
"underground railway." In 1900 there were 911,025 Negroes living in
the North, 10.3 per cent of the total Negro population, which was then
8,883,994. Census figures for the period 1900-1910 show a net loss for
southern states east of the Mississippi of 595,703 Negroes. Of this number
366,880 are found in northern states. Reliable estimates for the last
decade place the increase of northern Negro population around 500,000.
The 1910-20 increase of the Negro population of Chicago was from 44,103
to 109,594, or 148.5 per cent, with a corresponding increase in the white
population of 21 per cent, including foreign immigration. According to
the Census Bureau method of estimating natural increase of population,
the Negro population of Chicago unaffected by the migration would be
58,056 in 1920, and the increase by migration alone would be 51,538.
The relative 1910-20 increases in white and Negro population in typical
industrial cities of the Middle West, given in Table II, illustrate the
effect of the migration of southern Negroes.
_The migration to Chicago._--Within a period of eighteen months in 1917-18
more than 50,000 Negroes came to Chicago according to an estimate based
on averages taken from actual count of daily arrivals. All of those
who came, however, did not stay. Chicago was a re-routing point, and
many immigrants went on to nearby cities and towns. During the heaviest
period, for example, a Detroit social agency reported that hundreds of
Negroes applying there for work stated that they were from Chicago. The
tendency appears to have been to reach those fields offering the highest
present wages and permanent prospects.
TABLE II
===============================================================
| Negroes | Percentage | Percentage
| | of Negro | of White
+--------+---------+ Increase, | Increase,
| 1910 | 1920 | 1910-20 | 1910-20
------------------+--------+---------+------------+------------
Cincinnati, Ohio | 19,639 | 29,636 | 50.9 | 8.0
Dayton, Ohio | 4,842 | 9,029 | 86.5 | 28.0
Toledo, Ohio | 1,877 | 5,690 | 203.1 | 42.5
Fort Wayne, Ind. | 572 | 1,476 | 158.0 | 34.3
Canton, Ohio | 291 | 1,349 | 363.6 | 71.7
Gary, Ind. | 383 | 5,299 | 1,283.6 | 205.1
Detroit, Mich. | 5,741 | 41,532 | 623.4 | 106.9
Chicago, Ill. | 44,103 | 109,594 | 148.5 | 21.0
------------------+--------+---------+------------+------------
II. CAUSES OF THE MIGRATION
A series of circumstances acting together in an unusual combination both
provoked and made possible the migration of Negroes from the South on
a large scale. The causes of the movement fall into definite divisions,
even as stated by the migrants themselves. For example, one of the most
frequent causes mentioned by southern Negroes for their change of home
is the treatment accorded them in the South. Yet this treatment of
which they complain has been practiced since their emancipation, and
fifty years afterward more than nine-tenths of the Negro population
of the United States still remained in the South. "Higher wages" was
also commonly stated as a cause of the movement, yet thousands came
to the North and to Chicago who in the South had been earning more in
their professions and even in skilled occupations than they expected to
receive in the North. These causes then divide into two main classes:
(1) economic causes, (2) sentimental causes. Each has a bearing on both
North and South. The following statements are based on reports prepared
by trustworthy agencies during the migration, on letters and statements
from migrants, Negroes and whites living in the South and the North,
and on family history obtained by the Commission's investigators.
I. ECONOMIC CAUSES OF THE MIGRATION
A. THE SOUTH
_Low wages._--Wages of Negroes in the South varied from 75 cents a day
on the farms to $1.75 a day in certain city jobs, in the period just
preceding 1914. The rise in living costs which followed the outbreak of
the war outstripped the rise in wages. In Alabama the price paid for day
labor in the twenty-one "black belt" counties averaged 50 and 60 cents
a day. It ranged from 40 cents, as a minimum, to 75 cents, and, in a
few instances, $1.00 was a maximum for able-bodied male farm hands.[14]
A Negro minister, writing in the _Montgomery_ (Alabama) _Advertiser_, said:
The Negro farm hand gets for his compensation hardly more than
the mule he plows; that is, his board and shelter. Some mules
fare better than Negroes. This, too, in spite of the fact that
the money received for farm products has advanced more than
100 per cent. The laborer has not shared correspondingly in
this advance.
High rents and low wages have driven the Negro off the farms.
They have no encouragement to work. Only here and there you
will find a tenant who is getting a square deal and the proper
encouragement.
A white man, writing in the same paper, said:
There is an article in today's _Advertiser_ headed "Exodus
of the Negroes to Be Probed." Why hunt for a cause when it's
plain as the noonday sun the Negro is leaving this country for
higher wages? He doesn't want to leave here but he knows if
he stays here he will starve. They have made no crops, they
have nothing to eat, no clothes, no shoes, and they can't
get any work to do, and they are leaving just as fast as they
can get away.... If the Negro race could get work at 50 cents
per day he would stay here. He don't want to go. He is easily
satisfied and will live on half rations and will never complain.
The _Atlanta Independent_, white, said:
If our white neighbors will treat the Negro kindly, recognizing
his rights as a man, advance his wages in proportion as the cost
of living advances, he will need no ordinance nor legislation
to keep the Negro here. The South is his natural home. He
prefers to be here, he loves its traditions, its ideals and
its people. But he cannot stay here and starve....
When meat was 15 cents a pound and flour $8 a barrel, the Negro
received from $4 to $8 a week. Now meat is 30 cents a pound
and flour $16 a barrel, and the Negro is receiving the same
wages. He cannot live on this and the white man cannot expect
him to live in the South and live on the starvation wages he
is paying him, when the fields and the factories in the North
are offering him living wages.
[Illustration: TYPICAL PLANTATION HOMES IN THE SOUTH OF MIGRANTS TO
CHICAGO]
_The boll weevil._--In 1915 and 1916 the boll weevil cotton pest so
ravaged sections of the South that thousands of farmers were almost
ruined. Cotton crops were lost, and the farmers were forced to change
from cotton to food products. The growing of cotton requires about
thirty times as many "hands" as food products. As a result many Negroes
were thrown out of employment. The damage wrought by the boll weevil
was augmented by destructive storms and floods, which not only affected
crops but made the living conditions of Negroes more miserable.
_Lack of capital._--The "credit system" is a very convenient and common
practice in many parts of the South. Money is borrowed for upkeep until
the selling season, when it is repaid in one lump sum. The succession
of short crops and the destruction due to the boll weevil and storms
occasioned heavy demands for capital to carry labor through the fall and
early winter until a new crop could be started. There was a shortage of
capital, and as a result there was little opportunity for work. During
this period many white persons migrated from sections of the South most
seriously affected.
_"Unsatisfactory" living conditions._--The plantation cabins and
segregated sections in cities where municipal laxity made home
surroundings undesirable have been stated as another contributing cause
of the movement.
_Lack of school facilities._--The desire to place their children in good
schools was a reason often given by migrants with families for leaving
the South. School facilities are described as lamentably poor even by
southern whites. Perhaps the most thorough statement of these conditions
is given in a _Study of Negro Education_ by Thomas Jesse Jones, made
under the direction of the federal Bureau of Education, and comparing
provisions for white and Negro children in fifteen southern states and
the District of Columbia. He states:
In the South they [Negroes] form 29.8 per cent of the total
population, the proportion in Mississippi and South Carolina
being over 55 per cent and ranging in the "black belt" counties
from 50 to 90 per cent of the total population. Almost 3,000,000
are engaged in agricultural pursuits. They form 40.4 per cent
of all persons engaged in these pursuits in the Southern States.
Though the United States census shows a decrease in illiteracy,
there are still about 2,225,000 Negroes illiterate in the
South, or over 33 per cent of the Negro population ten years
of age and over.
TABLE III
======================================================================
| White | Colored
---------------------------------------------+------------+-----------
Total population | 23,682,352 | 8,906,879
Population six to fourteen years of age | 4,889,762 | 2,023,108
Population six to fourteen[15] | 3,552,431 | 1,852,181
Teachers' salaries in public schools |$36,649,827 |$5,860,876
Teachers' salaries per child six to fourteen | $10.32 | $2.89
Per cent of illiteracy | 7.7 | 33.3
Per cent rural | 76.9 | 78.8
---------------------------------------------+------------+-----------
In the fifteen states and the District of Columbia for which salaries by
race could be obtained, the public school teachers received $42,510,431
in salaries. Of this sum $36,649,827 was for the teachers of 3,552,431
white children and $5,860,876 for teachers of 1,852,181 colored children.
On a per capita basis, this is $10.32 for each white child and $2.89
for each colored child.
TABLE IV
======================================================================
| | | Per | Per
| White | Negro | Capita | Capita
County Groups, Percentage of | School | School | for | for
Negroes in the Population | Population|Population| White | Negro
------------------------------+-----------+----------+--------+-------
Counties under 10 per cent | 974,289 | 45,039 | $ 7.96 | $7.23
Counties 10 to 25 per cent | 1,008,372 | 215,744 | 9.55 | 5.55
Counties 25 to 50 per cent | 1,132,999 | 709,259 | 11.11 | 3.19
Counties 50 to 75 per cent | 364,990 | 661,329 | 12.53 | .77
Counties 75 per cent and over | 40,003 | 207,900 | 22.22 | 1.78
------------------------------+-----------+----------+--------+-------
The supervisor of white elementary rural schools in one of the states
recently wrote concerning the Negro schools:
"I never visit one of these [Negro] schools without feeling that
we are wasting a large part of this money and are neglecting a
great opportunity. The Negro schoolhouses are miserable beyond
all description. They are usually without comfort, equipment,
proper lighting, or sanitation. Nearly all of the Negroes of
school age in the district are crowded into these miserable
structures during the short term which the school runs. Most
of the teachers are absolutely untrained and have been given
certificates by the county board, not because they have passed
the examination, but because it is necessary to have some kind
of a Negro teacher. Among the Negro rural schools which I have
visited, I have found only one in which the highest class knew
the multiplication table."
A state superintendent writes:
"There has never been any serious attempt in this state to
offer adequate educational facilities for the colored race. The
average length of the term for the state is only four months;
practically all of the schools are taught in dilapidated
churches, which, of course, are not equipped with suitable
desks, blackboards, and the other essentials of a school;
practically all of the teachers are incompetent, possessing
little or no education and having had no professional training
whatever, except a few weeks obtained in the summer schools;
the schools are generally overcrowded, some of them having as
many as 100 students to the teacher; no attempt is made to do
more than teach the children to read, write, and figure, and
these subjects are learned very imperfectly. There are six or
eight industrial supervisors financed in whole or in part by
the Jeanes Fund; most of these teachers are stimulating the
Negro schools to do very good work upon the practical things
of life. A few wide-awake Negro teachers not connected with
the Jeanes Fund are doing the same thing. It can probably be
truthfully said that the Negro schools are gradually improving,
but they are still just about as poor and inadequate as they
can be."
Commenting on the cause of the migration, the _Atlanta Constitution_,
a prominent southern white paper, says:
While mob violence and the falsehood which has been built
upon that foundation constitutes, perhaps, a strong factor
in the migration of the Negroes, there is scarcely a doubt
that the educational feature enters into it. Negroes induced
to go to the North undoubtedly believe they can secure better
educational facilities there for their children, whether they
really succeed in getting them or not.
Georgia, as well as other southern states, is undoubtedly
behind in the matter of Negro education, unfair in the matter
of facilities, in the quality of teachers and instructors, and
in the pay of those expected to impart proper instruction to
Negro children.
We have proceeded upon the theory that education would, in his
own mind, at least, carry the Negro beyond his sphere; that
it would give him higher ideas of himself and make of him a
poorer and less satisfactory workman. That is nonsense....
B. THE NORTH
_The cessation of immigration._--Prior to the war the yearly immigration
to the United States equaled approximately the total Negro population of
the North. Foreign labor filled the unskilled labor field, and Negroes
were held closely in domestic and personal-service work. The cessation of
immigration and the return of thousands of aliens to their mother-country,
together with the opening of new industries and the extension of old
ones, created a much greater demand for American labor. Employers looked
to the South for Negroes and advertised for them.
_High wages._--Wages for unskilled work in the North in 1916 and 1917
ranged from $3.00 to $8.00 a day. There were shorter hours of work and
opportunity for overtime and bonuses.
_Living conditions._--Houses available for Negroes in the North, though
by northern standards classed as unsanitary and unfit for habitation,
afforded greater comforts than the rude cabins of the plantation. For
those who had owned homes in the South there was the opportunity of
selling them and applying the money to payment for a good home in the
North.
_Identical school privileges._--Co-education of whites and Negroes in
northern schools made possible a higher grade of instruction for the
children of migrants.[16]
II. SENTIMENTAL CAUSES OF THE MIGRATION
The causes classed as sentimental include those which have reference to
the feelings of Negroes concerning their surroundings in the South and
their reactions to the social systems and practices of certain sections
of the South. Frequently these causes were given as the source of an
old discontent among Negroes concerning the South. Frequently they took
prominence over economic causes, and they were held for the most part
by a fairly high class of Negroes. These causes are in part as follows:
_Lack of protection from mob violence._--Between 1885 and 1918, 2,881
Negroes were lynched in the United States, more than 85 per cent of these
lynchings occurring in the South. In 1917, 2,500 Negroes were driven by
force out of Dawson and Forsythe counties, Georgia.[17]
The Chicago Urban League reported that numbers of migrants from towns
where lynchings had occurred registered for jobs in Chicago very shortly
after lynchings. Concerning mob violence and general insecurity both
whites and Negroes living in the South have had much to say. Their
statements at the time of the migration are here quoted.
From the _Atlanta Constitution_ (white), November 24, 1916:
Current dispatches from Albany, Georgia, in the center of the
section apparently most affected, and where efforts are being
made to stop the exodus by spreading correct information among
the Negroes, say:
The heaviest migration of Negroes has been from those counties
in which there have been the worst outbreaks against Negroes.
It is developed by investigation that where there have been
lynchings, the Negroes have been most eager to believe what
the emigration agents have told them of plots for the removal
or extermination of the race. Comparatively few Negroes have
left Dougherty County, which is considered significant in
view of the fact that this is one of the counties in southwest
Georgia in which a lynching has never occurred.
These statements are most significant. Mob law as we have
known in Georgia has furnished emigration agents with all the
leverage they want; it is a foundation upon which it is easy
to build with a well concocted lie or two, and they have not
been slow to take advantage of it.
This loss of her best labor is another penalty Georgia is
paying for her indifference and inactivity in suppressing mob
law.
From the _Southwestern Christian Advocate_ (Negro), April 26, 1917:
But why do they [the Negroes] go? We give a concrete answer:
some months ago Anthony Crawford, a highly respectable, honest
and industrious Negro, with a good farm and holdings estimated
to be worth $300,000, was lynched in Abbeville, South Carolina.
He was guilty of no crime. He would not be cheated out of his
cotton. That was insolence. He must be taught a lesson. When
the mob went for him he defended himself. They overpowered him
and brutally lynched him. This murder was without excuse and
was condemned in no uncertain words by the Governor, other
high officials and the press in general of South Carolina.
Officials pledged that the lynchers would be punished. The
case went to the grand jury. Mr. Crawford was lynched in the
daytime and dragged through the streets by unmasked men. The
names of the leaders were supposed to have been known, and
yet the grand jury, under oath, says that it could not find
sufficient evidence to warrant an indictment....
Is any one surprised that Negroes are leaving South Carolina
by the thousands? The wonder is that any of them remain.
They will suffer in the North. Some of them will die. But
Anthony Crawford did not get a chance to die in Abbeville,
South Carolina. He was shamefully murdered. Any place would
be paradise compared with some sections of the South where
the Negroes receive such maltreatment.
From the _Savannah_ (Georgia) _Morning News_ (white), January 3, 1917:
Another cause is the feeling of insecurity. The lack of legal
protection in the country is a constant nightmare to the colored
people who are trying to accumulate a comfortable little home
and farm. There is scarcely a Negro mother in the country who
does not live in dread and fear that her husband or son may
come in unfriendly contact with some white person as to bring
the lynchers or the arresting officers to her door which may
result in the wiping out of her entire family. It must be
acknowledged that this is a sad condition....
The Southern white man ought to be willing to give the Negro
a man's chance without regard to his race or color, give him
at least the same protection of law given to anyone else. If
he will not do this, the Negro must seek those North or West,
who will give him better wages and better treatment. I hope,
however, that this will not be necessary.
_Injustice in the courts._--An excerpt from one of the newspapers of
that period illustrates the basis of this cause:
While our very solvency is being sucked out from underneath
we go out about affairs as usual--our police officers raid
poolrooms for "loafing Negroes," bring in twelve, keep them
in the barracks all night, and next morning find that many
of them have steady, regular jobs, valuable assets to their
white employers, suddenly left and gone to Cleveland, "where
they don't arrest fifty niggers for what three of 'em done"
[_Montgomery_ (Alabama) _Advertiser_ (white), September 21,
1916].
_Inferior transportation facilities._--This refers to "Jim Crow cars,"
a partitioned section of one railway car, usually the baggage car, and
partitioned sections of railway waiting-rooms, poorly kept, bearing
signs, "For colored only." This dissatisfaction is expressed in part in
the following comment of a Negro presiding elder, writing in the _Macon_
(Georgia) _Ledger_, a white paper:
The petty offenses, which you mention, are far more numerous
than you are aware of, besides other unjust treatments enacted
daily on the streets, street cars and trains. Our women are
inhumanly treated by some conductors, both on the street
cars and trains. White men are often found in compartments
for Negroes smoking, and if anything is said against it they
who speak are insulted, or the car is purposely filled with
big puffs of smoke and the conductor's reply is, "He'll quit
to-rectly." Recently a white man entered a trailer for Negroes
with two little dogs. One of the dogs went between the seats
and crouched by a woman; she pushed him from her and the
white man took both dogs and set them aside her and she was
forced to ride with them. This is one of the many, many acts
of injustice which often result in a row for which the Negro
has to pay the penalty. These things are driving the Negro
from the South.
Other causes stated are (_a_) the deprivation of the right to vote,
(_b_) the "rough-handed" and unfair competition of "poor whites," (_c_)
persecution by petty officers of the law, and (_d_) the "persecution of
the Press."
III. BEGINNING AND SPREAD OF MIGRATION
The enormous proportions to which the exodus grew obscure its beginning.
Several experiments had been tried with southern labor in the Northeast,
particularly in the Connecticut tobacco fields and in Pennsylvania.
In Connecticut, Negro students from the southern schools had been
employed during summers with great success. Early in 1916, industries in
Pennsylvania imported many Negroes from Georgia and Florida. During July
one railroad company stated that it had brought to Pennsylvania more than
13,000 Negroes. They wrote back for their friends and families, and from
the points to which they had been brought they spread out into new and
"labor slack" territories. Once begun, this means of recruiting labor
was used by hard-pressed industries in other sections of the North. The
reports of high wages, of the unexpected welcome of the North, and of
unusually good treatment accorded Negroes spread throughout the South
from Georgia and Florida to Texas.
The stimuli of suggestion and hysteria gave the migration an almost
religious significance, and it became a mass movement. Letters, rumors,
Negro newspapers, gossip, and other forms of social control operated to
add volume and enthusiasm to the exodus. Songs and poems of the period
characterized the migration as the "Flight Out of Egypt," "Bound for
the Promised Land," "Going into Canaan," "The Escape from Slavery," etc.
The first movement was from Southeast to Northeast, following main lines
of transportation. Soon, however, it became known that the Middle West
was similarly in need of men. Many industries advertised for southern
Negroes in Negro papers. The federal Department of Labor for a period
was instrumental in transporting Negroes from the South to relieve the
labor shortage in other sections of the country, but discontinued such
efforts when southern congressmen pointed out that the South's labor
supply was being depleted. It was brought out in the East St. Louis riot
inquiry that plants there had advertised in Texas newspapers for Negro
laborers.
Chicago was the logical destination of Negroes from Mississippi, Arkansas,
Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, because of the more direct railway lines,
the way in which the city had become known in these sections through its
two great mail-order houses, the Stock Yards, and the packing-plants with
their numerous storage houses scattered in various towns and cities of
the South. It was rumored in these sections that the Stock Yards needed
50,000 men; it was said that temporary housing was being provided by
these hard-pressed industries. Many Negroes came to the city on free
transportation, but by far the greater numbers paid their own fare.
Club rates offered by the railroads brought the fare within reach of
many who ordinarily could not have brought their families or even come
themselves. The organization into clubs composed of from ten to fifty
persons from the same community had the effect, on the one hand, of
adding the stimulus of intimate persuasion to the movement, and, on the
other hand, of concentrating solid groups in congested spots in Chicago.
A study of certain Negro periodicals shows a powerful influence on
southern Negroes already in a state of unsettlement over news of the
"opening up of the North."
The _Chicago Defender_ became a "herald of glad tidings" to southern
Negroes. Several cities attempted to prevent its circulation among their
Negro population and confiscated the street- and store-sales supplies as
fast as they came. Negroes then relied upon subscription copies delivered
through the mails. There are reports of the clandestine circulation
of copies of the paper in bundles of merchandise. A correspondent of
the _Defender_ wrote: "White people are paying more attention to the
race in order to keep them in the South, but the _Chicago Defender_ has
emblazoned upon their minds 'Bound for the Promised Land.'"
In Gulfport, Mississippi, it was stated, a man was regarded "intelligent"
if he read the _Defender_, and in Laurel, Mississippi, it was said that
old men who had never known how to read, bought the paper simply because
it was regarded as precious.[18]
Articles and headlines carrying this special appeal which appeared in
the _Defender_ are quoted:
WHY SHOULD THE NEGRO STAY IN THE SOUTH?
WEST INDIANS LIVE NORTH
It is true the South is nice and warm, and may I add, so is
China, and we find Chinamen living in the North, East, and
West. So is Japan, but the Japanese are living everywhere.
SCHOOL BOARDS BAD
While in Arkansas a member of the school board in one of the
cities of that state (and it is said it is the rule throughout
the South that a Race woman teacher to hold her school must be
on friendly terms with some one of them) lived openly with a
Race woman, and the entire Race, men and women, were afraid to
protest or stop their children from going to school, because
this school board member would get up a mob and run them out
of the state. They must stomach this treatment.
FROZEN DEATH BETTER
To die from the bite of frost is far more glorious than that
of the mob. I beg of you, my brothers, to leave that benighted
land. You are free men. Show the world that you will not let
false leaders lead you. Your neck has been in the yoke. Will
you continue to keep it there because some "white folks Nigger"
wants you to? Leave to all quarters of the globe. Get out of
the South. Your being there in the numbers you are gives the
southern politician too strong a hold on your progress.
TURN DEAF EAR
Turn a deaf ear to everybody. You see they are not lifting
their laws to help you, are they? Have they stopped their Jim
Crow cars? Can you buy a Pullman sleeper where you wish? Will
they give you a square deal in court yet? When a girl is sent
to prison, she becomes the mistress of the guards and others
in authority, and women prisoners are put on the streets to
work, something they don't do to a white woman. And your leaders
will tell you the South is the best place for you. Turn a deaf
ear to the scoundrel, and let him stay. Above all, see to it
that that jumping-jack preacher is left at the South, for he
means you no good here at the North.
GOOD-BYE, DIXIE LAND
_One of our dear southern friends_ informs an anxious public
that "the Negroes of the North seem to fit very well into their
occupations and locations, but the southern Negro will never
make a success in the North. He doesn't understand the methods
there, the people and the work are wholly unsuited to him.
Give him a home in the South where climatic conditions blend
into his peculiar physical makeup, where he is understood and
can understand, and let him have a master and you have given
him the ideal home." There is the solution of the problem in
a nutshell. This dear friend thinks that under a master back
of the sugar cane and cotton fields, we might really be worth
something to the world. How thoughtful to point out the way
for our stumbling feet.
Those who live in the North presumably always lived there, and,
like Topsy, they "just growed" in that section, so naturally
fit well into their occupations. There is such a difference
between the white man and the black man of the South; the
former can travel to the North Pole if he chooses without
being affected, the latter, "they say" will die of a million
dread diseases if he dares to leave Dixie land, and yet the
thousands who have migrated North in the past year look as
well and hearty as they ever did. Something is wrong in our
friend's calculations.
We hear again and again of our "peculiar physical makeup." Is
there something radically different about us that is not found
in other people? Why the constant fear of Negro supremacy if
the white brain is more active and intelligent than the brain
found in the colored man? A good lawyer never fears a poor one
in a court battle--he knows that he has him bested from the
start. The fact that we have made good wherever and whenever
given an opportunity, we admit, is a little disquieting, but
it is a way we have, and is hard to get out of. Once upon a
time we permitted other people to think for us--today we are
thinking and acting for ourselves, with the result that our
"friends" are getting alarmed at our progress. We'd like to
oblige these unselfish (?) souls and remain slaves in the
South, but to other sections of the country we have said, as
the song goes: "I hear you calling me," and boarded the train
singing, "Good-by to Dixie-Land."
News articles in the _Defender_ kept alive the enthusiasm and fervor of
the exodus:
LEAVING FOR THE NORTH
Tampa, Fla., Jan. 19.--J. T. King, supposed to be a race leader,
is using his wits to get on the good side of the white people
by calling a meeting to urge our people not to migrate North.
King has been termed a "good nigger" by his pernicious activity
on the emigration question. Reports have been received here
that all who have gone North are at work and pleased with the
splendid conditions in the North. It is known here that in the
North there is a scarcity of labor, mills and factories are
open to them. People are not paying any attention to King and
are packing and ready to travel North to the "promised land."
DETERMINED TO GO NORTH
Jackson, Miss., March 23.--Although the white police and sheriff
and others are using every effort to intimidate the citizens
from going North, even Dr. Redmond's speech was circulated
around, this has not deterred our people from leaving. Many
have walked miles to take the train for the North. There is
a determination to leave and there is no hand save death to
keep them from it.
THOMAS LIKES THE NORTH
J. H. Thomas, Birmingham, Ala., Brownsville Colony, has been
here several weeks and is very much pleased with the North.
He is working at the Pullman shops, making twice as much as
he did at home. Mr. Thomas says the "exodus" will be greater
later on in the year, that he did not find four feet of snow
or would freeze to death. He lives at 346 East Thirty-fifth St.
LEAVING FOR THE EAST
Huntsville, Ala., Jan. 19.--Fifteen families, all members
of the Race, left here today for Pittsburgh, Pa., where they
will take positions as butlers, and maids, getting sixty to
seventy-five dollars per month, against fifteen and twenty
paid here. Most of them claim that they have letters from
their friends who went early and made good, saying that there
was plenty of work, and this field of labor is short, owing to
the vast amount of men having gone to Europe and not returned.
THEY'RE LEAVING MEMPHIS IN DROVES
Some are coming on the passenger,
Some are coming on the freight,
Others will be found walking,
For none have time to wait.
Other headlines read: "Thousands Leave Memphis"; "Still Planning to Come
North"; "Northbound Their Cry." These articles are especially interesting
for the impelling power of the suggestion of a great mass movement.
_Denunciation of the South._--The idea that the South is a bad place,
unfit for the habitation of Negroes, was "played up" and emphasized by
the _Defender_. Conditions most distasteful to Negroes were given first
prominence. In this it had a clear field, for the local southern Negro
papers dared not make such unrestrained utterances. Articles of this
type appeared:
EXODUS TO START
Forest City, Ark., Feb. 16.--David B. Smith (white) is on
trial for life for the brutal murder of a member of the Race,
W. H. Winford, who refused to be whipped like others. This
white man had the habit of making his "slave" submit to this
sort of punishment and when Winford refused to stand for it,
he was whipped to death with a "black snake" whip. The trial
of Smith is attracting very little attention. As a matter of
fact, the white people here think nothing of it as the dead
man is a "nigger."
This very act, coupled with other recent outrages that have
been heaped upon our people, are causing thousands to leave,
not waiting for the great spring movement in May.
The _Defender_ had a favorite columnist, W. Allison Sweeney. His specialty
was "breaking southerners and 'white folks' niggers on the wheel." One
of his articles in the issue of June 23, 1917, was captioned: "A Chicago
'Nigger' Preacher, a 'Feeder,' of The 'Little Hells,' Springs up to
Hinder Our Brethren Coming North."
A passage from this article will illustrate the temper of his writings.
Aroused by what he calls a "white folks nigger," he remarks:
Such a creature has recently been called to my attention, and
for the same reason that an unchecked rat has been known to
jeopardize the life of a great ship, a mouse's nibble of a
match to set a mansion aflame, I've concluded to carve a
"Slice of liver or two"
from that bellowing ass, who, at this very moment no doubt,
somewhere in the South, is going up and down the land, telling
the natives _why_ they should be content, as the _Tribune_,
puts it, to become "Russianized," to remain in that land--to
them--of _blight_; of _murdered_ kin, _deflowered_ womanhood,
_wrecked_ homes, _strangled_ ambitions, _make-believe_ schools,
_roving_ "gun parties," _midnight arrests_, _rifled_ virginity,
_trumped up_ charges, _lonely_ graves, where owls hoot, and
where friends dare not go! Do you wonder at the thousands
leaving the land where every foot of ground marks a tragedy,
leaving the grave of their fathers and all that is dear, to
seek their fortunes in the North? And you who say that their
going is to seek better wages are insulting truth, dethroning
reason, and consoling yourself with a groundless allegation.
_Retaliation._--In answer to the warnings of the South against the rigors
of the northern winters, articles of this nature appeared:
FREEZING TO DEATH IN THE SOUTH
So much has been said through the white papers in the South
about the members of the race freezing to death in the North.
They freeze to death down South when they don't take care of
themselves. There is no reason for any human staying in the
Southland on this bugaboo handed out by the white press, when
the following clippings are taken from the same journals:
AGED NEGRO FROZEN TO DEATH
Albany, Ga., Feb. 8.--Yesterday the dead body of Peter Crowder,
an old Negro, was found in an out-of-the-way spot where he
had been frozen to death during the recent cold snap [from
the _Macon_ (Georgia) _Telegraph_].
DIES FROM EXPOSURE
Spartanburg, Feb. 6.--Marshall Jackson, a Negro man, who lived
on the farm of J. T. Harris near Campobello Sunday night froze
to death [from the _South Carolina State_].
NEGRO FROZEN TO DEATH IN FIRELESS GRETNA HUT
Coldest weather of the last four years claimed a victim Friday
night, when Archie Williams, a Negro, was frozen to death in
his bed in a little hut in the outskirts of Gretna [from the
_New Orleans Item_, dated Feb. 4th].
NEGRO WOMAN FROZEN TO DEATH MONDAY
Harriet Tolbert, an aged Negro woman, was frozen to death in
her home at 18 Garibaldi Street early Monday morning during
the severe cold [Atlanta (Ga.) _Constitution_, dated Feb. 6].
If you can freeze to death in the North and be free, why
freeze to death in the South and be a slave, where your mother,
sister, and daughter are raped and burned at stake, where your
father, brother and son are treated with contempt and hung
to a pole, riddled with bullets at the least mention that he
does not like the way he has been treated?
Come North then, all of you folks, both good and bad. If you
don't behave yourself up here, the jails will certainly make
you wish you had. For the hard working man there is plenty of
work--if you really want it. The _Defender_ says come.
Still in another mood:
DIED, BUT TOOK ONE WITH HIM
Alexandria, La., Sept. 29.--Joe Pace (white) a southern workman,
who had a way of bulldozing members of the Race employed by
the Elizabeth Lumber Company, met his match here last Saturday
night.
Pace got into one of his moods and kicked a fellow named
Israel. Israel determined to get justice some way and knowing
that the courts were only for white men in this part of the
country, he took a shot at Pace and his aim was good.
Another type of article appeared. In keeping with the concept of the
South as a bad place for Negroes, their escape from it under exceptional
circumstances was given unique attention. Thus, there were reported the
following kind of cases.
SAVED FROM THE SOUTH
Lawyers Save Another from Being Taken South
SAVED FROM THE SOUTH
Charged with Murder, but His Release Is Secured by Habeas Corpus
NEW SCHEME TO KEEP RACE MEN IN DIXIE LAND
A piece of poetry which received widespread popularity appeared in the
_Defender_ under the title "Bound for the Promise Land." Other published
poems expressing the same sentiment were: "Farewell, We're Good and
Gone"; "Northward Bound"; "The Land of Hope."
Five young men were arraigned before Judge E. Schwartz for
reading poetry. The police claim they were inciting riot in
the city and over Georgia. Two of the men were sent to Brown
farm for thirty days, a place not fit for human beings. Tom
Amaca was arrested for having "Bound for the Promise Land,"
a poem published in the _Defender_ several months ago. J. N.
Chislom and A. A. Walker were arrested because they were said
to be the instigators of the movement of the race to the North,
where work is plentiful and better treatment is given.
_The "Great Northern Drive."_--The setting of definite dates was another
stimulus. The "Great Northern Drive" was scheduled to begin May 15,
1917. This date, or the week following, corresponds with the date of
the heaviest arrivals in the North, the period of greatest temporary
congestion and awakening of the North to the presence of the new arrivals.
Letters to the _Chicago Defender_ and to social agencies in the North
informed them of many Negroes who were preparing to come in the "Great
Drive." The following letter tells its own story:
April 24th, 1917
_Mr. R. S. Abbot_
SIR: I have been reading the _Defender_ for one year or more
and last February I read about the Great Northern Drive to
take place May 15th on Thursday and now I can hear so many
people speaking of an excursion to the North on the 15th of
May for $3.00. My husband is in the North already working,
and he wants us to come up in May, so I want to know if it is
true about the excursion. I am getting ready and oh so many
others also, and we want to know is that true so we can be in
the Drive. So please answer at once. We are getting ready.
Yours,
----
Usually the dates set were for Wednesday and Saturday nights, following
pay days.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that the _Defender's_ policy
prompted thousands of restless Negroes to venture North, where they were
assured of its protection and championship of their cause. Many migrants
in Chicago attribute their presence in the North to the _Defender's_
encouraging pictures of relief from conditions at home with which they
became increasingly dissatisfied as they read.
[Illustration: A NEGRO FAMILY JUST ARRIVED IN CHICAGO FROM THE RURAL
SOUTH]
[Illustration: NEGRO CHURCH IN THE SOUTH]
IV. THE ARRIVAL IN CHICAGO
At the time of the migration the great majority of Negroes in Chicago
lived in a limited area on the South Side, principally between
Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth streets, Wentworth Avenue and State
Street, and in scattered groups to Cottage Grove Avenue on the east.
State Street was the main thoroughfare. Prior to the influx of southern
Negroes, many houses stood vacant in the section west of State Street,
from which Negroes had moved when better houses became available east
of State Street. Into these old and frequently almost uninhabitable
houses the first newcomers moved. Because of its proximity to the old
vice area this district had an added undesirability for old Chicagoans.
The newcomers, however, were unacquainted with its reputation and had no
hesitancy about moving in until better homes could be secured. As the
number of arrivals increased, a scarcity of houses followed, creating
a problem of acute congestion.
During the summer of 1917 the Chicago Urban League made a canvass of
real estate dealers supplying houses for Negroes, and found that in a
single day there were 664 Negro applicants for houses, and only fifty
houses available. In some instances as many as ten persons were listed
for a single house. This condition did not continue long. There were
counted thirty-six new neighborhoods, formerly white, opening up to
Negroes within three months.
At the same time rents increased from 5 to 30 and sometimes as much
as 50 per cent. A more detailed study of living conditions among the
early migrants in Chicago was made by the Chicago School of Civics
and Philanthropy. The inquiry included seventy-five families of less
than a year's residence. In the group were sixty married couples, 128
children, eight women, nine married men with families in the South. Of
these migrants forty-five families came from rural and thirty-two from
urban localities. The greatest number, twenty-nine, came from Alabama;
twenty-five were from Mississippi, eleven from Louisiana, five from
Georgia, four from Arkansas, two from Tennessee, and one from Florida.
Forty-one of these seventy-five families were each living in one room.
These rooms were rented by the week, thus making possible an easy change
of home at the first opportunity.
It was at this period that the greatest excitement over the "incoming
hordes of Negroes" prevailed.
A significant feature was the large number of young children found.
The age distribution of 128 children in these seventy-five families
was forty-seven under seven years, forty-one between seven and fourteen
years, and forty over fourteen years.
Most of these children were of school age and had come from districts
in the South which provided few school facilities. The parents were
unaccustomed to the requirements of northern schools in matters of
discipline, attendance, and scholarship. Considerable difficulty was
experienced by teachers, parents, and children in these first stages of
adjustment.
V. ADJUSTMENTS TO CHICAGO LIFE
Meeting actual conditions of life in Chicago brought its exaltations and
disillusionments to the migrants. These were reflected in the schools,
public amusement places, industry, and the street cars. The Chicago
Urban League, Negro churches, and Negro newspapers assumed the task of
making the migrants into "city folk." The increase in church membership
indicates prompt efforts to re-engage in community life and establish
agreeable and helpful associations. It also reflects the persistence of
religious life among the migrants. This increase is shown in Table V.
TABLE V
=========================================
| INCREASE IN MEMBERSHIP
| DURING MIGRATION PERIOD
NAME OF CHURCH |------------+------------
| Number | Percentage
---------------+------------+------------
Salem | 700 | 51
Olivet | 5,543 | 80
South Park | 2,425 | 1,872
St. Mark's | 1,800 | 100
Hyde Park | 95 | 131
Bethel | 650 | 800
Walters | 351 | 338
---------------+------------+------------
Adjustment to new conditions was taken up by the Urban League as its
principal work. Co-operating with the Travelers Aid Society, United
Charities, and other agencies of the city, it met the migrants at stations
and, as far as its facilities permitted, secured living quarters and
jobs for them. The churches took them into membership and attempted to
make them feel at home. Negro newspapers published instructions on dress
and conduct and had great influence in smoothing down improprieties of
manner which were likely to provoke criticism and intolerance in the city.
Individual experiences of the migrants in this period of adjustment
were often interesting. The Commission made a special effort to note
these experiences for the light they throw upon the general process.
Much of the adjustment was a double process, including the adjustment
of rural southern Negroes to northern urban conditions. It is to be
remembered that over 70 per cent of the Negro population of the South
is rural. This means familiarity with rural methods, simple machinery,
and plain habits of living. Farmers and plantation workers coming to
Chicago had to learn new tasks. Skilled craftsmen had to relearn their
trades when they were thrown amid the highly specialized processes of
northern industries. Domestic servants went into industry. Professional
men who followed their clientèle had to re-establish themselves in a
new community. The small business men could not compete with the Jewish
merchants, who practically monopolized the trade of Negroes near their
residential areas, or with the "Loop" stores.
Many Negroes sold their homes and brought their furniture with them.
Reinvesting in property frequently meant a loss; the furniture brought
was often found to be unsuited to the tiny apartments or large, abandoned
dwelling-houses they were able to rent or buy.
The change of home carried with it in many cases a change of status.
The leader in a small southern community, when he came to Chicago, was
immediately absorbed into the struggling mass of unnoticed workers.
School teachers, male and female, whose positions in the South carried
considerable prestige, had to go to work in factories and plants because
the disparity in educational standards would not permit continuance of
their profession in Chicago.
These illustrations in Table VI, taken from family histories, show how
adjustment led to inferior occupation.
TABLE VI
======================================================================
Occupation in South | Occupation on First | Occupation One or
| Arrival in Chicago | More Years Later
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Display man on |Laborer |Laborer in factory
furniture | |
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Stone mason |Laborer in coal yard |Laborer in Stock Yards
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Proprietor of café |Laborer |Elevator man
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Farmer |Laborer in Stock Yards |Laborer in Stock Yards
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Coal miner |Porter in tailoring |Janitor
|shop |
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Proprietor of |Laborer |Laborer in Stock Yards
boarding-house | |
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Farmer |Factory worker |Factory worker
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Barber |Painter |Janitor
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Hotel waiter |Waiter |Porter in factory
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Plasterer |Laborer in Stock Yards |Laborer in steel mill
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Farmer |Hostler |Laborer in livery
| |stable
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Clergyman |Stationary fireman |Laborer in Stock Yards
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Tinsmith |Waiter |Laborer
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Farmer |Laborer in cement |Laborer in Stock Yards
|factory |
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Blacksmith |Barber |Janitor
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
Office boy |Porter |Laborer in Stock Yards
-----------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
The following experiences of one or two families from the many histories
gathered, while not entirely typical of all the migrants, contain features
common to all:
_The Thomas family._--Mr. Thomas, his wife and two children,
a girl nineteen and a boy seventeen, came to Chicago from
Seals, Alabama, in the spring of 1917. After a futile search,
the family rented rooms for the first week. This was expensive
and inconvenient, and between working hours all sought a house
into which they could take their furniture. They finally found
a five-room flat on Federal Street. The building had been
considered uninhabitable and dangerous. Three of the five
rooms were almost totally dark. The plumbing was out of order.
There was no bath, and the toilet was outside of the house.
There was neither electricity nor gas, and the family used
oil lamps. The rent was $15 per month. Although the combined
income of the family could easily have made possible a better
house, they could find none.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were farmers in the South. On the farm
Mrs. Thomas did the work of a man along with her husband. Both
are illiterate. The daughter had reached the fourth grade and
the boy the fifth grade in school. At home they belonged to
a church and various fraternal orders and took part in rural
community life.
On their arrival in Chicago they were short of funds. Father
and son went to work at the Stock Yards. Although they had
good jobs they found their income insufficient; the girl went
to work in a laundry, and the mother worked as a laundress
through the first winter for $1 a day. She later discovered
that she was working for half the regular rate for laundry
work. Soon she went back to housekeeping to reduce the food
bill.
All the family were timid and self-conscious and for a long
time avoided contacts, thus depriving themselves of helpful
suggestions. The children became ashamed of the manners of
their parents and worked diligently to correct their manner
of speech. The children attended Wendell Phillips night school
in the hope of improving their community status.
The freedom and independence of Negroes in the North have
been a constant novelty to them and many times they have been
surprised that they were "not noticed enough to be mistreated."
They have tried out various amusement places, parks, ice-cream
parlors, and theaters near their home on the South Side and
have enjoyed them because they were denied these opportunities
in their former home.
The combined income of this family is $65 a week, and their
rent is now low. Many of their old habits have been preserved
because of the isolation in which they have lived and because
they have not been able to move into better housing.
_The Jones family._--Mr. Jones, his wife, a six-year-old son,
and a nephew aged twenty-one, came from Texas early in 1919.
Although they arrived after the heaviest migration, they
experienced the same difficulties as earlier comers.
They searched for weeks for a suitable house. At first they
secured one room on the South Side in a rooming-house, where
they were obliged to provide gas, coal, linen, bedding, and
part of the furniture. After a few weeks they got two rooms
for light housekeeping, for $10 a month. The associations as
well as the physical condition of the house were intolerable.
They then rented a flat on Carroll Avenue in another section.
The building was old and run down. The agent for the property,
to induce tenants to occupy it, had promised to clean and
decorate it, but failed to keep his word. When the Jones family
asked the owner to make repairs, he refused flatly and was
exceedingly abusive.
Finally Jones located a house on the West Side that was much
too large for his family, and the rent too high. They were
forced to take lodgers to aid in paying the rent. This was
against the desire of Mrs. Jones, who did not like to have
strangers in her house. The house has six rooms and bath and
is in a state of dilapidation. Mr. Jones has been forced to
cover the holes in the floor with tin to keep out the rats. The
plumbing is bad. During the winter there is no running water,
and the agent for the building refuses to clean more than three
rooms or to furnish screens or storm doors or to pay for any
plumbing. In the back yard under the house is an accumulation
of ashes, tin cans, and garbage left by a long series of
previous tenants. There is no alley back of the house, and all
of the garbage from the back yard must be carried out through
the front. Jones made a complaint about insanitary conditions
to the Health Department, and the house was inspected, but
so far nothing has been done. It was difficult to induce the
agent to supply garbage cans.
Jones had reached the eighth grade, and Mrs. Jones had
completed the first year of high school. The nephew had finished
public-school grades provided in his home town and had been
taught the boiler trade. He is now pursuing this trade in hope
of securing sufficient funds to complete his course in Conroe
College, where he has already finished the first year. The boy
of six was placed in a West Side school. He was removed from
this school, however, and sent back south to live with Mrs.
Jones's mother and attend school there. Mrs. Jones thought that
the influence of the school children of Chicago was not good
for him. He had been almost blinded by a blow from a baseball
bat in the hands of one of several older boys who continually
annoyed him. The child had also learned vulgar language from
his school associates.
The Jones family were leading citizens in their southern
home. They were members of a Baptist church, local clubs, and
a missionary society, while Jones was a member and officer
in the Knights of Tabor, Masons, and Odd Fellows. They owned
their home and two other pieces of property in the same town,
one of which brought in $20 a month. As a boiler-maker, he
earned about $50 a week, which is about the same as his present
income. Their motive in coming to Chicago was to escape from
the undesirable practices and customs of the South.
They had been told that no discrimination was practiced against
Negroes in Chicago; that they could go where they pleased
without the embarrassment or hindrance because of their color.
Accordingly, when they first came to Chicago, they went into
drug-stores and restaurants. They were refused service in
numbers of restaurants and at the refreshment counters in
some drug-stores. The family has begun the re-establishment
of its community life, having joined a West Side Baptist
church and taking an active interest in local organizations,
particularly the Wendell Phillips Social Settlement. The
greatest satisfaction of the Joneses comes from the "escape
from Jim Crow conditions and segregation" and the securing of
improved conditions of work, although there is no difference
in the wages.
VI. MIGRANTS IN CHICAGO
Migrants have been visited in their homes, and met in industry, in the
schools, and in contacts on street cars and in parks. Efforts have been
made to learn why they came to Chicago and with what success they were
adjusting themselves to their new surroundings.
Some of the replies to questions asked are given:
_Question_: Why did you come to Chicago?
_Answers_:
1. Looking for better wages.
2. So I could support my family.
3. Tired of being a flunky.
4. I just happened to drift here.
5. Some of my people were here.
6. Persuaded by friends.
7. Wanted to make more money so I could go into business;
couldn't do it in the South.
8. To earn more money.
9. For better wages.
10. Wanted to change and come to the North.
11. Came to get more money for work.
12. To better my conditions.
13. Better conditions.
14. Better conditions.
15. Better living.
16. More work; came on visit and stayed.
17. Wife persuaded me.
18. To establish a church.
19. Tired of the South.
20. To get away from the South, and to earn more money.
_Question_: Do you feel greater freedom and independence in
Chicago? In what ways?
_Answers_:
1. Yes. Working conditions and the places of amusement.
2. Yes. The chance to make a living; conditions on the street
cars and in movies.
3. Going into places of amusement and living in good
neighborhoods.
4. Yes. Educationally, and in the home conditions.
5. Yes. Go anywhere you want to go; voting; don't have to look
up to the white man, get off the street for him, and go to
the buzzard roost at shows.
6. Yes. Just seem to feel a general feeling of good-fellowship.
7. On the street cars and the way you are treated where you
work.
8. Yes. Can go any place I like here. At home I was segregated
and not treated like I had any rights.
9. Yes. Privilege to mingle with people; can go to the parks
and places of amusement, not being segregated.
10. Yes. Feel free to do anything I please. Not dictated to
by white people.
11. Yes. Had to take any treatment white people offered me
there, compelled to say "yes ma'am" or "yes sir" to white
people, whether you desired to or not. If you went to an ice
cream parlor for anything you came outside to eat it. Got off
sidewalk for white people.
12. Yes. Can vote; feel free; haven't any fear; make more money.
13. Yes. Voting; better opportunity for work; more respect
from white people.
14. Yes. Can vote; no lynching; no fear of mobs; can express
my opinion and defend myself.
15. Yes. Voting, more privileges; white people treat me better,
not as much prejudice.
16. Yes. Feel more like a man. Same as slavery, in a way,
at home. I don't have to give up the sidewalk here for white
people as in my former home.
17. Yes. No restrictions as to shows, schools, etc. More
protection of law.
18. Yes. Have more privileges and more money.
19. Yes. More able to express views on all questions. No
segregation or discrimination.
20. Sure. Feel more freedom. Was not counted in the South;
colored people allowed no freedom at all in the South.
21. Find things quite different to what they are at home.
Haven't become accustomed to the place yet.
_Question_: What were your first impressions of Chicago?
_Answers_:
1. I liked the air of doing things here.
2. A place of real opportunity if you would work.
3. Place just full of life. Went to see the sights every night
for a month.
4. I thought it was some great place but found out it wasn't.
Uncle told me he was living on Portland Avenue, that it was
some great avenue; found nothing but a mud hole. I sure wished
I was back home.
5. When I got here and got on the street cars and saw colored
people sitting by white people all over the car I just held my
breath, for I thought any minute they would start something,
then I saw nobody noticed it, and I just thought this was a
real place for colored people. No, indeed, I'll never work in
anybody's kitchen but my own, any more, that's the one thing
that makes me stick to this job.
6. Was completely lost, friend was to meet me but didn't and I
was afraid to ask anyone where to go; finally my friend came;
was afraid to sleep first night--so much noise; thought the
cars would finally stop running so I could rest.
7. Liked the place.
8. Always liked Chicago, even the name before I came.
9. Liked it fine.
10. Good city for colored people.
11. Fine city.
12. Thought it the best place for colored people.
13. Thought it a good place for colored people to live in.
14. Very favorable, thought it the place to be for myself and
family.
15. Didn't like it; lonesome, until I went out. Then liked
the places of amusement which have no restrictions.
16. Liked it fine, like it even better now.
17. Liked Chicago from the first visit made two years ago;
was not satisfied until I was able to get back.
18. Think I will like it later on.
_Question_: In what respects is life harder or easier here
than in the South?
_Answers_:
1. Easier. I don't have to work so hard and get more money.
2. Easier in that here my wife doesn't have to work. I just
couldn't make it by myself in the South.
3. Living is much easier; chance to learn a trade. I make and
save more money.
4. Easier, you can make more money and it means more to you.
5. Easier to make a living here.
6. Easier, I get more money for my work and have some spare
time.
7. Have better home, but have to work harder. I make more
money, but spend it all to live.
8. Have more time to rest here and don't work as hard.
9. Find it easier to live because I have more to live on.
10. Earn more money; the strain is not so great wondering from
day to day how to make a little money do.
11. Work harder here than at home.
12. Easier. Work is hard, but hours are short. I make more
money and can live better.
13. More money for work, though work is harder. Better able
to buy the necessities of life.
14. Easier; more work and more money and shorter hours.
15. Living higher, but would rather be here than in South. I
have shorter hours here.
16. Don't have to work as hard here as at home. Have more time
for rest and to spend with family.
17. Easier to live in St. Louis. More work here and better
wages. Living higher here. Saved more there.
18. Must work very hard here, much harder than at home.
19. Harder because of increased cost of living.
20. The entire family feels that life is much easier here than
at home. Do not find work as hard anywhere.
_Question_: What do you like about the North?
_Answers_:
1. Freedom in voting and conditions of colored people here.
I mean you can live in good houses; men here get a chance to
go with the best-looking girls in the race; some may do it in
Memphis, but it ain't always safe.
2. Freedom and chance to make a living; privileges.
3. Freedom and opportunity to acquire something.
4. Freedom allowed in every way.
5. More money and more pleasure to be gotten from it; personal
freedom Chicago affords, and voting.
6. Freedom and working conditions.
7. Work, can work any place, freedom.
8. The schools for the children, the better wages, and the
privileges for colored people.
9. The chance colored people have to live; privileges allowed
them and better homes.
10. The friendliness of the people, the climate which makes
health better.
11. Like the privileges, the climate; have better health.
12. No discrimination; can express opinion and vote.
13. Freedom of speech, right to live and work as other races.
Higher pay for labor.
14. Freedom; privileges; treatment of whites; ability to live
in peace; not held down.
15. Freedom of speech and action. Can live without fear, no
Jim Crow.
16. More enjoyment; more places of attraction; better treatment;
better schools for children.
17. Liberty, better schools.
18. I like the North for wages earned and better homes colored
people can live in and go more places than at home.
19. Privileges, freedom, industrial and educational facilities.
20. The people, the freedom and liberty colored people enjoy
here that they never before experienced. Even the ways of the
people are better than at home.
21. Haven't found anything yet to like, except wife thinks
she will like the opportunity of earning more money than ever
before.
_Question_: What difficulties do you think a person from the
South meets in coming to Chicago?
_Answers_:
1. Getting used to climate and houses.
2. Getting accustomed to cold weather and flats.
3. Getting used to living conditions and make more money; not
letting the life here run away with you.
4. Adjusting myself to the weather and flat life: rooming and
"closeness" of the houses.
5. Getting used to flat conditions and crowded houses.
6. Getting used to living in flats, and growing accustomed to
being treated like people.
7. Getting used to the ways of the people; not speaking or
being friendly; colder weather, hard on people from the South.
8. Just the treatment some of the white people give you on
the trains. Sometimes treat you like dogs.
9. Know of no difficulties a person from the South meets coming
to Chicago.
10. I didn't meet any difficulties coming from the South. Know
of none persons would likely meet.
11. Can think of no difficulties persons meet coming from the
South to Chicago.
12. Adjustment to working conditions and climate.
13. Climatic changes.
14. Change in climate, crowded living conditions, lack of
space for gardens, etc.
15. Change in climate, crowded housing conditions.
16. Coming without knowing where they are going to stop usually
causes some difficulty. Get in with wrong people who seek to
take advantage of the ignorance of newcomers.
17. Becoming adjusted to climate.
18. If they know where they are going, when they come here.
The danger lies in getting among the wrong class of people.
19. Adjustment to city customs, etc.
20. If persons know where they are going and what they are
going to do, will not have any trouble. Must come with the
intention of working or else expect many difficulties.
21. Know of no difficulties.
_Question_: Do you get more comforts and pleasures from your
higher wages?
_Answers_:
1. Yes. Better homes, places of amusement, and the buying of
your clothes here. You can try on things; you can do that in
some stores in Memphis, but not in all.
2. Yes. Living in better houses, can go into almost any place
if you have the money, and then the schools are so much better
here.
3. Yes. I live better, save more, and feel more like a man.
4. Yes. I can buy more, my wife can have her clothes fitted
here, she can try on a hat, and if she doesn't want it she
doesn't have to keep it; go anywhere I please on the cars after
I pay my fare; I can do any sort of work I know how to do.
5. Yes. Go anywhere I please, buy what I please; ain't afraid
to get on cars and sit where I please.
6. Well, I make more money. I can't save anything from it.
There are so many places to go here, but down South you work,
work, work, and you have to save, for you haven't any place
to spend it.
7. Yes. Better homes. Spend money anywhere you want to, go
anywhere you have money enough to go; don't go out very much
but like to know I can where and when I want to.
8. Have chance to make more money, but it is all spent to keep
family up.
9. At home did not earn much money and did not have any left
to go what few places colored people were allowed to go. Here,
Negroes can have whatever they want.
10. Don't have to worry about how you are going to live. More
money earned affords anything wanted.
11. Have more comforts in the home that could not have at home;
more conveniences here. Wages sons earn make it possible to
have all that is wanted.
12. Yes. Better houses and more enjoyment.
13. Yes. I live in larger house and have more conveniences.
Can take more pleasure; have more leisure time.
14. Yes. Better houses and more amusement. More time of my
own, better furniture and food.
15. Yes. Better houses and furniture. More pleasures because
of shorter hours of work, giving me more time.
16. What little was earned at home was used for food and
clothing. Here, earn more, have more to spend; now and then
put some in the bank, and can spend some for pleasure without
strain or inconvenience.
17. Yes. More places to go, parks and playgrounds for children,
and no difference made between white and colored. Houses more
convenient here.
18. Have more money to spend but when you have to live in houses
where landlord won't fix up you can't have much comfort. Go
no place for pleasure, but enjoy the chance of earning more
money.
19. No comment.
20. Have money to get whatever is desired. Live in a better
house and can go places denied at home. All the family are
perfectly satisfied and are happier than they have ever been.
21. Live in better house than ever lived in. Never had the
comforts furnished here. Some houses there had no water closets;
only had cistern and wells out in the yard.
_Question_: Are you advising friends to come to Chicago?
_Answers_:
1. Yes. People down there don't really believe the things we
write back, I didn't believe myself until I got here.
2. No. I am not going to encourage them to come, for they
might not make it, then I would be blamed.
3. Yes. If I think they will work.
4. Some of them, those who I think would appreciate the
advantages here.
5. No. Not right now, come here and get to work, strikes come
along, they're out of work. Come if they want to, though.
6. Yes. I have two sisters still in Lexington. I am trying
to get them to come up here. They can't understand why I stay
here, but they'll see if they come.
7. Yes. People here don't realize how some parts of the South
treat colored folks; poor white trash were awful mean where
we came from; wish all the colored folks would come up here
where you ain't afraid to breathe.
8. Yes. Want friend and husband to come; also sister and family
who want her to come back that they may see how she looks
before they break up and come. Youngest son begs mother never
to think of going back South. Oldest son not so well satisfied
when first came, but since he is working, likes it a little
better.
Only a few migrants were found who came on free transportation, and many
of these had friends in Chicago before they came. Few expressed a desire
to return.
VII. EFFORTS TO CHECK MIGRATION
The withdrawal of great numbers of Negroes, both because of the migration
and because of military service, left large gaps in the industries of the
South dependent upon Negro labor. Thousands of acres of rice and sugar
cane went to waste. The turpentine industry of the Carolinas and the
milling interests of Tennessee were hard pressed for labor. Cotton-growing
was much affected, especially in the delta region of Mississippi. The
situation became critical, presenting a real economic problem. Organized
efforts were made, and at times extreme measures were taken, to start a
return movement. A report was circulated that on one day in the winter
of 1919 in Chicago, 17,000 Negroes were counted in a bread line. The
"horrors of northern winters" were played up as they had been during
the migration.
The press throughout the country was used to spread broadcast the South's
needs, its kind treatment of Negroes, its opportunities, and its growing
change of heart on the question of race relations. Newspaper articles
from sections of the North and South carried about the same story.
The _Chicago Tribune_ said in a conspicuous headline: "Louisiana Wants
Negroes to Return." Other such headlines were: _Washington Post_--"South
Needs Negroes. Try to Get Labor for Their Cotton Fields. Tell of Kind
Treatment"; _New York Evening Sun_--"To Aid Negro Return"; _Philadelphia
Press_--"South Is Urging Negroes to Return. Many Districts Willing to
Pay Fare of Those Who Come Back"; _Memphis Commercial Appeal_--"South
Is Best for Negro, Say Mississippians. Colored People Found Prosperous
and Happy."
Though such reports were widely circulated throughout the North, the
actual efforts of agencies from the South seeking the return of Negro
labor centered around Chicago. This was due largely to the fact that
from the southern states most acutely in need the drift during the
migration had been to Chicago, and because the increase of Chicago's
Negro population had been so great.
Immediately following the riots in Chicago and Washington, rumors gained
wide currency that hundreds of migrants were leaving for sections of
the South. So strong was the belief in the truth of this report that a
Chicago newspaper telegraphed the governors of southern states inquiring
the number of Negroes they needed. Agents of the South, including
representatives of the Tennessee Association of Commerce, the Department
of Immigration of Louisiana, the Mississippi Welfare League, and the
Southern Alluvial Land Association, visited northern cities with a view to
providing means for the return of Negroes. Although free transportation
was offered, together with promises of increased wages and better living
conditions, the various commissions were disappointed.
Their interviews with Negroes living in Chicago revealed a determination
not to return to conditions they had left two years before. To offset
this objection, two Chicago Negroes and one white man were taken to
Mississippi by a representative of the Mississippi Welfare League to
make an investigation. They visited several delta towns, traveling for
the most part in automobiles and interviewing farmers and laborers. They
reported in substance as follows:
Railroad accommodations for Negroes were adequate and uniform,
irrespective of locality; treatment accorded Negro passengers
by railroad officials was courteous throughout. Public-school
terms were nine months in the city and eight months in the
country for white and colored alike, and the strongest possible
human ties between planter and worker exist.... In no instance
were Negroes not given the freest use of sidewalks, streets,
and thoroughfares and we were unable to find any trace of
friction of any kind between the races.
An effort was then made by the Chicago Urban League to ascertain the
precise state of affairs. Its southern representative questioned hundreds
of Negroes living in the South, regarding improved relationships. Answers
to this query were all about the same. Some of them are quoted:
There has been no change. Lincoln League organized in this
city has been denounced by the white newspapers as a movement
that will cause trouble, and the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People, and the Urban Leagues of
various cities have been called "strife breeders and meddlers
in southern affairs"; Jim Crow accommodations are just the
same as ever. If there is any change for the better, I can't
see it.
It is ridiculous for any Negro to say he finds conditions
better here. Don't you remember that Negroes answering an
invitation to meet the Welfare Committee of white men not long
ago were told as soon as they got into the meeting place that
the Committee was ready to hear what Negroes wanted, but that
the question of the Negro's right to exercise the right of
voting would not be allowed to be discussed at all, and that
that must be agreed to before any discussion whatever would
be entertained, and that the Negroes left the meeting place
without a chance to demand the one thing they wished to enjoy?
* * * * *
Some deceitful, lying Negro may say that times are better, but
he would, at the same time, know that he was not telling the
truth. Haven't you been hearing more reports of lynching of
Negroes than you ever did in your life, since the war? Where,
then, is there any improvement? Ain't all the judges, all the
police and constables, all the juries as white man as ever?
Does the word of a Negro count for more now than it did before
the war? Don't white men insult our wives and daughters and
sisters and get off at it, unless we take the law into our
own hand and punish them for it ourselves, and get lynched
for protecting our own, just as often as ever? How much more
schooling from public funds do our children get now than they
got before the war? How much more do we have to say now than
we had to say before the war about the way the taxes we pay
shall be spent for schools, or for salaries, or for anything
connected with administration and government? Why, even the
colored man in Caddo parish who subscribed for $100,000 in
Liberty bonds and bought lots of War Savings stamps, and others
who bought less, but in the hundreds, and thousands of the
bonds and War Saving stamps, have no more to say about affairs
now than they ever had. Where is the improvement?
The Urban League also made an inquiry into the numbers of Negroes leaving
and arriving in the week following the riot, and when the strongest
efforts were being made to induce a return of migrants. During this
period 261 Negroes came to Chicago and 219 left the city. Of the 219
leaving, eighty-three gave some southern state as their destination.
For the most part, they were persons returning from vacations in the
North, and Chicago Negroes going South to visit or on business. Some
were rejoining their families. Fourteen were leaving because of the
riot. None, however, indicated any intention of going South to work.
It is clear that migrant Negroes are not returning South. On the contrary,
there is a small but continuous stream of migration to the industrial
centers of the North. No great number of Negroes returned to the South
even during the trying unemployment period in the early part of 1921.
Census figures for Chicago for 1920 show a number much smaller than the
usual estimates of the size of the Negro population during the period
of the heaviest migration. This may be accounted for by the fact that
Chicago has been used as a re-routing point to other northern cities. The
decrease from 1918 undoubtedly means that some returned to the South, but
it is apparent that the great majority of the migrants remain, despite
the hardships attending shortage of work.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO
A. DISTRIBUTION AND DENSITY
The Negro population of Chicago, as reported by the Federal Bureau of
the Census, was 44,103 in 1910 and 109,594 in 1920. The increase during
the decade was therefore 65,491, or 148.5 per cent. Negroes constituted 2
per cent of the city's total population in 1910 and 4.1 per cent in 1920.
The increase in the white population during the decade was 450,047, or
21 per cent, bringing the white population up to 2,589,104 in 1920. The
remainder of the population consisted of 3,007 Chinese, Japanese, and
Indians, of whom there were 2,123 in 1910. Chicago's total population
in 1920 was 2,701,705.
In order to indicate where the Negro population of the city lived in 1910
and in 1920, the Commission sought the co-operation of the Census Bureau.
On the basis of a rough preliminary survey, certain areas in which it
was evident that the main groups of Negroes lived were delimited, and
liberal margins allowed to include scattered residents living near the
main areas. For these areas the Census Bureau supplied figures showing
the total and Negro population by census-enumeration districts. Since
each enumeration district embraced from one or two to six city blocks
in the more crowded portions of the city, the data thus made available
enabled the Commission to prepare maps showing with a fair degree of
accuracy where Negroes in Chicago lived in 1910 and in 1920, and also
their proportion to the total population in these units of area.
The 510 enumeration districts covered for 1910 included 40,739, or
92.3 per cent of the 44,103 Negroes reported by the Census Bureau for
that year; and the 730 enumeration districts covered for 1920 included
106,089, or 96.8 per cent of the 109,594 Negroes reported for that year.
The small remaining number of Negroes scattered throughout the parts
of the city not embraced in these areas in 1910 and 1920 included many
janitors living in the buildings where they worked, and others employed
in private homes and living on the premises, thus making their presence
inconspicuous among white residents. The areas in which 40,739 Negroes
were living in 1910 contained a total population of 657,044, the Negroes
thus constituting 6.2 per cent of the total. The areas in which 106,089
Negroes lived in 1920 contained a total population of 779,279, the
Negroes thus constituting about 13 per cent of the total.
The outstanding fact concerning these data for 1910 and 1920 is that
the large increase in Negro population did not bring into existence any
new large colonies but resulted in the expansion and increased density
of areas in which groups of Negroes already lived in 1910.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF NEGRO POPULATION 1910
DATA OBTAINED FROM FEDERAL CENSUS]
By far the largest number of Negroes in 1910 and 1920 lived in what
may be termed the old "South Side," which includes the original "Black
Belt" embracing the area from Twelfth to Thirty-first streets and from
Wentworth to Wabash avenues. This and other areas of Negro residence in
various parts of the city, with their approximate boundaries in 1910
and 1920 and their Negro population for both years, are listed here
under designations which are arbitrarily given for convenient reference;
they do not embrace the whole of each area commonly included under such
designations.
SOUTH SIDE
1910 boundaries: On the north, Twelfth Street; on the west,
Wentworth Avenue; on the south, Fifty-fifth Street; and on
the east, Indiana Avenue. Negro population, 34,335, or 11 per
cent of the total population of 311,049.
1920 boundaries: The same as in 1910. Negro population, 92,501,
or 24.6 per cent of the total population of 376,171.
WOODLAWN
1910 boundaries: On the north, Sixty-third Street; on the
west, Eberhart Avenue; on the south, Sixty-seventh Street;
and on the east, Grand Avenue. Negro population, 319; total
population, 4,783.
1920 boundaries: On the north, Sixty-first Street; on the west,
South Park Avenue; on the south, Sixty-seventh Street; and
on the east, Cottage Grove Avenue. Negro population, 1,235;
total population, 8,861.
LAKE PARK AVENUE AREA
1910 boundaries: On the north, Fifty-third Street; on the
west, Harper Avenue; on the south, Fifty-seventh Street; and
on the east, Lake Park Avenue. Negro population, 438.
1920 boundaries the same as in 1910. Negro population, 238.
OGDEN PARK AREA
(Vicinity of Ogden Park in Englewood)
1910 boundaries: On the north, Fifty-ninth Street; on the
west, Loomis Street; on the south, Sixty-third Street; and
on the east, Halsted Street. Negro population, 1,403; total
population, 25,880.
1920 boundaries the same as in 1910. Negro population, 1,859;
total population, 38,893.
MORGAN PARK AREA
1910 boundaries: On the north, 107th Street: on the west,
Vincennes Avenue; on the south, 111th Street; and on the east,
Loomis Street. Negro population, 126.
1920 boundaries, the same as in 1910, except on the south,
115th Street. Negro population, 695.
THREE MINOR COLONIES IN THE SOUTHERN DIVISION OF THE CITY
South Chicago in the vicinity of the steel plants bordering
on Lake Michigan at Ninety-first Street: 36 Negroes in 1910
and 117 in 1920.
Burnside, in the vicinity of South State and Ninety-first
streets: 2 Negroes in 1910 and 205 in 1920.
Oakwoods, in the vicinity immediately east of Oakwoods Cemetery,
between Sixty-seventh and Seventy-first streets: 52 Negroes
in 1919 and 58 in 1920.
WEST SIDE
1910 boundaries: On the north, Austin Avenue; on the west,
Western Avenue; on the south, Lake Street to Racine to
Washington to Halsted; on the east, Halsted Street. Negro
population, 3,379. This includes a scattering of Negroes living
immediately southwest of this area.
1920 boundaries: On the north, Austin Street; on the west,
California Avenue; on the south, Washington Boulevard; and on
the east, Morgan Street. Negro population, 8,363, including
scattered residents as far south as Twelfth Street.
NORTH SIDE
1910 boundaries: On the north, North Avenue; on the west,
Larrabee Street; on the south, Chicago Avenue; and on the
east, State Street. Negro population, 744.
1920 boundaries: The same as in 1910. Negro population, 1,050.
RAVENSWOOD
1910 boundaries: On the north, Lawrence Avenue; on the west,
Ashland Avenue; on the south, Montrose Avenue; and on the
east, Sheridan Road. Negro population, 105.
1920 boundaries: The same as in 1910. Negro population, 175.
The total Negro population in the north division of the city,
including the part designated "North Side," the Ravenswood
colony, and scattered residents in other parts, was 1,427 in
1910 and 1,820 in 1920.
B. NEIGHBORHOODS OF NEGRO RESIDENCE
While the principal colony of Chicago's Negro population is situated in a
central part of the South Side, Negroes are to be found in several other
parts of the city in proportions to total population ranging from less
than 1 per cent to more than 95 per cent. In some of these neighborhoods
whites and Negroes have become adjusted to one another; in others
they have not. There are numerous degrees of variation between the two
extremes. In this study the term "adjusted neighborhood" indicates one
in which whites and Negroes have become accommodated to each other, and
friction is either non-existent or negligible; "non-adjusted neighborhood"
is one where misunderstandings, dislikes, and antagonisms resulting from
contacts of any degree between whites and Negroes express themselves in
racial hostility, sometimes involving open clashes.
I. ADJUSTED NEIGHBORHOODS
1. THE SOUTH SIDE
The most striking example of "adjusted neighborhoods" is the district
known as the "Black Belt." Because 90 per cent of the Negroes of Chicago
live within this area, it is usually assumed that the district is 90
per cent Negro. This, however, is not the case. The area between Twelfth
and Thirty-ninth streets, Wentworth Avenue and Lake Michigan, includes
the oldest and densest Negro population of any section of its size in
Chicago. However, the actual numbers of whites and Negroes living there
are 42,797 and 54,906 respectively. In this area the Negro population has
increased gradually and without disturbance for many years. Although for
a long period Negroes were confined to the area bounded by State Street,
Wentworth Avenue, Twelfth, and Thirty-ninth streets, their movement
into the neighborhood east of State Street was ultimately looked upon
as a natural and expected expansion. Within the whole of this territory
a relationship exists, which, although perhaps not uniformly friendly,
yet is without friction or disorder. During the riot few white persons
living or engaged in business there were attacked by Negroes, who were
in the majority in many parts of the area. Many whites remaining in the
area, which was formerly all white, are small property owners who for
sentimental reasons prefer to live there. Numbers of family hotels and
large apartment houses there continue to be occupied by whites, who are
apparently little affected by the presence of 10 per cent more Negroes
than whites around them. Michigan Avenue and Grand Boulevard are the
streets into which Negroes have moved most recently. The only recorded
bombing within this area occurred on Grand Boulevard. The Grand Boulevard
district is affiliated with the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners'
Association. Although the bombing was an expression of resentment against
Negroes because they moved into this block, there are circumstances
which indicate that the resentment did not come from the neighbors. For
example, the wife of a Negro physician owning and living in a house in
the same block was asked by her white neighbors to serve as chairman of
a committee to keep up the property in the neighborhood.
[Illustration: RACIAL CONTACTS AMONG CHILDREN IN AN ADJUSTED
NEIGHBORHOOD]
The first Negro family to move into the Vernon Avenue block immediately
south of Thirty-first Street bought its residence in 1911. It was five
years before another Negro family came. White neighbors, who were and are
very friendly, said this family's good care of its lawn was an example
for the whole block.
When an apartment house in which a Negro family lived on South Park
Avenue near Thirty-first Street was burned, white neighbors took them
into their home and kept them until another house was secured. At a
meeting of the City Club of Chicago a white man who had lived in this
area for forty years thus characterized the relations between whites
and Negroes living there:
Having lived on the South Side in what is now known as the
"Black Belt" for forty years, I can testify that I have never
had more honest, quiet, and law-abiding neighbors than those
who are of the African race, either full or mixed blood. In
the precinct where I live we have several families blessed
with many orderly and well-behaved children, of Caucasian and
African blood. They seem to get along nicely, and why should
they not?... There is no race question, it is a question of
intelligence and morality, pure and simple.
Occasional minor misunderstandings have resulted from contacts in this
area, but they have not been conspicuously marked by racial bitterness.
Objections, sometimes expressed when the tradition of an "all white"
neighborhood was first broken, disappeared as the neighbors came to know
each other. Long residence is apparently one condition of the adjustment
process.
_Expansion and adjustment._--The first noticeable expansion of the
Negro population following the migration in 1917 and 1918 was in the
area extending south from Thirty-ninth Street to Forty-seventh Street
on Langley, St. Lawrence, and Evans avenues. Negroes began moving into
this area early in 1917, first a few and finally in large numbers. There
is yet no compact group, for these Negro families, while numerous, are
well distributed. The experiences of some of the first families there
are interesting.
A Negro woman bought a piece of property on Langley Avenue, near
Forty-third Street, when every other family in the block was white.
The courtesy shown her by them was all that could be desired, she
declares. There are still six or eight white families in the block,
and they continue on the most friendly terms with her. A Negro woman
in another block has white neighbors all around her, but there has
been no racial objection or friction. Another, who owns her property
on Evans Avenue, has had no trouble with white families that remain in
the block. So with a Negro who rents from the Negro owner of a flat on
East Thirty-sixth Street. A Negro who has bought a home on St. Lawrence
Avenue near Forty-seventh Street declares that the white families living
thereabouts "treat my family right." In one block on St. Lawrence Avenue
a Negro family is surrounded by white neighbors, but no trouble has been
experienced. In a block on Langley Avenue another family of Negroes
has had no clashes with the white neighbors who compose most of the
neighborhood.
A woman who built her home in the 4800 block on Champlain Avenue, when
hers was the only Negro family there and has lived there ever since,
had no trouble with neighbors until other Negroes moved in. Then a white
woman circulated a petition for the purpose of compelling the Negroes to
move out. This effort failed. In another block on East Forty-sixth Street
a Negro family lives in a neighborhood which has a majority of whites,
but the relations have been amicable. An apartment house on Champlain
Avenue near Forty-sixth Street is occupied entirely by Negroes, though
there are white families all through the neighborhood. One Negro who
has lived there for three years says they have never been molested. A
pioneer Negro family in a white block on Vernon Avenue near Thirty-ninth
Street reports no trouble with the white neighbors.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF NEGRO POPULATION 1920
DATA OBTAINED FROM FEDERAL CENSUS]
Two women who were among the last of the whites to leave the Langley
Avenue vicinity say they always found the Negroes to be kindly neighbors.
A Negro family on Forty-first Street has been there a year without
friction with white neighbors. In another block on East Forty-second
Street a Negro woman reported that, though there are white people all
through the neighborhood, the two races get along peaceably. In the 400
block of East Forty-sixth Street a similar report is given. In still
another block on Champlain Avenue lives a woman who has been in the midst
of white families for a number of years without experiencing animosity.
On East Forty-second Street a Negro family has lived for three years in
similar freedom from racial friction.
In another instance a pioneer Negro family in a block otherwise wholly
white was well regarded by all except one of the neighbors. This white man
who voiced loudly his objections to the "invasion" was one who, because
of his drunken habits and troublesome nature, had long been considered
an undesirable neighbor by other whites in the block.
_Woodlawn._--Relations in Woodlawn, where the Negro population increase
has been relatively large, are for the most part friendly. There is
an association of Negro property owners interested in keeping up the
physical appearance of their homes in the neighborhood. No clashes have
been reported except one instance of a group of white boys from another
neighborhood throwing stones at a building where they saw Negroes.
Following the stirring up and organization of anti-Negro sentiment in
Hyde Park, an attempt was made to organize white Woodlawn property owners
against the invasion of the district by Negroes. This organization was
not a great success. There have been no bombings in this district, and
no concerted opposition to the presence of Negroes as neighbors. Long
residence together and the good character and conduct of both Negroes
and whites are probably important reasons for lack of friction.
2. THE WEST SIDE
A situation like that in the adjusted neighborhoods of the South Side
exists in the district bounded by Washington and Kinzie, Ashland and
California avenues, where there has been a settlement of Negroes for
many years. Houses are cheaper than on the South Side, and although the
general standard of workingmen's homes compares favorably with that on
the South Side, few of the abandoned good residences formerly occupied
by wealthy persons are available for Negroes. The densest and oldest
settlement of Negroes is within the boundaries named, although the Negro
residence area actually extends many blocks beyond them on all sides.
There has been little friction, though the area has 9,221 whites and
6,520 Negroes. South of Washington Boulevard occasional difficulties
have been met by the incoming Negro population, similar to those found
in areas where the most congested Negro population on the South Side is
spreading. On the West Side no bombings have occurred, although there
have been frequent protests against the expansion. Some streets have
come to be recognized as Negro streets.
In recent years many Negroes have bought homes on the West Side when
they could not easily find living quarters in or near the older Negro
residence areas on the South Side. Almost uniformly they keep their
homes in good condition, which cannot be said of all the Negroes who
settled early in this district. West Side Negroes, laborers for the most
part, are generally home-loving, hard-working, and desirous of improving
conditions for their children. Older settlers among them have been able
to make their adjustments without great difficulty and with no marked
antagonism from white neighbors.
Though occasionally trivial conflicts arise between Negro and white
neighbors, the attitude of whites in nearby areas is customarily friendly
if not cordial. For example, a Negro doctor has a considerable practice
among nearby Italians in the vicinity of the Chicago Commons Social
Settlement. At Chicago Commons itself no distinction is made with respect
to the few Negro families which at times make use of the facilities.
Children of these families have entered classes and clubs, and one of
them became a leader of a group.
The Poles who mainly occupy the neighborhood around the Northwestern
University Social Settlement are entirely friendly to Negroes. Three
years ago an educated Negro was at the head of the boys' department of
the settlement, and, with one exception, no one in that position has
made more friends among the boys and their families.
On the West Side, as on the South and North sides, Negroes have
established their own restaurants and barber shops and some groceries
and delicatessen stores. There are several theaters whose patronage is
largely Negro.
3. THE NORTH SIDE
On the North Side, Negroes live among foreign whites and near a residence
area of wealthy Chicagoans. Their first appearance occasioned little
notice or objection, since they were generally house servants living
near their work. The largest numbers are to be found between Chicago
Avenue and Division Street on North Wells, Franklin, and cross streets
connecting them.
This neighborhood has experienced several complete changes in population.
It was first occupied by Irish, then by Swedes, then by Italians. The
present neighbors of Negroes are Italians. As indicated by the population
changes, the neighborhood is old and run down, and the reasons given by
Negroes for living there are low rents and proximity to the manufacturing
plants where they work.
The Negroes there are renters, because the property, although undesirable
for residence purposes, is valuable for business and too expensive for
them to buy. The families are chiefly respectable, hard-working people.
They have their own barber and tailor shops and similar business places.
In social affairs they confine themselves largely to meetings, dances,
and similar gatherings held exclusively for their own race. Formerly
the second floor of a building on Division Street was frequently rented
by the Negroes for church and other meetings, and dances. Recently they
have found other meeting places, particularly for religious devotions.
Some of their social gatherings and meetings take place at Seward Park.
[Illustration: A SAVINGS BANK IN THE NEGRO RESIDENCE AREA ON SATURDAY
EVENING]
[Illustration: CHILDREN AT WORK IN A COMMUNITY GARDEN]
They are welcomed not only in Seward Park, one of the city's recreation
centers, but in the settlements. At Eli Bates House, 621 West Elm Street,
for example, there has been a club of Negro young men, and applications
have been received for admission of Negro children to some classes.
The head resident of the settlement reports, however, that it has not
had much contact with the Negro group. A few Negro children come to the
kindergarten; a group of Negro boys makes use of the gymnasium, and some
neighboring Negro families have asked settlement residents for advice.
In this neighborhood friendly relations exist between the Sicilians, who
predominate, and their Negro neighbors. Some Negroes live harmoniously
in the same tenements with the Sicilians. Their children play together,
and some Negro children have learned Sicilian phrases, so that they are
able to deal with the Sicilian shopkeepers.
Elsewhere on the North Side the feeling between Italians and Negroes is
not so cordial. During the riot of 1919, serious trouble was averted
on the North Side through prompt and effective efforts by the police
and members of the community. It was reported throughout the district
that automobiles loaded with armed Negroes were on their way from the
South Side to "shoot up the North Side." The Italians immediately armed
themselves and began to shoot recklessly. They were eventually quieted
by the police and others, and there was no retaliation of the Negroes.
Many Negroes who have purchased homes and lived on the North Side for
years report little opposition. One family on North Wells Street has lived
there since 1888 and now owns several valuable pieces of property. The
man had no trouble in buying property, and the whites have always been
friendly to them and to all Negroes in that section. Another Negro family
on North Wells Street, where Negroes first lived, had no difficulty in
getting their flat sixteen years ago. This block is occupied by whites
and Negroes without friction.
Minor expressions of antagonism attended the moving in of some Negro
families, but after several months the white neighbors accepted them
and now are on good terms with them.
II. NON-ADJUSTED NEIGHBORHOODS
Failure of adjustment between whites and Negroes has greatly accentuated
the difficulties of the housing problem for Negroes. When a general
shortage of housing is relieved there may still be a serious shortage for
Negroes because of the hostility of white neighborhoods. The sentiment
for "all-white" neighborhoods has grown with the increase in Negro
population and the threatened occupancy in small or large degree by
Negroes. These non-adjusted neighborhoods fall into distinct classes:
1. Neighborhoods of unorganized opposition. These are neighborhoods
where few Negroes live. Though contiguous they are sharply separated
from areas of Negro residence and are definitely hostile to Negroes,
even those passing through the neighborhood going to and from work, but
the hostility in them is unorganized.
2. Neighborhoods of organized opposition. (_a_) Neighborhoods in which no
Negroes live but which are in the line of Negro expansion. Opposition to
threatened invasion has been strong. As yet they are exclusively white,
and every effort is being made to keep them so. They are illustratively
treated here as "exclusive neighborhoods." (_b_) Neighborhoods in which
the presence of Negro residents is hotly contested, by organized and
unorganized efforts to oust them. These for convenience are termed
"contested neighborhoods."
1. NEIGHBORHOODS OF UNORGANIZED OPPOSITION
In Certain West Side neighborhoods white property owners objected to
the expansion of the principal Negro residence area of that section.
The pastor of the Negro Presbyterian Church on Washington Boulevard, who
came to Chicago in 1919, bought the houses at 2006 and 2008 Washington
Boulevard, in which white people had formerly lived. He moved into one
of them in May, 1919, and both he and his tenants in the other house
received warning letters advising them to move or take the consequences.
The last of these was received during the riot in July, 1919. No attention
was paid to them.
During the riots little trouble was experienced by the Negroes in the
West Side district, who generally remained in their own houses and
neighborhoods. Some became involved in clashes on their way to or from
work, but there was no serious clash.
The district west of Cottage Grove Avenue and south to Sixty-third Street
in Woodlawn is rather sparsely built up, most of the buildings being
one- and two-family houses. Numbers of white people in the neighborhood
believe that the district has been blighted because of the occasional
presence of Negroes.
On the North Side some hostility to Negroes was shown during the 1919
riot. One Negro, who had lived on North Franklin Street for five years
and in Chicago for thirty years, told of having been spit at by rowdy
Italians, and on another occasion threatened with shooting by young
roughs in a passing automobile. White neighbors, however, intervened.
Under pressure of the riot excitement, some Italian children pushed
through windows and doors pictures of skulls and coffins inked in red.
At the time of the riot Eli Bates House issued a circular deploring race
hatred and appealing for order and fairness.
Although the few Negroes living in the Lake Park Avenue area[19] have
experienced little opposition in their present homes, there has been no
Negro expansion there. The colony, has in fact, dwindled in size since
1910. It is made up largely of Negroes who were house servants for white
families near-by or worked in the hotels of the district.
Negroes of this colony are barred from all white restaurants in
the district except one place conducted by a Greek. In three of the
motion-picture houses they are not allowed to sit in the best seats. In
one of these theaters a sign reads, "We reserve the right to seat our
patrons to suit ourselves." Negroes are permitted in the balcony or in
the rear seats of the main floor.
On Langley, St. Lawrence, and adjoining streets south of Fifty-fifth
Street there is considerable friction resulting from the presence of
Negroes.
There are residence districts of Chicago adjacent to those occupied
by Negroes in which hostility to Negroes is so marked that the latter
not only find it impossible to live there, but expose themselves to
danger even by passing through. There are no hostile organizations in
these neighborhoods, and active antagonism is usually confined to gang
lawlessness. Such a neighborhood is that west of Wentworth Avenue,
extending roughly from Twenty-second to Sixty-third streets. The number
of Negroes living there is small, and most of them live on Ada, Aberdeen,
and Loomis streets, south of Fifty-seventh Street. In the section
immediately west of Wentworth Avenue and thus adjoining the densest Negro
residence area in the city, practically no Negroes live. In addition to
intense hostility, there is a lack of desirable houses. Wentworth Avenue
has long been regarded as a strict boundary line separating white and
Negro residence areas. The district has many "athletic clubs."[20] The
contact of Negroes and whites comes when Negroes must pass to and from
their work at the Stock Yards and at other industries located in the
district. It was in this district that the largest number of riot clashes
occurred.[21] Several Negroes have been murdered here, and numbers have
been beaten by gangs of young men and boys. A white man was killed by one
of two Negroes returning from work in that district, who declared that
they had been intimidated by the slain man. Speaking of this district,
the principal of the Raymond School, a branch of which is located west
of Wentworth Avenue, said that antagonism of the district against Negroes
appeared to have been handed down through tradition. He said:
We get a good deal of the gang spirit in the new school on the
other side of Wentworth Avenue. There seems to be an inherited
antagonism. Wentworth Avenue is the gang line. They seem to
feel that to trespass on either side of that line is ground
for trouble. While colored pupils who come to the school for
manual training are not troubled in the school, they have to
be escorted over the line, not because of trouble from members
of the school, but groups of boys outside the school. To give
another illustration, we took a little kindergarten group over
to the park. One little six-year-old girl was struck in the
face by a man. A policeman chased but failed to catch him.
The condition is a tradition. It is handed down.
2. NEIGHBORHOODS OF ORGANIZED OPPOSITION
"_Exclusive neighborhoods._"--In neighborhoods which are exclusive on
the basis of social class, whose restrictions apply to Negroes and the
majority of whites alike, the high price of property is a sufficient
barrier against Negroes; it is in the neighborhoods where property values
are within the means of Negroes that fears of invasion are entertained.
In many new real estate subdivisions houses are sold on easy payments.
Almost without exception these sections are exclusively for whites,
and usually it is so stated in the prospectus. Other sections longer
established come to notice when some incident provokes the expression
of opposition already organized and awaiting it.
Such a section is the neighborhood known as Park Manor and Wakeford.
This neighborhood lies between Sixty-ninth and Seventy-ninth streets,
and Cottage Grove and Indiana avenues. It is newly built, chiefly with
small dwellings, most of them not more than five years old. Many of the
residents had lived in a neighborhood to the north, nearer Woodlawn,
whose growth of Negro population had caused some of them to move. Park
Manor and Wakeford were startled by the following advertisement in the
_Chicago Daily News_ in July, 1920:
For sale--Colored Attention: homes on Vernon, South Park
and Indiana Aves. Sold on easy terms; come out and look this
locality over; Protestant neighborhood, Park Manor and Wakeford;
good transportation. Blair, 7455 Cottage Grove Avenue.
Blair, a real estate agent, denied all knowledge of the advertisement
and attributed it either to an enemy or to a practical joker. He sent
notices to be read the following day in the nine churches of the district,
so stating, deploring the occurrence and pledging himself to aid the
other residents in excluding Negroes and in hunting down the author of
the advertisement.
Meanwhile the entire district had been aroused, and a meeting called for
the evening of July 12, in front of a church at Seventy-sixth Street and
St. Lawrence Avenue. About 1,000 people gathered for this meeting, which
was conducted by the presidents of the South Park Manor and Wakeford
Improvement Associations. The former announced that he had visited the
_Daily News_ and learned that the advertisement had been handed to a
clerk in typewritten form and with a typewritten signature, and paid for
in advance, whereas Blair's regular advertising was done on a charge
account. This and other information tended to show that the agent was
not responsible for the advertisement. In its issue of Monday, July 12,
the _Daily News_ printed an explanatory statement.
Other speakers at the meeting were a real estate dealer and an alderman.
Considerable indignation was expressed over the false light in which the
community had been placed. Even the suggestion that Negroes might by
chance become a part of this community seemed to be abhorrent. As far
as Negroes were concerned there was no excitement, but they resented
being used to frighten white residents.
[Illustration: PROPORTION OF NEGROES TO TOTAL POPULATION 1910
DATA OBTAINED FROM FEDERAL CENSUS]
"_Contested neighborhoods._"--The contested neighborhoods are by far
the most important among the types of non-adjusted neighborhoods, both
because of the actual presence in them of varying numbers of Negroes
and their bearing on the future relations of the races. The efforts in
such neighborhoods to keep out Negroes involve stimulation of anti-Negro
sentiment and organization of property owners, and the campaign against
the presence of Negroes as neighbors develops into a campaign against
Negroes. Negroes in turn resent both the propaganda statements and the
organized efforts. A continuous struggle, marked by bombings, foreclosures
of mortgages, and court disputes, is the result.
The most conspicuous type of a "contested neighborhood" is that known as
Kenwood and Hyde Park. In this general neighborhood, from Thirty-ninth
to Fifty-ninth streets and from State Street to Lake Michigan, hostility
toward Negroes has been plainly and even forcibly expressed through
organized efforts to oust them and prevent their further encroachment.
The situation is peculiar. This is the part of the old South Side in
which most of the Negro population of Chicago has settled. The so-called
"Black Belt" has been overcrowded for years. Old and deteriorated housing
and its insufficiency have been steadily driving Negroes out of it in
search of other homes.
It was inevitable that the great influx of migrants should overflow
into surrounding territory. Many migrants brought funds, having sold out
their homes and other possessions. Negroes who had lived for some time
in the "Black Belt" were eager to escape from it, and here was their
opportunity. They did not wish to go too far from their churches and
other established institutions, and Hyde Park was immediately adjoining.
Conditions in Hyde Park during 1916 and 1917 favored the overflow.
Numbers of new, and in some instances high-grade, apartment houses had
been built during the previous ten or fifteen years. Many whites were
leaving their individual houses to live in these apartments or to move to
the North and South Shore regions. The houses had become less desirable,
and many of them were vacant. The district, except for certain definite
neighborhoods, had lost much of its former aristocratic air, with the
coming of rooming-and boarding-houses. During 1914, 1915, and 1916 many
houses and apartments in Hyde Park were vacant or were rented at low
prices. Inducements were offered to prospective tenants in the form of
extensive decorations and repairs, or some rental allowance.
Negroes bought houses and apartment buildings and rented anything
rentable. This expansion of the Negro boundaries was promoted by both
white and Negro real estate agents and property owners with little
opposition. These men soon learned that Negroes, with their increased
wages due to war conditions, were able to make first payments, at least,
on houses and to rent better houses or flats than they had previously
been obliged to occupy.
Then the entrance of the United States into the war in 1917 and the
suspension of building operations occasioned a house shortage which
became acute in 1918. The white demand for dwellings began to exceed
the supply. Real estate men of the neighborhood began to discuss plans
for re-establishing it as an exclusively white neighborhood. A survey
by the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association showed that
of the 3,300 property owners in the district, about 1,000 were Negroes.
Neighbors had objected little, the entrance of the Negroes having been
so gradual that it was almost unnoticeable.
Both Kenwood and Hyde Park, using these terms in the more restricted sense
of the original residential localities that bore the names, had enjoyed
the activities of local improvement organizations whose function it was
to keep the streets sprinkled and clean, to procure better lighting, and
otherwise improve civic conditions. The Kenwood and Hyde Park Property
Owners' Association became prominent in 1918 on account of its agitation
to "make Hyde Park white." In October, 1918, a form letter was sent out
calling a meeting of the Grand Boulevard district of this Association
for October 20. The letter said in part: "We are a red blood organization
who say openly, we won't be driven out. We make no secret of our methods,
they are effective and legal." A dodger announcing the same meeting read:
Every white person Property Owner in Hyde Park come to this
meeting. Protect your Property.
Shall we sacrifice our property for a third of its value and
run like rats from a burning ship, or shall we put up a united
front and keep Hyde Park desirable for ourselves? It's not
too late.
The Grand Boulevard district, described as extending from Thirty-ninth
to Sixty-third streets, and from Michigan to Cottage Grove avenues was
included in the consolidated organization of the Hyde Park and Kenwood
districts. This Association, as was asserted by its president, also
had the co-operation of three other similar organizations, one in the
Washington Park district, the Lake Front Community Property Owners'
Association, operating in the district north of Thirty-ninth Street and
south of Thirty-third Street, east of Cottage Grove Avenue; and one in
the Englewood district, which is southwest of Hyde Park.
Organization of sentiment: It does not appear that the residents
of this neighborhood rose spontaneously to oppose the coming in of
Negroes. If this had been the case, the first Negroes moving into the
district in 1917 would have felt the opposition. The sudden interest in
race occupancy was based upon the alleged depreciation of property by
Negroes. With this emphasized, it was not difficult to rally opposition
to Negroes as a definite menace. The real estate men gave the alarm,
alleging a shrinkage in property values. The effort through the Hyde
Park and Kenwood Association was intended to stop the influx and thereby
the depreciation. Meetings were held, a newspaper was published, and
literature was distributed. Racial antagonism was strong in the speeches
at these meetings and in the newspapers. The meeting which probably
marked the first focusing of attention on the Kenwood and Hyde Park
districts was held May 5, 1919, when the sentiment was expressed that
Negro invasion of the district was the worst calamity that had struck
the city since the Great Fire. A prominent white real estate man said:
"Property owners should be notified to stand together block by block
and prevent such invasion."
Distinctly hostile sentiments were expressed before audiences that came
expecting to hear how their property might be saved from "almost certain
destruction." A speaker at one of the meetings said in part:
We are taught that the principle of virtue and right shall be
the rule of our conduct in all of our transactions with our
fellow-men, and therefore it is our duty to help the Negro, to
uplift him in his environment, mark you, not ours. But it is
not our duty, now mark this, it is not our duty as I see it,
nor is it according to the laws of nature for us to live with
him as neighbors or on a social basis. There is an immutable,
unchanging law that governs the distribution, association and
conduct of all living creatures. Man is no exception to the
universal rule. In every land and clime man obeys the second
law of his nature and seeks his own kind, avoiding every
other, and ever, ever is he warring with his unlike neighbor,
families, classes, societies, tribes, and nations.
There are men who proclaim to the world and ourselves that the
destiny of the black man and the white man is one. I do not
believe it; I cannot believe it. Now, listen! As far back as
September 18, 1858, in his famous joint debate with Stephen
A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, that wonderful, Godlike man, the
liberator of the slaves, said this (Now listen, 1858, over
sixty years ago): "I am not nor ever have been in favor of
bringing about in any way the social and political equality
of the white and the black race. I am not nor ever have been
in favor of qualifying them to intermarry with white people,
and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical
difference between the white and black races living together
on terms of social and political equality."
Other remarks of speakers at these meetings were:
The depreciation of our property in this district has been two
hundred and fifty millions since the invasion. If someone told
you that there was to be an invasion that would injure your
homes to that extent, wouldn't you rise up as one man and one
woman, and say as General Foch said: "They shall not pass"?
* * * * *
There isn't an insurance company in America that will turn
around and try to buck our organization when we as one man
give them to understand that it is dangerous to insure some
people.
* * * * *
Why I remember fifteen or twenty years ago that the district
down here at Wabash Avenue and Calumet was one of the most
beautiful and highest-class neighborhoods of this great city.
Go down there today and see the ramshackle broken-down and
tumble-down district. That is the result of the new menace
that is threatening this great Hyde Park district. And then
tell me whether there are or not enough red-blooded, patriotic,
loyal, courageous citizens of Hyde Park to save this glorious
district from the menace which has brought so much pain and
so much disaster to the district to the south of us.
* * * * *
You cannot mix oil and water. You cannot assimilate races of
a different color as neighbors along social lines. Remember
this: That order is heaven's first law.
Throughout the meetings, profession was made of friendliness toward
the Negroes, together with a desire to serve their needs and accord
them fair treatment. The _Property Owners' Journal_, published by the
Association, was less guarded. While some of its columns made similar
professions, its remarks in other columns were characterized by extreme
racial bitterness and antagonism.
An apparently conciliatory attitude was also taken by speakers at meetings
of the Hyde Park Association and its Grand Boulevard branch. In a meeting
of the latter on January 19, 1920, the chairman declared that he wished
to say for publication: "We have no quarrel with the colored people.
We have no desire to intimidate them by violence." The mission of the
organization, he said, was peaceable, and it was the purpose to proceed
according to law and order. The Association, he averred, had been charged
"by the colored press" with being parties to bombing outrages. He wanted
it known that "we have denounced officially the action of anyone or any
set of people who would indulge in a practice of that character." The
story of the bombing campaign is given in another section of this report.
At another meeting it was asserted that the Kenwood and Hyde Park
Association had a membership of 1,000 persons, and it was estimated that
in the district to which it applied the investment in real estate was
$1,000,000,000. The purpose of the organization was declared to be "to
guard that $1,000,000,000 against depreciation from anything." One speaker
said he did not believe there was a piece of property west of Cottage
Grove Avenue in Hyde Park that was worth 33 cents on the dollar "as it
stands now with this invasion." He said his home cost about $25,000,
but he felt safe in saying that he could not then get $8,000 for it. A
city alderman was one of the speakers at this meeting.
Most of the real estate dealers in the area were claimed as members of the
Kenwood and Hyde Park Association or its Grand Boulevard branch. Special
reference was made at various times and in scathing terms to dealers who
declined to affiliate. At the meeting of the Grand Boulevard district
on January 19, 1920, it was reported that the Executive Committee of
the parent association had succeeded during the previous two or three
months in educating real estate men. "The colored man," a speaker said,
"would have never been in this district had not our real estate men in
their ambition to acquire wealth and commissions, which is perfectly
legitimate, put them here, although this action on their part has been
very shortsighted, as some of them now admit." This speaker said also
that the Association's "greatest successes" had been in getting all but
five or six of the real estate men to sign a pledge not to show or rent
or sell any property "within our locality that we claim jurisdiction of
in the future to colored people."
[Illustration: PROPORTION OF NEGROES TO TOTAL POPULATION 1920
DATA OBTAINED FROM FEDERAL CENSUS]
The _Property Owners' Journal_ exerted no little influence in the creation
of this sentiment. Claiming a wide circulation, its utterances were so
extreme in bitterness against Negroes that many of the residents of the
district, although opposed to the coming in of Negroes, held aloof from
the organization because they could not indorse appeals to race hatred
and advocacy of measures which they felt were illegal and dangerously
near to violence. These extracts are from its issue of December 13, 1919:
To damage a man's property and destroy its value is to rob him.
The person who commits that act is a robber. Every owner has
the right to defend his property to the utmost of his ability
with every means at his disposal.
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.
Protect your property!
Property conservatively valued at $50,000,000 owned by some
10,000 individuals is menaced by a possible Negro invasion of
Hyde Park. The thing is simply impossible and must not occur.
These are from its issue of January 1, 1920:
As stated before, every colored man who moves into Hyde Park
knows that he is damaging his white neighbors' property.
Therefore, he is making war on the white man. Consequently, he
is not entitled to any consideration and forfeits his right
to be employed by the white man. If employers should adopt a
rule of refusing to employ Negroes who persist in residing in
Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's property, it would
soon show good results.
The Negro is using the Constitution and its legal rights to
abuse the moral rights of the white.
This is from its issue of February 15, 1920:
There is nothing in the make-up of a Negro, physically or
mentally, which should induce anyone to welcome him as a
neighbor. The best of them are insanitary, insurance companies
class them as poor risks, ruin alone follows in their path. They
are as proud as peacocks, but have nothing of the peacock's
beauty. Certain classes of the Negroes, such as the Pullman
porters, political heelers and hairdressers are clamoring
for equality. They are not content with remaining with the
creditable members of their race, they seem to want to mingle
with the whites. Their inordinate vanity, their desire to
shine as social lights caused them to stray out of their paths
and lose themselves. We who would direct them back where
they belong, towards their people, are censured and called
"unjust." Far more unjust are their actions to the members
of their race who have no desire to interfere with the homes
of the white citizens of this district. The great majority of
the Negroes are not stirred by any false ambition that results
only in discord. Wherever friction arises between the races,
the suffering is usually endured by the innocent. If these
misleaders are sincere in their protestations of injustice,
if they are not hypocritical in their pretence of solving the
race question, let them move. Their actions savour of spite
against the whites, whose good will can never be attained by
such tactics. The place for a Negro aristocrat is in a Negro
neighborhood.
In the same issue, under the heading _Caveat Vendor_ (Let the Seller
Beware) appeared the following:
People who sell their property to Negroes and take first and
second mortgages and promises to pay monthly sums do not know
what risks they are taking in trying to collect the money. Mrs.
Nora Foster of 4207 Prairie sold her house to some niggers and
when she went to collect she was assaulted and thrown down a
flight of stairs. This is not a case of saying it served her
right because more than seven of her neighbors sold before
Mrs. Foster did, but it does serve as a splendid example of
the fact that niggers are undesirable neighbors and entirely
irresponsible and vicious.
The Negroes' innate desire to "flash," to live in the present,
not reckoning the future, their inordinate love for display
has resulted in their being misled by the example of such
individuals as Jesse Binga and Oscar De Priest. In their loud
mouthing about equality with the whites they have wormed their
course into white neighborhoods, where they are not wanted
and where they have not the means to support property.
Keep the Negro in his place, amongst his people and he is
healthy and loyal. Remove him, or allow his newly discovered
importance to remove him from his proper environment and the
Negro becomes a nuisance. He develops into an overbearing,
inflated, irascible individual, overburdening his brain to such
an extent about social equality, that he becomes dangerous to
all with whom he comes in contact, he constitutes a nuisance,
of which the neighborhood is anxious to rid itself.
Another building which has been polluted by Negro tenancy is
to be renovated on May 1st.... Either the Negro must vanish
or decay sets in. Who is next?
Misleaders of the Negro, those flamboyant, noisy, witless
individuals, who, by power of superior gall and gumption, have
blustered their way into positions of prominence amongst their
people, wonder why this district resents their intrusion. To
allow themselves an opportunity to parade their dusky persons
before an audience of their followers, these misleaders held
a meeting of the Protective Circle (composed, no doubt, of
Negro roundheads), at which a varied assortment of Negro
preachers, politicians and other what nots exposed our methods
and organization work. With much comical oratory, they dangled
our association before the spellbound eyes of their sable
dupes and after extreme fuming and sweating appointed about
fifteen committees to annihilate all Hyde Parkers.
III. BOMBINGS
A form of organized resistance to the coming of Negroes into new
neighborhoods was the bombings of their homes and the homes of real
estate men, white and Negro, who were known or supposed to have sold,
leased, or rented local property to them.
From July 1, 1917, to March 1, 1921, the Negro housing problem was marked
by fifty-eight bomb explosions. Two persons, both Negroes, were killed,
a number of white and colored persons were injured, and the damage to
property amounted to more than $100,000. Of these fifty-eight bombs,
thirty-two were exploded within the square bounded by Forty-first and
Sixtieth streets, Cottage Grove Avenue and State Street. With an average
of one race bombing every twenty days for three years and eight months,
the police and the state's attorney's office succeeded in apprehending but
two persons suspected of participation in these acts of lawlessness. One
of these, James Macheval, arrested on the complaint of C. S. Absteson,
a janitor, was released on a $500 bond. At the writing of this report,
one year after the arrest, there has been no trial. Another man was
apprehended, questioned, held under surveillance for two days by the
police, and finally released.
News of threatened bombings in many cases was circulated well in advance
of the actual occurrence. Negroes were warned of the exact date on which
explosions would occur. They asked for police protection, and, in some
instances where police were sent beforehand, their homes were bombed,
and no arrests were made.
The persons directing these bombings did not limit their intimidations to
Negro residents in white neighborhoods; residences of Negroes and white
real estate men were bombed because they had sold or rented property in
these exclusive areas to Negroes, and Negro bankers' houses were bombed
because they made loans on Negro property and supported their mortgages.
These bombings increased rapidly in frequency and damaging effect. The
six months' period ended October 1, 1920, witnessed as many bombings
as the entire thirty-five months preceding. Prior to 1919 there were
twelve bombings. Four of these were directed at properties merely held
by Negro real estate men as agents, two of them in Berkeley Avenue just
north of Forty-third Street, and near the lake. Five were in the 4500
block on Vincennes Avenue, two at 4200 Wabash Avenue, and one at 4732
Indiana Avenue.
Bombing of real estate men's properties appears to have been part of a
general scheme to close the channels through which the invasion proceeded
rather than a protest of neighbors. The four explosions in the 4500
block on Vincennes Avenue appear to have been deliberately aimed at the
tenants. This block is at the center of the neighborhood most actively
opposed to the coming in of Negroes. In January, 1919, a white and a
Negro real estate agent were bombed; in March, Jesse Binga's real estate
office at 4724 State Street and an apartment at 4041 Calumet Avenue were
bombed. In April there were two more bombings, one of a realty office.
Following a public meeting on May 5 to arouse white property owners of
the Hyde Park district against Negro invasion, there were four bombings.
Between January 1, 1920, and March 1, 1920, there were eight bombings
in eight weeks. Responsibility for the creation of the sentiment thus
expressed was in some instances assumed by organizations. For example
the _Property Owners' Journal_, in its issue for February 1, 1920, said:
Our neighborhood must continue white. This sentiment is the
outgrowth of the mass meeting of property owners and residents
which was held Monday, January 19. Mr. George J. Williams
furnished the climax of the meeting when he informed the
audience in terse, pithy language that "Hyde Park enjoys a
reputation too splendid as a neighborhood of white culture to
allow Negroes to use it as their door mat."
In the issue of December 13, 1919, white and Negro real estate men and
owners selling property to Negroes in the district were "branded as
unclean outcasts of society to be boycotted and ostracized in every
possible manner," and W. B. Austin, white, was accused of violating a
gentleman's obligation to his community in selling a home to a Negro.
It was asserted falsely that the house which he had sold had been used
during the race riots as a "rendezvous for Negroes who fired volleys of
revolver shots from doors and windows at white boys in the street who,
according to the testimony of neighbors, had not attacked the premises."
On December 26 the home of J. H. Coleman, a white real estate man who
had sold a house to a Negro, was bombed. The transaction was not public,
and occupancy was not to take place for five months. On December 27
the home of Jesse Binga, a Negro real estate man, was bombed. One week
later, on January 6, came the bombing of W. B. Austin, on the North Side.
During 1919 and 1920 committees and delegations of whites and Negroes
appealed to the chief of police, the mayor, State's Attorney Hoyne, and
the press, but nothing was done. The mayor referred these matters to his
chief of police. The police were unable to discover the bombers or anyone
directing them. The state's attorney, in response to appeals, emphatically
defined his duty as a prosecuting rather than an apprehending agent. All
the while, however, the bombings continued steadily; no arrests except
the two mentioned were made; and the Negro population grew to trust less
and less in the interest of the community and the public agencies of
protection.
1. TYPICAL BOMBINGS
The circumstances of the bombings were investigated by the Commission,
and details of what happened in several typical cases are here presented.
_Bombing of the Motley home._--In 1913 S. P. Motley, Negro,
and his wife purchased a building at 5230 Maryland Avenue
through a white agent, and on March 15, 1913, the family moved
in. For four years they lived there without molestation save
the silent resentment of neighbors and open objection to the
presence of Negro children in the streets. On July 1, 1917,
without warning or threat, a bomb was exploded in the vestibule
of the house, and the front of the building was blown away.
The damage amounted to $1,000. Police arrived from the station
at Fifty-second Street and Lake Park Avenue ten minutes after
the explosion. No clews were found and no arrests were made.
The original owner of the building was bitterly opposed to
Negroes and was a member of an organization which was seeking
to keep Negroes out of the district.
Some time after this incident it was rumored that Motley was
planning to purchase the building adjacent. At 4:00 A.M. June
4, 1919, a dynamite bomb was exploded under the front of the
house adjacent and tore up its stone front. The neighbors
were in the street immediately after the explosion. No clews
were found and no arrests were made. The Motley family on
this occasion was accused of inviting another Negro family
into the block. The new family in question negotiated for its
own property, and before an actual settlement had been made,
received numerous telephone messages and threats. It moved
in, but was not bombed.
[Illustration: HOMES BOMBED IN RACE CONFLICTS OVER HOUSING
JULY 1, 1917-MARCH 1, 1921]
_Bombing of Moses Fox's home._--Moses Fox, white, connected
with a "Loop" real estate firm, lived at 442 East Forty-fifth
Street. The house was too large, and he decided to move to
smaller quarters. The building was sold through a real estate
firm to persons whom he did not know. On March 10, 1920, a few
days after the sale, he received a telephone call informing
him that he must suffer the consequences of selling his home to
Negroes. At 7:30 that evening an automobile was seen to drive
slowly past his home three times, stopping each time just east
of the building. On the last trip a man alighted, and deposited
a long-fuse bomb in the vestibule. The fuse smoked for four
minutes. Attracted by the smoke, Fox ran toward the front of
the house. The bomb exploded before he reached the door. It was
loaded with dynamite and contained slugs which penetrated the
windows of buildings across the street. The evening selected
for the bombing was the one on which Patrolman Edward Owens,
Negro, was off duty and a white policeman was patrolling his
beat. The bombing was witnessed by Dan Jones, a Negro janitor,
and Mrs. Florence De Lavalade, a Negro tenant. The front of
the building was wrecked and all the windows shattered. Damage
amounting to $1,000 was done. No arrests were made.
_Bombing of Jesse Binga's properties._--Jesse Binga is a Negro
banker and real estate man. His bank is at 3633 State Street,
his real estate office at 4724 State Street, and his home at
5922 South Park Avenue. He controls more than $500,000 worth of
property and through his bank has made loans on Negro property
and taken over the mortgages of Negroes refused by other banks
and loan agencies.
On November 12, 1919, an automobile rolled by his realty office
and a bomb was tossed from it. It left the office in ruins.
The police were soon on the scene, but the car was well beyond
reach by the time of their arrival. No clews to the bombers
were found, and no arrests were made. It was the opinion of
the police that white residents of the Hyde Park district
resented Binga's handling of Negro property in that district.
Twenty-one days later an automobile drew up in front of Binga's
home at 5922 South Park Avenue, and its occupants put a bomb
under the front steps. It failed to explode. When the firemen
arrived they found it sizzling in the slush beneath the porch.
The police declared that this was an expression of racial
feeling.
Twenty-five days later the bombers reappeared and left a third
bomb. It tore up the porch of Binga's home. Again the police
found that the explosion had been caused by "racial feeling,"
white men having said that "Binga rented too many flats to
Negroes in high-class residence districts." The house was
repaired and police provided to guard the house. At twelve
o'clock each night the guard changed watch. On the night of
February 28 the policeman on duty until twelve o'clock left
a few minutes early, and the policeman relieving him was just
a few minutes late. In this unguarded interval an automobile
swung around the corner, and as it passed the Binga home a man
leaned out and tossed a bomb into the yard. The bomb lit in a
puddle of water and the fuse went out. It was found that the
bomb had been made of black powder, manila paper, and cotton.
The explanation of the attempt was that "his $30,000 home is
in a white neighborhood."
A police guard was still watching the house on the night of
June 18, 1920 when the bombing car appeared again. On this
occasion neither policeman was in sight when the car drew up.
A man alighted this time and carefully placed the bomb. The
explosion that followed almost demolished the front of the house
and smashed windows throughout the block. This last explosion
damaged the home to the extent of $4,000. Binga offered a
reward of $1,000 for the apprehension of those guilty of these
repeated acts of lawlessness.
On November 23 Binga was bombed again. This time the bomb
damaged his neighbors more seriously than it did Binga's
property. No clews were found and no one was arrested.
_Bombing of R. W. Woodfolk's home._--R. W. Woodfolk, Negro
banker and real estate dealer, purchased a flat at 4722 Calumet
Avenue. It was an investment of the Merchants and Peoples'
Bank, 3201 South State Street, which he controlled. The
building was occupied by one white and four Negro families.
On the evening of February 1, 1920, a person with keys to the
building locked the tenants in their apartments, sprung the
locks of the doors leading to the street, and planted a bomb
in the hallway. The explosion ripped up the hall and stairway,
tore away the brick work around the entrance, and shattered
the windows of adjacent buildings. The damage was estimated
at $1,000. No arrests were made.
_Bombing of the Clarke home._--Mrs. Mary Byron Clarke, Negro,
purchased through W. B. Austin, a white banker and real estate
man, properties at 4404 and 4406 Grand Boulevard, vacant
for a year at the time of purchase, and previously used by
prostitutes. A real estate dealer herself, she had frequently
been assisted by Austin in financing her transactions, one
of which was the sale to Negroes of Isaiah Temple, a Jewish
synagogue at Forty-fifth Street and Vincennes Avenue.
The dwellings were renovated and she moved into one of them;
the other she rented. During the riot of July, 1919, her home
was attacked by a mob. When the police arrived in response to a
call by the Clarkes, they battered in the doors at the demand of
the mob and arrested Mr. and Mrs. Clarke. They were acquitted.
On January 5, 1920, the house was bombed. The explosion caused
$3,360 worth of damage. The building was again bombed February
12, 1920, this time with a dynamite bomb thrown through the
plate-glass door in the hallway from a passing automobile. The
stairway was knocked down and large holes blown in the wall.
The police came, found no clews, and made no arrests. At the
request of Mrs. Clarke a special policeman was detailed to
guard the property.
Numerous threatening letters and telephone calls followed,
all of which were reported to the police. There were threats
of another bombing if she did not sell, and there were visits
from representatives of real estate interests in Hyde Park
making offers.
Tuesday evening, April 13, 1920, a third bomb was exploded
in spite of the presence of the two special policemen. The
bomb was thrown from the premises of Frederick R. Barnheisel,
an immediate neighbor, a telephone wire deflected it, and it
landed near the Clarke garage.
Mrs. Clarke made a statement concerning this bombing before
the Commission in which she said:
"Wednesday [the day following the third bombing] we got a
letter saying 'move out or sell, there is nothing else for
you to do. We missed you last night but we will get you the
next time. We are determined.' A letter prior to that stated
if we did not get out they would 'get our hides.'
"There has been some sinister influence brought to bear on the
insurance company since the riot and since the first bombing.
We have had our house insured against bombing since the first
bombing. The first damage of about $500 they paid and canceled
the insurance on 4404 Grand Boulevard. The second bomb did
damage to the extent of $3,360. They wrote saying they would
cancel it, subject however to pending loss. There was a clause
calling for settlement within sixty days. After sixty days
we would have to enter suit to get it. The sixty days have
passed, and there has been no attempt to settle. Some of the
glass has been replaced. They have accepted it, and there has
been no disposition on their part to settle.
"Berry, Johnston, & Peters, the men with whom we have had the
most business dealings, have insisted that we sell the place.
Mr. Peters said last week he could get a buyer from the Hyde
Park-Kenwood Association people, also said if any indebtedness
remained on the contract or deeds, that the money must first
be paid to them, then to us. We have been careful not to let
any indebtedness, even for ten days, come against 4406."
_Bombing of Crede Hubbard's home._--Following is part of
Hubbard's statement to the police immediately after the bombing
of his home at 4331 Vincennes Avenue on the night of April
25, 1920:
"The day on which I had planned to move, a man who said he was
Mr. Day, of the Hyde Park and Kenwood Association, telephoned
me. He said: 'I hear you have acquired property and you are
dissatisfied with it; we can take it off your hands--relieve
you of it.' I replied that I didn't think I needed any help. He
asked, 'What do you expect to do?' I said, 'I expect to move
into it or sell it if I can get my price.' I moved on Tuesday
and Wednesday he called in person. He said, 'I called to find
out if you want us to sell or handle your property for you.'
I told him I thought I could handle it, and that I was not
anxious to sell but would consider selling if I could get an
offer of say $11,000. He replied that his buyers were not able
to go that far. He continued, 'The point is, I represent the
Hyde Park-Kenwood Association. We have spent a lot of money
and we want to keep this district white.' I asked him why they
had not thought of buying the property before and told him
that the house had been for sale for eight months. He replied
that it was a lamentable fact that they had overlooked it. I
told him that I heard the Hyde Park Association had a $100,000
slush fund out of which $100 was paid for each bombing. He
said he would have some of his buyers come in and look over the
property. Shortly afterward, Mr. Stephen D. Seman and another
man came and represented themselves as buyers. They looked
over the inside of the house. I only carried them through the
halls. Mr. Seman said, 'You only paid $8,500 for this property.'
I told him that he had been misinformed, I had paid $9,000.
He said, 'I will give you $9,500 for it.' I refused. As they
were leaving he added, 'You had better consider our offer.'
Soon after that a man named Casson, real estate man, called.
I would not let him in. When he asked me my price I told him
$11,500.
"A week later a delegation from the Hyde Park Association
called. The spokesman began: 'I am Mr. Austin. You understand
the nature of our business with you, I suppose.' ... I told
the chief clerk of the office of the Northwestern Railroad to
inform you that we were coming to see you. We are the Hyde
Park-Kenwood Association and you will understand that you
are not welcome in this district. We want to know what can be
done.' I replied that I didn't know what could be done unless
they wanted to buy; otherwise I expected to live there, and my
price was $11,500. They continued, 'Do you suppose if I moved
into a black district where I wasn't wanted, that I would want
to live there?' I said, 'If you had bought property there and
liked the property, I don't see why you should move.' They
said, 'Why do you persist in wanting to live here when you
know you are not wanted?' I said, 'I have bought property here
and I am expecting to live here.' Then they filed out of the
door, and one of the members stated, 'You had better consider
this proposition.'
"In the office of the Northwestern Railroad, Mr. Shirley called
me in and read a letter to me which he had received from Mr.
Austin. 'Murphy, his name is,' he said, 'I know him fairly
well, and I simply want to make an answer to the letter. Don't
think I am trying to influence you one way or the other. This
is the letter: it goes about like this: "Crede Hubbard has
purchased a three-flat building at 4332 Vincennes Avenue.
Property values are always shot to hell when Negroes move in.
Use whatever influence you have to induce him to sell and find
out for us his lowest figures."' He added, 'Don't think I am
trying to brow-beat you into selling this property.'"
"On the following Sunday night on my way back to Milwaukee, I
read in the paper that my house had been bombed. My family was
at home, my two boys sleeping about ten feet from the place
that was most seriously damaged. The bomb was placed inside
the vestibule. The girl there heard a taxicab drive up about
twenty-five minutes to twelve and stop for a few minutes and
start off again. About six minutes after the taxicab stopped,
the explosion came, and in about five minutes there were
not less than 300 people on the street in front of the place
asking questions. There were a number of plain-clothes men
in the crowd. I told my story to the chief of police and to a
sergeant of the police and they said it was evidence enough to
warrant the arrest of the officials of the Association named,
but they also thought that it would do no good.... 'The thing
we will have to do is to catch somebody in the act, sweat him
and make him tell who his backers are.'
"The police believe that the actual bombing is being done by
a gang of young rough-necks who will stop at nothing, and they
expect a pretty serious encounter if they are interfered with.
A big automobile is being shadowed now by the police. It is
used by this bunch of young fellows under suspicion, and it is
thought that they keep the car well loaded with ammunition,
and whoever attacks them must expect trouble. There are four
plain-clothes men on guard in this district now. The police
told me to get anything I want from a Mauser to a machine
gun and sit back in the dark, and when anybody comes up to my
hallway acting suspiciously to crack down on him and ask him
what he was there for afterwards."
_Bombing of the Harrison home._--Mrs. Gertrude Harrison, Negro,
living alone with her children, contracted to buy a house
at 4708 Grand Boulevard. In March, 1919, she moved in. She
immediately received word that she had committed a grave error.
She and her children were constantly subjected to the insulting
remarks both of her immediate neighbors and passers-by.
On May 16, 1919, a Negro janitor informed her that neighbors
were planning to bomb her house. She called up the Forty-eighth
Street police station and told of the threatened danger. The
officer answering the telephone characterized her report as
"idle talk" and promised to send a man to investigate. The
regular patrolman came in and promised to "keep an eye on the
property," but there were ten blocks in his beat. A special
guard was secured and paid by Mrs. Harrison when it was learned
that one would not be furnished by the police.
The following night, May 17, her house was bombed while the
patrolman was "punching his box" two blocks away and the special
watchman was at the rear. A detail of police was then provided
both at the front and rear. The following night a bomb was
thrown on the roof of the house from the window of a vacant
flat in the adjoining apartment house. The flat from which
the bomb was thrown had been unlocked to admit the bombers and
locked again. The police failed to question either the persons
living in the apartment or those leaving it immediately after
the explosion.
The first explosion blew out the front door and shattered
the glass in the front of the house. The bomb was filled with
gravel and bits of lead. The second was of similar character,
but did not do as much damage. No arrests were made.
[Illustration: DAMAGE DONE BY A BOMB
This bomb was thrown into a building at 3365 Indiana Avenue, occupied
by Negroes. A six-year-old Negro child was killed.]
In all these fifty-eight bombings the police have been able to accomplish
nothing definite. Practically every incident involved an automobile,
descriptions of which were furnished by witnesses. The precautions taken
to prevent bombings, even if they were well planned and systematically
carried out, failed lamentably.
2. REACTION OF WHITES IN HYDE PARK
Increasing frequency of bombings, failure of the police to make arrests,
and the apparent association of these acts of open violence with the
white residents of Hyde Park drew out explanations.
Pastors of churches in the district who, it had been charged, helped
to give circulation to printed sentiments of the organized opposition
to the "invasion" were strong in their repudiation. The menace to law
and order was definitely recognized and the public given to understand
that neither the pastor nor his congregation had encouraged acts of
lawlessness in any manner. In a statement to a Commission investigator,
one of these pastors said, "I am not in sympathy with the methods and
am very doubtful about the aims of the Property Owners' Association and
have, therefore, been unable to join them or indorse their efforts."
A local paper, the _Real Estate News_, published a long article in
February, 1920, on "Solving Chicago's Race Problem." It was directed at
South Side property owners and carried a stern warning "against perils of
boycott and terrorism being promoted by local protective associations."
Referring to the bombing outrages, this paper, under the heading "Danger
in Boycotts and Bombs," said:
In Kenwood and Hyde Park, particularly, a number of "protective
associations" have been formed. Property owners have been urged
to join these bodies, which, without attempt at concealment,
advocate a boycott against all persons of a certain race.
At meetings of these groups there has been open advocacy of
violence. There has been incendiary talk. Bombs and bullets
have been discussed, and speakers talking thus have been
applauded. There have been repeated acts of violence. Night
bombing of Negro homes and apartments has taken place. Bombing
and shooting is increasing in frequency.
The time has come, we believe, for a word of solemn warning
to all South Side property owners. It is: Keep out of those
associations. If you are now in, get out! For you are in great
danger of the penitentiary! You are in grave peril of losing
your property by damage suits!
Another excerpt, under the heading "Perils of 'Protective' Organizations,"
said:
No one can justly criticize men for forming organizations
to protect or advance their own interests lawfully. Property
owners ought to unite wherever practicable for proper and lawful
purposes beneficial to themselves. For such unions operate to
the welfare of all.
Recently, however, a number of men have joined in forming and
promoting organizations on the South Side which are perilous to
themselves and to every property owner who joins them. Owners
of real estate should be the last men in the world to get mixed
up in movements involving violence, threats, intimidations,
or boycotts. Because they are responsible. Their wealth cannot
be concealed. Judgments against them are collectible.
Under the heading "Drastic Laws Forbid Conspiracies":
The law of conspiracy is drastic. Conspiracy is an association
together of persons for the purpose of doing an unlawful thing
in an unlawful way, or a lawful thing in an unlawful way, or
an unlawful thing in a lawful way. Under the law, all persons
in a conspiracy are equally guilty. One need not throw a bomb,
or even know of the intent of throwing a bomb, to be found
guilty. The act of one, no matter how irresponsible, is the
act of all.
Any association formed in Chicago for the purpose of, or having
among its aims, refusal to sell, lease or rent property to any
citizen of a certain race, is an unlawful association. Every
act of such an association for advancement of such an aim is
an act of conspiracy, punishable criminally and civilly in
the District Court of the United States. And every member of
such an association is equally guilty with every other member.
If one member hires a bomber, or a thug who commits murder in
pursuance of the aims of the association, all the organization
may be found guilty of conspiracy to destroy property or to
commit murder, as the case may be.
This entire article was widely circulated in the disturbed neighborhoods
by the Protective Circle, an organization of Negroes, 25,000 copies
being mailed to residents of Hyde Park.
Residents of the district, stirred by the succession of bombings, began
to protest. The paper of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners'
Association reflected this feeling in a statement declaring that the
Association had no connection with the bombings, and that its president
was considering the advisability of assisting the authorities in
apprehending these lawless individuals. On another occasion, this paper
took pains to explain that the bombing of George A. Hyers' property
on March 5 was an outgrowth of labor troubles and not of a property
owners' organization recently formed in this community. At a meeting of
the General Committee of the Property Owners' Association the following
resolution was unanimously adopted:
WHEREAS, Our attention has been called to various explosions
of bombs in our neighborhood at the houses of colored people
living in this vicinity, and
WHEREAS, While we are anxious to persuade these people to
move from this locality, we are opposed to violence of every
description, therefore, be it
_Resolved_, That we condemn the action of anyone resorting
to throwing of bombs or other methods not in accordance with
reason, law or justice.
The attention of the city was directed to these unlawful happenings and
protests from both white and Negro individuals made themselves heard. The
bombings, however, did not abate in frequency. Neither were the police
any more successful in locating their sources.
3. REACTION OF NEGROES
From the beginning Negroes were outspoken in their indignation over
the bombings, but their protests had no apparent effect in checking the
outrages.
The attacks, however, have made the Negroes firm in their stand. Mrs.
Clarke was bombed four times; she still lives in the property and declares
that she will not be driven out. Jesse Binga has been bombed six times
but states he will not move. Only two of the forty Negro families bombed
have moved; the others have made repairs, secured private watchmen or
themselves kept vigil for night bombers, and still occupy the properties.
Following the bombing of Jesse Binga on June 18, 1920, the _Chicago
Daily News_ quoted him as saying to a policeman, "This is the limit;
I'm going." When his attention was called to the statement he promptly
replied:
Statements relative to my moving are all false. My idea of
this bombing of my house is that it is an effort to retard the
Binga State Bank which will take over the mortgages of colored
people now buying property against which effort is being made
to foreclose. I will not run. The race is at stake and not
myself. If they can make me move they will have accomplished
much of their aim because they can say, "We made Jesse Binga
move; certainly you'll have to move," to all of the rest. If
they can make the leaders move, what show will the smaller
buyers have? Such headlines are efforts to intimidate Negroes
not to purchase property and to scare some of them back South.
In February a group of Negroes formed themselves into a body known as
the Protective Circle of Chicago, the purpose of which, as stated in its
constitution, was "to combat, through legal means, the lawlessness of
the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association and by organized
effort to bring pressure to bear on city authorities to force them to
apprehend those persons who have bombed the homes of twenty-one Negroes."
A mass meeting was held February 29, 1920, with 3,000 Negroes present.
A popular appeal for funds for the purposes of this organization raised
$1,000. Attacks were directed against the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property
Owners' Association. A representative of the Protective Circle said in
part:
The Hyde Park Property Owners' Association is not a new thing.
It is more than eighteen years old. Eighteen years ago they
proposed fourteen points as a platform for their Association.
The thirteenth point was that they would keep out undesirables.
All Negroes were classed as undesirables. Ten years ago Dr.
Jenifer, a Negro minister, appeared before the Association
and severely criticized the organization for its un-American
policies. It is just recently that this organization has shown
its hand openly, and the things that they have said and done
are dangerously near to illegality. I have in my files this
statement taken from a stenographic report of one of their
meetings, made by the president of the Association: "If Negroes
do not get out of Hyde Park, we will get Bolsheviks to bomb them
out." The bombers of the homes of Negroes have been allowed to
get away unpunished. Judge Gary hanged numbers of anarchists
in the Haymarket riot for very much less complicity in bomb
outrages than these men are guilty of. Hatred can never be
counteracted by hatred. We cannot put any stop to the bombings
of Negro homes by going out and bombing homes of white persons.
The Negro press severely condemned the bombings, and the Negro population
in general felt that the apathy of city authorities and even the
influential public was responsible for continuance of the outrages.
Protests were sent to the governor of the state. The mayor, chief of
police, and state's attorney were persistently importuned to stop the
destruction of Negroes' property and remove the menace to their lives.
Negroes pointed out, for example, that the authorities had shown ability
to apprehend criminals, even those suspected of bomb-throwing. They cited
the bombing of the home of a professional white "gunman," when eleven
suspected bombers were caught in the dragnet of the state's attorney
within thirty hours. Yet in fifty-eight bombings of Negro homes only
two suspects were ever arrested.
In March, 1920, a Commission from the Chicago Church Federation Council
sent a delegation to Mayor Thompson, Chief of Police Garrity, and
State's Attorney Hoyne, to demand action on the bombing of Negroes'
homes. Prominent white and colored men comprised this delegation. A
prominent Negro, testifying before the Commission, said that he, with
other Negroes, both from the local branch of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, and from other organizations,
had carried their grievances to city officials. He said:
We have been to the mayor's office, we have been to the state's
attorney's office, we have sent representatives to both these
offices, and nothing has been done--possibly something is being
done, but nothing of great moment. I think that the colored
people feel that they are so insecure in their physical rights
that rather than take any chance they're going out and paying
whatever the charge is for insurance against bombing.
Another delegation of Negroes in June, 1919, twice attempted to register
a complaint with the mayor against bomb outrages. The mayor's secretary,
however, refused them an audience with the mayor.
The editors of local daily papers have also been visited by mixed white
and Negro delegations in an endeavor to arouse public opinion.
The effect of these delegations and protests has been small. One joint
conference with the mayor, chief of police, and state's attorney brought
out the information that it was beyond the state's attorney's province
to make arrests. The mayor, after some discussion, instructed Chief of
Police Garrity to do what he could toward putting a stop to the bombing
of Negroes' homes. The chief of police, after explaining the shortage
of patrolmen, said he would do so.
The bombing question began to figure in local politics. Charges were
made before the primary election of September, 1920, that the city
administration had not given Negroes the protection it had promised.
The matter of apprehending the "nefarious bomb plotters" was included
in the platforms of Negroes running for office, and in those of white
candidates seeking Negro votes.
The Commission had neither authority nor facilities for accomplishing
what all public agencies had signally failed to do. It could, however,
and did, go over the trail of the bombers and collect information which
shows that the sentiment aroused in the contested neighborhoods was a
factor in encouraging actual violence. Whatever antagonisms there were
before the agitation were held in restraint, even though Negroes were
already neighbors. Other districts, like Woodlawn and sections of the
North Side, undergoing almost identical experiences as those of Hyde
Park, have had no violence; the absence of stimulated sentiment is as
conspicuous as the absence of violence. In the Hyde Park district,
between Thirty-ninth and Forty-seventh streets and State Street and
Cottage Grove Avenue, four-fifths of the bombings occurred. All but
three of those happening outside the district were against real estate
men accused of activities affecting the Hyde Park District. It seemed,
especially in the first bombings, that the bombers had information about
business transactions which the general public could not ordinarily get.
Houses were bombed in numbers of cases long before their occupancy by
Negroes. Each of the bombings was apparently planned, and the opportune
moment came after long vigil and, as it would seem, after deliberately
setting the stage. The first bombing of Binga does not appear to have
been the result of resentment of neighbors in the vicinity of his home,
for it was his office on State Street that was bombed. His office is in
a neighborhood around which there is no contest.
4. OTHER MEANS EMPLOYED TO KEEP OUT NEGROES
The Grand Boulevard Property Owners' Association officially decided
that its object should be "the acquisition, management, improvement and
disposition, including leasing, sub-leasing and sale of residential
property to both white and colored people within the said district
heretofore described." This district was to include the area from
Thirty-fifth to Sixty-third streets, and from the Chicago and Rock Island
Railroad tracks to Lake Michigan.
In August, 1920, the manager of the Association cited an instance in
which it had functioned. On Vernon Avenue a white man had sold property
direct to Negroes. The next-door neighbor had arranged a similar sale
to potential Negro buyers. The neighbor next to him, a widow, loath to
lose her home, appealed to the Association. After a conference with the
possible Negro buyers, their money was returned to them, the Association
purchased the house in question, and the whole matter was thus amicably
arranged.
During April, 1920, inquiries were made by the Commission into the
unrest caused by rumors that 800 Negro families intended to move into
Hyde Park. It developed that May 1, the customary "moving day," was
feared both by whites in Hyde Park and by Negroes in and out of Hyde
Park. Negroes living there feared that an attempt would be made to oust
them by canceling or refusing to renew their leases, and whites thought
Negroes might get possession of some of the properties vacated on that
date. The Commission found, however, only eighteen instances where leases
were canceled on houses occupied by Negroes who were having difficulty
in finding other places to live.
In the summer of 1920 the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners'
Association stated that sixty-eight Negro families had been moved through
cancellation of leases and mortgage foreclosures.
Incidental to the general plan of opposition to the entrance of Negroes
in Hyde Park was the sending of threatening letters. For example, in
August, 1919, a leading Negro real estate agent and banker received this
pen-printed notice by mail:
HEADQUARTERS OF THE WHITE HANDS
TERRITORY, MICHIGAN AVE. TO LAKE FRONT
You are the one who helped cause this riot by encouraging
Negroes to move into good white neighborhoods and you know
the results of your work. This trouble has only begun and we
advise you to use your influence to get Negroes to move out of
these neighborhoods to _Black Belt_ where they belong and in
conclusion we advise you to get off South Park Ave. yourself.
Just take this as a warning. You know what comes next.
Respect.
WARNING COM.
This man's home and office have been bombed a number of times. Efforts
were made to buy out individual Negroes who had settled in the district,
as well as to cause renters to move out. There are numerous incidents
of this nature, with indications of many others. A Negro woman who was
living in the district, told one of the Commission's investigators that
she and her husband had formerly lived in the 3800 block of Lake Park
Avenue. White neighbors caused them so much trouble that they had moved
and bought the apartment house in which they are now living, renting out
the second and third flats. Almost immediately white people began to call
and inquire whether she was the janitress, or whether she was renting
or buying the place. When she gave evasive answers, letters began to
arrive by mail. One letter was slipped under the door at night. These
letters informed her that she was preventing the sale of the adjoining
house because she would not sell and no white person would live next
door to her. She was advised that it would be best for her to answer and
declare her intentions. Two white women called and offered her $1,500
more than she had paid for the property. She refused and a few days later
she received a letter demanding an immediate answer, to the Kenwood and
Hyde Park Property Owners' Association.
Later three white men in overseas uniforms inquired as to the ownership
of the property, asking if she was the janitress and if she knew who
the owner was. She answered in the negative. One of the men tore down
a "For Sale" sign on the adjoining property, and another informed her
that it was the intention to turn the neighborhood back to white people
and that all Negroes must go.
This woman is the president of a neighborhood protective league, including
the Negroes in several of the blocks thereabouts. She received a letter
from the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association asking the
purposes and intentions of this league.
This woman also reported that a man had been going about the neighborhood
under the pretext of making calling cards, advising Negroes to sell out
and leave the neighborhood, as it was better not to stay where they were
not wanted. Another white man who had been about the neighborhood selling
wearing apparel, told her that two Negro families in the neighborhood
would be bombed. She inquired how he knew this and was told to wait and
see. Within two weeks these bombings had taken place.
IV. TREND OF THE NEGRO POPULATION
In considering the expansion of Negro residential areas, the most
important is the main South Side section where more of the Negro
population lives. This group is hemmed in on the north by the business
district and on the west by overcrowded areas west of Wentworth Avenue,
called in this report "hostile." During the ten years 1910-20 business
houses and light manufacturing plants were moving south from the downtown
district, pushing ahead of them the Negro population between Twelfth
and Thirty-first streets. At the same time the Negro population was
expanding into the streets east of Wabash Avenue. This extension was
stopped by Lake Michigan, about eight blocks east. Negro families then
began filtering into Hyde Park, immediately to the south.
In 1917 the Chicago Urban League found that Negroes were then living on
Wabash Avenue as far south as Fifty-fifth street east of State Street,
where they had moved from the district west of State Street. From
Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth streets, on Wabash Avenue, Negroes had
been living from nine to eleven years, and the approximate percentage
of Negroes by blocks ranged from 95 to 100; from Thirty-ninth Street to
Forty-seventh Street they had been living from one to five years and
averaged 50 per cent. The movement had been almost entirely from the
west and north.
On Indiana Avenue, from Thirty-first to Forty-second streets, a similar
trend was revealed. In the 3100 block, Negroes had been living for eight
years, in the 3200 block for fourteen years; in the more southerly blocks
their occupancy had been much briefer, ranging down to five months. In
the most northerly of these blocks Negroes numbered 90 per cent and in
the most southerly only 2 per cent.
On Prairie Avenue, farther east, two Negro families bought homes in the
3100 block in 1911, but the majority of the Negroes had come in since
1916. The percentage of Negroes in that block was 50. From Thirty-second
to Thirty-ninth Street the blocks were found to have more than 90 per
cent Negroes. One family had been there five years and the average
residence was one and one-half years. No Negroes were found from Fortieth
to Forty-fourth Street on Prairie Avenue. There were two families in
the 4500 block, and none south of that.
On Forest Avenue, from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Street, 75 per cent
of the families were Negroes and had lived there less than six years.
On Calumet Avenue, the next street east of Prairie, Negroes had begun
to live within four years. The population was 75 per cent Negro from
Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Street. None live south of Thirty-ninth
Street, except at the corner, where they had been living for five months.
A similar situation was found on Rhodes Avenue, still farther east,
from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Street. Negroes had lived in Vincennes
Avenue, the next street east, less than two years, and in Cottage Grove
Avenue, still farther east less than one year.
South Park Avenue and its continuation, Grand Boulevard (south of
Thirty-fifth Street) was the most recent street into which Negroes had
moved in large numbers. This had occurred within the years 1915-17.
The first Negro families had moved into the 3400 block less than four
years previously. The percentage of Negroes between Thirty-first and
Thirty-fifth streets was less than 50. Within five months two Negro
families had moved into the hitherto exclusively white 3500 block.
Few Negroes had moved from east of State Street to west of that street.
[Illustration: A NEGRO CHORAL SOCIETY]
V. OUTLYING NEIGHBORHOODS
The Commission's investigation being confined to the city of Chicago,
the growing Negro colonies in such suburbs as Evanston and Glencoe
were not studied, but attention was given to two southwestern outlying
neighborhoods in the east part of Morgan Park, just inside the city
limits, and the village of Robbins, wholly Negro, just outside.
1. MORGAN PARK
In 1910, 126 Negroes lived in Morgan Park, with a total population of
5,269. In 1920 the area had been incorporated in the city of Chicago,
and there were 695 Negroes in a total population of 7,780 occupying
approximately the same area.
In its early days Morgan Park was the site of a theological seminary,
which in 1892 became part of the University of Chicago. The first Negroes
there were servants, mostly from the South, working in the households of
the professors. The colony remained, and its more recent increase was due
in considerable measure to the influx of well-to-do Negroes from farther
north in Chicago, many of whom bought houses. In some cases Negroes in
congested Negro residential areas sold out to Negroes arriving in the
migration and re-established themselves in much better dwellings and
surroundings in Morgan Park.
Less prosperous Negroes also came, despite the feeling of some home owners
that too great an influx of that type would injure property values and
render the neighborhood less desirable. Many of these work in the South
Chicago steel mills and the shops at Pullman. Some work in the Stock
Yards.
A number of Negroes of Morgan Park are employed at the Chicago City
Hall. Some are porters on Pullman cars. Only a small number are laborers.
Many of the women sew or work as car cleaners and seem reluctant to do
housework even at day wages.
Physically Morgan Park is attractive with comfortable homes and large
grounds. Several churches, a number of schools, and an attractive park
all add to the desirability of the place as a "home town." The lots
are deep, affording plenty of space for gardens, and many vacant lots
are cultivated. The opportunity for garden patches is an attraction for
many Negroes. There are two Negro churches, Methodist and Baptist, and
a Colored Men's Improvement Association which has provided a social hall
for the Negro population.
School facilities are inadequate, and the buildings are old and
overcrowded. Because of this congestion, it becomes necessary for children
in the sixth and higher grades to go three miles to a school on Western
Avenue. About twenty Negroes attend the high school. In the Esmond Street
school approximately 25 per cent of the children are Negroes. The Negroes
have repeatedly requested enlarged school facilities. They want a new
building conveniently situated for their children.
The white people of Morgan Park are not unfriendly toward their Negro
neighbors, though there seems to be a common understanding that Negroes
must not live west of Vincennes Road, which bisects the town from
northeast to southwest. A Negro once bought a house across the line but
found he was so unwelcome that he promptly sold again. More recently the
owner of a three-story brick flat building rented to Negroes the twenty
flats above his stores. A protest was made by both white and Negro house
owners, so that he was forced to eject the Negro tenants.
The demand for homes is shown in the numbers of Negroes who go to Morgan
Park on Sundays by automobile, street car, and train. In the spring of
1920 a number of houses were being erected for Negro occupancy in what
is known in Morgan Park as "No Man's Land," east of Vincennes Road from
109th to 112th streets. This swampy tract of land was being reclaimed.
Streets had been surveyed and laid out, though with little paving. Water,
light, and gas were available, and some efforts at drainage had been
made, leaving some stagnant pools. Other plans involved the building of
eighty five-room bungalows by a Chicago contractor. Six of these were
under construction at the time of the investigator's visit, and five had
been sold, corner-lot houses at $4,550, houses on inside lots at $4,330.
Morgan Park Negroes appear to be progressing financially. An officer
of a local trust and savings bank said that they met their obligations
promptly, only occasionally defaulting or suffering foreclosure and then
only because of illness, death, or loss of employment. The same officer
said savings accounts of Negroes were increasing in number, though small
in amount.
Whites and Negroes maintain a friendly attitude. During the 1919 riots
a number of conferences took place between Negroes and white people of
Morgan Park. The Negroes kept rather close to their own neighborhood,
and the only difficulty the police had was in controlling rowdy white
boys.
Younger children of the two races play together in the school yards.
A teacher in the Esmond Street school declared that no distinction was
made between Negroes and whites in that school. It was noted, however,
that when games were played, this teacher directed the little Negroes
to take little Negro girls as partners. Some prejudice is discernible
among whites in the community, but there is an evident desire to be fair
and to give the Negroes every reasonable opportunity to exemplify good
citizenship so long as they do not move from their own into the white
neighborhoods.
Those familiar with the Morgan Park settlement believe that it offers
unusual inducements as a home community for Negroes. The contractor who
is already building for Negroes there has confidence in the venture. He
has dealt before with Negroes and found them satisfactory clients.
2. ROBBINS
This village is the only exclusively Negro community near Chicago with
Negroes in all village offices.
Robbins is not attractive physically. It is not on a car line and there
is no pretense of paved streets, or even sidewalks. The houses are
homemade, in most cases by labor mornings, nights, and holidays, after or
before the day's wage-earning. Tar paper, roofing paper, homemade tiles,
hardly seem sufficient to shut out the weather; older houses, complete
with windows, doors, porches, fences, and gardens, indicate that some
day these shelters will become real houses. In 1920 the village took
out its incorporation papers, and while there are some who regret this
independence and talk of asking Blue Island to annex it, in the main
the citizens are proud of their village and certain of its future. There
are 380 people all told, men, women, and children, living in something
more than seventy houses. It is a long mile down the road to the street
car, but daily men and women trudge away to their work, taking with
them the feeling of home ownership, of a place for the children to play
unmolested, of friends and neighbors.
These men and women find many kinds of work in the neighboring towns--at
the mills, on the railroads, in the factories. Many of the women work
in the factory of Libby, McNeil & Libby. Their wages go into payments
for their homes. Men and women together are living as pioneer families
lived--working and sacrificing to feel the independence of owning a bit
of ground and their own house.
C. THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
I. THE BEGINNING OF THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
Negroes have been living in Chicago since it was founded. In fact, Jean
Baptiste Point de Saible, a San Domingan Negro, was the first settler
and in 1790 built the first house, a rude hut on the north bank of the
Chicago River near what is now the Michigan Boulevard Bridge.
There are records of Negroes owning property in Chicago as early as 1837,
the year of its incorporation as a city. In 1844 there were at least
five Negro property owners and in 1847 at least ten. Their property was
in the original first and second wards of the city, one on Lake Street,
others on Madison, Clark, and Harrison, and Fifth Avenue. In 1848 the
first Negro church property was purchased at the corner of Jackson and
Buffalo streets, indicating the presence of the first colony of Negroes.
In 1850 the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law caused many to flee for
safety to Canada, many of the property owners disposing of their holdings
at a great loss. In 1854 Negroes held two pieces of church property in
the same general locality. Although the great majority lived on Clark and
Dearborn streets north of Harrison Street, there was a tendency among
the property-owning class to invest in outlying property. Some of them
bought property as far south as what is now Thirty-third Street.
The year of the Great Fire, 1871, Negroes owned four pieces of church
property. That fire stopped at Harrison Street and did not consume all
of the Negro settlement. A second large fire in 1874 spread northeast
and burned 812 buildings over an area of forty-seven acres. With the
rebuilding of the city they were pushed southward to make room for the
business district.
In 1900 the most congested area of Negro residence, called the "Black
Belt," was a district thirty-one blocks long and four blocks wide,
extending from Harrison Street on the north to Thirty-ninth Street on
the south, between Wabash and Wentworth avenues. Although other colonies
had been started in other parts of the city, notably the West Side,
at least 50 per cent of the 1900 Negro population of 30,150 lived in
this area. As this main area of Negro residence grew, the proportion of
Negroes to the total Negro population living in it increased until in
1920 it contained 90 per cent of the Negroes of the city.
II. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
In the discussion of race contacts attention is called to the peculiar
conditions which compel Negroes of the city to develop many of their
own institutions and agencies. Partly from necessity and partly from
choice, they have established their own churches, business enterprises,
amusement places, and newspapers. Living and associating for the most
part together, meeting in the same centers for face-to-face relations,
trusting to their own physicians, lawyers, and ministers, a compact
community with its own fairly definite interests and sentiments has
grown up.
The institutions within the Negro community that have been developed
to aid it in maintaining itself and promoting its own welfare, are
of four general types: (1) commercial and industrial enterprises; (2)
organizations for social intercourse; (3) religious organizations; (4)
agencies for civic and social betterment.
1. COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES
Commercial and industrial establishments conducted by Negroes are listed
by Ford S. Black in his yearly _Blue Book_, which serves as a directory
of Negro activities. They increased from 1,200 in 1919 to 1,500 in 1920.
The compilation lists 651 on State Street, the main thoroughfare, 549 on
principal cross streets, and more than 300 on other streets. The increase
is strikingly shown in the following figures: In 1918 Negro business
places on Thirty-first Street numbered nine and seventy-one in 1920; on
Thirty-fifth Street there were forty-seven in 1918 and seventy-seven in
1920. On Cottage Grove Avenue, Negroes have only recently established
themselves in large numbers, yet between Twenty-eighth and Forty-fifth
streets there are fifty-seven Negro business places, including nine
groceries, three drug-stores, and two undertaking establishments.
A partial list of business places as listed in Black's _Blue Book_ is
given:
Art stores 14
Automobile schools and repair shops 10
Bakeries, wholesale and retail 13
Banks 2
Barbershops 211
Baths 2
Blacksmith shops 6
Book and stationery stores 6
Chiropodist 29
Cleaning, dyeing, and repairing establishments 68
Clothing stores 8
Decorators 12
Dressmaking shops 32
Drug-stores 31
Electricians and locksmiths 9
Employment agencies 15
Express and storage offices 71
Fish markets 7
Florists 5
Furnace and stove repairing 6
Groceries and delicatessens 119
Hairdressing parlors 108
Hotels 11
Ice-cream and confectionery stores 7
Insurance companies 3
Jewelers 5
Laundries 2
Medicine specialists 9
Millinery shops 15
Music and musical instruments 16
Newspapers and magazines 13
Musicians and music teachers 66
Notions 25
Optometrists 4
Orchestras 1
Photographers 4
Plumbers 4
Printers 20
Public stenographers 6
Real estate offices 52
Restaurants 87
Schools 4
Shoemaking and repairing shops 33
Shoe-shining parlors 26
Sign painters 4
Soft-drink parlors 11
Tailors 62
Toilet articles 10
Undertaking establishments 21
Vending machines 2
[Illustration: OLIVET BAPTIST CHURCH
The largest Negro church in Chicago (old building), at Twenty-ninth
and Dearborn streets.]
[Illustration: ST. MARK'S M.E. CHURCH
Located at Fiftieth Street and Wabash Avenue, built by Negroes.]
[Illustration: OLIVET BAPTIST CHURCH
The largest Negro church in Chicago, larger and more modern building,
Thirty-first Street and South Park Avenue, purchased recently by
Negroes.]
2. ORGANIZATIONS FOR SOCIAL INTERCOURSE
Various organizations for social intercourse and mutual helpfulness have
developed in the Negro community. Some are local lodges or branches of
national organizations, and others are purely local and independent. Some
are simply for social intercourse, and others have in addition benefit
features, professional interests, etc. Frequent reference is made in
the family histories given in this report to these various organizations.
_Fraternal organizations._--Fraternal organizations are an old institution
among Negroes. In the South they rank next in importance to the church;
in the North they have considerable prestige. Membership is large and
interest is strong. Following is a list of the most active in Chicago:
Elks, Great Lakes Lodge No. 43, I.B.P.O.
Elks of the World (an independent order of Elks)
Ancient Order of Foresters
Catholic Order of Foresters
American Woodmen
Builders of America
Knights of Pythias
Mosaic Templars of America
Masons
Grand Court Heroines of Jericho of Illinois
Eastern Star
The Golden Circle
Odd Fellows (G.U.O. of O.F.)
Royal Circle of Friends
United Brotherhood of Friendship
Sisters of the Mysterious Ten
All of these organizations, although having their own rituals, serve
as a means of group control and of exchange of views and opinions.
They are also a guaranty against absolute friendlessness, and that is
perhaps one of the strongest motives for the establishment of the first
organizations years ago. Much charitable and relief work is carried on
by these fraternal bodies among their members.
Out of these associations have grown clubs with social activities among
wider circles. There are, for example, the Easter Lily Club, the Mayflower
Club, and the Masonic Progressive Club.
_Social clubs._--Many of the clubs and societies with social, educational,
or professional interests are modeled after those of the larger community.
There are, for example, the Arts and Letters Society, the University
Society, and Civic Study Club. There are also many smaller clubs
organized for various purposes, but designed principally to serve the
Negro community. There are more than seventy women's clubs, leagued in
the Chicago Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. There are also the Art
and Charity Club, Chicago Union Charity Club, Cornell Charity, Dearborn
Centre, Diana Charity, East End 30th Ward, East Side Woman's Club,
Eureka Fine Arts, Fideles Charity, Giles Charity, Hyacinth Charity, Ideal
Embroidery Art, Ideal Woman's Club, Imperial Art, Kenwood Center, Mental
Pearls, Mothers' Union, Necessity Club, New Method Industrial, North
Shore, North Side Industrial, Motley Social Uplift, Phyllis Wheatley
Club, Progressive Circle of Kings Daughters, 37th Ward Civic League,
Volunteer Workers, West Side Woman's City Club, and the Woman's Civic
League.
Among the exclusive social clubs, perhaps the most important is the
Appomattox Club. Its membership includes the leading business and
professional men, and it has a well-appointed club building. Its
membership is limited and it carries civic and social prestige.
The Phalanx Club is an organization of government employees. Its
membership is large, though limited by occupational restriction. Its
interests are largely social. The Forty Club and Half Century Club are
purely social and still more exclusive.
Negro professional societies, sometimes formed because of the objections
of whites to the participation of Negroes in white societies of a similar
nature, include the Lincoln Dental Association, Physicians, Dentists and
Pharmacists' Association, a Bar Association, and a Medical Association.
3. RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
_Negro churches._--The church is one of the first and probably one of the
strongest institutions among Negroes. The importance of churches in the
Negro community lies not only in their large membership and religious
influence, but in their provision of a medium of social control for
great numbers of Chicago Negroes, and in their great value in promoting
the adjustment of newcomers.
In the South the churches are the principal centers for face-to-face
relations. They serve as a medium for the exchange of ideas, making and
maintaining friendships, community co-operation, collective striving,
group competition, as well as for the dissemination of information,
assistance and advice on practical problems, and the upholding of
religious ideals. The pastors know the members personally, and the church
exercises a definite control over individual behavior.
The church is often the only Negro social institution with an unhampered
opportunity for development. In most southern cities, Negroes have no
Y.M.C.A., public playground, welfare organizations, public library,
gymnasium, orderly dance halls, public parks, or theaters. The church in
a large degree takes the place of these and fills a vacancy created by
the lack of the public facilities ordinarily found in white communities.
In many instances it determines the social standing of the individual
Negro. No one can escape the opprobrium attached to the term "sinner"
if he is not a member of the church, however successful otherwise.
The minister is the recognized leader of the Negroes, and often their
legal adviser and school teacher. He is responsible for the social good
behavior of his people. No movement can get the support of the people
unless it has his sanction.
In the North the function of both Negro church and pastor is different.
Negroes can find other places than the church for their leisure time;
numerous urban and civic organizations with trained workers look after
their interests, probably better than the church. In the Y.M.C.A. they
find religion related to the development of their bodies and minds. In
northern cities enterprises and movements thrive without the good-will
or sanction of the clergy, and even against their protest.
The field wholly occupied in the South by the church is shared in the
North by the labor union, the social club, lectures, and political and
other organizations. Some of the northern churches, realizing this, have
established employment agencies and other activities of a more social
nature in response to this new demand.
_Social activities._--The churches in Chicago serve as social-contact
centers, though not to the same extent as in the South. Frequently they
arrange lectures, community programs, fêtes, and meetings. Many of them,
seeking to influence the conduct of the group, have provided recreation
and amusements for their members. Several churches have social-service
departments, basket-ball teams, and literary societies. Olivet Baptist
Church, with a membership of 9,069, maintains an employment department,
rooming directory, kindergarten, and day nursery, and employs sixteen
workers; in its social organization there are forty-two auxiliary
departments. During the last five years it has raised $200,000,
contributed $5,600 for charitable relief, and found jobs for 1,100
Negroes.
Unique among such developments is the People's Church and Metropolitan
Community Center, organized by a group which withdrew from the Bethel
African Methodist Episcopal Church in October, 1920. Relying solely
upon its membership, it raised $22,000 during its first five months. Six
persons are employed to carry on the work, one a social-service secretary.
Land for a church building has been purchased, and plans have been made
to buy a community-center building to accommodate several thousand people.
_Relief work._--The records of the United Charities, which assumes the
care of dependent children of the juvenile court, show a much smaller
proportion of appeals for aid from Negroes than might be expected.
This is partly explained by the work of the churches in relieving
Negro families. A very high proportion of families below the line of
comfortable subsistence belong to the churches, the small "store-front"
churches. The number and variety of denominational divisions and sects
increases competition for membership and sends pastors and members out
into the community to gather in the people. Forty-one churches, many of
them small, reported a total of $15,038 distributed during 1920 for the
relief of the sick and distressed.
Following is a summary of information collected by the Commission
concerning the churches in the Negro community:
Number of churches, regular and "store-front" 170
Number visited 146
Number of churches owning their property 49
Value of property owned $1,677,183
Indebtedness on church properties being bought $325,895.91
Amount collected in 146 churches during 1919 $400,000.00
Membership of 62 of the 146 churches 36,856
Number in Sunday school in 57 of 146 churches 16,847
Number of persons in attendance in 64 of 146 churches
Morning 20,379
Evening 13,806
In a very few cases, Negroes are found to be members of white churches,
but the Negro churches have an entirely Negro membership with Negro
pastors.
_"Store-front" churches._--The "store-front" church membership is
merely a small group which, for one reason or another, has sought to
worship independently of any connection with the larger churches. The
establishment of such a church may be the result of a withdrawal of part
of the membership of a larger church. They secure a pastor or select
a leader from their own number and continue their worship in a place
where their notions are not in conflict with other influences. Most
frequently a minister formerly in the South has come with or followed his
migrant members and has re-established his church in Chicago. Or again
a group with religious beliefs and ceremonies not in accord with those
of established churches may establish a church of its own. The groups
are usually so small and the members so poor as to make the purchase of
a building impossible. The custom has been to engage a small store and
put chairs in it. Hence the name "store-front" church.
[Illustration: NEGRO CHURCHES]
_Denominations._--The varieties of denominational divisions are wide and
interesting. A classification on the basis of information collected by
the Commission is given in Table VII.
TABLE VII
=======================================+=========+==============
Denomination | Regular | "Store-Front"
---------------------------------------+---------+--------------
Baptist: | |
Missionary Baptist | 19 | 61
Free Will Baptist | ....... | 2
Primitive Baptist | ....... | 4
Methodist: | |
Methodist Episcopal | 6 | .......
African Methodist Episcopal | 9 | 6
African Methodist Episcopal Zion | 3 | 1
Colored Methodist Episcopal | 3 | .......
Independent Methodist Episcopal | ....... | 6
Presbyterian | 2 | 2
Episcopal | 1 | .......
Congregational | 1 | .......
Disciples of Christ | 1 | .......
Saints, Holiness, and Healing Churches | ....... | 20
+---------+-------------
Total | 45 | 102
---------------------------------------+---------+-------------
The steady growth in the number of churches is shown in the dates of
organization of sixty-five of them as given in Table VIII.
TABLE VIII
Year Number
1825-50 2
1850-80 2
1880-90 5
1890-1900 5
1900-1910 5
1910-15 12
1915-16 4
1917 3
1918 15
1919 6
1920 6
--
Total 65
_Church property._--It was not easy to determine the amount of money
raised and handled by the Negro churches for any specific period, because
only the better-organized churches keep accurate accounts.
The total value of the property holdings of twenty-six of the larger and
better-organized churches is $1,677,183.02, with a total indebtedness
on nineteen of them of $318,595.91. In twenty of the twenty-six annual
collections aggregate $226,216.25.
Out of 100 "store-front" churches visited only seven own or are buying
the property they use. The total value of the property of these seven
churches is $44,300. Four of the seven have an indebtedness of $7,300;
and the four that kept records showed a total annual collection of $5,170.
_The pastors._--A sharp division both as to education and experience
is found between the pastors of the regular churches and those of
the "store-front" churches. Generally the larger churches have the
better-trained, more experienced, and more highly salaried ministers.
Exceptions are found in the case of one or two "holiness" churches.
The ministers in these various churches represent a range of training
from that of such seminaries as Newton Theological and institutions like
Yale University, University of Chicago, and Northwestern University, down
to that of the sixth grade in grammar school. Some have had no schooling
at all. The number of specially trained ministers totals twenty-one.
Six of these are graduates of recognized northern institutions, while
fourteen are graduates of recognized Negro institutions such as Lincoln
University, Howard University, Virginia Union University, and Livingston
College. Four are graduates of standard high schools and four of other
high schools below the standard rating. The remainder fall below the
sixth grade. Among this last group it is not unusual to hear that "God
prepares a man to preach; he does not have to go to school for that. All
he must do is to open his mouth and God will fill it. The universities
train men away from the Bible."
The range of active service in the ministry is from two months to
forty-four years. Here again the larger established churches have the
ministers of longer service. Typical examples are found in churches like
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, whose pastor has had forty-four
years of service; Shiloh, thirty-seven years; Bethesda Baptist Church,
thirty-seven years; Grace Presbyterian Church, thirty-two years (all at
this one church); Original Providence, thirty-five years; Berean Baptist
Church, thirty years.
4. SOCIAL AND CIVIC AGENCIES
Social agencies in the Negro communities are an expression of group effort
to adjust itself to the larger community. Within the Negro community
there are two types, those especially for Negroes and those which are
branches of the agencies of the larger community but located conveniently
for use by Negroes.
[Illustration: TRINITY M.E. CHURCH AND COMMUNITY HOUSE
Located at Prairie Avenue near Thirty-first Street, purchased recently
by Negroes.]
[Illustration: SOUTH PARK M.E. CHURCH
The congregation moved from a store-front church to this edifice at
Thirty-second Street and South Park Avenue in less than three years
after the church was established.]
[Illustration: PILGRIM BAPTIST CHURCH
Located at Thirty-third Street and Indiana Avenue. Formerly a Jewish
synagogue, purchased recently by Negroes.]
A. AGENCIES ESPECIALLY FOR NEGROES
_Chicago Urban League._--This organization is one of the thirty-two
branches of the National Urban League whose headquarters are in New York
City. It was established in Chicago in 1917 during the period of heaviest
migration of Negroes to the city. The numerous problems consequent upon
this influx guided the development of the League's activities. Its
executive board and officers are whites and Negroes of high standing
and influence in both the white and Negro groups, and it is supported
by voluntary subscriptions. Within four years this organization has
taken the leading place among all the social agencies working especially
among Negroes. It has a well-trained staff of twelve paid workers, and
its work is carried out along the lines accepted in modern social work.
The League has organized its activities as follows: Administration
Department, Industrial Department, Research and Records Department,
Children's Department, settlement work.
The work of the Administration Department involves, in addition to
general management, co-operation with other agencies and co-ordination
of their efforts for community improvement through interracial meetings,
conferences, and joint undertakings.
The Industrial Department during 1920 placed more than 15,000 Negroes in
positions, made industrial investigations in sixteen plants, provided
lectures for workingmen in plants and for foremen over Negro workers.
It also investigates complaints of workers, selects and fits men for
positions, secures positions for Negroes where Negroes have never worked
before, and assists in other ways the adjustment of Negroes in industry.
More than 25,000 persons passed through the department during 1920.
The Department of Research and Records makes the investigations on the
basis of which the programs of the League are carried out. Its information
is a permanent and growing body of material useful to all agencies and
persons interested in obtaining reliable information concerning Negroes
in Chicago.
The Children's Department handles cases of boys and girls and co-operates
with the schools, juvenile protective organizations, the juvenile court
and probation department, and various other child-helping institutions.
A total of 540 such cases were adjusted during 1920.
During 1919 a total of $28,659 was raised and used in the support of
the Chicago Urban League.
The Wendell Phillips Settlement on the West Side is under the supervision
of the League. The settlement has a day nursery and provides a center
and leadership for twenty-five groups in the West Side community.
_Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A._--This organization is a branch of the local
Young Men's Christian Association, but because of its location and the
peculiar social problems of its membership and vicinity, it has become
one of the strongest agencies of the community. Its work is among boys
and young men, many of whom are industrial workers in various plants.
Community work is vigorously promoted. In 1920 an enthusiastic group
of 1,137 boys was enlisted in a neighborhood clean-up campaign, and 100
community gardens were put in operation. Moving pictures and community
singing were provided during the summer months. The following list gives
some statistics of activities for the first nine months of 1920.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES
Attendance at building 140,740
Attendance at reading-room 19,402
Attendance at Bible classes 1,514
Attendance at industrial clubs 5,394
Attendance at entertainments 6,542
Meals served 100,610
Dormitory attendance 71,396
Persons directed to rooms 614
Persons assisted 1,526
Persons reached through community work 10,406
Personal religious interviews 396
Men referred to churches 196
PHYSICAL WORK
Men used swimming-pool 3,604
Boys used swimming-pool 14,096
Men and boys used shower baths 24,332
Participated in leagues and tournament 3,906
Spectators 44,742
Men attended gymnasium classes 5,622
Boys attended gymnasium classes 17,106
In addition to the foregoing work this institution has promoted efficiency
and industrial clubs among Negro workers in industrial plants, three
glee clubs, noonday recreational programs, and nine baseball teams.
During 1919 the total contributions for support were $15,353, of which
$3,100 came from Negroes. The membership dues of the latter, however,
totaled $16,000 and receipts from operation amounted to $143,747.
_Chicago Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People._--This organization aims to carry out the general policies of the
National Association as far as they apply to Chicago. The national purpose
is to combat injustice against Negroes, stamp out race discriminations,
prevent lynchings, burnings, and torturings of Negroes, and, when they
do occur, to demand the prosecution of those responsible, to assure to
every citizen of color the common rights of an American citizen, and
secure for colored children equal opportunity in public-school education.
In Chicago, the principal efforts of this organization have been in the
line of securing justice for Negroes in the courts and opposing race
discriminations in public accommodations. Its most active period followed
the riots of 1919. With a number of competent attorneys, white and Negro,
it gave legal support to Negro riot victims and followed through the
courts the cases of many Negroes accused of participation in rioting.
[Illustration: SOCIAL AGENCIES USED BY NEGROES]
_Community service._--The South Side Community Service is a re-established
organization growing out of the Soldiers and Sailors' Club. It aims
to provide wholesome recreation and leisure-time activities for its
neighborhood. At Community House, 3201 South Wabash Avenue, it serves a
number of organizations, arranges supervised dances, dramatics, programs,
and other entertainment for the groups.
_Wendell Phillips Settlement._--The Wendell Phillips Settlement is
located on the West Side at 2009 Walnut Street and has been under the
supervision of the Chicago Urban League since 1918. It has a day nursery,
serves as a center for twenty-five different groups, and provides the
only public meeting place for Negroes apart from the churches, on the
West Side. There is a Boy Scout division and a division especially for
women and girls.
_Butler Community Center._--The Butler Community Center is located on the
North Side in a neighborhood with about 2,000 Negroes. About 250 persons
use the Center regularly. There are classes in citizenship, hygiene, Negro
history, sewing, and china painting. There is an organization of Camp
Fire Girls and a Boys' Group. Through courses of lectures instruction
is given in hygiene, sanitation, and first aid.
_Phyllis Wheatley Home._--The Phyllis Wheatley Home was established
several years ago to provide wholesome home surroundings for colored
girls and women who are strangers in the city and to house them until
they find safe and comfortable quarters. The building at 3256 Rhodes
Avenue, which has been purchased, accommodates about twenty girls.
_Home for the Aged and Infirm._--The Home for Aged and Infirm Colored
People on West Garfield Boulevard is supported almost entirely by
contributions from Negroes.
_Indiana Avenue Y.W.C.A._--The Indiana Avenue branch of the Y.W.C.A. on
the South Side is under the general direction of the Central Y.W.C.A.
of Chicago. Its directors are Negro women. Many girls are directed
in their activities by volunteer group leaders from the community.
The Industrial Department secures employment for Negro girls. A small
number of girls live in the building at 3541 Indiana Avenue, and a room
directory is maintained through which safe homes are secured for girls
who are strangers in the city, or who have no family connections. Mrs.
Martha G. McAdoo is the executive secretary.
_Elaine Home Club and Johnson Home for Girls._--The Elaine Home Club and
the Julia Johnson Home for Girls are small institutions which provide
living accommodations under careful supervision for young working girls.
_Hartzell Center._--Hartzell Center is a social institution under
the direction of the South Park Methodist Episcopal Church. It has a
commercial school, in which typewriting and stenography are taught, a
cafeteria, and some social activities.
_Illinois Technical School._--The Illinois Technical School for Colored
Girls, a Catholic Institution, serves as a boarding and technical school
for colored girls. It accommodates about 100 girls. Sister Augustina is
the superintendent.
_Woodlawn Community Association._--This is a neighborhood organization
originally intended to interest the Negroes of the Woodlawn community
in taking pride in their property and in making the neighborhood more
desirable for residence purposes. It has extended its functions to
include community activities and civic welfare program.
_Louise Training School for Colored Boys._--This school is at Homewood,
Illinois, about twenty-five miles from Chicago; until 1918 it was located
at 6130 South Ada Street. It receives dependent boys between eight and
fifteen years of age. Some of these boys are placed in the institution
by the Cook County authorities. The institution can accommodate only a
few. At present thirty-two boys are cared for in the dormitory. This is
the only institution in the city for dependent colored boys.
B. AGENCIES CONVENIENT FOR NEGROES
_American Red Cross._--The American Red Cross has a branch headquarters
at 102 East Thirty-fifth Street. It gives emergency relief, general
information and advice, and has been active in helping the families of
Negro service men. During the riot of 1919 it provided food for thousands
of Negroes who were cut off from work.
_United Charities._--The United Charities, which provides relief and
other help for needy families, has four branches convenient for use by
Negroes: one at 2959 South Michigan Avenue, near the center of the main
Negro residence area on the South Side; another at 1701 Grand Avenue,
near the West Side Negro residence area; another at 102 East Oak Street,
near the North Side area; and another at 6309 Yale Avenue, convenient
for Negroes living in Woodlawn, in the vicinity of Ogden Park and in
the southern part of the South Side residence area.
_The Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society._--This society has two
field representatives who find homes for dependent Negro children and
supervise their placing. Since 1919 it has placed and supervised more
than 168 Negro children.
_Abraham Lincoln Center._--The Abraham Lincoln Center is at Langley
Avenue and Oakwood Boulevard. Although originally not used by Negroes,
the movement of the Negro population southward has added many of them
to the group of people using its facilities. There is a boys' group, a
branch library, and a neighborhood visitor. Negroes are welcomed in most
of the activities of this center. Miss Susan Quackenbush is the resident.
[Illustration: THE CHICAGO URBAN LEAGUE BUILDING
Located at 3032 South Wabash Avenue.]
[Illustration: THE SOUTH SIDE COMMUNITY SERVICE BUILDING
Located at 3201 South Wabash Avenue.]
C. MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS
_Provident Hospital and Training School._--Provident Hospital and Training
School is supported and controlled by whites and Negroes. It has a mixed
board of directors. Practically all its physicians and all its internes
and nurses are Negroes. For the year ended June, 1919, the hospital
handled 1,421 patients, served 682 persons through its dispensary, and
gave free medical care to 143. Of the total number of patients in the
hospital during 1919, 1,248 were Negroes, and 173 were white. Support
of the institution comes from patients and donations. During 1919 the
receipts from patients totaled $36,445.81; from donations $5,782.07.
Donations in drugs totaled $1,505.95, and from the dispensary $112.05.
The expenses for the year were $42,002.35. The hospital has an endowment
fund of $47,350, invested in securities. It has a training school for
Negro nurses whose faculty is made up of prominent white and Negro
physicians and surgeons.
_Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium._--The two branches of this institution
which are in Negro neighborhoods, at 2950 Calumet Avenue and 4746
South Wabash Avenue, and the Children's South Side Dispensary, 705 West
Forty-seventh Street, are municipal agencies so located that they are
convenient for Negroes.
_South Side Dispensary._--This is at 2531 South Dearborn Street and is
supported by the Northwestern University Medical School. It gives free
care to those unable to pay for medical services.
D. SUPPORT OF INSTITUTIONS BY NEGROES
Social agencies, although their work is limited as respects the Negro
group, have for many years taken second place to the churches in
self-support. This is accounted for largely by the fact that social work
in general has been regarded as a philanthropic rather than a co-operative
matter. With Negro social and philanthropic agencies, especially during
the period of general unsettlement following the migration, the number
of possible beneficiaries greatly increased, while the group of Negroes
educated in giving to such agencies grew more slowly. Recently, however,
support from Negroes for their own institutions has gradually been
increasing. An example is found in the Urban League. In 1917 Negroes
contributed $1,000 and in 1919 $3,000. During 1920 six social agencies
and twenty-seven churches raised among Negroes approximately $445,000.
Although Negroes contribute in some measure to agencies like the United
Charities and American Red Cross, there is no means of knowing or
accurately estimating the amount.
CHAPTER V
THE NEGRO HOUSING PROBLEM
A. A STUDY OF NEGRO FAMILIES
Consideration of the housing problem as a continuing factor in the
experience of Negro families led to an effort to study it from a new
angle of approach--through histories of typical families in the Negro
community.
The data thus gathered afford an opportunity to present an interpretative
account of Negro family life, setting forth the intimate problems
confronting Negroes in Chicago, their daily social difficulties, the
reflection in their home life of their struggle for existence, just how
they live, how they participate in the activities of the Negro community
and the community at large, their own opinions concerning civic problems,
their housing experience, how much they earn and how much they save, how
much they spend and what value they receive from these expenditures,
how they spend their spare time, and how they seek to improve their
condition in the community.
A selection was made of 274 Negro families living in all sections of
Chicago. Three Negro women, well equipped to deal intelligently and
sympathetically with these families, gathered this information. These 274
families lived in 238 blocks, the distribution being such that no type
of neighborhood or division of the Negro population was overlooked. The
questionnaire employed contained five pages of questions and required an
interview of about two hours. Special effort was made to secure purely
social information without the aid of leading questions.
I. GENERAL LIVING CONDITIONS
For the most part the physical surroundings of the Negro family, as
indicated by these family histories, are poor. The majority of these
houses fall within the classifications noted as Types "C" and "D" in
the discussion of the physical condition of housing.[22]
On the South Side, where most of the Negro population lives, the low
quality of housing is widespread, although there are some houses of a
better grade which are greatly in demand.
The ordinary conveniences, considered necessities by the average white
citizen, are often lacking. Bathrooms are often missing. Gas lighting is
common, and electric lighting is a rarity. Heating is commonly done by
wood or coal stoves, and furnaces are rather exceptional; when furnaces
are present, they are sometimes out of commission.
Under the heading of "Housing Conditions" such notations as these are
often found:
No gas, bath, or toilet. Plumbing very bad; toilet leaks; bowl
broken; leak in kitchen sink; water stands in kitchen; leak
in bath makes ceiling soggy and wet all the time. Plastering
off in front room. General appearance very bad inside and
out. Had to get city behind owner to put in windows, clean,
and repair plumbing. Heat poor; house damp. Plumbing bad;
leaks. Hot-water heater out of order. Needs repairing done
to roof and floors. In bad repair; toilet in yard used by two
families. Toilet off from dining-room; fixtures for gas; no gas;
just turned off; no bath; doors out of order; won't fasten.
Sanitary conditions poor; dilapidated condition; toilet won't
flush; carries water to bathtub. Plumbing bad; roof leaks;
plastering off; no bath or gas; general repairs needed; very
dirty. Plumbing bad; plastering off in toilet; window panes
broken and out; no bath or gas. Plastering off from water that
leaks from flat above; toilet leaks; does not flush; washbowl
and bath leak very badly; repairs needed on back porch; rooms
need calcimining. No water in hydrant in hall; no toilet,
bath, or gas; general repair needed. Water not turned on for
sink in kitchen; water for drinking and cooking purposes must
be carried in; toilet used by four families; asked landlord
to turn on water in kitchen; told them to move; roof leaks;
stairs and back porch in bad order. Sewer gas escapes from
basement pipes; water stands in basement. House dirty; flues
in bad condition; gas pipes leak; porch shaky. No heat and
no hot water; no repairing done; no screens; gas leaks all
over house; stationary tubs leak. Water pipes rotted out; gas
pipes leak. Toilet leaks; plastering off; windowpanes out.
Plastering off; large rat holes all over; paper hanging from
ceiling.
This is the common situation of the dweller in the districts mentioned.
The variations are in degree rather than kind. To dwellings a little
better in sanitation and repair than those just described, the adjective
"fair" was given.
Occasionally a Negro family manages to escape from this wretched type of
dwelling in the "Black Belt." Some who were financially able purchased
homes in Woodlawn, for example, where they live much as white residents
do, supplied with the comforts and conveniences of life and in fairly
clean, wholesome surroundings. There, as a rule, the physical equipment
of their dwellings is good and is kept in repair. In some instances
they have hot-water heating, electric lighting, and gas for cooking
purposes. They ordinarily redecorate once a year, take proper care of
their garbage, keep the lawns cut and the premises clean; and otherwise
reveal a natural and normal pride of ownership.
In this respect the Negro residents of Woodlawn are far more fortunate
than many of their race brothers who have purchased dwellings in the
"Black Belt." Many of these purchases have been made by migrants on
long-time payments, and large expenditure would be required to put the
houses in repair and keep them so. Purchases made by Negroes in Woodlawn
have been chiefly of substantial dwellings, not necessarily new but in
good condition and needing only ordinary repairs from time to time.
II. WHY NEGROES MOVE
Except where the property is owned by Negroes there is frequent moving.
The records obtained of these movements give a great variety of reasons.
A strong desire to improve living conditions appears with sufficient
frequency to indicate that it is the leading motive. Buying a home is one
of the ways of escape from intolerable living conditions, but removal to
other houses or flats is more often tried. For example, a man who now
owns his home near Fifty-first Street and South Wabash Avenue--living
there with his two brothers and five lodgers--has moved six times, "to
live in a better house and a better neighborhood." A family now living
near Thirty-first Street and Prairie Avenue, resident in Chicago since
1893, has moved four times, three times to obtain better houses in better
neighborhoods and once to get nearer to work. A man and wife living
near Fifty-third and South Dearborn streets have moved four times since
coming to Chicago in 1908. A family living on East Forty-fifth Street
and paying $60 a month rent for six rooms has moved twice since 1900
to "better and cleaner houses." Another family paying $65 a month for
eight rooms on East Bowen Avenue has moved twice since 1905 into better
houses and neighborhoods. "Better house" and "better neighborhood" were
the most frequently given reasons.
Of kindred nature are these: leaky roof; house cold; dirty;
inconvenient; did not like living in rear flat; to better
conditions; better houses away from questionable places;
landlord would not clean; first floor not healthy; small and
undesirable; not desirable flat; poor plumbing; didn't like
neighborhood; moved to better quarters; landlord would not
repair; house too damp; no windows; owner would not fix water
pipes; more room wanted; better environment for children;
better street; no yard for children; better people; house in
bad condition; more conveniences for roomers.
III. THE FAMILY GROUPING
The normal family is generally recognized as consisting of five
persons--two parents and three children. Properly they should make up
a single group and live by themselves. The 274 families studied were
chosen as follows: in the most populous district, from Thirty-first
to Thirty-ninth streets and from Wentworth Avenue to Lake Michigan,
ninety-nine family histories were taken; in the district north of
Thirty-first Street to Twelfth Street and from Wentworth Avenue to the
Lake, forty-six; in the narrow strip in Hyde Park known as the Lake Park
district, thirty-seven; in the district from Thirty-ninth to Sixtieth
streets and from Wentworth to Cottage Grove Avenue, thirty-six; on the
West Side, sixteen; in the Ogden Park district, fifteen; on the North
Side, fourteen; and in Woodlawn, eleven. For convenience, as well as to
show contrasts or like conditions, the material has been analyzed and
interpreted by districts.
[Illustration: HOMES OF WHITE AND NEGRO EMPLOYEES OF AN OUTLYING
INDUSTRIAL PLANT
TIME CONSUMED IN TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM THE ARGO PLANT
BY ANY CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES.
LONGEST RIDE FOR WHITE EMPLOYEES:
ARGO TO LEMONT, VIA CHICAGO & JOLIET ELECTRIC R.R. 32 MINUTES
LONGEST RIDE FOR NEGRO EMPLOYEES:
ARGO TO STATE & 31ST ST. VIA ARCHER AVE. & STATE ST.
SURFACE LINES, WITH TWO TRANSFERS 67 MINUTES
ARGO TO STATE & 39TH ST. VIA 63RD ST. & STATE ST.
SURFACE LINES. WITH TWO TRANSFERS 60 MINUTES]
There was found a wide variation in the family groups, comprising six
classifications, in three of which no lodgers appear. A lodger here means
an adult not a member of the immediate family. Thus relatives, unless
infants or children, are classed as lodgers. The three groups without
lodgers are: (1) man and wife; (2) two parents and children; (3) a parent
and children. The other three groups with lodgers are: (1_a_) man and
wife and lodgers; (2_a_) man, wife, children, and lodgers; (3_a_) man
or woman, surviving head of the family, with lodgers.
Of the total 274 family groups there were 104 without lodgers and 170,
or 62 per cent, with lodgers. For the most part the lodgers were found in
"2_a_" classification--in families. There were ninety-two such groups and
only sixty-one families with no lodgers. Forty-two couples had lodgers,
and in thirty-six instances a man or woman living alone had lodgers.
Thirty-nine couples were living alone, and in only four instances was
there a parent alone with a child.
The Negro colony in Woodlawn approaches most nearly the normal family
grouping. Home ownership in that district is fairly common, and the
houses for the most part are substantial and well fitted and suited to
the families. In the eleven Woodlawn families there was but one where
the mother or father was dead or not living with the family. Lodgers
were found in only four of the eleven families: two were couples, one a
family, and the other a single woman. In the eleven families there were
seventeen children.
A marked contrast with this section is found in the congested Negro
district between Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth streets. Out of a total
of ninety-nine families seventy-two had lodgers, or 72 per cent as
contrasted with 36 per cent in Woodlawn and 62 per cent for the total
274 cases. In this district there were forty-two families with children,
thirteen couples without children, and seventeen where a man or woman
took lodgers. There were only fourteen families without lodgers, and
thirteen couples living alone.
North of Thirty-first Street in this South Side area were similar
conditions. Of forty-six households studied, twenty-seven, or 58.7 per
cent, had lodgers: of these sixteen were families with children, nine
were couples and two were man or woman with children. Of the households
without lodgers, there were twelve families with children, five couples
living alone, and two instances of parent and child.
The percentage of families with lodgers was highest in the Lake Park
district, 75.6 per cent. On the West Side it was 68 per cent, a trifle
higher than for the entire 274 families. On the North Side it was 57
per cent, on the South Side between Thirty-ninth and Sixtieth streets,
41.6 per cent, and in the Ogden Park district 40 per cent.
The Ogden Park district, with a relatively low percentage of families
having lodgers, resembles the Woodlawn district in many respects. The
houses are built for single families and are largely owned by Negroes
who have lived in that locality for many years. Of the fifteen families
there visited, nine had no lodgers; and of the seven with lodgers, four
were families and two were couples without children.
_Room crowding._--A study of Negro housing made in 1909 by the Chicago
School of Civics and Philanthropy brought out the fact that, although
Negro families find it extremely difficult to obtain a flat of three or
four rooms, they do not crowd together as much as white immigrants; that
Negroes take larger flats or houses and rent rooms to lodgers to help
pay the rent, and thus lessen crowding among the members of the family.
Among the 274 families studied by the Commission there was comparatively
little overcrowding. One room to a person is a standard of room occupancy
generally accepted by housing authorities as involving no overcrowding.
Of these 274 Negro households, only sixty-seven exceeded the standard.
There were, of course, wide divergences from the standard. For example,
there were eight instances of six persons living in five rooms; six of
eight persons living in six rooms; four of six persons living in four
rooms; one of six persons living in three rooms; one of seven persons
living in three rooms; two of seven persons living in four rooms; two of
eight persons living in five rooms; one of nine persons living in five
rooms; and one of eleven persons living in five rooms.
In the cases of unusually large families, either in the number of children
or lodgers, there was a corresponding increase in the number of rooms.
Thus in the case of fourteen persons making up one family, they were
living in ten rooms.
The five-room dwelling was the most common, with fifty-nine families;
six-room, forty-seven; seven-room, forty-two; four-room, forty-one.
In the Ogden Park district the standard of one person to one room was most
closely adhered to. All the fifteen families studied in that district were
housed in four-, five-, or six-room dwellings; ten of them in five-room
dwellings. In Woodlawn the tendency was toward somewhat larger dwellings.
There were no four- and five-room dwellings, but five of seven rooms
and three of six rooms, one each of eight and three rooms. The four-room
dwelling was most prevalent on the North Side. Of the fourteen families
studied there, six were in such dwellings. There were two dwellings of
six rooms, two of seven, one of five, two of three, and one of eleven
rooms.
On the West Side, also, thirteen of the sixteen families were housed
in four-, five-, six-, or seven-room dwellings, the five-room type
predominating. In the Lake Park district the five-room type was most
frequent, there being eleven of these out of a total of thirty-seven,
six of six rooms and seven of seven rooms, the next largest group being
five of eight rooms.
On the South Side in the district from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth
Street, out of a total of ninety-nine there were eighteen families in
five-room dwellings, seventeen in four-room, nine in three-room, ten in
six-room, fourteen in seven-room, and eight in ten-room dwellings. In
the district north of Thirty-first Street the predominating size was
six-room dwellings, of which there were eleven, and there were nine
of four rooms, seven of five rooms, and seven of seven rooms, the rest
scattering from one-room dwellings to one dwelling of thirteen rooms.
From Thirty-ninth to Sixtieth streets, six-room dwellings were most
frequent, there being eight of these out of a total of thirty-six,
and there were seven of five rooms, six of six rooms, and six of seven
rooms. The dwellings occupied by Negroes south of Thirty-ninth Street,
it should be noticed, are larger than those north of that street.
The grouping of the 274 families according to number of persons is as
follows:
Families Persons to Family
48 4
40 2
35 3
37 5
30 7
29 6
22 8
17 9 or more
16 Not recorded
-----
274
Four persons to a "family" was the most common type, there being
forty-eight of these out of the 274. In the Woodlawn and Ogden Park
districts the group of three was predominant. The North Side district
grouping of two persons to a family is partly due to the inclusion of
nine "groups" of one person each who were interviewed mainly for data
bearing upon industrial relationships. The tables show a total of sixteen
such groups in the eight districts; but they are not deemed sufficient
to vitiate the statistics.
Negroes have more space in their living quarters than do other Chicago
people housed in similar grades of dwellings. They were usually found in
dwellings of five rooms for each family, while the prevailing size among
the foreign groups was four rooms, as disclosed by the Chicago School
of Civics housing studies from 1909 to 1917. In the School's earliest
study of the Negroes it was said:
The colored families do not as a rule live in the small and
cramped apartments in which other nationalities are so often
found. Even the families who apply to the United Charities
for relief are frequently living in apartments which would be
considered adequate, as far as the number of rooms is concerned,
for families in comfortable circumstances.
Some marked exceptions, of course, were found.
The four-room dwelling was found to prevail among the Slovaks of the
Twentieth Ward, the Lithuanians of the Fourth Ward, the Greeks and
Italians in the neighborhood of Hull-House, the various central and
southern European nationalities who work in the South Chicago steel mills
and live near-by, and among the Jews, Bohemians, and Poles of the West
Side.
_The lodger problem._--The prevalence of lodgers is one of the most
conspicuous problems in the Negro housing situation. It is largely a
social question. The difficulty of finding a home adequate for a family
of four or five persons at a reasonable rent has forced many Negroes to
take over large buildings in better localities and in better physical
condition but with much higher rents. To meet these rents they have
taken lodgers. It was seldom possible to investigate the character of
the lodgers. The arrangement of these large houses, originally intended
for single-family use, prevents family privacy when lodgers are added,
making a difficult situation for families with children. Again, the
migration brought to the city many unattached men and women who could
find no other place to live except in families. Thus it happens that
in Negro families the lodger problem is probably more pressing than
in any other group of the community. Not only do lodgers constitute a
social problem for the family, but, having little or no interest in the
appearance and condition of the property, they are in many instances
careless and irresponsible and contribute to the rapid deterioration of
the buildings.
As previously explained, the term "lodgers," in this report, includes
relations as well as other adults unrelated to the family. It was apparent
in the study that there was a large number of relative-lodgers in Negro
families. The recent migration from the South had a distinct bearing
on this situation. Many Negroes came to Chicago at the solicitation of
relatives and remained in their households until they could secure homes
for themselves. The migration further accounts for the accentuation of
the lodger problem during the period immediately following it. The 274
family histories include 1,319 persons, of whom 485, or 35 per cent, were
lodgers, living in 62 per cent of the households. The greatest number
of households with lodgers were those living in five-room dwellings.
There were thirty-eight such households. Living in six-and seven-room
dwellings were thirty-four families with lodgers. Families with only
one lodger were most numerous. There were fifty-five such families as
compared with thirty-nine having two lodgers, twenty-five with three
lodgers, twenty-three with four lodgers, thirteen with six lodgers,
eight with five lodgers, and seven with more than six lodgers.
Naturally the lodger evil was found in its worst form in the congested
parts of the South Side. In the district from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth
streets seventy-two of the ninety-nine families had lodgers. In twenty-two
families there was but one, however, as against twelve with three and
four, eleven with two, and six with five and six lodgers. Two families
had ten each, and one had thirteen. This last case was that of a widow
who rented nine sleeping-rooms in her ten-room house, in addition to
catering at odd moments. It was a typical rooming-house as distinguished
from a family taking lodgers. One family that had ten lodgers consisted
of a man, his wife, and a son twenty-five years old; they had eight
bedrooms, seven opening into a hall. The other family that had ten
lodgers consisted of the parents and two children, a boy of eight and a
girl of seven, and had a ten-room house. The lodgers were two men and
three women, with five children. Five of the ten rooms were used as
sleeping-rooms.
In the district north of Thirty-first Street an increased number of
lodgers appeared in only one family, that of a man and his wife, without
children. They lived in a ten-room house, using eight of the rooms for
sleeping purposes and accommodating seven male and five female lodgers.
In the district from Thirty-ninth to Sixtieth Street was one instance
of seven male lodgers in a seven-room house with the man who owned the
property. Two of the lodgers were his brothers. There was no heat and
no bathroom. The house had been reported to the health department.
In the Lake Park district one, two, or three lodgers were the rule,
only five of the twenty-eight families with lodgers in that district
being outside of those three classes. Eight lodgers were found in an
eight-room dwelling. The family consisted of man and wife, and the only
female lodger was their niece. Five rooms were used for sleeping purposes.
In the other district no instances of excessive overcrowding due to
lodgers were found.
Complaint has often been made of the numerical preponderance of lodgers
over children among Chicago Negroes, and comment has been made on the
economic significance. It has been suggested, for example, that economic
pressure had lowered the birth-rate among Negroes and increased the
infant-mortality rate. As indicated by the 274 family histories, the
number of lodgers among the Negro population exceeds the number of
children, that is, the number of boys less than twenty-one years and
girls less than eighteen. The School of Civics and Philanthropy, in its
housing studies, counted as children those less than twelve years of
age. On this basis it found in its study of the Negroes of the South and
West sides that there were less than half as many children as lodgers
on the South Side, but a more normal situation in the West Side. Even
extending the ages of children, as has been done in the present report,
the situation does not appear in a much better light.
The proportion of lodgers and of children in the districts covered by
the Commission is shown in Table IX.
TABLE IX
=====================================================================
| Percentage of | Percentage of
District | Lodgers | Children
-------------------------------------+---------------+---------------
South Side: | |
Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth | 45.9 | 15.4
Twenty-second to Thirty-first | 37.8 | 20.4
Thirty-ninth to Sixtieth | 30.1 | 21.4
West Side | 21.8 | 32.0
Lake Park | 42.1 | 16.9
North Side | 15.2 | 25.0
Woodlawn | 26.9 | 30.0
Ogden Park | 12.3 | 45.0
+---------------+---------------
Total of 274 families | 35.0 | 22.7
-------------------------------------+---------------+---------------
By way of comparison similar figures from other housing studies of the
Chicago School of Civics might be mentioned, the children in each instance
being less than twelve years old.
Among the Slovaks of the Twentieth Ward, 13 per cent were lodgers and
32 per cent children; in South Chicago, 27.3 per cent lodgers and 25.7
per cent children; among the Greeks and Italians near Hull-House, 13
per cent lodgers and 30 per cent children; among the Lithuanians of the
Fourth Ward, 28 per cent lodgers and 27 per cent children.
As far as the South Side is concerned, the situation with regard to the
balance between lodgers and children has become aggravated since the
earliest School of Civics report was issued, whereas the situation on
the West Side has improved somewhat.
Where there were children and lodgers together, a considerable number of
instances were found which suggest probable injury to health or morals,
and sometimes both. Even where lodgers are relatives, impairment of
health and morals is threatened in certain circumstances, especially if
the over-crowding is flagrant. For example, a household on South Dearborn
Street near Thirty-fourth Street consisted of a father, mother, a son of
nineteen years, and a baby girl of four months, with three lodgers, two
men and one woman--seven persons living in seven rooms and sleeping in
all parts of the house. One of the lodgers was a sister-in-law, another a
nephew by marriage, and the third, a stranger, had a bedroom to himself.
In a ten-room house in East Thirty-second Street parents having a boy of
eight years and a girl of seven years were found to have taken in ten
lodgers, two of whom were men. In another instance five children, four
of them boys of eight, five, four, and two years and a girl of eleven,
lived with their parents and two lodgers in a six-room house.
In Ogden Park, a district which shows a high percentage of children,
lodgers sometimes are added to the family. In one house of five rooms,
for example, there were found living twelve persons--father, mother, two
sons, sixteen and seventeen years of age, four daughters, thirty-three,
twenty-four, twenty-two, and thirteen years of age, and four lodgers--a
daughter, her husband, and their two infants. There were only two bedrooms
for the twelve persons. Another instance was that of a family of father,
mother, four sons, nine, five, three, and two years, and two daughters,
seven years and three weeks, with a sister of one of the parents for a
lodger. The nine persons lived in five rooms. There were only two beds
in the house, and one of the bedrooms was not in use.
On the South Side near Thirty-first Street there was a case where a
man lodger occupied one bedroom, the other being used by the parents
and their eight-year-old daughter--four persons in a four-room flat.
On South Park Avenue near Twenty-ninth Street two lodgers, a son-in-law
and a nephew, occupied two of the six rooms, while the husband and wife,
a son of twenty-three years, and a daughter of twenty-one years lived
in the other four rooms, which included the kitchen and dining-room.
A similar instance was found, on Indiana Avenue near Thirtieth Street,
where two male lodgers lived with a family consisting of the parents,
a son of twenty, and a daughter of eighteen, all in six rooms, two of
which were not sleeping-rooms. On Lake Park Avenue near Fifty-sixth
Street a family, including father, mother, and daughter of twenty, slept
in the kitchen in order that three lodgers, one male and two female,
might be accommodated in the five-room flat. In a five-room flat on
Kenwood Avenue near Fifty-third Street the two male lodgers occupied
both bedrooms, while the mother and her boy of nine and girl of seven
years lived in the kitchen and dining-room. Seven persons were found
living in a six-room house on East Fortieth Street; they were father,
mother, a son of five years, a daughter of seven years, and an infant,
with a male and a female lodger, friends of the parents. Virtually the
whole house was used for sleeping purposes.
These are examples of the arrangements that sometimes occur when children
and lodgers are found in the same dwelling. The fact that in the main
Chicago Negroes live in more rooms per dwelling than immigrants, whose
standard of living has not yet risen, does not necessarily mean that
the Negroes have a greater appreciation of a house with more rooms.
The explanation in many cases is that the Negroes take whatever living
quarters happen to be available, which often are large residences
abandoned by well-to-do whites, and then adapt their mode of living to
the circumstances. Lodgers are one of the sources of revenue that aid
in paying the rent. Negro families often expressed a desire to live by
themselves if they could find a dwelling of suitable size for reasonable
rent. They sometimes complained of lodgers and declared that they would
prefer not to take them at all, especially women lodgers. The objection
to married couples and unattached men was not so pronounced.
Smaller houses thus would seem to be a factor in the solution of the
lodger problem. A Negro real estate dealer was asked if the Negro was
as contented or as much disposed to live in a cottage as white people,
or whether he wanted to live in spacious quarters where he could draw a
revenue from roomers. The reply was that the Negro would rather live by
himself. This is evidenced by the fact that many Negroes would rather
live in an apartment and rent two or three rooms than take a large house
and have it full of roomers.
Lodgers are often found in the smaller dwellings occupied by Negroes.
Rent is often the determining factor in the selection of the smaller
dwelling. When it is so high that it forms too large a proportion of
income, economic necessity often drives the Negro family to admit one or
more lodgers at the expense of overcrowding and its attendant harmfulness.
This was noted in certain districts where the dwellings as a rule were
small.
_Rents and lodgers._--An effort was made to determine the economic
necessity for lodgers as expressed by the relation of the wages of heads
of families to the amounts of rent paid. It is assumed that in a normal
family budget rent should not exceed one-fifth of the income of the head
of the family. Wide variations from that proportion were revealed.
Facts as to both rent and wages were difficult to secure, owing to the
variable earnings of various members of the family, variable sums received
from lodgers, and other factors. For example, seventeen occupants owned
their houses. In seventy-eight other cases information obtained by the
investigators was not adequate or could not, for various reasons, be
used in calculations.
The remaining 179 cases out of the 274 provided data from which the
following facts are presented: In three instances the rent exceeded the
income of the head of the family; in thirty-one instances the rent equaled
one-half the income of the head of the family, and in an equal number it
amounted to one-third. In one case the rent was equal to three-fourths
of the income, and in twenty-three cases the rent equaled one-fourth.
Thus eighty-nine instances were disclosed in which the rent was in excess
of one-fifth of the income of the head of the family. In most of these
cases, particularly the extreme ones, the income of the head of the
family was greatly supplemented by money received from lodgers or from
earnings of other members of the family.
The remaining ninety families in which the rent amounted to one-fifth
or less of the income of the head of the family were divided as follows:
Twenty-four fell in the one-fifth column, twenty-seven in the one-sixth
column, fourteen in the one-seventh column, eleven in the one-eighth
column, while fourteen were in the "low" column. The last named included
those ranging from one-ninth to one-twenty-third.
On the South Side, in the district from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth
Street, rents exceeded the one-fifth proportion in one-half of the
sixty-two families studied, two of them paying rent in excess of income,
eight paying one-half of income for rent, fourteen paying one-third, and
seven paying one-fourth. Of the remaining thirty-one families in that
district, seven fell in the one-fifth column, twelve in the one-sixth
column, six in the one-seventh column, four in the one-eighth column
and two in the "low," being one-ninth and one-eleventh.
Rents were high also in the Lake Park district, where twenty-five
families of a total of thirty-six were paying in excess of the one-fifth
proportion. Fourteen of these paid one-half of the income for rent, five
paid one-fourth, four paid one-third, one paid three-quarters, and in
one instance rent exceeded income. In only five instances was the normal
one-fifth paid, two paid one-sixth, two paid one-seventh, while two paid
one-ninth and one-eleventh respectively.
In the district north of Thirty-first Street, eighteen out of a total
of thirty-eight families paid in excess of the one-fifth proportion,
four paid one-half, nine paid one-third, and five paid one-fourth.
Six families paid the normal one-fifth, five paid one-sixth, two paid
one-seventh, one one-eighth, and six less than that, running as low as
one-twenty-third.
The Ogden Park area was found to be a district of low rents. None of the
eight families studied paid as much as the normal one-fifth. Two paid
one-sixth, one paid one-seventh, three one-eighth, one one-ninth, and
one one-twelfth.
The other districts did not show much variation from the normal proportion.
Examination was made of all the factors in instances where the rent
equaled one-half or more of the income of the head of the family or
amounted to one-third. With regard to the former it was assumed, for the
purpose of the study, that it compelled renting rooms to lodgers. With
regard to the one-third column, lodgers were assumed to be an economic
necessity when they offered the only source of income in addition to that
of the head of the family. On these bases it was found that in forty-six
families supplementary income afforded by lodgers was necessary, that
in three instances they were the sole source of the income, while one
instance was presented of a widow whose children partly supported her,
but insufficiently for their common needs.
While in most instances of high rents and low income on the part of the
head of the family good reason appeared for taking lodgers, in not a few
instances further analysis revealed other sources of income which might
indicate that there was no economic necessity for lodgers. There was one
instance on Forest Avenue, for example, where the relation of the rent
to the father's income was one-third, but where his sons earned more
than double his income. In another family on South State Street near
Thirtieth Street, the father earned $125 a month and paid $50 a month
rent, but additional income was derived from the wife, son, and daughter,
in addition to that obtained from lodgers. There was likewise the case
of a waiter living on Lake Park Avenue whose rent was $30 a month as
against wages of $10 a week. In addition to the tips he doubtless received
in his work, his wife earned $18 a week, and $6 a week was derived from
lodgers. In one instance a man living near Fifty-sixth Street and Wabash
Avenue paid rent equal to one-third of his wages, but had considerable
income from investments.
Such instances tend to explain why only forty-eight families were found
in which lodgers seemed to be an economic necessity in aiding to pay
rents, when eighty-nine cases were revealed in which the rent was in
excess of one-fifth of the wages of the head of the family. The family
histories also showed that various means besides lodgers supplemented
the insufficient income of a family head. In some cases the wife or
children worked, and not infrequently their incomes exceeded those of
the father.
Lodgers were often found in families where the income from that source
did not appear to be needed. This was the case in a number of families
with unusually high wages and abnormally low rents. High wages and
low rents explain most of the cases shown where the rent ranges from
one-ninth to one-twenty-third of the income of the head of the family. In
the one-twenty-third case the couple lived in two rooms on South State
Street for which they paid $6 a month. The man earned $35 a week in an
iron foundry, while the wife added $18 a week to the common fund. Another
instance was that of a man who paid $16 a month rent and earned $48 weekly
at the Stock Yards. His wife and a relative added $23.60 a week to the
family income. A man in Ogden Park whose income as a contractor was $48
a week paid $16 a month rent. A man living on the West Side earned $48
a week and paid $15 a month rent. His children added $43.50 a week to
the family income.
Even in circumstances such as these, lodgers were sometimes taken. In
one case where the rent was one-tenth of the wages of the head of the
family the man paid $15 a month rent for a five-room dwelling out of his
$36 weekly wages earned in a coke plant at Gary. His son and lodgers
increased the monthly income by $28. There was a teamster earning $30
a week who paid $15 a month rent for a six-room dwelling in which nine
persons lived. The proportion of rent to his wages was as one to eight.
His wife, one of his children, and lodgers added to the income. As in
numerous instances where the income was high, a large amount was spent
for food in this family.
An instance was found of a man earning $9.50 to $10.50 a day. His wife
was a caterer. There was a daughter of fifteen years. They took three
roomers. There was no need for the woman to work, but she said she wanted
the money. She was a good cook, having served in that capacity in the
South, and she said she earned $15 when she went out for a week-end of
catering. In this instance there seemed to be little need for lodgers.
Another case was that of a man and his wife and two grown children living
in a nine-room dwelling on Calumet Avenue and having nine lodgers. The
man was earning $40 a week, and the lodgers paid $33.50 a week. The wife
occasionally did day work, earning $3.65 a day. The monthly expenditure
for food was $100, clothing $33, and rent $60.
Another instance was that of a widow with three children who lived on
State Street near Thirty-seventh Street, in a three-room flat. Though the
children's earnings amounted to $78 a week, the inevitable lodger was
present, contributing $4 a week to the common fund. This little family
spent $120 a month for food.
Large amounts spent for food were not uncommon in some families that
took lodgers. A typical instance was that of the man and wife with three
children and two lodgers who lived on Prairie Avenue. The man earned
$25 a week, while $82 a month was derived from the lodgers. Food for
the family alone cost $100 a month.
A man on North Wells Street earned $57 a week for the support of his
wife and three adopted children. They lived in an eleven-room house
which also accommodated the man's sister and brother. One of the sons
earned $75 a week, and the lodgers paid $45 a month. This family spent
$180 a month for food. Another earned $22 a week in the Stock Yards.
Besides his wife and child they had in their nine-room house on East
Thirtieth Street six lodgers paying $20 a week. This family spent $100
a month for food and $34 for clothing. Another man and wife on Forest
Avenue paid $25 a month rent and spent $88 a month for food and $43 for
clothing. They derived $3.75 a week from their two lodgers. A similar
case was that of a family which lived on East Thirty-second Street. The
man earned $30 a week in a foundry. He and his wife have one child, and
they had ten lodgers, who paid $72 a week. In this family $80 was spent
for food each month and $50 for clothing.
The heaviest expenditure for food in any one family was $330 a month.
This was explained by the fact that there were twenty table boarders.
The husband earned $22.50 a week, and there were three lodgers who paid
$13 a week. The boarders collectively paid $13 a day. Rent was $55 a
month, and $25 a month was spent for clothing.
Other reasons for the ready acceptance of lodgers in Negro dwellings
were apparent, among them friendship and the desire to be obliging and
to assist others in a new environment. Most Negroes would regard it as
a breach of good faith to encourage friends and relatives to come to
Chicago from the South and then fail to help them after their arrival.
This accounts for the frequent designation of "relatives" and "friends"
among the lodgers. Sometimes these lodgers seemed to be permanent, but
often they were taken only until they could adjust themselves.
During the period of greatest migration, 1915-20, hundreds of unattached
men and women could be seen on the streets as late as one or two o'clock
in the morning, seeking rooms shortly after their arrival in Chicago.
One instance was reported of a family to whose house four men came at
midnight looking for rooms. Lack of lodging-houses or of hotels where
accommodations could be had at reasonable prices was partly responsible
for this swarm of migrants seeking shelter in private homes. The meager
provision of such places for the accommodation of unattached Negroes
has been a factor in the lodger problem.
IV. HOW NEGRO FAMILIES LIVE
How Negroes earn their living in Chicago, what occupational changes
those from the South have undergone since arrival, how their present
occupations differ from those in their former homes--information on
all these points was gained from the family histories. Almost without
exception, the Negroes interviewed declared that their economic situation
had improved in Chicago. In most instances they were able to earn more;
some said they were obliged to work harder but felt well recompensed
because of their improved economic condition.
From the occupations of persons included in the study it appears that
there is a distinct departure from the domestic and personal service in
which Negroes were commonly found a few years ago. Among the 274 families
visited, the heads of 225 families were men. Of this number eighteen
were idle at the time of the investigation, in the summer of 1920, nine
were professional men, nineteen were in business, twenty-two were in
some skilled trade or work, 110 were doing unskilled work, and only
forty-seven were engaged in personal service. The latter term includes
such occupations as doorman in a hotel or club, bellboy, bootblack, cook,
waiter, porter, elevator operator, and chauffeurs who lack training as
mechanics. These are chiefly functions which bring employees in contact
with the public or with white employers in a more or less personal
capacity.
Before coming to Chicago, forty-five of the 225 were farmers. Practically
all of these entered the field of unskilled occupations here. Only
sixty-four of the 225 had been doing unskilled work in their former
home. Six more did skilled work in their former homes than were doing
such work in Chicago; two more were in personal service; two less were
in business; and one more was in a profession.
Of these 225 family heads, 122 migrated to Chicago, chiefly from the
South, during the period from 1916 to 1920 inclusive. Three periods in
the industrial history of the family head were taken: (1) occupation in
the former home; (2) occupation on first arrival in Chicago; and (3)
adjustment to new conditions in Chicago and occupation at the time of
investigation, during the spring and early summer of 1920.
Many of these migrants had not yet made their adjustment to the new
occupations at that time. However, certain tendencies were manifest.
For example, in the former home thirty-one were farmers and forty-five
were unskilled workers. In the period of adjustment seventy-seven were
doing unskilled work. The unskilled occupations had apparently, in the
shifting about, absorbed the farmers. The difficulty of continuing in
skilled occupations in the North was evidenced. In the South fourteen
of the 122 men were engaged in skilled occupations of some sort; in
the period of adjustment there were fifteen; but at the time of the
investigation there were but twelve.
In the South nineteen of the 122 were in personal-service occupations;
during the transition period, eighteen; and at the time of the
investigation, sixteen. In the South seven were in business; during the
period of transition, three; and at the time of the investigation, five.
In the South four were in practice as professional men; during the period
of transition only three; while at the time of the investigation there
were five, one just beginning to practice.
As to whether any previous occupational training was used or abandoned
after coming to the North, it appeared that of the 225 only 91 utilized
such training. In 134 cases previous training was not used, but these
included many who were farmers in the South.
Of forty-nine who had been engaged in personal-service occupations before
coming to Chicago, only twenty still continued in such work. Six were
unemployed at the time of the investigation, nineteen were in unskilled
work, one was doing skilled work, and three were in business.
Forty-nine women were heads of families as revealed by the 274 family
histories. This does not include all the Negro women shown by the
histories to be engaged in gainful occupations in Chicago. Often daughters
were working. There were thirty instances in which man and wife both
worked outside of the home. Before coming to Chicago 129 wives were
employed, while in Chicago sixty-seven wives were gainfully employed,
including the thirty who were working in addition to their husbands.
During the period of transition, it appears, they helped out, since the
records show that 132 were then at work. But the tendency plainly is to
abandon the practice as soon as the family becomes settled in the new
environment.
Of seventeen women who had worked as house servants in their former
homes, seven were found in factories, three in offices, two in stores,
and five in unskilled manual labor.
Some of the transitions in occupation are especially interesting. One
oil-field worker in the South had become a shoemaker. A farmer had become
a postal clerk. A former superintendent of a label factory attended
high school during the adjustment period and became an undertaker. One
who was a schoolboy in the South worked in a hotel on coming to Chicago
but became a grocer. A barber in Kansas City became first a painter in
Chicago, then a janitor. A bottler from Memphis, Tennessee, went to work
in the Stock Yards but became a canvasser. A farmer from Alabama worked
first in the Yards and later in woolen mills.
One man was a porter in a store in Mississippi. In Chicago he became a
chauffeur. A farmer from Louisiana on arriving worked as a butcher and
then secured employment in a tannery. A porter in a wholesale grocery
in Memphis, Tennessee, who worked first in Chicago as a lard maker in a
packing-house, later became a building laborer. A preacher from Tennessee
worked at Swift's packing-house until he could become established in a
church.
A Mississippi plumber who served as a butter maker for a time after
reaching Chicago became a contractor within three years. A hotel porter
from Alabama came to Chicago in 1918 and went to work in a steel foundry
and later in a soap factory. A farmer who worked on shares in Georgia
tried work in the Stock Yards in Chicago, but changed to a paint shop. An
Alabama man who worked in a sawmill there found a job in a steel foundry
in Chicago, and later went to the Stock Yards. A man who worked in an
ice plant in Texas became a railroad porter after coming to Chicago and
then found a job as a butcher at the Stock Yards.
A man who began life as a bootblack in Atlanta came to Chicago in 1893
and sold newspapers until he could enter business for himself. For
many years he has been a jeweler. In the South his wife was a musician
by profession. To aid her husband in his struggle she worked in a box
factory for a time after arriving in Chicago.
Clergymen sometimes abandon their profession for more remunerative
employment. One of these came to Chicago from Boston in 1904. For a time
he worked as a fireman and later in a packing-house. One who served
as a waiter on first coming to Chicago became an insurance agent, and
another, who was a reporter on a Negro newspaper on arrival in Chicago,
became the manager of a manufacturing company.
Few migrants continued in Chicago the employment in which they worked
in the South.
The family histories show that the Stock Yards industry absorbed many
of the migrants, and a large number went to work in the steel mills and
iron foundries, as well as in lighter manufactures.
Many Negro women have become hairdressers and manicurists after a course
in a school of "beauty culture" which also teaches the use of cosmetics.
Considerable skill is often required in this work, and the earnings often
supplement very substantially the husband's income and may be sufficient
to make an individual self-sustaining in case of need. Hairdressing is
most frequently done in the homes.
An occasional teacher, cateress, or seamstress was found among the Negro
women. Some of them remained in personal-service occupations, but a
decided tendency was noticeable toward office and factory employment.
In summary it is scarcely necessary to remark that wages in the North far
exceed those in the South. The difference in some instances is so great
that many foolish expenditures are indulged in before the relatively
higher cost of living is appreciated, or other conditions are properly
understood. High wages, supplemented by income from other sources, often
proved a temptation to unnecessarily heavy expenditures for material
comforts, such as food and clothing. With relation to food it did not
appear that Negroes were deliberately taken advantage of in their buying,
but that they frequently bought articles without considering prices that
had been refused by others because they were deemed excessive.
Insurance of one kind or another was often carried in the families
studied. In spite of high living costs, a considerable number of families
were found to have bank accounts, Liberty bonds, War Savings stamps,
and good interest-paying investments.
The testimony of Negroes who at some time had lived in the South was
mainly that they were obliged to work harder for what they got North.
They also declared that they were unable to save as much as they hoped
or expected, because of high prices. But in the great majority of
cases satisfaction was expressed over the improvement in their economic
situation. While their movements in search of better housing in Chicago
were extremely frequent, they still felt that they were better housed
than in their former homes, where bathtubs, steam heat, and electric
lighting were almost unknown. Being accustomed to a certain measure of
dilapidation in their home surroundings in the South, the Negro is not
necessarily dismayed by the extent of dilapidation in Chicago's Negro
housing, though usually it is not long before he begins to think of more
substantial dwellings in better surroundings than those he first obtains.
Also in Chicago he finds available and accessible to his home many
churches, some with large memberships and adequately housed; the best
schools he has ever known; fine hospitals and dispensaries at his command;
some playgrounds, bathing-beaches, parks, and similar facilities for
his recreation and that of his children; settlement houses; libraries;
and many other civic and recreational societies that make a strong
appeal to his interest and promote his ambition for physical and mental
development. He finds many motion-picture theaters and other amusements
for his leisure hours.
Where the habit has not already been established, he is learning to make
liberal use of all these facilities through the guidance and direction
of Negro newspapers and organizations working especially for the
improvement of the Negro group. There are indications of improvement in
moral standards, health, and civic consciousness through these contacts
and the use of these up-building social agencies.
The opinions of migrants and their feeling toward the community were
solicited. It appeared that above all they prized the social and political
freedom of the North. Satisfaction was expressed over the escape from "Jim
Crow" treatment in the South. They valued the independence possible in
the North, and sometimes spoke of having come North "out of bondage." They
recalled frequently the "shameful treatment received by the Negroes from
the white people in the South," the "intimidation and discrimination,"
and they were surprised and sometimes amazed at the fact that they could
go and come at will in Chicago, that they could ride in the front of
a street car and sit in any seat. Satisfaction was also expressed over
the fact that they could get a job at good wages and did not have to buy
groceries at plantation stores where they felt they had been exploited.
Thus, while they may have to work harder and may find it difficult for
a long time to adjust themselves to the environment, few indicated any
intention of returning to the South. In some instances, where adjustments
have not been made, some discouragement was evidenced, and they sometimes
expressed the feeling that they were no better off in Chicago than in
their former homes. The prevailing sentiment, however, was in favor of
remaining in spite of some greater difficulties.
Often Negroes from the South said they missed the care-free social
greetings and relationships that prevail in the rural South. They thought
that people in the North were "colder," that they did not show sufficient
hospitality.
Asked what conditions they would change if they could have their way,
the most frequently expressed desire was for more and better housing.
Improvement of social, moral, or political conditions followed. Some
emphasized the necessity of improving the management of the migrants
from the South, whose new-found freedom had led them to become offensive
in their conduct. Interviews with migrants, however, indicated that
instruction was being received without offense from many social agencies
on how to act, dress, and speak in such a manner as not to create
unfavorable impressions.
There were some complaints of political exploitation and of being
obliged to live in proximity to gambling and vice that were encouraged
by political bosses in their neighborhoods.
The inquiry showed that membership in clubs, lodges, and kindred
organizations was almost as universal as church affiliation. There
were only a few families in which no member had any association with a
fraternity or club.
V. A GROUP OF FAMILY HISTORIES
The general statistical treatment of these 274 Negro families takes
away many of their human qualities. For this reason a selection has
been made of various types of Negro families in order that a rounded
picture of the whole unit may be given. The family stories that follow
include typical migrant Negroes from the South--common laborers, skilled
laborers, salaried, business, and professional men. They illustrate
the commonplace experiences of Negroes in adjusting themselves to the
requirements of life in Chicago.
AN IRON WORKER
Mr. J----, forty-nine years old, his wife, thirty-eight years, and
their daughter twenty-one years, were born in Henry County, Georgia.
The husband never went to school, but reads a little. The wife finished
the seventh grade and the daughter the fifth grade in the rural school
near their home.
They worked on a farm for shares, the man earning one dollar and the
women from fifty to seventy-five cents a day for ten hours' work. Their
home was a four-room cottage with a garden, and rented for five dollars
a month. They owned pigs, poultry, and a cow, which with their household
furniture, were worth about $800. The food that they did not raise and
their clothing had to be bought from the commissary at any price the
owner cared to charge.
They were members of the Missionary Baptist Church and the wife belonged
to the missionary society of the church and the Household of Ruth, a
secret order. Their sole recreation was attending church, except for
the occasional hunting expeditions made by the husband.
_Motives for coming to Chicago._--Reading in the _Atlanta Journal_,
a Negro newspaper, of the wonderful industrial opportunities offered
Negroes, the husband came to Chicago in February, 1917. Finding conditions
satisfactory, he had his wife sell the stock and household goods and
join him here in April of the same year. He secured work at the Stock
Yards, working eight hours at $3 a day. Later, he was employed by a
casting company, working ten hours a day and earning $30 a week. This is
his present employment and is about forty minutes' ride from his home.
Both jobs were secured by his own efforts.
The family stayed in a rooming-house on East Thirtieth Street. This
place catered to such an undesirable element that the wife remained
in her room with their daughter all day. She thought the city too was
cold, dirty, and noisy to live in. Having nothing to do and not knowing
anyone, she was so lonely that she cried daily and begged her husband
to put her in three rooms of their own or go back home. Because of the
high cost of living, they were compelled to wait some time before they
had saved enough to begin housekeeping.
_Housing experience._--Their first home was on South Park Avenue. They
bought about $500 worth of furniture, on which they are still paying. The
wife then worked for a time at the Pullman Yards, cleaning cars at $1.50
a day for ten hours' work. Their house leaked and was damp and cold, so
the family moved to another house on South Park Avenue, where they now
live. The house is an old, three-story brick, containing three flats. This
family occupies the first flat, which has six rooms and bath. Stoves are
used for heating, and gas for light and cooking. The house is warm, but
dark and poorly ventilated. Lights are used in two of the rooms during
the day. The rooms open one into the other, and the interior, as well
as the exterior, needs cleaning. There are a living-room, dining-room,
and three bedrooms. The living-room is neatly and plainly furnished.
The daughter has married a man twenty-three years old, who migrated first
to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, then to Chicago. He works at the Stock
Yards. They occupy a room and use the other part of the house, paying
half the rent and boarding themselves. A nephew, who was a glazier in
Georgia, but who has been unable to secure work here, also boards with
Mr. and Mrs. J----, paying $8 a week. He is now unemployed, but has been
doing foundry work. Mrs. J---- occasionally does laundry work at $4 a day.
_How they live._--The cost of living includes rent $25; gas $5.40 a
month; coal $18 a year; insurance $9.60 a month; clothing $500 a year;
transportation $3.12 a month; church and club dues $3 a month; hairdresser
$1.50 a month. Little is spent for recreation and the care of the health.
The family carries insurance to the amount of $1,700, of which $1,200
is on the husband.
The meals are prepared by the wife, who also does the cleaning. Greens,
potatoes, and cabbage are the chief articles of diet. Milk, eggs, cereals,
and meat are also used. Meat is eaten about four times a week. Hot bread
is made daily, and the dinners are usually boiled.
_Relation to the community._--The whole family belongs to the Salem
Baptist Church and attends twice a week. The wife is a member of the
Pastor's Aid and the Willing Workers Club, also the Elk's Lodge. The
husband is a member of the Knights of Pythias. He goes to the parks,
bathing-beaches, and baseball games for amusement. The family spends
much of its time in church and helped to establish the "Come and See"
Baptist Mission at East Thirty-first Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.
They have gone to a show only once or twice since they came to the city.
During the summer they spend Sunday afternoons at the East Twenty-ninth
Street Beach.
Heavier clothes were necessary because of the change of climate, and
more fresh meat is used because of the lack of garden space and the high
cost of green vegetables.
The wife thinks that northern Negroes have better manners, but are not
as friendly as the colored people in the South. She says people do not
visit each other, and one is never invited to dine at a friend's house.
She thinks they cannot afford it with food so high. She thinks people
were better in the South than they are here and says they had to be good
there for they had nothing else to do but go to church.
She feels a greater freedom here because of the right to vote, the better
treatment accorded by white people, the lack of "Jim Crow" laws. She
likes the North because of the protection afforded by the law and the
better working conditions. "You don't have an overseer always standing
over you," she remarked.
Life here is harder, however, because one has to work all the time. "In
the South you could rest occasionally, but here, where food is so high
and one must pay cash, it is hard to come out even." The climate is
colder, making it necessary to buy more clothes and coal. Rent also is
very much higher here. They had to sell their two $50 Liberty bonds.
_Economic sufficiency._--With all this, Mrs. J---- gets more pleasure
from her income because the necessities of life here were luxuries in
Georgia, and though such things are dear here there is money to pay for
them. Houses are more modern, but not good enough for the rent paid.
They had to pay $2 more than the white family that moved out when they
moved in.
_Sentiments on the migration._--Mrs. J---- says "some colored people
have come up here and forgotten to stay close to God," hence they have
"gone to destruction." She hopes that an equal chance in industry will
be given to all; that more houses will be provided for the people and
rent will be charged for the worth of the house; and the cost of living
generally will be reduced. She does not expect to return to Georgia and
is advising friends to come to Chicago.
A FACTORY HAND
In his home town in Kentucky, Mr. M---- was a preacher with a small
charge. Now, at the age of forty-nine, in Chicago, he works in a factory
and is paid $130 a month. He has an adopted son, twenty-three years of
age, who is an automobile mechanic in business for himself, drawing an
income of $300 a month.
Mr. M---- might still be a preacher on small salary but for the
intervention of his wife. He came to Chicago about 1900. His wife came
from Nashville, Tennessee, in 1902, and they were married in 1904. Mrs.
M---- felt that she was too independent to "live off the people" and
persuaded her husband to give up the ministry. He got a job as foreman
at a packing-house, where he earned $25 a week for a ten-hour day. Next
he worked for the Chicago Telephone Company, and finally secured the
position with a box-manufacturing company which he now holds.
_Family life._--The M----s have adopted three children, having had none
of their own--the adopted son already mentioned, an adopted daughter now
twenty years of age, and another foster son of thirteen. The latter is
in a North Side school. The girl is in a normal school in Alabama. Both
Mr. and Mrs. M---- completed high school. All speak good English.
Wife and husband have separate banking accounts. Living expenses for such
a large family are, of course, heavy. For example, the bills for food
aggregate from $42 to $45 a week, and more than $200 a year is paid in
insurance premiums. Frequently a woman is hired to come in and help with
the housework. Food in good variety is used. Illness prevented adding
to the bank accounts during the year of 1920. An operation performed
on Mrs. M---- cost $650 and the illness of Mr. M---- and the daughter
consumed between $900 and $1,000.
_Housing experience._--The M----s' first home in Chicago was a cottage
in the "Black Belt." They wanted a large house and found one on South
State Street. The neighborhood, however, was displeasing to them, and
they moved to the North Side to be near a brother's children. The house
was too small, and they moved again to another North Side address. Again
the neighborhood proved distasteful, so they bought the three-story
dwelling on the North Side where they now live. It is in good sanitary
condition and is supplied with gas. As lodgers they have the wife's
sister and brother, who are actually members of the family.
_Community participation._--They belong to the Baptist church.
Affiliations of a secular nature include the Masons, the Household of
Ruth, the Court of Calanthe, the Eastern Star, the Heroines of Jericho,
the North Side Men's Progressive Club, the Twentieth Century and Golden
Leaf clubs, and the Young Matrons and Volunteer Workers. Mrs. M---- is
president of a settlement club and a member of the Urban League. After
coming to Chicago three years passed before she mingled much with people.
She had always done community work in her southern home and feels that
her reluctance here was due to the fact that she did not know what the
northern people were like. She found them friendly enough when at last
she did associate with them.
_Sentiments on community problems._--They came to Chicago because they
had visited here and liked it well enough to come back and settle.
Conditions are not all that they would like. They would like to see
Negroes allowed to live anywhere they choose without hindrance, they
would suppress moving pictures that reveal murder, drinking, and similar
acts that lead young people to commit crimes. They would also like to see
newspapers abandon their habit of printing articles that are derogatory
to the Negro, thus creating prejudice, and of printing items unfit for
children. Also they would like to see better homes for Negroes.
For the Negroes, they feel, life in the North is considerably easier
than in the South, since they can always get plenty of work and do not
have to work so hard as in the South. The mixed schools in the North are
especially appreciated because no discrimination can creep in. The general
lack of segregation on street cars, in parks, and in similar public places
also pleases them. Still they see difficulties for southern Negroes who
come North to live and are easily led astray. Southern Negroes are not
accustomed to the new kinds of work and are inclined to slight it. This
is, of course, unsatisfactory to their employers and accounts in some
measure for the frequency with which they change jobs. This may also
account for the fact that white people are averse to paying migrants well.
A RAILWAY MAIL CLERK
Mr. L---- was graduated from the Carbondale (Ill.) high school and the
Southern Illinois State Normal School, while Mrs. L---- was graduated
from Hyde Park High School and the Chicago Normal School. The latter
is a music teacher. Before coming to Chicago, Mr. L---- was a school
principal in Mounds, Illinois, and Mrs. L---- also was a teacher. They
are northern people, the husband having been born in East St. Louis and
the wife in Chicago. They have a daughter, three years of age, and have
living with them a niece and nephew, six and five years old, as well as
two adult women relatives.
_Economic sufficiency._--As a railway mail clerk, Mr. L---- earns $125
a month. He owns a house and lot in Carbondale and carries insurance on
his life and property. They spend $37.50 a month for rent, about $10
for miscellaneous items, $15 a week for food, $4 a month for gas, $1
for barber's services, and always $10 a month is added to the family's
bank account.
_Housing and neighborhood expenses._--In April, 1919, a flat building
south of Sixty-third Street, previously occupied by white people, was
opened to Negroes. The L---- family were the first of the Negroes to
move in. A few white families wished to remain and lived in the same
building with the Negroes. Mr. L---- says: "We objected, as they were
not the kind of people we wanted to live with. My sister-in-law acted
as agent of the building, and the condition of some of the flats was
terrible. The owner was arrogant when the Negroes first came in, but
he soon found that we would not be pleased with just anything. He told
us he saw that we were particular and wanted things nice, and, said
he, 'Seeing that you are that way, I'll do the best I can for you, as
I believe you will take care of the flat.' The Negroes insisted on the
laundry being cleaned and it is now being used."
The L---- family has had three stoves since moving in. After thoroughly
renovating the building and making many of the repairs themselves, the
sanitary conditions are good, and the owner makes no further objection
to maintaining the good order of things.
The white people of the neighborhood objected to having the building
occupied by Negroes. White boys of the neighborhood stoned the building,
and its tenants were obliged to call upon the police for protection. This
antagonism now seems to have disappeared. The white and Negro children
play together amicably.
_Community participation._--Mrs. L---- attends the First Presbyterian
Church regularly and Mr. L---- is a member and secretary of the board of
trustees of the A.M.E. Mission. He is a Mason and a member of the Woodlawn
Community Organization, which has the betterment of the neighborhood
as its aim. He plays tennis for recreation and goes to concerts and
the movies for entertainment. The children in the family have made use
of public playgrounds and libraries. Bathing-beaches have been sought
occasionally, and contacts have been made with the St. Lawrence Mission,
a neighborhood institution.
_Opinions on race relations._--Mr. L---- thinks that agitation is of
no assistance to the problem and draws attention to the fact that lack
of agitation on the part of newspapers averted a riot in connection
with one recent racial disturbance. "Housing is the greatest difficulty
confronted by the migrant from the South." It is his opinion, further,
that the Negroes are not understood, that the white people fear them
until they become really acquainted with the Negroes. "Contact," he
says, "is the only thing that will help to make conditions better. It
is just a question of understanding each other."
A MULATTO
Mr. A---- was born in Chicago and his wife in Helena, Arkansas. He was
educated in the Chicago public schools, and his wife attended Fisk
University, Nashville, Tennessee, and afterward the Chicago Musical
College.
Mr. A---- is light in complexion and is frequently mistaken for a white
man. Several years ago, without announcing his race, he obtained work in a
label factory and remained for some time until it was discovered that he
was not a white man, and therefore the only Negro in the establishment.
The officials, being the first to learn his racial identity, decided to
keep him as long as no objection came from the other white employees.
In a few years he became superintendent of the factory, which position
he held for eight years. He was treated as an equal by members of the
firm, who visited him at his home and invited him to their club. He was
also president of the company's outing club.
A short time ago he decided to enter business for himself, and both he
and his wife took courses in an embalming school. He now has a business
with stock and fixtures valued at $10,000.
_Economic sufficiency._--His business income affords a comfortable
livelihood and a surplus for investment. He has bought one house and
built another. These two are valued at $8,000 and yield $90 monthly.
He also owns stock in the Pennsylvania Railroad and a fire insurance
company, has $300 invested in Liberty bonds and owns a $1,000 automobile.
_Community participation._--Mr. and Mrs. A---- attend Congregational
church services every Sunday and get much pleasure from concerts,
lectures, and shows in the "Loop." Their principal recreation is motoring.
Mr. A---- is president of an association of business men and of a
charity organization. He is a member of several fraternal organizations,
contributes to Provident Hospital, United Charities, and the Urban
League. His wife is an active committee member of a charity organization.
_Opinions on local race problems._--Mr. A---- thinks there would be
no housing problem if prejudice were not so marked. He mentioned a
subdivision east of Stony Island Avenue where it is specifically stated
that Negroes are not desired. Homes there are being sold for prices within
the reach of Negroes, and he feels that at least 500 Negroes would be
glad to pay cash for such homes anywhere in Chicago if they were given
the opportunity. He feels that proper protection should be given Negroes
against bombers.
A TRANSPLANTED HOUSEHOLD
Mr. B---- is seventy-two years old and his wife sixty-four. They came to
Chicago during the migration. They had difficulty in finding work suited
to their advanced age and in accustoming themselves to the simplest
changes in environment. Neither of them can read or write.
_Home life in the South._--In Alabama they owned an eight-acre farm
and a four-room house and raised hogs, chickens, and cows. They both
had worked twelve hours a day for years and by denying themselves even
a comfortable home had saved $2,000. They were members of a church,
although they could not actively participate in church or other affairs
of their rural community. When the migration fever struck them they sold
their property, drew out their $2,000, and followed the crowd.
_Home life in Chicago._--They first secured rooms and began the search
for work. Mr. B---- finally secured a job in a livery stable at $18
a week, but the work was uncertain and the wages insufficient. Mrs.
B---- went to work cleaning taxicabs. Illness and frequent lapses in
work depleted their savings. They rented an eight-room house and took
in lodgers, hoping to insure a steady income. They have nine lodgers in
these eight rooms, in addition to themselves. There is no furnace heat;
the bathroom is out of repair, the halls dark and dirty, and they are
using their old furniture brought from the South. Three of the women
lodgers came from the same Alabama community. The habits and customs of
this household are unchanged. They go out seldom, and all of the women
smoke pipes and use snuff.
Of the original $2,000 which Mr. B---- brought with him, he has $250 left.
They make no use of civic and social agencies and do not go to church
because they think Chicago Negroes are unsociable. They prize the
fact, however, that work is plentiful for the lodgers, and they have no
intention of returning South.
A BARBER FROM MISSISSIPPI
Mr. D---- was a migrant and a member of a party of over a hundred Negroes
who left Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in the autumn of 1916.
He was a barber at home and earned an average of $25 a week. Mrs. D----
was a good housewife. They owned a house and lot valued at $1,000 and
furniture valued at $500. They have two children.
_Motive for coming to Chicago._--Mr. D---- had always read the _Chicago
Defender_, and usually got in a supply of these papers to sell to
his customers and to supply topics for barber-shop discussion. His
daughter, then a student at Straight College in New Orleans, was to be
graduated that year, and he went to New Orleans to spend a week. While
there he worked in a barber shop. He found that the migration was being
much discussed. One day a man came into the shop and said he was a
representative of a northern industry that was anxious to get Negroes
to come North and work for it. He argued that the North had freed the
Negroes, but had left them in the South where they had not received good
treatment, so that at this late date the North was trying to right an
old wrong and was now offering to Negroes a chance to work. On the other
hand the Negroes were indebted to the North for their freedom.
When Mr. D---- returned home he sold his barber shop and left for the
North with his wife and children.
_Life in Chicago._--Opening a place of business in Chicago, he called
it the Hattiesburg Barber Shop. It is patronized largely by Hattiesburg
people who came up in his party. His earnings are larger here, but at
first his wife was forced to work in the Stock Yards at $10 a week to
help meet the family budget. Occasionally now she works as a hairdresser.
They pay $46.50 a month for rent. Their clothing bill amounts to $650
a year. Last year they spent $200 for medicine and an average of $18 a
week for food. Their insurance premiums total $6 a month.
_Community participation._--In the South the entire family was active in
church affairs. In Chicago they have continued their church connections,
and Mr. D---- is one of the officials at the Olivet Baptist Church. They
go to church four times a week.
_Adjustments to Chicago._--They were quick to begin adjustment to their
new surroundings, profiting by the advice and instructions of their
present pastor. At the end of six months they felt themselves quite at
home. They feel the need for using more careful English and are more
formal in their greetings and relations with persons whom they meet.
They enjoy the "freedom of speech and action" allowed in Chicago, the
privilege of voting, the freedom from segregation, and the absence of
Jim Crow laws. They think Chicago is fair to Negroes in so far as laws
are concerned, but believe there should be better enforcement of the
laws. They find life easier here, although there is more work to be
done. They feel a great satisfaction in the more modern homes and other
comforts and pleasures they are able to obtain. Each month they add a
small amount to their bank account. They suggest that Negroes who have
become adjusted to Chicago should take pains in a kindly spirit to inform
newcomers concerning the proper deportment. They believe that if advice
is offered in the right manner it will always be gladly received. They
do not intend to return South.
A STOCK YARDS LABORER
A son-in-law of the B---- family, also from Mississippi, is employed
at the Stock Yards. His impressions throw light on the adjustment of
migrants and on their views. He said:
"A friend met me when I first came to Chicago and took me to the Stock
Yards and got me a job. I went to the front of the street car the first
time I entered one here because my friend told me to; I would not sit
beside a white person at first, but I finally got courage to do so.
"At Swift's the whites were friendly. There I was in the dry-salt
department at 22½ cents an hour. The foreman, a northerner, had been
there thirty-five years. He was fair to all. I worked with Americans,
Poles, and Irish. But the work was very hard, and I had to leave. I
carried my lunch with me. Negroes and whites there eat together when
they wish. I am now working at Wilson's. The Irish and Poles are a mean
class. They try to get the Negroes to join the union. When the Negroes
went to work Friday after the riot, most of the Irish and Poles quit
and didn't come back to work until Monday. They came back jawing because
the Negroes didn't join the union. White members of the union got paid
when their houses had been burned--$50 if they had families and $25 if
they were single. Colored members of the union got nothing when their
houses had been burned. That's why I won't join. You pay money and get
nothing. The whites worked during the riot; we had to lose that time.
I lost two weeks. It seemed strange to me. It looked unfair. They are
still mean and 'dig ditches' for us. They go to the foreman and knock
us, just trying to get us out of jobs. The foreman so far hasn't paid
any attention to it. I am working in the fresh-pork department, handling
boxes.
"The Negroes stick together and tend to their business. Some of the
Americans and Polish are very friendly. Everybody does his own work. We
use the same showers and locker-rooms. They don't want us to work because
we are not in the union. One asked me yesterday to join. The Poles said
non-union men would not get a raise, but we got it."
_Opinions on race relations._--"When I first came I thought the city
was wide open--I mean friendly and free. It seems that there is more
discrimination and unfriendly feeling than I thought. I notice it at
work and in public places. Wages are not increasing like the high cost
of living. As soon as one gets a raise, the cost of living goes up [May,
1920].
"The whites act just as disorderly on cars as the Negroes. Monday evening
two white laborers sitting beside a white woman cursed so much that I
had to look around. Nothing is ever said about such incidents.
"Rent goes up whenever people think of it. We have to pay $8 more since
April. Things are getting worse for us and we need to think about it.
Still it is better here than in the South."
AN OLD SETTLER
Mr. S---- was born in Baltimore in 1851. At the time of the gold rush
to California, his father took his family and started out to seek his
fortune. They had got as far as Chicago when his father was robbed and
the journey ended. Mr. S---- has lived here since. He has seen many
changes during his sixty-three years' residence in Chicago. When he came
here the city limits were Twelfth Street on the South and Chicago Avenue
on the North, and there were no street cars. The Negro population was
175. His parents took him on Sunday to the Railway Chapel Sunday School,
started in 1857 in two passenger cars by a Presbyterian minister, Father
Kent. The first building occupied by this congregation was on the site
where the Board of Trade now stands, 141 West Jackson Boulevard. This
was destroyed in the fire of 1871. The second church was at the corner
of State and Thirteenth streets, where the Fair warehouse now stands.
The next site of the church was that of the Institutional Church at
Thirty-eighth and Dearborn streets.
_Early housing experience._--Prejudice, Mr. S---- says, was unknown in
the early days. He has lived south of Thirty-first Street for thirty-five
years. They were the first Negro family to enter the block in which they
now live. He built his home there and has been living there twenty years.
A BASEBALL "MAGNATE"
Mr. G---- was born in La Grange, Texas, the son of a minister. As a boy
he worked on his father's farm, went to school, and progressed as far
as the eighth grade. He was a good baseball player. He played first in
Forth Worth, Texas, then in New York and Philadelphia, and finally came
to Chicago in 1907. The highest amount he had been able to earn was $9 a
week. His first job in Chicago netted him about $1,000 a year. In 1910
he had acquired ownership of the team, and now, at the age of forty,
it nets him $15,000 a year. His team has traveled extensively, having
covered the principal cities in the United States at least twenty-five
times.
_Home life._--Mrs. G---- was born in Sherman, Texas. She completed the
first-year high school at her home. She is a modest woman and a good
housekeeper. They have two children, a son of nine and a daughter of
three. Mr. G---- has moved four times in Chicago, seeking desirable living
quarters for his family. He owns a three-story brick building containing
nine rooms, the house in which he now lives. In addition he owns $7,000
worth of Liberty bonds and values his baseball team and other personal
property at about $35,000.
_Community participation._--Both Mr. and Mrs. G---- were church members
in the South. This membership is continued in Chicago. Mrs. G---- belongs
to an A.M.E. church and is interested in and helps support Provident
Hospital and Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls, while Mr. G---- is a
member of several fraternal orders, City Federation of Clubs, and the
Appomattox Club. Their recreation is baseball and dancing, and they find
entertainment in attending theaters and orchestra concerts principally
in the "Loop." Mr. G---- is very much interested now in a playground
which is being established near his home and a tennis and croquet club
for young people in the same vicinity.
AN OLD RESIDENT
Before coming to Chicago in 1886 Mrs. L---- had lived in Washington and
Detroit. Mr. L---- was successively a railroad porter, a night watchman,
and a janitor. There are four children, three daughters and a son. Two
of the daughters are married and have families. One is a dressmaker,
another a stenographer, and another an accomplished musician. The son is
a typist. Several years ago Mr. L---- purchased a lot near Forty-seventh
Street on Wells Street on which he built his home. In this neighborhood
the family was reared. Mr. L---- died several years ago.
_Riot experience._--Although the L---- family has been living at
Forty-seventh and Wells streets for over thirty years, and relations
between the family and the white neighbors in the block were cordial,
gangs of hoodlums from other districts practically destroyed their
property. The house was attacked, some of the furniture was stolen, and
some was destroyed. The heavy pieces of furniture were broken up and
burned in the street. The building was so badly damaged that they were
forced to move into a boarding-house for a time.
_Community participation._--The L---- family lived in a section of
the city in which there were few Negroes, but maintained an active
relationship with organizations of the Negro community. They are members
of the A.M.E. Church and Sunday school and of two fraternal organizations.
Mrs. L---- is a member of the Linen Club of the Provident Hospital and
is actively interested in the Old Folks Home. Miss L----, one of the
daughters, is well known in the community as a musician and composer.
A PHYSICIAN
Dr. W---- and family came to Chicago in 1910. He had lived in Mexico
City until the revolution made living there hazardous. He was in good
circumstances, maintaining a comfortable household with servants. Since
he has been in Chicago he has had considerable difficulty in finding a
home in a neighborhood fit for rearing his children. He finally purchased
a home on Grand Boulevard which is valued at more than $25,000. It is a
three-story building with brown-stone front, ten rooms and two baths,
and many works of art installed by the artist, Holslag, who formerly
owned the house, and who himself painted some of the decorations. Dr.
W---- has spent several thousand dollars on the furnishings.
_Home life._--Besides the doctor and his family there are two other
relatives. The physician's income is adequate to maintain this
establishment and in addition two high-class automobiles. Mrs. W---- is
a social leader and does much entertaining. She is a patron of community
drama and attends grand opera and the leading theaters in the "Loop."
They were formerly Catholics but now attend the Bahai Assembly. Dr.
W---- is a member of two fraternal orders and two social clubs. Their
recreation is tennis, boating, motoring, and bathing. He is a director
of the Chicago Health Society. He is an examining physician and a member
of the board of directors in a life insurance company. Both are members
of the Art Institute and are active in supporting the settlements and
hospitals of the community.
In addition to her social duties Mrs. W---- continues the study of
music. She is chaperon at the regular dances of a post of the American
Legion held in the South Side Community Center; a member of the Library
Committee of the Y.W.C.A., and is interested in the entertainment of
Negro students of the University of Chicago.
They are living in a neighborhood in which several bombings of homes
of Negroes have occurred, but Mrs. W---- says that their relations with
the white neighbors are friendly.
A NATIVE OF CHICAGO
Mr. C---- was born in Chicago in 1869. His grandmother was part Indian
and his grandfather of Scotch extraction. The grandfather was born
in Cincinnati, and was graduated from Oberlin College. His father's
brother was a personal friend of Owen Lovejoy and Wendell Phillips. In
Leavenworth, Kansas, a monument had been erected to him as the first
Negro captain of a volunteer company. He fought with General Buckner
in New Orleans, was active as an abolitionist, and his wife was one of
the women sent to Kansas to establish schools among Negroes. She taught
school for thirty-six years and was one of the first women in the country
who were graduated as kindergarten teachers. His maternal grandfather
bought a home in Chicago in 1854 and lived where the Federal Building
now stands. At the time of Mr. C----'s birth his father lived on Plymouth
Court, then called Diana Place. They lived for thirty-one years on South
La Salle Street, where they owned their home.
_Economic sufficiency._--Mr. C---- is a graduate of the Chicago College of
Dental Surgery and practiced his profession until ill health forced him
into other fields. He has been a clerk in the county treasurer's office,
assistant bookkeeper in a white bank in Memphis, which position he held
for two years, and assistant electrician for a telephone company. Now,
at fifty-one, he is superintendent of the Western Exposition Company's
building. Twice he has lost his savings by bank failures. He lost $9,000
through the failure of the Day and Night Bank in Memphis, Tennessee. He
owns a house and lot, oil and mining stocks valued at $4,600, Liberty
bonds, Thrift stamps, and carries a small bank balance. His present home
is a four-room flat in a building on South State Street, which contains
forty apartments and two stores. With him lives the family of his younger
brother, who has a twelve-year-old son. He is a member of the Baptist
church and two fraternal orders. His chief recreation is swimming, and
he finds his entertainment in the "Loop" theaters and the city library.
A MISSOURI FAMILY
Mr. and Mrs. T---- came to Chicago in 1919, the wife arriving one month
before her husband. They had been living in St. Louis, Missouri, where
Mr. T---- was employed as a roller in an aluminum works. Prior to that
time he had been a houseman, and before that a teamster.
There are two children. One is fourteen years old and in the first-year
high school, and the other is seven and in the first-grade grammar school.
Mrs. T---- has always been a substantial aid to her husband, and, as
she says, she "doesn't always wait for him to bring something to her,
but goes out herself and helps to get it." Accordingly, when reports
were being circulated that Chicago offered good jobs and a comfortable
living, she came up to investigate while her husband held his job in
St. Louis.
_Home life in Chicago._--The family lives on State Street over a store.
They have moved four times since coming to Chicago in 1919, once to be
nearer work, once to get out of a neighborhood that suffered during the
riot, and twice to find a more desirable neighborhood for their family.
They are not satisfied with their present home and are planning to move
again as soon as a more suitable place can be found. With them live a
sister-in-law and her child, who are regarded as members of the family.
The house is in poor sanitary condition. The toilet is in the yard and
used by two families. There is no bath. The sister-in-law is a music
teacher but does not earn much. She pays board when she can afford it.
Mr. T---- is forty-seven and his wife forty-six years old. He is employed
at the International Harvester Company and earns $35 a week for a
nine-hour day. He consumes an hour and a half each day going to work.
Although Mr. T---- lived on a farm and too far from school to attend, he
taught himself to read and write. Mrs. T---- went as far as the eighth
grade in grammar school.
_Community participation._--The entire family belongs to a Methodist
church. Mr. T---- is a member of the Knights of Pythias and Mrs. T----
is a member of the Sisters of the Mysterious Ten. They have no active
recreation. For amusement they attend motion-picture shows in the
neighborhood. The children regularly use the playground near their home
and the Twenty-sixth Street Beach.
_Adjustment to Chicago._--Their most difficult adjustment has been in
housing. They think landlords should be forced to provide better homes
for the people in view of the high rents.
AN EMBALMER
Mr. B---- was born in Texas, lived for a number of years in Tuskegee,
Alabama, moved to Montgomery, and thence to Chicago in the summer of
1906. His first position here was that of coachman for $30 a month,
room, and board. His next position was that of porter, working fifteen
hours a day for $30 a week. He accumulated a small amount of money, and,
wishing to enter business for himself, and not having sufficient funds
to attend a specialized school, he secured a job with an embalmer and
worked for him four years. In 1913 he entered the undertaking business
for himself. He is now buying a two-story brick building on a five-year
contract, to serve as a place of business and a home. The business is
young and was begun on small capital. To establish himself he exhausted
his little bank account and sold his Liberty bonds. His equipment is
still incomplete, and he rents funeral cars and other equipment necessary
for burials.
_Community participation._--Both Mr. and Mrs. B---- are members of
several local improvement clubs; they attend Friendship Baptist Church,
and each belongs to three fraternal orders.
_Sentiments on local conditions._--Mrs. B---- thinks the town too
large for much friendliness. Mr. B---- believes that there should be
a segregated vice district. His principal objection to the present
scattering of houses of prostitution is that his wife, who is frequently
obliged to return home late at night, is subjected to insults from men
in the neighborhood. He thinks there should be a law requiring that
landlords clean flats at least once a year.
A YOUNG PHYSICIAN
Dr. C---- is a good example of the numbers of young Negro professional
men in Chicago. His office is on State Street near Thirty-fifth. He was
born in Albany, New York, and his wife in Keokuk, Iowa. They have lived
in Chicago since 1915.
_Early experiences in profession._--Through a civil-service examination
Dr. C---- secured a place as junior physician at the Municipal
Tuberculosis Sanitarium. At the same time he passed with high rating an
examination for interneship at the Oak Forest Infirmary. At the latter
place he was promptly rejected because of his color, and at the former
he was asked to leave nine hours after he reported for duty.
_Economic status._--Dr. C---- owns a house and lot in his former home,
Albany, which he values at $14,000 and other property and stock holdings
valued at $13,000.
_Education._--Dr. C---- was graduated from the Brooklyn Grammar School,
the Boys' High School of Brooklyn, and Cornell University, where he
obtained his A.B. and M.D. degrees. Mrs. C---- is a graduate nurse.
He is at present an associate surgeon and chief of the dispensary of a
local hospital.
_Community participation._--He has already assumed a position of
leadership in the social activities of the community, is a trustee of
the new Metropolitan Church, a thirty-second degree Mason, a member
of the Knights of Pythias, Chicago Medical Society, American Medical
Association, Urban League, and a director of the Community Service, and
also an instructor at the Chicago Hospital College.
_Opinions on race relations._--He believes that the recent migration
of Negroes has been an advantage in teaching Chicago Negroes the value
of property ownership and co-operation. He thinks the scarcity of homes
for Negroes can be relieved by allowing Negroes "as much freedom as the
American dollar." Definite suggestions for improving conditions within
the race he gives as follows:
1. Establishment of a permanent medium for understanding between the two
races--a permanent commission to act in the adjustment of difficulties
of any kind. This body should be composed of Negroes and whites.
2. Rigid enforcement of existing laws.
3. A systematic campaign under the direction of the commission among
Negroes to teach them personal hygiene.
4. Negroes should join labor unions and refuse to serve as strike breakers.
5. When Negroes do act as strike breakers, the doctor thinks, race
friction is created and labor is cheapened. Negroes can obtain a square
deal from the unions only when they have joined them in sufficient
numbers to demand justice by becoming an important factor in the unions.
If they are not permitted in certain unions they should form groups of
their own for collective bargaining.
A YOUNG LAWYER
Numbers of young Negro lawyers are establishing themselves in Chicago, and
their influence already is being felt in the community. A good example
of this group is Mr. J----, who, although only twenty-eight years old,
has been actively practicing law six years. He was born in Kentucky and
has lived in Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, New York, and Oklahoma.
_Education._--He completed high school in Kansas, graduated from Oberlin
College, and then went to Columbia University, New York, and received
the degrees of Master of Arts and Bachelor of Laws. His wife completed
the junior year in college in New York, studied art in New York City,
and is skilled in china painting.
_Home life._--Mr. and Mrs. J---- have one child of four years. They live
in one of the 1,400 buildings owned by a real estate man of that district
who "notoriously neglects his property." The struggle to establish
himself during the first few years in Chicago was difficult. Now Mr.
J---- has the confidence of a large number of people, and a clientèle
which provides a comfortable income.
_Community participation._--Mr. J---- is a trustee of the institutional
A.M.E. Church, chairman of the United Political League, member of the
Y.M.C.A., Knights of Pythias, a Greek-letter fraternity and the Urban
League, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Friends of
Negro Freedom.
_Civic consciousness._--He thinks that if working Negroes and working
white men can be led to regard one another as workingmen interested in
the same cause the color question will be forgotten. He believes that
prejudice is based on the economic system. With respect to housing he
thinks a Negro should, as an American citizen, be free to purchase real
estate wherever he is able to make a purchase; that as long as artificial
barriers are set up there can be no successful solution of the color
question; that a man's respect for the rights of others increases in
proportion to his intelligence, and that the press can be a great source
of evil or good in educating the people. He believes that there should
be clubs and educational meetings to instruct some of the less refined
classes of Negroes in conduct.
A MIGRANT PROFESSIONAL MAN
Mr. and Mrs. F---- lived in Jackson, Mississippi, until 1917, the year
of the migration, when they moved to Chicago. He followed his clientèle
and established an office on State Street near Thirty-first Street.
Mr. F---- received his commercial and legal training at Jackson College
and Walden University. Mrs. F---- is a graduate of Rust College and the
University of Chicago.
_Home life._--The F---- home evidences their economic independence. It
contains ten rooms and bath and is kept in excellent condition. They own
six houses in the South, from which they receive an income. Mr. F---- is
the president of an insurance company incorporated in Illinois in 1918,
which has a membership of 12,000. He has also organized a mercantile
company, grocery and market on State Street, incorporated for $10,000,
of which $7,000 has been paid.
They have two sons, nineteen and twelve years of age, and three adult
nephews living with them. One nephew is a painter at the Stock Yards,
another is a laborer, and the third a shipping-clerk.
_Community participation._--They are members of the Baptist church and
of the People's Movement, while Mr. F---- is a member of the Appomattox
Club, an organization of leading Negro business and professional men.
In addition to membership in three fraternal organizations, they are
interested in and contribute to the support of the Urban League and
United Charities.
_Opinions on race relations._--Concerning housing, Mr. F---- feels that
some corporation should build medium-sized cottages for workingmen. He
thinks that the changes in labor conditions make it hard for Negroes to
grasp immediately the northern industrial methods. Patience will help
toward adjustment, he thinks.
He thinks that colored women receive better protection in Chicago than
in the South. His experience in the courts leads him to believe that
Negroes have a fairer chance here than in the South. Agitation by the
press in his opinion can have no other effect than to make conditions
worse.
B. PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF NEGRO HOUSING
The purpose of this section of the report is to describe by a selection
of types the physical condition of houses occupied as residences by
Negroes. This description includes the structure, age, repair, upkeep,
and other factors directly affecting the appearance, sanitation, and
comfort of dwellings available for Negro use.
In 1909 the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy included Negro
housing in a series of general housing studies. This study was confined
to the two largest areas of Negro residence, those on the South and West
sides. Both of these were studied generally, and in each a selected area,
of four blocks in one case and three blocks in the other, was studied
intensively.
The South Side area included parts of the Second, Third, and Thirteenth
wards between Fifteenth and Fifty-fifth streets, with State Street as
the main thoroughfare. The four blocks bounded by Dearborn Street,
Twenty-seventh Street, Armour Avenue, and Thirty-second Street were
intensively studied. It was found that within these four blocks 94 per
cent of the heads of families were Negroes. The buildings were one- and
two-story, with a considerable amount of vacant space in the lots. Half
the lots had less than 50 per cent of their space covered. The houses were
for the most part intended for single families but had been converted
into two-flat buildings. Rooms were poorly lighted and ventilated, the
sanitation bad, and the alley and grounds about the houses covered with
rubbish and refuse.
Comparisons with other districts studied showed the following: Of houses
in a Polish district, 71 per cent were in good repair; in a Bohemian
district, 57 per cent; Stock Yards district, 54 per cent; Jewish and
South Chicago districts, 28 per cent; and in the Negro district, 26 per
cent. A study made three years later by the School of Civics covering the
same area showed a decrease of 16 per cent of buildings in good repair.
Five buildings had been closed by the Department of Health as no longer
fit for habitation. There were leaks in the roofs, sinks, and windows
of five-sixths of the dwellings. In describing a typical house in this
area, the report said:
There was no gutter and the roof leaked in two places, the sink
drain in the basement leaked, keeping it continually damp,
the opening of the chimney let the rain come down there, the
windowpane in front rattled from lack of putty. The conditions
in these houses are typical; almost every tenant tells of
rain coming in through roof, chimney or windows, and cases
of fallen plaster and windows without putty were too common
to be noted. One aspect of the situation that should not be
overlooked is the impossibility of putting these old houses in
good condition. Leaks may be repaired, plaster may be replaced,
windows may be made tight, and these things would certainly
improve most of the houses, but when all were done it would
not alter the fact that these are old houses, poorly built,
through which the wind can blow at will.
[Illustration: TYPES OF NEGRO HOUSING]
Lack of repairs to the houses in the "Black Belt" is accounted for by
the fact that owners do not regard the buildings as worth repairing, and
that tenants can always be found, even though it is necessary to reduce
rents somewhat. This reduction is indeed notable. The School of Civics
found that while in 1909 50 per cent of the houses examined on the South
Side rented for as much as $16 a month, in 1917 only 13 per cent could
command as high a rental as that; that in 1909 the prevailing rents were
$15 and $16 as against $10 and $12 in 1917.
On the West Side the area studied generally was that bounded by Lake
Street, Ashland, Austin, and Western avenues. Here the situation was
little better. One-third of the families visited in the three selected
blocks bounded by Fulton and Paulina streets, Carroll Avenue and Robey
Street were Negroes. The remaining two-thirds represented sixteen
nationalities. It was reported that the white residents could get
advantages and improvements for their houses that a Negro could not.
While 35 per cent of the houses were reported in good repair, 31 per
cent were described as "absolutely dilapidated" and in a worse state
of repair than those in any other districts studied except the Jewish
district. The report said:
Broken-down doors, unsteady flooring, and general dilapidation
were met by the investigators at every side. Windowpanes were
out, doors hanging on single hinges or entirely fallen off,
and roofs rotting and leaking. Colored tenants reported that
they found it impossible to persuade their landlords either
to make the necessary repairs or to release them from their
contracts; and that it was so hard to find better places in
which to live that they were forced either to make the repairs
themselves, which they could rarely afford to do, or to endure
the conditions as best they might. Several tenants ascribed
cases of severe and prolonged illness to the unhealthful
condition of the houses in which they were living.
That there was a continuing demand even for the shacks and shanties of
the "Black Belt" is evidenced in a report made by the Urban League of
Chicago in 1917 that only one out of every thirteen Negro applicants
for houses to rent could be supplied. At the height of the demand
applications for houses were coming in at the rate of 460 to 600 a day,
and only ninety-nine were available for renting purposes. This was due,
of course, to the growing stream of Negroes arriving daily from the South.
Covering the same area on the South Side as that studied by the School
of Civics in 1917 a canvass was also made in 1917 by Caswell W. Crews, a
student at the University of Chicago. He found that tenants had remained
in these dwellings in some instances as long as twenty years after their
unfitness had become evident, because the rent was low and they could
find nowhere else to go. He mentioned the mass of migrants from the South
who, because of their ignorance of conditions in Chicago as to what was
desirable and what was to be had for a given sum, fell an easy prey to
unscrupulous owners and agents. Mr. Crew's description said:
With the exception of two or three the houses are frame, and
paint with them is a dim reminiscence. There is one rather
modern seven-room flat building of stone front, the flats
renting at $22.50 a month and offering the best in the way of
accommodations to be found there. There is another makeshift
flat building situated above a saloon and pool hall, consisting
of six six-room flats, renting at $12 per month, but in a very
poor condition of repair. Toilets and baths were found to be
in no condition for use and the plumbing in such a state as to
constantly menace health. Practically all of the houses have
been so reconstructed as to serve as flats, accommodating two
and sometimes three families. As a rule there are four, five,
and sometimes six rooms in each flat, there being but five
instances when there were more than six. It is often the case
that of these rooms not all can be used because of dampness,
leaking roofs, or defective toilets overhead.
The owners are in most instances scarcely better off than
their tenants and can ill afford to make repairs. One house
in the rear of another on Federal Street near Twenty-seventh
had every door off its hinges, water covering the floor from
a defective sink, and windowpanes out. A cleaning of the house
had been attempted, and the cleaners had torn loose what paper
yielded readily and proceeded to whitewash over the adhering
portion which constituted the majority of the paper. There
were four such rooms and for them the family paid $7 a month.
In 1920 a cursory examination by investigators from the Commission showed
that the only change in the situation was further deterioration in the
physical state of the dwellings.
The movement of the Negro population across State Street eastward into
the area once occupied by wealthy whites began as early as 1910. Wabash
Avenue was the first street into which they moved. Gradually they
scattered farther east toward Lake Michigan. Following the migration
from the South the Negro area east of State Street expanded to the lake
and pushed southward. The houses which they found in the new territory,
although from twenty to forty years old, were a vast improvement over
those they had left west of State Street. These houses do not permit of
any general classification, for some are very bad while others, though
not new, are in a state of good repair, largely according to the care
taken by previous occupants. Along with descriptions of Negro homes must
be considered the tendency among those Negroes who were able to move
away from the congested areas of Negro residence. Some of the best houses
occupied by Negroes in 1920 were in districts until recently wholly white.
A rough classification of Negro housing according to types, ranging from
the best, designated as "Type A," to the poorest, designated as "Type
D," was made by the Commission on the basis of a block survey comprising
238 blocks, covering all the main areas of Negro residence, and data
concerning 274 families, scattered through these 238 blocks, one or two
to a block, whose histories and housing experiences were intensively
studied by the Commission's investigators. Approximately 5 per cent of
Chicago's Negro population live in "Type A" houses, 10 per cent in "Type
B," 40 per cent in "Type C," and 45 per cent in the poorest, "Type D."
I. "TYPE A" HOUSES
Type A houses, with those of the other types, were not concentrated wholly
in any one section but were found widely scattered; there were none,
however, in the areas which in 1910 held practically the whole Negro
population. Examples of Type A were found on South Park Avenue between
Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth streets, where some Negroes had lived for
six years; on Grand Boulevard between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-eighth
streets, where a few had lived for three years; on Champlain, Evans,
Vincennes, and Langley avenues, between Forty-third and Forty-seventh
streets, where some Negroes had lived four and five years; and on Wabash
Avenue between Fifty-first and Fifty-third streets. In Woodlawn there
are a few of recent occupancy, one of which was built by its Negro owner.
Most of the Type A dwellings are of substantial construction, principally
of brick and stone. Some are old family residences in formerly high-class
neighborhoods, built to withstand the test of years. Consequently,
although they have been subject to the usual deterioration, they still
afford a fairly high standard of comfort and convenience. Some are large
and exceptionally well equipped with luxurious fittings and adornments
installed by former owners. Most of these houses were built and owned
by people of wealth who abandoned them. Many of them have since passed
through several stages of occupancy. Somewhat less permanent in their
physical aspects perhaps are the Type A houses in Woodlawn. Many of
the houses in this district are of frame structure, and they are not
as commodious as those in the formerly fashionable white districts. But
they provide a desirable measure of comfort, with less waste space and
superfluous rooms.
_Comforts and conveniences._--Type A dwellings are fitted with all
the conveniences required by well-to-do whites. Some of them have more
than the customary one bathroom, have electricity and gas, and are well
heated by steam or hot-air furnaces. One example of Type A housing is
a three-story, stone-front, ten-room house on South Park Avenue owned
and occupied by a lawyer and his family. There is a garage, and the
place is kept in good condition. A twelve-room house, also on South
Park Avenue, owned and occupied by a physician and his family, has two
bathrooms, steam heat, and electricity, and is in excellent repair.
Another physician on the same street owns a three-story brown-stone
house, with a garage. It contains ten rooms and two bathrooms, has steam
heat and electric lights, and is in good condition. For this property
he paid $35,000. A three-story brick house on Vernon Avenue is owned
and occupied by a business man. In addition to other modern conveniences
there are lavatories in four of the bedrooms. The house is in excellent
condition. A nine-room house on Langley Avenue, in good repair, owned
by another business man, has gas, furnace heat, and a bathroom.
_The occupants._--Although these buildings are occupied by the wealthier
Negroes, business or professional men, it often happens that others
secure and occupy such houses. High wages during the war and immediately
afterward permitted some Negroes who arrived in Chicago during the
migration to live in the best class of housing available for Negroes.
For example, an undertaker owns such a house on Langley Avenue, with
seven rooms, with gas, a bathroom, electricity, and hot-water heat. This
building is ornate and in excellent repair. A postal clerk who has been
in Chicago since 1897 owns a seven-room house on Champlain Avenue south
of Sixty-sixth Street, where he lives with his wife and child. In the
block south of Forty-third Street on Prairie Avenue is a nine-room house
occupied by an employee of the American Express Company. In order to
help pay the rent, four lodgers are taken, who together pay $20 a week.
The house, which includes a bathroom, is furnace-heated and lighted by
electricity. A transfer man pays $65 a month rent for an eight-room house
of this class on Bowen Avenue. He earns $35 a week, and two lodgers pay
$50 a month. The house has bath, electricity, and furnace. A railroad
porter, who has been a doctor's assistant and has lived in Chicago since
1886, owns a house on Rhodes Avenue near Sixty-sixth Street. It has seven
rooms and is provided with a furnace, gas, bathroom, and electricity.
_Neighborhood conditions._--Surroundings of Type A houses are generally
far more pleasant than those in areas where the majority of Negroes live.
The streets and alleys are usually clean, except where Type A houses are
in neighborhoods surrounded by poorer houses. The premises are generally
well kept. This is especially true where the occupants are owners. When
space permits, there is a lawn or a garden that shows signs of pride and
attention. One block was noted, however, where the residents reported
that the street was watered twice a day until Negroes moved in, after
which it received no such attention.
II. "TYPE B" HOUSES
Type B designates a class of houses which have not the size, durability,
permanence, architectural embellishments, or general standard of comfort
and convenience of those classed as Type A. They are usually flat
buildings, whether originally intended for that purpose or not. Frequently
dwellings are rearranged by landlords, when Negroes are given occupancy,
to accommodate two or more families in place of the one for which they
were built. Type B houses have less floor space, the average number of
rooms is fewer, and they have, as a rule, fewer modern conveniences.
Still, they are good houses and much superior to the habitations in
which Negroes are most often found.
Occupants of Type B houses are frequently found to be clerical workers,
postal clerks, railway mail clerks, small tradesmen, artisans, and
better-paid workers in steel mills and Stock Yards.
[Illustration: HOMES OWNED BY NEGROES ON SOUTH PARK AVENUE
Classified in text as "Type A."]
[Illustration: AN ABANDONED RESIDENCE IN THE PRAIRIE AVENUE BLOCK WITH
A FACTORY IN THE REAR]
Most of the houses in the part of Woodlawn inhabited by Negroes are of
Type B. Another district in which this type of house is found extends from
Fortieth to Forty-seventh streets on Langley, Evans, Champlain, Vincennes,
and St. Lawrence avenues. Although in this area a few dwellings are of
Type A, the greater part of them fall under Type B. About 5 per cent of
the dwellings occupied by Negroes on the West Side--for example, some of
those on Oakley and Washington boulevards--might also be classed as Type
B. Brick or stone dwellings predominate in the districts where this type
is found. For example, the block survey made by the Commission covered
twelve blocks in the Negro residence in Woodlawn on which there were 190
brick or stone and 119 frame houses. Practically all the Type B dwellings
are one- and two-family houses, and the majority are two-family houses.
The Commission's study shows that these dwellings are not overcrowded
and house their families comfortably. Many of the occupants own their
homes.
_Comforts and conveniences._--Most of these houses have baths, electric
lights, steam, hot-water or hot-air heating, and gas for cooking. Only a
few are heated by stoves or lack electrical fixtures. They were found to
be in good repair, well kept and clean. Special pride is taken by home
owners of this class in keeping the property presentable and preventing
rapid deterioration. Family histories reveal that most of the Woodlawn
residents are long-time residents of Chicago.
_Neighborhood conditions._--In the neighborhoods where Type B houses
were found, no uniform standard of cleanliness was evident in streets
and alleys or in adjoining properties. They were as frequently unkempt
as tidy. Although the premises of Type B houses were generally kept
neat, surrounding untidiness often detracted from their appearance. But
a block containing a majority of this type usually had an appearance
of being better kept, whether the surrounding property was occupied by
whites or Negroes. In the Woodlawn area the surroundings of the houses
were well cared for, and sanitary measures were commonly observed. In
some blocks in the Langley Avenue neighborhood carelessness and neglect
were evident. Vacant lots were no more littered with rubbish than in
white areas of a similar grade.
III. "TYPE C" HOUSES
Type C houses are the most common in areas of Negro residence. In this
classification are included about 50 per cent of the houses on the South
Side east of State Street, most of those in the North Side area, about
60 per cent of those in the West Side area, practically all those in
the Ogden Park area, and many dwellings in the little Lake Park district.
Heads of families occupying Type C houses were usually unskilled
wage-earners, or in personal service. Their incomes were such that they
could rarely afford more than $20 a month rent.
_Types of houses._--Eleven blocks on the North Side were included in
the Commission's block survey. In these blocks 146 of the buildings were
of brick or stone, and 123 frame. Fifteen were single houses, four were
double, and 167 housed three or more families, the largest proportion of
such buildings in any district examined. There were also four rows of
houses. They were in a fair state of repair. Four-room houses or flats
predominated among the fourteen families whose histories were taken. In
one instance seven persons were living in four rooms, in another nine
persons were living in seven rooms, in another eleven persons were living
in seven rooms. The dwellings were mainly one- and two-story buildings,
with a few three- and six-flat buildings.
A large proportion of buildings housing three or more families was found
also in Ogden Park. In eleven blocks there were 109 such buildings. There
were also sixty-eight single and no double houses. The frame buildings
numbered 189, and brick or stone forty-eight. Most of the houses were
one- and two-story frame buildings. The majority were in good or fair
repair, though one block showed gross neglect of repairs to exteriors,
and practically all needed painting. Five-room dwellings predominated
among the fifteen families whose histories were recorded. Overcrowding
was frequent. In one instance eleven persons lived in five rooms; in
another nine persons in five rooms.
In the part of the South Side area east of State Street and between
Twenty-second and Thirty-first streets forty-two blocks were surveyed.
Michigan, Indiana, and Prairie avenues have excellent dwellings,
practically all of which are still occupied by whites. Until a few
years ago these were fashionable residential streets, and the buildings
are large, well built, and often ornate. Surrounding them, however,
are hundreds of houses, old and difficult to keep in repair. In these
forty-two blocks there were 767 buildings of which 163 were frame and
604 brick. About 37 per cent of these are of Type C.
The surroundings of these buildings appear in brief comments on some of
these blocks, taken from investigator's notes, as follows:
Property has been allowed to run down.
Five vacant houses; yards full of rubbish; lodgers transient;
families do not move.
Vacant lot dirty.
Two vacant lots; yards well kept.
Garbage piled up on vacant lot; Negroes moving in.
Roomers move often; one poolroom; empty church building.
Vacant lot used as dump; yards well kept.
Two vacant houses robbed of plumbing fixtures.
Yards poorly kept; whites moved out three years ago, except
one family.
Vacant lot used as dump; one poolroom, two hotels; yards well
kept; Negroes moving in.
Yards unkempt; mostly renters.
Formerly questionable houses for whites.
Mostly newcomers; property run down.
Yards well kept; boarding-houses.
People move in because they can't find anything better.
Between Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth streets east of State Street
seventy-eight blocks were surveyed. There were seventy-eight frame and
1,523 brick and stone buildings, 620 single houses, 559 double, 254
accommodating three or more families, and nine apartment houses. Of this
group 51 per cent were of Type C. The property and general surroundings
showed age and the beginning of rapid deterioration everywhere; in some
cases there had been attempts to care for the premises and in some cases
neglect was obvious. The streets, except Michigan Avenue and South Park
Boulevard, showed much neglect, and the alleys generally were dirty.
Many of these houses were occupied by their Negro owners. Negroes were
found to occupy about 40 per cent of these Type C houses.
_Conveniences._--In these two parts of the South Side area conveniences
and ordinary sanitary facilities are often absent. Gas is the common
form of lighting, and often it is not used. Family-history data revealed
that there were about as many homes without as with bathrooms. In a
large number of buildings families were obliged to use common toilets
located in halls or back yards. The dwellings were out of repair in
some respects in nearly every instance. Defects of this kind were often
in the plumbing. Leaky toilets or water pipes were common complaints.
Some toilets did not flush. Some sinks were leaky, as were some of the
roofs. In some houses windows or doors were broken, loose, or sagging.
Some houses were very dirty.
On the West Side a situation not essentially different was found among
the Type C dwellings. Possibly baths were a little more frequent.
Occasionally there was a furnace, though stove heat was most common.
Gas was the usual means of lighting. The situation as to toilets was
about the same, and the buildings, being chiefly old, were usually out
of repair in some respect. The number of brick and frame dwellings was
about equal. There were more double houses in proportion to the single
ones, and none that had three or more families. Five-room dwellings were
most numerous, and there was little indication of overcrowding.
_Neighborhood conditions._--Only two blocks in the West Side area were
rated as merely "fair," four in the North Side area were dirty, while
only one in the Ogden Park area was not cleaned. In the North Side and
Ogden Park areas distinct efforts were observed to keep yards clean.
Premises showed signs of care and attention, though an occasional vacant
lot showed use for dumping. Alleys in all three districts gave evidence
of neglect. Some were badly littered with garbage and rubbish.
IV. "TYPE D" HOUSES
Type D housing is the least habitable of all. The houses were usually
dilapidated, and in many cases extremely so. Most of the buildings are
among the oldest in the city. They were occupied only by Negroes at the
foot of the economic scale, many families living from hand to mouth,
frequently in extreme poverty.
This class of houses predominates in those parts of the South Side
area from Twelfth to Twenty-second Street along State Street and Wabash
Avenue, and from Twelfth to Thirty-ninth streets and Wentworth Avenue.
Many Negro dwellings in the North Side area and about 35 or 40 per cent
of those in the West Side area were of Type D. Even in the area of the
South Side between State Street and Lake Michigan many of the older
frame and brick buildings fall into this classification. It is safe to
say that 43 per cent of the housing for Negroes is of this type.
Most of these dwellings were frail, flimsy, tottering, unkempt, and some
of them literally falling apart. Little repairing is done from year to
year. Consequently their state grows progressively worse, and they are
now even less habitable than when the surveys quoted at the beginning of
this section were made. The surroundings in these localities were in a
condition of extreme neglect, with little apparent effort to observe the
laws of sanitation. Streets, alleys, and vacant lots contained garbage,
rubbish, and litter of all kinds. It is difficult to enforce health
regulations.
Although there has been protest by Negroes against the necessity of
living in places so uncomfortable and unhealthful, improvement comes
slowly. Contentment with such insanitary conditions is usually due to
ignorance of better living. For the poorest buildings low rents are
offered to encourage continued occupancy and to forestall requests for
repairs. Prompt vacating of many of these houses usually follows when
a family can secure better accommodations in a better neighborhood.[23]
V. NEIGHBORHOOD IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS
Among the more intelligent Negroes neighborhood organizations were found
similar to those of white people. Dissatisfaction with local conditions,
failure of authorities to sweep and sprinkle streets or to provide
adequate street lighting, corner signs, and similar equipment usually
prompt these efforts. Three or four such societies have been instituted
by Negroes in Chicago. One example is the Middlesex Improvement Club,
organized following the riots of 1919 in a neighborhood including three
blocks on Dearborn Street near Fiftieth. Among other things it seeks to
promote a friendly spirit among the people of both races in a neighborhood
which was turbulent during the riots. It has extended some financial
aid to its members when required. It is financed by Negro business men
with some help from white business men of the locality.
Woodlawn has a community organization which reflects the friendly
attitude between the races in that district. Both whites and Negroes
are members, with a common community interest. This organization goes
somewhat beyond the usual neighborhood improvement association in scope
and purpose. While it embodies the usual purposes, it also seeks to induce
full use by all the people of the district of all public and semi-public
institutions that contribute to good citizenship. One of the notices
sent out by the association urged attendance at night sessions of public
schools. It briefly set forth the advantages for both young and older
people, suggesting that their usefulness to the community might thus
be enlarged, that they might be trained for profitable employment, and
incidentally that young people could be kept off the streets and away
from demoralizing places. Attention was drawn to the fact that "business
men of the city are seeking young people, both colored and white, for
positions as stenographers, clerks, and trades people." The notice closed
thus:
We are desirous that you use your influence to maintain a
spirit of friendliness and good will among all citizens, white
and black, and especially among the school children, paying
especial attention to the conduct of pupils to and from school.
We earnestly seek your co-operation in these matters.
In the neighborhood of Fifty-sixth Street and Wabash Avenue is another
of these neighborhood leagues; all the members are Negroes. Meetings
take place periodically at the houses of members, and special attention
is given to such matters as the condition of their premises, care of
lawns, etc.
VI. EFFORTS OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
Social agencies likewise have given considerable attention to the
instruction and encouragement of Negroes in better living. While this
effort has been directed mainly to the newer arrivals from the South,
it has also had an effect on many who have lived in the city for some
time but have not yet adjusted themselves to city life and more rigid
standards of sanitation and deportment.
One of these agencies is the Urban League. Among other activities
it issued placards to be kept in sight in Negro homes, graphically
contrasting good and bad habits of living. Pictures showed the front
porch of a Negro family as it should and should not be used, with the
pointed question, "Which?" underneath. Then followed a sort of pledge
of conduct:
_I realize_ that our soldiers have learned _new habits of
self-respect and cleanliness_.
_I desire_ to help bring about a _new order of living_ in this
community.
_I will attend_ to the neatness of my personal appearance on
the street or when sitting in front doorways.
_I will refrain_ from wearing dust caps, bungalow aprons,
house clothing, and bedroom shoes out of doors.
_I will arrange my toilet_ within doors and not on the front
porch.
_I will insist_ upon the use of rear entrances for coal dealers,
hucksters, etc.
_I will refrain_ from loud talking and objectionable deportment
on street cars and in public places.
_I will do my best_ to prevent defacement of property either
by children or adults.
The guidance and instruction given by the South Side Community Service,
pastors of churches and Negro newspapers have stimulated the Negro
population to efforts at improvement of their property. One newspaper, for
example, conducted a column containing hints on cleanliness, sanitation,
and deportment. It printed items concerning objectionable conditions
at given addresses and warned offenders that they were being watched by
the neighborhood organization, which might take action against them if
they did not improve their conduct.
Another way in which Negroes have been led to understand that habits of
orderliness and cleanliness are expected of them in Chicago has been
through a "Clean-up Week" in the spring of each year, when concerted
efforts are made to collect and dispose of tin cans and other rubbish
on vacant lots and yards. A "Tin Can Contest" was conducted by the
Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A., which offered prizes to the children collecting
the greatest number of tin cans beyond 300. The 1,000 youngsters who
participated in the Second Ward were divided into eight regiments. The
eleven-year-old Negro girl who collected the greatest number of tin cans
had a total of 6,840 to her credit. Next in order was Hyman Friedman,
whose total was 5,347. More than 100,000 tin cans in all were obtained.
VII. EFFORTS OF INDIVIDUAL HOUSEHOLDERS
Individual householders, especially those owning their homes, were
found to be trying to keep their premises presentable often in the face
of discouraging odds. Throughout the family histories appear repeated
protests by tenants at the failure of landlords to maintain a decent
state of repairs and improvements.
None of the houses occupied by Negroes are of as high a standard,
generally speaking, as those occupied by whites of a similar economic
status.
Negroes rarely live in new houses. Virtually all live in neighborhoods
where the housing is old. Negro houses, even of the best class, were built
from twenty to forty years ago. Conditions in these old neighborhoods
do not make for high standards of sanitation and cleanliness, nor the
best habits of living generally; and Negroes labor under a handicap in
striving to attain such standards.
Less attention is paid by public authorities to the condition of streets
and alleys in such neighborhoods than in localities where the housing is
of a higher grade. The streets are not cleaned and sprinkled as often and
the alleys are more likely to be dirty, unpaved, and generally uncared
for.
In most of the localities where Negroes live, buildings that have not
already reached a state of great dilapidation are deteriorating rapidly
because of the failure of owners to make repairs and improvements.
Escape from undesirable housing conditions is difficult for any Negroes,
and for the vast majority it is practically impossible, particularly
during a period of acute general housing shortage.
[Illustration: HOMES OCCUPIED AND IN PART OWNED BY NEGROES
Classified in the text as "Type B."]
C. NEGROES AND PROPERTY DEPRECIATION
No single factor has complicated the relations of Negroes and whites
in Chicago more than the widespread feeling of white people that the
presence of Negroes in a neighborhood is a cause of serious depreciation
of property values. To the extent that people feel that their financial
interests are affected, antagonisms are accentuated.
When a Negro family moves into a block in which all other families are
white, the neighbors object. This objection may express itself in studied
aloofness, in taunts, warnings, slurs, threats, or even the bombing of
their homes.[24] White neighbors who can do so are likely to move away at
the first opportunity. Assessors and appraisers in determining the value
of the property take account of this general dislike of the presence or
proximity of Negroes. It matters little what type of citizens the Negro
family may represent, what their wealth or standing in the community
is, or that their motive in moving into a predominant white neighborhood
is to secure better living conditions--their appearance is a signal of
depreciation. So it happens that when a Negro family moves into a block,
most of the white neighbors show resentment toward both the Negro family
and the owner or agent who rents or sells the property. Whites owning
homes in the neighborhood become much exercised by fear of loss both
of money and of neighborhood exclusiveness and desirability. The Negro
suffers under the realization that, for reasons which he cannot control,
he is considered undesirable and a menace to property values. Wherever
Negroes have moved in Chicago this odium has attached to their presence.
The belief that they destroy property values wherever they go is now
commonly taken as a valid explanation of any unfriendliness toward the
entire group. This feeling takes on the strength of a protective instinct
among the whites.
So wide and menacing, indeed, has this feeling grown that the Commission
deemed it necessary to make a thorough inquiry into its basis and to
determine, if possible, to what degree the presence of Negroes is a
factor in the depreciation of property values. Therefore it is essential
to distinguish clearly between: (1) general factors in depreciation;
and (2) presence of Negroes as an influence in these factors, and also
as a direct factor.
What is meant by "depreciation"? Real estate men know it as "a loss in
market value." Market value is "the price which a buyer who wishes to
buy but is not forced to buy will pay to an owner who wishes to sell but
is not forced to sell." Depreciation is reflected, not only in market
values, but also in appraised or assessed valuations. Before purchasing
property it is customary to take into account the surrounding conditions
that affect its value, as well as its inherent value. Assessed valuations,
fixed for taxing purposes by authorized public officials, fluctuate to
some extent in harmony with appraised valuations. This analysis of the
factors that tend to determine the value of real estate for one purpose
or another gives a fairly dependable rule for finding whether it has
risen or fallen in a given period. If property is thus shown to have
decreased in value, it is said to have depreciated.
The value of real estate is determined largely by the human factors
involved. This fact accounts for the striking differences in value
of property, for example, on Sixteenth Street, on State Street, in
the "Loop," on Chicago Avenue, and on Sheridan Road. Convenience,
desirability, and other factors involving individuals who make up the
public enter into the determination of realty values.
It is necessary to distinguish between land values and improved-property
values. Usually buildings are erected that harmonize in cost with the
value of the land on which they stand. But this harmonious relationship
may not continue; developments in the neighborhood may increase materially
the value of the land, while the value of the improvements decreases
as time goes on. The values of the land and of the improvements do not
necessarily rise and fall together, though improvements generally tend
to add to the value of the land. Much, however, depends on the use to
which the land is put, and even more on the use of adjacent land. That
use may be such as seriously to impair the value of all the land within
a given area or some particular tract in that area. Such impairment is
a chief reason advanced for zoning, so that property values in various
given districts may not be impaired through inharmonious uses, and that
property values throughout a city may thus be stabilized.
It is also necessary to distinguish between "deterioration" and
"depreciation." They are not interchangeable. Deterioration of
improvements on land affects the value of the improvement, not necessarily
the value of the land. The property as a whole may be depreciated by
deterioration of improvements, but an increase in the land value might
more than offset this loss. This would be accounted for by a possible
change in the use of the land. For example, the buildings on the North
Side in which Negroes now live are uniformly old and bad, yet the Negroes
cannot buy them. The properties are in process of change from residence
to industrial use, and the values placed upon them for the latter use
are far beyond the financial capacity of the Negro residents.
I. GENERAL FACTORS IN DEPRECIATION OF RESIDENCE PROPERTY
Apart from any racial influence there are many causes of depreciation
in property values, the responsibility for all of which has often been
thoughtlessly placed upon Negroes. Throughout the city may be observed
blocks, streets, and neighborhoods running a declining course in
desirability for residence purposes, losing value, changing in character
and, in short, depreciating, but in or near which no Negroes live. The
following are important factors of depreciation not due to race:
_Physical deterioration._--The natural wear of time and the elements is
a constant factor. Few houses are built to withstand these inroads over
a long course of years, even though they have the utmost care. Neglect
and lack of repairs and improvements hasten this deterioration sometimes
greatly. Character of occupancy is often a factor. Some occupants are
highly destructive, particularly in rented houses. Their careless or
inept use of a house often adds vastly to the wear and tear and hastens
deterioration. Overcrowding has a like effect.
_Change in the character of a neighborhood._--Depreciation in property
values in large cities is due in marked degree to factors not purely
physical. There is always a continuing yet varying fluctuation in
the character of neighborhoods; a restless shifting of population and
conditions due to growth which rarely has been orderly or scientific.
The psychological factor of residential property values is such that they
may change very rapidly with the advent into a homogeneous neighborhood
of a few families of a different nationality or social status. Between
Twelfth and Thirty-first streets in the South Side Negro residence area,
once the most fashionable white residence section, property values based
on residential uses slumped utterly, and then later began to increase
because of industrial uses. Such a change is often due to an encroachment
upon a residential district of commercial or industrial enterprises.
Neighbors will move away rather than endure such disturbance of their
peace and comfort. Their places may be taken by people less sensitive
to such influences who may be drawn to the neighborhood by reduced rents
resulting from the exodus of former residents. Then rapid deterioration
usually sets in as the tone of the neighborhood falls. A like result
follows a change from an exclusive residential district into one of
rooming-and boarding-houses and large residences remodeled into flats.
The shifting of fashionable neighborhoods soon leads persons of means
to abandon a high-grade residential section for some suburb or newer
neighborhood which they think better suited to their social positions.
_Use of buildings for immoral purposes._--Such use, though clandestine,
eventually becomes known; and although the property yields high rents,
it lowers the standing and value of the block or neighborhood and of
adjacent areas. It not only deteriorates the buildings thus used, but also
drives decent people from the locality; and the deserted houses either
remain vacant or are taken by less desirable occupants. Depreciation
inevitably results.
_Public garages, theaters, and kindred nuisances._--People of a high-grade
residential district do not wish to live too near a public garage,
theater, bathing-beach, saloon, cabaret, dance hall, bowling-alley, or
billiard room. If they are unable to keep such enterprises out of their
neighborhood they will sell their property and find homes elsewhere.
_Changes in transportation facilities._--These may depreciate property
in two ways: (_a_) they may themselves introduce obnoxious dirt or
noise-making features or bring in industries with such features; (_b_)
new transportation facilities often open up more desirable localities
to which people are drawn from the older localities. In both cases
depreciation ensues.
_Overbuilding._--Overbuilding is another and frequent cause of
depreciation. Building booms are often followed by years of depression
due to an oversupply of buildings.
II. DEPRECIATION ON THE SOUTH SIDE
The area from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Streets and State Street to
the lake is now the center of the largest Negro residential area in the
city, having approximately 20 per cent more Negroes than whites.
In the eighties and nineties this area was part of the most fashionable
residential district in Chicago and included some of the city's most
prominent families and business leaders. They lived in houses which they
had built for their homes, and which were the first fine residences
erected after the Chicago fire of 1871. Michigan, Prairie, and South
Park avenues and Grand Boulevard were the most fashionable streets with
the best houses.
The Negro population then lived immediately west, between Wentworth
Avenue and State Street and north of Thirty-fifth Street.
The North Side and the North Shore had not yet developed as fashionable
neighborhoods. Indeed, the most prominent residence on Lake Shore
Drive and one of the earliest stood almost alone for many years before
fashionable people settled around it.
As the North Side grew in fashionable favor the South Side began to lose
its original exclusiveness, and its residences began to depreciate. These
properties, while their original owners occupied them, were worth, many
of them, from $30,000 to $100,000, including large grounds, elaborate
interior decorations, and sometimes works of art. The usual range of the
original costs of these houses was from $10,000 to $30,000. The change
steadily continued, and these houses were rented and sold by the first
owners at reduced prices to persons less prominent socially, until nearly
all the original families had gone. A few refused to sell their houses
and left them in charge of caretakers; and a very few still remain.
The gradual lowering of the market value of the property is pictured
by prominent real estate men well acquainted with the neighborhood for
many years:
It is a positive fact, an economic fact, that any time a poor
class of people moves into a neighborhood formerly occupied
by people who had an earning capacity greater than that of
the people moving in, there is depreciation. That is true
whether Italians move in, or Poles, Negroes, Greeks, etc. If
the people moving into the neighborhood earn less and have
less than the people formerly living in that neighborhood,
there is depreciation.
Between 1900 and 1910 a few Negroes moved into Wabash Avenue. The houses
were very old and built close together, with few single residences.
Negroes did not progress farther eastward in any large numbers because
the next street was Michigan Avenue, probably the most select of all the
streets in the area. With the pressure of increasing numbers and ascending
economic ability urging them out of the congested, uncomfortable, and
unclean dwellings west of State Street, Negroes could and would pay higher
rents than the class of white persons to which the oldest houses would
next descend. In 1912, in the area east of State Street, practically all
of the original residents had gone, and few Negroes had come in. Real
estate men estimate that generally natural depreciation proceeds at the
rate of 2 to 2½ per cent a year. When Negroes first came into the area
the buildings were at least twenty years old, and many were much older,
representing at the lowest figure a very substantial depreciation.
There was another important factor in the depreciation of the area. In
1912 the old vice district west of State Street and immediately northwest
of this area was broken up. The inmates numbered approximately 2,000 and
were by no means confined strictly within the recognized limits. They
moved into the nearest good houses available where they could continue
to ply their trade clandestinely. They could afford to pay high rents,
and numbers of real estate owners profited greatly by dealing with them.
As many of these houses stood, they again yielded rents almost as high
as when they were new. Cabarets, saloons, and amusement places packed
the side streets, and buffet flats opened up in the residence blocks.
Raids and prosecution, night visits from men who did not live in the
district, called attention to the changed character of the neighborhood,
and property values sank lower. Pressure from prosecuting agencies, as
well as the attraction of better houses in less conspicuous neighborhoods,
urged the vice element southward. This southward trend is indicated in
the maps, facing pages 342 and 346, showing the environment of the South
Side Negro.
While property in this area could be bought cheaply it was also possible
to obtain proportionately high rents by placing Negroes or prostitutes
in houses not rented to either class before. Negroes were always charged
higher rents than were the whites who immediately preceded them.
The Juvenile Protective Association in 1913 made a study called _The
Colored People of Chicago_ and published it in a small pamphlet.
Concerning the disposition of real estate men to profit in this way,
the reports say:
... the dealer offers to the owner of an apartment house which
is no longer renting advantageously to white tenants cash
payment for a year's lease on the property, thus guaranteeing
the owner against loss, and then he fills the building with
colored tenants. It is said, however, that the agent does not
put out the white tenants unless he can get 10 per cent more
from the colored people.
The fact that for like quarters Negroes pay much higher rents than any
other group in the city was discussed by the Chicago School of Civics
and Philanthropy in a special study of housing for Negroes in 1911-12.
The report says:
The explanation for this condition of affairs among the colored
people is comparatively simple; the results are far-reaching.
The strong prejudice among the white people against having
colored people living on white residence streets, colored
children attending schools with white children, or entering into
other semi-social relation with them, confines the opportunities
for residence open to colored people of all positions in life
to relatively small and well-defined areas. Consequently the
demand for houses and apartments within these areas is strong
and comparatively steady, and since the landlord is reasonably
certain that the house or apartment can be filled at any time,
as long as it is in any way tenantable, he takes advantage of
his opportunities to raise rents and to postpone repairs.
It was during this period that buildings could be easily purchased
by Negroes. One white real estate dealer whose interests are almost
exclusively in the area under discussion has purchased more than 1,000
such houses which he rents to Negroes. These buildings were not purchased
from Negroes but from first, second, and third owners, and at a price
much below the original value.
With an opportunity for renting or purchasing the houses in this area,
Negroes began to move in, first in small numbers and soon in larger
numbers. They naturally sought to abandon the generally and often
extremely dilapidated houses west of State Street.
III. DEPRECIATION AFTER THE COMING OF NEGROES
Buildings twenty to thirty years old deteriorate rapidly unless expensive
repairs are made. As Negroes were often unable to make such repairs
while paying for the property, the depreciation continued.
Widespread buying of property in this district by Negroes began during
the period of the migration. Many home-owning Negroes, having sold their
property in the South and brought the money to Chicago, found it easier
to buy a house here on a first payment of $200 to $500, and on monthly
instalments thereafter, than to pay the rents demanded. Few, however,
knew anything of city property values; they were often exploited by
agents or assumed larger obligations than they could easily handle.
Many Negroes purchased fairly substantial dwellings on the long-time
instalment plan without providing for repairs and maintenance. Usually
the monthly payment to cover interest, taxes, and instalment on principal
was about all the Negro and his family could carry, even though his
wife's wages supplemented his. Thus nothing was left for upkeep.
Real estate agents before the Commission agreed that Negroes meet these
obligations with reasonable regularity. One white real-estate broker
said: "Those of us who have dealings with Negroes find that they make
very fair clients on the whole, pay their way, and ask no favors that
any other human being would not ask."
Another referred to Negroes as "wonderful instalment buyers" who have
a "tendency to invest in a home earlier than whites," and said that in
fifteen years' experience his firm had never foreclosed on a Negro home
buyer; and in only two cases, due to exceptional circumstances, had
contracts been forfeited. Two Negro real estate dealers said:
A colored man usually feels that he will go without food rather
than not meet his obligations. That is one reason why sometimes
his home is run down, because he has spent every dollar he
can get to meet the payments on that property. He cannot spare
the money sometimes to buy a lawn mower or sprinkling hose.
* * * * *
A colored man who buys a piece of property in a neighborhood
has no financial connections. He meets his obligations promptly
for three reasons: first, he wants a home; second, he knows
they may squeeze him; third, that mortgage is coming due and
he doesn't know where to go to get it renewed. We have no
organization of our own to back him. If the fence is to be
fixed or the house is to be painted, and a year from that date
the mortgage is due, and he has $500 in the bank, he will not
paint his house for the simple reason that, if he did, when
the mortgage is due he will not be able to meet it. He saves,
and when the mortgage comes due he has $500, $600, or $700
set aside to meet it.
Frequently Negroes overreach themselves in purchasing property. Charles
Duke, a Negro, in a pamphlet on Negro housing in Chicago remarked:
A very harmful result of present tendencies is manifested
in the acquisition of homes by colored people beyond their
social or economic advancement. The economic waste in this
particular has been especially great. They represent in many
cases a considerable outlay of capital. The domestic facilities
they afford are years beyond the needs of the people to whom
they are allotted. In many instances it costs a small fortune
annually to maintain one of these establishments, and when
this is not done the depreciation is both rapid and spectacular.
There is such lack of hotels and lodging-houses for Negroes, especially
for single men, that many Negroes have bought or rented houses with the
intention of paying for them, in part at least, with income from lodgers
or boarders. Such use leads to overcrowding, with consequent rapid
deterioration and depreciation. This tendency is accentuated by the fact
that the houses that Negroes can buy are usually old and deteriorated.
While new arrivals from the South soon learn that the poorest city
tenement requires better care than plantation cabins, their carelessness
meanwhile contributes to the property depreciation of their dwellings
and neighborhood.
There are other factors of depreciation in this district which became
active after the Negroes came, but for which they were not wholly
responsible. One was the remodeling of residences for business purposes.
While the remodeled property may bring larger returns, neighboring
residence property declines in value. Many fine old dwellings on Michigan
Avenue and Grand Boulevard have been transformed in recent years into
lamp-shade factories, second-hand fur shops, and small business houses;
and these changes have depreciated neighboring property for residence
purposes.
Another factor of depreciation is the city's tolerance of gambling and
immorality in and near areas of Negro residence. In most cities where
Negroes are numerous a like tendency appears. Little consideration is
given to the desire of Negroes to live in untainted districts, and they
have not been able to make effective protest.
In 1916 the _Chicago Daily News_, in a series of articles on the Negroes,
described some of the disorderly saloons and cabarets in the South
State and Thirty-fifth streets region, with their vile associations of
disreputable whites and blacks:
Other resorts in the district are worse; some are better.
These are typical of the roistering saloons, a kind which would
not be tolerated in any other part of the city since the old
Twenty-second Street levee was broken up. White proprietors have
brought them into the district, and many of them are patronized
largely by crowds from other parts of the city. The resorts
are forced on the colored people. Those colored families in
good circumstances and desiring respectable surroundings move
away, only to find disorderly saloons trailing after them.
At 301 East Thirty-seventh Street, on the southeast corner of
Forest Avenue, is the saloon of C----. With this exception the
district is a quiet, respectable residence quarter. When it was
known that this property was to be used for saloon purposes a
petition of protest was signed by 300 representative colored
men and presented to Mayor Harrison.
At night this saloon is an animated place. Reputable colored
families object to it chiefly on account of the numbers of
disorderly white women who meet colored men in its diminutive
back room. In the barroom an automatic piano thumps through the
night until closing hours. On the mirrors are pasted chromos
of "September Morn" and other poses of nude women.
Buffet flats and disorderly hotels are adjuncts of the bad
saloons. They make a better harvest for the police than the
saloons. The borderland of a colored residential district is
the haven for disorderly resorts. Protests of colored residents
against the painted women in their neighborhood, the midnight
honking of automobiles, the loud profanity and vulgarity are
usually ignored by the police.
In one block between South State and South Dearborn streets
which was canvassed by the _Daily News_, five places were
found openly admitted to be disorderly houses. Some were in
flat buildings, the other tenants of which apparently were
respectable, some raising families of children.
Many white owners of real estate who speak in horrified whispers
of vice dangers view such dangers with complacency when these
are thrust among colored families. Two years ago a woman
of the underworld and her gambler husband decided to open a
"high-class" resort on the South Side. She got a location as
a neighbor of reputable colored people by purchasing the home
of a former alderman and leader in a church, the one of which
the Rev. John P. Brushingham, secretary of Mayor Thompson's
Morals Commission, is the pastor. The woman was one of the most
notorious of the demimonde. An oil painting of her, as she was
before her husband in a fit of jealousy bit off a part of her
nose, for years hung in a saloon of international reputation.
These are some of the influences which the colored population is
forced to combat in its fight for decency and good citizenship.
A few secure political preferment and others profit by catering
to the city's vices, while the rank and file are hedged around
by demoralizing influences and the race is discredited unjustly.
[Illustration: HOMES OCCUPIED BY NEGROES ON FOREST AVENUE
(Note pavement and smoke.)
Classified in text as "Type C."]
[Illustration: REAR VIEW OF HOUSES OCCUPIED BY NEGROES ON FEDERAL STREET
Classified in text as "Type D."]
Another chapter of this series dealt with gambling in the South Side
district. Here are two excerpts:
Colored men are in active control of the gambling situation in
the big part of their district in the second ward. Back of them
are white police officials at one end of the line and white
politicians who keep them in power at the other end of the
line. When second ward, and even some adjacent ward, gambling
is discussed by gamblers on the inside, certain colored men
are always mentioned. They are called "the syndicate," and
their approval is said to be necessary if the police are to
let anybody run in the ward.
* * * * *
Whether gambling is a more dangerous cause of demoralization
of a community than are disorderly saloons, buffet flats and
dissolute women is an often discussed question. Gambling is a
man's game, is more open, and the connection between it, the
police, and politics easier to trace. In order to gamble the
police must be evaded, which is difficult, or made blind by a
peculiar remedy for itching palms or by orders from political
powers that be. However, it usually is the same police and
the same politicians who are protecting both classes of vice.
The contamination of these influences depreciates property and casts
a blight upon all who live within their unrestricted range. The taint
extends beyond the blocks in which they exist and serves to promote
prejudice and ill feeling against the Negroes who are the unwilling
sufferers from these vicious resorts.
There are many landlords who exact high rentals from Negroes for the
use of run-down houses. All investigations of Negro housing on the South
Side indicated that as a rule the rents are excessive, considering the
inferior dwellings, their disrepair, and unsanitary conditions. This
neglect by the landlords not only directly depreciates the property but
encourages a careless use of it by tenants that leads to the same end.
One can hardly expect tenants to respect property that is not respected
by its owners.
Owners and agents of property occupied by Negroes differ in their opinions
of Negroes as tenants and in their ways of handling them. Of course
there are differences in character, standing, and responsibility among
Negroes as among whites, and this fact partly explains the following
differences of opinion expressed by experienced real estate men:
One real estate firm, on Indiana Avenue, that makes leases
to both white and Negro clients, said that property occupied
by Negroes was more likely to run down. Another firm on East
Fifty-first Street reported that it rented to Negroes on
regular leases and had no trouble about collections. A young
Negro real estate agent on Indiana Avenue said that he had no
difficulty with collections: about half of his tenants came to
the office, and collectors called upon the other half. When a
building supports a janitor, he said, there is no trouble about
repairs, but if the responsibility is upon the tenants it is
difficult to keep a building in repair. The office manager for
a firm on Cottage Grove Avenue said that the majority of its
Negro tenants are on leases; all pay the rent at the office;
if they fall in arrears collectors are sent.
A firm which for many years has conducted a real estate business
on the South Side reported that 75 per cent of its Negro tenants
are on a month-to-month basis with thirty days' notice to
terminate; and 95 per cent of them are north of Thirty ninth
Street. A firm on Indiana Avenue requires its tenants to sign
leases; and in districts where there is much shifting about,
or where the property is for sale, a sixty days' notice clause
is inserted. It usually sends a collector, so that proper
supervision may be kept of the property. Its head expressed
the opinion that Negroes are just as good tenants as whites
whose wages are on about the same scale.
The office manager of an owner with about 1,400 Negro tenants
said that on the whole they compared very favorably with
the white tenants who preceded them; while some Negroes are
careless and ignorant, they all paid their rent promptly; his
office did not average one eviction a month, and when Negroes
are evicted they rarely cause trouble. Quite the contrary was
the report of the office manager of a real estate firm on
East Thirty-first Street, which does an extensive business
with Negroes. Much depreciation, he said, can be attributed
to Negro tenants; they are much harder on houses than white
tenants of the same station in life; they do not take proper
care of the furnaces or plumbing, and the higher rents paid
by them merely cover the cost of the additional repairs; the
recent comers pay their rent promptly when they have brought
money with them or when they receive good wages, but later on
become difficult to manage because they find it hard to adjust
themselves to city life.
* * * * *
A firm on East Forty-seventh Street reported that it has
a large number of Negro tenants, makes leases to them, has
no difficulty in collecting rents, and considers them more
desirable than the whites who preceded them; a firm on Indiana
Avenue expressed the opinion that depreciation is very great
in houses rented to Negroes. That Negro tenants pay their rent
promptly was the experience of a real estate agent on Cottage
Grove Avenue. He has many Negro tenants on leases and is well
satisfied with them, although he does not think they take as
good care of the property as do the whites; Negroes are usually
occupants of old buildings, which are more difficult to take
care of.
Another real estate dealer on Cottage Grove Avenue who leases
to Negroes finds that usually they adhere to the terms of the
lease, although they sometimes move without notice. A dealer
on Wabash Avenue, who rents flats to Negroes, said that he
looked up the housing record of Negroes carefully before
letting them in, yet he sometimes had trouble with them. Once
he rented a flat to a mother and daughter, and the next day
he found another family living in it; but on the whole he was
well satisfied to have Negroes as tenants.
A prominent official of the Grand Boulevard district of the
Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association, which seeks
to keep Negroes out of Hyde Park, stated that a fundamental
fault in connection with the strained relations between
whites and Negroes was the failure of white owners to keep
their property in good condition so that it might be occupied
"efficiently," that is, by white persons. Another official of
that organization said that Negro tenants could not be expected
to repair white men's property; that there are a great many
dwellings in the South Side Negro district that ought to be
condemned by the city health department, and that Negroes are
compelled to live in them because they can get nothing better.
In analyzing responsibility for depreciation, in the area from
Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth Street and from State Street to the lake,
it is difficult to determine to just what extent the Negroes are there
because of prior depreciation, and to what extent present depreciation
is due to their presence. It is certain, however, that a large part
of the depreciation is not justly chargeable to them, and that their
contribution is attributable partly to their economic status and partly to
the deep-seated prejudice against them. There are many instances in which
property occupied by them has appreciated in value. This will always be
true when the use by Negroes, or the demand for such use, is higher or
greater than any other use or demand. A symptom of the general prejudice
is the very prevalent belief that if Negroes have once occupied property
its value is thereby "destroyed" for white persons. This is true only
until it has a value for use by whites greater than its value for use
by Negroes. So long and only so long as Negroes as a class are, or are
generally deemed to be, at the bottom of the economic scale will their
presence in a neighborhood depreciate values. At present the fact stands
out that Negro occupancy is an unmistakable symptom of depreciation--an
indication that the value of property has fallen to their economic level,
as well as an aid to depreciation in its last stages.
IV. DEPRECIATION IN HYDE PARK
The area bounded by Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets and Michigan and
Cottage Grove avenues has several property owners' protective associations
for the purpose of preserving property values. Their dominant interest
has been the exclusion of Negroes because these associated property
owners believe that Negroes always depreciate the values of real estate.
Negroes have moved into the neighborhood and there has been depreciation.
Therefore Negroes are the cause.
A complete understanding of the situation requires that it be determined
to what extent property values decreased because Negroes moved in, and
to what extent Negroes moved in because property values had decreased.
There is no doubt that the thousands of protests against the "invasion"
of Negroes were sincere. It is also true that scarcely ten Negroes now
living there could have purchased their properties at the original prices.
A leading real estate dealer said that "when a Negro moves into a block
the value of the properties on both sides of the street is depreciated
all the way from $100,000 to $500,000, depending upon the value of the
property in the block"; that it was a fact and that there was no escaping
it.
It's a condition that is inherent in the human race ... a man
will not buy a piece of property or put his money in or invest
in it where he knows that he is liable to be confronted the next
day or the next year or even five years hence with the problem
of having colored people living alongside of his investment.
This depreciation runs all the way from 30 to 60 per cent.
Some time ago a survey was made as a result of which it was
estimated that the influx of Negroes into white neighborhoods
during the last two years had depreciated property on the
South Side about $100,000,000.
He cited as evidences of this the increased difficulty of negotiating
loans on South Side realty on any terms, and the fact that some loan
companies refused to write them at all, and loan values there had dropped
enormously.
The Grand Boulevard district of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners'
Association reported an even larger estimate of the depreciation caused
by the coming of Negroes into property near that boulevard. A committee
of the Association in a report made early in 1920 claimed that the coming
of Negro owners and tenants into that territory had depreciated property
values of $400,000,000 fully 50 per cent.
The advent of the first Negro families in a white district usually creates
something like a panic. The white residents, in a great many instances,
fearing contiguity with Negroes and property loss, hasten to offer
their property for sale and move elsewhere. Even a threat that Negroes
intend to occupy a certain block or neighborhood will cause an exodus
of white people, and their property is customarily sold at a sacrifice.
When many properties are thus thrown on the market low prices are the
certain result.
When in recent years, Negroes moved into the Hyde Park district, animosity
was aroused, and numerous bombings of property occupied by Negroes
followed. One of the oldest South Side real estate dealers, quoted in
the _Daily News'_ series of articles in the summer of 1919, expressed
the tense feeling of an association there that was seeking methods to
drive out and keep out the Negroes:
We want to be fair. We want to do what is right, but these
people will have to be more or less pacified. At a conference
where their representatives were present I told them we might
as well be frank about it, "You people are not admitted to
our society," I said. Personally I have no prejudice against
them. I have had experience of many years dealing with them,
and I'll say this for them: I have never had to foreclose a
mortgage on one of them. They have been clean in every way and
always prompt in their payments. But, you know, improvements
are coming along the lake shore, the Illinois Central, and
all that; we can't have these people coming over here. Not one
cent has been appropriated by our organization for bombing or
anything like that.
They injure our investments. They hurt our values. I couldn't
say how many have moved in, but there's at least a hundred
blocks that are tainted. We are not making any threat, but we
do say that something must be done. Of course, if they come
in as tenants, we can handle the situation fairly easily, but
when they get a deed, that's another matter.
This fear of Negro neighbors has been used by some real estate agents
in promoting speculative schemes. By sending a Negro to inquire about
property, they alarm the neighbors so that they will consider offers of
purchase much below the normal prices. When the excitement has abated
values rise again, and a profit is made.
In the actual depreciation of Hyde Park property there were several
factors, usually overlooked, that were in no wise attributable to the
presence of Negroes. Some of Chicago's finest residences were located on
Michigan Avenue and Grand Boulevard south of Thirty-ninth Street. This
was an extension of the early fashionable South Side district and had
residences that cost $350,000. But as in the case of the earlier South
Side the neighborhood long since had lost some of its first settlers
and had begun to decline. The World's Columbian Exposition, held in
Chicago in 1893, was near the Hyde Park neighborhood. To accommodate the
millions of visitors at the Exposition hotels and apartment houses were
built in that district far in excess of the normal need. The apartment
houses, moreover, affected the exclusiveness of the residence streets.
The buildings were speculations. Large sums were expended in the hope of
immediate exceptional profits. Property on Sixty-third Street sold at
the Exposition time for three times the price it could command today.
This is typical of the speculative values that then prevailed there.
After the Exposition the removal of the first residents to the North
Side and to suburbs steadily increased.
The abnormal years just preceding the Exposition had brought in thousands
of workmen, who were thrown out of work when the Exposition buildings
were finished. This and the panic of 1893 made building costs very low
and caused further construction of dwellings in that district. Mr. L.
M. Smith, a prominent South Side real estate man, described this change
at a meeting of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association:
The condition that existed after the World's Fair, if you will
remember, in the material yards and the labor market was this:
Every yard was loaded up, and the carpenters and the mechanics
that were stranded here after the World's Fair were glad
to take jobs as janitors at $25 a month, in order that they
could have good warm places for their families, and buildings
that were put up three and four years after the Fair, along
in 1894, 1895, and 1896, could be built at about 30 per cent
cheaper than those that were put up during the World's Fair.
The consequences were that you could rent a flat cheaper in
a brand-new modern building than you could in a building that
was put up during the World's Fair, and as the older buildings
could not be rented, the owners finally had to come down in
their rent more and more; they got in less and less desirable
tenants until finally the whole territory became undesirable.
These first "undesirables" were not Negroes, for Negroes had not then
moved across State Street. And there were other causes for the vacancies
and removals that admitted Hyde Park's first undesirables beside the
overbuilding. One was the proximity of the Stock Yards. Since the
South Siders could not have the Stock Yards moved, many of them moved
themselves. The railroads along the lake front, with their cinders, smoke,
and noise, were also a factor. Another was the creeping in of industrial
plants that located in and near the district, frequently in the face of
protests. A striking instance of this is the large assembly plant of an
automobile company at Thirty-ninth Street and Michigan Avenue. During
recent years the automobile industry has practically taken control of
Michigan Avenue, once the most beautiful street of the South Side.
The coming of apartment houses and boarding-houses was another signal of
declining values. It was shown that for twenty-five years scarcely a new
residence had been built on Grand Boulevard, once noted for its handsome
residences--due principally to the extensive building of apartment houses
there.
Racial prejudice other than that against Negroes has operated in many
instances to depress property values. The presence of Jews, Germans,
Irish, Italians, and Swedes has at times been objectionable to
neighborhoods of Americans or of another race. A leader in the movement
to remove Negroes from the Grand Boulevard area gave evidence of this,
saying: "I know the Irish killed a certain boulevard. I know the Jews
hurt another one, and I know the gambling element hurt another one."
On the South Side the Negroes were preceded by Irish. The original
settlers in the area around Thirty-first and Dearborn streets were mainly
Irish laborers who worked in the lumber yards and mills, the Stock Yards,
and other South Side industries. When they moved westward among their
own people, thirty-five years ago, the Negroes took their places.
Sometimes social or sentimental values are involved in the depreciation
brought about when a new race or nationality breaks down the exclusiveness
of a residence district. After the Exposition, for example, when wealthy
residents of Michigan Avenue, and Grand and Drexel boulevards deserted
their houses for more fashionable locations, many of them were bought
by Jews. This operated to depreciate adjacent property in the opinion
of those who disliked Jews as neighbors.
How the changes take place was well described by an experienced real
estate man: The original families have divided up and moved away; sons
and daughters have married; the servant problem has become acute, making
it difficult to maintain large houses; thus apartment houses have become
popular; houses are older and deteriorated, apartments are new and
modern. In 1915 when the number of apartments for rent was in excess
of the demand, a tenant would spend $25 or $30 in order to move into
an apartment across the street merely because it happened to be fitted
with glass door knobs; a high-class residence at Forrestville Avenue
and Forty-fifth Street was sold twenty years ago for $12,000; yet he
told the purchasers ten years ago that the property would not sell for
more than $4,000 to $6,000; and that was before Negroes had moved into
the neighborhood. Apartments in that vicinity still command a price
approaching their original cost of building, because the demand for them
is stronger than for houses.
This real estate man made the broad statement that the depreciation
has taken effect, in the majority of cases, before a Negro family has
moved into a neighborhood. There is depreciation, he thought, due to
prejudice, when a Negro family moves into a good neighborhood that has
been exclusively white, but that there are very few such instances for the
reason that Negroes prefer to live where they are welcome, where there
is no antagonism. With regard to the district between Thirty-ninth and
Fifty-fifth streets, State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, he stated
that the entrance of the Negro had not appreciably affected values.
Another real estate dealer, experienced in South Side property and in
selling to Negroes, expressed similar opinions. The greatest depreciation,
he felt, was in the expensive residences, and he doubted whether property
as a whole in the square mile centered at State and Thirty-fifth streets
had been depreciated much if at all.
There was agreement among the authorities consulted that in an exclusive
neighborhood of wealthy residents marked depreciation in large residences
has taken place, followed by the introduction of apartment buildings.
One of the men who had earnestly opposed Negro entrance into the Grand
Boulevard district recalled when valuations on Grand and Drexel boulevards
were from $400 to $600 a front foot; then they fell to $125 or $150 a
foot; and then gradually climbed back to $175 or $200 a foot on account
of the introduction of apartment buildings.
Such variations in value are the usual accompaniment of unguided growth
in a large city. This unguided development brought depreciation, which
was manifest before Negroes began to make their appearance in the area.
The spread of clandestine prostitution, discussed in connection with the
area north of Thirty-ninth Street, did not stop at Thirty-ninth Street.
As the environment maps indicate,[25] there was a noticeable increase
from 1916 to 1918 in the number of houses or flats used by prostitutes in
the area south of Thirty-ninth Street. These changes occurred before the
spread of the Negro population reached the neighborhood. Two houses, for
example, at 4404 and 4406 Grand Boulevard, bought by a Negro woman and
bombed four times after she moved in, had been occupied by prostitutes
just prior to her purchase.
_The coming of Negroes._--In 1916 hundreds of buildings in the Hyde Park
area stood vacant and had been so for some time. Owners and real estate
men were offering large concessions in the effort to get tenants. Values
had fallen greatly. A prominent real estate man closely in touch with
the neighborhood estimated that 25 per cent of the buildings there were
vacant, and that there was little prospect of renting or selling them.
Coincident with this oversupply in Hyde Park was an acute demand among
Negroes for houses, intensified by the sudden addition of about 50,000
migrants. Many of them had sold their property in the South and brought
the money with them. Hyde Park landlords were willing to sell or rent
to them rather than lose their property entirely. Many Negroes, however,
instead of renting, purchased the properties because of the exceptional
terms offered.
This continued for about two years, when a demand for houses again arose
among the white population. There was inactivity in building throughout
the war period. Chicago was sharing in the housing shortage which affected
the whole country, which was estimated in the early part of 1921 at
50,000 houses. As the demand of whites for housing became acute, Hyde
Park owners began to feel that their property was at a disadvantage due
to the presence of Negroes.
Plans for beautifying the lake front and improving Hyde Park were
emphasized as a reason for holding on to property there. Alderman
Schwartz, in addressing a meeting of the Grand Boulevard district of
the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association, said:
The South Side, and Hyde Park and Kenwood in particular, in past
years has been the choice residential section of Chicago, the
show place of Chicago. Grand Boulevard is the most magnificent
street in the world, the finest boulevard of our wonderful
boulevard system. I know that for many, many years, in this
town, it was the ambition of people living in other parts
of the city to arrange matters so that they could have their
homes on the South Side in the place where you now live.
We have seen the rapid deterioration. In the council and in
the committees we have decided that we must do something.
The law has some very definite limitations written into our
constitution and statutes. It cannot afford any relief. You
yourselves must resurrect the South Side.
As one instance of what we attempted to do in the way of
assuring to the people who reside here that the South Side
can and will continue to be the great place we live in, we
passed the Lake Front Ordinance. You people probably never
realized what a wonderful thing that will be for the South
Side. It will take in the lake front from Twelfth Street south
to Fifty-first; it will affect the very choicest residential
district in Chicago, the territory between Thirty-ninth Street
and Forty-seventh Street--in this portion of the ward where
we now are, something like $125,000,000 will be expended in
reclaiming the lake front for you people, you men and women who
must stand together to save your homes, see that your homes are
kept as fine places to live in, that your neighbors are kept
the most desirable neighbors in the city of Chicago, so that
you may enjoy the benefit of that wonderful improvement that is
to come. Think of that tremendous stretch, from Thirty-ninth
to Forty-seventh, of bathing facilities, the finest in the
world. More than a year and a half ago an estimate was made of
the loss in property values in the Oakland district, north of
Forty-third Street, and that was estimated to be $100,000,000.
Now it is not only the loss of money that interests us. It means
not only that somebody has lost a certain amount of wealth,
but it means that somebody has lost comfort in living; someone
has lost joy in his home; someone has lost the opportunity to
give his children the environment that he wanted to give.
A survey made by the Hyde Park Property Owners' Association in 1920
showed that there were then 3,300 property owners in the area bounded
by Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets, Michigan Avenue and Cottage
Grove Avenue, and that of this number 1,000 were Negroes. Then began
the attempts to move Negroes[26] back into "their own neighborhood."
Many of the Negroes who moved into this area had substantial resources
enabling them either to buy property outright or so to arrange for
payments through instalments and mortgages as to render themselves secure
against efforts to remove them. But in so doing they further complicated
the status of the neighborhood. Few white persons recognize the marked
differences among Negroes, so that in purely commercial dealings they are
not as careful in selecting Negro tenants as they would be among whites.
As a result some Negroes who secured property there proved damaging to
property values, just as would persons of a similar type from any other
race.
Many of the houses for sale or rent were not suited to the incomes of
ordinary wage-earners. White persons whose incomes were sufficient to
pay the rental for such large houses preferred a different sort of house
or neighborhood; and whites of smaller incomes could find more suitable
houses elsewhere; while Negroes, hard pressed for houses, rented them,
and took lodgers to fill them and help pay the rent.
The exclusive occupancy of a block by Negroes is usually followed by less
care of streets and alleys. This neglect is general between Twenty-second
and Thirty-ninth streets and is beginning to appear in the territory
between Thirty-ninth and Forty-third streets where recently blocks have
been "turned over" to Negroes. Community associations are being formed
in some of these areas to protest against this laxity, and stimulate
neighborhood interest in neat premises.
_Appreciation of property._--When values fall extremely due to a selling
panic among white owners, it is often followed by a decided recovery as
the Negro demand grows. Such a new market among Negroes, however, seems
never to have been strong enough to send prices for residence purposes
back to original levels. But many instances have shown that prices rarely
stay at the low "panic" level and frequently rebound to a level much above
that at which panic sales were made. Mr. Gates, a prominent South Side
real estate dealer, said: "If a Negro family locates in a street where
the population is all white, values are cut in two, but this would not
be likely to occur if a large number of Negroes were ready and willing
to buy adjacent property at established prices. Supply and demand would
rule in such a market." Other real estate dealers expressed the opinion
that "if the white owners were not over-anxious to sell when the Negro
'invasion' begins, they might later on obtain as much or more for their
property than they could have obtained before the advent of the Negroes."
In numerous cases Negroes created a market for property when there was
none. A prominent white business man long resident on the South Side
told of a row of houses on South Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard that
were vacant for years until sold or rented to Negroes: they could not
be sold at all until they took on a value because Negroes were ready to
buy them.
A prominent Negro physician bought a piece of property in an exclusive
white Hyde Park neighborhood. He lived there seven years and then sold
the property at an advance, and, to his knowledge, there had been no
depreciation in adjacent property.
A white real estate dealer bought a house in Grand Boulevard between
Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth streets about five years ago. When Negro
residents came some of the white people sold at a sacrifice. But he
remained and four years later sold the property for $2,000 above its
cost to him.
An interesting instance related to property on Langley Avenue into which
a Negro family moved in 1919. The value of contiguous property remained
the same as of property two and three blocks east where no Negroes lived.
Six months later, across the street from this Negro family, a white man,
aware of their occupancy, bought a house and paid $1,500 more than it
had formerly been offered for.
Thus, notwithstanding the prejudice against Negro neighbors that usually
obtains, a block or neighborhood into which Negroes move is not always
and necessarily depreciated, so many and active are the other factors
contributing to depreciation (or sometimes preventing); and so frequently
has it occurred that these factors of depreciation have operated
extensively prior to the arrival of Negroes.
The fluctuation of values in response to sentiment, both inherent and
stimulated, manifested itself in a practice of certain real estate dealers
on the South Side. Although it was stated and believed that values were
irrevocably destroyed when a Negro family occupied a building, these
agents boosted values by announcing that another building had been "saved"
or "redeemed," _thoroughly renovated_, and restored to its "rightful
occupants." The Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association
stated that this plan had succeeded in sixty-eight instances of buildings
"reclaimed" by the Association.
_A Prairie Avenue block._--To study the processes and factors of
depreciation the Commission selected an obviously depreciated block on
the once fashionable Prairie Avenue, between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth
streets, into which no Negroes had yet moved.
In 1885-90 Prairie Avenue was one of Chicago's most fashionable and
exclusive residential streets. Imposing brown- and gray-stone residences,
with balconies of stone and ornamental iron, broad bay-windows, and large
well-kept lawns behind high iron fences, gave evidence of the wealth
and social position of their owners.
The gradual decline of Prairie Avenue, as North Side and North Shore
neighborhoods became more fashionable places of residence, and long
before the approach of Negroes was even thought of, was exemplified in
this block. _Chicago Blue Book_, a broadly inclusive social directory,
published annually, shows that in 1890 the families living at forty-nine
of the sixty-one addresses in the block were listed; in 1900 there were
eighteen of the forty-nine left; in 1910 there were only ten, and in
1915 only two. Second and third occupants of the houses took the places
of fifteen of the original forty-nine in 1900, of nine in 1910, and of
four in 1915. The _Blue Book_ listings at five-year intervals are shown
in the table on the following page.
[Illustration: A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD]
From 1895 on, those who moved away were to be found scattered all the way
from Lake Shore Drive to Lake Forest. The newcomers who took their places
appeared decreasingly in the _Blue Book_ and more and more frequently
they had Irish or Jewish names.
A closer examination of the changing occupancy of the sixty-one houses
in the block shows strikingly the rapidity and extent of the decline
and reveals some of its causes.
"BLUE BOOK" LISTINGS IN PRAIRIE AVENUE BLOCK
=====================================================================
| Number of Houses | | Number of Houses
Year | Listed with no | Number of Houses | with Second and
| Change in | Not Listed | Third Occupants
| Occupants | | Listed
-------------+------------------+------------------+-----------------
1890 | 49 | 12 | .....
1895 | 26 | 25 | 10
1900 | 18 | 28 | 15
1905 | 12 | 36 | 13
1910 | 10 | 41 | 9
1915 | 2 | 54 | 4
-------------+------------------+------------------+-----------------
_The residents._--In a house with fifty feet frontage on Prairie Avenue
lived a wealthy artist, son of a Chicago pioneer merchant and member of
several exclusive clubs. He lived there until a large brick factory was
erected at the rear of his residence which is now occupied by a medical
fraternity. A prominent Chicago family lived in another house which
they had built in 1885. In 1890, they moved to Cleveland and rented the
property. For sentimental reasons they kept the property, although it was
fast sinking in value. In 1919 a son living in Lake Forest proposed to
remodel and improve the property, if by reasonable expenditures he could
be assured by real estate men of "desirable" tenants. No real estate man
felt able to do this, however, and the deterioration and depreciation
were uninterrupted.
Another residence, formerly occupied by a capitalist and journalist since
1890, was a large two-story house with basement and attic and two-story
brick barn. The family long since moved to the North Side, and the old
mansion on Prairie Avenue is now a rooming-house of thirty-eight rooms,
including the garage.
At another address lived the president of a large business corporation,
in a two-story stone-front building. It is now cut up into flats; and
in the window recently was a sign: "4th Flat for Rent, 6 Rooms, $20.00,
_White Only_."
Only one or two of the fine old residences in this block are still
occupied by Chicago's "first families" or owned by their estates.
There are now two relatively modern three- and four-story brick apartment
buildings in the block, and five old residences are rooming-houses. One
is a club for railroad men, and another is a fraternity house. About a
third of the places are in fairly good repair.
The altered character of the block is revealed also in the number of
persons now at each address. The polling lists for March, 1920, disclose
that fourteen persons are registered from one address, ten from another,
seven from another, six each from three others, and so on, indicating
more adults than are usually found in a single family. These are probably
roomers.
The problem, however, is a complex one, for, although no Negroes moved
into this block, they occupied parts of neighboring blocks during
that period, and their occupancy contributed to the final stage of
depreciation.
The picture in neighboring Calumet Avenue is not essentially different;
perhaps the early occupants represented fewer of the "first families,"
and the deterioration is more obvious.
The evidences of the oncoming of commerce and industry from the north are
numerous and inescapable. In this and adjoining blocks are now garages,
an auto-repairing shop, the South Side Dispensary of the Municipal
Tuberculosis Sanitarium, a factory for grinding bearings, and a carpentry
and glazing shop. An auto-laundry occupies the old church building.
This area is a comparatively short distance from the "Loop." In real
estate parlance it is known as "close-in" property. A former president of
the Chicago Real Estate Board stated that a large part of this "close-in"
property depreciated because of its change from residential to commercial
property. He mentioned Prairie and Calumet avenues, north of Thirty-first
Street--which includes the block studied. The depreciation, he asserted,
was also due to the "departure of many owners of costly homes to other
districts."
With the city's growth, transportation became an increasingly influential
factor. The automobile made it easy to reach the business center from
outlying and suburban regions. It thus became less desirable to live near
the "Loop," particularly as such districts are susceptible to changes
that may quickly destroy an exclusive residence district.
The rapidly developing automobile industry gravitated very largely
to this part of the South Side. Its salesrooms, shops for the sale of
accessories, and kindred business places spread along Michigan Avenue
from Twelfth to Thirty-fifth street. Michigan Avenue is only two blocks
west of Prairie Avenue and one block west of Indiana Avenue. Garages,
repair shops, welding factories, and the like accompanied this invasion,
and spread into adjoining streets. For instance, on an Indiana Avenue
corner a large eight-story factory was built immediately adjoining the
rear of a handsome Prairie Avenue residence, and a one and one-half story
garage and repair shop was built in the rear of 2900 Prairie Avenue. Just
northeast of the block are factories and breweries with their noise,
smoke, and heavy traffic; and from the west and south Negroes have
recently been approaching--long after these other factors were operating.
A peculiar fact about the property in this block and northward on Prairie
Avenue is that the lots are long and narrow, and the houses are built
to the side lines. These lots, when threatened with encroachment by
factories and the automobile industry, lost their residence value but did
not easily take on a new industrial value because they were individually
owned and it required several lots to make a suitable industrial site.
The owners, though not desiring to live there, were yet loath to sell
as cheaply as the individual strip sales would make necessary. And no
investor would buy a single lot for industrial purposes unless certain
of getting two or three others adjoining.
In 1910 land values on Prairie Avenue between Twenty-sixth and
Twenty-eighth streets were $250 a front foot; and from Twenty-ninth to
Thirtieth streets, $200; on Indiana Avenue between Twenty-sixth and
Twenty-eighth streets, $200, and between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth
streets $175. In 1920, however, values had dropped on Prairie Avenue to
$60 a front foot while on Indiana Avenue, a semi-business street, they
were $150 and $180.[27] Negroes first moved into the block on Prairie
Avenue between Thirtieth and Thirty-first streets about 1917, though
very few lived there at the time of the inquiry in 1920. In 1919 they
purchased an abandoned church in this block which at one time was valued
at $125,000.
To summarize the results of this investigation of depreciation: Negro
occupancy depreciates the value of residence property in Chicago because
of the prejudice of white people against Negroes, and because white
people will not buy and Negroes are not financially able to buy, at
fair market prices property thrown upon the market when a neighborhood
commences to change from white to Negro occupancy; nevertheless a large
part of the depreciation of residence property often charged to Negro
occupancy comes from entirely different causes.
D. FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF NEGRO HOUSING
I. NEGRO PROPERTY CONSIDERED A POOR RISK
An important factor in the housing problem is the low security rating
given by real estate loan concerns to property tenanted by Negroes.
Because of this Negroes are charged more than white people for loans,
find it more difficult to secure them, and thus are greatly handicapped
in efforts to buy or improve property. The general opinion that condemns
such property makes the risk poor, even for Negroes. A Chicago Trust
Company representative said:
A Negro called to buy a mortgage. Our first thought was to
submit to him one of the colored loans, which we did. We showed
him a photograph; he liked the appearance of the building,
and then he inquired, "Is this anywhere near the colored
district?" He declined the loan on that account, showing that
this uneasiness is not confined to the white investor.
When districts become exclusively Negro this reluctance to invest or
to lend invariably appears. If there are sufficient Negroes with money
to create a market the loss is somewhat relieved. Yet, deprived of the
usual facilities for purchasing a home, they cannot relieve their housing
shortage and are forced to seek houses in unfriendly neighborhoods.
The factors are similar to those in depreciation, often based on
prejudices and erroneous beliefs concerning Negroes. Whatever depreciates
real estate necessarily depresses its security value--whether the cause
be fact or opinion. A South Side bank had difficulty in selling Negro
loans to white people because "they say they don't keep up the property;
they let it deteriorate; they don't improve it." The representative of
another bank said:
I don't believe you could find enough colored people who
could make a substantial first payment. There are a few that
I have talked with recently who are on the police force, who
wanted to know how we could help them out in buying places.
One had in mind the purchase of a three-flat building; the
price was around eight or nine thousand dollars. There was a
first mortgage on it of about five. He had only $300 cash to
buy it with.
A former president of the Chicago Real Estate Board said:
The percentage of Negro people in Chicago who will buy homes
is comparatively small. The best evidence we have is that 85
per cent of the white people are tenants; 15 per cent of them
are home owners. It follows, I think, that a smaller percentage
of the colored race will buy homes, not more than from 3 to
5 per cent of the colored people at the present time.
A representative of a very large South Side realty business said: "There
are ever so many mortgage men not familiar with the colored belt. That's
one of their greatest reasons for refusing the loans--they are not
familiar with the values."
Real estate men, white and Negro, were invited to present their views,
and leading mortgage-loan houses and banks of the city were asked what
they knew about Negroes as borrowers, investors, tenants, and clients, and
their thrift and care of property. Their testimony, with the Commission's
investigations, yielded a fairly accurate picture.
II. NEGROES AS HOME OWNERS
The first house in Chicago was a rude cabin built by a Negro in 1790.
There were several Negro home owners when the city was incorporated in
1837. The first Negroes to settle near Thirtieth Street--long before
the city had extended its limits that far--owned their homes. Although
prior to 1916 most Negroes did not own homes, there were many, especially
business and professional men, who had gradually acquired dwellings. The
migration brought thousands of Negroes with ready cash who found it easy
to buy dwellings on the South Side. The uncomfortable and inadequate
dwellings of the "Black Belt" could be avoided only by the purchase of
property elsewhere. Attention thus was directed, probably for the first
time, to the question of home buying by Negroes. Indeed home owning is
an essential feature of any solution of their housing difficulties.
Until the migration Chicago's Negroes had engaged chiefly in
personal-service occupations that governed somewhat the location of
their homes; when these were not in the "Black Belt" they were in shabby
property in undesirable streets near their employment. Men who worked
on dining- and sleeping-cars lived near the railroad stations--on State
and Dearborn streets, Plymouth Place, and the surrounding neighborhood;
they were generally renters and moved southward with the general trend.
_Home buying stimulated by high wages and the migration._--The war brought
wages to the Negroes that seemed fabulous to many; and the wages brought
the migration. The first migrants were mostly drifters. Then came a great
many who had acquired considerable substance in the South, and having
sold out they came to Chicago with ready money, in some instances large
amounts. This class of Negroes bought dwellings. Several of them bought
apartment buildings, said a real estate dealer, and in one instance the
buyer paid $10,000 in cash; and there were very many who were able and
ready to pay from $1,000 to $3,000 on the purchase of a residence in a
respectable neighborhood. Another dealer said that he was not able to
supply the buying demand: "We have put renters on the side list; buyers
are taking up the time. We used to think $500 a good-sized payment for
them, but now they often have $3,000, $4,000, or $6,000. A Negro customer
lately wanted a twelve-flat building and would pay cash."
"The average newcomer is a home-owner," said another realty dealer; "he
has sold his home in the South to come here. Some say the high wages
are not attracting them so much as better schools."
Another dealer said that the average amount per family brought from
the South was from $300 to $500, and he knew of one family that brought
$6,000.
It was the experience of another firm that three or four years ago Negro
purchasers paid down about $500, but that now (1920) they frequently
make first payments of $1,000 or more.
This sudden wave of home buying impressed Carl Sandburg, who wrote (1919)
in the _Chicago Daily News_:
Twenty years ago fewer than fifty families of the colored
race were home owners in Chicago. Today they number thousands,
their purchases ranging from $200 to $20,000, from tar paper
shacks in the still district to brownstone and greystone
establishments with wealthy or well-to-do white neighbors. In
most cases, where a colored man has investments of more than
ordinary size, it is in large part in real estate. Realty
investment and management seems to be an important field of
operation among those colored people who acquire substance.
Several other factors contributed to this house-buying movement. One was
that Hyde Park had many available houses in the early years of the war,
while the Negro was excluded from the market west of Wentworth Avenue,
with its smaller and less expensive houses, by the vigorous antagonism of
the Irish and other people living there. The southern Negroes were glad
to find that--at first, anyway--access was not denied them to districts
having good schools, churches, recreation and amusements, and convenient
transportation facilities. This feeling was reflected in their purchase
of churches; two of these, one on Washington Boulevard and one on Prairie
Avenue, are in districts of extensive home buying by Negroes.
The high war wages contributed to home buying. Though in many instances
they induced extravagant expenditures, a surplus remained for many, and
with the frugal the savings were large.
High rents were another primary contribution. Many of the ambitious
newcomers figured that they could buy a house for about the same monthly
amounts required for rent. In many instances they thriftily contrived
to make the property pay for itself. Two- and three-flat buildings would
furnish a family with a home while providing a considerable revenue from
the rented flats. When old-fashioned houses too large for one family
were bought, lodgers and boarders were often taken. Frequently wife and
children added to the family income so that they might own a home.
A real estate dealer in Hyde Park said: "The Negro has purchased 90
per cent of the property where he lives, and 75 per cent of these are
'high-class colored men.'" This estimate is too high, but it shows the
impression made by the large number of Negro home buyers.
An inquiry in two blocks on Prairie and Forest avenues disclosed that 40
per cent of the Negroes living on Prairie Avenue were property owners,
in the intervening block on Thirty-seventh Street over 90 per cent were
owners, while on Forest Avenue the Negro property owners were few.
In 1920 the School of Civics canvassed a small area occupied by Negroes
in the district west of State Street, a district where, because of their
low economic status, they would not be expected to buy. Of 331 families,
thirty, or 10 per cent, were owners, and all but one had been owners
for from four to twenty years, so that they had not been influenced by
the migration.
Of the impression made by the home-buying migrants a very intelligent
Negro real estate dealer said, referring to the Chicago Negroes:
I will dare say that 90 per cent or even a greater number did
not own their property. They rented. It seems there has been
a different spirit instilled into the northern colored man.
We bow to the southern man because he is a home owner. The
northern man was satisfied to rent. I was born in Chicago and
felt the same as others do.
The present trend was indicated in these statements of two well-informed
white real estate dealers on the South Side: "The colored people are
demanding homes and the tendency is to buy"; and that Negroes were
continuing to buy homes in the district between Thirty-ninth and
Forty-seventh streets, Cottage Grove Avenue and State Street, more sales
being made to Negroes in that particular location than in any other.
And this has been during a period of acute and general housing famine
in every large city.
_Methods of purchase._--When Negroes first began to buy dwellings during
the migration years, the average price was $4,000 to $5,000, and the
initial payment, usually $500, ranged from $300 to $1,000. The time
for payment was ordinarily three years, though some contracts were for
five years. Later on Negroes began to buy houses or apartment buildings
running as high as $8,000 or $10,000, and the payments were increased
proportionately.
That the Negro assumed a heavy load, sometimes more than he could
reasonably be expected to carry, was the opinion of several careful
observers. While the surplus from his wages might be expected to cover
the monthly payments, money for taxes, repairs, and insurance would have
to come from the wages of wife or children, or from lodgers.
In April, 1920, when work at high wages was abundant, a well-informed
Negro real estate dealer said that any Negro family head could then
assume payments of from $40 to $55 a month on purchased property. But
many Negroes made contracts calling for monthly payments of $65 to $75.
The opinions of experienced persons in close touch with the situation
were divided as to whether, in making such purchases, Negroes had assumed
too heavy obligations. One said his long experience showed that Negroes
carry out what they undertake to do; that very few default on their
payments, and when Negroes buy on the instalment plan "they pay out
better than the whites do, as a rule."
Another said, though Negroes buy only old properties--and generally pay
more than white people--they are careful in assuming their obligations
and make their payments promptly. They pay down to the mortgage, in from
three to five years, and sometimes within two years.
Another, who has been dealing with Negroes since 1907, gave his opinion
that they undertake their obligations seriously, and as instalment buyers
of property they are entirely satisfactory.
Still another South Side man who sells real estate to Negroes declared
that he had been getting better payments recently than he did three or
four years ago; in 1914, 1915, and 1916 he suffered considerable loss
because of defaults in payments on purchases or in rents.
A former president of the Chicago Real Estate Board remarked that Negroes
buy but do not build their houses, and are not yet sufficiently numerous
to create a market for real estate; that white people will not buy
back property once occupied by Negroes; that, as the numbers of Negroes
increase, this situation might be changed, but that the Negro who tries
to sell old property, on which he has put no improvements, will rarely
find a buyer, because there is so much old property available.
Certain banks and loan firms thought there would be a general foreclosure
of mortgages on recently purchased property as they fell due, that the
Negroes are carrying such heavy payments on their contracts that they
cannot reduce their mortgages and consequently renewals will be denied;
that the Negro has not yet acquired sufficient stability to carry on
payments over a long term of years, and if wage reductions become general
they will fall most heavily on unskilled workers and render difficult the
meeting of payments by such Negroes, who constitute the great majority.
Most of the firms that had dealings with Negroes, whether as buyers,
borrowers, or renters, expressed satisfaction with their transactions
with them. Typical of their comments was that of John A. Schmidt, who
found Negroes to be prompter than Jews in making payments, and of Milton
Yondorf, who said that Negroes, like the Italians, finish paying for
one house before undertaking to buy another, and are eager to make the
final payment.
While the preponderance of opinion was that the Negroes do meet their
payments, it may be that experience is still too limited in Chicago and
conditions have thus far been too abnormal to afford the basis for final
judgment and future policy.
The first wave of buying by Negroes was stimulated by both Negro and
white real estate agents because many dwellings had been unremunerative
for several years. With the tightening up of the real estate market that
ensued, Negroes became home hunters, and they are continuing to search.
There has been a wide variation in the prices paid by Negroes for
dwellings. For some houses Negroes have undoubtedly paid more than could
have been obtained from a white purchaser. One dealer's opinion was that
the Negroes have paid full value. Another said that the Negro never pays
higher for property unless the price is measured by what has been paid
for it by white persons of the "fourth class"--referring to property that
has descended from the original owner through three classes of whites
before coming into Negro hands. Many purchases during the last two or
three years have been made direct from the owners. An attempt made by
white real estate men to come to an agreement regarding sales in new
districts--whereby they would turn over to Negro agents all inquiries
as to blocks where Negroes already lived, and Negro agents would not
place Negroes in exclusively white districts--was unsuccessful.
III. REAL ESTATE LOANS TO NEGROES
The most formidable stumbling-block in the way of home owning by Negroes
is the unsalability of their mortgages. Except in a limited field these
loans have no market. The Negro demand for home property has become so
large in recent years that the search for it has extended beyond the
fringes of the main existing districts on the South, West, and North
sides into the outlying territory adjoining Negro settlements in Blue
Island, Woodlawn, Morgan Park, and Robbins. How the Negro is to be
financed in his effort to improve his citizenship and home life through
home ownership thus becomes a matter of great concern.
The Commission sought to learn from banks, trust companies, brokerage
firms, and similar institutions their experience with Negro clients and
property and their purpose and plans as to future dealings. To thirty
such institutions questionnaires were sent, and twenty-three gave careful
replies.
Only a few real estate firms that have a large number of Negro clients
have funds available for such loans. These meet but a small part of the
demand. The three banks that have large Negro deposits, the Lincoln
State, the Franklin State, and Jesse Binga's, make such loans when
deemed desirable, but they seem not a large factor in relieving the loan
situation. Many of the banks that are depositories for Negroes' funds do
not make loans to them, giving as their reason that they do not lend on
the class of property purchased by Negroes. Some of them have no real
estate department. Only three of the downtown investment bankers make
no restrictions regarding Negro borrowers that are not common to all;
they have dealt with Negro clients for many years and have found them
entirely satisfactory. Possibly one reason for this is that they educate
their buyers of mortgages concerning the value of these loans; and thus
have succeeded, they say, in overcoming many objections based upon race
prejudice.
Most large real estate firms and loan companies decline to make loans
on property owned or occupied by Negroes. With some of them this is
a blanket provision that covers generally property in changing or
depreciated districts. Difficulty of disposing of such mortgages is one
of the commonest reasons given for refusing to handle them.
Even among the agencies that handle such loans opinion is not unanimous
on fundamental points involved. The Commission asked several brokers
representing large interests this question: "Does your experience
indicate that loans up to 50 per cent of the valuation on property in the
residence districts from Twenty-sixth to Sixtieth streets and from State
Street to the lake have a safe-and-sound investment value?" Among those
favorable to Negroes the answer of Yondorf & Company, a downtown firm,
is perhaps typical: It is necessary to consider each house separately,
as conditions vary widely; consideration must be given to future uses of
the property, the present condition of the improvements, and especially
the stability of the person asking for the loan. As a general rule,
loans on old residence property are not as good as those on houses in
new districts; on an old house about $1,000 would be loaned on a market
value of $5,000, whereas in new districts the contractor can borrow up
to two-thirds of the cost of the house; no conscious discrimination is
made in the nature of higher rates because a borrower happens to be
a Negro; careful consideration is given to the margin of safety, and
safeguards are arranged in the way provided for payments.
Lionel Bell, another downtown loan broker, regarded this general type
of mortgages on old residence property as fully secured, and does not
hesitate to recommend mortgages in the district mentioned.
John A. Schmidt, who handles a large number of loans on Negro property
in that district, considers them of high value, though the risks are
both physical and moral; it is essential to know both the client and the
property; the amount of the loan asked on Negro property usually is not
high as compared with its value. No distinction is made as to the color
of the borrower, the condition and value of the property being the only
basis for the loan; loans to Negroes are less in amount than to whites,
though clients thus far accepted are commonly found satisfactory; the
period of payment is about the same, varying between three and five years,
according to the amount paid monthly, the kind of property involved, and
so on. The usual range of amounts requested was one-third to one-half
of the value of the property.
R. M. O'Brien & Company, an active South Side real estate firm which
also deals largely in Negro mortgages, found that the average amount
loaned to Negroes was smaller, and that it is a smaller percentage of
the value of the property than in the case of loans to whites, and that
the average period for loans to Negroes was three years.
Mead & Coe, another real estate firm, found that the Negroes usually
are allowed $1,000 to the white man's $1,500; that only 35 per cent of
the value of the property is loaned to the Negro, whereas 50 per cent
is granted to whites. Maximum time of loan was five years for the white
and three years for the Negro.
The Chicago Trust Company answered that the same requirements were made
of white and Negro; the range was from $2,000 to $6,000, limited to 50
per cent of conservative valuation, and five years.
In general it was found that property values in the districts where
Negroes usually buy are affected by more factors than is the property
in districts where whites usually buy. Where Negroes are buying the
majority of white people are renting.
It was sought to find out whether Negroes ask for renewals more often
than do white borrowers; whether there was any marked difference between
Negroes and other racial groups in the promptness of making payments,
in asking for additional time, in the difficulty of collections, and in
compelling foreclosure. Comparison of Negroes and whites was found to
be difficult because of differences between various nationalities as to
repaying loans. The Poles pay promptly when dealing through loan companies
or banks conducted by Poles. The Italians are eager to get their property
cleared. Jews are likely to ask for renewals and to expect the property
to pay the mortgage out of earnings. The Negroes pay if they can, but
sometimes have difficulty because they have arranged heavy payments on
their contracts; during the period of high wages there has been little
trouble, but the feeling was that as yet there had been no real test.
Speaking generally, a representative of Yondorf & Company said it was
estimated that only about 25 per cent of working people are thrifty and
save anything; 75 per cent save nothing; and that proportion holds true
of the Negroes.
Firms that deal with Negroes ask for no larger reduction when a Negro
renews his loan, they say, than when a white person renews if the
character of the property is the same. The facts as to the reliability,
character, and standing of the borrower are established when the loan
is first made. Negroes buy old properties where deterioration is rapid,
and when the renewal is asked the value of the property has fallen in
proportion. White persons do not buy the same class of property. So it is
necessary to ask the Negro to reduce his mortgage considerably, except
when his property is in a location of newer houses, such as Morgan Park
or Woodlawn.
Difficulty is experienced by mortgage bankers and brokers in selling
Negro mortgages to white clients. Yondorf & Company declared that while
their old clients would buy regardless of the color of the borrower,
others had to be convinced of the value of the property and of the
earning power and stability of the Negro borrower. The Negro mortgages
are usually for smaller amounts and hence within the reach of small
investors. When white investors find that Negroes' loans are promptly
paid they continue to buy such securities.
Lionel Bell reported some difficulty in selling Negro mortgages to white
clients, though he generally succeeded, by showing their value and by
inspection, that the Negroes were keeping their houses in good condition
as to both sanitation and repair.
E. A. Cummings & Company have difficulty in selling such mortgages
because many of their clients are out-of-town buyers who are suspicious
of Negro property.
E. and S. Lowenstein find no market for such loans; non-resident buyers
and even local buyers fight shy of Negro property in particular, and
property in general that is undesirable because of overcrowding and
consequent hard usage.
In general, the refusals to buy Negro loans are due to feeling against
the Negro, a disbelief in the Negro's ability to pay them, and distrust
of the old properties which Negroes commonly buy. The opinion was general
that anything which would tend to stabilize values on the South Side,
especially in the lower part of the district occupied by Negroes, would
be desirable; that improvements such as the widening of South Park Avenue
would aid materially.
Real estate men who have Negroes for clients are finding it advantageous
to educate them in the meaning of mortgages, in the method of issuing
and renewing them, and in what is expected of the mortgagor and what
the mortgagor may expect. When the Negro is carefully informed of the
processes involved in financing the purchase of a home, and the terms
are thoroughly understood, there is much less likelihood of losing his
property. Friendly real estate men are constantly helping Negroes to
carry their mortgages and to find means of renewing when that contingency
arises. It is helpful also to remind Negroes of the necessity of paying
their taxes and meeting other obligations promptly, and of keeping their
property in good condition. Some firms stated that the "natural honesty
of the Negro and his love of home life" have been fostered by thoughtful
friends and leaders, as well as by those who have business transactions
with him. This pays dividends in better citizenship.
_Widening the market for Negro loans._--The white people need to know
the obstacles in the path of the Negro who wishes to establish a good
home for his family and thus improve his citizenship and serve as a good
example to others of his race. How to finance Negro home buyers is a
large difficulty in solving the Negro housing problem. The Commission
held a conference devoted almost entirely to this topic, at which various
experts and authorities were consulted. It was sought to ascertain the
fundamentals for meeting the needs of the future, assuming that the
Negro population in Chicago is likely to continue in normal growth, and
that the demand for adequate housing for the Negro population is not
likely to lessen for several years. Particular attention was given to
the question of how a market might be created for the Negro's loans.
An appraiser for the Fort Dearborn National Bank suggested that a system
involving partial payments represented by $25 bonds paying semiannual
interest might be helpful. Bonds of such low denominations might, he
thought, be purchased by Negroes. By such a system Negroes would learn
to invest their money wisely, and by putting money into substantial
securities would encourage real estate investments. These securities
could be sold by Negro bankers and real estate brokers. But he expressed
confidence that not a few white people would buy bonds of that character.
They would be based on about 60 per cent of the value of the property.
One real estate broker averred that success in financing Negro home buyers
would be contingent upon creating definite districts in any portion of
the city where the colored men may find it necessary to live in order to
be able to reach their business or their place of employment, districts
to be known as their exclusive territory. Then it would be possible to
go to a mortgage loan house and present a definite case when a mortgage
falls due. Knowing that the property was that of a Negro, and knowing the
district, one would have a definite basis for estimating future increase
or depreciation of value. It was his opinion that white people would
support a market of that nature, because it would not only protect the
colored man and the white man alike but all of the property interests
of the city. He disclaimed any desire to promote segregation. But he
maintained that so long as the races mixed, clashes were inevitable, and
that the problem of selling Negro loans, erecting houses, and renewing
mortgages would solve itself under this plan, "because white men will
be very glad to come to the assistance of colored."
It happens, however, that some subdivisions developed "especially
for Negroes" present low standards as well as exploitation. One such
subdivision is called Lilydale. An investigator reported on it as follows:
Lilydale is on a flat prairie and was laid out as a subdivision
for Negro residents near the corner of Ninety-fifth and State
streets several years ago. It is about five blocks square. The
developer is a prominent white real estate dealer active in
subdivision property generally. Another well-known real estate
man, who is also a prominent local politician, is interested
in establishing a Negro colony on this property. The latter is
agent for a great deal of property on the South Side tenanted
by Negroes.
Many Negroes purchased lots in Lilydale at fairly high prices,
considering that virtually no improvements had been made to
the property. Water has since been laid in some of the streets
and some of them are supplied with sewers, but there is no
paving and no lighting. Sidewalks are few, mud holes many.
Yards, streets, and alleys are unkempt.
Those who promoted the subdivision set up the shells of a few
houses, mainly of the bungalow type. Most of these were sold
and the inside finish was supplied by the purchasers. Most
of these sale houses, though, remain unfinished. The building
of houses in Lilydale has been half-hearted, and most of the
structures are so poorly constructed that they are conspicuously
uncomfortable. Some of these were built by piecemeal with any
kind of waste building material that could be gathered. The
people in this isolated community apparently are making the
best of a hopeless situation. They express a desire to recover
the money they have invested. Provisions are obtained from two
or three small stores. There is a church in the vicinity, but
at the time of the investigation no services were being held
in it. The children attend a branch of the Burnside School,
which is conveniently located. The teacher is a Negro woman,
a graduate of a southern normal school. She reported that
there is apparently no prejudice between the white and Negro
children; that their only differences are those to which all
children fall heir. She regards the Negro colony of Lilydale
as a bad mistake and would discourage other Negroes from
making purchases there. She regards the investment there as
of doubtful value.
There is a car line on Ninety-fifth Street which connects with
the industries of South Chicago, where a number of the men of
Lilydale are employed.
Adding to the loneliness of the general aspect is the fact that
most of the surrounding area is still what is termed "acreage."
Pertinent also is the statement of a man who for years has been interested
in the housing difficulties of Negroes.
Some people have suggested taking a vacant piece of property
and building it up for colored occupancy, but there is the
biggest hubbub raised when any such attempt is made. People
complain: "You will ruin this whole neighborhood! You will
ruin the street car line! Everything out in that neighborhood
will be ruined all along the street, because if you build up
a colored neighborhood in any one particular location nobody
else will want to go out that way." So that I have come to the
point where I say there is no solution. I can't do anything.
I'd have been willing to put in a million dollars in property
anywhere where there would have been a chance to get 5 per cent
return on my money. There isn't any use in doing a thing that
isn't economically sound. I wanted to bring this up to show
that I had given it some thought, and that I am very desirous
of having somebody make a suggestion that is feasible so that
something can be done.
The difficulty of disposing of loans in a district inhabited by Negroes
was touched upon by a loan expert from the Chicago Trust Company, which
handles such loans. The trouble, he thought, centers on the character
of the property and of the district, rather than on the fact that the
property happened to be owned or occupied by Negroes. He said that even
Negro investors object to property in such a district for the reason
that it is old, little in demand, and generally a poor risk. He suggested
the possibility of small mortgage bond issues with separate notes. This
would save the expense of printing the bonds, which is considerable at
present prices, and the investor would be afforded the same security.
He also suggested having "baby" bonds printed in standard form, so that
they could be simply filled in, thus saving expense.
Another real estate broker who had dealt in mortgages of South Side
Negroes for a number of years declared that the average mortgage buyer
seems to prefer those on new bungalows where the margin of security is
less than that on property in the Negro district. Since the bungalow's
cost of construction was less, the chance of revenue under adverse
circumstances would be less. He maintained that a ten- or twelve-room
apartment house in the Second Ward (South Side) affords a better margin
of security than the ordinary cheap bungalow, and that it was therefore
a question of educating mortgage buyers on the question of security. The
best evidence on this, he maintained, would be the number of foreclosures.
He had never had to foreclose with Negroes in the fifteen years of his
experience. In that time only two contracts had been forfeited, both
because of disputes between the heirs and the buyers. His firm had,
however, made new contracts when illness or other adverse circumstances
had halted payments, thus allowing the buyers to start over again. Means
had also been taken to see that buyers paid their taxes, in which process
they had required education. White people must be depended upon to buy
the Negro's loans. Very few Negroes buy loans. Their tendency, he said,
is to invest in a home earlier in their career than the white people,
and they buy as soon as they have accumulated enough to make the initial
payment.
According to a bank appraiser's opinion Negroes do not understand values,
and they are often led to purchase a building at much more than its
worth. In consequence the amount of loans they need is much greater than
it ought to be. He had not found, however, that the Negroes allow their
property to deteriorate unduly. A different situation had been found
where white people lease to Negroes.
According to some real estate dealers, there are cases where houses
are allowed to deteriorate, where the payment has been larger than the
purchaser could carry conveniently. But "after he has taken care of the
payment and has his deed, he will give attention to the improvement of
the house." Others agreed that the Negro mortgage debtor is quite as
reliable as a white debtor of the same class.
The president of the Cook County Real Estate Board suggested that one
means of creating a market for Negro loans would be the passage of the
"Home Loan Bank Bill." Its provisions are that no loan would be made
in excess of $5,000, but loans would be made up to 80 per cent of the
fair value of the property. Many of the loan houses, he declared, do
not consider small loans, a fact confirmed by the Commission. He cited
one house that will not consider a loan of less than $500,000. For this
reason he suggested that this business should be handled by the building
and loan associations, since they do business on a smaller margin of
operating cost and he regarded them as the proper media for finding
suitable markets for Negro mortgages.
Involved in the plan for funding the Negro's loans was the question
of segregation. It has been maintained that not much financing could
be expected from white people unless boundaries were allotted to the
Negroes, so that investors in loans would know definitely what to expect.
Opinions, of course, differed on segregation. It was admitted that a
spreading out of the Negro population in Chicago is to be expected, that
Negroes can hardly be expected to remain in the districts in which they
have hitherto virtually segregated themselves. But the opinion was also
given that their tendency is to remain among and near their own people.
IV. FINANCIAL RESOURCES OF NEGROES
The chief concern of investors, brokers, and real estate dealers is as to
the ability of Negroes to meet obligations. There is a common belief, not
shaken even by the satisfactory experiences of those who have dealt with
them, that Negroes have no financial resources, and are thriftless and
improvident. Inasmuch as a large part of the present housing difficulty
hinges upon this point, the Commission made inquiries as to the thrift
of Negroes. A group of large banks in the "Loop" and in neighborhoods
of Negro residents were asked to give their experiences with Negroes
as depositors and investors. In spite of contrary opinion it appears
that the resources of Negroes in Chicago are astonishingly large. In
the summer of 1920 in one of the South Side banks operated by white men
Negroes had deposits of $750,000. One banker told of a Negro banker who
sold among the Negroes a bond issue of $150,000 on an old building on
Wabash Avenue, paying solicitors 10 per cent commission to make sales.
The savings deposits in his bank recently had grown very materially. It
was his experience that only a few Negroes buy bonds. They only inquire
casually about them.
The sales manager for bonds at a large savings bank, however, told of
the sale of $3,000 worth of bonds to a Negro woman who paid for them
from a roll of bills of $10 to $50. Another "downtown" broker told of a
Negro porter in a "Loop" hotel, who recently loaned $6,000 through his
firm.
The information as to Negro deposits, sought by the Commission, was
provided by seven trust and savings banks, three state banks, two national
banks, and one trust company. These were able to isolate and check up
their Negro deposits. One of the banks had $1,500,000 on deposit for
Negroes; another $1,000,000. Still another had 4,000 Negro depositors.
A state bank had $650,000 on deposit for Negroes, another $150,000 and
one of the national banks had $47,000.
The average deposits of the Negroes are not so large as those of all
the depositors. The comparison, however, reveals a fair proportion when
it is considered that there are many very large individual depositors
and business houses among the whites. This is how the amounts run, by
institutions:
Average Individual Savings Balance Average Individual Balance
(White and Negro Combined) (Negroes Only)
$125.00 $ 50.00
108.88 66.76
545.00 332.00
400.00 200.00
120.00 60.00
235.00 100.00
125.00 10.00
196.00 105.00
186.82 300.00
230.00 186.00
It was the almost unanimous report that Negroes are more likely to
withdraw their accounts than are white people, that their accounts are
less permanent. In two instances only was the opinion expressed that
they were about the same with both races.
Accompanying the questionnaire to banks was a list of questions concerning
real estate loans. One of these was: "Does your bank make loans to Negroes
on real estate, collateral, commercial paper, or personal notes?" All
except one of the trust and savings banks replied in the affirmative.
One of the state banks buys commercial paper on proper security, but
not real estate loans because of the difficulty in selling them. One of
the national banks buys commercial or collateral paper on its merits,
without regard to color. Indeed, it appears that no color line is drawn
in this line of business except by the few institutions that decline
all loans to Negroes.
In general it was found that the Negroes are showing strong tendencies
to open bank accounts, that they are steadily improving in the amount
of deposits made, in the steadiness of their accounts, and in thrift in
general. However, it appears that in only a few of the banks are they
welcomed and in most of them they are only tolerated. In banks located in
neighborhoods in which Negroes live there is an amazing number of Negro
depositors, who receive, as a rule, friendly advice and help in their
financial transactions. Thus Negroes are taught banking formalities,
while thrift is encouraged, and a good spirit is developed among the white
employees toward Negro depositors. In some instances, however, Negroes,
like their white brothers, show suspicion of banking institutions when
they have suffered losses.
It appears also that, in addition to the growing desire to invest in
homes of their own, Negroes are showing a strong tendency to engage in
business ventures. They are developing insurance companies, co-operative
stores, retail stores of various kinds, and kindred enterprises.
_Negroes' lack of opportunities for banking experience._--In order to
carry forward successfully their business undertakings Negroes need
practical personal experience and training in banking and financial
methods. Yet there is a strong tendency to bar Negroes from employment
in banks, except as porters or in some unskilled capacity, and they are
thus denied the experience needed in solving financial problems among
their own race.
Bankers were asked: "If Negroes competent to learn practical banking
were available, could you employ them?" Here are some of the condensed
replies:
1. Other employees would refuse to co-operate with them and
associate with them.
2. They are not reliable as a rule.
3. Do not think so.
4. Yes.
5. No.
6. We have no objections beyond the fact that 95 per cent of
our depositors are white; consequently we would not care to
employ colored tellers or clerks in handling their business.
7. We could not have them in clerical positions.
8. In a general way we feel that the employment of Negroes by
banking institutions would cause trouble with certain classes
of our depositors.
9. Very difficult to work white and colored in same office or
cages. White customers prefer to have white clerks wait upon
them.
10. Clerks who were antagonistic to Negroes would bring
about constant difficulties through the misplacing of papers,
mistakes, etc., which would seem to be the fault of the Negroes.
11. Have found that a Negro will appear to be strictly honest
for a period of years and then turn around and prove not to be.
12. Our section of the city is entirely white, but with a fear
of colored invasion. There is, therefore, a strong prejudice
against them. We have only about half a dozen accounts with
colored people. Two of these are in the savings department
and are maintained with large balances. These two customers
are thrifty and careful with their money. The others are not.
13. In former years a bank position was eagerly sought and
considered exceptionally good. At present, because of higher
salaries which can be offered by concerns which make greater
earnings than banks and can therefore pay more, the banks are
not getting the same high grade of employees. With the former
class it would have been possible to appeal to their sense of
duty to help educate the Negroes and to overcome prejudice.
With present conditions it is not likely that this appeal would
have the same effect, and prejudice against Negroes would make
trouble in our routine.
14. Social factors enter. For instance, banks often have
dinners or other events for or among their employees. No "Loop"
hotel would put on an affair for whites and Negroes. There
is also the difficulty of washrooms, and lockers, etc., where
prejudiced employees could make a great deal of trouble.
It would seem, then, that there is not much chance for the hundreds of
intelligent Negro high-school and college graduates in Chicago to obtain
a practical education in banking methods through direct experience. Banks
owned by Negroes are few and small, and there is scarcely any opportunity
to obtain similar experience in Negro building and loan, insurance, and
other companies, which are also limited in number.
CHAPTER VI
RACIAL CONTACTS
INTRODUCTION
Contacts of whites and Negroes in the North and South differ according
to the institutions and traditions of the sections in which they have
been reared. In the South relations are fixed and generally understood,
although Negroes consider the institutions on which these relations are
based oppressive and consistently oppose them. There the "color line"
is drawn rigidly without reference to the desires or comfort of Negroes
or the free expression of their citizenship privileges. Because it is
nearer than the North to the institution of slavery, the South still
maintains an almost patriarchal relationship with its Negro population.
Small communities, the plantation system, and the great numbers of
Negroes in domestic service hold the two races steadily in contacts so
close that class as well as race lines are maintained with deliberateness
and persistence. Even where there are no laws specifically regulating
association of the races, the sentiment of the community is enforced,
frequently in disregard of existing general laws. Thus Negroes may not
eat in a restaurant with whites, sit in adjoining seats in a theater,
live in the same neighborhoods, work together on the same jobs, or attend
the same schools.
In northern communities the institutions are more liberal and with few
exceptions there are no restrictive laws applying specifically to racial
association. In fact, the trend of legislation and of court decisions
is strongly toward adopting and enforcing general regulations without
regard to race or color. Relations are less personal, contacts are wider
and more frequent.
From a very simple organization of relations in the South, Negroes are
transported to more complex relations based on more elaborate urban
distribution of responsibilities. Thus it happens that whites and Negroes
in Chicago may be found working together in industry, riding together on
street cars, attending the same schools, sharing political activities,
with an increasing number of Negroes holding public office, transacting
business in banks, stores, and real estate, competing in athletics in
public schools, colleges, and the Y.M.C.A., and conferring on social
problems in civic and reform clubs.
The increasing number of these contacts cannot fail to influence the
necessary adjustments. The general public seems to accept necessary
contacts with a minimum of outward friction, as is shown by thousands
of daily contacts. Each contact, however, where there is friction, is
a focus of comment, antagonism, resentment, prejudice, or fear. But
association in such places as hotels, restaurants, barber shops, dance
halls, and theaters is often limited by tradition and custom in the
North as strictly as by regulation in the South.
A. LEGAL STATUS OF NEGROES IN ILLINOIS
The legal status of Negroes in Illinois differs in no respect from that
of white persons. The limitations which affect Negroes are established
through rules imposed by persons who offer public services and
accommodations. When these rules are unfair, evasive, or even illegal,
they can be enforced only because of non-enforcement of existing laws.
Federal and state courts are in accord in holding Negro men and women in
Illinois to be citizens of the United States and of the commonwealth,
protected by the laws against discrimination or oppression on account
of their race or color.
There are two lines of decisions in Illinois relating to discriminations
on account of color. One line of cases prohibits discrimination in certain
public places and the other prohibits discrimination against school
children. All but two of these cases were tried since the passage of the
School Act and the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting such discrimination,
enacted in 1874 and 1885, respectively. The civil-rights cases[28] are
briefly reviewed below by a consideration of the school cases.
I. CIVIL RIGHTS IN PUBLIC PLACES
The Civil Rights Act, originally passed in 1885, was amended in 1903,
and again in 1911. Section 1 of this act now provides:
That all persons within the jurisdiction of said State of
Illinois shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment
of the accommodation, advantages, facilities and privileges
of inns, restaurants, eating houses, hotels, soda-fountains,
saloons, barber shops, bathrooms, theaters, skating rinks,
concerts, cafés, bicycle rinks, elevators, ice-cream parlors
or rooms, railroads, omnibuses, stages, street cars, boats,
funeral hearses, and public conveyances on land and water,
and all other places of public accommodation and amusement,
subject only to the conditions and limitations established by
law and applicable alike to all citizens; nor shall there be
any discrimination on account of race or color in the price
to be charged and paid for lots or graves in any cemetery or
place for burying the dead, but the price to be charged and
paid for lots in any cemetery or place for burying the dead
shall be applicable alike to all citizens of every race and
color.
Section 2 provides:
That any person who shall violate any of the provisions of
the foregoing section by denying to any citizen, except for
reasons applicable alike to all citizens of every race and
color and regardless of color or race, the full enjoyment of
any accommodations, advantages, facilities or privileges in
said section enumerated or by aiding or inciting such denial,
shall for every such offense forfeit and pay a sum not less
than $25 nor more than $500 to the person aggrieved thereby,
to be recovered in any court of competent jurisdiction in the
county where said offense was committed, and shall also for
every such offense be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon
conviction thereof, shall be fined not to exceed $500 or shall
be imprisoned not more than one year or both; and _provided_
further, that a judgment in favor of the party aggrieved,
or punishment upon an indictment, shall be a bar to either
prosecution respectively.
_Anna William_ v. _Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company_ (55 Ill.
185)--the first case of color discrimination which reached the supreme
court of Illinois--was heard in 1870, before the passage of the Civil
Rights Act. The court decided that a railroad company could not exclude
a Negro woman on account of her color from a certain car reserved for
the use of ladies. The evidence showed that the brakeman had refused to
permit the Negro woman to enter the "ladies' car" and pushed her away.
The jury awarded her $200 damages, which the court upheld as reasonable.
Before the Amendment of 1903, the Civil Rights Act of 1885 provided that
all persons should be entitled
to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodation,
advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, restaurants,
eating houses, barber shops, public conveyances on land or
water, theaters, and all other places of public accommodation
and amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations
established by law and applicable alike to all citizens.
In 1896, in _Cecil_ v. _Green_ (60 Ill. App., 61; affirmed, 161 Ill.
265), the court decided that the expression "all other places of public
accommodation" embraced only places of the same general character as
those enumerated, and therefore that soda fountains were not included
within the general term.
The amendment of 1903 included soda fountains, saloons, bathrooms,
skating rinks, concerts, bicycle rinks, elevators, and ice-cream parlors.
In _Baylies_ v. _Curry_ (30 Ill. App. 105; affirmed, 128 Ill. 36), decided
in 1889, a Negro woman, after being refused tickets at the box-office of
Curry's Theater, had a white woman purchase two tickets for her in the
balcony. Upon attempting to use them, the Negro woman and her husband were
referred back to the box-office and their money returned. The proprietor
introduced evidence to show that his theater was in a bad neighborhood,
and he had, therefore, adopted the rule of reserving certain rows for
Negroes in each section of the house. The supreme court, in affirming
judgment for $100 damages, said: "Beyond all question, the Civil Rights
Act prohibits the denial of access to the theater and to the several
circles or grades of seats therein, because of race or color."
In 1903, in _Grace_ v. _Moseley_ (112 Ill. App. 100), it was held that
the statute imposes liability only where the defendant denies or incites
a denial of service, not where he merely fails to provide service.
The amendment of 1911 provided that there should not be any discrimination
on account of race or color in the price charged for lots or graves in
any cemetery.
Relying upon this provision, Gaskill, a Negro, applied for a writ of
mandamus to compel the Forest Home Cemetery Company to receive the body
of his wife for burial (_People ex rel. Gaskill_ v. _Forest Home Cemetery
Company_, 258 Ill. 36, 1913). The cemetery company had passed a resolution
in 1907 that thereafter the cemetery would be maintained for the burial
of white persons only--except that colored persons owning lots in the
cemetery, and their direct heirs, should be admitted for burial. Gaskill
did not own a lot in the cemetery, but four of his children had been
buried there fifteen to twenty years before in single graves separated
from each other; and when he applied in 1912 for space for the burial of
his wife, the company refused permission solely on account of her color.
The court held that the 1911 amendment did not prohibit a cemetery
corporation, which did not have the power of eminent domain under its
charter and which had no monopoly of the burial places in its vicinity,
from making and enforcing a rule excluding colored persons from burial
in its cemetery. The case was taken on writ of error to the Supreme
Court of the United States (238 U.S. 606), but the writ was dismissed
for want of jurisdiction without further comment.
In _Dean_ v. _Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company_ (183 Ill. App. 317;
1913), Dean, a Negro, recovered damages of $300 from the railway company
for its refusal to allow him to ride in a station elevator because of
his color.[29]
II. DISCRIMINATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The first school case was decided in 1874, before there was any
statute forbidding discrimination against Negro children in the public
schools.[30] In _Chase_ v. _Stephenson_ (71 Ill. 383; 1874) a taxpayer
filed a bill to enjoin the directors of a school district from maintaining
a separate school for Negro children; and the court held that the
directors had no authority to discriminate on account of color, and the
separate school was enjoined.
In March, 1874, "An Act to Protect Colored Children in Their Rights to
Attend Public Schools" was passed which provided:
That all directors of schools, boards of education, or other
school officers, whose duty it now is or may be hereafter
to provide in their respective jurisdictions schools for the
education of all children between the ages of six and twenty-one
years, are prohibited from excluding directly or indirectly
any such child from such school on account of the color of
such child.
Two school cases have since arisen at Quincy, Illinois. The first,
decided in 1882 (_People ex rel. Longress_ v. _Board of Education of
Quincy_, 101 Ill. 308), was a _quo warranto_ proceeding, attacking a
regulation of the school board, requiring all Negro children to attend
one school, and excluding them from all others. The court held that
the laws of Illinois prohibited such discrimination and the board was
without authority to make the regulation.
In the second Quincy case, decided in 1888 (_People_ v. _McFall and
Board of Education of Quincy_ 26 Ill. App. 319; affirmed, 124 Ill. 642),
the petition for _quo warranto_ charged that the Board of Education
had continued the illegal discrimination against Negro children ever
since the decision in the first case. The petition was supported by a
number of affidavits of Negroes. After a full hearing on affidavits and
counter-affidavits the trial court denied the petition. The appellate
court affirmed the judgment, characterizing the affidavits in support
of the petition as "vague and unsatisfactory"; and the supreme court
affirmed the judgment.
Quincy has fourteen schools, and the School Board has divided the city
into four school districts. The Lincoln School is exclusively a Negro
school and is the only school in the district in which most of the
Negroes live. All white children in that district are transferred to other
schools, and the few Negro children outside the Lincoln district are urged
to attend the Lincoln School. The Negro teachers and Negro principal
of the Lincoln School are paid higher salaries than other teachers in
Quincy, and are told that if they wish to maintain themselves in the
Quincy schools, they must persuade Negro children in other districts
to attend the Lincoln School. In this way the board has succeeded in
confining Negro children with few exceptions to the Lincoln School. Yet
some Negroes are attending five other schools, including the high school.
There have also been two school cases from Alton, Illinois. The first
case was _People_ v. _Board of Education of Upper Alton_ (127 Ill. 613),
decided in 1889. This was a proceeding by mandamus, begun in the supreme
court by John Peair, to compel the Board of Education to admit his two
children to the high school of Upper Alton. Certain issues of fact were
certified to the circuit court for trial by jury. The jury returned a
general verdict in favor of the Board of Education, notwithstanding the
following special findings in answer to questions asked by the relator,
John Peair:
_Q._: When application was made ... to the principal in charge
of the said building on behalf of relator's two children
for permission to attend school in said building, was such
permission refused by said principal because said children
were colored?
_A._: Yes.
_Q._: Have not the children of relator, John Peair, been
excluded from attending school in said high school building
by the defendants on account of the color of said children?
_A._: Yes.
The supreme court held that the general verdict in favor of the Board of
Education was "so manifestly the result of misdirection by the court as
to be entitled to no consideration," and a writ of mandamus was ordered.
The second school case from Alton, though begun in 1899, was not finally
decided until 1908. This was a petition for mandamus filed in the supreme
court by Scott Bibb to compel the mayor and city council of Alton to admit
his children to the Washington School which they had been attending, and
from which he alleged they were excluded on account of color and were
transferred to a school attended only by Negro children. The supreme
court certified the case to the circuit court of Madison County for
the trial of certain issues of facts. Before the supreme court finally
ordered the mandamus to issue in 1908 the case had been tried by a jury
seven times, had been before the supreme court five times, and the Bibb
children were grown up. It is interesting as a flagrant example of race
prejudice in the trial judge and jury.
In this case (_People ex rel. Scott Bibb_ v. _Mayor and Common Council
of Alton_, 233 Ill. 542) the supreme court said:
The issues in this case have been tried seven times by juries
in the circuit court, and in two of them the jury disagreed.
Upon the first trial where there was a verdict it was in
favor of the respondents, and it was certified to this court.
That verdict was set aside for manifest error prejudicial
to the relator in rulings of the court in the admission of
evidence. (_People ex rel._ v. _Mayor and Common Council of
Alton_, 179 Ill. 615.) There was another trial resulting in a
verdict in favor of the respondents, which was set aside on
account of a misdirection of the court in submitting to the
jury a question of law. (_People ex rel._ v. _Mayor and Common
Council of Alton_, 193 Ill. 309.) Upon another trial there
was a third verdict in favor of the respondents, which this
court set aside because clearly contrary to the facts proved
and without any support in the evidence. It was proved at that
trial, beyond dispute or controversy, that the respondents
were guilty of the charge contained in the petition, and the
evidence introduced by them had no tendency to prove that the
intention clearly manifested by their acts did not exist. The
verdict could only be accounted for as a product of passion,
prejudice or hostility to the law. (_People ex rel._ v. _Mayor
and Common Council of Alton_, 209 Ill. 461.) The attorney for
relator then urged that a peremptory writ should be awarded
on the ground that the evidence in the record clearly showed
the relator to be entitled to it. The relator, however, had
not requested the circuit court to direct a verdict in his
favor, and it was said that if such a motion had been made the
court would doubtless have granted it. The court said that the
issues were sent to the circuit court for trial in conformity
with the practice governing the trial of issues of fact in
actions at law before a jury, and it was not deemed advisable,
in the existing condition of the record, to set aside that
order. The case was sent back for another trial, and upon the
next trial the attorney for relator moved the court to direct
a verdict in his favor, and this the court refused to do,
assigning as a reason that this court had directed that the
issues be submitted to another jury. The excuse was so shallow
and baseless as to justify a conclusion that it was a mere
pretext to evade a compliance with the law as declared by this
court, and the verdict was set aside and the circuit court
directed, in the trial of the questions of fact, to proceed in
accordance with the opinion then filed and the earlier opinions
in the case. (_People ex rel._ v. _Mayor and Common Council
of Alton_, 221 Ill. 275.) The case has been again tried, and
a verdict in favor of the respondents, unsupported by any
evidence, has been returned to this court. The evidence was to
all intents and purposes the same as upon the former trials,
and demonstrated, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the
children of relator were excluded from the Washington School,
which was the most convenient of the public schools of the
city to which they had the right to be admitted, and that the
exclusion was solely on account of their race and color, and
for no other reason whatever. The evidence for the respondents
that nothing was said about schools or colored children by the
mayor and council in changing the ordinances for the purpose
of excluding colored children from schools attended by white
children; that the intention to exclude them was not declared,
or that orders were never issued to the police, or that the
mayor never intended the police force under his control to
do what they did and what he knew they were doing, had no
tendency whatever to prove that the children of the relator
were not excluded by the respondents on account of their race
or color. At the conclusion of the evidence the attorney for
the relator moved the court to direct a verdict finding the
issues in favor of the relator and presented to the court a
written instruction for that purpose, but the court denied
the motion and refused to give the instruction. In so doing
the court erred, and the error was in a matter of law, and
contrary to the law in this case as declared by this court in
previous opinions filed in the case.
The attorney for respondents says that we ought to approve
this verdict for the reason that the questions of fact have
been tried seven times in the circuit court; that the juries
have twice disagreed and five juries have decided in favor of
the respondents, and all the trials have been presided over by
learned judges. Great weight is justly given to the conclusion
of a jury upon controverted questions of fact where the verdict
appears to be the result of an honest exercise of judgment and
the weighing, with fair deliberation, of the credibility of
witnesses, but it is beyond dispute that this verdict, when
viewed in the most favorable light for the respondents, does
not represent any conclusion of the jury from the evidence, and
that all of the verdicts represent nothing but a refusal by
juries to enforce a law which they do not personally approve
or which is distasteful to them. In the first opinion filed
in this case it was said that it might be that the wisest
of both races believe that the best interests of each would
be promoted by voluntary separation in the public schools,
but that it is no less the duty of courts to enforce the law
as it stands, without respect to race or persons. We would
be remiss in our duty to enforce the law and would forfeit
the respect of all law-abiding citizens if we should approve
this verdict for no other reason than because it is one of
a series which represent, not the enforcement of law or the
discharge of duty, but a deplorable disregard for the law and
for the rights of citizens. The verdicts have all been more
offensive and dangerous assaults upon the law, the government,
and organized societies, than utterances of individuals or
societies who are opposed to all law, and which are regarded
only as the sentiments of the ignorant, depraved and vicious
who are the enemies of a government of laws. These verdicts
were pronounced, not by those who were avowed enemies of law
and government, but by those who constituted a part of the
governmental machinery for the enforcement of the law and
who had been sworn to discharge their duty in that regard.
Such verdicts not only denote opposition to the enforcement
of the law, but they also jeopardize the highest interests of
society and individuals. When the law, through the refusal of
jurors to regard their oaths, becomes impotent to protect the
rights of the humblest, the rights of no person are secure;
and jurors may take heed that they obey and enforce the law,
lest their refusal to enforce the law for the protection of
others becomes effective to deprive them of their legal rights
and substitute the beliefs of jurors and courts as to the
wisdom of laws enacted for their protection. The error of the
court in refusing to direct a verdict is not obviated by the
fact that there have been so many verdicts contrary to the
law and the evidence. The verdict must be set aside, and the
next question is whether the issues shall be again sent to
the circuit court for trial.
In this case the effort to obtain a fair trial of the issues
of fact before a jury has proved utterly futile, and upon the
trial now under review the court refused to direct a verdict
in passing upon a question of law raised by the motion of the
relator for such a direction. It is clear that after so many
trials there can be no further evidence produced by either party
but that all the evidence relating to the issues is before us.
We are of the opinion that it would be a wrong to the relator
to further delay him in establishing his rights and to compel
him to add to the trouble and expense already incurred in an
effort to compel obedience to the law. The verdict of the jury
is set aside and the issues will not be again certified to
the circuit court for trial but will now be finally disposed
of. The averments of the petition have been fully proved upon
repeated trials and the evidence is preserved in the record.
The evidence produced by the respondents affords no support
to their answer.
We therefore find that all the material facts alleged in the
petition are true as therein stated and that the relator is
entitled to a writ of _mandamus_ as therein prayed, and it is
therefore ordered that a peremptory writ of _mandamus_ issue
according to the prayer of the petition, that the respondents
pay the costs, and that execution issue therefor.
B. CONTACTS IN CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The public schools furnish one of the most important points of contact
between the white and Negro races, because of the actual number of
contacts in the daily school life of thousands of Negro and white
children, and also because the reactions of young children should indicate
whether or not there is instinctive race prejudice.
The Chicago Board of Education makes no distinction between Negro and
white children. There are no separate schools for Negroes. None of the
records of any teacher or principal shows which children are Negroes and
which white. The board does not know how many Negro children there are
in any school or in the city at large, nor how many of the teachers are
Negroes. It was impossible to obtain from the board, for example, a list
of the schools having a large Negro enrolment with which to begin the
investigation. An unfortunate but unavoidable incidental effect of the
investigation was the focusing of attention of principals and teachers
on the Negroes in their schools.
Frequently white teachers in charge of classes with Negro pupils are
race conscious and accept the conduct of white children as normal and pay
disproportionate attention to the conduct of Negro children as exceptional
and distinctive. As a result of the focusing of attention on Negro
children, the inquiry, which was intended to get balanced information,
developed a disproportionate amount of information concerning their
conduct as compared with that of whites. Teachers who considered both
races were inclined to believe that Negro children as a group had no
special weaknesses that white children as a group did not also exhibit;
that some Negro children, like any other children, were good, some were
bad, and some indifferent, and that no generalizations about the race
could be made from the characteristics or attitude of a few.
It became evident as soon as the investigation started that it was
necessary to distinguish between the northern and the southern Negro.
The southern Negro is conspicuous the moment one enters the elementary
schools. Over-age or retarded children are found in all the lower grades,
special classes, and ungraded rooms, and are noticeable all the way to
the eighth grade, where seventeen- and nineteen-year-old children are
sometimes found. In some schools these children are found in the regular
classes; in others there are special rooms for retarded children, and
as these groups are often composed almost entirely of Negro children,
there is an appearance of segregation which made necessary a study of
these retarded children from the South.
The southern child is hampered first of all by lack of educational
opportunity in the South. He is usually retarded by two or more years
when he enters the northern school because he has never been able
to attend school regularly, due to the short term in southern rural
schools, distance from school, and inadequacy of teaching force and
school equipment. According to a report by the United States Bureau of
Education on _Negro Education_[31] 90 per cent of the Negro children
between fifteen and twenty years of age attending school in the South
are over-age. Says this report:
The inadequacy of the elementary school system for colored
children is indicated both by the comparisons of public
appropriations and by the fact that the attendance in both
public and private schools is only 58.1 per cent of the children
six to fourteen years of age. The average length of the public
school term is less than five months in practically all of the
states. Most of the school buildings, especially those in the
rural districts, are in wretched condition. There is little
supervision and little effort to improve the schools or adapt
their efforts to the needs of the community. The reports of
the state departments of Georgia and Alabama indicate that 70
per cent of the colored teachers have third grade or temporary
certificates, representing a preparation less than that usually
given in the first eight elementary grades. Investigations made
by supervisors of colored schools in other states indicate
that the percentage of poorly prepared colored teachers is
almost as high in the other southern states.[32]
The inadequacy of Negro teachers' salaries is shown by the per capita
expenditure in six southern states for each white and Negro child between
six and fourteen years of age. The salary of the teacher, expressed in
per capita for each child, ranges from $5.27 to $13.79 for white pupils
and from $1.44 to $8.53 for Negro pupils. South Carolina pays its white
teachers ten times as much as its Negro teachers. Alabama pays its white
teachers about nine times as much. In Kentucky the per capita for white
and colored is about the same.[33]
Distribution of school funds by counties indicated a decreasing per
capita expenditure for the Negro as the proportion of Negroes in the
county increased. A table from the Bulletin shows:[34]
========================================================================
County Groups, | White | Negro | Per Capita | Per Capita
Percentage of | School | School | Expenditure, | Expenditure,
Negroes in the | Population | Population | White | Negro
Population | | | |
------------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------
Counties under | 974,289 | 45,039 | $7.96 | $7.23
10 per cent | | | |
------------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------
Counties 10 to | 1,008,372 | 215,774 | 9.55 | 5.55
25 per cent | | | |
------------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------
Counties 25 to | 1,132,999 | 709,259 | 11.11 | 3.19
50 per cent | | | |
------------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------
Counties 50 to | 364,990 | 661,329 | 12.53 | 1.77
75 per cent | | | |
------------------+------------+------------+--------------+------------
Counties 75 to | 40,003 | 207,900 | 22.22 | 1.78
100 per cent | | | |
=========================================================================
A southern state superintendent of education is quoted in the report,
as follows:
There has never been any serious attempt in this state to
offer adequate educational facilities for the colored race. The
average length of the term for the state is only four months;
practically all of the schools are taught in dilapidated
churches, which, of course, are not equipped with suitable
desks, blackboards, and the other essentials of a school;
practically all of the teachers are incompetent, possessing
little or no education and having had no professional training
whatever, except a few weeks obtained in the summer schools;
the schools are generally overcrowded, some of them having as
many as 100 students to the teacher; no attempt is made to do
more than teach the children to read, write, and figure, and
these subjects are learned very imperfectly.[35]
Another difficulty was suggested by the principal of a Chicago school
(Webster) where 30 per cent of the children are Negroes, who said:
"We base our educational ideas on certain backgrounds. The curriculum
in Chicago was planned for children who come from families who are
educated. It doesn't take children coming from uneducated families into
consideration. That isn't fair either to the white or colored children."
The problem of readjustment to life in a northern city also affects the
child's school life, and he is self-conscious and inclined to be either
too timid or too self-assertive. A Negro teacher in speaking of the
difficulties confronting the southern Negro, as well as the whole Negro
group, said:
The southern Negro has pushed the Chicago Negro out of his home,
and the Chicago Negro in seeking a new home is opposed by the
whites. What is to happen? The whites are prejudiced against
the whole Negro group. The Chicago Negro is prejudiced against
the southern Negro. Surely it makes a difficult situation for
the southern Negro. No wonder he meets a word with a blow.
And all this comes into the school more or less.
Another Negro teacher thus analyzes further the adjustment problems
which tend to make the Negro newly come from the South unpopular with
the Chicago Negro, as well as with the whites:
These families from the South usually come from the country
where there are no close neighbors.... Then the family is
transplanted to Chicago to an apartment house, and even in
with another family. The whole environment is changed and
the trouble begins. No sense of property rights, no idea of
how to use conveniences, no idea of how to live in the new
home, to keep it up, to live with everybody else so near.
On top of that, the father does not fit into his work, and
therefore cannot support the family; the mother goes out to
work, and what is the result? Poorly kept houses and poorly
kept children.... A normal home shows itself in the school,
and poor home conditions show up still more.
The Negro child born in the North is not found to an unusual extent among
the retarded children. He has been able to enter school on time and to
attend the full term of nine months; his teachers compare favorably with
those in white American and foreign neighborhoods, and his parents as
a rule have a better background. Many teachers say that the progress of
northern-born Negroes compares very favorably with that of whites.
I. PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT OF SCHOOLS
Since the Board of Education keeps no record of Negro children as such,
it could not furnish a list of the schools having a percentage of Negro
children. Therefore a list was made up of all the schools in the Negro
residential areas, the boundaries of these schools were obtained from the
Board of Education, and the percentage of Negroes in each school district
was worked out from the 1920 census figures. The schools listed in Table
X were found to be situated in districts where the Negro population
was 10 per cent or more. The figures at the right show the approximate
percentage of Negro children in the school, as given by the principal
of the school.
Fuller School is a branch of Felsenthal and has the same principal;
it is in a neighborhood where the percentage of Negroes is practically
the same as in the neighborhoods around Felsenthal, but there is a very
great difference in the percentage of Negro children in the two schools,
according to figures given by the principal. It appears from this that
the principal, who is a believer in separate schools, places the large
majority of the Negro children in Fuller School. Negroes in the vicinity
say that Fuller School is run down and neglected, that the staff of
teachers is below the average, that the school has no playground of its
own but must use the one at Felsenthal, and that all the unmanageable
children are sent there from Felsenthal. It is also believed by these
Negroes that Fuller is used as a feeder for the other schools in the
neighborhoods where there are fewer Negro children.
TABLE X
SCHOOLS IN DISTRICTS HAVING AN AVERAGE NEGRO POPULATION
OF 10 PER CENT OR MORE
==============================+=============+==============
|Percentage of|Percentage of
School | Negroes in |Negro Children
| District | in School
------------------------------+-------------+--------------
Colman | 81 | 92
Copernicus | 18 | 23
Doolittle | 65 | 85
Douglas | 72 | 93
Drake | 28 | 24
Emerson (branch of Hayes) | 70 | 75
Farren | 69 | 92
Felsenthal | 38 | 20
Forrestville | 20 | 38
Fuller (branch of Felsenthal) | 42 | 90
Haven | 24 | 20
Hayes | 70 | 80
Keith | 89 | 90
McCosh | 13 | 15
Mann (branch of Raymond) | 39 | 25
Moseley | 46 | 70
Oakland | 17 | 26
Raymond | 85 | 93
Sherwood | 20 | 25
Tennyson | 14 | 28
Webster | 50 | 30
Willard | 15 | 13
------------------------------+-------------+--------------
The points in regard to physical equipment stressed by a district
superintendent in the area containing the largest number of schools
attended mainly by Negroes were: date of erection, an assembly hall
located on the main floor, gymnasium, and, in the congested districts,
bathroom and lunchroom. Table XI shows such facts concerning these
schools.
[Illustration: MOSELEY SCHOOL
Located at Twenty-fourth Street and Wabash Avenue, 70 per cent Negro
attendance.]
It will be noted that only five of these schools, or 23 per cent, were
built since 1900, and four of these five are in sections where the Negro
population is less than 25 per cent. The ten schools serving the largest
percentage of Negroes were built, one in 1856, one in 1867, seven between
1880 and 1889, and one between 1890 and 1899. Of the 235 white schools
133, or 56 per cent, were built after 1899.
TABLE XI
PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT OF TWENTY-TWO SCHOOLS ATTENDED
LARGELY BY NEGROES[36]
====================================================================
| Date of | Location of | Separate | Bath- | Lunch-
School | Erection | Assembly Hall | Gymnasium | room | room
-------------+----------+---------------+-----------+-------+-------
Colman | 1887 | None | None | Yes | Yes
Copernicus | 1907 | First floor | Yes | None | None
Doolittle | 1885 | Third floor | Combined | None | None
Douglas | 1889 | Third floor | Combined | None | None
Drake | 1900 | None | None | None | None
Emerson | 1884 | None | None | None | None
Farren | 1898 | Third floor | Combined | Yes | Yes
Felsenthal | 1901 | Third floor | Combined | None | None
Forrestville | 1896 | First floor | Yes | None | None
Fuller | 1890 | None | None | None | None
Haven | 1885 | Fourth floor | Combined | Yes | None
Hayes | 1867 | Fourth floor | Combined | Yes | Yes
Keith | 1883 | None | None | Yes | Yes
McCosh | 1895 | None | None | None | None
Mann | 1890 | Third floor | Combined | None | None
Moseley | 1856 | None | None | Yes | None
Oakland | 1903 | First floor | Combined | None | None
Raymond | 1886 | Third floor | Combined | Yes | None
Sherwood | 1892 | Third floor | Combined | None | None
Tennyson | 1895 | First floor | Combined | None | None
Webster | 1883 | None | None | None | None
Willard | 1915 | Basement | Yes | None | None
-------------+----------+---------------+-----------+-------+-------
Assembly halls and gymnasiums were totally lacking in seven of the
twenty-two schools, and in the remaining fifteen the assembly hall
was on the third or fourth floor, where, according to the district
superintendent, it cannot have maximum use for community purposes. A
really useful assembly hall, he stated, should be on the ground floor,
opening directly on the school yard, and capable of being shut off
entirely from the rest of the building so that it could be lighted and
heated separately for evening gatherings. Only three of these fifteen
schools had separate gymnasiums. In the others the gymnasium was combined
with the assembly hall. There was little in the way of apparatus;
what there was consisted mainly of hand apparatus, including clubs,
dumbbells and basket-balls, that could be used in the assembly hall
or the corridors. The district superintendent emphasized the need for
gymnasiums in Negro residential areas because the children were weak
physically and needed special exercises.
Playground space for schools attended largely by Negroes compares
favorably with that for schools attended largely by whites, though Douglas
School (92 per cent Negro), with 1,513 pupils, has only one playground
96×125 feet. Most schools have two playgrounds, one for boys and one for
girls. The only other school having such limited play space as Douglas
is a foreign school, Von Humboldt, where there are 2,500 pupils and the
playground is 50×100 feet. Like Douglas, this is a double school with
inadequate space for the children inside the school and outside. Sometimes
there is a public playground near by which relieves the congestion on
the school playground except in the case of Keith School (90 per cent
Negro), the principal of which emphasized the need for a playground near
her school.
In a group of twenty-four schools, six of which are attended mainly by
Negroes, six mainly by white Americans, and twelve mainly by children of
immigrants, it was found that there was no unusual crowding of classrooms
in those attended mainly by Negroes except in the case of Douglas School.
Conditions were practically the same in the three groups of schools.
Indications of overcrowding are the average number of seats in a
classroom, the average number of pupils per teacher, and the double-school
or shift system. There is little variation among the three groups of
schools in the number of seats in the classroom and the number of pupils
to each teacher, except that the school having the largest number of
pupils to each teacher (57) is Colman, 92 per cent Negro. Although there
are no double schools in the group attended mainly by white Americans,
one of the six schools attended mainly by Negroes and five of the schools
attended mainly by children of immigrants are double schools. Under this
system, which is a makeshift in a neighborhood where another school is
needed to take care of the children, the children go to school in two
shifts, one shift an hour later than the other, and leave correspondingly
later in the afternoon. Under this arrangement more children are at
the school during the major part of the day than can be seated in the
classroom and the full school curriculum can be carried on only under
pressure, as one group of children must always be hurried on before the
next group appears.
II. SCHOOL CONTACT PROBLEMS
Information as to problems of contact in the schools was gathered from
conferences to which the principals of high and elementary schools were
invited, and by personal visits to the schools. Thirteen elementary
schools were visited, seven of which had an enrolment of less than 50
per cent Negro, and six of which had an enrolment of more than 50 per
cent Negro. The schools with the smaller percentage were: Drake (30),[37]
Felsenthal (20), Forrestville (38), Haven (20), Oakland (26), Webster
(30), and Kenwood (a very small number of Negroes). The schools having
a majority Negro were Colman (92), Doolittle (85), Douglas (93), Farren
(92), Keith (90), and Moseley (70).
The high schools visited were Englewood, Hyde Park, and Wendell Phillips.
In Englewood and Hyde Park the percentage of Negroes was very small,
while in Wendell Phillips the Negro children were about 56 per cent of
the enrolment.
The opinions of principals and teachers about Negro children are a
cross-section of public opinion on the race question with all its
contradictions and irritations. It must therefore be borne in mind in
reading this section on school contacts that whether Negro children are
reported good or bad, bright or dull, quarrelsome or amiable, whether
antagonism and voluntary grouping or their lack are reported, there is
an inevitable tendency for the teacher to see the facts in the light of
any prejudice or general views she may have on race relations.
It was thought, for example, that for the purposes of this discussion
the schools could be put in two general groups: those with less than 50
per cent Negroes and those with more than 50 per cent Negroes. But it was
immediately apparent that no generalizations could be made on the basis
of the percentage of Negro children in the schools, because sometimes two
principals of schools having the same proportion of Negro pupils reported
widely different experience with reference to friction; and in some
cases principals of schools with a small percentage of Negroes reported
friction, while other principals of schools with a larger percentage
reported harmonious relations. The most important factor determining the
attitude of the teachers in a school was invariably the attitude of the
principal. Though there were many cases where individual teachers held
views entirely different from those of the principal, yet the attitude
of the principal was usually reflected in the expressed opinion of the
teachers and in the atmosphere of the school.
But there is no explanation for total disagreement between two teachers
in the same school as to whether or not there is race friction in the
school except difference in points of view on the race problem. This
factor is to be taken into consideration in weighing the testimony of
teachers regarding school contacts of the races.
The attitude of some of the principals and teachers was revealed in their
fear that their schools, with 20 per cent or 30 per cent Negro children,
would be regarded as largely Negro schools. The principal of a school
with 30 per cent Negro children considered it an insult to be asked
to have his school take part in a song festival with schools largely
attended by Negroes. A teacher in a school 26 per cent Negro was much
incensed because the Board of Education had sent Negroes to the school
to talk to the children on cleaning up the neighborhood. She said that
the white children did not seem to mind and listened interestedly; it
was the teachers who considered it an outrage that Negroes should come
to "tell a community seven-eighths white to clean up."
Since the elementary schools and high schools present rather different
problems, due to the greater number of social activities in the latter,
it was decided to consider the two groups separately.
1. ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
The contacts in the elementary schools fall naturally under three heads:
classroom contacts, building and playground contacts, and social contacts.
_Classroom contacts._--There was much less variety of opinion in regard
to classroom contacts than the other two. Most teachers agreed that there
was little friction so far as school work was concerned, even when it
meant sitting next to one another or in the same seats. Most kindergarten
teachers found the most natural relationship existing between the young
Negro and white children. "Neither colored nor whites have any feeling
in our kindergarten," said one principal in a school 30 per cent Negro
(Webster); "they don't understand the difference between colored and white
children." In visiting one school the investigator noticed that the white
children who objected to holding hands with the Negro children in the
kindergarten and first and second grades were the better-dressed children
who undoubtedly reflected the economic class and race consciousness of
their parents. The Armour Mission near the school had excluded Negroes
from its kindergarten, thereby fostering this spirit among the whites.
A teacher in Doolittle (85 per cent) told of a little white girl in
another school who cried because she was afraid the color from the Negro
children's hands would rub off on hers; in her present school she has
known no such instances in the kindergarten. This conduct is paralleled
in instances in which Negro children who have never had any contact with
white children in the South are afraid of them when they first come North.
Most of the teachers in the higher grades reported that there were no
signs of race prejudice in the room. A teacher at Oakland (26 per cent)
said that white girls sometimes asked to be moved to another seat when
near a very dirty Negro child, but that this often happened when the
dirty child was white. This teacher said it was the white mothers from
the South, not the children, who wanted their children to be kept away
from the Negroes. "The white children don't seem to mind the colored,"
she said. "I have had three or four mothers come in and ask that their
children be kept away from the colored, but they were women from the
South and felt race prejudice strongly. But they are the only ones who
have complained."
A teacher in a school 90 per cent Negro said that when doubling up in
the seats was necessary whites and Negroes frequently chose each other.
A teacher at Moseley (70 per cent), when the investigator was present,
called upon a white girl to act as hostess to a Negro girl who had just
come from the South, and the request was met with pride and pleasure
by the white girl. On the same occasion a white boy was asked to help a
Negro boy with his arithmetic, and the two doubled up and worked together
quite naturally.
"Race makes no difference," declared the principal of a school 92 per cent
Negro (Colman). "The other day I had them all digging in the garden, and
when they were all ready to go in I kept out one colored boy to help me
plant seeds. We could use another boy, so I told Henry to choose anyone
out of two rooms and he returned with an Italian. The color makes no
difference."
A few instances of jealousy are cited. In one of them resentment ran
high because when a loving cup was presented in McKinley (70 per cent)
for the best composition, it was awarded by a neutral outside jury to a
white girl. The principal of this 70 per cent Negro school, in addition
to finding the Negro children jealous, considered their parents insolent
and resentful. On the investigator's first visit she said that military
discipline was the only kind for children, and that absolute segregation
was necessary. At the next interview she said she preferred her school
to any other; that there was never any disciplinary difficulty, and that
white children who had moved from the district were paying car fare to
finish their course at her school.
_Discipline._--There was considerable variety of opinion among the
teachers as to whether Negro children presented any special problems of
discipline. The principal of a school 20 per cent Negro (Felsenthal),
for example, said that discipline was more difficult in this school than
in the branch where 90 per cent were Negroes (Fuller). This principal
is an advocate of separate schools. She was contradicted by a teacher
in her school who said she had never used different discipline for
the Negroes. In schools where the principals were sympathetic and the
interracial spirit good the teachers reported that Negro children were
much like other children and could be disciplined in the same way. One or
two teachers reported that Negro children could not be scolded but must
be "jollied along" and the work presented as play. This is interesting
in view of the frequent complaint of the children from the South that
the teachers in Chicago played with them all the time and did not teach
them anything.
_Attitude toward Negro teachers._--Few Negro teachers were found in the
schools investigated.
At Doolittle (85 per cent) there were thirty-three teachers, of whom two
were Negroes. There was also a Negro cadet. At Raymond (93 per cent) there
were six Negro teachers and a Negro cadet in a staff of forty. At Keith
(90 per cent) there were six Negro teachers in a staff of twelve. Two of
these principals said that their Negro teachers compared favorably with
their white teachers and that some of them were excellent. Asked whether
there was much antagonism if a Negro teacher was assigned where all the
children were white, the principal of a 93 per cent school (Raymond)
said there had been one or two such cases. "They are most successful in
the foreign districts on the West Side. The European people do not seem
to resent the presence of a colored teacher."
Another principal said that this was especially true where the foreign
element was Jewish. A Negro teacher in a West Side school, largely
Italian, is considered one of the ablest teachers in the school and
proved herself highly competent during the war, when she assisted with
the work of the draft board in the district.
One or two principals said that they would not have Negro teachers in
their schools because the white teachers "could not be intimate with
colored teachers," or because Negro teachers were "cocky," or because "the
_Defender_ preaches propaganda for colored teachers to seek positions in
white schools." Sometimes an effort was made to explain the principal's
objection to Negro teachers by saying that Negro children had no respect
for Negro teachers. One principal whose white teachers were rather below
the accepted standard said that the one colored teacher who had been
there was obliged to leave because of the children's protest against her.
A Negro teacher in a 20 per cent school (Haven) was valued highly by
the principal, who advised with her as to what measures could be taken
to prevent the appearance of race feeling. This teacher formerly taught
in a school where there were no Negro children and had experienced no
difficulty in either type of school. "The children just seem to forget
I am colored," she said.
In Farren School (92 per cent) a teacher of a special room for children
recently arrived from the South expressed the belief that these children
"have a distinct and decided fear of the white teacher and it's up to
the teacher to change this fear into respect." They were very timid at
first, she said, due to the new environment and the contact with so many
more people, especially white. This timidity lasted for about a year
and then these children became more like Chicago children.
_Building and playground contacts._--At six out of the thirteen elementary
schools some friction about the buildings and on the playgrounds was
reported, and none at the other seven schools. On further analysis it
appeared that the friction reported was general at only two of the six
schools. At the other four the instances cited seemed either to involve
a few troublesome individuals or to be quarrels among Negro children
rather than between Negroes and whites. The two schools reporting general
antagonism between Negro and white children had about 30 per cent Negro
children. The principals of these schools said that the white children
were dominated by the Negroes and did not dare stand up for their
rights. The testimony of the principal of one of these schools showed a
disposition to regard many acts as characteristically racial. For example,
she needed no further evidence that a Negro boy had cut up a white boy's
cap than the fact that it was cut with a safety-razor blade. Although
both white and Negro boys commonly carry safety-razor blades to sharpen
their pencils, she thought of razors only in connection with Negroes.
She also believed that "Negro children of kindergarten age are unusually
cruel," and that "Negroes need a curriculum especially adapted to their
emotional natures." Again she said that a Negro boy who asked to be put
back from the third to the first grade, because the third-grade work was
too hard for him, was typical of Negro children, who "shut down on their
intellectual processes when they are about twelve or fourteen years of
age." In view of the numbers of Negro children in the higher grades who
are advancing normally, this is obviously an unwarranted generalization.
[Illustration: FARREN SCHOOL
Located at Forty-eighth Street and Wabash Avenue, 92 per cent Negro
attendance.]
There were some signs of friction at a school 20 per cent Negro (Haven)
when a school largely Italian was combined with it, but the situation
was handled tactfully by the principal and there had been no trouble.
At a school 85 per cent Negro (Doolittle), where the white element was
Jewish, all the teachers reported that there was no antagonism between
the races.
_Voluntary grouping._--The only school where the investigator noticed
Negro and white children playing in separate groups was Webster (30 per
cent), whose principal reported antagonism between Negroes and whites.
At the other schools natural mingling was reported by some teachers or
observed by the investigator. At a school 26 per cent Negro (Oakland)
three teachers said that Negro and white children did not mingle on
the playgrounds, while another teacher said they all played together
regardless of color. The principal and twelve teachers at a school 85
per cent Negro (Doolittle) agreed, with the exception of one teacher
who was a southerner, that there was never anything but the most natural
mingling in the classrooms, about the building and on the playground. At
a school 30 per cent Negro (Drake), the principal of which stated that
the relations between the races were not harmonious, the investigator
observed a free and natural grouping of Negroes and whites of all ages
on the playground. The principal explained that this was "a forced rather
than a natural grouping because of lack of apparatus for all." The white
children at a school 20 per cent Negro (Haven) were Italians, Jews, and
Greeks, and all the races played so naturally together that passersby
frequently stopped to watch them.
_Social contacts._--There are few social organizations and gatherings
in the elementary schools. The principal of a school 93 per cent Negro
(Raymond) said that there were clubs through all the grammar grades and
that the friendliness between the two races was marked, but added:
We have not more than fifty or sixty white children in this
particular building. One white child was elected vice-president,
the first white child elected in eight years. It shows the
friendly relationship when a white child could be elected
to office with a large preponderance of colored children. A
Jewish boy was elected to a smaller office of clerk. The white
children are not foreign. In their meetings the question of
color never arises at all.
In a few instances principals had found that graduation presented some
difficulties, as white mothers would appear at the school a few days
before and request that their children do not march with Negro children.
"About the only time I see a white mother is near graduation," said the
principal of a school 38 per cent Negro (Forrestville). "They always
say they wouldn't care for themselves, but a friend might see and they
would feel ashamed." "White children prefer not to march with colored
at graduation," said a teacher at Oakland School (26 per cent), "and
mothers sometimes come to ask that it be so arranged that their girls
can march with white girls. They usually say that for themselves they
don't mind, but friends might see and wonder why that should be."
A number of the schools have orchestras or occasional musical programs.
The investigator heard one orchestra of eleven pieces in Doolittle School
(85 per cent), which played remarkably well. All but one of the children
were Negroes. A teacher in Webster School (30 per cent), where there
was reported to be constant friction between Negro and white children,
gave an incident of a Negro boy in the school playing the violin with
a white accompanist and being enthusiastically applauded by the children.
The principal of a 92 per cent Negro school (Colman) reported an
unpleasant experience when pupils from her school were invited to take
part in a musical program at a West Side Park.
A group of sixty went with two white teachers in charge. On
the way over a group of foreign women called out insulting
remarks to the teachers, but no one paid any attention. After
the program the group started marching out of the park and
were met at the gate with a shower of stones. The teacher
told the children to run for their lives, and they all had
to scatter and hide in the bushes in the park or run toward
home if they could. A rough set of boys had got together and
were waiting for those children, stones all ready to throw.
Since that time we have never accepted an invitation to sing
outside our own neighborhood. Invitations have come from time
to time, but the children all come with excuses. All of them,
children and parents throughout the neighborhood, are afraid
but you can't get anyone to come out and say it.
_Attitude of parents._--Principals and teachers were questioned about
their relations with the parents of both Negro and white children--whether
they received co-operation from the parents in matters of discipline;
what was the attitude of the parents toward Negro teachers; and whether
many requests were received from Negro or white parents for transfers
to schools where there were fewer Negroes.
In general it may be said that the principals who found Negro parents
unco-operative, unambitious, and antagonistic were those who believed
in separate schools, found Negro children difficult to discipline, and
would have no Negro teachers in their schools. Such principals declared
that Negro parents were "10 to 1 in the complaints brought into the
office,"[38] and that "they fuss over everything and tell their children
not to take anything from a white child." They also cited cases of
insolence and threats which appeared to be exceptional rather than
typical.
Some teachers said the reason they did not receive any co-operation
from Negro mothers was because a large proportion of them were working.
Tardiness and absence were due mainly to this cause, according to one
principal, though a teacher of a room for retarded children in another
school said there was little tardiness and practically no absence in
her group. This teacher expressed the conviction, as did many others,
that Negro parents were appreciative of school advantages and eager
to have their children learn. Principals who came in contact with both
Negro and foreign parents found the Negro parents much more interested
and ambitious than the foreigners. Even the principal of a school 30
per cent Negro (Webster), who was somewhat prejudiced in her attitude
toward Negroes in the school, said she had more Negro than white boys
able to go to work whose parents wished them to remain in school.
Negro teachers were apparently acceptable to Negro parents, only one
of the principals or teachers interviewed reporting objections by Negro
parents. One teacher in a school 30 per cent Negro (Webster) said that
Negro parents had their children transferred there from schools with
more Negroes, so that they would have white teachers. The district
superintendent said he had had some difficulty in placing Negro teachers
in Negro schools, which he attributed to the fact that Negro parents
felt that Negro teachers had not had the same opportunity for thorough
training as white teachers. Some Negro parents, however, had indicated
that their attitude was not due to belief that Negro teachers were
inadequately trained, but to fear that too general placing of Negro
teachers over Negro pupils was a step toward segregation.
The principal of a school 90 per cent Negro (Keith) thought Negro mothers
preferred Negro teachers because several had said to her that the "colored
teachers understand our children better."
The district superintendent in the area including most of the schools
largely attended by Negroes said that few requests for transfers were
made during the year, but he believed more were made at the request of
Negro than of white parents. A number of these Negro children transferred
not to go to a school largely white but to a school 70 per cent Negro,
because they said they were afraid to go to the school in their own
district which was across Wentworth Avenue. The race feeling between
certain groups in this district was very intense, according to the
superintendent. It was especially violent between the Negro children
and the Italians and between the Jews and the Bohemians. The principal
of a school 93 per cent Negro (Raymond) also testified to the spirit of
antagonism along Wentworth Avenue:
Wentworth Avenue is the gang line. They seem to feel that
trespass on either side of that line is ground for trouble.
While they will admit colored members to the school without
any trouble for manual training, they have to be escorted over
the line, because of trouble, not from members of the school,
but groups of boys outside the school. To illustrate: We took
a kindergarten group over to the park. One little six-year-old
girl was struck in the face by a man. The condition is a
tradition. There does not seem to be any malice in it. "He is
from the east side," or "Hit him, he is from the West Side,"
are remarks frequently heard.
Transfers from schools with a predominant Negro membership were reported
by one or two principals and teachers in schools with a Negro minority,
who said that the Negro mothers objected to having their children in
schools "where there are so many common niggers." One of the principals
said she had many requests from Negro mothers for transfers from the
branch of the school with 90 per cent Negroes to the main school with 20
per cent. The Commission did not find in its inquiry among Negro mothers
that such an objection was prevalent, but that most of the transfers
requested were due to the reputation of the school for being overcrowded,
poorly taught, and generally run down.
2. HIGH SCHOOLS
_Classroom and building contacts._--In the high schools the ordinary
contacts in classes and about the building become subordinate to the
more difficult problems created by the increased number of social
activities--athletics, gymnasium exhibitions, clubs, and parties.
The dean of Englewood High School, which has only about 6 per cent Negro
children, said that the white and Negro children mingled freely with
no sign of trouble or prejudice but thought that if more Negro children
came to the school the spirit would change. A teacher in this same school
who had formerly been at Wendell Phillips, where the majority are Negro,
said that a spirit of friendliness had grown up there between the two
races, and race distinction had disappeared.
[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS HIGH SCHOOL
Located at Thirty-ninth Street and Prairie Avenue, 52 per cent Negro
attendance.]
There was only one Negro teacher in the high schools of Chicago at
the time of this investigation, the teacher of manual training at
Wendell Phillips. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois and
had substituted around Chicago for several years. Although they spoke
very highly of him, none of the principals of three high schools with
small Negro percentages and in which there were vacancies could use him.
The principal of Wendell Phillips, with a large proportion of Negroes,
told, however, of a different experience when this teacher was at that
school. "In answer to complaints by pupils I told them that this man was
a graduate of the University of Illinois, a high-school graduate in the
city, and a cultured man. 'Go in there and forget the color, and see if
you can get the subject matter.' In the majority of cases it worked."
Racial friction about the buildings and grounds was not reported by any
of the high-school principals. "I have not known of a fight between a
colored and a white boy in fifteen years," said the principal of Hyde
Park.
Two principals said that the Negro children voluntarily grouped themselves
at noon, either eating at tables by themselves in the lunchroom or
bringing their own lunches and eating in the back part of the assembly
hall. The gymnasium instructor at Wendell Phillips said that she had
no difficulty in her work if she let the children arrange themselves.
The gymnasium instructor at a school with a small proportion of Negroes
said that the white girls had objected to going into the swimming-pool
with Negro girls, but that she had gone in with the Negro girls, which
had helped to remove the prejudice.
_Athletic teams._--In the field of athletics there seems to be no
feeling between the white and Negro members of a school team, but the
Negro members are sometimes roughly handled when the team plays other
schools. "The basketball team is half and half," said the principal of
Wendell Phillips. He reported some friction in previous years but said
that "this year it is not shown at all." "They played a strenuous game
with Englewood last week. A colored boy was roughly treated by the other
team. Our white boys were ready to fight the whole Englewood team."
The principal of Hyde Park High School also said that there was no
feeling in his school against Negro members of athletic teams, and that
he did not know of a single instance in which a Negro boy was kept off
an athletic team if he was the best for the place.
Two Seniors in a high school mainly white (Tilden) thus described the
way they handled the Negro members of a visiting basket-ball team:
On the way over here fellows on the outside bawled them out,
but our fellows sure got them on the way home. There were three
black fellows on the team and those three got just about laid
out. Our team wouldn't play them, so there was a great old
row. Then, when they went home some of our boys were waiting
for them to come out of the building to give them a chase. The
coons were afraid to come out, so policemen had to be called
to take them to the car line. The white fellows weren't hurt
any, but the coons got some bricks.
_Transfers between high schools._--Requests for transfers from Wendell
Phillips to Englewood and Hyde Park schools had been made by both white
and Negro children, according to the principals of the latter schools. The
permits of the Negro children had frequently been revoked after they had
been admitted to classes, and the children returned to Wendell Phillips.
A teacher at Wendell Phillips pointed out the injustice of transferring a
child in the middle of a term. After a child has been admitted to classes
he should be permitted to remain through the semester, she believed, for
otherwise a full term's work was lost because the courses in the schools
were different. "All this transferring is nonsense, anyway," she said.
"Children should be made to go to school in the district where they live
and that would end the trouble."
This teacher told of an incident at Tilden School when a group of Negro
boys registered for entrance:
About sixty colored boys entered Tilden High School either
for the regular high-school course or prevocational work and
were thrown out by the Tilden boys. They made it so hot for
the colored boys that the sixty had to withdraw. Some came
back here; others dropped out of school entirely. It's pretty
bad when one set of boys can put out another set and nothing
is done to punish one and call back the other group.
Two boys at Tilden who took part in this affair gave this version of
the incident:
About thirty colored boys registered at Tilden last fall, but
we cleaned up on them the first couple of days and they never
showed up again. We didn't give them any peace in the locker
room, basement, at noon hours, or between classes--told them
to keep out of our way or we'd see they got out. The fellows
who were in school before we didn't tackle--they know where
they belong. There's one colored fellow in our class everybody
likes. He's a smart nice fellow to talk to, and he doesn't
stick around when you don't want him. He didn't say anything
when we made the new coons step around, but I guess he didn't
like it very well.
It was this same group of boys who objected to playing a visiting
basketball team with three Negroes on it and "just about laid them out."
_Social activities in high schools._--In high schools, with their older
pupils, there is an increased race consciousness, and in the purely
social activities such as clubs and dances, which are part of high-school
life, there is none of the general mingling often found in semi-social
activities such as singing and literary societies. Although Negro pupils
do not share in the purely social activities, they do not organize such
activities among themselves.
"The colored never come to social affairs," said the dean of one school.
"They are so much in the minority here that they leave all organizations
to the whites." The principal of this school told of having seen two
colored girls at a class party who danced together for a while and
left. "It is the only time I've seen the two races at the same social
gathering."
The dean of Englewood said: "We have colored children in singing clubs,
in the orchestra, in literary societies, in class organizations, and on
athletic teams. Always when there is a class party there will be five
or six colored children. They will always dance together, but they are
present and welcomed by the white. Between dances it is not uncommon to
see white and colored talking."
An incident showing lack of feeling against individuals of special
achievement was given by the principal of this last school:
Several years ago we organized a voluntary orchestra which met
after school. The director accepted all applications, among
them a number of colored boys. The white boys balked; it should
be white membership or they would leave. As it was near the
end of the year the orchestra was dissolved. The next year I
suggested to the teacher that he fill the orchestra places by
a general tryout, so understood, but really with the policy
of excluding the colored. This was done and a white orchestra
organized. Shortly, the father of H. F., a colored boy who had
been excluded, protested in my office, saying that his boy
had been excluded because of race prejudice and that he was
going to carry his protest to the Board of Education, for he
knew his boy played better than any boy in school. I admitted
that it was a choice in the school of white orchestra or no
orchestra, but that if his boy was the fine musician he said
he was I would gladly see what could be done. Soon after that
H. appeared on a school program and played with remarkable
skill and technique. He was applauded enthusiastically and
recalled three times. Straightway the orchestra members asked
him to play with them. He became unusually popular throughout
the school. His standing was the highest and he was awarded a
scholarship of $100 allowed by the Board of Education for the
best student. He was also chosen to represent the school on
the Northwestern University scholarship, and in his Freshman
year he won another scholarship for the next year. The death
of his parents made it necessary for him to leave college to
support his brothers and sisters. At this time he was stricken
with infantile paralysis. The interest on Liberty bonds taken
out by the high school is paid in to H., and when the colored
people gave a benefit for him the pupils sold 500 tickets. He
is improving and teaching violin to thirty pupils at present.
His sister is in the school now on a scholarship and is doing
remarkably well also.
At Wendell Phillips the situation was quite different, for there were no
school or class social affairs which were general. There were invitational
affairs to which the Negroes were not invited. All the clubs in the
school were white, Negroes being excluded. The principal said he would
not insist on mixed clubs until he saw the parents of the children mixing
socially. The glee club was an especially difficult problem because of
its semi-public as well as social character. The Negro children maintained
that a glee club composed entirely of whites was not representative of a
school in which the majority were Negroes. The Negroes had not responded
to the suggestion of the principal that they form a glee club of their
own, and as the white children would not be in a glee club with Negro
children, there was constant friction over this club.
Other principals expressed the conviction that the racial problem
of school social affairs could not be solved until the prejudice and
antagonism of adults had disappeared. One principal said he had had to
call off an arrangement for a class affair because the hotel would not
accommodate the Negroes. Another principal thought that the schools
would not wait to follow the lead of the parents in forgetting the race
prejudice but would themselves be the greatest factor in destroying it.
_Relations with parents._--In most cases the high schools were receiving
splendid support from Negro parents in matters of discipline. "I have
never had a case where the parent did not back up the teacher in the
treatment given to a colored child," said one principal, speaking of
cases where children had got into difficulty when they complained that
the teacher had "picked on them" because they were Negroes. The parents
always made the child withdraw the statement and admit that the trouble
was not due to color at all.
3. TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOLS
Reports were received from three technical high schools, Lane, Tilden,
and Lucy H. Flower. Lane and Tilden had few Negro students, while in
Lucy H. Flower the Negroes were about 20 per cent. The principals of
Lane and Tilden said they were not conscious of any racial difference in
their pupils, that no special methods of instruction were necessary for
the Negro children, that there were no quarrels with a racial background
in the schools, and no voluntary or compulsory groupings of white and
Negro. The principal of Lucy H. Flower found racial differences between
the Negroes and whites which she believed created special problems of
education and discipline. The children got along together very well in
school, and whatever quarrels there were, the principal thought were due
to personal dislikes rather than to race prejudice. The colored girls
grouped themselves voluntarily at noon and at dismissal time, and the
white girls did the same.
III. RETARDATION
1. RETARDATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
With the assistance of the Board of Education a selection was made
of three groups of schools to be studied for comparative retardation.
The group comprised six schools having the largest percentage of Negro
children, six attended mainly by whites in neighborhoods where the family
income might be comparable, and twelve attended mainly by children of
immigrants. Table XII gives the number and percentage of accelerated,
normal, and retarded children for each school, for each group, and for
the whole group of twenty-four schools.
This table shows the much greater amount of retardation among schools
attended by Negroes than in schools attended by white Americans or by
children of immigrants. The percentage for the group attended by Negroes
is 74, while for the different schools in the group it varies from 67
to 81. For the two groups of schools attended by white Americans the
percentage of retardation is the same, 49, though there is greater
variation among these schools than among the schools attended by Negroes.
In the group attended by children of immigrants, for instance, only 32
per cent are retarded in the Jungman (Bohemian) School, while 71 per
cent are retarded in the Holden (Polish) School. A similar discrepancy
appears in the group attended by white Americans, where the figure is 40
per cent for the Armstrong School and 62 per cent for the Byford School.
TABLE XII
NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN IN ACCELERATED, NORMAL, AND RETARDED GROUPS
IN SCHOOLS ATTENDED MAINLY BY WHITE AMERICANS, BY NEGROES, AND
BY CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS
=========================================================================================
School |Accel.|Percent-|Normal|Percent-|Retarded|Retarded |Percent-|Total |
| | age | | age | |Ungrad.[39]| age | |
-------------------+------+--------+------+--------+--------+----------+--------+-------+
Attended mainly | | | | | | | | |
by white Americans:| | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Armstrong | 202 | 21 | 365| 39 | 355 | 19 | 40 | 941 |
Byford | 118 | 9 | 361| 29 | 783 | -- | 62 | 1,262 |
Harper | 291 | 17 | 609| 35 | 829 | -- | 48 | 1,729 |
Howe | 220 | 17 | 421| 35 | 577 | -- | 48 | 1,218 |
Key | 173 | 25 | 205| 29 | 314 | -- | 46 | 692 |
Morse | 169 | 14 | 450| 37 | 581 | -- | 49 | 1,200 |
+------+--------+------+--------+--------+----------+--------+-------+
Total |1,173 | 17 | 2,411| 34 | 3,439 | 19 | 49 | 7,042 |
| | | | | | | | |
Attended mainly | | | | | | | | |
by Negroes: | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Coleman | 54 | 8 | 124| 17 | 561 | 2 | 75 | 743 |
Doolittle | 267 | 16 | 261| 16 | 1,099 | 24 | 68 | 1,651 |
Douglas | 136 | 9.3 | 197| 13.7 | 1,126 | -- | 77 | 1,463 |
Keith | 77 | 11 | 93| 14 | 497 | -- | 75 | 667 |
Moseley | 62 | 7.5 | 95| 11.5 | 551 | 122 | 81 | 830 |
Raymond | 112 | 13 | 179| 20 | 578 | -- | 67 | 869 |
+------+--------+------+--------+--------+----------+--------+-------+
Total | 708 | 11 | 949| 15 | 4,412 | 148 | 74 | 6,217 |
| | | | | | | | |
Attended mainly by | | | | | | | | |
children of | | | | | | | | |
immigrants: | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |
Bohemian: | | | | | | | | |
Bryant | 385 | 21 | 735| 37 | 809 | 15 | 42 | 1,944 |
Hammond | 161 | 12 | 503| 34 | 795 | -- | 54 | 1,459 |
Jungman | 375 | 35 | 350| 33 | 357 | -- | 32 | 1,082 |
| | | | | | | | |
Polish: | | | | | | | | |
Chopin | 298 | 17 | 631| 36 | 818 | 1 | 47 | 1,748 |
Hibbard | 392 | 29 | 445| 32 | 535 | -- | 39 | 1,372 |
Holden | 122 | 11 | 208| 18 | 759 | -- | 71 | 1,089 |
| | | | | | | | |
Italian: | | | | | | | | |
Goodrich | 157 | 14 | 240| 22 | 693 | -- | 64 | 1,090 |
Jackson | 360 | 15 | 731| 32 | 1,174 | -- | 53 | 2,265 |
Jenner | 176 | 11 524| 33 | 875 | -- | 56 | 1,575 |
| | | | | | | | |
Jewish: | | | | | | | | |
Herzel | 609 | 25 | 731| 30 | 1,085 | -- | 45 | 2,425 |
Lawson | 466 | 16 | 944| 32 | 1,407 | 20 | 52 | 2,837 |
Von Humboldt | 528 | 22 | 848| 34 | 1,072 | -- | 44 | 2,448 |
+------+--------+------+--------+--------+----------+--------+-------+
Totals |4,029 | 19 | 6,890| 32 |10,379 | 36 | 49 |21,334 |
Totals for | | | | | | | | |
three groups |5,910 | 17 |10,250| 30 |18,230 | 203 | 53 |34,593 |
-------------------+------+--------+------+--------+--------+----------+--------+-------+
The retardation figures for the group of twenty-four schools studied
are close to those for the city at large, 53 per cent retarded in the
special group and 51 per cent for the city at large. In the accelerated
group the percentage of accelerated Negro children, 11, is smaller than
the percentage of accelerated white children, 17, or the percentage of
accelerated foreign children, 19. This variation is not so striking as
that in the normal group where only 15 per cent of the Negro children
appear to make normal progress as compared with 34 per cent of the white
children and 32 per cent of the foreign children. From this it would
appear that there are factors in the lives of many Negro children which
prevent them from making normal progress.
The degree of retardation, as shown in Table XIII is again quite different
for the white and Negro groups.
The largest single groups of backward white American and foreign children
are retarded less than one year (42 per cent of the white American and
39 per cent of the foreign group), and the numbers decrease rapidly
as the degree of retardation increases. In the case of the Negroes 19
per cent are retarded less than one year. The decrease as the degree
of retardation increases is slower than in the white groups, and many
more children are retarded two, three, four, five years and more. In
the white American group only one child out of 3,439 retarded children
is retarded five and one-half to six years, while there are forty-one
in the corresponding Negro group out of a total of 4,412. One white
child is retarded six and one-half to seven years, while seventeen Negro
children are retarded this amount; twelve foreign children out of 10,379
retarded children are retarded six to ten years, and thirty-seven Negro
children are found in these groups.
Though the main reasons for the high degree of retardation among Negro
children are set forth in the next section under "Causes of Retardation,"
a partial explanation is to be found in the fact that Negro parents
are frequently more interested in keeping their over-age children in
school than white parents, especially foreign parents, whose anxiety to
have their children leave school as soon as they are old enough to get
work-permits is well known.
_Causes of retardation._--It is generally understood of course that
comparisons of Negro with white children are hardly fair, since Negro
children have not had the same opportunities as whites to make normal
progress.
A study was made of the reasons why children were retarded in the
groups of schools attended mainly by Negroes, by white Americans, and by
children of immigrants. Records were obtained at the schools for 1,469
Negro children and 1,560 white children who were listed according to
the Board of Education's classification for retarded children.
Table XIV shows clearly that the predominating cause of retardation among
Negroes is late entrance, which, according to the board's classification,
means that they did not enter school until more than six years of age.
This is generally explained by the fact that the family came from the
South, where there was no school near enough for the child to attend, or
the school was overcrowded, or the family was uneducated and indifferent.
In some cases the parents have come North, leaving the child with
grandparents who made no effort to see that it went to school.
TABLE XIII
NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN TABLE XII WHO ARE RETARDED ONE-HALF
TO ONE YEAR, ONE YEAR TO ONE AND ONE-HALF YEARS, ETC.
=============================================================
| YEARS
----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+----
| ½ | 1 | 1½ | 2 | 2½ | 3 | 3½
SCHOOL | to | to | to | to | to | to | to
| 1 | 1½ | 2 | 2½ | 3 | 3½ | 4
----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+----
Attended mainly by white Americans:
Armstrong | 143 | 84 | 62 | 31 | 15 | 13 | 3
Byford | 317 | 175 | 105 | 64 | 54 | 20 | 11
Harper | 364 | 234 | 106 | 67 | 28 | 12 | 6
Howe | 275 | 128 | 93 | 57 | 9 | 9 | 2
Key | 141 | 106 | 33 | 19 | 20 | 2 | 2
Morse | 229 | 160 | 81 | 56 | 27 | 14 | 8
----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+----
Total | 1,470 | 887 | 480 | 294 | 143 | 70 | 32
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman | 109 | 114 | 109 | 66 | 50 | 46 | 27
Doolittle | 229 | 175 | 146 | 152 | 117 | 86 | 69
Douglas | 190 | 198 | 191 | 142 | 126 | 83 | 71
Keith | 94 | 66 | 71 | 78 | 54 | 34 | 30
Moseley | 95 | 104 | 96 | 54 | 59 | 31 | 34
Raymond | 135 | 115 | 111 | 69 | 50 | 39 | 27
----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+----
Total | 852 | 772 | 724 | 561 | 456 | 319 | 258
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Bohemian:
Bryant | 369 | 224 | 107 | 51 | 36 | 15 | 3
Hammond | 306 | 225 | 114 | 69 | 47 | 13 | 10
Jungman | 173 | 87 | 49 | 27 | 12 | 6 | 2
Polish:
Chopin | 323 | 216 | 125 | 57 | 43 | 23 | 16
Hibbard | 252 | 158 | 68 | 28 | 18 | 5 | 4
Holden | 216 | 190 | 112 | 91 | 60 | 36 | 18
Italian:
Goodrich | 236 | 185 | 104 | 68 | 42 | 28 | 10
Jackson | 369 | 284 | 202 | 141 | 84 | 53 | 16
Jenner | 281 | 253 | 135 | 86 | 42 | 32 | 20
Jewish:
Herzel | 521 | 294 | 124 | 71 | 38 | 19 | 9
Lawson | 574 | 370 | 233 | 109 | 65 | 24 | 19
Von
Humboldt | 498 | 145 | 145 | 76 | 37 | 17 | 6
----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+----
Totals | 4,118 | 2,710 | 1,518 | 874 | 524 | 271 | 133
----------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+----
Totals | 6,440 | 2,249 | 2,722 | 1,729 | 1,123 | 660 | 423
for three groups | | | | |
-------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE XIII
(continued)
======================================================
| YEARS
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
| 4 | 4½ | 5 | 5½ | 6 | 6½ | 7
SCHOOL | to | to | to | to | to | to | to
| 4½ | 5 | 5½ | 6 | 6½ | 7 | 7½
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Attended mainly by white Americans:
Armstrong | ... | 4 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Byford | 32 | 2 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | ...
Harper | 4 | 3 | 1 | ... | 1 | ... | 1
Howe | ... | 4 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Key | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Morse | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ... | ... | ...
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Total | 40 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman | 18 | 7 | 8 | 4 | 2 | ... | ...
Doolittle | 44 | 37 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ...
Douglas | 45 | 26 | 21 | 14 | 10 | 7 | ...
Keith | 32 | 17 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | ...
Moseley | 26 | 20 | 15 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 3
Raymond | 12 | 10 | 6 | 2 | ... | 1 | ...
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Total | 177 | 117 | 74 | 41 | 24 | 17 | 3
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Bohemian:
Bryant | 1 | 2 | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ...
Hammond | 8 | 2 | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ...
Jungman | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Polish:
Chopin | 9 | 2 | 1 | 2 | ... | ... | ...
Hibbard | ... | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Holden | 13 | 9 | 8 | 4 | 2 | ... | ...
Italian:
Goodrich | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 | ... | ...
Jackson | 13 | 4 | 4 | 2 | ... | 1 | 1
Jenner | 10 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | ...
Jewish:
Herzel | 4 | 4 |... | 1 | ... | ... | ...
Lawson | 7 | 4 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ...
Von
Humboldt | 6 | 2 | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ...
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Totals | 81 | 36 | 25 | 17 | 6 | 3 | 1
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Totals | 298 | 167 | 103 | 59 | 31 | 21 | 5
for three groups | | | | |
--------------------------------------------------
TABLE XIII
(continued)
=============================================
| YEARS
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
| 7½ | 8 | 8½ | 9 | 9½ | 10
SCHOOL | to | to | to | to | to | to
| 8 | 8½ | 9 | 9½ | 10 | 10½
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Attended mainly by white Americans:
Armstrong | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Byford | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Harper | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ...
Howe | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Key | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Morse | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Total | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ...
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Doolittle | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ...
Douglas | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | 2
Keith | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Moseley | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ...
Raymond | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Total | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Bohemian:
Bryant | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Hammond | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Jungman | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Polish:
Chopin | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Hibbard | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Holden | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1
Italian:
Goodrich | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Jackson | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Jenner | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ...
Jewish:
Herzel | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Lawson | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Von
Humboldt | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Totals | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | 1
----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----
Totals | 6 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3
for three groups | | | |
---------------------------------------------
TABLE XIV
REASONS WHY 1,469 NEGRO CHILDREN AND 1,560 WHITE CHILDREN WERE RETARDED
IN GROUP OF TWENTY-FOUR SCHOOLS
Abbreviations:
LE - LATE ENTERING
Fn - FOREIGN
PD - PHYSICAL DEFECT
IH - ILL HEALTH
FD - FAMILY DIFFICULTIES
DV - DEFECTIVE VISION
DH - DEFECTIVE HEARING
VM - VARIANT MENTALITY
Bd - BACKWARD
LM - LOW MENTALITY
Fm - FEEBLE-MINDED
IA - IRREGULAR ATTENDANCE
TG - TEMP. IN GRADE
DC - DEMOTED FOR CONDUCT
==================================================================
SCHOOLS |TOTAL |LE | Fn | PD | IH | FD
--------------+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---
|N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W.
--------------+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman, | 29| 1| 20|...|...|...|...|...| 1|...|...|...
92 per cent Negro attendance | | | | | | | |
Doolittle, | 603| 6|190|...|...| 6| 3|...| 68|...|141|...
85 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Drake, | 72| 58| 41| 11|...| 3|...|...| 4| 15|...| 3
24 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Farren, | 171| 7| 49|...|...|...| 1| 1| 34| 1| 21|...
92 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Felsenthal, | 173| 69| 58| 13| 3| 2|...|...| 6| 12| 56| 15
20 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Forrestville,| 93| 5| 34| 2|...|...| 2|...| 4|...| 10|...
38 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Haven, | 71| 59| 56| 9|...| 6|...|...| 2| 9|...|...
20 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
McCosh, | 18| 31| 7| 4|...| 2|...| 1| 5| 8|...|...
15 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Oakland, | 50| 44| 18| 6|...|...| 1|...| 4| 5|...| 6
26 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Raymond, | 133| 6| 64| 2|...| 2| 1|...| 7| 1| 18|...
93 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Webster, | 52| 31| 27| 7|...| 1| 1|...| 5| 9| 6| 2
30 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Attended mainly by White Americans:
Fiske | 2| 88|...| 3|...| 16|...| 2|...| 1|...| 34
Rowland | ...| 101|...| 13|...| 7|...| 2|...| 17|...| 3
Kenwood | ...| 25|...| 1|...| 5|...|...|...| 4|...| 4
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Farragut | ...| 107|...| 12|...| 10|...| 2|...| 11|...| 6
Goodrich | ...| 92|...|...|...| 28|...| 3|...| 8|...| 7
Jackson | ...| 255|...| 32|...| 48|...| 12|...| 38|...| 38
Jungman | ...| 21|...| 11|...| 2|...|...|...|...|...| 1
Kosciuszke | ...| 144|...| 23|...| 17|...| 4|...| 9|...| 18
Lawson | 1| 155|...| 7|...| 15|...| 1|...| 19| 1| 20
McCormick | ...| 21|...|...|...| 2|...| 1|...| 7|...|...
Seward | ...| 131|...| 19|...| 29|...| 2|...| 14|...| 10
Smyth | ...| 57|...| 3|...| 14|...| 1|...| 9|...| 4
Swing | ...| 46|...| 9|...| 2|...| 1|...| 7|...| 4
--------------+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---
Totals by |1,469|1,560|564|187| 3|217| 9| 33|140|204|253|175
races | | | | | | | | | | | |
--------------+-----+-----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---
Totals of | 3,029 | 751 | 220 | 42 | 344 | 428
both races | | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE XIV
(continued)
=============================================================
SCHOOLS | DV | DH | VM | Bd | LM | Fm
--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--
|N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W.
--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman, |...|...|...|...|...|...| 4|...|...|...| 1|...
92 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Doolittle, | 7|...|...|...| 35|...| 73|...| 10|...|...|...
85 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Drake, |...| 2|...|...|...| 7| 7| 12|...| 1|...|...
24 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Farren, | 3|...| 1|...| 12| 2| 18|...| 11| 2|...|...
92 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Felsenthal, |...| 2| 1|...| 7| 1| 33| 10| 3| 4|...|...
20 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Forrestville,| 1|...|...|...| 4|...| 30|...| 1|...| 1|...
38 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Haven, |...| 4|...|...|...| 3| 7| 19| 2| 4|...|...
20 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
McCosh, |...| 1|...|...|...|...| 1| 1| 1| 6|...|...
15 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Oakland, | 1| 2|...| 2| 3| 6| 3| 5| 4| 3| 1|...
26 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Raymond, |...|...|...|...| 1|...| 11|...| 6|...| 6|...
93 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Webster, |...|...|...|...|...| 1| 4| 2| 9| 6|...|...
30 per cent | | | | | | | | | | |
Attended mainly by White Americans:
Fiske |...| 1|...|...|...|...| 1| 21| 1| 2|...| 1
Rowland |...| 4|...|...|...| 9|...| 28|...| 10|...| 1
Kenwood |...|...|...|...|...| 2|...| 5|...| 1|...|...
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Farragut |...| 3|...|...|...| 5|...| 23|...| 32|...|...
Goodrich |...| 3|...|...|...| 2|...| 23|...| 10|...|...
Jackson |...| 8|...| 1|...| 3|...| 45|...| 8|...|...
Jungman |...|...|...|...|...|...|...|...|...|...|...|...
Kosciuszke |...| 2|...|...|...| 12|...| 4|...| 8|...| 1
Lawson |...| 2|...| 1|...| 25|...| 39|...| 19|...| 2
McCormick |...|...|...|...|...|...|...| 1|...| 8|...|...
Seward |...|...|...| 1|...| 2|...| 13|...| 11|...| 5
Smyth |...| 2|...|...|...|...|...| 14| 1| 5|...|...
Swing |...| 2|...|...|...| 1|...| 6|...| 6|...| 1
--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--
Totals by | 12| 38| 2| 5| 62| 81|192|271| 49|146| 9| 12
races | | | | | | | | | | | |
--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--
Totals of | 50 | 7 | 143 | 463 | 195 | 21
both races | | | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE XIV
(continued)
======================================
SCHOOLS | IA | TG | DC
---------------+---+---+---+---+-------
|N. |W. |N. |W. |N. |W.
---------------+---+---+---+---+----+--
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman, | 1| 1|...|...| 2|...
92 per cent | | | | |
Doolittle, | 68|...| 8|...|...|...
85 per cent | | | | |
Drake, | 19| 5|...|...|...|...
24 per cent | | | | |
Farren, | 21| 1|...|...|...|...
92 per cent | | | | |
Felsenthal, | 13| 2|...| 1|...|...
20 per cent | | | | |
Forrestville,| 6| 3|...|...|...|...
38 per cent | | | | |
Haven, | 4| 5|...|...|...|...
20 per cent | | | | |
McCosh, | 3| 9|...|...|...|...
15 per cent | | | | |
Oakland, | 12| 9| 1| 2|...|...
26 per cent | | | | |
Raymond, | 19| 1|...|...|...|...
93 per cent | | | | |
Webster, | 1| 2|...|...|...|...
30 per cent | | | | |
Attended mainly by White Americans:
Fiske |...| 6|...| 1|...|...
Rowland |...| 7|...|...|...|...
Kenwood |...| 3|...|...|...|...
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Farragut |...| 3|...|...|...|...
Goodrich |...| 8|...|...|...|...
Jackson |...| 19|...| 2|...|...
Jungman |...| 7|...|...|...|...
Kosciuszke |...| 39|...| 9|...|...
Lawson |...| 5|...|...|...|...
McCormick |...| 1|...|...| 1|...
Seward |...| 20|...| 5|...|...
Smyth |...| 5|...|...|...|...
Swing |...| 2|...| 4|...|...
---------------+---+---+---+---+----+--
Totals by |167|161| 9| 24| 3|...
races | | | | | |
---------------+---+---+---+---+----+--
Totals of | 328 | 33 | 3
both races | |
---------------------------------------
The next most important cause of retardation among the Negroes is family
difficulties. The fathers are often kept away from home weeks at a
time by their work. A large number of the mothers are working, and the
parents' lack of education is frequently the cause of a home life that
is below standard, physically and morally.
Among the whites, late entrance, inability to speak the language,
ill health, backwardness, and low mentality are the main causes of
retardation. While it is often maintained that the Negro is the mental
inferior of the white, these figures do not bear out that contention.
Also the retardation figures do not show the home life of the Negroes
to be productive of as much ill health as is the case with the whites.
Approximately the same number of Negro and white children were retarded
because of irregular attendance.
In addition there were forty-two Negro children and 155 white children
who were classified under two, three, or four different causes for
retardation. Children who were late entering also had some physical
difficulty, or children who were retarded because of family difficulties
were also of poor mental endowment. In some cases such double
classification represented a realization by the teacher that retardation
is a complicated and delicate thing which cannot be explained by one
hard-and-fast reason. Others, finding it difficult to decide whether
children were backward, of low mentality, or feeble-minded, classified
them under all three causes. In two instances Negroes were found to be
retarded because they were late entering and "foreign"--that is, they
were handicapped by an "initial lack of the English language."
_Intensive study of 116 retarded Negro children._--The presence of
retarded Negro children in the Chicago public schools within recent
years has been regarded by many teachers and principals as a problem of
Negro education. Some assume that this retardation is due to an inherent
incapacity for normal grade work. Inquiries of the Commission early
disclosed the fact that although the retardation rate of Negro children
was higher than that of white, the great majority of the retarded Negroes
were from southern states, and that Negro children born in the North had,
as a rule, no higher rate of retardation than the whites. In the belief
that the causes of retardation among Negro children could be found in
the same factors of social background and environment which operates to
retard white children, an intensive study was made of 116 Negro children
taken at random from among all the retarded Negro children in several
schools to learn what elements in their former life and present home
environment might explain their retardation.
Out of the 116 children 101 had been in school before coming to Chicago.
Of these eighty-six had lived in the South and attended southern schools.
Since this group was chosen at random, the large proportion from the
South tends to bear out the statements of school principals and teachers
that Negro children from the South constitute the bulk of retarded
children. Previous school records were obtained for eighty-four of these
eighty-six southern children, and in sixty-four cases the children were
retarded when they came to Chicago. Many of them were retarded two and
three years, and some three, four, five, and even six years. Forty-seven
of the sixty-four were retarded more than one year. In a number of cases
children who were in the normal grade for their age in the South were
put back one or two grades when they entered Chicago schools because
they were not equipped to do the work of this grade in the North.
The states from which these children came are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Twenty-three of the eighty-six children
who had lived in the South were from Mississippi--the largest group
from any one state--and of these three were up with their normal grade,
eleven were retarded three or four years, one was retarded six years, and
one who was in the normal grade in the South was demoted two years. One
reason for the poor record of these Mississippi children is undoubtedly
to be found in that state's inadequate compulsory-education law which
provides a school term of eighty days in districts which do not reject
the law. Eight of the Mississippi children lived on plantations which
were so far from school that regular attendance was impossible.
Information gathered concerning the parents of these 116 retarded children
showed that in eighty-six cases the father was living with his family.
In six cases the father was dead, in one case he was insane, in fifteen
cases he had separated from or deserted the mother, and in eight cases
there was no report on the father.
The mother was found to be living with her family in 112 cases. In two
cases the mother was dead, and in two cases she had deserted father and
child.
All of the eighty-six fathers who lived at home were working, though
one was reported as working irregularly, and two as having deserted
their wives occasionally for periods of several weeks. In two of the
cases where the father had separated from the mother he was reported as
contributing to the support of the child.
In forty out of the eighty-six cases where the father was living at home
and working, the mother was also working, and in the fifteen separation
cases where the mother was supporting the child, she was working. The
fact that a total of fifty-five out of 112 mothers, or 49 per cent,
were working is undoubtedly a large factor in the retardation of the
children. The statement was frequently made by teachers that 40 or 50
per cent of the Negro mothers worked, and that the child was therefore
neglected, and the teacher could get no co-operation from the mother,
as she was never free to come to school to talk over matters affecting
the child.
Some teachers felt that many mothers worked where there was no economic
necessity, as the father was earning enough to support the family.
It should be noted in this connection that at the time this material
was gathered there were more opportunities for work than there were
men to fill them. Under ordinary conditions there would doubtless be
a certain amount of unemployment in these Negro families which would
cause more mothers to work from economic necessity. Many of the families
investigated, where both parents were working, were reported as getting
on very well, though there were some cases of real poverty. In a number
of instances the families could not seem to make ends meet on a good
income because they were ignorant and did not know how to spend their
money, or because they had not been able to adjust themselves to city
life.
Of the eighty-six fathers who were working, few were in skilled
occupations which would command a substantial wage. Most of the mothers
were engaged in work that took them away from home. A few did sewing,
hairdressing, and laundry work in their homes, but the large majority
went out to work. Work carried on in the home frequently has as bad an
effect on the child's school attendance as the mother's absence, for the
child is sometimes kept at home to help and often finds the work more
interesting than school.
The following occupations of mothers of retarded children were noted:
Day work 22
Stock Yards 12
Hairdresser 4
Laundry 4
Maid 4
Barrel factory 3
Seamstress 3
Domestic service 2
Box factory 1
Car cleaner 1
Cleaning (hospital) 1
Dishwasher 1
Elevator 1
Foundry 1
Housekeeper 1
Lamp-shade factory 1
Waist factory 1
_Education of parents._--Of the eighty-six fathers, thirty-one were
illiterate, and forty-eight had gone to elementary school but had
completed only the second, fourth, or sixth grade. Five of the fathers
had gone to high school, and two were college graduates.
The figures are slightly better for the mothers. Out of 112, twenty-one
were totally illiterate, seventy-six had gone to elementary school,
ten had been in high school or college, and five were not reported on.
Eighty-eight per cent of the mothers, therefore, and 91 per cent of the
fathers had less than a high-school education. Though there were many
illiterate or poorly educated parents who were eager for their children
to have advantages which they never had themselves, others, as in any
illiterate group, no matter what the color, failed to appreciate the
importance of school.
_Home discipline._--A number of teachers reported that they were unable
to discipline the children in school because they were undisciplined at
home. In seventy-three of the 116 homes there was found to be discipline,
in twenty-two a lack of discipline, and twenty were not reported on.
Discipline seemed to be the responsibility of the mother in the large
majority of cases, and many of the twenty-two undisciplined children
were boys who were beyond the control of the mother. In every case but
four where there was no discipline the mother was working, so that the
child did not receive much care during the daytime and the mother was
too tired to bother about discipline at night. Lack of discipline can
also be traced to the fact that the child has not always lived with the
parents but with relatives who have been lax in the matter of discipline.
_Home care._--The physical condition of the home, the preparation and
substance of the meals, may be expected to affect a child's health and
therefore his attendance at school. The homes of eighty-four children
were reported to be clean and twenty-five not clean, while seven were
not reported on. In twenty-one cases out of the twenty-five reported not
clean, the mother was working. In forty-seven cases out of the eighty-four
reported clean the mother was working. In many of the forty-seven cases
there was an aunt or grandmother who took care of the house.
In many homes the ignorance of the parents was obviously responsible for
failure to provide the kind of food adapted to the needs of the children.
A great deal of fresh meat, usually pork and bacon, potatoes, rice, and
coffee were the staples, while green vegetable, fruits, cereals, and
milk were noticeably lacking. Also, when the mother is away all day the
food is hastily prepared, which usually means that it is fried. The girl
who gets home from school before her mother has finished her day's work
usually starts the dinner, or brings something from the delicatessen.
Many children are given twenty-five cents with which to buy lunch, and
in three extreme cases the children were given money to buy all their
meals, with no supervision over what they ate.
_Difficulty of adjustment._--When all the causes contributing to
retardation were taken into consideration in the histories of the
116 retarded children studied, it was still obvious that the greatest
stumbling-block to normal progress was previous residence in the South.
The retardation of children from the South is explained in a variety of
ways.
Some of the children from the South did not get along well because
they had not been able to adjust themselves to city life. They had been
accustomed to the freedom and outdoor life of the farm and did not like
the confined life of the city. They felt timid and shy in the midst of
so many people, as they did not come much in contact with people when
they lived on southern farms four or five miles from the nearest town.
Most of these children had never gone to school for more than a few
months at a time, either because the school term was short or they lived
too far from the school to attend regularly. Consequently some of them
found the nine months' term irksome.
_Demotion._--A number of children were found to be over-aged for their
grades because they had been demoted one or two years when they came to
Chicago. Some of these had gone to school regularly in the South and were
of normal age for their grades, but the school term was so short that
it was impossible for them to complete the same amount of work in the
same number of years as children in northern schools. Children who were
in the fifth or fourth grade in the South had been put back to the third
or second grade on entering Chicago schools. This sometimes discouraged
them so much that they dropped out of school on reaching fourteen, the
age limit of the compulsory-education law.
_Inadequate schools._--Overcrowded and poorly taught schools also are
responsible for the retardation of southern Negro children. One girl
attended a school which was in session only three months a year and
where there were 100 to 125 children under one teacher. Consequently
this girl was retarded four years. A boy who, when he came to Chicago,
was fifteen years old and six years behind his grade had always lived
in small country towns in the South. In one of these his teacher was
the iceman. "He didn't come to school until he was through totin' ice
around," said the boy. "Then if anyone wanted ice they comed after him.
He wasn't learning me anything so I quit." This boy was found to be
ambitious and was attending school regularly in Chicago in spite of the
fact that he was conspicuously over-age for his grade.
_Other causes of retardation._--Some over-age children are extremely
sensitive about their size and are irregular at school on this account.
A fifteen-year-old boy who was 5 feet 8 inches tall was in the fifth
grade. He refused to go to school because he was larger than anyone in
his class. At one time he was so ashamed of being seen in the room with
smaller children that he would go out of the classroom every time a girl
passed the door.
As in many white families where the importance of regular school
attendance is not fully understood, work at home or work after school
hours is sometimes permitted to interfere materially with school
attendance. Older children are kept at home to look after young children
while the parents are away at work and sometimes when the mother is home.
A fourteen-year-old girl who was three years retarded had always been
kept out of school to do housework. The five younger children were all
in the normal grades for their ages but the fourteen-year-old girl had
been out of school so much she had lost interest. Other children were
working after school hours selling papers and delivering packages and
wanted to leave school as soon as possible so that they could work all
the time.
The attitude of the teacher seemed in a few instances to be responsible
for the child's lack of interest. In one case the teacher threw a paper
at a boy instead of handing it to him, and the boy had refused to recite
to her ever since. He went to school but recited to his mother at home.
Another boy had been kept back in school by a misunderstanding between
his mother and the principal. The principal took the boy home with her
to do some work around her house and kept him until nine o'clock. The
mother became so worried she had the police out looking for him. When
she found out the cause of his lateness coming home, she went to the
school and threatened the principal. The principal afterward refused
either to promote the boy or transfer him to another school.
_Recreation._--A study of the favorite forms of recreation among 116
children, aside from the few who reported that they had no time to play,
showed the movies to be in the lead. Children economized on lunch, buying
potato salad and pickles, in order to have enough left from their lunch
money to go to the movies. One boy who worked outside of school hours
made $3 to $5 a week and spent most of it on the movies; he went three
or four times a day if he had the money. A few children played truant
in order to go to the movies.
TABLE XV
FAVORITE RECREATION OF 116 RETARDED NEGRO CHILDREN
Movies 85
Baseball 32
Reading 31
Marbles 29
Skating 20
Jumping rope 11
Music 6
Jacks 6
Vaudeville 5
Running games 4
Singing games 4
Sewing 3
Basket-ball 2
Target practice 1
Pool 1
Mechanical toys 1
Drawing 1
Dolls 1
Bicycle 1
Typewriting 1
Swinging 1
Rolling hoop 1
Card games, checkers, etc. 1
---
Total 248
Most of these children had two and even three forms of recreation, and the
second was usually some form of outdoor recreation--baseball, marbles, or
jumping rope. Most of the younger ones went to the playgrounds, except
those who had housework to do or the few who did not care to associate
with other children.
A reference to the section on "Recreation" will show that Negro children
are limited in their recreational activities by lack of recreation centers
where they are welcome. There are playgrounds for the younger children
in the areas of Negro residence, but no recreation centers with their
varied indoor facilities for the older children.
2. OPINIONS ON SCHOLARSHIP OF NEGRO CHILDREN
_Progress of the southern Negro._--The retarded Negro child, usually
from the South, who is conspicuous in the elementary schools, has been
referred to in the section on "Retardation in Elementary Schools." In
some schools such children are put in the regular grades, where they
receive no special attention and can progress only one year at a time,
though most teachers agree that retardation is due to lack of educational
opportunity rather than to inability to learn. In other schools there
are special rooms for these children where they are advanced through
several grades as rapidly as possible.
Doolittle School (85 per cent) had six first-grade rooms for such
children. In one of these rooms there were about twenty-five children
from twelve to seventeen years of age doing all the lower-grade work
up to the sixth. The teacher said that many of these children who were
unable to read or write when they came from the South showed remarkable
progress in a few months, and in less than a year were able to do fourth-,
fifth-, and sixth-grade work.
"One big girl of thirteen, when she arrived from the South," this teacher
said, "pretended to read with her book upside down, but in a little more
than a year she was doing sixth-grade work. One twelve-year-old boy from
the South, unable to read the primer or write his name, after about nine
months of applied work just ate up everything I gave him and during the
following year read sixty library books."
A thirteen-year-old girl, just five days in the school, had come from
Alabama, where she had never attended school. "There wasn't room for
me," she explained. She read for the investigator on the tenth page of
the primer, haltingly but with understanding. The teacher was confident
that she could put her through several grades next year. She said further:
These children who have been deprived in the South of their
rights educationally are very eager. At first they are timid,
but they learn very quickly. They're as smart as whips if
they'd just get down to business. Without question this is
the kind of attention all the colored children from the South
need when they enter school in the North. The plan has been
successful and should be adopted throughout the school system.
One appreciates by comparison the injustice of putting the
fifteen-year-old newcomer from the South into second grade,
requiring of him only second-grade work over the nine months'
period.
Another school, 92 per cent Negro (Farren), has a special room for
children from the South. "Our dull children are almost without exception
those from the South who have never been to school," said the teacher.
"Those children should not be classed as dull, either, for they learn
remarkably fast and often catch up to grade."
A teacher of the ungraded room in a school 38 per cent Negro
(Forrestville) said:
Practically all of the colored children are from the South,
where they have not been in school. Once they get started they
learn very rapidly and often catch up to the proper grade if
they are not too old when they start school. The older children
in this room have good power of concentration and consequently
learn much in a short time. Take, for example, a boy twelve
years old who came here not two months ago from the South. When
he came he had no idea how to write his name. A few days ago
he wrote for me a fourth-grade eight-line memory passage with
but three mistakes in spelling. Now I call that remarkable.
I have taught in this school all my teaching years, and they
have been many, and have never seen any child equal this,
either white or black.
_Capacity for advanced work._--Teachers in the seventh and eighth grades
usually found Negro children equal to the work, though in some cases they
felt that these children had been pushed out of the lower grade because
of crowded conditions before they were ready for the more advanced work.
An eighth-grade teacher gave the following statement:
When children get this far they have a good foundation and do
their work very well. One of my colored girls is the brightest
child in school--arithmetic is hard for her but she works at
it. One of my colored boys is seventeen years old. He came
here from the South last fall to live with an uncle and to
get to a better school. His father wants him to be a doctor
and thought he wasn't getting along as well in the South as
he would in the North. When the boy came to me he said he
had been going to a college[40] in the South. I took him into
the eighth grade but saw he didn't have the fundamentals. On
close questioning he told me he had been in the seventh grade
in that college. Now he is doing excellent work for me. He
has much broader interests than the other children. He reads,
reads, reads, all the time and is well informed.
Other teachers believed that there was nothing to keep the Negro children
from making equal progress with the white, given similar opportunities.
"The progress of the colored children in Drake school (30 per cent)
cannot be compared with that of the white," said an upper-grade teacher,
"because the colored are all from the South and have had the poorest
opportunities. But comparing a Negro child and a white child who have
had the same advantages in school and equal opportunities for observation
and example in the home, the Negro makes the same progress."
"I say that under the same conditions a Negro child will do as well every
time as a white," said the teacher of an ungraded room in a school 38
per cent Negro (Forrestville). "Many do as well as the white and live
in very poor neglected homes. I think every person who is not prejudiced
must admit that the colored do fully as well in school as the white."
An upper-grade teacher in the Felsenthal School (20 per cent) held a
similar point of view: "The colored are making wonderful strides. They
advance just as rapidly as the white, given equal opportunities. But their
background is so slight and so short in years that one cannot fairly
compare them. The southern colored child must be studied individually
to get his point of view in the school or he gets nowhere in his work."
_High-school work._--The principal of Wendell Phillips High School
prepared tables showing the numbers of white and Negro children dropping
out at the end of each school year. They show that the largest number
of Negro children dropped out during the first year, and the largest
number of white children during the first and second years, the number
of drop-outs being the same for both years. Some children repeat the
work so that all of them do not leave school.
One or two teachers in other schools stated concerning Negro children
that a "very limited number go beyond the first year." "They cannot
grasp the subject," said an English teacher; "they do not understand as
the white child does. They lack the mentality."
In the same school the Latin teacher held quite the opposite opinion.
"The colored children are in every way equal to the white children.
They are just as well equipped mentally and make similar progress. My
best student at present is a colored girl. Her choice of English and her
vocabulary and construction are far ahead of that of any white student."
Several teachers and principals testified to the brilliancy of individual
Negro students who not infrequently had the highest standing in the
school. The principal of an elementary school (Crerar) who had formerly
had experience in a school largely Negro felt that the junior high school
would meet the needs of the Negro children to a large degree:
More of them than the immigrant enter high school but do
not stay to finish. I suppose the parents insist upon some
high-school training, but it is necessary for the child to go
to work before he finishes. Another reason for the dropping out
might be the teachers' lack of interest in the child. In the
high school you don't find the teachers taking a keen interest
in every individual child as you do in the grades, and just
what colored children need is a keen interest in them. They
do better work.
_Academic v. other courses._--A preference of Negro children for academic
work was reported by principals and teachers at two high schools. This
may be due in part to the fact, testified to by many teachers, that Negro
children excel in languages and music and find mathematics and sciences
difficult. The usual implication was, however, that Negro children took
academic work because they thought it gave them better social standing.
A principal who said that "Negroes want to know nothing about industrial
training" and that "the girls don't care for sewing and cooking," said
on another occasion that the majority of children in auto-mechanics,
printing, and household arts were Negroes. He also reported more Negro
than white children in the normal course preparing themselves to be
teachers, though this was the first year that this had been the case.
_Comparative scholarship in elementary schools._--Negro children are
reported to be slower than the Jews, less responsive than the Bohemians,
and more ambitious than the Italians. A manual-training and domestic-arts
teacher thought Negroes did as good work as the Jews, Bohemians, and
white Americans whom he taught. A Latin teacher said that the Negroes
were studious and ambitious, and that in every way she preferred them
to the Jews.
Several teachers thought the Negroes were slow and lacked logic and
"sticking qualities." An upper-grade teacher explained the slowness
as partly due to the fact that they had been pushed out of the crowded
lower grades before they were ready for more advanced work. A physics
teacher who was convinced that Negro children had no ambition said it was
his policy to promote a Negro child if the child had made the effort,
because he appreciated that the child had come "to the limit of his
mental ability."
The principal who said that Negroes had no "sticking qualities" gave a
single instance of a boy who wanted to become a mechanical engineer but
gave up the course after five months, because he said he did not care
enough about the course to work at it for several years. In endeavoring
to prove that Negro children are not successful in completing high-school
work, this principal emphasized the fact that in the 3-B class 20 per
cent of the Negroes dropped out as compared with 6 per cent of the
whites. In actual numbers three Negroes and two whites dropped out. He
did not mention that in the 2-A class 12 per cent of the whites (sixteen
children) as compared with 3 per cent of the Negroes (three children)
dropped out. In the 4-B grade 21 per cent of the whites (three children)
and none of the Negroes dropped out. The fact that 21 per cent of the
whites dropped out was explained by the principal to be due to the fact
that the white children wished to graduate from a high school wholly
white. However, only three children were involved.
_Attendance and failures._--Table XVI shows the record for attendance
and failures in three groups of schools attended mainly by Negroes, by
children of immigrants and by white Americans. It will be noticed that
the best attendance records are found in Douglas and Farren schools,
both mainly attended by Negroes. The other schools, attended mainly by
Negroes, compare favorably with those attended by whites.
The smallest percentage of failures is at Colman (92 per cent), while
the next to the largest percentage is also at a school attended mainly
by Negroes (Raymond, 93 per cent). This may be explained to a certain
extent by the fact that there is a higher economic class of Negroes in
the neighborhood of the Colman School. In the other schools the percentage
of failures compares very favorably with that of whites.
TABLE XVI
ENROLMENT, AVERAGE ATTENDANCE, AND NUMBER OF FAILURES IN TWENTY SCHOOLS
===================================================================================
| Enrol- | Average | Percent- | Number | Percent-
School | ment | Attendance | age of | of | age of
| | | Attend- | Failures |Failures
| | | ance | |
----------------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+---------
Attended mainly by Negroes: | | | | |
Colman, 92 per cent | 964 | 709 | 73 | 13 | 1.8
Doolittle, 85 per cent | 1,784 | 1,282 | 72 | 77 | 6.0
Douglas, 93 per cent | 1,443 | 1,341 | 93 | -- | ---
Farren, 92 per cent | 986 | 924 | 93 | 83 | 8.9
Forrestville, 38 per cent | 1,493 | 1,085 | 73 | 130 | 12.0
Haven, 20 per cent | 1,165 | 700 | 60 | 24 | 3.4
McCosh, 15 per cent | 1,280 | 1,017 | 79 | -- | ---
Moseley, 70 per cent | 923 | 605 | 66 | 81 | 13.3
Raymond, 93 per cent | 1,532 | 1,299 | 85 | 200 | 15.4
Webster, 30 per cent | 805 | 654 | 81 | -- | ---
Attended mainly by | | | | |
children of immigrants: | | | | |
Farragut | 1,729 | 1,502 | 86 | 107 | 7.0
Goodrich | 1,305 | 1,039 | 78 | 121 | 11.6
Kosciusko | 1,134 | 775 | 68 | 33 | 4.2
Lawson | 3,069 | 2,545 | 83 | 292 | 11.5
McCormick | 1,432 | 1,266 | 88 | 204 | 16.1
Seward | 1,058 | 708 | 67 | 43 | 5.9
Smyth | 1,106 | 860 | 77 | 69 | 8.0
Swing | 810 | 629 | 77 | 99 | 15.8
Attended mainly by white | | | | |
Americans: | | | | |
Fiske | 1,535 | 1,272 | 83 | 45 | 3.5
Howland | 2,161 | 1,809 | 84 | 100 | 5.0
-------------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+------------
C. CONTACTS IN RECREATION
In studying contacts between the races at places of recreation a survey
was made of the various recreational facilities maintained by the
Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches, the South
Park Commission, the West Chicago Park Commission, and the Lincoln Park
Commission. Recreational facilities maintained by twelve park boards which
control smaller areas in outlying parts of the city were not included
in the survey unless they were in or near Negro areas. Visits were made
by the Commission's investigator to places in or bordering on the Negro
areas at a time of day when the use of the park would be greatest; the
director or one of his assistants was interviewed and observations were
made as to the relations between Negroes and whites.
The information thus gathered was supplemented by a conference held
by the Commission, at which representatives of the various park boards
discussed policies and experiences with reference to race relations in
the various recreation places under their charge.
I. CLASSIFICATION OF FACILITIES
Although there is no definite city-wide classification, the publicly
maintained recreation facilities of the city may, for the purpose of
this study, be grouped by types and defined as follows:
1. _Playground._--A small tract of land, usually adjacent to
public schools, providing space for ball games, gymnastic and
play apparatus, and in most cases a small building used as an
office and storage place for apparatus.
2. _Recreation center._--Including outdoor and indoor gymnasiums
for men, women, and children, a swimming-pool, and a little
children's playground out doors, and a field house providing
an assembly room and dance hall, clubrooms, shower baths, and
often an infant-welfare station and branch library.
3. _Large park._--A large area with lawns, shrubbery, and
general recreation facilities, such as tennis, golf, baseball,
and boating.
4. _Bathing-beach._--Intended primarily for swimmers and usually
including no other recreation equipment. A dressing-house,
showers, and towel supply are provided with life guard and
attendants on duty.
5. _Swimming-pool._--In some instances a swimming-pool or
natatorium is maintained separately from a recreation center.
II. DISTRIBUTION OF FACILITIES IN RELATION TO NEGRO AREAS
Of a total of 127 public places of recreation excluding the large parks,
thirty-seven are in or near Negro areas. Of the eighty-two playgrounds,
fourteen are in the Negro areas and nine are adjacent. Of the twenty-nine
recreation centers, none is located within the Negro areas, but seven
are adjacent.
Though these figures seem to indicate that the Negro areas are fairly
well supplied with recreation facilities, it should be borne in mind
that their use by the Negroes in their vicinity is by no means free and
undisputed. The reasons for this are shown in the next section on "Use
of Facilities," but the following summary of use will aid in considering
the distribution of recreation facilities in relation to the Negro areas:
=====================================================================
| | | | Number Used
| Total for | In Negro | Near Negro | 10 Per Cent
| City | Areas | Areas | or More by
| | | | Negroes
-------------------+-----------+----------+------------+-------------
Playgrounds | 82 | 14 | 9 | 13
Recreation centers | 29 | None | 7 | 1
Bathing-beaches | 8 | 3 | 2 | 1
-------------------+-----------+----------+------------+-------------
The type of recreation facility most commonly found in the Negro areas
is the playground. The lack of recreation centers within the Negro areas
is conspicuous, as is also the fact that six of the seven recreation
centers accessible to Negroes are not used as much as 10 per cent by
them. The playground is intended for the use of young children and has
practically nothing to attract older children and adults, except sometimes
a baseball or athletic field. Indoor facilities are not a part of the
equipment of a playground, so that the average maintenance cost of a
playground is not more than $2,000 to $5,000 a year.[41]
[Illustration: RECREATION FACILITIES]
The recreation center is the most unusual and notable feature of Chicago's
recreation system but one from which the Negro gets little benefit. It
is a complete community center, with both indoor and outdoor facilities.
It represents an investment of from $200,000 to $800,000, according to
the amount of ground, the location, and the extent of its facilities. The
yearly expenditure necessary to maintain such a recreation center where
older children and adults can hold meetings, dances, and entertainments,
and where there are concerts, indoor games, swimming-pools, showers,
etc., is shown by the reports of the park boards to be from $30,000 to
$50,000. Though the argument that wholesome recreation makes for better
citizenship applies to Negroes as well as to whites, no recreation center
has been located within the Negro areas and only seven near them.[42]
The director of Armour Square, a recreation center which is just beyond
the edge of the main Negro area, but which the Negroes do not feel free
to use for reasons discussed later, was asked what places of recreation
for adult Negroes existed in that neighborhood. She instanced a social
settlement that had been out of existence for more than six years, an
infant-welfare station and a commercial amusement park known to be in
bad repute.
Although in recent years the Negro population has been increasing in
density in the neighborhood directly east of Wentworth Avenue along which
Hardin, Armour, and Fuller recreation centers are located, this has not
increased the use of these centers by Negroes. It has tended, rather, to
increase the antagonism of the whites in the vicinity to the use of the
centers by Negroes. In this neighborhood the hostility toward Negroes
of whites, especially gangs of hoodlums, is shown by the many attacks
upon Negroes in this area as discussed in the sections on the "Riot of
1919" and "Antecedent Clashes."
Several representatives of the park boards strongly deprecated the lack
of recreation centers within the Negro area and said that such facilities
should be provided. The South Park representative recommended the area
east of Wentworth Avenue between Thirtieth and Forty-seventh streets as
one needing additional facilities. The West Park representative said: "A
complete all-year-round recreation center for the colored people should
be established at Ashland and Lake streets. We need greater facilities,
or equal facilities, for the colored people. There isn't any place on
the West Side that I know of, but yet we have many of these complete
recreation centers there for the whites." Although the Negroes on the
West Side had never asked for additional facilities, the white people
in that neighborhood had frequently asked the West Park Commission to
provide greater facilities for the Negroes. The Negroes in the district
were not organized, according to the West Park official, but the white
people realized that something ought to be done for the Negroes and made
the request.
The director of Seward Park said the maintenance cost was the chief
obstacle to additional recreational facilities. "The law permits
acquisition of property for small parks by request of citizens and bond
issues for the purchase of the property and its development," he said.
"When it comes to maintenance the question of taxes comes in, and unless
people are willing to be taxed in excess of what they are taxed now,
there won't be any possibility of maintaining more parks."
Though there are three public bathing-beaches near the main Negro
area, the whites seem to expect Negroes to confine themselves to the
Twenty-sixth Street Beach. It is quite limited and unattractive in
approach and surroundings. The approach is over a rough road through a
much-neglected neighborhood, and then up a long flight of stairs to a
four-foot viaduct over the railroad tracks, and a roundhouse and switch
yards are near by. The beach is a strip of sand about fifty feet wide
and a short block in length; it narrows at one end to the tracks and at
the other end is walled by a high embankment. While it offers a chance
to get into the lake, the atmosphere of wholesome, recreative outdoor
life is entirely lacking.
In the Morgan Park region there is a large Negro population but no park
or playground within its Negro area. Barnard Playground and Ridge Park
are the nearest facilities, a mile or more distant. Negro children said
they did not go there because "those are in Beverley Hills and only rich
folks go there--no colored people." The directors of these parks said
there was no discrimination against Negroes but that they did not come
because they felt that these parks were "for white folks only."
III. USE OF FACILITIES
Table XVII gives estimates by the officers in charge of the Negro
attendance at the places of recreation in or near the Negro areas.
TABLE XVII
NUMBER OF NEGROES ATTENDING PARKS AND PLAYGROUNDS IN OR NEAR NEGRO AREAS
AND THEIR PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL ATTENDANCE
===============================+=====================+=====================
| |
| AVERAGE DAILY | PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL
| ATTENDANCE | DAILY ATTENDANCE
+------+-------+------+------+-------+------
NAME | | | Vaca-| | | Vaca-
|School|Through| tion |School|Through| tion
| Time | Year | Time | Time | Year | Time
-------------------------------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------
South Side District: | | | | | |
Twenty-sixth St. Beach | | 200| | | 95 |
Thirty-eighth St. Beach | | 500| | | < 1 |
Fifty-first St. Beach | | 500| | | < 1 |
| | | | | |
Moseley Playground, Twenty- | | | | | |
fourth St. and Wabash Ave. | 900| | 150| | 80 |
Colman Playground, Forty- | | | | | |
sixth and Dearborn Sts. | 350| | 700| | 90 |
Doolittle Playground, Thirty-| | | | | |
fifth St. near Rhodes Ave. | 800| | 500| | 90 |
Oakland Playground, | | | | | |
Fortieth St. and Langley | | | | | |
Ave. | 600| | 400| | 75 |
Beutner Playground, Thirty- | | | | | |
third St. and LaSalle St. | 1,400| | 1,000| | 67 |
Sherwood Playground, Fifty- | | | | | |
seventh St. and Princeton | | | | | |
Ave. | 1,500| | 900| 50| | None
Drake Playground, Twenty- | | | | | |
seventh St. and Calumet | | | | | |
Ave. | 1,100| | 600| | 25 |
McCosh Playground, Sixty- | | | | | |
sixth St. and Champlain | | | | | |
Ave. | 1,200| | 450| 25| | 15
Carter Playground, Fifty- | | | | | |
eighth St. and Michigan | | | | | |
Ave. | 1,200| | 500| | 25 |
Fiske Playground, Sixty- | | | | | |
second St. and Ingleside | | | | | |
Ave. | 1,500| | 1,000| | 2 |
| | | | | |
Fuller Park Recreation | | | | | |
Center, Forty-fifth St. | | | | | |
and Princeton Ave. | | 1,500| | | 3 |
Armour Square Recreation | | | | | |
Center, Thirty-third St. | | | | | |
and Shields Ave. | | 1,500| | | 1 |
Hardin Square Recreation | | | | | |
Center, Twenty-sixth St. | | | | | |
and Wentworth Ave. | | 800| | | 1 |
| | | | | |
Washington Park | | 27,000| | | 10 |
Jackson Park | | 47,000| | | 2 |
| | | | | |
Ogden Park District: | | | | | |
Copernicus Playground, | | | | | |
Sixtieth and Throop Sts. | 1,400| | 800| 7| | 16
Ogden Park Recreation Center,| | | | | |
Sixty-fourth St. and | | | | | |
Racine Ave. | | 3,000| | | < 1 |
South Chicago District: | | | | | |
Thorp Playground, Eighty- | | | | | |
ninth St. and Buffalo Ave. | 500| | 350| | 5 |
| | | | | |
West Side District: | | | | | |
Robey Playground, Birch and | | | | | |
Robey Sts. | 500| | 800| | 20 |
Mitchell Playground, Oakley | | | | | |
Ave. and Ohio St. | 1,200| | 200| | 5 |
Washington Playground, Grand | | | | | |
Ave. and Carpenter St. | | 200| | | 1 |
Otis Playground, Grand | | | | | |
Ave. and Armour St. | | 200| | | 1 |
McLaren Playground, Polk | | | | | |
and Laflin Sts. | 300| | 400| | |
Gladstone Playground, Robey | | | | | |
St. and Washburne Ave. | 1,300| | 400| | 1 |
Hayes Playground, | | | | | |
Levitt and Fulton Sts. | | |Closed| | |
Union Park Playground, | | | | | |
Washington St. and | | | | | |
Ashland Blvd. | | 1,500| | | 40 |
| | | | | |
North Side District: | | | | | |
Northwestern Playground, | | | | | |
Larrabee and Alaska Sts. | | 300| | | None |
Orleans Playground, Orleans | | | | | |
St. and Institute Pl. | 150| | 400| | 5 |
Franklin Playground, | | | | | |
Sigel St. near Wells St. | 1,500| | 300| 5 | | 25
| | | | | |
Seward Park Recreation | | | | | |
Center, Elm and | | | | | |
Sedgwick Sts. | | 1,500| | | 15 |
Stanton Park Recreation | | | | | |
Center, Vine and Rees Sts. | | 2,000| | | 1 |
Lincoln Park | | 60,000| | | 15 |
-------------------------------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------
Maximum attendance, 100,400. Negroes approximately, 19,000.[43]
_Factors influencing attendance._--Out of the thirty-five playgrounds,
recreation centers, and bathing-beaches in or near the Negro areas for
which attendance figures were secured, at fifteen Negro attendance never
amounted to more than 10 per cent, and usually was less. In several
cases distance or such barriers as railroad tracks seemed to explain the
small percentage of Negro patrons. In other cases it seemed due to the
existence of other facilities nearer the center of the Negro area which
were more largely patronized by the Negroes; an example is Stanton,
which though not far from the Negro area is farther than Seward Park.
The small number of Negroes at other places often could not be explained
by the director. At Gladstone Playground, for example, in a neighborhood
where the Negro population was increasing rapidly, practically no Negro
children were found, though the white children said there were plenty
of Negro children in the school. "They don't stick around after school
hours or in the summer," said the children, but no one appeared to know
why this was the case, as there had never been any difficulty at this
playground. Negro children used Drake and Sherwood playgrounds much
less, or not at all, after school hours and in summer. At Drake, though
the two races mingled in games in the daytime and no disorders had
occurred, the Negro boys took no part in the games in the evening when
the older white boys were home. This, the director said, was due not
to timidity or fear of aggression, but rather to "lack of ambition." At
Sherwood Playground, west of Wentworth Avenue, where 50 per cent of the
children using the playground during school hours were Negroes, there
were no Negroes on the playground in the afternoon and evening and all
summer. This was said to be due to the fact that the Negro children in
the school, especially the girls, were larger than the white children
and during the school session were the dominating group. After school,
however, the older white children got home from other schools or from work
and assumed control, allowing no Negroes in the playground. The Negroes
then went to Carter Playground, which is east of Wentworth Avenue, in
the main Negro settlement. This separation, the attendant stated, was
due entirely to action on the part of the children, as the officials did
not discriminate in any way. This neighborhood has been much disturbed
and is discussed in more detail under "Contacts."
[Illustration: A TYPICAL SCHOOL YARD PLAYGROUND IN A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD]
Representatives of each park commission said that they had no rules or
regulations of any kind discriminating against Negroes, and that all
races were treated in exactly the same way. The only case in which this
rule appeared to be violated was in connection with Negro golf players
at Jackson Park. Two Negroes participated in the Amateur Golf Tournament
at Jackson Park in the summer of 1918 and made good records. The only
requirement for entrance into the tournament at that time was residence
in the city for one year. In 1919 the requirements were increased,
entries being limited to the lowest sixty-four scores, and membership
in a "regularly organized golf club" being required. Since Negroes
are not accepted in established golf clubs, the Negro golf players
met this qualification by organizing a new club, "The Windy City Golf
Association." In 1920 the restriction was added that contestants must
belong to a regularly organized golf club affiliated with the Western
Golf Association. As it was impossible for Negro clubs to secure such
affiliation, it is impossible for Negroes to compete in the tournament.
Unofficial discrimination, however, frequently creeps in. According to
the representative of the Municipal Bureau, "the person in charge of the
park is largely influenced by the attitude of the people outside the
park. We had trouble at Beutner Playground because of the tendency on
the part of the director, who was a white man, to be influenced by the
attitude of the white people in the neighborhood, and either consciously
or unconsciously showed by his actions to the colored people that they
were not fully accepted." Beutner Playground later became an example
of unofficial discrimination in favor of the Negroes, for the Municipal
Bureau decided to "turn over the playground particularly to Negroes" and
instructed the director "to give them more use of the facilities than the
whites." But this was found to be impossible as long as a white director
was employed, because he was influenced by the feeling of the whites
in the neighborhood who did not want the playground turned over to the
Negroes. The desired result was finally obtained by employing a Negro
director. "Then the switch suddenly came," said the park representative,
"and the playground was turned over to the Negroes almost exclusively."
A similar method was employed with reference to the Twenty-sixth Street
Beach, according to the head of the Municipal Bureau, who said: "As the
colored population gradually got heavier and more demand came for the use
of that beach it gradually developed into a beach that was used almost
exclusively by Negroes. And we did as we did in the Beutner case: we
employed a Negro director when the preponderance was Negro."
This beach has since been transferred to the South Park Commission, and
there is no longer a Negro director there, though most of the attendants
are Negroes.
Park policemen will not let Negroes go in swimming at the Thirty-eighth
Street Beach, according to a Negro playground director. "The park
policemen tell you, 'You can't go in, you better not go in, I'd advise
you not to go in,'" said the director. "If you try to go in he keeps
you out."
The Negro director of Beutner Playground reported an unpleasant personal
encounter with the policeman of Armour Square. "Last summer I had
occasion to go over there with my assistant who is colored. We went to
the library and the park police officer we met said, 'niggers ought to
stay in Beutner Park.'" Policemen in Armour Square also had helped to
drive out Negro boys who had gone over there to use the showers, according
to this director. In addition he said that Negro boys had been refused
permits to play baseball at Armour Square. The director of the park
said, in answer to these statements, that there was no discrimination
on the part of the management and if such things had occurred it was
without the knowledge of the management and due to the fact that the
applicants did not see anyone in authority. "The only applicants I have
had for a colored baseball team this year was for an outside industrial
team, and they were given permission," said the director. "Whether the
police officer followed them up and told them they shouldn't come back,
I don't know, but they didn't come back. I gave them the permit to come."
At one or two parks definite efforts had been made to encourage larger
numbers of Negroes to make use of the facilities, but at Armour Square
the director did not believe this to be advisable. "I have never gone
out to do any promotional work to bring them in," she said, "because I
would not choose personally to be responsible for the things that would
happen outside my gates if I were responsible for bringing large groups
into Armour Square. If such groups come to me for reservations I give
them, but they don't come." This director also said that she would feel
it necessary to warn any Negro group that might come to her park that
she could not be responsible for their protection outside the park.
At Union Park, which has a playground and swimming-pool and is situated
on the edge of the densest Negro residential area on the West Side,
every effort has been made to encourage the Negroes of the neighborhood
to make use of the limited facilities, according to the representative
of the West Chicago Park Commission, who said:
We have advertised among the colored people and done everything
we could to get them to use the swimming-pool, shower baths,
and reading-room, and send their children to the playground.
The result to some extent is satisfactory but of course they
are not using it in proportion to the population of the Negroes
in that neighborhood. That, I think, is partly due to the fact
that we ought to have some other facilities there. We ought to
have some equipment for boys over sixteen years of age, and we
ought to have an assembly hall, a regular library, clubrooms,
and other facilities for the recreation of older boys and girls.
The director of Fuller Park told of a special effort he had made, with
the assistance of a Y.M.C.A. physical instructor, a Negro, to increase
the use of the park by Negroes living east of Wentworth Avenue. The
Y.M.C.A. instructor guaranteed to get the people, and 400 application
blanks were distributed among Negro children in the Sunday schools of
the neighborhood. All the blanks were signed with the names of Negro
children between eight and sixteen and returned to the office. When
the classes started a few weeks later, no Negro children appeared. The
distributor of the blanks tried for three or four weeks to find out why
the Negro children did not come but failed to discover any reason. Then
the director sent a notice to the _Defender_, a widely circulated Negro
newspaper, saying that the children who had signed application blanks
for classes at Fuller Park were requested to come at any time and were
just as welcome as white children. Thereupon a few children came--two
or three out of a class of thirty. Additional notices were put in the
_Defender_, and an effort was made to interest the Negro pastors, but
the attendance did not increase, and finally the attempt was given up
for that year. The next year a similar effort was made but with only
slightly better results. At the band concerts and moving pictures the
Negro attendance is fairly good, and a large number of Negroes use the
library, but the gymnasium and the children's playground are used very
little by the Negroes, and the swimming-pool practically not at all.
The reasons advanced by the park officials for the non-use of convenient
recreation facilities are that the Negro is timid and reluctant to go
where he feels he is not wanted, or that he fears attack in the park or
near it. At a conference the West Park representative said:
When we first opened the doors of Union Park we thought,
owing to the large colored population in the district, that
the colored people would come there most willingly and avail
themselves of the facilities just as freely as any person
would. But we found that it was not so, that the greater number
of persons who came there were the whites, and they as usual
availed themselves of the facilities freely. The colored were
timid, came in gradually, and as soon as they found they were
welcome, that there was no line of discrimination drawn, the
attendance of the colored increased.
At Sherwood Playground, Armour Square, and Fuller Square, all west of
Wentworth Avenue, which is considered the dividing line between the
white and Negro areas, fear is probably a large factor in the small
Negro attendance, as the feeling in the neighborhood is bitter and
fights have been frequent. At Sherwood Negro children use the playground
during school hours when they feel that they have the protection of the
school, but not after school when they feel that protection is lacking.
Webster School at Wentworth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, which is 30
per cent Negro, has its graduation exercises in Armour Square, but the
Negro children do not go to Armour Square at any other time, and they
did not go over at night for an entertainment which the principal of
Webster School arranged at Armour Square. Negro children use the Armour
Square library freely, according to the director, but there has never
been an application for the use of a clubroom, and no Negroes come to
the outdoor moving pictures which are given one night a week. "There's
absolutely nothing to prevent them coming," said the director. "Why don't
they come? There is nothing within the park they need to be afraid of.
There has been absolutely no distinction made in the handling of colored
children or colored men or colored women coming to Armour Square, but
they do not come." The director was positive that the failure to come
to the park was due to the attitude toward Negroes outside the park. She
explained that although she could guarantee safety and police protection
inside the park, she could do nothing to protect Negroes outside the
park gates. The park policemen are employees of the park boards and not
of the city and have no jurisdiction outside the parks. This is true of
the police at all parks and beaches maintained by the park boards, but
the police at the playgrounds and beaches maintained by the Municipal
Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches are members of the
regular city police force.
Continuing, the Armour Square director said:
Personally I know of no disturbances that have started within
Armour Square, and yet we have had outside of Armour Square
every year at least two riots, not counting the general race
riot--riots that started largely in school clashes. There
have been some very serious riots between the children of the
Webster School and the Keith School just east of it, and there
have also been some very serious clashes between the black and
white children going to and from the parochial school--actual
fights in which they have had to call large detachments of the
police. Armour Square is not used by the colored people in
proportion to their numbers in the neighborhood, but it has
absolutely nothing to do with our management. It is because
they are afraid to come to the park. They know absolutely that
within the four walls of the park nothing is going to happen
to them.
The testimony of the Negro director of the Beutner Playground seemed to
indicate that Negroes were kept out of Armour Square in ways that its
director did not know about.
IV. CONTACTS
_Behavior._--The behavior of Negroes at the parks apparently has not been
the major cause of the difficulties that have arisen in the past. Such
complaints as were made by park officials in regard to the behavior of
Negroes at the parks concerned groups of rough or domineering children
at the playgrounds rather than adults.
[Illustration: BEUTNER PLAYGROUND
The largest in the Negro residence area.]
[Illustration: FIELD HOUSE EQUIPMENT AT BEUTNER PLAYGROUND]
[Illustration: NEGRO ATHLETIC TEAM REPRESENTING DOOLITTLE PLAYGROUND IN
CITY-WIDE MEET]
[Illustration: FRIENDLY RIVALRY
White and Negro boys at a playground near the Negro residence area]
The playgrounds where the attitude of Negro children was criticized
were Sherwood and Moseley, both in neighborhoods where unusually bitter
racial feeling was reported by the playground directors. The older Negro
girls were particularly rough and hard to control, these officials said,
abusing small children both white and Negro, monopolizing apparatus,
and refusing to leave the playground when asked to do so.
Testimony in regard to adults indicated that the park directors found
them quiet and desirable patrons of the parks. Said the director of
Seward Park:
One of the most interesting and best-conducted and best-behaved
groups I have ever seen is a group of colored people known as
the "Jolly Twenty," a dancing organization. They started coming
eight years ago and had a system of couple dancing which was
marvelous. I have never seen it equaled anywhere. They have
been coming every year, once a year, for a dance at Seward,
and the "Jolly Twenty" has grown to be about the "Jolly Four
Hundred," but the larger the group the better they seem to
behave and the better they dance.
The director of Ogden Park told of a Negro club which holds frequent
dances at Ogden Park. He said: "About 300 attended the last one. They
are the best-behaved group that come. I never have to object to improper
dancing or boisterousness, and they always leave on time, have had to
object several times to conduct at white dancing parties."
This testimony in regard to Negroes at dances is interesting in view of
the situation regarding the recreation facilities at the Municipal Pier.
Negro attendance there is about 8 per cent of the total attendance of
four million or five million a year, according to the director of the
Pier. They are well dressed and well behaved and inclined to segregate
themselves. There had never been a single instance of an intoxicated Negro
or of one who had made himself in the least objectionable, the director
said. The only people whom the pier authorities have had to reprimand
for violation of pier rules in regard to cleanliness, monopolizing of
furniture, etc., have been whites. Many of the attendants are Negroes, and
the band which plays for the dance concessionaire is composed of Negroes.
Negroes are welcome everywhere on the Pier, as are all races, according
to the director, except in the dance hall, where their appearance is
discouraged by the concessionaire. The following method is followed to
discourage the appearance of Negroes on the dance floor, according to
a white man who had observed it:
Admission to the dance floor is at the rate of five cents per
couple, per dance. Each dance lasts about three minutes. If
a Negro couple buys a ticket and dances one dance nothing is
said. If the couple comes in for another dance, one of the floor
managers--employed by the concessionaire--speaks courteously
to the couple. He expresses regret that he must mention the
matter of their dancing to them, but that they are not dancing
properly, and he invites them to come to a corner of the dance
floor where he will instruct them in the proper way to dance.
This usually occupies the remainder of the particular dance,
and results in the Negroes not coming on the floor again. If
the couple does reappear, the floor manager again speaks to
them saying he is very sorry he has to tell them again that
they still are not dancing quite properly and again he invites
them to a corner of the dance floor for further instruction.
This is the procedure by which the Negroes are embarrassed
and discouraged from using the dance floor.
_Relations between the children._--Lack of antagonism was reported at a
large number of playgrounds. Apparatus was used by both groups without
friction, Negro and white children mingled freely in their games and
in the swimming-pools, and both Negroes and whites played on baseball
and athletic teams. Occasional playground fights had taken place, but
usually without any element of racial antipathy. "There might be personal
misunderstandings and disagreements between a white and a black just
the same as between two whites," said the director of Union Park, "but I
wouldn't lay it to race prejudice. They work together and play together
and seem to harmonize in most instances." When this director came to
Union Park a year before he found a tendency among Negroes and whites
to group by themselves, but steps were taken to bring them together in
games of various kinds, and toward the end of the season the director
felt that they "harmonized better and worked together more cordially
than they did before." When the investigator from the Commission visited
Union Park Playground, he saw the small children playing together on the
same pieces of apparatus--a Negro child on one end of a teeter ladder
and a white child on the other.
These children were ten years or under. The director felt that it was
not until children reached the age of eleven years or older that they
began to feel racial antipathy. In the swimming-pool at this park, which
is used by the older children and adults, the Negroes and whites kept
separate. There was no trouble between them, but they stayed in separate
groups. The director felt that there was little likelihood of trouble
ever starting in this park, because "where such nicknames as 'Smoke'
are applied to colored boys by white boys, and is given and accepted in
a friendly spirit, there is little chance for serious disturbance."
As this playground in Union Park is intended for children under ten,
the occasional difficulties between older children might be alleviated
if the Hayes Playground, one of those in the system maintained by the
Municipal Bureau, were kept open in the summer. The playground at the
Hayes School, 80 per cent Negro, was closed and the apparatus dismantled
in the summer of 1920 when the investigator visited it. Though it is not
a large playground it is the one the older Negro children are accustomed
to use during the school year, and they are doubtless reluctant to go
in the summer to other school playgrounds which they do not ordinarily
use.
At Seward Park the Negroes use the facilities freely and play with the
white children on the apparatus and in the ball field. The only difficulty
reported here was in connection with a wrestling tournament. The director
described it as follows:
Last season we had a wrestling championship tournament. There
were some colored groups who had wrestled at Seward who were
eligible for entrance into this tournament, and when the night
came for weighing in, the director for one of the other parks
said, "What are these colored people doing here?" "They are
weighing in." I said. "They will not wrestle with my group,"
he said. "Very well, then, I guess your groups will not be in
it," I said.
It looked as though we were up against a problem, but the night
when the wrestling came the colored contestants didn't show
up, so that the problem was solved for that time. Of course we
couldn't say that any white man must wrestle with a colored
man. It presented a problem that had to be settled in some
way. I think the reason they didn't show up was because I told
my investigator to say to these colored men, "Next season if
you have a sufficiently large group you can have a contest of
your own. We'll award the same prizes to colored wrestlers as
we do to the white."
The representative of the Municipal Bureau also spoke of occasional
difficulty in wrestling, though there may be no objection to Negro
participation in other events. He said:
We have athletic meets in which a Negro team has competed
and for five years has won the championship in athletics. In
baseball there is no trouble. The difficulty comes in some of
the activities, particularly wrestling, because of the nature of
the activity. It is a closer contact. We make no distinction,
however, and when a Negro boy gets up to face a white boy and
the white boy doesn't face him, the bout is forfeited to the
Negro. I think more meet than fail to.
At Fiske Playground, where there are few Negroes, as they do not live
near, the investigator witnessed a baseball game with a team from Colman
Playground composed entirely of Negro boys except the pitcher. They
played as any teams would, with no evidence of racial antipathy. The
Negro team seemed to be the better, and according to the director had
won every game so far that season.
At McCosh, Robey, Carter, Oakland, Colman, Doolittle, and Beutner
playgrounds the children mingled without friction, according to the
directors. Negroes were in a minority at the first three and in a majority
at the last four. At Carter Playground the investigator witnessed the
presentation of a medal for athletics to one of the white boys while the
Negro boys looked on in admiration and, after it was over, invited the
white boys to "come on out and play ball." The only trouble that has been
experienced at this playground was a few days before the 1919 riot, when
a fight between a white boy and a Negro started on the playground and
the spectators divided along racial lines, especially after the fight
was transferred to the street. A riot call was sent in, and the police
put a stop to the fight. No trouble has occurred since and the director
believed it could not happen again. "The boys have learned better," he
said.
Free mingling of Negro and white children was observed at Oakland and
Robey playgrounds and was encouraged by the directors. Italian and Negro
boys were playing ball together when the investigator visited Robey
Playground, and Negro and white girls were playing on the same slides.
The director said that in the evening the ball games were watched by
both Negroes and whites, and that frequently the Negroes had a game
themselves, which white onlookers enjoyed watching. The only incident
of importance at Robey Playground had occurred a few days before, when
a dispute over a baseball game arose between a white boy of fourteen and
two Negro boys of eleven, resulting in a fight in which the director had
to interfere. The director said there was not the slightest chance that
such a fight would divide the playground along racial lines, as there
had never been any disorders there, and that animosity between the Negro
and white groups was entirely lacking.
At Oakland Playground, where neither race predominated strongly, the
assistant director said there had never been any difficulty. The
investigator witnessed a ball game in which Negro and white girls
participated and saw groups of Negro and white boys talking outside the
playground in a friendly manner.
At Colman, Beutner, and Doolittle playgrounds, where the Negroes come
in the majority, no difficulties were reported. The Negro director of
Doolittle Playground encourages comradeship between Negro and white
children and allows no discrimination against white children. "If a
white boy can make a team, he makes it," this director says to a Negro
team which objects to a white boy being allowed to play on it. When
this director was assigned to Doolittle Playground he was told that 60
per cent of those who made use of the playground were Negro and 40 per
cent white. When he got there he found that 70 per cent were white and
30 per cent were Negroes. He said:
I had to look around to find a colored child, but I never had
any trouble. Of course the white people gradually moved out
and the colored people moved in. We never had any trouble with
colored boys or white boys--they played on the same teams. In
fact, I think we won the district championship for four years.
Then they moved me over to the Beutner and the majority of the
white children got up a petition to bring me back to Doolittle
Playground. That shows there was no distinction there. They
wanted me because we carried on activities.
White ball teams often use the field at Beutner Playground in spite of
the fact that Armour Square is only two blocks away. "Last year [1919]
there were several games between white and colored teams," said the
assistant director, "but there have been none so far in 1920."
No difficulties between Negroes and whites were reported at Palmer
Park, Bessemer Park, or Thorpe, Otis, and Orleans playgrounds, which
are patronized by a few Negroes, though they are too far away from the
Negro areas to be generally used.
The supervisor of girls' work in the Municipal Bureau made the following
statement in regard to the relations between the Negro and white children
visiting the municipal playgrounds:
From my observation and supervision of the girls' work in the
municipal playgrounds I can only say that in all our activities
colored and white children mingle without restriction. In
indoor gymnasium and dancing-classes as well as in games,
athletics, and general informal use of the playground, they
take part together. Ability and sportsmanship are the only
qualifications considered in candidates for any playground team.
In the field of adult recreation, since we have no community
centers conducting indoor activities in connection with any of
our playgrounds within the colored area, my observations refer
only to outdoor gatherings. On such occasions adults of both
races mingle without friction. It is my experience that the
most harmonious relations are established in connection with
band concerts, field days, festivals, pageants, etc., including
all forms of community art, which tend to unify rather than to
split those taking part. In the Illinois Centennial Pageant,
presented by groups from thirty-eight neighborhoods in 1918,
girls from Doolittle Playground represented "Dances of the New
Freedom," bringing "Liberty and New Strength to Illinois." In
preparation of this episode several rehearsals were held at
Doolittle Playground, white dancers from other playgrounds
taking part; and the interest and co-operation shown by the
neighbors made each evening memorable.
_Voluntary racial grouping._--Voluntary racial grouping appears to be a
characteristic of the large parks and beaches, which adults frequent,
rather than of the playgrounds which are used mainly by children. One
instance of voluntary grouping among children was found at Copernicus
Playground. The percentage of Negroes using this playground is much larger
in summer than in winter. The playing space is in the shape of an "L,"
one end intended for boys and the other for girls, but by common consent
the children divide along race lines rather than sex. The investigator
saw small white children playing at one end of the playground, while
Negro boys were playing ball in the larger end. Later, after the Negro
boys left, some of the white children used the larger space while some
Negro children collected around the apparatus in the smaller end. No
instance of mixed play was observed, but there seemed to be no antagonism
between the groups, and no disorders were reported.
The director of Union Park in speaking of boys who play games in the
recreation rooms, said that there seemed to be a tacit understanding
between the blacks and whites that they had certain nights. On certain
nights all the attendance would be black and on other nights it would
all be white. Asked whether Negro and white boys who were school friends
played separately at the park, the director said that blacks and whites
often came in together, but that for every case where they came in
together and played a sociable game, there were probably three instances
where groups were either of one race or the other. However, the director
said that this grouping was casual, and that there was no prevailing
community sentiment that the Negroes should use the park on separate
nights. He believed that additional recreation facilities would help
greatly in doing away with this tendency to voluntary segregation. He
also said that the Negroes had a tendency to separate from the whites,
not because they wished to avoid them, but because they preferred to
associate with their own race.
In the general use of Lincoln and Washington parks the Negroes and whites
stay in separate groups. There has never been any difficulty, according
to the Lincoln Park representative, arising from the fact that Negroes
have taken possession of a spot desired by whites for a picnic or other
amusement. No part of either park is especially set aside for the use of
one race, and groups of both Negroes and whites are seen everywhere in
the parks, but they do not mingle. While there was no outward evidence
of antagonism toward Negroes at the time of the investigator's visit to
Washington Park, white visitors who were questioned showed an antipathy
to the Negro which seemed to have its basis in the influx of Negroes
into the residence districts. One man, originally from the South, was
bitter against Negroes. He said he had left the Socialist party because
it accepted Negroes as equals. At an open-air "free-speech" meeting
speakers representing various radical doctrines were addressing a crowd
composed almost entirely of whites. The chairman of the meeting, however,
was a Negro, whose humorous remarks made him popular with the white crowd.
The only place in Washington Park where there seemed to be a general
mingling of Negroes and whites was on the ball field. There were games
in which the two teams were composed entirely of Negroes, and games
in which the teams were composed entirely of whites; there were also
games in which both Negroes and whites were engaged. The investigator
watched one game in which vacancies on two teams from American Legion
posts had been filled by Negroes. There was the best of spirit between
the players and among the spectators. The white spectators were lined
up along the first base line and the Negro spectators along the third
base line, but rooters and players joked with each other with no sign
of racial antagonism.
The South Park representative testified to the good feeling between
Negroes and whites at a baseball game, and said the whites often
preferred to watch the Negro games. At other points in the park, however,
particularly the tennis courts and the boathouse, difficulties between
the races were reported. These will be discussed in the next section on
"Clashes."
Separate racial grouping is the general rule at the beaches, though it
is not always voluntary. At the Thirty-eighth Street Beach, for example,
Negroes are prevented by white boys and the park policeman from going
into the water, according to a Negro playground director. "Boys who live
around there from Thirty-ninth to Thirty-first Street have to swim at
the street end between Thirty-third and Thirty-second. They rock you if
you go in." This director was invited by white boys of the Vincennes
Club to swim at Thirty-eighth Street, but when he suggested bringing
some Negro boys along the white boys said, "Oh no, they can't come."
[Illustration: ARMOUR SQUARE RECREATION CENTER
Located at Thirty-third Street and Shields Avenue.]
[Illustration: BEUTNER PLAYGROUND
Located at Thirty-third Street and La Salle Avenue.]
At the Diversey Beach in Lincoln Park both races go in the water, but
a Lincoln Park representative said that the few Negroes who used this
beach kept by themselves on one part of the beach, though there was
no official rule compelling them to do this. There have never been any
racial disturbances at this beach.
From the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, which is patronized almost entirely
by Negroes, down to Thirty-sixth Street, Negroes and whites go into the
water in separate groups, except at Twenty-sixth Street, where the few
whites who go in mingle amicably with the Negroes. The investigator
saw a white couple who had gone out to a raft and could not get back
rescued by a Negro life guard. The other bathing-places along the shore
for those ten blocks have been allotted by custom exclusively to one
race or the other. At Twenty-ninth Street, where the 1919 riot started,
a policeman is now stationed, and no trouble has occurred since the
riot, though many fights have started which the police have stopped.
Gangs of young men come from as far as Halsted Street, according to the
policemen, ready to fight at the slightest opportunity. Fights usually
occur because of some remark made by one group about a girl in another
group. On the whole, however, few Negroes come to Twenty-ninth Street,
the policeman said, going instead to Twenty-sixth Street.
At the beaches outside the main Negro area, such as Fifty-first Street
and Triangle Park, and Clarendon and Rogers Park beaches to the north,
the only Negro patrons are a few young children. The attendants at these
beaches believe there would be trouble if adult Negroes started to use
them. Negro children have been objected to at Clarendon Beach, where
a man asked the director to put a little girl out because "she was a
nigger."
Several directors reported that the Negroes did not use the swimming-pools
much and segregated themselves when they did go in. The director at Union
Park said the Negroes did not use the swimming-pool in proportion to
their numbers, and that when they did use it, they came in small groups
and confined themselves to a certain part of the pool instead of mingling
with the whites. He said that there was nothing in the attitude of the
white boys to make them do this, but that it was the "natural impulse
of the colored people to do that in the swimming-pool." He thought that
many Negroes did not use the pool more because "they are afraid of the
water." A Negro playground director testified that he had frequently
seen a white boy dive off one side of the pool at Union Park when a
Negro boy dived off the other side and hold the Negro boy down until,
when he came up, he was gasping for air.
The director of Ogden Park gave an incident that had occurred recently
at that park:
One day I noticed three small colored girls sitting among the
others in the "swimming line" waiting for the doors to open.
A few minutes afterward they were at the end of the line. I
tried to find out the reason but could discover nothing either
from the colored girls or the others. I saw that they went
back to the place in the line they had before and went to my
office. Some minutes later I looked out and saw that while
the swimming had begun, these three had not gone in but were
sitting there watching the rest. I was unable to discover why
they didn't go in--they said merely that they "didn't want
to." Whether there was some threat or whether the girls were
naturally timid about going into the pool I do not know.
The representative of the South Park Commission said that in the South
Park district the parents were opposed to race contacts in swimming- and
wading-pools. "Not 10 per cent of the families will allow contact with
Negroes in the pools," he said.
None of the three natatoriums maintained by the Municipal Bureau is
patronized by Negroes, with the exception of the Washington Heights pool
which is used by a few Negro children in the summer. This pool is near
a Negro district, but the other two are remote from the Negro areas.
A distinction was made by several directors between formal and informal
activities at playgrounds and recreation centers. It was their theory
that Negroes and whites mingled successfully in informal activities,
but not in formal ones. "There is a difference in the informal use by
children of a playground and the use of a recreation building where
there are clubs and dances and classes and things of that sort," said
the director of Armour Square. "Children and adults come in individually
to use the library and other facilities, but there are no applications
from organized groups of Negroes for any of the facilities at Armour
Square." The real distinction in most cases is probably not between
formal and informal use but between use by children and use by adults,
as the formal activities are those in which older children and adults
engage, as was pointed out by the representative of the West Chicago
Commission.
_Clashes._--Clashes between Negroes and whites at various places of
recreation are reported as far back as 1913. These clashes in the main
have been initiated by gangs of white boys. In 1913, for example, the
secretary of boys' work at the Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A. (for Negroes)
conducted a party of nineteen Negro boys from the Douglass Center
Boys' Club to Armour Square. They had no difficulty in entering the
park and carrying out their program of athletics. The party then took
shower baths in the field house. The Y.M.C.A. secretary had noticed the
increasing crowds of white boys near-by but had no misgivings until the
party left the park. Then they were assailed with sandbags, tripped,
walked over, and some of them badly bruised. They were obliged to take
refuge in neighboring saloons and houses in Thirty-third Street west
of Shields Avenue. For fully half an hour their way home was blocked,
until a detachment of city police, called by the park police, scattered
the white gang.
That same year the Y.M.C.A. secretary had found it impossible to proceed
east through Thirty-first Street to the lake with groups of Negro boys.
When this was tried they inevitably met gangs of white boys, and fights
ensued with any missiles procurable. Attempts to overcome this antagonism
by continuing to demonstrate that the Negro boys had a right to use
these streets were unavailing for the next two years.
In 1915 similar conflicts occurred. That winter Father Bishop, of St.
Thomas Episcopal Church, took a group of the Negro Y.M.C.A. boys to
Armour Square to play basket-ball. The party, including Father Bishop,
was beaten up by white boys, their sweaters were taken from them, and
they were otherwise maltreated. The Y.M.C.A. staff then decided not to
attempt to use the park or field house during the evenings.
The same year an attempt was made to take seventy-five of these boys
through the Stock Yards. They had received tickets of admission to
the annual stock show, in the pavilion at "the Yards." In spite of the
four adult leaders, several of the boys were struck by sticks and other
missiles while passing from one section of the show to another. The gang
of white boys continually increased in numbers, and the situation by
three o'clock, two hours after the Negroes had entered, began to look
desperate. Police assistance was required to get the Negro boys safely
out of the building and into street cars. No effort was made to restrain
the white gangsters, who were allowed to range through the building at
will.
An altercation between white and Negro boys in Washington Park is
on record as early as the summer of 1913. These boys were sixteen or
seventeen years of age. During the spring and summer of 1919, numerous
outbreaks occurred because of the use of the baseball diamonds in
Washington Park by Negro players. White gangs from the neighborhood of
Fifty-ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue, not far from the park, also came
there to play baseball, among them some of "Ragen's Colts."[44] Gang
fights frequently followed the games. Park policemen usually succeeded
in scattering the combatants. The same season gangs of white boys from
sixteen to twenty years of age frequently annoyed Negro couples on the
benches of this park. When the Negroes showed fight, minor clashes often
resulted.
In Ogden Park, as far back as 1914, there were similar instances of
race antipathy, expressed by hoodlums who were more or less organized. A
Negro playground director said that if Negro boys attended band concerts
in that park, white gangs would wait for them outside the park, and the
Negroes were slugged. The white gangs also tried to keep Negro boys from
using the shower baths at the park. This director told how a party of
Negroes whom he had taken there was surrounded by white gangsters when
they emerged from the shower house. "A boy reached around and caught me
and pulled me up close to the other fellow," he said. "I dug down and
got out. Of course they rushed for me. In the rush the other colored
lads got out. Brass knuckles were used on me. When I looked up they
said, 'My God, you have hit L--; you have hit the wrong fellow.'" The
director declares that the man who hit him with the brass knuckles was
discharged by the court with a reprimand.
This condition in the parks continued up to the early summer of 1920.
George R. Arthur, secretary of the Negro Y.M.C.A. branch, expressed the
fear at that time that a riot might occur in Washington Park any Sunday
afternoon. He described the condition in the vicinity of the boathouse in
that park as "fierce." There were fights there every Sunday. Five white
men had beaten a Negro there one night the previous week. That sort of
thing had been going on for years, he said. The Y.M.C.A. had long been
dealing with the situation but he had noticed this trouble especially
in the last two years. He attributed it to the gang spirit and to racial
antipathy, which ordinarily would not amount to much, but which because
of the tense situation in Chicago might lead to serious riots.
The director of the Negro branch of Community Service of Chicago ascribed
the trouble to the same source. He said that most of the white boys came
to Washington Park from the "Ragen's Colts" Club, that some of them went
to poolrooms where the mischief was hatched. There was but one policeman
in charge of about fifteen baseball games in the park, he said.
The racial difficulties at the baseball fields in Washington Park had
doubtless never been brought to the attention of the representative of
the South Park Commission, because he cited these games as an example of
good feeling between the two races. He believed that there was never any
difficulty at the baseball fields, and that the white people who enjoyed
the Negro games would be the first to object if the Negroes were not
permitted to play in the park. This opinion coincides with the situation
at the ball fields observed by the investigator for the Commission, but
apparently there are occasional clashes here as in other parts of the
park.
The representative of the South Park Commission did not think Negroes
hesitated to use any of the facilities of the park because of fear of
mistreatment in the park, though they might have some fear of being
mistreated outside the park. He did not know that any difficulties have
ever occurred at the boathouse, though a Negro doctor testified that
he had treated many Negro boys who had been assaulted there. The South
Park representative said:
I have never known of any actual abuse of a colored patron
in any park to which I was personally assigned. I have known
people coming and going who were abused, mistreated, and
actually assaulted, outside the park reservations, but I don't
believe our records would show very many cases--probably no
more than occur where the Poles and the Irish get together,
or the Bohemians and the Germans.
Fights of a racial character were reported at one or two playgrounds.
At Franklin Playground, where fights among boys between ten and fourteen
are frequent, the director said he was always especially careful to stop
a fight between a white and Negro boy because "a race riot would be easy
to start."
At Sherwood Playground Negro children do not use the playground after
school hours or during the summer. The attendant declared that "things
used to be mighty rough but are better now." The change may have been
due to a younger group of children replacing the former pupils, among
whom were many children fourteen to seventeen years of age. There was
much fighting between Negroes and whites in the neighborhood of Sherwood
Playground, according to the attendant. Street fights were frequent,
often ending in the use of knives or stones, and numerous arrests had
been made. The fight usually started between two boys over some trivial
dispute, a mixed crowd gathered, and the fight became general. Fights were
also frequent within the playground, the attendant said; sometimes as
many as three were going on at once. But a policeman had been stationed
near-by, and conditions were improving. The playground had no director
at the time it was visited.
An example of objection to the first Negroes appearing in a park was
given by an official of the Municipal Bureau:
I remember a particular instance at the Beutner Playground in
about 1903. Prior to that time we had very few colored people
in that vicinity. One evening a young colored boy, probably
seventeen or eighteen years of age, came in there. I happened
to be on the athletic field at that time. He came in the rear
gate, and the first thing I noticed there was quite a crowd of
white fellows chasing this fellow all over the field. He ran
down to where the Armory now stands, doubled, and came back
and got out of the gates.
This official said that after that incident there was little trouble
between the races at the playground until about 1910, when the balance
of the patronage became almost equal. He continued:
That was when the trouble started. There wasn't any preference
shown on the part of the park management to any particular
race, but it was the people outside. They absolutely took the
stand that as long as they could keep the colored people away
they were going to do it. They used every means they could
to keep the colored people away from Beutner Playground and
Armour Square.
Another instance of whites objecting to the use of recreation facilities
for the first time by Negroes was given by the representative of the
West Chicago Commission:
Not long ago, two colored men, for the first time in the
history of Garfield Park, came out there to play tennis.
Immediately somebody in the neighborhood called up the Park
Board and complained about Negroes breaking into Garfield
Park. We frankly told the people who were complaining that
they had equal rights to the use of the facilities at Garfield
Park. But it seemed that while we said nothing, the colored
gentlemen never appeared again to use the tennis facilities.
The representative of the South Park Commission in commenting on this
same point said:
There is a history of development in amicable race relations.
Most of the troublous conditions are where there is injected
for the first time the question of racial intermingling. Where
it is established, where it has gradually grown up, in time
there comes an adjustment.
At Armour Square individual Negroes have been accepted as "part of the
scheme," according to the representative of the South Park Commission,
practically ever since the park was opened. But the director says that
it is group action which stirs up trouble:
I think the trouble will adjust itself as the colored people
continue to come into the neighborhood, but we are in the
situation of having colored people come into the neighborhood
where there haven't been any before. I think it will adjust
itself in a year or so, and that possibly at that time colored
people will begin coming.
The head of the Municipal Bureau thought the difficulties arose, not
when Negroes first entered a white neighborhood, but when a balance
between the two races was struck, and it was a question which race was
going to predominate. "That has been my experience with the municipal
playgrounds," he said, citing the case of the Beutner Playground which
the Municipal Board decided to turn over to the Negroes.
Where Negroes are accepted and live amicably near white people, or where
there has not been enough influx of Negroes to arouse feeling against them
the contacts in the playground are usually peaceful. On the other hand,
in communities where Negroes are looked on as intruders and objectionable
neighbors, and where the white people are antagonistic, a contact between
a Negro and white child, which would normally be peaceful, will result
in a disturbance and tend to increase existing antagonism. This is the
situation at Moseley and Sherwood playgrounds.
At Thirty-eighth Street Beach the prejudice is such as to prevent any
Negro from bathing there, although it is as near the center of the main
Negro area as the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, to which Negroes are expected
to confine themselves. At Armour Square neighborhood sentiment permits
a few Negroes to use the park, but trouble starts if new groups come.
At Ogden Park a Negro playground director was assaulted by white boys
and hit with brass knuckles in 1914, but now, according to a prominent
Negro familiar with the situation at the center, there is order and fair
treatment both within the park and on the way to it, and the Negroes
prefer to travel out there than to go to Washington Park, which is closer
at hand, but where they may be attacked if they try to use a boat or
may be obliged to wait indefinitely for a tennis court.
The use of the parks by Negroes is determined almost entirely by the
degree of antagonism in the neighborhood, and Negroes are afraid to
make use of the parks where the neighborhood sentiment is hostile. "The
neighborhood condition pretty much governs the feeling of security, on
the basis of which the Negro will come in and use our park facilities,"
said the representative of the South Park Commission. "Without feeling
secure in his neighborhood and in his access to the park, I don't think
anything we could do would pull the Negro in."
[Illustration: A NEGRO AMATEUR BASEBALL TEAM]
At Mitchell Playground, in a district with a reputation for lawlessness,
and at Seward Park, two blocks from a region known as "Little Hell," no
racial difficulty is reported.
The two causes of neighborhood antagonism most commonly cited were the
real estate and the sex problems. Among visitors to Washington Park
the real estate problem in the residence districts near the park seemed
to be the primary cause of ill feeling. One of the property owners in
that region showed his feeling by complaining that the park ought to be
rechristened "Booker T. Washington Park." The figures in Table I indicate
that only about 10 per cent of the patrons of the park are Negroes.
An important point in considering neighborhood sentiment is whether
the white hoodlum who appears to be mainly responsible for the clashes
which have taken place is a cause of neighborhood antagonism or whether
he merely reflects the attitude of the community. The fact that the
hoodlum is permitted to terrorize and mistreat Negroes without serious
protest from whites is an indication that the hoodlum expresses what
the white community feels. The hoodlum does not always live, however,
in the immediate neighborhood of the place of recreation where he makes
trouble. The gangs of white boys who come down to Twenty-ninth Street
Beach and start trouble, for example, do not live near the beach, the
policeman in charge says, but over at Halsted Street. The director
of Armour Square, though she stated that the feeling in the immediate
neighborhood of the park was responsible for keeping Negroes away from
Armour Square, said that the boys who were active in starting trouble
at the time of the 1919 riot came from west of the park, and that the
boys in her vicinity tried to stop the others.
The head of the girls' work in the Municipal Bureau said:
It [hoodlumism] is a symptom, the reflection and logical
carrying out of an attitude widely accepted by the community as
a whole. Although a serious and troublesome symptom, I believe
it should be faced and welcomed as evidence of the potential
brutality of this attitude. Men and women of good standing
in white society condone much that they would hesitate to do
in person; and by their failure to protest prove themselves
equally responsible for results.
The director of Fuller Park believed that the groups of hoodlums mainly
responsible for keeping Negroes out of the parks were the athletic clubs
"composed usually of a bunch of young sports that are not athletes at
all." "These clubs, which have only about one athlete on the roster," he
said, "are so situated that the Negroes have to pass them going to and
from the park. Those are the boys, numerous in every park neighborhood,
who are keeping the colored people out of the parks."
The director of Ogden Park took the part of a Negro boy set upon by a
white gang during the 1919 riot and rescued by the police, though they
did not keep the mob from killing the Negro. He advocated the formation
of "square-deal" clubs to defend innocent people from hoodlums. "Members
would be bound to fight for the square deal--whites against white hoodlums
and blacks against black hoodlums," he said. "Until both races will act,
the lawless elements will continue to cause trouble."
It is possible in some cases, such as those in which the "athletic clubs"
are involved, to find out the identity of boys who molest Negroes, but,
according to the testimony of several park directors, it is absolutely
impossible to control these boys because the courts will not convict
them. The director of Armour Square stated:
I have had boys taken down to the courts time after time, and
now my policeman refuses to take them down to the court any
more, because he is reprimanded when he brings them in....
One of our attendants was shot through the lung and is now
absolutely incapacitated for work, and the policeman was
reprimanded because he had kept the boy in jail two nights.
When it came to trial, they had already seen somebody and the
policeman got the reprimand.
There was a general feeling among park representatives that the presence
of a director with a proper attitude toward the problem was the greatest
factor in bringing about amicable relations within the park, but there was
considerable difference of opinion as to whether the park management could
or should attempt to influence the surrounding neighborhood. The West
Chicago Commission representative said that there was no instructor at
Union Park the first year it was open, and that considerable segregation
and undesirable conduct on the part of both whites and Negroes resulted.
Since then, there had always been a director in charge, and a very
harmonious mingling of the two races had been brought about on the
playground. He believed that a similar relationship could be brought about
within the recreation building by a director with the right personality,
if adequate facilities were provided.
The Seward Park director did not consider it a proper function of a
recreation center to try to direct the community life outside it.
The director of Armour Square felt that she could do nothing to promote
Negro activities there. She did not approve of the suggestion of turning
over Armour Square to the Negroes as the best way of solving the problem.
She thought this would result in ill feeling and trouble, since there was
a well-established tradition that the whites should use Armour Square to
the fullest extent. But since the Negroes had no such recreation center
as Armour Square available to them, she believed that a new center with
full equipment should be started in a neighborhood part white and part
Negro with the understanding that it should be a Negro recreation center
where the whites were welcome if they wished to come. She thought that
white people would patronize such a recreation center and, with careful
leadership, would mingle with the Negroes on friendly and peaceable terms.
Two recreation-center directors favored entirely separate recreational
facilities for Negroes with whites excluded. One of these was the director
of Fuller Park, who told the Commission that he had made every effort to
get Negroes to come to the park, and that he considered it part of his
duty to go out into the neighborhood and try to get Negroes to use the
park. "Separate parks and playgrounds for colored people are advisable,"
he said, "not because one group is any better than the other, but because
they are different. Human nature will have to be remodeled before racial
antipathy is overcome."
The director of Hardin Square, another recreation center little used by
Negroes, though it is near the main Negro area, believed that separate
facilities for each race would be the best solution of the problem. He
did not encourage Negroes to come to Hardin Square. The policeman at
the park also believed that "you can't make the two colors mix." This
policeman said he knows a group of young men in the district, mostly
ex-service men, who would "procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder
with me if a Negro should say one word back to me or should say a word
to a white woman." He thought it would not take much to start another
riot, and that the white people of the district would resolve to make a
"complete clean-up this time." This policeman is the one whose failure
to arrest a white man accused of stoning the Negro boy, Williams, at
the Twenty-sixth Street Beach was an important factor in precipitating
the riot in 1919.
The director of Moseley Playground, who was born and raised in that
vicinity, said there had been antagonism between the two races in that
neighborhood for thirty years. He believed that separate recreation
facilities would be impracticable because the taxpayers could not be
divided in such a way that they would not be paying for fields their
children could not use.
The director of Seward Park thought that it might be arranged in the
small parks to give special hours to Negro groups. This would meet what
he believed to be the desire of the Negroes to be by themselves and also
the objection of the white girls who had protested against having Negro
girls in the same gymnasium classes with them.
V. TRAINING FOR RECREATION DIRECTORS
The importance of the personality of the park director in determining the
conditions in the park, which was often emphasized, led to a consideration
of the training for the work--whether training was required that would
develop the understanding and vision necessary to handle the problems
involved in racial contacts. The representative of the Municipal Bureau
said that every effort had been made to get trained men, but that there
was no school or curriculum of training that determined the efficiency
of a person in charge. Some of his best directors had had no specific
training, while some of the poorest came from the best recreational
training schools.
Few Negro instructors were found at the places of recreation and these
were employed by the Municipal Bureau. The representative of the West Side
Commission said that he had been trying for a long time without success
to get a Negro to take the civil-service examination for playground
instructors, as he was anxious to get a Negro for Union Park. The
representatives of the Lincoln and South Park commissions said that they
used Negroes only as life guards, attendants, janitors, etc. The South
Park Commission representative said the question of the desirability
of having Negro instructors and play leaders had never come up, because
no Negro had ever become a candidate for a position as a result of the
competitive examinations.
_Training opportunities for Negroes._--It was found that the Y.M.C.A.
has a four-year recreational training-course in which no distinction is
made between Negroes and whites. As the courses are not open to women,
the Y.M.C.A. has no such race problem as arises in recreation courses
where women are admitted. The president of the graduating class at the
Y.M.C.A. College the year previous was a Negro, though the rest of the
class was composed entirely of whites. The number of Negroes taking the
Y.M.C.A. recreation course is relatively small, usually about two in a
class of 150.
The American College of Physical Education and the Chicago Normal School
of Physical Education reported that they did not admit Negroes to any
courses, saying that their students would object to physical contact
with Negroes.
The Recreation Training School of Chicago, successor to the Recreation
Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, admits
Negroes to the recreation course on the same terms as all other students
and has trained several, both in the short courses and in the full year's
course. This school admits both men and women.
VI. SUMMARY
Though the Negro areas are as well supplied with ordinary playgrounds
as the rest of the city, they are noticeably lacking in more complete
recreation centers with indoor facilities for the use of older children
and adults. Several of these recreation centers, such as Hardin, Armour,
and Fuller squares, Stanton and Ogden parks, border on Negro areas but
are not used to any great extent by Negroes because the Negroes feel that
the whites object to their presence. Though there are three publicly
maintained beaches within the main Negro area the Negroes feel free to
use only the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, though many of them live as far
south as Sixty-sixth Street. Where Negroes do not use nearby facilities
to any great extent they have usually either been given to understand,
through unofficial discrimination, that they are not desired, or they
have been terrorized by gangs of white boys. Few attempts to encourage
Negro attendance have been made, and with the exception of Union Park
these attempts have failed.
In the main there seem to be no difficulties arising from contacts between
young white and Negro children at the playgrounds, no matter whether
the playground is predominantly white or predominantly Negro, with the
exception of one or two playgrounds, such as Sherwood and Moseley, which
seem to share in traditional neighborhood antagonism between the two
races. Voluntary racial grouping at the playground was found only in
rare instances and usually involved the older rather than the younger
children. The swimming-pools, for example, are patronized more by older
children, and voluntary racial grouping at swimming-pools was reported
in several instances. In the ordinary playground sports and athletic
contests the two races mingle with the best of feeling.
Voluntary racial groupings and serious clashes are found mainly at the
places of recreation patronized by older children and adults--the large
parks, beaches, and recreation centers. Trouble is usually started by
gangs of white boys, organized and unorganized. The members of so-called
"athletic clubs," whose rooms usually border on the park, are the worst
offenders in this respect. If they do not reflect the community feeling
they are at least tolerated by it, as nothing is done to suppress them.
Some park authorities that have made sincere efforts to have these
hoodlums punished are discouraged because they get no co-operation from
the courts, and the policeman who takes the boy to court gets a reprimand,
while the boy is dismissed.
Another source of racial disorder is the lack of co-ordination between
park and city police. The park police stop a fight between a white child
and a Negro child and send them from the park. Outside the park gates
the children start fighting again, and the park police have no power to
interfere. The spectators may then get into the fight, dividing along
racial lines, and before the city police can be summoned a race riot
may be well under way. Either city police should be stationed directly
outside every park, ready to co-operate with the park police, or else
the jurisdiction of the park police should be extended to include the
area immediately surrounding the park.
The most important remedies suggested to the Commission for the betterment
of relations between Negroes and whites at the various places of
recreation were: (1) additional facilities in Negro areas, particularly
recreation centers which can be used by adults; (2) an awakened public
opinion which will refuse longer to tolerate the hoodlum and will insist
that the courts properly punish such offenders; (3) selection of directors
for parks in neighborhoods where there is a critical situation who will
have a sympathetic understanding of the problem and will not tolerate
actions by park police officers and other subordinate officials tending to
discourage Negro attendance; and (4) efforts by such directors to repress
and remove any racial antagonism that may arise in the neighborhood
about the park.
D. CONTACTS IN TRANSPORTATION
I. INTRODUCTION
_Volume of traffic._--The number of passengers carried in 1916 in a
twenty-four-hour day by the Chicago surface lines was 3,500,000 and
by the elevated railway lines 560,000, according to a tabulation made
by the Chicago Traction and Subway Commission in 1916. With the city's
growth in population the traffic in 1920 doubtless showed an even larger
volume. This traffic is distributed over approximately 1,050 miles of
surface and 142 miles of elevated track. It is most congested in the
"Loop" area of the downtown business section, which is a transfer center
for the three sides of the city, North, South, and West; and of course
it is heaviest at the hours when people go to and from work.
_Concentration of Negro traffic._--Negroes constitute 4 per cent of
the city's population, according to the federal census for 1920, and
presumably about that percentage of the city's street-car traffic.
The Negro traffic, however, instead of being scattered all over the
city, is mainly concentrated upon twelve lines which traverse the Negro
residence areas and connect them with the manufacturing districts where
Negroes are largely employed. These twelve lines, which are shown on
the two transportation diagrams facing page 300, cover 11 per cent of
the total mileage of the surface and elevated lines. Because of this
concentration, however, the proportion of Negroes to whites on these
twelve lines is much higher than 4 per cent, and on such lines as that on
State Street, which runs along the principal business street of the main
South Side Negro residence area, it often happens that the majority of
the passengers are Negroes. In addition to these twelve lines of heaviest
Negro traffic, there are others traversing less densely populated parts
of Negro residence areas. In varying degrees contacts of Negroes and
whites may be found on other lines which serve the small proportion of
the Negro population scattered throughout the city.
The main area of Negro residence, on the South Side, where about 90 per
cent of the Negroes in Chicago live, is traversed by the State Street,
Indiana Avenue, Cottage Grove Avenue, Stony Island Avenue, and the South
Side elevated lines, running north and south, and by eleven cross-town
lines, running east and west, beginning with the Twenty-second Street
line at the north and ending with the Seventy-first Street line at the
south. From six to nine o'clock in the morning, and from four to six
o'clock in the afternoon, there is a heavy Negro traffic on the lines
going north to the "Loop," on the Cottage Grove Avenue line going south
to the South Chicago manufacturing district, and on the Thirty-fifth
Street and Forty-seventh Street lines and the elevated branch line at
Fortieth Street going west to the Stock Yards. To reach the Stock Yards,
Negro laborers must ride through a territory between Wentworth Avenue
and Halsted Street in which, as shown in the sections of the report
dealing with housing and with racial clashes, hostility toward Negroes
has often been displayed. This Negro traffic west of Wentworth Avenue
is, therefore, chiefly confined to a few hours in the morning and the
afternoon.
The West Side Negro residence area is connected with the "Loop" by the
Madison Street and Lake Street surface lines, and the elevated line on
Lake Street, and with the Stock Yards by the Halsted Street and Ashland
Avenue lines.
The North Side Negro residence area is connected with the "Loop" by
the lines on State and Clark streets and by the Northwestern elevated
lines. Contacts on these lines, however, are not as important as on
the lines serving the South and West Side areas, because the number of
Negroes involved is only about 1,500, or less than 2 per cent of the
Negro population.
_Contacts and racial attitudes._--As in other northern cities, there is
no "Jim Crow" separation of the races on street cars in Chicago. The
contacts of Negroes and whites on the street cars never provoked any
considerable discussion until the period of Negro migration from the
South, when occasional stories of clashes began to be circulated, but
only one such incident was reported in the newspapers. Even since the
migration began there have been few complaints based upon racial friction
in transportation contacts.
In response to inquiries, the South Side Elevated Company, which has the
largest Negro traffic of any elevated line, replied that except during
the riot in 1919, when a few cases of racial disorder were reported,
there had been no complaints from motormen or trainmen since 1918, when
a trainman was cut by a Negro but not seriously injured. No complaints
from white passengers had been received since the spring of 1917, when
white office workers objected to riding with Stock Yards laborers,
mainly Negroes, on the Stock Yards spur of the elevated. White laborers
in the Stock Yards mostly lived within walking distance of their work,
but Negroes found it necessary to use car lines running east to the main
Negro-residence area. The Chicago Surface Lines replied that complaints
due to racial friction were negligible.
Information obtained by investigators for the Commission showed that
the attitude of Negroes and whites toward each other was being affected
by contacts on the cars. A white woman in the Hyde Park district, an
officer of the Illinois Federation of Woman's Clubs, when interviewed
upon race relations, made special reference to transportation contacts.
She said:
While Negroes are coming into this neighborhood, especially
on Lake Park, I see little of them, except on the street car.
There I must say I have a decided opinion. Just last evening
around five o'clock, I took a Lake Park car at Fortieth Street
and Cottage Grove Avenue, and several colored men saw to it
that they were first to board the car. I had to sit near the
front and a great big Negro man sat next to me, smoking a cigar
right in the car. I told my husband when I got home, I was for
moving them all out of the city, and I never felt like that
toward them until just of late. There's a feeling of resentment
among us white people toward the colored people on the cars,
and they feel that, and they feel the same resentment toward
us. I think I see that very plainly. Last night, on this same
car, a colored man was hanging over me, and I know he didn't
want me there near him, any more than I wanted him.
As a factor in attitudes on race relations, transportation contacts,
while impersonal and temporary, are significant for several reasons.
In the first place, many whites have no contact with Negroes except on
the cars, and their personal impressions of the entire Negro group may
be determined by one or two observations of Negro passengers. Secondly,
transportation contacts are not supervised, as are contacts in the school,
the playground, and the workshop. If there is a dispute between passengers
over a seat it usually rests with the passengers themselves to come to
an understanding. Any feeling of suspicion or prejudice on either side
because of the difference in race accentuates any such misunderstanding.
In the third place, transportation contacts, at least on crowded cars,
involve a degree of physical contact between Negroes and whites which
rarely occurs under other circumstances, and which sometimes leads to
a display of racial feeling.
_Scope and method of investigation._--In obtaining information as to
transportation contacts the Commission's investigators, both white and
Negro, men and women, made many observation trips on the twelve lines
carrying the heaviest volume of Negro traffic and therefore involving
the greatest amount of contact. Counts of passengers, Negro and white,
were made, behavior and habits were noted, passengers and car crews were
questioned, and officials of the surface and elevated lines, starters,
and station men were interviewed.
Superintendents of 123 industrial plants were interviewed to ascertain
the numbers of whites and Negroes employed in offices and in plants,
transportation lines used by workers, nature of work and its effect upon
cleanliness of person and clothing, provision of baths, etc. A further
source of information was a report made for the officers of the Central
Manufacturing District, setting forth the transportation facilities
for the 12,000 employees of the district and providing data drawn from
questionnaires filled out by these employees. The district includes the
area from Thirty-fifth to Forty-third streets and from Morgan to Robey
streets.
II. DISTRIBUTION OF NEGRO TRAFFIC
Negro traffic is fairly continuous throughout the day in the Negro
residence areas, and the proportion of Negroes and whites is about the
same at different hours of the day. Except during the times of going to
and from work the cars are not overcrowded, and the danger of friction
is therefore small. On the routes connecting the Negro residence areas
with the Stock Yards and with South Chicago, where many Negroes are
employed in steel plants, the Negro traffic is confined to a few hours
in the morning and late afternoon, but at these hours the cars are very
crowded. There is much rushing to board cars and get seats, and white
office workers and other non-laborers are thrown into contact with Negro
laborers still in their working clothes. It is under such circumstances
that irritation and actual clashes are most likely to arise. It should be
noted that similar contacts with white laborers in their working clothes
are disagreeable in the same ways, though in such cases the odors and
grime are not associated with race and color.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTATION CONTACTS
MORNING TRAFFIC 7 TO 9 O'CLOCK FROM HOME TO WORK]
[Illustration: TRANSPORTATION CONTACTS
AFTERNOON TRAFFIC--4 TO 6 O'CLOCK FROM WORK TO HOME]
The hours of greatest general travel and car crowding were found to be
from six to nine o'clock in the morning and from four to six o'clock in
the afternoon.
The proportions of whites and Negroes on lines carrying the largest
numbers of Negroes to and from work are shown in two diagrams. These
are based on counts of white and Negro passengers, several trips being
averaged to show typical car loads during the heavy travel of early
morning and late afternoon. The first diagram shows the proportions in
travel from the Negro residence areas of the South and West sides toward
the Stock Yards, the other large industries employing Negroes, and
the "Loop" district during the period from six to nine A.M. The second
diagram shows the proportions in travel from the Stock Yards, the other
industries, and the "Loop" toward the Negro residence areas of the South
and West sides during the period from four to six P.M.
III. CONDUCT RESULTING FROM CONTACTS
As already noted, contacts of Negroes and whites on street cars provoked
little discussion until the migration of Negroes from the South began to
be felt. The great majority of the migrants are laborers. Many of them
are ignorant and rough mannered, entirely unfamiliar with standards of
conduct in northern cities. It is this type which is meant in references
hereinafter to the "migration" or "southern" Negro.
Coming to a city like Chicago, with no "Jim Crow" racial segregation,
was a new experience to many southern Negroes. They felt strange and
uncertain as to how they should act. Many whites and Negroes long
resident in Chicago have said that they could tell a migration Negro by
his ill-at-ease manner and often by his clothes.
The conspicuous points in the behavior of the migration Negro before he
became urbanized were his "loud laughing and talking," his "ill-smelling
clothes," his "roughness," and his tendency to "sit all over the car."
These are easier to understand when one considers the background of the
southern Negro.
Few white people realized how uncertain the southern Negro felt about
making use of his new privilege of sitting anywhere in the car, instead
of being "Jim Crowed." One Negro woman who came to the city during
the migration said, when she was asked about her first impression of
Chicago: "When I got here and got on the street cars and saw colored
people sitting by white people, I just held my breath, for I thought any
minute they would start something. Then I saw nobody noticed it, and I
just thought this is a real place for Negroes." There were exceptional
cases in which southern Negroes walked miles, rather than take a car.
It may seem strange in view of such uncertainty of mind and timidity
that the most noticeable point of behavior of the southern Negro was
loud talking, joking, and laughter. The South Side Elevated Company,
replying to the Commission's inquiries, said: "These colored people are
of a happy-go-lucky type and are often noisy, especially when two or
more acquaintances meet on the trains or station platforms or crossing
from one side of the station to the other. They laugh and talk a good
deal and seem to be happy and care-free."
Although some of this boisterousness was no doubt due to a care-free
spirit and a broad good humor, some of it had quite a different source.
Many a southern Negro thinks that the whites like him to be "typical,"
and that they will tolerate him as long as his dialect, his wit, and
his manner are amusing enough. A Negro newspaper of Chicago took the
southern Negroes to task for using this safety device in Chicago.
Many whites, clerical workers, shoppers, and others of a non-laboring
type, have expressed objections to what they term a tendency of Negroes
to "sit all over the cars," meaning to sit anywhere in the car. This was
most conspicuous when whites had to ride in the morning on a car which
had come from one of the Negro residence areas and was already filled
with Negroes, or when Negroes and whites were boarding a comparatively
empty car near one of the big industrial plants in the afternoon. The
employment manager of the Corn Products Company plant at Argo reported
a complaint about this tendency made to him by one of the girls in the
office:
An office girl told me she had trouble getting a seat on the
cars. She was not able to get a seat by herself and did not
want to sit next to a Negro. She said that Negroes would rush
in and get all the seats by the windows. She thought they
did it more to tease the office help than anything else. This
girl was undoubtedly prejudiced. That was one of her arguments
to explain why she had difficulty in getting to work in the
morning. She is a St. Louis girl of Flemish extraction.
Many of the southern Negroes were found to be very hesitant about taking
seats next to whites. The southern tradition was so ingrained in them
that they tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. On the other hand,
some, with the sudden removal of the restraints of the South, used their
new freedom without thought of the effect of their behavior on Chicago
whites and Negroes.
The attitude of migration Negroes was sometimes expressed to the
Commission's investigators. For example:
You can spend your money as you please, live better and get
more enjoyment out of it--I mean go where you please, without
being Jim-Crowed.
* * * * *
There's no lynching or Jim Crow. You can vote, you receive
better treatment and more money for your work.
* * * * *
The freedom of speech and action. You can live without fear
and there's no Jim Crow.
Some southern Negroes apparently came to Chicago with a real grudge
against all whites and ready at slight provocation to display their
resentment. The minister of one of the Negro churches in Chicago said:
After years of restriction and proscription to which they were
subjected in the South, they suddenly find themselves freed in
a large measure of these conditions. Their mind harks back to
that which they endured at the hands of members of the Aryan
race in the South, and they grow resentful, and in the midst
of their new environment they vent their spleen. One has but
to ride on any of the surface lines running into the section
of Chicago largely occupied by my race group to be convinced
of the facts mentioned above.
The southern Negro who got into trouble with whites by insisting on
his right to a seat sometimes belonged to the class of suspicious
and sensitive Negroes, and sometimes he was simply a "greenhorn." The
following cases show how "green" the migration Negro could be, and how
easy it was for him to make himself disliked and ridiculous. The first
case was observed by a Negro man, the second by a Negro woman, both long
resident in Chicago:
I boarded a crowded car in the "Loop" going south and was forced
to stand near the rear door. There are two lengthwise seats
at the rear of the car, one of which will hold three people
and one of which will hold two. Two colored women, carelessly
dressed and holding greasy paper bundles in their hands, got
on the car at Twelfth Street and stood in the back of the
car hanging on to straps. They rode this way until Eighteenth
Street, when one of them, a large woman, noticing that there
were three white people on one of the seats and only two on
the other said to her companion, "If three folks can sit on
that seat, I ain't going to stand over these white folks, who
are just like they are down South, and don't want you to sit
down. I'm going to sit down myself." She then inserted herself
between the two white women, one of whom was pushed to the
floor. The Negro woman was much embarrassed, but I don't think
she has yet realized that the seats were of different lengths.
* * * * *
I was on a State Street car when two southern Negro women got
on, talking loud, and throwing themselves around loose and
careless like. I was sitting on one of the end seats, just
big enough for three, and one of the women says to the other,
"Here's a seat, here's a seat." "You move over," she said to
me. There was fire in their eyes, and I don't like fighting,
so I made up my mind that if they started anything I'd get up
and give them my seat. Most people would have understood how
you felt if you did that, but I am not sure they would have
understood. I said to one of them, "There really isn't room on
this seat." She gave me a shove, so I said, "But I'll get up
and give you my seat." You wouldn't believe what happened then.
The conductor came in and said, "You just keep your seat."
And a white man, who was sitting in one of the cross-seats,
turned around and said, "I'll see that she does."
Soiled and ill-smelling clothes were a large factor in making Negro
workingmen objectionable to many whites even of the same working class.
At the time of the migration, in the fall of 1916 and the spring of 1917,
the Stock Yards were taking on hundreds of Negro laborers to increase
their war-time production, and these new hands, most of them migration
Negroes, rode to and from work with white office workers. How the white
office workers felt about it is shown by a statement of a white woman
clerk in the Stock Yards:
Some of the Negroes on the Thirty-fifth Street car are very
rough. Most of them work out at the Stock Yards and the smell
of the Yards is very bad. They seem to try to clean up, but
the smell is there, especially in cold weather when the cars
are closed. I would suggest that they run special cars from
the Stock Yards for those people, and that would leave enough
cars for us and we wouldn't get the odor either.
This situation was somewhat remedied by the fact that most of the Negro
laborers at least changed their clothes before going home, even if they
could not entirely rid themselves of the Stock Yards odor; also the hours
for Stock Yards employees were so arranged that the office workers came
to work later and left later than the white and Negro laborers.
The Negro press of Chicago tried to make the migration Negro realize
how the odor attaching to his clothes was affecting public opinion. The
_Chicago Searchlight_ of May 22, 1920, had this exhortation by the editor:
Did you ever get on the elevated train at Indiana Avenue about
5:30 o'clock in the afternoon, and meet the "gang" from the
Stock Yards? It would make you ashamed to see men and women
getting on the cars with greasy overalls on and dirty dresses
in this enlightened age. There is really no excuse for such a
condition to exist. There is plenty of soap and water in the
Stock Yards and you have better clothes in your homes. Why not
take a suit to the yards and wash up and change your clothing,
before attempting to mingle with men and women, many of them
being dressed for theaters and club parties, etc.? Don't you
know that you are forcing on us here in Chicago a condition
similar to the one down South?
In order to find out whether Negroes working in other plants than
the Stock Yards do work which leaves the worker soiled and smelling,
superintendents or foremen were questioned. It was learned that much
other work done by Negro laborers leaves oil, grease, and acid stains,
that many of the plants have no baths or adequate facilities for washing,
and that sometimes where there are such facilities they are not kept in
order. Three-fourths of the superintendents and foremen interviewed had
the impression that Negroes were more careful about bathing and changing
their clothes than whites. They said the difference was probably due
either to the fact that the white laborer who was doing the same class
of work as the Negro, was an immigrant, or to the fact that the white
laborer often lived near the plant where he works, and preferred to wash
up at home.
The Negro laborer meets little objection when he is riding with white
laborers; it is when he comes in contact with whites of a non-laboring
class that there is the most likelihood of trouble. Such whites often
find white laborers quite as objectionable. A lawyer in Indiana Harbor
who was questioned about the transportation contacts in the Calumet
industrial district, said:
So far as transportation is concerned, little trouble need
be expected. Most of the people here are working people, and
they know what to expect when a dirty workman comes and sits
down next to them. The fact of it is that if there is any
complaint to be made, it would be against the foreigners. In
the winter, when the doors are closed, the smell of garlic is
almost unbearable.
Another complaint from whites is that Negroes on the street cars are
"rough." It is significant, however, that all the incidents related to
the Commission in regard to "roughness" occurred on crowded cars. The
rush to get on a car before or after working hours is often heavy. The
Commission's investigator, describing the loading of cars at an important
transfer point near the Stock Yards at the evening rush hour, said:
I observed the loading and transfers at Ashland and
Forty-seventh from three to four o'clock in the afternoon.
With the possible exception of six to seven in the morning
the traffic is heaviest at this time. The transfers from the
Ashland to the Forty-seventh Street car are mostly Negroes
from the government plants at Thirty-ninth and Robey. About 40
per cent of them are women. Cars going east on Forty-seventh
Street leave every five minutes. There is a supervisor on this
corner, whose duty it apparently is to supervise the arrival
and departure of cars. He pays no attention, however, to the
matter of loading. Usually the men meet the car in the middle
of the block and climb on while it is moving. By the time the
car reaches the corner the seats are all taken and the doorway
is congested. The women, like the men, get on as they can. No
deference is shown them. Most of those who get on this car are
colored, and most of them, colored and white alike, are workmen.
Some friction between whites and Negroes has occurred during the boarding
of cars. It may be caused by general racial attitude as well as by the
circumstances of the particular case. The following cases were both
related by white men, one an assistant superintendent in a foundry, and
the other a barber:
One of our employees (Negro) in running to catch a car
accidentally knocked over a white man. The white man became
particularly abusive, and the crowd joined in with him. The
crowd attempted to beat the Negro up, but he ran back to the
plant here for protection and we quieted them down.
* * * * *
I remember one time about three years ago, I was coming home
on the Forty-seventh Street car and two Negroes were standing
on the back. It was pretty crowded. A man swung his wife on
board, and two more white men jumped on too. He got her through
into the car, and one of the Negroes said to her: "I'm going
to get that husband of yours." I went up and stood in back
of the white man and told him I'd stand by him, if anything
happened. There were lots of whites on the car but about half
Negroes, I guess. I think the Negroes have too much freedom.
They don't know how to act. Some of those Negroes on the street
car are real uncivilized.
The South Side Elevated Company, in answer to a questionnaire said:
"It requires constant watching to prevent Negroes from entering and
leaving cars through the windows." The following incident, reported by
the Commission's investigator, who traveled over all the lines used by
Negroes, shows that both whites and Negroes may climb through the windows
under the same conditions of crowding:
I was transferring from the Argo car to the Sixty-third Street
car with a number of white and Negro workmen from the Corn
Products Refining Company. The crowd rushed for the door,
and the doorway soon became congested. Two white men climbed
in the car through the back window, followed immediately by
a Negro. When the conductor came up, a white woman, who was
standing next to me and had seen the whole performance, said
to the conductor, indicating the Negro, who had climbed in
through the window: "I wouldn't take his fare, if I were you.
He came in through the window."
Selection of seats by white and Negro passengers often provides instances
of conduct which is based on racial prejudices. These seem to be most
frequent on lines with comparatively light travel by Negroes and where
there is thus less opportunity for the races to become accustomed to
contact. Sometimes whites show plainly their avoidance of Negroes.
Some Negroes have timidly offered their seats to women standing, and
have been chagrined by the refusal of the white women to accept the
courtesy. The superintendent of one of the plants where Negroes work
made the following comment:
Negroes seemingly refrain from showing courtesy to white women,
such as offering them their seats, because of two facts. Either
the woman to whom the courtesy was extended, or outsiders, seem
to the Negro to place a wrong construction upon his courtesy.
They think him either fresh or servile, and in the majority of
cases where a Negro would extend such courtesies, he refrains
from doing so.
A few Negroes justified themselves by pointing out that white men did
not give up their seats for Negro women, and so they did not intend to
give up their seats for white women. The editor of a Negro newspaper
took Negro men to task for their disregard of white women and also women
of their own race, as follows:
Do you know that there is a growing tendency among the young
men of our race to show disrespect for our womanhood? If
you don't think so, just get on a street car or visit public
amusement places, or even notice their actions as they walk
along the street. It is nothing to see hundreds of big strong
young men sitting on our cars, while women stand until they
become almost exhausted, while those "fellows" sit and read
their papers or gaze out of the car windows.
There is one trait, and I might say only one, that I take off
my hat to the southern "Cracker" for, and that is his respect
and high regard for women. While he hasn't any for the other
fellow's [the Negro's] wives and daughters, yet he respects
his own. We must set a good example for him and respect all
women, regardless of race, color, or creed. Then you will win
the admiration of all civilized people. Men who do not respect
and honor their women are not worthy of citizenship. Do you
get me, brother?
White men have become much incensed when they have given seats to white
women, and Negro men, not realizing what had happened, took the seats.
The timekeeper at a large industrial plant said:
I was on an East Chicago Whiting car. Six Negro workmen were
standing. The car was full about one-third with Negroes. A
man got up to let a white woman sit down. A Negro, seeing the
seat vacated, sat down before the woman had a chance to get
to it. The man who had proffered the seat became indignant,
cursed the Negro, yanked him out of his seat, and proceeded
to beat him up. The Negro drew out a knife. About this time,
it became a general race clash. One of the Negro workmen had
a gun: he pulled it out of his pocket and cleaned out the car.
The following incidents were reported by two white investigators:
I was on a Cottage Grove Avenue car at 5:30 P.M. The car was
crowded, about one-third colored people. A young, well-dressed
colored boy of about twenty was standing in the aisle beside
a white man and a white woman. The seat directly in front of
this colored boy was vacated, and the white man made a move
to seize it, but the boy by holding his arm on the back of
the seat barred the white man's way and stepped aside to allow
the woman to sit down. The woman nodded her thanks to the boy,
and the white man went on reading his paper.
* * * * *
I was on an eastbound Oak Park elevated train at about 10:30
A.M. Several Pullman porters got on at Campbell Avenue and had
to stand, as did several white women and men. As the crowd
began to thin out, I noticed that the white men were apt to
drop into a vacant seat themselves, while the Negro porters
were careful to wait until the women sat down before they took
advantage of any vacant seats.
A white woman in the Hyde Park district said to one of the investigators:
On the street cars I would rather ride with Negro gentlemen
than with many of our so-called white gentlemen. A Negro man
who has the slightest training is courteous and genuinely so.
My children use the street car every day to go to the Hyde Park
High School, and it's not the Negro men on the street cars
I hate to think of; it's the cheap white men. A very rough
element of whites congregate every night on Lake Park near
Fifty-first Street--hoodlums that the colored people living
there must fear.
No case of attempted familiarity by a Negro man toward a white woman on
the street cars was reported to the Commission. Cases were reported,
however, of accidental contacts between Negro men and white women
which might easily have been misunderstood, but which seemed to the
investigator, a white woman, to be due to the clumsiness of southern
rural Negroes in crowded cars. Two such cases follow:
I was on a Madison car going west. A number of Negroes got on
at the Northwestern Station. The car was crowded, and I felt
someone in the aisle leaning heavily against my shoulder. I
was very much annoyed and glanced up. I saw that the man was
a Negro about twenty years old. He was with a girl, obviously
his sister, who was also standing in the aisle. They both had
childlike faces, and I could see that he was quite unaware
that he was leaning against me. I didn't say anything, as the
car was really crowded.
* * * * *
I was in the aisle seat of an Illinois Central suburban car
about 5:00 P.M., waiting for the train to start. A Negro man
standing in the aisle next to me suddenly leaned against my
shoulder so hard that it hurt. I looked up at him resentfully
but he didn't notice me. He looked as though he had been picked
up in a little western town and dumped down in a city for the
first time. He had a wide western hat on, and his face was
lean and weatherbeaten. I take it he was about fifty years
old. He was in animated conversation with a woman in a seat
behind me. This woman had many bundles. Apparently they wanted
to find seats together. Soon another man joined them who had
been scouting for seats in the car ahead, and they all set out
together for another car. They were so concentrated on this
problem of getting a seat that they didn't know there was anyone
else in the car. They lunged down the aisle knocking against
people as they went along, but no one paid any particular
attention to them.
Another case of accidental contact, showing an attitude of suspicion on
the part of a white woman, was reported by a Negro Y.M.C.A. secretary:
I was on a street car going west through the "Loop" on Madison
Street. A colored man, apparently a workman, was sitting across
the aisle from me, looking out of the window, with his left
arm stretched along the back of the seat. A white woman came
in, glanced at the vacant seat beside me, and sat down beside
the colored man across the aisle. He looked around and saw
the woman sitting in the seat, and apparently was confused. He
attempted to remove his arm, and in doing so his arm brushed
across the woman's shoulder. She got right up and exclaimed:
"How dare you put your arm around me?" The man looked at her
dumbly, his face the picture of excitement and wonder. I said
to the lady, "I was watching this man and he was honestly
trying to remove his arm from the back of the seat. I think
he was more surprised to find you there than anything else,
and the whole thing was sheer accident." She wanted to know
what I had to do with it, and I simply said I wouldn't like
to see a matter of that kind misunderstood. She resumed her
seat beside the colored man and nothing further happened.
Many cases of improper advances by white men toward Negro women were
reported to the Commission by Negro women, well known to the Commission,
whose character is beyond question. The following are typical:
Going south on a State Street car to Fifty-third Street, I
noticed a man in the aisle staring at me. He kept moving down
nearer and nearer to my seat and sat down in front of me. He
handed me a note written on a scrap of newspaper. I opened it
because I was curious to know what his motive was. He was a
young man, in his twenties, and well dressed. He had written
down his name and telephone number and the words: "Call me
for a date."
* * * * *
I remember one man especially, because I used to ride downtown
on the same car he took every morning. The first time I ever
saw him, he stared at me a great deal and when I got off the
car, he got off too. As he got off he said to me, "Don't take
that car, wait for the other one." I noticed then that he
went over to the corner and took a car going in the opposite
direction from mine. I saw him lots of times after that, and
he always got just as close as he could and stared. I always
arranged it so that he could not sit next to me.
* * * * *
I was on the elevated with a friend the other day. We were
sitting on end seats. A man got up to give a white woman his
seat and then came over and stood close to us. He stood with
his legs against my friend's knees, until she jerked around
and sat facing me. Then he tried standing close to me. He had
me so hedged in I could hardly move, and I had to make a very
abrupt movement to get away. He moved on after a while.
What may be done to prevent misunderstanding and check in its incipiency
trouble which might easily and suddenly become serious, is illustrated
in the action of a white woman, a resident of the Chicago Commons Social
Settlement:
One evening, soon after the race riot in July, 1919, I was
riding on a State Street car, going south from Grand Avenue. I
had only ridden a block, when there was a general stir in the
car, a young woman fainted, and I learned that the conductor
had been struck and his cap knocked off. Word went around
the car that a "nigger" did it. Ugly remarks were being made
and I feared there would be trouble. I stepped to the back of
the car and asked two colored women if they knew who struck
the conductor. One said, "He looked like a colored man," the
other said, "I don't know." Then I asked the conductor, in a
voice loud enough so that the rest of the car could hear me,
whether it was a white or a black man that struck him and why.
He said: "It was a white man. I wouldn't let him bring his
big drum on the platform, it was too crowded." Having learned
this, I turned to two young couples who were still showing
much feeling and said, "A white man struck the conductor."
The whole car then quieted down, and there was no more feeling.
Most of the difficulties in transportation contacts reported and generally
complained of seem to have centered around the first blundering efforts
of migrants to adjust themselves to northern city life. The efforts of
agencies interested in assisting this adjustment, together with the Negro
press, and the intimate criticisms and suggestion for proper conduct
of Chicago Negroes, have smoothed down many of the roughnesses of the
migrants, and as a result friction from contact in transportation seems
to have lessened materially.
E. CONTACTS IN OTHER RELATIONS
Here are included:
I. Contacts in public places, such as restaurants, department stores,
theaters, and personal-service places.
II. "Black and tan" resorts, which present a much-criticized association
because of the vicious elements of whites and Negroes in contact there.
III. Cultural contacts which indicate associations on a purely
intellectual basis.
IV. Contacts in co-operative efforts for race betterment, which includes
most of the social organizations working among Negroes.
I. CONTACTS IN PUBLIC PLACES
On the street, in public conveyances, stores, restaurants, and commercial
places of amusement, contacts of races and nationalities are unavoidable
and have not the supervision that is common in schools or even public
amusement places.
Where large numbers of Negroes live there are theaters, restaurants,
stores, barber shops, and personal-service places, which are used by
Negroes in the proportion in which they predominate in the population
of the area. In any or all of these places, however, white persons are
served.
The business district along State Street between Twenty-sixth and
Forty-seventh, and on the car-line cross-streets, is maintained partly
by, and largely for, the Negro residents in the general neighborhood.
Since, however, about 50 per cent of the population is white, there are
personal-service places which are used almost exclusively by whites.
Barber shops are wholly exclusive, and several restaurants attempt to
make themselves so. For example:
At Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue, in the heart of
the Negro residence area, a restaurant proprietor maintains
an L-shaped establishment. Fronting on Thirty-first Street is
a neatly arranged and well-kept dining-room, with tables for
ladies, and a lunch counter with white waiters. Fronting on
Indiana Avenue is a narrow, dark dining-room, with a counter
served by colored waitresses. It is not kept neatly, and is not
so well supplied. Both dining-rooms are served from the kitchen
in the corner of the L, and patrons in either dining-room would
never suspect that there were two dining-rooms with connection
through this kitchen. At the time of the investigation, the
dining-rooms had different names.
Negroes entering the Indiana Avenue dining-room are given
prompt service. If they enter the Thirty-first Street room
they are given indifferent service, are required to wait long
and the service given them is reluctant and discourteous.
At another restaurant in the same neighborhood, similar means
are used to discourage Negro patronage. Sometimes in addition
to long waiting and discourtesy, food is spoiled. For example,
egg shells are placed in egg orders, and salt is poured into
the food.
In the districts where whites predominate, the measures taken to exclude
Negroes are very definite. In a lunchroom near Forty-third Street and
Vincennes Avenue, a well-educated, well-appearing young Negro had the
following experience:
I went into the restaurant about two o'clock June 13, and sat
about four seats from the front at a counter. After about ten
minutes the waiter came and asked me to move to a seat at the
rear of the counter. I asked him why and he told me he could not
serve me where I was sitting. He said the management reserved
the right to seat its guests, and pointed to a sign on the
wall bearing that notice. I asked him if he could not serve
me just as well where I was sitting as on the rear counter.
He said maybe he could, but it was a rule of the house not
to, and he would not. I left without being served.
Another Negro experience in a lunchroom on Forty-third Street near the
Elevated is thus described: "Service given was very poor. When protest
was made, the police were called and the young man was arrested for
disorderly conduct. The case was dismissed."
Fifty-ninth and Halsted streets: "Service refused in a Swedish café. No
witnesses."
Near Berwyn and Broadway (North Side): "Service refused, and investigator
ordered out."
In the "Loop," experiences are widely varied. In all of the following
cases, carefully selected investigators were sent and asked to report in
detail what happened. It is possible to gather large numbers of personal
experiences, from any group of Negroes, but as the facts cannot be
verified they have not been used. These instances usually go unnoticed
by all but the participants, except where the parties offended may secure
witnesses among the guests present, which is difficult.
At a large, popular, general restaurant on Randolph Street, two women
investigators had this typical experience showing how a manager can
refuse service, and still attempt to keep within the law:
Entered about 7:30 P.M. The restaurant was well filled; I
counted only six vacant tables. A woman head waitress took
us through the main dining-room to the annex, where another
head waitress preceded us down the length of the room to a
corner table in the rear. There was a vacant table on either
side of us. We waited almost a half hour, with no attention,
until a couple was seated at the next table. When the waitress
brought water to them she also brought water to us. She took
the orders for both tables. Mrs. H---- ordered steak, salad and
tea. I ordered chicken salad and tea. Steak and potatoes were
served to the next table in about ten minutes. The waitress
came to me and said the chef said he was out of chicken. I
ordered steak. After another long period of waiting, she came
back and said, "The chef says he is out of small steaks." I
asked, "What have you?" She said she would go and see. She did
not return, but after about fifteen minutes a man came to our
table, put his hands on it, leaned down and said, "Do you want
to see me?" Although I suspected he was the manager, he had not
said so, and I replied, "Who are you? I don't know anything
about you. No, we don't want to see you." He then said, "I
am the manager. What do you want?" "I came to be served with
dinner." He replied, "We have nothing to serve you." I asked,
"Why, what is the reason?" He replied "There is no reason; we
haven't anything to serve you." He was evidently cautious to
keep within the letter of the law, but was determined that we
should not be served. He would give no reason, simply repeating
his former statement. We left without further discussion, and
without being served.
Mrs. T---- says the waitress was courteous, and evidently
regretful of the embarrassment of repeated refusal to serve.
None of the patrons sitting near made any protest at their
presence. It has been her experience that patrons, waitresses,
ushers in theaters rarely show any hesitancy in accepting the
presence of colored people who are orderly and self-respecting.
Almost invariably the disagreeable incidents happen through
the management, or through the carrying out of orders.
An interview with the manager of this restaurant was willingly given
to a white investigator who later visited the place, and questions were
answered freely and carefully. He said he had a number of Negro friends
and appreciated the differences in them, as he did in whites. The main
points in a long discussion of restaurant management in general, and
the particular problem with reference to serving Negroes, he summed up
as follows:
In the past five years, only one Negro has been served in this
restaurant. She came in with a southern family as maid to a
small child. The family was told that she could be served at a
table with them, or in a side room, but could not be served at
an adjoining table, even with the child. After some discussion,
the maid ate at one end of a long table with the child, while
the family sat at the other end.
At the time of the recent instance, when the two Negro women
came in, the manager was not in the restaurant. From what he
was told of the incident, he thinks he should have asked them
to come to the office, and explained the situation to them.
He had no doubt they would have understood, as he has always
found intelligent Negroes readily responsive to the things
which might be injurious to their relations with whites.
Before he was manager, a man brought in two Negroes, seemingly
to get a basis for a suit and damages. The manager offered to
serve them in a side room, but refused service in the main
dining-room. They left without being served, and nothing
further was heard from them.
In former years he had seen dishes broken in the presence of
Negroes after being used in high-grade restaurants where their
patronage was not wanted.
Barring Negroes was not personal, he said. A successful
restaurant must watch closely the desires of its patrons, and
not allow anything to interfere with smooth running. Complaints
are made after each appearance of Negroes. He did not know
what he would do if Negroes insisted on being served, but was
firm that no Negro could be served in the main dining-rooms.
He would vary procedure to suit the circumstances.
The following case, illustrative of the witnesses and testimony necessary
to a court decision, was tried before Judge Adams, and damages of $100
with costs were awarded:
In August, 1920, Miss Lillian Beale, Negro secretary to Miss
Amelia Sears, white, superintendent of the United Charities,
went as the guest of her employer to a candy shop and lunch
room on Michigan Avenue. They seated themselves and remained
for two hours without service. During this time several
friends of Miss Sears came in, were served and left, all of
them commenting on the apparently deliberate oversight of the
party. They remained for some time and left. Suit was brought
against the company, supported by Miss Sears and her friends.
At the first hearing it was stated that the waitress was ill at
a hospital in Cincinnati. The judge, however, was insistent,
and she was produced. When placed on the stand she admitted,
contrary to the expectations of the management, that she had
been ordered by the management not to serve any colored persons
at any time. Miss Beale was awarded and collected damages of
$100 and costs.
Eight months later, in July, 1921, a test was made of the same restaurant.
Two Negro women went together to the restaurant, and a white woman
observer went along to watch what might happen. Their reports agree and
are as follows:
Time, one o'clock. Restaurant 50 per cent filled. Mrs. L----
and Mrs. S---- came in and seated themselves at a table for
two near the center of the room. Waitress followed usual
routine of bringing water, taking order, etc. Service of a
table d'hôte luncheon was prompt and courteous. No inattention
was observed, nor any disturbance on part of neighbors. Two
white women came in and seated themselves at the next table,
though there were several others vacant.
Two other Negro women and a white observer were sent to another restaurant
operating under the same firm name. It was reported by the white observer
as follows:
Restaurant two thirds filled--12 o'clock. Mostly women patrons,
though a fair number of men alone, and of couples use this
restaurant. Mrs. T---- and her friend came in through the long
passage by the candy counter, and crossed to a table for two
in the middle of the room. The manager, who is a young woman
of considerable poise and ability, came at once and gave them
water, took their order, and later served them. Two young
white women at an adjoining table moved, but it may have been
because they were sitting with strangers and preferred a table
for two. After finishing my lunch, I joined Mrs. T---- and
her friend, and the manager kept us under observation, but
nothing was said.
In a subsequent interview with the manager at the general office of this
chain of tea rooms cautiously worded replies were made to questions,
with constant reiteration of the statement, "But you know we must serve
them." In general it was said:
Negro patrons are infrequent, and there has been no noticeable
increase. After many cases, complaint is made by white patrons,
either in person or by letter, to the effect that if the tea
room caters to Negroes, the white patrons will no longer use
it. They had never known of a case of objectionable conduct
but whites simply objected to their presence.
No instructions were given waitresses, but each case was
handled by the head waitress as it occurred. Some girls made no
objections to waiting on Negroes, and some refused to do it,
but each attitude is individual, and not from instructions.
No question that Negro patronage would hurt any high-grade
place, as white patrons would be likely to leave. Rights did
not enter into the problem--simply a matter of profitable
business.
Interviews with managers of tea rooms in department stores brought out
uniformity of attitude and of practice, as is shown in the following
reports:
The manager of one tea room is a young woman of considerable
experience. She was emphatic in saying that Negroes were not
wanted, and that every effort would be made to discourage
their coming. Considerable personal feeling was manifested in
her statements.
Not enough Negroes can afford to pay the prices in high-grade
restaurants to make them a real problem, and stray cases
are handled as they appear. The effort was made to make them
feel uncomfortable so they would not return. Slow service,
indifferent attention were given, but there was no overcharging,
and no spoiling of food.
Had never observed any objectionable conduct. Objections of
white patrons was only reason. Especially difficult in summer,
when many southern white people come to Chicago as a summer
resort.
Waitresses are largely young married women with spare time.
Manager finds them more unwilling than regular waitresses to
give service to Negroes.
At another tea room practically the same statements were made, and the
following instance was given: "Last winter a telephone reservation was
made for a large luncheon party--about forty. When the group arrived,
it was a club of colored women. Screens were placed around the tables,
and luncheon served. A rule was then made and enforced that no telephone
reservations would be made."
Following are reports from investigators seeking to learn at which
restaurants, tea rooms, and lunch counters, service would be given to
Negroes:
We had been shopping down town, and went into ----'s on State
Street to get a light lunch. There were vacant tables and
we sat down. No one came to wait on us. After waiting until
several persons who had come in after us had been served, I
went to one of the men who appeared to be the manager, and
asked him why we were not served. He did not respond very
cordially, but sent a girl. We ordered several dishes from
the card, and were told that they were "just out." Although
orders were being served, the girl stated that they were "just
out" of everything we ordered. To cover our embarrassment,
we practically begged her to serve us cups of chocolate. She
gave us the chocolate and our check; we paid it and left.
* * * * *
Mrs. T---- and Mrs. -- were served promptly and without incident
in a well-known candy store in the shopping district on State
Street. Mrs. T---- says that for many years this place has been
known for its courtesy to colored people. Soon after it was
opened, about World's Fair year, Mrs. ----, a Negro woman, was
refused service by a waitress. She reported the fact to the
owner, who investigated, and finding her statement correct,
discharged the waitress. He made the rule that every patron
was entitled to prompt, courteous service, and that discharge
would follow any justified complaint. Although the store
has been under other management for many years, later adding
light luncheons to candy and soft drinks, the tradition has
continued. Mrs. T---- says neither waitress nor patrons paid
any attention to the serving of two colored women.
This case, involving three races, was reported from one of the Chinese
restaurants on South Wabash Avenue:
About 7:00 P.M. we entered a Chinese restaurant. There were
three or four white couples eating in the main dining-room,
and two in booths. A Japanese waiter ushered us toward the
furthest booth at the rear of the room. "I prefer sitting in
the main dining-room," I said. He replied, "I can't serve you
here." "Why?" "These seats are reserved. I will serve you in
there [pointing to the booth] but not out here." We left.
One of the largest chains of cafeterias in Chicago is noted for the
fairness of its treatment of Negroes, but even here there are exceptions.
One of the Commission's staff observed two incidents within a short time
in the same cafeteria of this system and reported them as follows:
Just in line before me was a small, quiet, well-dressed
colored woman. She passed the checker, carried her tray to an
unoccupied table, and then counted her check. She took her
tray back to the checker, and made complaint of overcharge.
The checker did not recount, or explain, simply saying, "That
is our price." The woman went back to her table, ate, paid,
and went out without further protest.
A few nights later, I noticed two young, well-mannered colored
girls at a nearby table. As I went out I met the manager and
said to him, "Do many Negroes come here to eat?" He said,
"No, occasionally they come in, but they don't come back more
than once, or at most twice." "How do you manage it?" "Well,
under the law, we can't refuse to let them eat, but we can
charge them any price we like. The first time we charge them
enough to keep them from coming back. Then if they persist
and come again, as soon as they go down the line, I see to
it that something is put in their food which makes it taste
bad--salt or Epsom salts. They never come back after that."
After a pause he added, "You know we are within the law. We
can't have them coming here--it would ruin our trade."
In the inexpensive restaurants on the edge of the "Loop," various
practices are followed, as indicated by the following reports:
Miss B. S. met a friend and went into the ---- Cafeteria on
Lake Street, near State, upstairs. They were served, but the
waiter put screens around their table while they were eating.
* * * * *
In May, 1921, I went to a lunchroom on Van Buren Street to
get a lunch at noon. Six or seven men were at the counter,
and were served as fast as they came in. Finally all seats
were filled and three waiters were doing nothing, so I asked
to be served. The waiter pretended not to hear me, then said
roughly, "What do you want?" I said, "I do not know until I
get a bill of fare." He pitched it at me and I asked for some
baked beans. He stuck his head through the chef's window and
gave my order. He brought me a plate on which were fourteen
beans, and one small roll. I asked for a glass of water and he
brought me a half-glass. I asked for butter (which had been
served with two rolls to white patrons) and he said it would
cost me a nickel. He said with emphasis, "It will cost _you_
a nickel." I said, "You give me the butter, and then watch me
and see if I pay for it." I asked for some pie and he gave me
a piece about half the size he was serving the others. Then
he said again, "Remember that butter will cost you a nickel
extra." I said, "I won't pay it." He said, "You will pay for
that dinner before you eat a bite of it." I said, "No chance,
because I am not going to pay you at all, either before or
after I eat. After I have finished I will pay the cashier at
the desk." He looked at me hard and I kept on eating. Then he
threw me down a check for 25 cents. I said, "Brother, you are
wrong. My bill is only 20 cents. Your menu says beans are 15
cents and pie is 5 cents, and you gave me only one roll when
to all of the others you served two." He said again, "I told
you your butter would cost you a nickel." I said, "Now, you
watch me right close when I go out and see if I pay for it."
I told the cashier that my check called for 25 cents when it
should be 20, "beans 15, pie 5, and if you can make 25 out of
that all right." She said, "You know I have to collect what
the check calls for, or else make good myself." I told her
I appreciated her position but would not pay 25 cents for a
20-cent lunch. Then my waiter stepped up with an iron tap in
his hand, and said, "I told you that butter would cost you a
nickel, and now you pay it or else----." I said, I will "else,"
and laid down twenty cents and walked out. At the door he gave
me a push but did not strike me.
The white proprietor of a drug-store in a residence neighborhood
volunteered this story to a member of the Commission's staff:
Several years ago, there was a fine old colored man who used
to come in frequently to buy drugs, supplies, etc. One day he
came in with his wife, sat down at one of the little tables,
and asked for soda water. My clerk refused to serve them, and
the idea occurred to me that I would serve them myself in such
a way that there would be no possibility that they would ever
come back. I compounded a vile concoction and served it to
them. They tasted it, paid for it, thanked me, and went out
without making any complaint. I have never got over feeling
mean about it. I not only humiliated them, and insulted them,
but I cheated them out of their money.
An instance of unusual absence of friction in contacts under conditions
which might be expected to produce it was given by a white woman who
visited a restaurant patronized by many whites and Negroes:
In talking with Mr. O---- he asked me, "Would you consider it
possible that you would voluntarily go into a restaurant and
eat your lunch where you might have a Negro sitting on the
next stool, or perhaps one on either side of you at a table?"
I answered promptly, "No, I can't imagine it." He said, "A year
ago I wouldn't have imagined such a thing possible myself, but
now I do it quite frequently. There is a restaurant across the
street from my office, right here in the heart of the Negro
district, which a few years ago was a very good one, with
regular table service, excellent food, and all the rest. Last
year it was changed into a sort of a cafeteria, with a lunch
counter down one side, and some tables. You get your knife
and fork, go to the serving counter, and a man gives you on a
plate whatever you order. The other day I found myself between
two colored men, and took a good look at the restaurant. There
is absolutely no disturbance, or even consciousness of any
reason for disturbance."
Today I decided I would try it myself. The restaurant has no
frills; it is simply an eating-place. I chose a corner seat
at a table, because I could see all over the room. As I sat
down, a courteous arm reached across the table to shove back
the used dishes. I looked up to say "thank you," and found a
good-looking young colored man opposite. No further attention
was paid to me, nor was there any consciousness in his face,
other than courtesy. In a few minutes, two young white truck
drivers took the other places at my table. They were in working
jeans, and except that the color was blue instead of khaki,
looked just like the young soldiers in transport service who
used to come into my canteen in France. At the next table was
a quietly dressed young colored girl eating her lunch in a
business-like way. A young white father brought in his little
daughter. At the long lunch counter were neighborhood business
men, white and colored, some professional men, each taking
whatever stool happened to be vacant. Occasionally a truck
driver or roughly dressed working man came in. Even the white
dandy, immaculate in linen and with a cane hooked over his
arm, took his cup of coffee to the counter and sat between a
laborer and a business man.
In theaters, as in restaurants, there are petty evasions of the law,
disagreeable encounters, and small but insistent snobberies. A colored
investigator reported the result of a test of the purchase of tickets
for a play which had had a long run, as follows:
On July 5 I went down to the ---- theater and asked the ticket
seller if I could get two seats for Thursday or Friday night
between the third and ninth rows, center. She hunted out two
seats in the ninth row for Thursday. I said, "If you have them
I would prefer them for Friday." I asked the price, paid her,
and she thanked me.
Friday, I went to the theater, and handed the doorman my
tickets. He tore off the coupons, and directed me to the
main-floor door. The lady usher seated us three rows from
the back on the aisle. I counted and found that I was in the
seventeenth row. I went to the usher and said, "I beg your
pardon, but you seated me in the wrong place." She took the
coupons, said, "Wait a second," and started out with them. I
followed to see that she did not exchange my coupons. She went
to the lobby and talked with the manager. He looked at me and
said, "Well, seat them; there is nothing else to do now." She
went back, gave my coupons to another usher, who asked her
if I was to be seated in the seats the coupons called for.
She answered, "I guess so." Then we were shown to the correct
seats. There was no protest from those around us.
The manager of this theater was later interviewed. He had been in Chicago
only a few months and was not at all interested in the general question
of race relations, but was decided in his opinion that the attendance
of Negroes in any high-class theater was not desirable. His views were
about as follows:
Not many Negroes buy seats down stairs. Usually the ticket
seller gives them tickets in the balcony or gallery and on the
side aisles. Usually had complaints from white patrons if they
found a Negro seated near them, especially if there were ladies
in the party. It was not that the conduct of the Negroes was
objectionable, but their mere presence was objectionable. If
Negroes present tickets for the best main-floor seats, ushers
try to put them in less conspicuous places. If they insist on
taking their seats as shown on tickets, nothing can be done.
If white patrons object, every effort is made to change their
seats. Usual objection is offensive odor and proximity.
In making the study of theaters, certain tests were established. A Negro
would ask at the box-office for seats on the main floor within certain
rows and on the aisle. In the preceding report it will be noted that
seats were sold readily, but some difficulty was found in using them.
In the next report, conditions were reversed:
Mr. J----, Negro, asked for tickets, and was told that there
was nothing on the main floor further in front than the
twenty-third row. Miss H----, white, who was standing by him
as he made the request, and heard the answer, moved up to
the window and was immediately and without any remark, sold
tickets in the seventeenth row on the aisle.
These tickets were presented by Mr. and Mrs. S----, Negroes. They report:
We arrived at 8:15, five minutes before the opening of the
performance. The ticket taker tore off our stubs and returned
them to us without any hesitancy. The ushers, who were women,
glanced at the seat numbers and directed us to our seats,
which were in a very conspicuous location on the first floor.
They were in the seventeenth row, on the aisle. The people
around us, even the ones immediately next to us, were not in
the least concerned at our presence. The treatment accorded
us in general could not have been surpassed.
A different report comes from another "Loop" theater, which has always
been rather conservative in the standard of plays which it presents:
My husband and I wished to see a play at ---- Theater, and
bought seats several days in advance that we might have a
choice. When we were shown to our seats, however, we were
surprised to find that our tickets called for seats in the
gallery, and in a corner which did not afford a view, and
made them more than undesirable. We noticed that there were
several vacant seats in the balcony, also on the first floor.
My husband went to the box office and tried to exchange the
seats. The ticket seller refused to make the exchange and also
became insulting in his remarks to us. Afterwards we made the
attempt to secure seats on the first floor of this same theater
several days in advance of the performance which we wished to
attend. We were told there were no seats on the first floor
which we could get.
A contrasting experience follows:
On Tuesday I went to the ---- Theater, and applied for two
tickets on the main floor, center aisle, between the third and
eleventh rows. The ticket seller stated politely that he had
two tickets in the ninth row on the left. When we attended the
performance, nothing unusual occurred. Other patrons made no
comment, and in no way could we observe any objection made to
our presence. There were no other Negroes at the performance.
Reports of investigators indicate that the managers of movies are
convinced that their main floors, at least, should be guarded against
Negroes. In most of the commercial amusement places, Negroes seldom have
difficulty if they are willing to sit in the balcony, though attempts
are frequently made to seat them on the aisles next to the walls, even
when there are center seats empty. It is rare that any report is obtained
of objections by white patrons to the actual presence of Negroes when
they are well-mannered, well-dressed, and appreciative auditors.
As a rule movie theaters do not sell reserved seats, general admission
entitling any patron to any seat in the house. But the following detailed
report of the experience of two intelligent, well-dressed, quiet-mannered
Negro women at a new movie theater on State Street is typical:
Purchased tickets, and entered the large lobby which extends
across the front of the house. From this lobby there are closed
doors at the entrance of several aisles, so that patrons are
directed by ushers to different aisles, supposedly wherever
there are vacant seats. We followed directions, and went to
the extreme left of the lobby. We opened the door, and the
usher in charge of this aisle started down toward the front
to show us seats. We saw at once that the narrow section of
seats next to the wall was empty except for one colored woman
sitting about the middle of the section. Instead of following
the usher down the aisle, and taking seats indicated to the
right of this section, we turned through a row of empty seats
on the left-hand section, and sat next to a woman in the aisle
seat. This put us two rows from the rear in a side middle
section, instead of in the section which seemed to be reserved
for colored patrons, next to the wall. As the usher returned
to his station he said, "We have some lovely seats in the
balcony; wouldn't you prefer sitting there?" He was courteous,
and I thanked him, telling him that we were quite satisfied
with the seats we had taken.
Later, seeing two vacant seats further front in the center
section which gave us a much better view we decided to take
them and see what would happen. As we rose, the usher tried to
block us by putting his hands on the back of the seat in front,
and saying, "I am sorry that you can't take those seats." I
brushed by him and took one of the seats. He tried the same
thing with Mrs. H----, and she also brushed by and joined me.
There were scattered vacant seats both in the section we left
and the one to which we moved. We remained until the end of
the show without embarrassment.
The manager of this theater has had many years of experience in Chicago,
and was quite willing to discuss race contacts. Nothing in his words
would indicate any strong prejudice against Negroes, even when expressing
his conviction that they should keep to places intended especially for
them. He said, in substance:
Not many Negroes buy tickets--perhaps ten or a dozen a day.
An effort is made to seat them in one section of the house,
preferably the balcony, to which they are directed by ushers.
Reason is the complaint by white patrons who object to sitting
next to them for an hour, or hour and a half. Offensive odor
reason usually given. White patrons often complain to manager
as they go out if Negro has been sitting near them.
Conduct of Negroes is not often objectionable--runs about
the same as all patrons. Occasionally one tries to "start
something." Recently two Negroes came to manager in crowded
lobby after they had attended the show and objected to their
seats on the balcony to which they had been sent by ushers,
saying there were vacant seats on the main floor. Wanted to
know why they were discriminated against. Manager did not want
an argument in the presence of other patrons, and told them
that as they had seen the show, heard the music, and shared
everything with other patrons, he did not see they had any real
cause for complaint. Called attention to the notice printed
on almost every theater ticket in some form or other to the
effect that the management reserves the right to revoke the
license granted in the sale of the ticket, by refunding the
money paid.
The same two women bought tickets the next day and attended a movie in
an older and very popular "Loop" theater. They reported that they had
no difficulty of any kind.
On a test made of a new and popular movie theater in an outlying section
the investigator reported:
There were four of us in the party on June 5. We were told
by the usher that there were no seats on the first floor, and
that we would find seats in the first balcony. I think he was
right, for there were white people also sent to the balcony. We
were ushered in promptly, but another usher met us and said,
"Right on up to the second balcony." We said we preferred
seats in the first balcony, and walked by him. He went and
got two more ushers and stood in front of us to prevent us
from going into the first balcony, insisting that there were
no seats there. One of the young ladies stepped around the
usher, and saw three vacant seats. She called them to the
attention of the usher, and he then said he meant there were
no seats for four. Two of our party took those seats, and the
other two waited about twenty minutes till they could get the
seats they wanted. After getting into the first balcony, we
saw vacant seats in at least four rows, two, three, and four
seats together into which we might quietly have gone had the
usher been courteous.
On June 18, 1920, a well-known Negro employed in the City Hall was denied
admission to a movie theater at Halsted and Sixty-third streets. There
is a small but long-established Negro colony about a mile west of this
location.
In business places of various kinds, contacts are determined largely
by the kind of service offered. Department-store managers questioned
by investigators concerning their Negro patronage and the use of Negro
girls as clerks, stated that the public had definite preferences, and
probably would not willingly tolerate Negroes either as patrons or as
clerks. In stores selling general merchandise, courteous treatment is,
as a rule, accorded to Negro patrons, although there are occasional
annoying incidents. The attitude then taken is determined by the standing
and influence of the Negroes discriminated against. For instance:
At one of the largest department stores, two Negro women,
both school teachers, were refused service in the basement
shoe department. The clerks refused to fit shoes for them. A
Negro alderman became interested in this case, and because of
refusal of service, canceled his account.
The wife of a prominent Negro attorney went into a State Street
candy store and was flatly refused service. Her husband brought
suit and got damages.
Miss V---- was refused service at a large State Street
department store by one of the clerks. The manager was
interviewed and the clerk reprimanded and transferred. On the
second visit, Miss V---- received attention.
In residence areas which are largely white, certain stores practice a
peculiar subversion of the law in the effort to regulate contacts. A
Negro resident of Woodlawn stated that his seven-year-old daughter had
gone to the store to purchase goods for a costume to wear at a school
entertainment. She was given material for which she had not asked, which
she did not want, and for which she was overcharged. Frightened at the
manners of the clerk, she took it. When it was returned, the clerk was
extremely abusive, and told her that colored people were not wanted in
the store. The little girl had, according to her parents, made a mistake
in entering the store. Her parents were acquainted with the attitude of
the management and avoided the place. In the following reports, there is
evident the sense of injustice felt by both whites and Negroes concerned
in the contacts:
Miss S. T---- wrote a prominent musical college and made
arrangements for taking the summer normal-training courses.
Her tuition fee was accepted, and the classes arranged. On her
arrival, the manager received the balance of her money for the
entire course, but told her the classes she wanted were full,
and she would have to take private lessons with another teacher.
The teacher of the desired classes told her the manager had
not been frank, and that he feared the objection of southern
white girls in the classes. Miss T---- made repeated attempts
to get into the classes, but each time was told to apply again.
This she did until it was too late to catch up with her back
work. Other pupils were given prompt admission to the classes.
Two investigators were instructed to go to a public restroom in a large
office building on State Street where there are many small shops selling
women's wearing apparel. Their experience follows:
On July 6, at one P.M. with Mrs. H----, I visited the public
restroom in the ---- building. It is on the eleventh floor,
on the main hall, and the door to the suite of rooms stood
open. On one side of the entrance hall there is a small room
used for a shoe-shining, with a Negro in attendance. Next on
the same side is a large lavatory. Facing the outside door
is the entrance to the restroom proper, which is large enough
for ten or fifteen women, and is fitted up with wicker chairs,
lounge, table, etc.
As we were about to enter the restroom, the woman in charge
stood with her arm across the door, and said, "You are not
to go in there; you may go into the lavatory." We asked why,
and she said, "Those are the orders of the office." We went
into the restroom, and she did not offer any opposition, but
a little later came to us and said, "You are not allowed in
here. You will have to see the manager."
I asked the attendant for the manager's name and room number,
which she gave me. I related the incident to him. He told
me that the attendant had informed me correctly, that the
eleventh-floor restroom was reserved for "white folks" and that
"colored folks" were not allowed to use it. They could use a
restroom on the nineteenth floor set aside for colored employees
of the building, and for any "colored folks" who might come
into the building. He said it was one of the "iron-clad rules
of the man who owned the building," and that "the attendant
had it down in black and white."
Difficulties of this sort which confront Negroes and the efforts by
Negroes to share equal treatment in public accommodations as well as the
experiences met with when cases reach the courts were commented upon by
Judge Cook, of the municipal court, in testimony before the Commission.
He said:
During the earlier part of 1918 I sat in what was known as
the criminal jury branch. That is the branch to which were
assigned all criminal cases in the municipal court where the
defendants demanded a trial by jury and were not tried at the
police station. Among them were cases involving violations of
what is known as the civil-rights law, where a colored man had
a druggist or the proprietor of a moving picture or legitimate
theater arrested for refusing to serve him soda water or
refreshments at the drug store or to furnish him admission by
ticket at a movie or legitimate theater, or if he did furnish
him admission by selling him a ticket, limiting the ticket
which he would sell to some undesirable portion of the house
or to the gallery and not to the main floor, claiming that
the theater was crowded downstairs and that there were no seats.
I suppose I tried during the early part of 1918 and the summer
of 1919 probably a half-dozen of those civil-rights cases. In
every one of them that I tried, there was virtually a clear
case against the defendant. The jury in every instance was
practically a white jury, or may have had one or two colored
men. Notwithstanding that I gave very positive and clear
instructions as to what the law was--to wit, that they were
entitled to equal rights and privileges in public places and
that if the jury believed from the evidence that the plaintiff
was not accorded such right, there was a violation of the
law and the defendant should be punished, and after elaborate
argument by counsel for both the prosecution and the defendant
(and by parenthesis I may say in all of these cases the state's
attorney prosecuted vigorously), the jury, notwithstanding the
plain evidence and the instructions of the court, went out and
in about such time as it would take them to sign the verdict
and return to court, would bring in a verdict of "Not Guilty."
Of course in the criminal court in a case of that kind, the
jury is the judge of both the law and the fact. Therefore,
I was not in a position to grant a new trial. The white jury
simply say that law was not the law in Illinois or they would
not convict under such circumstances, and having once acquitted
the man the court and the state were without any remedy. Now
I have always thought that was unjust.
It was his opinion that those Negroes who did bring cases into court made
a mistake in prosecuting them from a criminal standpoint. It seemed to
be, in his opinion, hopeless for Negroes to assert their rights through
the criminal courts.
Another judge of long experience in the Chicago courts expressed the view
that few Negroes brought in cases involving discrimination. He thought
that especially the better class of Negroes would not bring them because
of the unpleasantness involved and because the damages obtained in most
cases would not pay the attorney's charges. "Most Negroes," he said, "have
found out by experience what the actual feeling is and act accordingly,
trying to avoid unpleasant experiences as much as possible. Although
there would be no trouble in getting a verdict in any clear case, the
amount obtained would not compensate for the trouble involved." He did
not believe that any jury would convict a white defendant on a criminal
charge of discrimination. A prominent Negro attorney, who formerly held
a responsible state office, in giving his general experience said:
In cases involving only Negroes on each side, both judges
and juries will act squarely between them; in cases involving
white defendants and Negro plaintiffs, the tendency is to give
considerably less credibility or weight to Negro testimony;
in cases involving Negro defendants and white plaintiffs, the
tendency is to give more weight to white testimony.
He stated further that in discrimination cases, where the law had been
clearly violated, there was usually no difficulty in getting a verdict
and damages for $25 and up, but that he did not care much about handling
such cases and Negroes did not care to push them, because they were
unpleasant and expensive.
II. "BLACK AND TAN" RESORTS
The intimate association of Negroes and whites in the cabarets of the
South Side has occasioned frequent and heated protests. Negro men are
there seen with white women and white men with Negro women. Although
mixed couples constitute somewhat less than 10 per cent of the patronage,
this mingling is used to characterize all of the association there.
These resorts, with their liquor selling and coarse and vulgar dancing,
are highly dangerous to morals and established law and order, and a
nuisance to the neighborhoods in which they are located. They are used as
amusement places, both by white couples living in other sections of the
city and by Negro couples who live near them. In fact, although many of
the resorts are patronized by an equal number of whites and Negroes, the
actual mixed couples are few. The habitués of these resorts are usually
of an irresponsible type of pleasure seekers, and frequently they are
vicious and immoral. Newspapers and several of the civic agencies have
violently criticized these places as a menace, but in their attacks the
emphasis has usually been shifted from the menace to morals to that of
arousing sentiment against the mingling of races. The police on numbers
of occasions have been urged to close the places in which this form of
association took place. In most cases they have not done so, stating
as their reason that, although mingling was undesirable, there was no
law prohibiting such contacts, and that evidence of violations of such
laws as those concerning liquor selling or decency would be necessary
to warrant their closing.
During 1920 the Negro press began a series of attacks on violations
of law and against the immoral resorts in the Negro residence areas,
including the so-called "black and tan" cabarets, some of which were the
most notorious violators. This was followed by similar attacks from the
white local newspapers. The emphasis in the white papers, however, was
on the race mingling. An extract from one of the articles in a white
paper is given:
"LID" A JOKE AS PEKIN SHIMMIES DEFIANCE OF LAW
LIQUOR, SIRENS, JAZZ, RACE RAINBOW RIOT IN CAFÉ
"Lawless liquor," sensuous "shimmy," solicitous sirens,
wrangling waiters, all the tints of the racial rainbow, black
and tan and white, dancing, drinking, singing, early Sunday
morning at the Pekin café, 2700 South State Street....
"BLACK AND TAN AND WHITE"
The crowd began to arrive. In came a mighty black man with
two white girls. A scarred white man entered with three girls,
two young and painted, the other merely painted.
Two well dressed youths hopped up the stairs with two
timid girls. Seven young men--they looked like back o' the
Yards--came with two women, one heavy footed, the other laughing
hysterically.
Two fur-coated "high yaller" girls romped up with a slender
white man. An attorney gazed happily on the party through horn
rimmed glasses. The waiters called, shouted, whistled when
each party arrived--a full table meant big tips.
At one o'clock the place was crowded. Meanwhile a syncopating
colored man had been vamping cotton field blues on the piano. A
brown girl sang.... All the tables were filled at two o'clock,
black men with white girls, white men with yellow girls, old,
young, all filled with the abandon brought about by illicit
whisky and liquor music.... The Pekin is again the Pekin of
years ago. Only more so.
The reply of a Negro newspaper to the series of articles in the white
press on these resorts expresses the reactions of Negroes to this view:
BLACK AND TANS AND RACE RIOTS
It is an established conviction that the so-called
"intermingling of races" in the cabarets of the South Side
is a fruitful source of riots. To those whose minds are bent
in this belief, the fact that no riot has ever yet started in
one of them is of little importance. Men believe, as a rule,
most readily what they earnestly wish to believe. It matters
little how absurd the proposition, if it expresses a desire
they will make of it an everlasting verity even though it costs
them the kingdom of heaven. And so it happens that we are told
that the Abyssinians burned a flag and almost precipitated
a race riot because they happened be to standing in front of
the Entertainers' Café where Negroes and white persons dance
on the same floor and occasionally together.
To carry further these deductions the United Cigar Store also
should be closed because one of the fanatics shot into it and
killed a white man. The connection of both of these places
with the incident is just about the same, if not a little
worse for the cigar store.
The fury back of complaints like that, for instance, of one
Mr. Farwell of the Law and Order League invites suspicion. In
all seriousness what is this crime of association for which
Mr. Farwell would have these places closed? If demoralization
of character is more certain in mixed places or liquor sold
more openly can it be urged that race contact is responsible?
It cannot. The sore point is the contact. These places are
located in the most densely populated Negro neighborhoods.
Attendance is voluntary and so is whatever amount of association
that follows. There is no manhandling of white innocents to
force them into the society of Negroes. Neither do Negroes
go snooping around the high lights of the West or North sides
seeking white companionship. But that is not the point. When
this antipathy is analyzed it becomes apparent that there is a
well defined intention to prove that any relationship varying
too sharply from the master and servant type is wrong. It
is the yelp of tribal jealousy. It is the gaunt denial of a
fallacious orthodoxy which proclaims that certain instincts
will keep certain persons eternally apart. It is that complex
of emotion into which all discussions of race relations resolve
themselves.
The resentment of Negroes at the poorly veiled thrusts is
perfectly justifiable. However unwholesome to morals these
places may be they refuse to join in the chorus of hate against
amusement places just because they put no restraints upon their
associations. They feel that they are human and at liberty to
seek pleasure if they so desire where contacts are mutually
agreeable. Those who do not care for this contact will stay
away. Because a white woman will dance with a colored man or a
white man with a colored woman there is no argument that a riot
will follow. Persons who dance together are not so likely to
fight as persons who stand at a distance and call each other
bad names.
Rationally considered there is no ground for these contentions.
They are insulting. If danger is ahead for the city when the
Irish and Italians visit the same places of amusement or the
Swedes and Lithuanians, then some thought will be given by
Negroes to eliminating their dangers. There is no point to
calling the patrol because Mr. Farwell and the News think it
complicates the race question.
This paper condemned all of these places because they were
nuisances to the neighborhood--the blacks, the black and tans
and the whites--it did not by this condemnation imply that
color affects morals.
III. CULTURAL CONTACTS
Contacts of whites and Negroes in institutions of learning, general
cultural agencies, and meetings ordinarily involve no friction and are
frequently directly beneficial to race relations. Many Negroes visit and
use the public libraries. In fact, instances of objections on the part
of the public in this institution appear to be extremely few. In the
reading-rooms Negroes sit where they wish, and no objections to their
presence are noted. At a branch library on Oakwood Boulevard over 70
per cent of the patronage is of Negroes, and, the director says, very
cordial relations exist. The civil-service system has made a number of
Negroes eligible for positions in the direct public-service branches of
the city government. No apparent difficulties or objections have resulted.
The University of Chicago and Northwestern University have for many years
had Negro students. There were in 1921 more than sixty at the University
of Chicago, and, although many southern white students attend, there
have been no conspicuous difficulties resulting from the associations. On
the contrary, certain individual Negroes have been very popular with the
student body. During the 1920 football season two Negroes were members
of the football squad, and for several years the favorite of the "track"
was Binga Dismond, a Negro runner.
There is no Negro member of the City Club or of the Woman's City
Club, although the question of admitting Negroes has occasionally been
discussed. The Chicago Woman's Club has two Negro members, one for more
than fifteen years. Negroes, however, have been welcomed to meetings
and in some instances have themselves held meetings there.
A few white churches have several Negro members, usually of long standing.
There are instances of white churches accepting particular Negro members,
with some apprehension that they might bring friends. The Catholic and
Christian Science churches welcome the presence of Negroes at their
services. There is no Christian Science church exclusively for Negroes,
and several hundred Negroes attend the various services of this church.
Many of the more definitely intellectual agencies like the Chicago
Ethical Society, the Chicago Rational Society, and the Sunday Evening
Club have regular Negro attendance. At the Chicago Rational Society one
of the young hostesses is a Negro.
In these forms of contact it is seldom, if ever, that Negroes are
discourteously received. This may be due to the relatively high class
of whites and Negroes who share these associations.
IV. CONTACTS IN CO-OPERATIVE EFFORTS FOR RACE BETTERMENT
Most of the important social organizations and agencies of the city
which aim definitely at the improvement of the Negro group have mixed
boards of control and supervision. The philanthropy, business ability,
and influence of white members is combined with the influence of Negro
members and their intelligent understanding of their own group problems.
The Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian
Association, the Chicago Urban League, Community Service, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Inter-racial
Committee organized by the Chicago Woman's Club are examples of this
form of joint effort. The sentiments of both groups in contact may
be discussed and, on the basis of represented group conditions and
sentiments, programs are formulated and carried out. This association
and exchange of sentiment provide a means of breaking down the isolation
between the groups and at the same time offer a means of extending the
representative thought of Negroes through their white associates to
circles in which contacts are either prohibited or restricted by custom
and tradition.
CHAPTER VII
CRIME AND VICIOUS ENVIRONMENT
The crime rate of Negroes is so largely controlled by a tangle of
predisposing circumstances that it is hardly possible to isolate
and measure its factors. The most important element is the general
lawlessness, crime, and vice in the whole population, irrespective of
race.
I. GENERAL CRIME SITUATION
During 1919 there were 330 homicides in Chicago. In 1920, in addition
to 162 murders, 559 persons were slain by automobiles, largely through
carelessness. According to the Chicago Crime Commission's report for
1920 there are 10,000 professional criminals in Chicago, and the annual
loss from larcenies, robberies, and burglaries aggregates $12,000,000.
Chicago pays a higher rate for burglary insurance than any other American
city.
Crime conditions in Chicago are even worse than is indicated by these
figures, which are based on incomplete police records. In 1919 the police
records showed 1,731 burglaries or persons arrested for burglaries,
while _Bulletin No. 9_ of the Chicago Crime Commission reported 5,509
burglaries during the first eleven months. During the same period the
police records showed 1,975 robberies or persons arrested for robbery,
while the Crime Commission bulletin listed 2,470 robberies. This bulletin
says:
An investigation in August, 1919, to determine whether all
crimes were being reported from the Eleventh Precinct and the
Englewood precinct showed that in forty instances burglaries
and robberies committed during the ninety days preceding had
not been reported. A detailed statement of these offenses
was prepared giving the victim's names, addresses, date and
amount of loss, and presented to the general superintendent
of police. The list was checked by the departmental inspector
and found correct.
Another investigation by the Crime Commission showed that in one month
a certain police captain reported only thirty-seven of the 141 criminal
complaints made to him for his district.
In his book, _Crime in America and the Police_, Raymond B. Fosdick wrote
(1920):
London in 1916, with a population of seven and a quarter
million, had nine premeditated murders. Chicago, one-third the
size of London, in the same period had 105, _nearly twelve
times London's total_. In 1916 Chicago with its 2,500,000
people had twenty more murders than the whole of England and
Wales with their 38,000,000. The Chicago murders during the
year totalled one more than London during the five-year period,
1910-14 inclusive.
In 1917 Chicago had ten more murders than the whole of England
and Wales, and four more murders than all England, Wales,
and Scotland. In 1918 Chicago had fourteen more murders than
England and Wales, and in 1919 the number of murders in Chicago
was almost exactly six times the number committed in London.
Chicago in 1916 had 532 more burglaries than London; in 1917,
3,459 more; in 1918, 866 more, and in 1919, 2,146 more. In
1918, for example, Chicago had twenty-two robberies for every
robbery in London, and fourteen robberies for every robbery
in England and Wales.
Chicago's arrests for 1917 exceeded London's by 61,874.
Thefts of automobiles reported in 1919: New York, 5,527, Chicago
4,316.... London, 290, Liverpool, 10. Comparative statistics
as to the number of automobiles in English and American cities
are impossible to obtain.
It is apparent that this reign of violence and lawlessness must have a
potent effect upon the crime rate of Negroes in Chicago.
II. PREVALENT IMPRESSIONS REGARDING NEGRO CRIME
In its inquiry the Commission met the following current beliefs among
whites in regard to the Negro criminal:
That the Negro is more prone than the white to commit sex crimes,
particularly rape; that he commits a disproportionate number of crimes
involving felonious cuttings and slashings; that the recent migrant
from the South is more likely to offend than the Negro who has resided
longer in the North; and that Negroes willingly tolerate vice and vicious
conditions in the midst of their residence districts. These and similar
impressions are compared with the facts as found by the Commission.
III. CRIMINAL STATISTICS
In its effort to secure information regarding Negro crime the Commission
sought the only available records kept of all crimes--the police records,
especially the annual report of the Department of Police. On examination
these records were found to be of questionable value for any accurate
presentation of Negro crime, or, in fact, of general crime. In 1913 the
City Council Committee on Crime made a study of crimes in Chicago and
encountered the same difficulty. Says the report of this Committee: "The
police and criminal judicial statistics in Chicago are wholly incomplete
and are not even assembled or published by any authority." Further
commenting on this inadequacy, it says:
Unfortunately, there is in Illinois no central bureau of
criminal statistics through which statistics from the police
department, the courts, the jails, prisons, and the probation
department are collected and correlated. A state bureau of
criminal statistics does exist on our statute books, for, by
a law approved June 11, 1912, the State Charities Commission
was directed to establish such a bureau with the secretary of
the Commission as director in charge. This proposed bureau was
charged with the duty of collecting and publishing annually
the statistics of Illinois relating to crime, and all courts
of Illinois, police magistrates, justices of the peace, clerks
of all courts of record, sheriffs, keepers of all places
of detention for crime or misdemeanors or violations of the
criminal statutes are to "furnish said bureau annually such
information on request as it may require in compiling such
statistics." Up to the present time, however, owing chiefly
to the fact that no appropriation has been made to cover
the expenses of this work, no steps have been taken by the
executive secretary of the Commission towards putting this law
into effect. Moreover, there has never been in Chicago any
attempt at an annual "stock-taking" in which the statistics
furnished by the various departments and agencies dealing with
the problem of crime might be brought together and examined
with the hope of determining how far the problem is being
adequately met.
Because there has been no systematic handling of criminal statistics,
no method has been developed for accurately measuring the prevalence of
crime. The Crime Commission expressed its difficulty here in this manner:
It is very important to note that the number of arrests is
not synonymous with number of crimes, among others reasons
because (1) a large number of persons may be arrested for
complicity in a single crime; (2) many innocent persons are
arrested through misapprehension and later discharged; and
(3) the vast majority of arrests are for petty offenses that
are not serious enough to be called "crimes" at all. Some
consideration should be given to the question of "new crime."
When laws are passed creating new offenses, there may be an
increase in arrests without any corresponding increase in
criminality. As a matter of fact, however, the new offenses
are chiefly those involving misdemeanors and violations of
ordinances. New felonies are rarely created. In Chicago the
police classification does, however, include two new offenses
improperly classed as felonies, "contributing to delinquency"
and "pandering."
To the difficulties experienced by the City Council Crime Committee in
determining the extent of general crime may be added the even greater
difficulty of comparing the crime record of Negroes with that of other
racial groups. The sources of the police statistics are the bookings by
the desk sergeant in the police station. These are taken from arrest slip
notations made by police-station desk sergeants, before whom persons
arrested are brought. The ability of these desk sergeants correctly
to ascertain the prisoner's race or nationality is open to question.
Reports from the Immigrants' Protective League show that the foreigners
arrested are often given wrong racial designations. On the other hand
the classification of Negroes, even of half blood, is never in doubt.
This fact should be remembered in interpreting the figures, for the Negro
will be debited with all the crimes he commits, while figures for other
groups will probably not indicate the full extent of their criminality.
Added to this is the disposition, conscious or unconscious, to arrest
Negroes more freely than whites, to book them on more serious charges,
to convict them more readily, and to give them longer sentences.
This bias does not appear in the bare figures, which thus seem to
substantiate the already existing belief that Negroes are more criminal
than other racial groups. An example of this is found in the bookings
in murder cases. For the six-year period 1914-19 inclusive, 1,121
whites and 193 Negroes were booked for murder, while 501 whites and
only twenty-one Negroes were booked for manslaughter. While Negroes
were charged with 17.1 per cent of the murders, they were charged with
only 4.1 per cent of the cases of manslaughter. This, of course, takes
into account bookings before trial. On the other hand, according to
the testimony, they are more easily convicted on the charges on which
they are booked. This fact introduces another element in the figures,
which, although not representing the actual criminality of Negroes, yet
gives plausibility to records. These situations presented such obvious
dangers that the Commission considered it best to avoid giving currency
to figures which carried such clear evidence of their own inaccuracy and
misrepresentation. Since it is necessary to employ some of these figures
despite their inaccuracies, the effort has been made to use them only
where clear comparisons are possible.
The Commission is aware that statistics have been prepared giving the
relative crime rates of different national groups, and has inquired into
the sources of such statistics. In one case, for example, population
estimates were based on 1910 census figures, arbitrarily increased by
one-third. But when the abnormal situation with respect to immigration
caused by the war, to mention only one important disturbing factor, is
taken into consideration, it will be appreciated that any estimate is
of doubtful value for careful calculation.
After much study and experimentation, and particularly after the counsel
of statistical authorities had been obtained, the Commission's plan to
work out comparative racial crime tables was abandoned.
Aside from the striking discrepancies between the crime figures of
the Police Department and those of the Chicago Crime Commission, it
is doubtful whether a reliable index to Negro crime as a separate item
could be obtained even if the police figures showed the whole, instead
of one-fifth or one-half, of the crimes committed.[45]
It was brought out in the testimony of judges and other authorities
that Negroes are more easily identified and more likely to be arrested,
and it is reasonably certain that a smaller proportion of Negroes who
commit crimes escape than whites. But there is absolutely no means of
determining what proportion of crime unrecorded by the police or other
authorities is committed by whites or Negroes.
Adequate comparison of criminal statistics requires at least comparable
units. This is rarely taken into account in comparing Negro and white
crime. For example: a true comparison of relative crime rates between
the two groups would require that the age distribution in each should
be the same. For, although the population figures include children,
women, and old persons, the greatest proportion of crimes is committed by
persons within what is known to criminologists as the "violent ages," or
between eighteen and thirty. If the population is overbalanced in these
ages the crime rate will be exaggerated. Such an overbalance exists in
the Negro population because of the migration to Chicago of more than
50,000 Negroes, mainly adults. Besides, a greater proportion of these
adults were men without families, another factor known to overweight
crime figures. It is a curious fact, however, that, although the Negro
population of Chicago increased from 2.1 per cent of the total in 1914
to 4.5 per cent in 1919, an increase of more than 100 per cent, the
Negro crime rate during the same period increased 50 per cent, or less
than half as rapidly as the Negro population.
The court cases studied intensively by the Commission show that the
majority of Negro criminals are recruited from the lowest economic
class of the Negro group. The frequency with which these persons are
taken to the Bureau of Identification; their inability to provide
bonds; their lack of means to employ attorneys, and their commitment on
account of inability to pay fines, all tend to emphasize the relation
between poverty and crime. The economic factors, as well as the actual
commission of crime, determine largely the size of groups eligible for
arrest and conviction. For example, laborers are likely to contribute
more crimes proportionate to the total than salaried men, and salaried
men more than professional men. The proportion of white laboring men to
the total white population is considerably smaller than the proportion
of Negro laboring men to the total Negro population. As a consequence,
the "eligibles" for arrest and conviction are fewer in the white group
than in the Negro group.
The reports of the City Council Committee on Crime, known as the
"Merriam Report," and of the Chicago Vice Commission, both indicate that
the economic factor is an important cause of both vice and crime. The
following is from the Vice Commission report:
Among the reasons why women or girls enter the life of
prostitution, the economic question plays a more or less
conspicuous part. The low wages paid, the long hours of
standing, insanitary conditions under which girls work in
factories--all these have a powerful effect on a woman's or
girl's nerves or physical force.
First among these causes [for prostitution] should be named
unfavorable home conditions.... Often when the home is not
entirely degraded there are conditions of crowding and poverty
which lead to misfortune. Working all day, the girls are often
obliged to work at home in the evening, and if they live in
a crowded house they must go on the street to receive their
friends. They are thus practically forced on the streets for
social life.
Among the economic conditions contributing to the social evil
are the following: low wages, insanitary conditions, too long
hours and high pressure of work; the over-crowding of houses
upon lots; of families in the house, and of persons in single
rooms.
The Merriam report similarly said:
The pressure of economic conditions has an enormous influence
in producing certain types of crime. Unsanitary housing and
working conditions, unemployment, wages inadequate to maintain
a human standard of living, inevitably produce the crushed
or distorted bodies and minds from which the army of crime
is recruited. The crime problem is not merely a question of
police and courts; it leads to the broader problem of public
sanitation, education, home care, living wages and industrial
democracy.
The greater liability of Negroes to unemployment introduces another
factor. A plant official told the Commission that his plant had dismissed
more than 500 Negro girls for business reasons. These girls, it was
stated, could not easily find re-employment and were therefore probably
exposed to certain necessities and temptations from which white girls
of comparable status are exempt.
_Ratio of convictions to arrest._--Police statistics of the relation
of convictions to arrests do not involve the question of faulty source
and bias and can therefore be used. They show that Negro defendants are
more frequently convicted than whites, and this difference is even more
pronounced in the more serious crimes. This excess ranged from 3 to 8
per cent during the period 1914-19.
_The Negro and sex crimes._--Examination of the records of sex offenders
brought into the criminal court in the two-year period 1917-18 showed
a total of 253, of whom thirty-two, or 12.6 per cent, were Negroes.
This was lower than the Negro rate, according to police statistics, for
felonies in general. The sex offenses of Negroes were committed for the
most part only against Negroes, and the specific charges were rape,
attempted rape, accessory to rape, crimes against children, indecent
liberties, contributing to delinquency, incest, adultery, murder by
abortion, bigamy, crimes against nature, seduction, and bastardy. Of
crimes against children two out of forty-six were committed by Negroes,
or about 5 per cent, substantially the proportion of Negroes to the
total population. The figures, however, are not a reliable index either
for white or Negro crime because they include only cases passing through
the social-service department of the criminal court.
IV. THE NEGRO IN THE COURTS
During the Commission's inquiry an effort was made to ascertain conditions
in some of the various courts into which Negroes are brought; to learn
the comparative attitudes of judges, prosecutors, and policemen toward
Negro and white offenders, and to learn some of the pertinent facts in
the social history of Negroes brought into these courts.
In all, 703 cases were studied, 538 white and 165 Negro. The social
histories showed a conspicuous lack of schooling in the Negroes arrested,
more than half of whom had left school before reaching the age of twelve.
This is two years below the minimum age for children in Illinois. Only
eight had gone beyond the fifth grade. More than 76 per cent were engaged
in unskilled work, and more than 70 per cent had incomes of less than
$25 a week. Few were property owners. More than 50 per cent were locked
up because of inability to furnish bonds.
Compared with white prisoners there was little difference in economic
class, ability to provide bonds, or legal representation. There was some
noticeable difference in the character of offenders, varying with the
type of neighborhood, but no general comparisons were possible because
the courts were selected in a manner to get the greatest number of Negro
cases.
While judges in most courts treated Negro defendants as considerately
as they did whites, conditions in other courts were quite different. One
judge frequently assumed an attitude of facetiousness while hearing Negro
cases. The hearings were characterized by levity and lack of dignity.
In one instance the judge was shaking dice during the hearing of the case.
1. JUVENILE COURT
Between 1913 and 1919, inclusive, the number of Negro boys brought into
the juvenile court increased from 123 to 288, and the number of Negro
girls from 71 to 112. The proportion of Negro boys to the total during
this six-year period decreased from 9 to 6.8 per cent; and the proportion
of Negro girls increased from 5.6 to 14.8 per cent. The proportion for
Negro boys represents a little over twice the proportion of the Negroes
to total population, and for Negro girls about three and one-half times.
Although the proportion for both Negro boys and girls increased from 7.9
per cent in 1913 to 9.9 per cent in 1919, the Negro population for the
same period increased over 100 per cent. The constant disproportion in
the number of Negro boys and girls coming into the juvenile court points
again to infective environment and to other circumstances heretofore
mentioned involved in the crime rate for Negroes.
_Northern and southern Negro delinquents._--Miss Mary Bartelme, assistant
to Judge Arnold, before whom all cases of delinquent girls are tried,
said: "In recent years we have had a large number of colored girls who
have come up from the South to Chicago because their fathers sent for
them. Their education has not been equal to the education of white girls
and their mental development has not been the same."
Joseph L. Moss, chief probation officer in the juvenile court, believed
that Negro girls might be more affected by the war situation, the abnormal
excitement, the lure of the uniform, than white girls.
Mr. Moss further said:
My impression is that southern Negroes contribute just about
their portion to the total number of delinquents. If any
difference could be noted I might say that the delinquencies of
the southern Negro might be more often classed as misdemeanors
than as the more serious offenses. One noted at times a sort of
irresponsibility on the part of southern Negro delinquents which
seemed to me to be traceable to the difference in standards
between former environment and the present one.
_Differences in delinquency of Negro and white children._--No information
could be secured to show that the conduct for which Negro children
are brought into court is in any way different from the conduct of all
delinquent children. On this point Miss Bartelme testified: "I get all
offenses committed by girls under eighteen years of age. I want to say
that the offenses of white and colored are very much the same as far as
those offenses come before me." Mr. Moss testified before the Commission:
"From my experience I would say that there is no significant difference
between acts for which colored delinquent boys are brought into court,
and the acts for which white delinquent boys are brought into court, with
this exception: that larceny, as an offense, seems to have a considerable
lead over other offenses."
_Comparative environment._--Since many of the delinquent children who
come into the juvenile court, particularly first offenders, are placed
on probation, comparative environment of white and Negro children is
important. This subject does not lend itself to statistical presentation,
but Miss Bartelme said:
Negro girls have not the same supervision that many of the white
girls of their same class have, because in so many instances
both parents are working, and the girls are left alone. They
come home from school to a house that is closed. There is no
one to receive them, and that, with a child, is always a very
serious matter. The environment in which they live is not
equal to the environment of the white girls. In these homes
lack of privacy is greater than in the homes of the same class
of white girls, therefore making life much more difficult and
temptations more numerous. These conditions are much worse
on account of the recent congestion, but they have existed
right along. Negro children have been allowed to live in worse
quarters, more crowded quarters, than the other children....
We feel that in placing the children on probation, especially
colored girls, they are placed in a home which often is not
a home because the mother is away at work.
Mr. O. J. Milliken, for many years a public-school principal in Chicago,
and now superintendent of the Chicago and Cook County School for Boys,
to which the milder delinquent cases are committed, testified:
I should not like to be recorded as giving a criticism of
the Board of Education, because I know that the present Board
of Education believes in what I have to say now, but this is
true: the colored boys are in the district that has practically
been abandoned by the white people and the schools are only
boxes for them to go to school in. You don't find any of the
$900,000 school buildings in the colored population district,
and I think that the time is approaching when the old system
will be changed and we will have the vocational work, etc.,
thoroughly organized in the schools in these districts where
most needed.[46] In dealing with boys I think more complaints
come along that line than in any other, and I have made a
report to the superintendent of schools on that at different
times.
Boys who are "trusties" in the above school are allowed to secure jobs
in Chicago. Their difficulties were outlined by Mr. Milliken as follows:
"After a boy has been committed by the Juvenile Court, he is known by
the police, and I have four or five colored boys today who are carrying
letters from me asking the police to please allow these boys to go to
work, and if the boys are in trouble to notify our institution."
Mr. Milliken told how, when the boys are seen on the streets, they
are picked up by the police. He referred to "one of the finest lads we
have had" and said, "I think probably within the last three months I
have had to get him out of the hands of the police by calling up the
police department twenty times, to get him to work." This difficulty,
in Mr. Milliken's opinion, was more common in regard to Negro than white
delinquents.
2. BUREAU OF IDENTIFICATION
While only 11.5 per cent of all persons arrested in Chicago in 1919 were
Negroes, more than 21 per cent of all persons held on criminal charges
in 1919 and taken to the Detective Division Identification Section were
Negroes. In proportion to total arrests about twice as many Negroes as
whites were taken to the Identification Bureau. Explanations of this
disproportion by officials indirectly connected with this branch of the
department and familiar with its methods are illuminating.
Judges of the criminal court have stated that "Negroes look alike," and
that it is "more difficult offhand to place them than it is to identify
a white criminal"; that Negroes are frequently taken to the Bureau for
identification when white men would not be arrested or would be at once
recognized, picked up, and booked.
Again, it is explained that it is unquestionably safer "to pick up
and mug" a Negro than a white person, because there is less fear of an
unpleasant "comeback." Negroes have fewer resources and less influence
with which to insure their fair treatment, and so are more likely to be
subjected to annoyance.
The fundamental reason, however, is perhaps more economic than racial.
The _City Council Crime Committee Report_, or "Merriam Report," says:
The department of police maintains a bureau of identification
with a system of photographs and finger prints, but it is
largely a matter of chance as to who is photographed, and
as to whether the record of criminality is asked for before
he is sentenced, the judge relying largely on the statement
of the prisoner and the memory of the officer. In general,
all prisoners who are held to the Grand Jury and are not
released on bail are taken to the bureau, photographed, and
their finger prints are taken. This seems a very unfair and
illogical arrangement. If there is a reason for photographing
a man before he is tried and while he is still only a suspect,
the reason should apply equally to those in jail and those on
bail. The practice of taking the finger prints and photographs
of only the men and women who cannot afford bail, seems hard
to justify.[47]
3. PROBATION AND PAROLE
It appears from the testimony of officials and others interested in the
care of offenders that the Negro on probation or parole is handicapped
by his color. He is more likely to be interrogated as a suspect; is
more frequently arrested, and perhaps "mugged," and is in more danger of
being molested even while on legitimate business. The principal sources
of information on this subject were:
1. Statistics from the Municipal Department of Adult Probation.
2. Statistics from state institutions.
3. Testimony of John L. Whitman, state superintendent of prisons; John
M. Houston, head of the Municipal Department of Adult Probation; and
Dr. F. Emory Lyon, superintendent of the Central Howard Association.
The figures provided from institutions are probably accurate, since
they are based on actual count, and do not involve any of the factors
overweighting crime statistics.
_Number admitted to probation._--From 1911 to January 1, 1920, 27,252
whites and 1,917 Negroes were admitted to probation after conviction
in the municipal and criminal courts. Negroes were thus slightly less
than 7 per cent of the total. For the six-year period ended January
1, 1920, Negro arrests for misdemeanors, according to police records,
averaged 8.20 per cent and for felonies 11.13 per cent. On convictions
for misdemeanors, Negroes average about 8.5 per cent of the total, and
for felonies, over 13 per cent. The percentage of Negroes among all
offenders placed on probation is thus less than the percentage of Negroes
among those convicted in either group. In other words, the convicted
white man seems more likely to be put on probation than the convicted
Negro.
Probation depends largely upon the attitude of the judges. The total
number of persons placed on probation has remained virtually the same
from year to year. In fact, 164 fewer persons were put on probation in
1920 than in 1919; so that the migration of southern Negroes does not
seem to have affected this situation.
_Extent to which probationers "make good."_--There are no exact figures
showing the relative degree to which white and Negro probationers
justify the leniency shown them, but Judge Houston testified before the
Commission: "I do not think there is any difference. I am satisfied that
the results are equally as good in the colored cases as in the white.
I don't see any material difference between a colored man and a white
man, so far as their truthfulness and reliability are concerned."
_Institutional figures._--Official reports were submitted by the following
state correctional and penal institutions: Chester State Hospital for the
Criminal Insane, Pontiac Reformatory, Southern Illinois Penitentiary at
Menard, and Joliet Penitentiary. No prisoners are paroled from Chester
State Hospital.
Pontiac reported that last year 45 Negroes and 294 whites had
been paroled. Of the Negroes 88 per cent, and of the whites
80 per cent, had "made good."
Menard reported that 50 Negroes and 168 whites had been paroled.
Of the Negroes 76 per cent, and of the whites 81 per cent,
had "made good."
Joliet reported that 61 Negroes and 223 whites had been paroled.
Of the Negroes 69 per cent, and of the whites 74 per cent,
"made good."
Totals for all the above institutions show that the percentages of Negro
and white paroled who "make good" are nearly the same, the Negro rate
being 76.9 per cent and the white 78.2 per cent.
John L. Whitman, state superintendent of prisons, who has had a continuous
experience covering more than twenty-six years in correctional and penal
institutions, testified before the Commission:
If there is a consistent effort being made to prepare inmates
of prisons for good citizenship when they are released, the
colored man responds as readily as the white, but it is a
question in my mind whether the colored man can profit as much
by it when he gets out as the white man can. That, however, is
not due to a natural inclination; perhaps his opportunities
on the outside are not as good.... I think if the reports of
those on parole from the state institutions now are closely
studied, it will be found that they have more difficulties to
surmount on the outside than the whites. If you assumed the
white and colored ex-convicts on a par when they get out, the
colored ex-convict would find it more difficult to lead the
"straight and narrow"--on account of the forces set against
him he is more greatly handicapped.
Dr. F. Emory Lyon, superintendent of the Central Howard Association, an
organization which for twenty years has been dealing with ex-convicts,
testified:
We have found this greater difficulty in dealing with colored
men--in finding suitable rooming places within their means. Of
course we could always find rooms recommended by the colored
Y.M.C.A., or some such source as that, but generally for
desirable places charges were beyond their means.
My experience in dealing with the colored and white, and in
getting them employment, and in observing their satisfactory
fulfilment of their paroles, is that possibly a little larger
percentage of colored men make good on their paroles. They
take any kind of employment by which they can make an honest
living. I notice in our report of this year that out of 972
assisted, discharged and paroled men, ninety-two were colored
men. This would be just about 10 per cent. I think that is
probably a fair proportion each year in the history of the
Association.
Colonel C. B. Adams, managing officer of St. Charles School for boys,
said: "We have seven farm cottages.... but we rarely send a Negro boy
to the farm cottage for the reason that it is almost impossible for him
to secure employment on the farms. The farmers in northern Illinois....
are prejudiced against colored help, and it is almost impossible for us
to secure employment on the farm for a colored boy."
Dr. Clara Hayes, managing officer of the State Training School for
Girls at Geneva, said: "I think the proportion of the colored girls who
are returned for one cause or another is practically the same as the
proportion of white girls.... I think the proportion of those recurring
from misconduct is practically the same."
Mr. O. J. Milliken, of the Chicago and Cook County School for boys,
said that Negro boys equaled white boys in fulfilling satisfactorily
the requirements for those paroled.
4. INSTITUTIONAL INQUIRY
Through the co-operation of John L. Whitman, state superintendent of
prisons, information was secured regarding comparative treatment and
conduct of white and Negro inmates of Illinois. The data covered the
State Penitentiary at Joliet, Southern Illinois Penitentiary at Menard,
State Reformatory at Pontiac, and State Hospital for the Criminal Insane
at Chester.
_Total number of prisoners._--In the total number of inmates in those
institutions, the percentage of Negroes is much larger than the percentage
convicted of felonies in Chicago. The percentage of Negroes among all
persons convicted of felonies in Chicago for a six-year period averaged
13.1 per cent, whereas their proportion among all inmates of these prisons
is about 23 per cent. Omitting the Southern Illinois Penitentiary, the
proportion is about 20 per cent. This disproportion is in part explained
by facts brought out elsewhere showing that Negroes receive much longer
sentences and fewer paroles (see p. 330).
All these institutions reported that in no cases were Negro and white
prisoners kept in the same cells. Mr. Whitman stated that this arrangement
was preferred by both whites and Negroes. Negro and white prisoners are
not segregated in separate cell sections but occupy adjoining cells in
the same block. "They are all in the same cell house; they are together
in the shops; in cottages; in the farm where there are dormitories."
Negro and white prisoners eat in the same dining-room at the same time
and at the same table. "The tables are for six or eight and there will be
colored and white at the same table." They also attend public meetings
together. Mr. Whitman also stated that in all the institutions Negroes
and whites mingled without distinction, and that the result had been
satisfactory. There was no difference in food, clothing, employment,
cells, or discipline for Negro prisoners as a group from that of white
prisoners because of the Negro's character or deportment. In no case was
racial discrimination in such matters used as a means of discipline or
punishment.
_Conduct in prison._--There is no exact system for appraising conduct
within the prison, but at Mr. Whitman's request persons were appointed
in each institution to examine the record of each inmate as to conduct
and tabulate the results. These and other data secured by Superintendent
Whitman indicate that Negroes are less amenable to prison discipline
than whites, but that their violations of rules are not so grave.
The percentage of Negro inmates whose conduct was marked "satisfactory"
was smaller in all institutions than the percentage of whites. At Pontiac
the difference in conduct was negligible. The greatest disparity was in
Menard (in the southern part of the state), where the difference amounted
to more than 20 per cent.
5. OTHER CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS
_St. Charles School for Boys_ receives delinquent boys between ten and
seventeen years of age from the whole state. Negro and white boys are
accepted up to the capacity limit. Negro boys are 12.5 per cent of the
total, or slightly above the proportion which the Cook County Juvenile
Court report shows Negro boys bear to the total of delinquent boys. Since
1915, the Negro population at St. Charles has increased from 8 per cent
to 12.5 per cent of the total, or approximately half as rapidly as the
Negro population in Chicago. St. Charles is conducted on the cottage
plan, there being twenty-two cottages. Negro and white boys live in the
same cottage, eat in the same dining-room, and use the same playground.
Four out of the twelve cadet companies have Negro captains, and these have
more white than Negro boys under them. There are no racial difficulties
in regard to employment or discipline, and the general conduct of Negro
and white boys was reported to be the same. Colonel C. B. Adams, managing
officer, said: "I really think mentally, and I am sure physically, the
colored boys, such as come into the institution today, are superior to
the white boys. We make much of athletics in the school and the best
athletes we have are colored boys."
_Geneva State Training School for Girls_ had 417 girls in 1917, 475 in
1918, and 445 in 1920. The increase over 1917 is proportionately the same
for white and Negro girls. In 1920, out of 445 girls, eighty-three, or
about 18.5 per cent, were Negro. Conditions at Geneva are substantially
similar to those at St. Charles, with the exception that in one cottage,
Negro and white girls eat at different tables. This, the managing officer,
Dr. Clara B. Hayes, says is mutually agreeable. No difficulties exist
with regard to employment or discipline. As to conduct on probation and
parole, Dr. Hayes thought there was no material difference between Negro
and white girls.
_Chicago and Cook County School for Boys._ This school is located in
Riverside, just west of Chicago, on a farm belonging to the City of
Chicago. The county feeds and clothes the boys; the city erects the
buildings, and the Board of Education manages the school and pays all
salaries. There are three buildings holding forty boys each. About 600
boys go through the institution in a year. It is a "testing out" school
and working boys' institution to which first offenders between the ages
of ten and eighteen are committed through the juvenile court. In 1919
the Negro boys were 15 per cent of the total; in 1920, less than 7 per
cent. This decline Mr. Milliken, the managing officer, thought to be
due to the cessation of Negro migration.
The treatment accorded Negro boys in cottages and at meals, play, and
work is identical with that given white boys. There is no difference in
discipline. Race prejudice is not prominent, and the boys are said to be
most democratic with each other regardless of color. The director says:
"They work together, beautifully; the idea [of prejudice] never enters
into their heads. I think it is the outside influence that brings about
these conditions [of prejudice]."
_Chicago Parental School._ To this school, situated on the North Side of
the city, truants from the public schools of Chicago are committed by
the juvenile court. The total number of pupils last year included 993
boys and eighteen girls. The Negro boys numbered eighty and the Negro
girls five.
The treatment accorded white and Negro children is the same. No difference
in regard to discipline or punishment exists. Race prejudice is not
apparent, and the children's attitude toward each other seems not to
be influenced by color. The deportment of Negro and white children is
reported to be the same.
_House of Correction._ To this institution adult misdemeanants are
committed. Information concerning conditions was furnished by Joseph
Siman, superintendent.
The total number of inmates in 1919 was 5,723, and 1,151, or more than
20 per cent, were Negroes. This percentage is larger than the percentages
of Negroes among persons arrested on misdemeanor charges and among those
convicted.
Negro inmates are not put in the same cells with whites, but are
frequently lodged in the same tier of cells. There are separate blocks
of cells, but no separate tiers for whites and Negroes.
The prisoners eat together in the same dining-room. They march from
their cells or work to meals, meetings, and church services and usually
sit in the same order as that in which they march.
No race prejudice is noticeable among prisoners, and no racial clashes
or unpleasant experiences have occurred in the institution.
_Cook County Jail._ The greatest discrimination noted in the course of
the institution inquiry was at the Cook County Jail, where segregation
has been carried out in nearly every department. The statements below
are based on interviews with Chief Deputy Sheriff Laubenheimer and with
Mr. King of the sheriff's office, who was chief clerk at the jail at
the time of this study.
Negroes are completely segregated in cells on the first two floors in
the new jail. Sometimes, when the jail is crowded, a few Negroes are
put in among the whites, but whites are not often put in the part of the
jail where Negroes are segregated. A condemned Negro murderer is placed
with white condemned murderers in the section set apart for condemned
murderers. Similarly Negro boys are placed with white boys in the boys'
section of the jail.
Meals are served to all prisoners in their cells. The Negroes have a
separate "bull pen" for exercise but are given the same facilities as the
whites. They have separate church services. Negro guards have charge of
the Negro prisoners. The conduct of Negroes, according to the observation
of Mr. King, is practically the same as that of the whites.
Out of a total of 8,616 inmates in the county jail in 1919 there were
1,655 Negroes, or about 19 per cent. This is larger than the proportion of
Negroes among all arrested or convicted. The report of the City Council
Crime Committee showed that inmates of the county jail were confined
there to a large extent on account of poverty.
V. NEGRO CRIME AND ENVIRONMENT
_Housing._--Housing must be considered as an important element in the
environmental causes of crime. Elsewhere this report presents a more
detailed study of housing and it will suffice here to call attention to
the prevalence of taking lodgers which is economically necessary in many
Negro homes, and the consequent danger to the integrity of the family;
to the laxity of law enforcement in certain sections; to the condition
of streets and alleys; and to frequent instances of defective housing
which have the effect of driving the children into the streets or to
questionable places of amusement.
_Recreation._--A comprehensive inquiry into the relations between
recreation and delinquency, made by the Cleveland Foundation in 1917,
showed that the use of leisure time had a relation to delinquency in
75 per cent of the cases observed, and that 51 per cent of the leisure
time of the delinquent child was spent in ways that were aimless and
undirected; while in the case of the "wholesome" child, only seven-tenths
of 1 per cent of the spare time was thus spent. Local studies made by
T. J. Szmergalski, of the West Chicago Park Commission, show that the
establishment of a supervised park or playground tends to decrease
complaints of delinquency from 30 to 40 per cent within the range of its
usefulness--a radius of about three-quarters of a mile. With these facts
as a background it is significant that there is no recreation center and
only a few small playgrounds freely available for Negro children within
the congested Negro district. In many of the crowded areas inhabited by
foreign colonies are well-equipped recreation centers with model field
houses, used by thousands of persons from these districts. The facilities
available to Negro children and young people in this respect are much
less adequate.[48]
Bathing-beaches, which are a summer-time boon to Chicago residents,
foreign and native, are not freely accessible to Negroes. The tragic
incidents in which the riot of 1919 began, illustrate the discriminatory
attitude frequently observed when Negroes attempt to enjoy some of these
recreational facilities.
The importance of these recreation opportunities is further emphasized in
the _Annual Report of the Crime Commission_ in its section on recreation.
The answer to the lack of a sufficient number of well-ordered
places of recreation and amusement is to be found in the
thriving condition of Chicago's cheap dance halls, underworld
cabarets, unsupervised movie theatres of the cheaper class
and the large number of pool-rooms scattered throughout the
city. These establishments are the worst breeders of crime
with which this community has to contend and they should
be subjected to rigid police regulations on the part of the
municipal authorities.
The chief counteracting influences of such places of amusement
are the parks, playgrounds and other municipal recreation
centers, and there is a great need for the establishment of
more of these, particularly in the congested districts.
_Psychological._--It is the opinion of criminologists that a "warped"
mind is responsible for many crimes. This general condition is true of
Negroes as well as whites. But another factor appears in many crimes
of Negroes. The traditional ostracism, exploitation and petty daily
insults to which they are continually exposed have doubtless provoked,
even in normal-minded Negroes, a pathological attitude toward society
which sometimes expresses itself defensively in acts of violence and
other lawlessness. A desire for social revenge might well be expected
to result from the facetious and insulting manner in which Negroes are
often treated by officers of the law.
_"Infective" environment._--Much of what is said in the _Annual Report
of the Crime Commission_ for 1920 regarding the relation of infective
environment to crime, can be fairly applied to the congested South Side
areas of Negro residence:
Infective environment as a cause of crime is classified
separately from problems of home environment because where the
latter may be conducive to the proper rearing of children into
manhood and womanhood, the influence immediately outside the
home may be exactly the opposite. There are, in a great city
like Chicago, certain neighborhoods in which influences are at
work continuously to produce criminals. While the production
of criminals is by no means confined to any one section of the
city but is widespread throughout the community, still there
are sections in which conditions are such that the growing
child is indeed fortunate if he can attain manhood without
being led to commit some offense against society.
In Chicago our chief district of this character is, or was
until recently at least, "Canaryville" and much of the other
territory immediately adjacent to the Stock Yards. It was this
section which produced "Moss" Enright, "Sonny" Dunn, Eugene
Geary, the Gentlemen brothers and many others of Chicago's
worst type of criminals. It is in this district that "athletic
clubs" and other organizations of young toughs and gangsters
flourish, and where disreputable poolrooms, hoodlum-infested
saloons and other criminal hangouts are plentiful.
Often it has been the case that public officials having such
constituencies have utilized these conditions to further their
own political advantages without making the slightest effort
to bring about improvements, in some instances, actually
assisting their constituents to violate the law in order to aid
the building up of their political machines.... Improvement
of districts of this character and the elimination of such
conditions within them is highly essential if organized crime
is to be reduced.
_Vice._--Vice districts and Negro residence districts are now and have
long been close together. As late as 1905 a segregated vice district was
tolerated on the West Side, on Green, Peoria, Sangamon, Morgan, Curtis,
Carpenter, and Randolph streets, and Washington Boulevard. Just north
of this district on Lake, Walnut, and Fulton streets, lived Negroes,
segregated by public sentiment. Another vice district was along Custom
House Place, now Federal Street, near which Negroes lived, similarly
segregated by public sentiment. When this vice district was moved
southward to Twenty-second Street it had a fringe of Negro residence.
Later this district was abolished, and now vice of this kind is scattered
and more clandestine and is to be found farther south, largely between
Thirty-first and Fifty-fifth streets. More than 75 per cent of the Negro
population of the city lives in this area.
[Illustration: ENVIRONMENT OF THE SOUTH SIDE NEGRO
NO. 1
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION
1916
DEALT WITH BY THE MORALS COURT AND THE COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN. THE AREA
OUTLINED IN BLACK SHOWS THE BOUNDARIES OF THE RECOGNIZED SEGREGATED VICE
DISTRICT WHICH WAS IN EXISTENCE UP TO NOVEMBER, 1912.]
[Illustration: ENVIRONMENT OF THE SOUTH SIDE NEGRO
NO. 2
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION
1918
DEALT WITH BY THE MORALS COURT AND THE COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN. THE AREA
OUTLINED IN BLACK SHOWS THE BOUNDARIES OF THE RECOGNIZED SEGREGATED VICE
DISTRICT WHICH WAS IN EXISTENCE UP TO NOVEMBER, 1912.]
Concerning the proximity of Negro residence areas to vice areas, the
Chicago Vice Commission report in 1911 said:
The history of the social evil in Chicago is intimately
connected with the colored population. Invariably the large
vice districts have been created within or near the settlements
of colored people. In the past history of the city every time
a new vice district was created downtown or on the South Side,
the colored families were in the district, moving in just
ahead of the prostitutes. The situation along State Street
from Sixteenth Street south is an illustration.
So whenever prostitutes, cadets and thugs were located among
white people and had to be moved for commercial or other
reasons, they were driven to undesirable parts of the city;
the so-called colored residential sections.
The chief of police in 1912 warned prostitutes that so long as they
confined their residence to districts west of Wabash Avenue and east of
Wentworth Avenue, they would not be disturbed. This area contained at
that time the largest group of Negroes in the city, with most of their
churches, Sunday schools, and societies.
The Vice Commission report further said:
In addition to this proximity to immoral conditions young
colored girls are often forced into idleness because of
prejudice against them and they are eventually forced to accept
positions as maids in houses of prostitution.
Employment agents do not hesitate to send colored girls as
servants to these houses. They make the astounding statement
that the law does not allow them to send white girls, but they
will furnish colored help.
In summing up, it is an appalling fact that practically all
of the male and female servants connected with houses of
prostitution in vice districts and in disorderly flats in
residence sections are colored....
The apparent discrimination against colored citizens of the
city in permitting vice to be set down in their very midst
is unjust and abhorrent to all fair-minded people. Colored
children should receive the same moral protection that white
children receive.
The prejudice against colored girls who are ambitious to earn
an honest living is unjust. Such an attitude eventually drives
them into immoral surroundings. They need special care and
protection on the maxim that it is the duty of the strong to
help the weak. Any effort, therefore, to improve conditions
in Chicago should provide more wholesome surroundings for the
families of its colored citizens who now live in communities
of colored people.
That many Negroes live near vice districts is not due to their choice nor
to low moral standards, but to three causes: (1) Negroes are unwelcome
in desirable white residence localities; (2) small incomes compel them
to live in the least expensive places regardless of surroundings; while
premises rented for immoral purposes bring notoriously high rentals,
they make the neighborhood undesirable and the rent of other living
quarters there abnormally low; and (3) Negroes lack sufficient influence
and power to protest effectively against the encroachments of vice.
The records of convictions in the morals court and the evidence of the
Committee of Fifteen show the gradual drift of prostitution southward
coincidentally with the expansions of the main area of Negro residence.
Between 1916 and 1918 houses of prostitution decreased from forty-eight to
twenty-five in number in the territory between Twelfth and Twenty-second
streets, and from 130 to 107 between Twelfth and Thirty-first streets.
Between Thirty-first and Thirty-fifth streets, the number had slightly
increased, while there was an increase of nearly 80 per cent between
Thirty-fifth and Thirty-ninth streets. In the combined districts between
Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth streets the number increased from sixty-two
to eighty-four; and between Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets the
increase was from eleven to fifty-four.
These are probably only a fraction of the number that really exist there,
and while they are too few to be conclusive, they are significant when
considered in relation to the movement of the Negro population. The
accompanying maps show that the figures coincide substantially with the
expansion of Negro residence areas southward and eastward.
Further evidence of this movement of vicious resorts, and an abnormally
large number of them, into the Negro areas was obtained from the state's
attorney's office, the Commission's investigations, and from confidential
reports submitted by other organizations. Most of these places are
maintained by white persons, because in this district there is less
likelihood of effective interference, either from citizens or public
authorities.
_Cabarets and gambling._--In close relation to the disorderly houses
are the vicious cabarets in the Negro areas on the South Side. Their
reputation and the conditions existing in them have been given much
publicity by the local press.
Gambling was found to be prevalent at many places in this section, and
only slight effort was made to conceal violations of the law. Under the
guise of "clubs" some places were being operated as gambling houses with
dice and card games predominating. Other places, apparently with little
fear of the police, both conducted and permitted gambling with cards
and on pool games. Baseball pools and "policy," as well as betting on
horse-race returns, were prevalent.
VI. VIEWS OF AUTHORITIES ON CRIME AMONG NEGROES
Much information was secured from conferences with numerous authorities on
crime: judges of the juvenile, municipal, circuit, superior and criminal
courts; the general superintendent of police and police captains, former
high police officials; heads of correctional and penal institutions;
the state's attorney; experts on probation and parole, representatives
from the sheriff's office; and social workers having intimate knowledge
of crime conditions.
The views of those authorities are an important aid in giving proper
interpretation to the factors which cause crime among Negroes, and to the
circumstances connected with crime prejudicial to Negroes as compared
with whites. For example, the testimony is practically unanimous that
Negroes are much more liable to arrest than whites, since police officers
share in the general public opinion that Negroes "are more criminal than
whites," and also feel that there is little risk of trouble in arresting
Negroes, while greater care must be exercised in arresting whites.
The Negro crime rate is exaggerated quite as much by the fewer arrests of
whites than Negroes, in comparison with the number of crimes committed,
as by the ease with which many Negroes may be arrested for one crime. We
have already noted the remarkable discrepancy between the police reports
of crimes committed and the actual crimes listed by the Crime Commission.
Fewer Negroes than whites escape arrest and prosecution. When comparisons
are made on the basis of statistics for arrests and convictions, there
is presented, unless proper explanations of the statistics are made, an
exaggerated picture of Negro crime.
The views of many of these authorities on various branches of this
inquiry are here given:
1. FEWER PROFESSIONAL AND BANDED CRIMINALS AMONG NEGROES
Judge Edmund Jarecki, municipal court:
I know of no built-up organization of Negroes that would have
any particular control over criminals.
Judge Daniel P. Trude, municipal court:
I think Negro criminals are more isolated. My experience in
the boys' court was with the colored boys who would go out
and steal clothes, a new shirt or some socks, or something
of that sort that they could pick off the back porch. I found
that there was considerable of that, but they are very partial
and take from their own people.
Judge Charles M. Thomson, criminal court:
Negro crime is not organized, but individual, I should say,
almost without exception.
Judge Kickham Scanlan, criminal court:
In May, 1920, I was assigned to the North Side to try some
unbailable murder cases. It was found that there were over
500 homicide cases ... these were nearly all cases in which
gangs of young white men confederated together to go out and
hold up places, and they made a business of it, and some of
these gangs have committed any number of hold-ups, and one
member of the gang explained that he had killed as many as
twenty victims. The evidence showed that they killed when they
didn't have to kill, just recklessly and wantonly. In none of
the cases of the character I have talked about were there any
colored defendants. They were all white men ... there were
some of the most vicious cases I know anything about in my
thirty-four years of experience.
I just want to make that one point to this Commission, that
never in the history of this community has the white race
stood so low from the standpoint of crime as it does at the
present time. White young men are banding together in gangs
and deliberately going out and holding people up, right and
left, and shooting them down. I notice that there are a few
colored imitators of the white men, but the bad man of the
city of Chicago at the present time is the young white man.
General Leroy T. Steward, former chief of police:
I think generally speaking that the Negro criminals work as
individuals. I only recall one instance where there was a gang
of colored men that came to my attention, but I know of many
white gangs.
Dr. Herman Adler, state criminologist:
You asked a question in regard to gangs--whether there is a
combination among Negroes. There are not many. They are more
individual, but on the other hand the lower grade of Negroes
are likely to be the tools of the others at times; they have
been used that way. Where you are dealing with murder, with
sex crimes, with certain forms of burglary, larceny, you are
usually dealing with individual criminals....
Now there is here, in Chicago, professional organized crime.
The colored people as a whole are less engaged in professional
crime and they are more the accidental, casual criminal or the
low-grade person with a strong temper and a strong physique
etc., who slips into crime by following the line of least
resistance.
Major L. M. C. Funkhouser:
Negro criminals are not organized.
Professor Charles E. Merriam:
My belief is that the Negro criminals are not so well organized
as the white. They don't go much in bands; furthermore, they
are not so much in the class of professional criminals as they
are in the class of occasional criminals. It seems to me that
the colored offender is the individual offender; his crimes
are more of haste or passion. He is in the occasional offender
class.
[Illustration: ENVIRONMENT OF THE SOUTH SIDE NEGRO
NO. 3
RESORTS
SUMMER OF 1919]
2. SEX CRIME AMONG NEGROES AS COMPARED WITH WHITES
Judge Edmund Jarecki:
So far as sex crimes are concerned, during the time I have
been there [in the boys' court] I have not noticed anything
that would indicate any difference between colored and white
boys.
Judge Charles M. Thomson:
In my work with the criminal court, I was astonished at
the large number of criminals involving the sexual abuse of
children, but I remember no case in which a colored defendant
was charged with that crime. Almost all races were represented,
but I don't remember one colored man charged with the abuse
of a child. There were many, however, accused of adultery.
Judge Hugo Pam, criminal court:
I have had more serious rape cases against white than against
colored people. The most serious case I had was about ten days
ago, and I sentenced the man to life imprisonment. I never
had such a case involving a Negro.
Judge Kickham Scanlan, criminal court:
I do not think Negroes are more liable to sex crimes than
whites. I tried a colored man six or eight years ago for rape.
He founded an alleged orphan asylum. The evidence showed that
he had held a number of young children in that place. He got
life in the penitentiary. He was the only colored man ever tried
before me with any offense of that character. The children in
that case were colored children. But I have tried a number of
white men for rape, and while I have had ten or a dozen cases
of crimes against children, in my twelve years' experience on
the bench, I have never had a case of a colored man charged
with crime against children.
3. OFFENSES AGAINST MORALS
Judge Arnold Heap:
The number of colored cases in the morals court is largely
disproportionate to the number of Negroes in the total Chicago
population. There are more colored cases now in the morals
court than formerly because in the past the houses kept by
white people with colored inmates were alone held responsible.
Since colored people are now doing business on their own
responsibility, they are at present brought in the same as
white people. At first the Negro newcomers were strangers to
our surroundings and were not such frequent offenders, but as
that strangeness wore off they became familiar with vice as
it exists among us today. The offenses of these new comers are
about the same as those of the northern Negroes. Some persons
think that the immorality of the colored is more gross than
that of the whites, but I have my doubts about it. One factor
in the problem is that colored people of the poorer class crowd
together in smaller quarters than whites, and this tends to
a lesser type of morality because they are so crowded.
Judge Wells M. Cook, municipal court:
Prostitution among the white people in Chicago in 1918 was more
or less clandestine, in flats and cheap hotels and in private
homes, and more or less under cover. The colored people, living
largely in one section of the city, and being naturally of a
social, emotional temperament, are apt to congregate in places
and in resorts where the police could more easily raid them,
and are much more easily apprehended. That is about the only
reason I can see for the disproportionate number of colored
defendants brought into the morals court. It is not that there
is any greater percentage of immorality, but prostitution
among whites was more clandestine.
O. J. Milliken, superintendent, Chicago and Cook County School for
Delinquent Boys:
I don't think that homosexual relations are a racial matter
with the boys. The sex problem, I think, doesn't manifest
itself between races as much as it does in the lower classes
of whites that come in.
4. LYING AND STEALING
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
"I think the colored man, if he is not a desirable citizen, is
undesirable because he has not been given a chance; he has not
been given the advantages that a white fellow has from birth."
Judge Trude agreed with the view expressed in a question that
if the Negro were found careless as to the truth and as to
his promises, it was due to his heredity and lack of training
rather than anything inherently bad in him.
Judge Wells M. Cook:
I think there is a great deal of nonsense in the talk about
the colored man being more apt to lie or steal than the white
man. I think that is largely a question of environment and
training. He is not more inclined, in my judgment, to tell a
lie or steal than a white man.
Judge Charles M. Thomson:
I would say there is a far larger number of larceny cases
involving the white than the colored man, even in proportion
to the population. The larger proportion of cases involving
the colored is in having to do with fights, involving murder
in some instances.
Judge Edmund Jarecki:
No, I don't think Negroes are more likely to be guilty of
theft than whites; that is not usually the case.
5. TYPES OF NEGRO CRIMES
Judge Hugo Pam:
The colored man is frequently charged with robbery with a gun,
and a great many have guns. Relatively speaking, more colored
men have guns than white men.
Judge Kickham Scanlan:
The most prevalent crimes or types of crimes amongst Negroes,
according to my observation, are gambling, assault cases,
caused by drinking or women, petty theft.
F. Emory Lyon, superintendent, Central Howard Association:
My experience in dealing with colored offenders would indicate
a slightly larger proportion of crimes of violence than in
the case of white men.
Dr. Clara Hayes, Geneva School for Delinquent Girls:
I think there is a little more tendency on the part of colored
inmates toward violence than there is among white girls. I
mean such misconduct as attacks on other girls, etc.
6. MENTAL
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
I today received a letter from a young colored man who has
been in the boys' court several times. His father is a mental
defective, and he is a mental defective. That is the reason
he keeps committing these crimes. He is in the Dixon Home for
Feeble Minded. There are a number of colored boys that come up
from the South that way, and it is my judgment that southern
institutions are turning them loose. I think Illinois does as
well as other states. They all discharge mental defectives as
cured, and they wander all over the face of the earth, in and
out of other institutions.
Judge Charles M. Thomson:
As a rule the mentality of colored offenders was not high.
I had a few cases where the reverse was true, and one which
involved a man who was as smart a man as I ever tried.
Mary Bartelme, associate judge of the juvenile court:
As to mentality, I would say that in recent years we have had
a large number of girls who have come up to Chicago from the
South and their educations have not been equal to the educations
of the white girls and their mental development has not been
the same.
Dr. Herman Adler:
At Pontiac we find in general that the average of intelligence
in the colored people is rather less than in the whites. Take
the white people separately and you will find about the same
proportion of low grades as in the colored race. In actual
group comparison, the colored race is somewhat below that of
the whites. That is, in general the distribution is about the
same, but there is always a slight lag of the colored below
the white. The lower the intelligence, on the whole, the more
likely it is that the individual is in the institution for a
crime of violence or a sex crime or incendiarism; the higher
the intelligence, the more likely that the crime is forgery
or some crime involving fraud.
7. CHANGE IN CHARACTER OF CRIME OR INCREASE IN CRIME DUE TO MIGRATION
Judge Hugh Stewart:
I am of the impression that the colored men from the South
are in the courts in larger numbers than are those who have
lived here a long time.... A great many of the colored people
from the South are very dark skinned, and there is a larger
proportion, in my estimation, of offenses among dark-skinned
colored people than among those of the light color. I sometimes
try to trace out where they come from. I find a great many of
these cases come from the South.
I think there is a difference between offenses committed by
colored persons from the South and colored persons who have
resided for a long time in the North. I think there are more
hold-ups and burglaries committed by men who come from the
South than by the colored population before the influx.
I am of the opinion that Negroes who have recently come from
the South and find their way into the police courts do not
typify or reflect the general character of the southern Negroes
as a class, any more than the white people who find their way
into the police courts typify other whites who manage to keep
out of them.
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
It was frequently true that the boys would jump freights from
down South and come up here and be picked up and brought into
court and be left in jail for a while with nobody to keep
after them, or furnish bail. The South has never given the
Negro adequate educational advantages, so they come up here
more or less uneducated, many of them, and they are not given
a helping hand as they should be.
In the boys' court the number of southern boys recently arrived
in Chicago was startling. While I was in the boys' court, I
made it a practice to give every one of them a card to the
Urban League, so that they would know where to go to get advice
on any difficulty.
Judge Wells M. Cook:
I would say that of the colored men and women brought into court
in the summer of 1918, the greater percentage were colored
people who had recently come to Chicago. In most instances
the colored man brought in had money; he was receiving more
wages than in the South; the city was "wet"; he had come
from districts in the South where he could not get whiskey;
in a great many instances he had not brought his wife and
family with him, so he was easy prey for those engaged in
commercial sexual vice. In consequence he would be arrested
in these raids, made usually by the police on the night
when the underworld was supposed to be the busiest, usually
Saturday and Sunday nights. I do not think there are any more
vicious colored men than there are vicious white men, but the
colored man who was brought in largely was a newcomer. There
had been no particular increase in vice that I observed among
the native-born colored people or the man who had come to
Chicago a reasonable number of years back. As to the women,
they were almost entirely typical southern prostitutes, who
had come here from New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta,
Galveston, and other large cities in the South, attracted to
Chicago by reason of the fact there were a lot of colored men
up here who were making good money. I would say that so far
as the colored women of Chicago were concerned, there was no
noticeable increase in immorality among them.
Mr. O. J. Milliken:
In 1919, we ran up to 15 per cent colored. This year, 1920, it
is less than 7 per cent. The reason is found in the boys from
the South. They have stopped coming now and we are getting back
to normal. The boys from the South have been very illiterate.
We have received a number who could not write their own names
and would almost be counted subnormal on first examination
but are often found to be very bright. A great many asked to
come back or asked to remain in the institution until they
could get some education. I never noticed any difference as
to color in the handling of the boys in any department.
8. LIABILITY OF THE NEGRO TO ARREST
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
I think that at the time of the riot there was more disposition
on the part of the officers to make arrests of colored
offenders, frequently for protection. I think it was due to
what Dr. Shepardson used to call, out at the University, "the
mind of the mob"--a disturbed view of things which makes one
likely to go too far one way or the other. These people were
that way. They had to arrest a certain number and try to check
the riot, and they went too far in many cases.
Judge Charles M. Thomson:
I have seen cases where Negroes were arrested on suspicion; I
would not say there was any large proportion. I remember one
case was a young colored fellow arrested purely on suspicion.
The jury disagreed the first time. The next time he was tried
before me, and the jury found him guilty. Because it was a
second trial, and because of the disagreement, I watched it
very carefully as the evidence went in, and I became convinced
that it was a pure case of the officers having had some trouble
with this fellow before. A crime occurred in their district,
and they pounced on this chap. I felt pretty sure he was not
guilty. The state's attorney called the trial off. He became
convinced himself.
Mr. O. J. Milliken:
After a boy has been committed by the juvenile court, he is
known to the police, and I have four or five colored boys today
who are carrying letters from me asking that the police will
please allow these boys to go to work. Prejudice on the part
of the police in picking up alleged offenders is more apt to
occur against Negroes than whites.
Judge Kickham Scanlan:
Negroes are more likely to be arrested on suspicion than white
persons. If you will tell me why race prejudice exists in
this world, I will tell you why this is so. I don't think the
police are quite as careful with reference to the rights of
the colored man as with the white man. I think they hesitate
a little longer when a white man is involved; I am certain
that it is so.
State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne:
In the race riots, the police arrested almost exclusively
Negroes, and practically no white men.
General Leroy T. Steward:
Recently there have come to Chicago from the South large
numbers of colored men who have formerly lived in the country
and are not accustomed to city environments. These men have
largely been employed at the Stock Yards and, being unknown
to the police, there is concerning them naturally a greater
suspicion than would attach to the white man who had lived
for a greater length of time in the same district, and who
also would be more easily identified and traced, if need be,
and he would not, therefore, perhaps, be arrested but simply
be observed, while the police would, no doubt, feel if they
permitted the colored man to pass on at the time, they would
lose him completely. This would seem to me to be the real basis
of the feeling that has maintained on the part of these men,
that they are discriminated against as compared with the whites.
Another matter in this same connection that no doubt has a
bearing on the subject is that these same men who have been
accustomed to rather close surveillance in the South, seem
to feel that when they come to the North they must conduct
themselves in a manner to evidence to all concerned that they
have equal rights of every kind and character, with the result
that they sometimes are guilty of unnecessarily accentuating
these matters, and thus bringing on disputes which occasion bad
feeling and perhaps lead to disturbances resulting in arrest.
Dr. Herman C. Adler:
Repeatedly colored men have been convicted on evidence which
I know perfectly well would not have been satisfactory in
white cases. I know that was so in the case of the East St.
Louis riot where a colored man was sent down to the Southern
Illinois Penitentiary for participating in the riots on the
charge of murder. Even the prosecuting office, on reviewing the
facts, a year later, admitted he did not believe the evidence
sufficient. If that had been a white man the chances are that
he would not have been convicted upon that evidence.
We had the same thing here in Chicago: a colored man sent
to the penitentiary on a charge of attempted rape where the
identification was made by a child of six or eight years who
picked him out of a crowd under suspicion. No such evidence
ought to be accepted. We know there is prejudice, and when there
is prejudice we know the person against whom the prejudice is
directed has a hard time.
9. DISCRIMINATION IN THE COURTS
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
I think in the main the Negro gets as good a show as the white
man when he gets before the judge. Whether the other forces
before he gets up to that point treat him right or not, I
cannot say.... A certain number of policemen have "got it in"
for him and are going to "take a crack" at him because he is
a colored man.
Judge Hugo Pam:
In a murder case lawyers will challenge a Negro; if there were
a colored man in the box he would soon be put out.
Judge Charles M. Thomson:
Take for example a gun case, with twelve men in the box, and
one a colored man, and suppose that the lawyer challenged
the Negro. If you went to the lawyer and said, "Give me your
reason," I don't think he would give you any reason.... If you
had a case where the defendant was colored that juror would
stay in the box so far as the defendant was concerned.
Judge Kickham Scanlan:
Of course there is another thing about the colored man in the
criminal court that must be kept in mind. It is a peculiar
thing about human nature, that no man wants to admit that he
has prejudices. He will talk loosely on the outside that he
doesn't like the Negro, or doesn't like the Jew, or doesn't
like this person or that person, but you get him under oath in
the jury box and in my twelve years on the bench I never knew
a juror to admit that he was prejudiced against anybody. It
goes without saying that in such a state of affairs you will
probably get men on the juries that try colored men who have
some prejudice against Negroes. I would say that when there
is a colored defendant and white prosecuting witness there
would be grave danger that the jury might unconsciously favor
the white side of the case. Juries will convict a colored man
with less hesitation than they will convict a white man on the
same kind of evidence. For that reason, in the many cases in
which the colored man is involved, I watch the evidence like
a hawk. The verdict has got to pass me.
10. EASE WITH WHICH NEGROES ARE CONVICTED
Judge George Kersten, criminal court:
There is unfortunately a difference in the ease or difficulty
with which white and colored persons brought into court are
convicted, and the misfortune operates adversely towards
colored people. In many cases jurors have been excused from
service because upon examination under oath to test their
qualifications to act as jurors they said they could not give
a colored person a fair trial. In my experience I have known
verdicts to be set aside by the presiding judge, because he
was convinced that the jury was influenced by color prejudice.
As to the prosecution of colored offenders by white plaintiffs
and white offenders by colored plaintiffs, I believe that the
influence of color prejudice is sometimes felt in our courts.
I think it is easier under similar facts and circumstances in
evidence to convict a colored defendant than a white one. And
for the same reason, a white person on trial is less liable
to conviction if the prosecuting witnesses are all colored.
Perhaps an enlightening phase of the whole situation is to be
found in the fact that colored offenders, on being brought in
for trial, usually ask to be tried by the judge instead of a
jury.
Judge Hugo Pam:
In light cases involving pocket-picking, larceny, stealing a
bag of sugar, a barrel of flour, clothing, etc., I think the
races stand on an equality, but in a serious offense I think
the colored man has the less chance. I feel that the colored
man starts with a handicap. I haven't any question about it
in my mind. In the more serious crimes, where a hold-up is
committed or guns are used, I think there is great prejudice.
I think very few white or colored men are convicted that
shouldn't be; no judge would allow such a case to stand if he
thinks there has been unfair trial, but, for instance, where a
white man will be found guilty of manslaughter, a colored man
will be found guilty of murder. A white man might escape with
three to twenty years in the penitentiary, while the colored
man would get ten years to life.
I think the colored man would not be convicted if he is not
guilty, but I am not certain that the white man would be
convicted if he is guilty.
I see colored men, very resigned men, very often feeling that
most people are not interested in them. They come and take their
medicine, and go away. I feel that they are being disposed of
without the interest being shown that should be.
11. LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR NEGRO DEFENDANTS
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
My experience in court work is that Negro lawyers in the main
lack education such as is necessary, but there are among the
members of the bar some very good colored attorneys. Many
Negroes cannot afford to pay the attorney's fees necessary to
obtain these, so that they are handicapped in court by lack of
competent counsel, and it becomes necessary for the judge to
give them more careful hearings and more careful consideration
to protect their interests.
Judge Wells M. Cook:
The handicap that the colored man seems to be under in the
severe cases is that he frequently does not get a good lawyer.
As a rule he is not represented by as good a lawyer as the
white. Of course there are capable Negro lawyers in Chicago,
but there were few such retained in the cases tried before me.
Judge Hugo Pam:
I do not think that Negroes have as able lawyers as whites.
I had a case of a colored man who I felt was misrepresented
instead of represented. He was convicted of murder and sentenced
to life imprisonment. I felt that the sentence was too severe.
I set it aside and granted a new trial and it resulted in a
verdict of manslaughter which was the thing that should have
been done.
Judge Kickham Scanlan:
The Negro hasn't the money to employ proper attorneys,
competent attorneys. In two out of three cases tried before
me in which there were colored defendants, I have appointed
attorneys to defend them. I appointed white attorneys. I asked
the defendants whom they wanted. They told me and I appointed
the white lawyers mentioned and made them serve.
12. IDENTIFICATION
Judge Daniel P. Trude:
I did find where certain of the police were going into Negro
clubs and arresting Negroes they found there, bringing them into
court without a bit of evidence of any offense. Somebody would
tip off the police that there was gambling going on so they
would raid the place, locking up all the men they found there
for the night and send them to the Bureau of Identification,
but that was all. Some policemen take many people to the Bureau
of Identification who absolutely should not be taken there,
but the judge only knows about it after they have been taken
there, when they are brought into court after the damage has
been done.
13. PROBATION ON PAROLE
Dr. F. Emory Lyon, superintendent, Central Howard Association:
In dealing with colored men on parole, our experience has
been that fully as large a proportion have completed their
parole with credit as in the case of white men under parole.
I should say that the task of securing employment has been
less difficult because colored men as a rule have been less
critical as to the kind of employment they would accept. They
have been willing to make an honest living at any work that
is offered.
John L. Whitman, superintendent of state prisons:
I have seen many colored men, young men or boys, who gave every
evidence of a sincere desire to do well on the outside. They
meet with disappointment that they did not expect, hardships,
difficulty in securing work as well as homes, and they fall.
The desire was there just the same. The opportunities were
not. But when the employer gives him a chance, the Negro
appreciates it and he sticks--and we have had employers say
during the last year many times, "If you have got such colored
men as you have sent before, give them to us in preference
to the whites, because there is a lack of appreciation on the
part of white men."
14. ENVIRONMENT: VICE IN NEGRO RESIDENCE AREAS
General Leroy T. Steward:
Where Negroes have come in and as a result white people
have moved out and the neighborhood has, plainly speaking,
deteriorated, there is a great tendency to permit infractions of
the law, as in any neighborhoods which are regarded as not as
important as high-class residence neighborhoods. For instance,
Calumet Avenue from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth streets is
entirely colored. Fifteen years ago it was entirely white. Now
it would be much easier to establish vice there than it would
have been fifteen years ago when a lot of well-known people
lived in the neighborhood.
Major L. M. C. Funkhouser:
Most of the Negroes found in disorderly houses are employees.
There was one notorious place down there that we closed where
they were all colored. That was the most notorious one we had.
Professor Charles E. Merriam:
I think there is this to be said about the colored side of
it there [on the South Side]: I am asked whether the colored
protest against disorderly resorts would be as effective as a
protest made by an equal number of white men. Making allowance
for the fluctuating conditions in a long period, I don't believe
it would be quite as effective. Not only that, but I don't
think the colored people are so well organized to fight these
evils as a class of men ... they have not the wealth. In the
territory upon the North Side or in any territory where there
are many lawyers and people of some means, if they found a
place like that they would never rest until they got it out.
They would just keep at it with time and money until they
forced it out.
Dr. F. Emory Lyon, superintendent, Central Howard Association:
Our observation would indicate that the Negro delinquent has
suffered under the handicap of unsatisfactory home conditions.
Owing to the general public discrimination, fewer opportunities
have been offered him. In addition to adverse conditions in
the home, some opportunities in public places have been denied
him. Some of the discrimination and ostracism on the part of
his associates has been unconscious in many instances. The
colored boy has especially few recreational facilities.
Mr. O. J. Milliken:
It is up to us to give them the best that there is, and we
can clean up those districts. I don't believe the question
of color is going to enter into the matter at all if we once
clean up the districts where they are obliged to live.
Myron Adams, former pastor of the First Baptist Church:
North of my church for a block or two along Thirty-first
Street at the time I went there was almost exclusively a
white residence district. The moral conditions could not have
been worse. I had a list in my church study of the houses of
prostitution and other lawless agencies gathered by the police
and the Committee of Fifteen. I don't know of a district in
Chicago where there were more gunmen, more high-class criminals,
more high-class prostitutes than there were within three blocks
of the First Baptist Church when I came there as pastor.
Speaking from my observation I think that any colored community
is liable to be imposed upon by white men who are vicious, and
the colored people get no encouragement when they themselves
endeavor to rout out that vice. White prostitutes and white
gamblers and vicious resorts come into the "Black Belt" because
it is black; they operate with more safety than they do in the
white belt. That is true of every American city that I know
of personally.
15. ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL ASPECTS OF NEGRO CRIME
Judge Charles M. Thomson:
Colored people who were up before me in the criminal court
were mostly men who did not have steady employment.... My
experience was that the environmental conditions out of which
the colored defendant arose were an environment of idleness,
very largely. I would say, as to the economic factors, that I
don't remember a case that I had involving a colored defendant
whom I would call prosperous, whereas there were many white
defendants who were very prosperous. Most of the colored people
tried were in stringent circumstances and poverty.
Judge Kickham Scanlan:
My experience in the criminal court is that the colored
defendant, even in bailable cases, is unable to give bail. He
has to stay in jail, and therefore his case is very quickly
disposed of by the prosecutor. Defendants locked up are
usually tried first. The colored man is more apt to be out of
work than the white man, and that is a possible reason for
the large number of arrests of Negroes. His sphere is very
limited, and if there is any let up in the industry that is
involved in that sphere, he is a victim. I have often wondered
if you could change the skins of a thousand white men in the
city of Chicago and handicap them the way the colored man is
handicapped today, how many of those white men in ten years'
time would be law-abiding citizens.
Professor Charles E. Merriam:
This problem as I see it is very complicated. We have to deal
first with the matter of economic class which is at the bottom
of a good deal of it, then with the matter of race, which is
at the bottom of a good deal more of it, although perhaps not
as much as class; then there is the matter of politics or a
system which has grown up for thirty or forty years back, which
makes the class and race relations a good deal more difficult
to deal with.
If every man had good housing conditions and a steady job, at
a living wage, a good opportunity for education, there would
not be very much crime.... Particularly in the case of the
colored people, the crime is on the part of the community,
on the part of the city that allows bad conditions to exist.
Negroes ought to be protected. They don't get protection for the
same reason that it is always hard to protect the economically
weak against the strong. There is not any use of making a lot
of fine phrases about it--that is largely where the trouble
lies.
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEGRO IN INDUSTRY
A. EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND CONDITIONS
I. INTRODUCTION
1. NEGRO WORKING POPULATION IN 1920
Between 1910 and 1920 the Negro population of Chicago increased from
44,103 to 109,594. Of this number it is estimated that about 70,000 were
engaged in industries in 1920 as compared with about 27,000 in 1910.[49]
Questions which naturally suggest themselves for answer in connection
with this great increase in the Negro working population in Chicago are:
How did this large number of Negroes fit into the industrial life of the
city? What were and are the opportunities open to them? Have they given
satisfaction to employers? Are they discriminated against by employers
or fellow-workers? Has racial friction developed because of competition
between white and Negro workers? Were the riots of 1919 in any sense the
result of labor troubles? What part have the Negroes taken in strikes?
What is the relation of the Negro to organized labor? What is the outlook
for the Negro in industry? These and other questions guided the inquiries
and investigations of the Commission in the industrial field.
2. OPPORTUNITIES CREATED BY THE WAR
The Negro's position in the industrial life of Chicago is so intimately
connected with the changes due to the war that a brief reference to
certain facts of common knowledge in connection with the war will be
helpful. With the beginning of the war in 1914 came an abnormally large
demand by the belligerent countries for American munitions, food products,
clothing, leather, iron and steel products, and other manufactured
goods. Existing establishments were enlarged and new ones were erected
in response to the demand for increased production. It was not uncommon
for a plant to double or treble its labor force. A typical case was one
of the large packing-plants in the Chicago "Yards" which increased its
workers during the war from 8,000 to 17,000.
The war stimulated the demand for goods, and therefore for labor, and at
the same time decreased the available labor supply. Immigration from the
belligerent nations immediately ceased, and there was a marked decrease
in immigration from other countries; aliens in large numbers departed
to join the fighting forces of their native lands.
The labor shortage became acute soon after the United States entered the
war in 1917, and enlistments withdrew hundreds of thousands of men from
northern industries. An unprecedented demand for Negro workers was the
result. The migration from the South was mainly a response to the call
of larger opportunity and higher wages in the North.
3. INDUSTRIAL BACKGROUND OF NEGRO WORKERS
For the United States as a whole in 1910 the industrial condition of
the gainfully occupied Negro population is shown in Table XVIII:
TABLE XVIII
GAINFULLY OCCUPIED NEGRO POPULATION TEN YEARS OF AGE AND OVER
IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1910
====================================================================
Industry |Both Sexes|Percentage| Male | Female
------------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------
Agriculture | 2,893,674| 55.7 | 1,842,537| 1,051,137
Domestic and personal | | | |
service | 1,074,543| 20.7 | 234,063| 840,480
Manufacturing and hand | | | |
trades | 657,130| 12.6 | 575,845| 81,285
Transportation | 276,648| 5.3 | 274,565| 2,083
Trade | 132,019| 2.5 | 123,635| 8,384
Professional service | 69,471| 1.3 | 39,400| 30,071
Public service | 26,295| 0.5 | 25,838| 457
Others | 62,755| 1.4 | 62,671| 84
+----------+----------+----------+----------
Total United States[50]| 5,192,535| 100.0 | 3,178,554| 2,013,981
------------------------+----------+----------+----------+----------
In 1910, more than three-fourths of the gainfully occupied Negroes in
the United States were engaged in two forms of industry--agriculture
and domestic and personal service. In the South at that time 78.8 per
cent of the Negro population lived in rural communities[51] and 62 per
cent of those employed were engaged in agriculture.[52] It is evident,
therefore, that the northward migration involved a sudden transition of
the southern Negro from farms or small towns to the highly specialized
industries of northern cities, with marked changes in modes of living.
On many southern plantations the Negroes were required to buy food and
clothing on credit at such high prices that their shares of the return
were usually spent before the crops were harvested.[53] This system
encouraged careless spending and did nothing to induce habits of thrift.
Even the hardest-working Negroes frequently found themselves in debt to
their landlords at the end of the year.[54] Incentive to sustained effort
and regular work was lacking in the hand-to-mouth existence under this
prevailing system of share rent and credit. It naturally produced habits
such as drawing against wages and working irregularly under the spur of
temporary need. Men handicapped by such habits joined the migration in
great numbers. Though ill-fitted for the keen competition, business-like
precision, and six-day-week routine of northern industry, the southern
Negro, in spite of these handicaps, has succeeded in Chicago.
II. THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO INDUSTRIES IN 1910 AND 1920
Of the Negro population of 44,103 in Chicago in 1910 the gainfully
occupied numbered 27,317. The distribution of this number, according
to industrial classification, is given in Table XIX, which shows that
60 per cent of all such Negroes were engaged in domestic and personal
service, as compared with 15 per cent in manufacturing and 3 per cent
in clerical occupations.
TABLE XIX
NEGROES GAINFULLY OCCUPIED IN CHICAGO IN 1910[55]
=======================================================================
| Both | | |
Industries | Sexes | Percentage | Male | Female
------------------------------+---------+------------+--------+--------
Manufacturing and mechanical | 4,071 | 15 | 3,073 | 998
Transportation | 1,852 | 7 | 1,849 | 3
Trade | 1,241 | 5 | 1,148 | 93
Public service | 224} | | {224 | 0
Professional | 963} | 4 | {640 | 323
Clerical occupations | 934 | 3 | 771 | 163
Domestic and personal service | 16,389 | 60 | 9,426 | 6,963
Agriculture, mining, and | | | |
unclassified | 1,643 | 6 | 1,306 | 337
+---------+------------+--------+--------
Totals | 27,317 | 100 | 18,437 | 8,880
------------------------------+---------+------------+--------+--------
1. METHOD AND SCOPE OF INVESTIGATION
To discover the industries in Chicago which were employing Negroes in
appreciable numbers in 1920, preliminary questionnaires were sent to 850
employers compiled from lists furnished by: (1) the Chicago Association
of Commerce (covering 591 establishments, with a total of 350,000
employees); (2) the Employment Department of the Chicago Urban League;
(3) the Illinois Free Employment Bureau; (4) the Federal Employment
Bureau; and (5) the classified telephone directory.
Questionnaires were returned by 460 establishments of 850 to which they
were mailed. We are satisfied that the replies received cover the field
of Negro labor, and that no establishments of importance in this field
have been overlooked. Table XX shows the results:
TABLE XX
====================================================================
| Number of |Total Negroes
Negroes Employed |Establishments| Employed
---------------------------------------+--------------+-------------
No Negroes | 264 | 0
Less than five Negroes | 59 | 111
Five Negroes or more (manufacturing) | 69 | 12,854
Five Negroes or more | |
(non-manufacturing) | 68 | 9,483
+--------------+-------------
Totals | 460 | 22,448
---------------------------------------+--------------+-------------
Answers came from 156 manufacturing establishments employing fifty-one
or more wage-earners. The representative character of this group is
indicated by the fact that over three-fourths of the total wage-earners
in Chicago engaged in manufacturing in 1914 were employed in factories of
this class. The United States Census of Manufactures for 1914 reported
the total number of wage-earners employed in manufacturing in Chicago
in that year as 313,710; of this number, 244,827, or 78 per cent, were
employed in 1,032 establishments employing fifty-one or more wage-earners.
The 156 questionnaires therefore represented 15 per cent of the 1,032
establishments in this class (in 1914) and included 107,403 wage-earners,
or almost 44 per cent of the total wage-earners in this class and 30
per cent of the total wage-earners engaged in manufacturing in 1914.
Questionnaires reporting Negro employees were returned by 104
manufacturing establishments of all classes. Of these, sixteen employed
one to fifty wage-earners, representing a total of 435 wage-earners;
and eighty-eight employed fifty-one or more wage-earners, representing
a total of 78,919 wage-earners.
Since thirty-five of the manufacturing establishments reporting Negro
labor (or 33 per cent of the 104 so reporting) employed less than five
Negroes each, or a total of seventy Negroes in all, while sixty-nine
employed 12,854 Negroes, or 99.4 per cent of the total Negroes reported
by manufacturing establishments, it seemed advisable in this report
to consider only those employing five Negroes or more, in order not to
give undue weight to conditions where only a relatively few Negroes were
concerned. A similar situation was disclosed by the returns furnished
by non-manufacturing establishments, and the returns from twenty-four
employing a total of forty-one Negroes have been disregarded in this
report in order to give proper weight to conditions in the sixty-eight
employing five or more Negroes which reported a total of 9,483
Negroes.[56] The combined number of establishments, both manufacturing
(69) and non-manufacturing (68), employing five or more Negroes each
was 137.
[Illustration: INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
120 INDUSTRIAL CONCERNS EMPLOYING 24,286 NEGROES]
On the basis of the returns reported in the preliminary questionnaires
certain establishments and industries were selected for more intensive
study through personal interviews with employers, conferences participated
in by employers and members of the Commission, and interviews with
employees. The basis on which the selection was made was either the
number of Negroes employed or the length of time during which Negroes
had been employed, special attention being given to those industries
and establishments which had employed Negro labor for the first time
since the war. The industries employing large numbers of Negro workers
which were selected for further study were: slaughtering, meat packing,
and other food products; iron foundries and iron and steel products;
laundries; needle trades; hotels; railroads; Pullman and dining-car
services; tanneries; taxicab upkeep and repair; mail order.
An investigator for the Commission visited 101 establishments of the 137
reporting five or more Negro employees (ten establishments employing less
than five Negroes each were also visited). Four industrial conferences or
informal hearings were held by the Commission, large employers of Negro
labor being invited to co-operate with the Commission by giving it the
benefit of their experience with Negro labor. Among those who reported
were general superintendents, assistant superintendents, employment
managers, and other representatives of the large employers of Negro
labor in Chicago as shown in Table XXI:
TABLE XXI
No. of Negroes
Employed in 1920
Pullman Car Shops 450
Armour & Co., Stock Yards 2,084
Morris & Co., Stock Yards 1,400
Swift & Co., Stock Yards 2,278
Wilson & Co., Stock Yards 818
Corn Products Refining Co., food products 500
International Harvester Co., agricultural machinery 1,551
Yellow Cab Co., taxicab 250
American Car and Foundry Co.[57] 20
American Brake Shoe and Foundry Co. 265
Brady Foundry Co. 125
National Malleable Castings Co. 427
Western Foundry Co. 200
Sears, Roebuck & Co., mail order 1,423
Montgomery Ward & Co., mail order 350
Gage Bros. Wholesale Millinery 73
Spring-filled Products Co., automobile cushions 250
------
Total 12,464
2. NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF NEGRO EMPLOYEES
The number and percentage of Negro employees to the total employees in
136 establishments reporting five or more Negroes are shown in Table XXII.
TABLE XXII
NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF NEGRO EMPLOYEES IN ESTABLISHMENTS
REPORTING FIVE OR MORE NEGROES
=================================+=========================================
|Number of | | | Negro
Industry |Establish-| Total | Negro |Percentage
| ments |Employees|Employees| of Total
---------------------------------+----------+---------+---------+----------
Manufacturing: | | | |
Box manufacturing (paper) | 3 | 995 | 143 | 14
Clothing | 9 | 1,405 | 203 | 14
Cooperage | 2 | 327 | 106 | 32
Food products | 8 | 35,278 | 7,597 | 22
Iron and steel products | | | |
(iron foundries) | 27 | 37,773 | 3,879 | 10
Tanneries | 7 | 2,230 | 462 | 21
Miscellaneous: | | | |
Lamp-shade manufacturing | 1 | 275 | 75 | 27
Auto-cushion manufacturing | 2 | 500 | 250 | 50
Other industries | | | |
(manufacturing) | 10 | 2,571 | 139 | 5
+----------+---------+---------+---------
Totals | 69 | 79,354 | 12,854 | 16
---------------------------------+----------+---------+---------+---------
Non-manufacturing: | | | |
Hotels | 9 | 1,714 | 923 | 53
Laundries | 20 | 1,736 | 764 | 44
Mail order[58] | 1 | 17,450 | 1,423 | 8
Railroads, dining- and Pullman-| | | |
car service | 16 | 7,816 | 5,408 | 68
Miscellaneous industries[59] | 21 | 10,028 | 615 | 6
+----------+---------+---------+---------
Totals | 67 | 38,744 | 9,133 | 23
---------------------------------+----------+---------+---------+---------
3. INCREASE IN NEGRO LABOR SINCE 1915
The data obtained from questionnaires, interviews, and conferences with
employers disclosed the fact that there has been a remarkable increase
since 1915 in the number of Negro workers employed in manufacturing, in
clerical occupations, and in laundries. As was to be expected, the number
of Negroes in personal service (hotels, dining-cars, and parlor-cars)
also increased, but the increase was negligible in comparison with the
gain in the other fields mentioned.
Inability to obtain competent white workers was the reason given in
practically every instance for the large increase in the number of
Negroes employed since 1914. All of the large employers of Negro labor
attending the conferences assigned shortage of labor as the principal
reason for the increased number of Negroes reported. A few establishments
(not represented in the conferences) reported that Negroes had first
been employed to take the place of strikers, and increasing numbers had
been employed thereafter. The establishments so reporting were hotels,
a small clothing factory, and a warehouse company. Because of the labor
shortage in the North, large numbers of Negroes left the southern states.
TABLE XXIII
NEGROES EMPLOYED FROM 1915 TO 1920 IN SIXTY-TWO MANUFACTURING
ESTABLISHMENTS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO INDUSTRIES[60]
======================+==========+======+======+======+======+======+=======
|Number of | | | | | |
Industries |Establish-| 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920
| ments | | | | | |
----------------------+----------+------+------+------+------+------+-------
Box making | 3 | 3 | 3 | 116 | 116 | 145 | 143
Clothing | 9 | 75 | 110 | 140 | 108 | 161 | 203
Other needlework | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 325 | 325
Cooperage | 2 | 29 | 34 | 95 | 110 | 15 | 106
Food products[61] | 16 |1,103 |2,529 |4,765 |6,518 |5,789 | 5,379
Iron and steel[62] | 22 | 121 | 672 |1,115 |1,580 |3,002 | 3,829
Tanneries | 7 | 0 | 17 | 36 | 87 | 229 | 462
Miscellaneous | | | | | | |
manufacturing | 10 | 15 | 15 | 24 | 48 | 75 | 140
+----------+------+------+------+------+------+-------
Totals | 62 |1,346 |3,380 |6,291 |8,592 |9,881 |10,587
----------------------+----------+------+------+------+------+------+-------
TABLE XXIV
NEGROES EMPLOYED FROM 1915 TO 1920 IN FORTY-SEVEN ESTABLISHMENTS
(NON-MANUFACTURING) CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO INDUSTRIES[63]
======================+==========+======+======+======+======+======+======
|Number of | | | | | |
Industries |Establish-| 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920
| ments | | | | | |
----------------------+----------+------+------+------+------+------+-------
Hotels | 9 | 544 | 559 | 615 | 684 | 693 | 956
Laundries | 20 | 118 | 180 | 220 | 350 | 520 | 764
Mail order (clerical | | | | | | |
occupations) | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 664 |1,650 | 1,400
Railroads (dining- and| | | | | | |
parlor-car service) | 16 |3,939 |3,940 |4,274 |4,493 |4,506 | 5,363
+----------+------+------+------+------+------+-------
Totals | 47 |4,601 |4,679 |5,109 |6,191 |7,369 | 8,483
----------------------+----------+------+------+------+------+------+-------
4. CHICAGO EMPLOYERS AND SOUTHERN NEGRO LABOR
During the course of its inquiry the statement was frequently made to
members of the Commission or to its investigators that large employers of
labor in Chicago, and particularly the packers, had imported many Negroes
from the South. Although the Commission made a thorough investigation
of such statements, no evidence of any value was discovered to support
them.
The general superintendents of the Armour, Morris, Swift, and Wilson
plants who attended conferences declared emphatically that their companies
had not engaged in any encouragement of migration.
Mr. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, being
asked through correspondence from the Commission if he could furnish any
evidence tending to prove the importation of Negroes into the Chicago
district by employers, replied, "There is a plentitude of such evidence,"
but when Mr. Gompers was urged to cite the evidence, his reply was: "It
cannot be unknown to you that some 30,000 Negroes were imported into
the Chicago district during the steel strike. They did not go there of
their own volition, but through inducements which were held out to them
by the agents of employers who visited southern and western cities."
As, however, the Chicago race riot occurred a year prior to the steel
strike, importation of Negroes at the latter time could not have affected
the situation out of which the riot came. But the fact remains that labor
leaders insist that employers in the Chicago district imported Negroes
from the South, notwithstanding their inability to cite facts in support
of this belief.
5. CLASSIFICATION OF NEGRO WORKERS
An accurate classification of Negro laborers into skilled, semi-skilled,
and unskilled would help to an understanding of the position of the Negro
in industry. In manufacturing, such a classification was attempted,
but the results were unsatisfactory. These classes cannot be strictly
defined, and different employers give them different meanings. In a number
of important cases employers reported the total number of skilled and
unskilled, and that figures for each class could not be compiled without
great labor. In all such cases the total is listed as "unskilled." This
class is thus unduly enlarged at the expense of the semi-skilled and
the skilled. So the number of semi-skilled workers appears to be less
than the skilled. These facts show that accuracy cannot be claimed for
the classification in Table XXV.
TABLE XXV
NEGRO EMPLOYEES IN SIXTY-SIX MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS
CLASSIFIED AS SKILLED, SEMI-SKILLED, AND UNSKILLED
==================+===============+=========+=========+=========+==========
| Number of | Total | | Semi- |
Industry |Establishments | Negroes | Skilled | skilled | Unskilled
------------------+---------------+---------+---------+---------+----------
Box manufacturing | 3 | 143 | ... | ... | 143
Clothing | 9 | 203 | 57 | 29 | 117
Cooperage | 2 | 106 | 8 | 45 | 53
Food products[64] | 8 | 7,597 | 229 | 12 | 7,356
Iron and steel | 27 | 3,879 | 434 | 180 | 3,265
Tanneries | 7 | 462 | 175 | ... | 287
Miscellaneous | 10 | 139 | 24 | 1 | 114
+---------------+---------+---------+---------+----------
Total[65] | 66 | 12,529 | 927 | 267 | 11,335
------------------+---------------+---------+---------+---------+----------
The attempt to classify Negro workers according to occupation failed
because the necessary information was not obtainable, especially from
large employers. Nevertheless the number of workers in certain occupations
reported by a few establishments is suggestive of the fields recently
opened to Negroes in Chicago. In 1910[66] there were only thirty-one
Negro molders in Chicago, while in 1920 there were 304 reported by ten
establishments. In 1910 there were but twenty-eight factory sewers or
machine operators, while in 1920 there were 382 in twelve factories. In
1910 there were 934 Negroes employed in clerical occupations as compared
with 1,400 in two concerns in 1920. In 1910 there were but 287 Negro
laundry operatives in Chicago, while there were 764 reported by twenty
laundries in 1920.
6. WAGES OF NEGRO WORKERS
The period of this industrial investigation--the spring and summer
of 1920--was one of exceptional demand for labor and of high wages.
Employers were glad to get workers of any sort at high pay.[67] In
branches of employment where Negroes were permitted to work, their wages
were generally the same as those of the white workers. In interviewing
many Negro workers the Commission's investigators found practically no
complaints of discrimination in wages on the same tasks. And the Chicago
Urban League which, through its industrial department, places more
Negroes in employment than any other agency in Chicago reported that it
had very few complaints of such discrimination.
Some discrimination was practiced by foremen in placing or keeping Negroes
at work on processes that yielded smaller returns than those to which
white workers were assigned. In the field of common labor, where the
largest number of Negroes are employed, some kinds of piecework yield
greater returns than others. The tendency of foremen in some plants was
to place Negroes on those processes yielding the smallest returns. The
following are instances of such discrimination in favor of the white
workers in the same plants.
In two large foundries white molders were given standard patterns, which
remain the same throughout the year and permit the working up of speed;
while patterns that were changed frequently, and made production slower
were given to the Negroes. As speed determined the piecework earnings,
the Negroes could not earn as much as the white molders in the same
foundry.
In the several plants the white workers were favored in the distribution
of overtime work; or Negroes were not permitted to work at all on overtime
at "time and a half" rates or on Sundays at "double pay" as long as
white workers were available.
While in the larger industries there was seldom any complaint about
inequality in the basic rate of pay for common labor, restrictions upon
the promotion and advancement of Negroes frequently prevented them from
earning higher wages. In one department of a large food-products plant
Negroes reached the maximum rate of 61 cents per hour after a few months'
employment. No further advancement could be had because the superintendent
was not willing to place Negro foremen over white workers. A Negro in
the starch-mixing department held a skilled position as starch tester.
It became apparent that in carrying out his duties many of the starch
mixers would be subject to his immediate direction. The foreman apparently
did not approve of this and ordered him to teach his duties to a Polish
workman. The Negro declined to do this, and the matter was referred to
the general superintendent. After an investigation it was decided to
permit the Negro to retain his position as tester, but he was given no
authority over the men.
In view of the fluctuations in wages, the impracticability of getting
actual records of wages from all plants, and the discrepancies which in
some instances did appear between reported and actual wages, it seemed
desirable to supplement the information of the Commission's investigators.
The records of the industrial department of the Chicago Urban League
afforded the most complete data on wages received by Negroes that could
be found in Chicago. During the year 1919 it placed more than 14,000
Negroes in plants in the Chicago District. In each case, when securing
Negro employment, it kept a record of the wages actually offered and of
conditions of work. If the Negro made complaint that the wage or work
conditions did not prove to be as stated, it investigated the complaint.
Included in these records are the Pullman Company, Wilson & Company
(packers), Armour & Company, Morris Company, Swift & Company, Illinois
Malleable Iron Company, National Malleable and Castings Company,
International Harvester Company, the General Can Company, the Republic Box
Company, Chicago Fire Brick Company, Sears, Roebuck & Company, Superior
Process Company, Consumers Coal Company, Corn Products Refining Company
at Argo, United States Quartermasters' Department, Adams & Westlake
Company, Griess Pfleger Tanning Company, and Inland Steel Company.
In the industries listed above, the minimum wage rate per hour is 42.5
cents, which is the minimum rate for the packing industries. The maximum
rate is sixty-one cents per hour paid by the Corn Products Refining
Company at Argo and the International Harvester Company. Neither of
the latter, however, represents a basic wage. The average wage for
the thirty-six companies is 48.7 cents. These wage rates cover the
most arduous tasks found in the list of common labor. Three items for
track laborers are included. Others include freight handlers, yardmen,
truckers, sweepers, foundry laborers, etc. Six companies work ten hours
per day, twelve companies nine hours, one company nine and one-half
hours, seventeen companies eight hours. Four pay bonuses, not including
packers, who also pay a bonus in compliance with the award of a judge
acting as mediator between the packers and the union.
The building trades are not included, but of the three independent
contractors listed the wage paid common laborers is 50 cents per hour,
60 cents per hour, and 70 cents per hour, respectively, for eight hours,
while the union rate of pay for common labor is $1.00 per hour for eight
hours, time and one-half for overtime, and double time for Sunday.
7. WOMEN EMPLOYEES IN INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENTS
Negro women employed in thirty-one industrial establishments worked,
in five of them forty-four hours a week, in fifteen of them forty-eight
hours, in seven of them forty-nine hours, and in four of them fifty-one
hours. The weekly pay ranged from $9.00 to $15.00 a week as clothing
folders, to as high as $20.00 to $35.00 a week as clothing drapers
or finishers. Map mounting paid $15.00 a week, book binding $15.00,
paper-box making $13.00, tobacco stripping $16.40, core making (foundry
work) $16.40, twine weaving $17.40, silk-shade making $10.00 to $18.00,
food packing $12.00 to $15.00, mattress making $12.00 to $22.00,
riveters (canvas) $15.00, paper sorters $12.00, steam laundry workers
(unskilled) $13.00 to $16.00, steam laundry hand workers $18.00 to $29.00,
power-machine operators on men's caps $15.00 to $18.00, on aprons $14.00
to $18.00, on dresses $15.00 to $18.00, on overalls (union shop) $18.00
to $25.00, and on overalls (non-union shop) $15.00 to $18.00.
Of fourteen companies employing colored girls as operators, five paid
on a piecework basis only. Two paid from $12.00 to $18.00 per week,
depending on the skill of the operator, two companies paid $14.00 per
week to beginners, one paid $15.00 per week to beginners, three paid
$12.00 per week to beginners, one paid $18.00 per week to beginners,
the latter being a union shop.
Considerable unrest has been traceable to delay on the part of the
managers in promoting beginners above the beginning wage. Girls have been
retained at a beginning wage for an unreasonable time after acquiring
satisfactory skill and production. This condition is known to the Women's
Trade Union League, but no well-directed effort has ever been made to
unionize colored workers in the garment trades, except when they have
been called in as strike breakers to replace white workers. An instance
of this was the strike at the C. B. Shane Company, manufacturers of
raincoats, where colored girls were employed to replace striking white
union workers. At that time very few colored girls were members of the
local union. According to an official of the Women's Garment Workers'
Union not more than 125 colored workers have become members.
8. HOTEL AND RESTAURANT EMPLOYEES
_Men._--In about twenty-five hotels and restaurants in which colored
men are employed, wages are as follows:
Chief cooks $25.00 to $50.00 per week
Waiters 25.00 to 40.00 per week
Bus boys 14.00 to 20.00 per week
Hotel porters 45.00 to 65.00 per month
Dishwashers 15.00 to 20.00 per week
Second cooks 20.00 to 35.00 per week
Bell-boys 40.00 to 45.00 per month
Shoe shiners and washroom porters 15.00 to 17.00 per week
In all of the above-listed occupations the wages are augmented by tips.
It is difficult to form an accurate estimate of the amount earned in
tips for the reason that it is conditioned upon the character of service
rendered and the inclination of the person served to pay for personal
service. It would be fair to estimate that in hotels and restaurants
known to employees as "good houses" the tips range from $2.00 to $5.00
per day. In a colored restaurant in the neighborhood of Thirty-first and
State streets a wage of $5.00 per week is paid to waitresses, while the
tips have been known to total five times that amount.
_Women._--The twenty-five hotels and restaurants concerning which the
Chicago Urban League's Industrial Department has records, employ women
in the occupations and at the wages listed as follows:
Waitresses $ 8.00 to $15.00 per week and tips (board)
Chambermaids 25.00 to 45.00 per month and tips (board)
Pantry girls 15.00 to 18.00 per week and board
Kitchen help 9.00 to 16.00 per week and board
Allowing an average of 35 cents per meal for three meals, $1.05 per day
or $7.35 per week should be added where board is included. This would
make the following schedule of wages:
Waitresses $15.35 to $22.35 per week
Chambermaids 54.40 to 74.40 per month
Pantry girls 22.35 to 25.35 per week
Kitchen help 16.35 to 23.35 per week
In clerical positions colored men have had very little opportunity,
except in the post-office. There are exceptions, however, such as shipping
clerks, storekeepers, and bookkeepers.
The girls employed as long-hand entry clerks, typists, checkers, routers,
and Elliott-Fisher and adding-machine operators received during 1920 from
$15.00 to $16.00 as a beginning wage. The chief supervisor (colored)
in charge of 600 girls in one of the large mail-order houses received
$23.00 per week, and the assistant superintendent, a white man, received
$50.00 per week while studying the mail-order business under the chief
supervisor. When the management's attention was called to the inequality,
two additional supervisors were added and the work lessened without
increase of pay.
Another firm employing several hundred colored girls paid a welfare
worker $20.00 per week, while another with half that number of girls
paid $25.00 per week.
There was a deep-seated suspicion existing among the clerical force of
a firm employing a large number of colored girls that the white girls
employed by the same company received a higher wage than that paid the
colored girls. The suspicion grew out of the mistake of an employment
manager in mistaking a colored girl for a white one.
9. RAILROAD WORKERS
_Dining-car men._--According to the records of the Railway Men's
International Industrial Benevolent Association, wages of dining-car
waiters prior to 1916 were universally $25.00 per month, with the
exception of the Santa Fe, which paid from $35.00 to $40.00 per month for
"preferred" runs. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy allowed an additional
$3.00 to the $25.00 standard for men in service ten years or more.
In 1918, after the roads had been federalized, the minimum wage became
$48.00 per month. In May, 1919, a further increase to $55.00 per month
and overtime on a mileage basis was granted. This gave an average of
$62.00 per month for so called "transcontinental" runs, that is, service
between Chicago and the Pacific Coast.
Effective February 1, 1920, wages were adjusted to an hourly basis,
which gave payment for overtime in excess of 240 hours per month. On
July 20, 1920, most roads allowed a general increase to dining-car men
which brought the average to $65.00 per month.
An official of the Railway Men's International Industrial Benevolent
Association estimated that the tips and salary of the average waiter
were $105.00 per month, including three meals valued at 35 cents per
day. This estimate was accepted by the Federal Railway Labor Board. This
low estimate is arrived at because it is generally the custom to feed
waiters and kitchen crews on leftovers which would otherwise become waste.
_Porters._--The wages of porters, including tips, is estimated at $105.00
per month. The present salary paid to porters is $65.00 per month. In
May, 1919, the minimum basis was $60.00 per month on a mileage basis of
$.0055 per mile in excess of 11,000 miles per month. In December of the
same year a final adjustment of the wage scale was made in which length
of service was taken as a basis. For three years or less the pay was
$63.00 per month; for from three to ten years the pay was $66.00 per
month; for ten years or more the pay was $69.00 per month. The Railway
Men's International Industrial Benevolent Association furnished the
above information.
According to the same authority, on January 1, 1921, most roads reduced
the hourly overtime for waiters, cooks, and stewards and placed it on
a straight time service, with pay ranging between $60.00 and $65.00 per
month. A twenty-four-day month was also established. This was equal to
a reduction of wages for the class of labor referred to.
In the case of thirty-one orders for porters in stores, restaurants,
cafés, and drugstores, office buildings, etc., the wages ran from $12.00
per week to $25.00. Some difficulty was experienced in determining a
minimum wage, for the reason that in many instances full time is not
required, porters being allowed to do odd jobs on their own account. Of
these thirty-one, three received $12 a week, one $13, four $15, two $16,
one $17, four $18, two $19, six $20, three $21, one $21.25, one $22 and
two $25.
Apartment-house janitors usually are affiliated with the labor unions.
An instance of financial benefit is as follows: F----, who is engineer
for an apartment in Evanston, before joining the union received $45.00
per month for his services, with quarters in a basement apartment. He
now receives $125.00 per month with the same quarters.
Firemen with licenses were offered from $125.00 to $150.00 per month in
ten different positions filled by the League.
10. DOMESTIC WORKERS
Eighty-one orders for maids for service in private families were listed
with the following results: maximum, $18.00 per week with room and board;
minimum, $6.00 per week with room and board; average, $12.84 per week
with room and board. Of these, twenty-six were paid $15, eight $14,
twelve $12, fifteen $10. Three received $18, and one $20.
_Children's nurses._--Fifteen were listed, of whom five were paid $15.00
per week with room and board, six were paid $12.00, one was paid $7.00,
two were paid $5.00, and one was paid $3.00.
_Cooks._--Sixteen were listed as follows: one was paid $25.00 per week
with room and board, four were paid $18.00, three were paid $16.00, six
were paid $15.00, and two were paid $14.00.
The minimum wage for cooks indicated is $14.00 per week with room and
board. The maximum wage is $25.00 per week with room and board, while
in the case of children's nurses the maximum wage is $15.00 per week
and the minimum $3.00 per week for part time.
_Housemen._--Out of a list of twenty-five orders, a minimum of $40.00
per month with room and board, a maximum of $100.00 per month with room
and board, and an average of $65.00 per month with room and board.
_Chauffeurs._--Minimum of $100.00 per month with room and board and
maximum of $150.00 per month with room and board. It is difficult to
outline the duties of chauffeurs for the reason that they often perform
the duties of butler, houseman, yardman, etc., in addition to that of
chauffeur.
_Couples._--(Man and wife.) Out of twenty-five orders listed, the
following wages were offered: minimum of $85.00 per month with room and
board. A maximum of $165.00 per month with room and board.
_Laundresses._--Usually employed by the day. The prevailing rate per
day over the past year was $4.00 and car fare, with one meal. This
wage was asked by common understanding and without any visible form of
organization. Since November 1, 1920, when the unemployment situation
became manifest, $3.60 per day, car fare, and one meal has been accepted.
From 1918 to November 1, 1920, a serious shortage of domestic help
was noted. Colored girls and women deserted this grade of work for the
factories, where shorter hours and free Sundays were secured. The larger
pay of domestic employment did not attract the average worker, for the
reason that free evenings for recreation and amusement were apparently
more desirable than the isolation and long hours of domestic service.
Recently housekeepers secured Negro girls from the southern states
and imported Negro girls from the British West India Islands[68] in
an attempted solution of the domestic-help problem. Transportation and
clothes were furnished by employers and some sort of verbal agreement
entered into by which the girls were expected to work out this
indebtedness. Instances have come to the attention of the Chicago Urban
League which seem to indicate that these agreements have not worked
out satisfactorily. For example: One colored woman was brought from a
small town in Florida to a Chicago suburb by a white family on such an
agreement. After a few weeks' service the employer complained that the
work performed by the woman as a general maid was unsatisfactory. Abuse
followed. The woman sought to go to a Negro family under the pretence
that she wished to return a pair of borrowed shoes. Her employer,
fearing that she wished to escape, drove her to the home of the Negro
family in his automobile. Once inside the home, she told a story of
how her employer had kicked, beaten, and threatened her with a revolver
if she attempted to leave. The Negro family gave asked-for shelter and
informed the employer that she would not return. After threatening to
take her away by force, the employer went away and the woman remained.
A suit followed on a charge of assault and battery and the employer was
discharged for lack of evidence.
A few weeks ago a white resident of another Chicago suburb applied to
the juvenile court for the guardianship of a colored girl. The court,
being unable to handle the case, requested the advice of the Chicago
Urban League. The details of the case were substantially as follows:
A Roman Catholic organization in Jamaica, British West Indies, sent
ten or twelve Jamaican girls to the United States, upon applications
of housekeepers, to serve as domestics. Some verbal agreement had been
entered into whereby the girls were to accept service as domestics and
work out the cost of transportation and clothing at a stipulated rate
per week. The arrangement seems to have progressed fairly until the girls
became acquainted with other colored people residing in the neighborhood.
It was then discovered that they were working at a wage considerably
lower than the usual wage. The girl in question, who was a minor but
seems to have misrepresented her age when applying for a passport, was
receiving $6.00 per week, one dollar of which was paid in cash and the
balance deducted to cover the expense of clothing and transportation.
After becoming dissatisfied with these wages, the girl left the home
of her white employer, who sought to be appointed her guardian so that
he could restrain her. A guardian has not thus far been appointed, for
the reason that the legal status of the girl and the legality of the
contract entered into are doubtful.
III. EMPLOYERS' EXPERIENCE WITH NEGRO LABOR
The entrance of Negroes in large numbers into manufacturing industries
and clerical occupations is one of the striking facts shown by this
investigation. Shortage of labor due to war conditions created many
openings for the Negro. Whether he will remain in these fields and become
an increasingly important factor in them will depend in a large degree
upon his efficiency and reliability, as well as upon absence of racial
friction, satisfactory wages, etc. It was therefore deemed important to
learn how the Negro improved his industrial opportunities.
The Commission made some investigation of this subject, seeking the
opinion of as many employers as possible who had had experience with
Negro workers. The inquiry covered two points: (1) a general question in
the preliminary questionnaire, to learn whether Negro labor had proved
satisfactory; and (2) a comparison of the Negro with the white worker
in efficiency, reliability, regularity, and labor turnover. The facts
under each head are considered separately below, following a brief
consideration of the difference between the southern and northern Negro.
1. SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN NEGROES COMPARED
Many employers drew a distinction between the recent southern migrants
and northern Negroes, and commented upon certain shortcomings of the
former, although they expressed themselves as satisfied on the whole
with Negro labor.
For instance, the representative of a foundry company with 200 Negroes
out of a total of 950 employees said:
It appears to me that the men coming from the South get here
and for a limited length of time seem to have a different view
of things. They do things that probably the Chicago Negro
wouldn't do. They don't seem to know exactly how to control
themselves. They are unsettled and to a great degree unsteady.
The northern-born Negro is more active. He is brighter in a way
and a little more ambitious. The southern Negroes are inclined
to work today, lay off tomorrow, and be back the next day on
the job again.
A representative of a large machinery-manufacturing establishment
employing 1,500 Negroes out of a total of 23,000 employees in Chicago
expressed the same opinion in these words:
Our experience with Negroes has a tendency to show that these
people do not realize that there is such a thing as steady work.
They work for possibly a week or two, then say they are obliged
to lay off for some imaginary cause and will probably return
within a week or four weeks. We believe they are improving
and will be better as time goes on and they become more used
to the way work and business are done in the North.
The superintendent of a foundry which increased its Negro employees in
five years from six to 125 out of a total of 466 employees was of the
following opinion:
The Negro up here from the South never heard of working six
days a week and being on time every morning and staying until
the job was done. It is entirely foreign to his idea of things,
but with a little persistent effort and showing him that it
is necessary he soon learns the system the same as the others,
and I do not believe he is any worse than the white man after
he has been here a year or two.
The superintendent of a company employing more that 2,000 Negroes out
of a total of 10,000 employees in Chicago declared:
The southern Negroes have not yet become thoroughly reconciled
to working six days a week. Down South they are accustomed
to taking off Saturdays, and they are quite frequently absent
on Saturday. That is not true of the colored man who has been
with us a long time. He is accustomed to the regularity of six
days a week, but the men from the South have the weakness of
being away on Saturdays.
In general it was the employers of large numbers of Negroes who
differentiated between the southern and the northern Negro. Employers
of Negroes in small numbers were more inclined to judge all Negroes by
those recently arrived from the South.
2. NEGRO LABOR SATISFACTORY
One of the questions contained in the preliminary questionnaire was: "Has
your Negro labor proved satisfactory?" Of 137 questionnaires returned by
establishments employing five or more Negro workers, 118 reported that
Negro labor had proved satisfactory and nineteen that it had not proved
satisfactory.
The significance of these returns is disclosed by Table XXVI, in which
the establishments are classified by industries, and the number of Negro
employees in establishments reporting Negro labor satisfactory is shown
to be 21,640 as contrasted with 697 Negro employees in the nineteen
establishments reporting Negro labor unsatisfactory.
TABLE XXVI
NEGRO LABOR SATISFACTORY OR UNSATISFACTORY IN ESTABLISHMENTS
CLASSIFIED BY INDUSTRIES
===================+==========+=========+================+=================
| | | ESTABLISHMENTS | ESTABLISHMENTS
| | | REPORTING | REPORTING
| | | NEGRO LABOR | NEGRO LABOR
| | | SATISFACTORY | UNSATISFACTORY
| TOTAL | TOTAL +------+---------+------+----------
INDUSTRY | NUMBER |Negroes | |Number of| |Number of
|Establish-|EMPLOYED | | Negroes | | Negroes
| MENTS | |Number|Employed |Number|Employed
| | | |in These | |in These
| | | | Estab- | | Estab-
| | | |lishments| |lishments
-------------------+----------+---------+------+---------+------+----------
Manufacturing: | | | | | |
Clothing | 9 | 203 | 8 | 191 | 1 | 12
Food products | 8 | 7,597 | 7 | 7,547 | 1 | 50
Iron and steel | 27 | 3,879 | 22 | 3,750 | 5 | 129
Tanneries | 7 | 462 | 6 | 421 | 1 | 41
Miscellaneous[69]| 18 | 713 | 13 | 464 | 5[70]| 249
+----------+---------+------+---------+------+----------
Totals | 69 | 12,854 | 56 | 12,373 | 13 | 481
| | | | | |
Non-manufacturing: | | | | | |
Railroads | 16 | 5,408 | 16 | 5,408 | |
Hotels | 9 | 923 | 8 | 911 | 1 | 12
Laundries | 20 | 764 | 16 | 587 | 4 | 177
Mail order | 2 | 1,773 | 2 | 1,773 | |
Public service | 4 | 42 | 4 | 42 | |
Taxicab upkeep | 1 | 250 | 1 | 250 | |
Miscellaneous[70]| 16 | 323 | 15 | 296 | 1 | 27
+----------+---------+------+---------+------+----------
Totals | 68 | 9,483 | 62 | 9,267 | 6 | 216
+----------+---------+------+---------+------+----------
Totals, all | | | | | |
industries | 137 | 22,337 | 118 | 21,640 | 19 | 697
-------------------+----------+---------+------+---------+------+----------
3. NEGRO AND WHITE LABOR COMPARED
At a conference at which Negro and white workers were under discussion a
large foundry representative suggested that such a comparison was unfair
to the Negro because he was still a newcomer in manufacturing industries
and could not be expected to be as efficient, reliable, and regular as
the white worker who had been thus engaged much longer. Other employers
felt that this point should be borne in mind.
_Efficiency._--Comparing the efficiency of the Negro worker and the white
worker, seventy-one employers interviewed (thirty-four manufacturing
and thirty-seven non-manufacturing establishments) considered the Negro
equally efficient, and twenty-two employers (thirteen manufacturing and
nine non-manufacturing) considered the Negro less efficient.[71]
The seventy-one establishments which reported Negro labor as equally
efficient as white labor included all of the large employers of Negro
labor, with very few exceptions. Ability shown by Negro workers in widely
dissimilar occupations and industries was commented upon. The following
instances are of interest:
Foundries: "Our star molder in the foundry is a Negro who has been with
us twenty years. Our best truck driver is a Negro who has been with us
about eighteen years." "About the best grinder we have in one department
is a colored man." The superintendent of a large foundry employing 125
Negroes said:
I covered thirty foundries, members of the National Association
when I was serving on a certain Committee, and I know that
in their departments Negroes have made very good. Out of the
thirty foundries, there are half or more which have colored
men in now which did not have colored men two years ago. One
of the instances, a little foundry I know of, had four men in
the grinding department; one colored man and his partner wanted
to take the job of running the grinding room. The partner
wanted to do it all himself, and is now doing what four men
were doing formerly.
That the Negro is apt in learning new work is illustrated by an instance
cited by the same superintendent:
I know of a Pullman porter who has been with the Pullman Company
twenty years who turned out to be as good a helper as we had
in the foundry. Take a man who has made beds for twenty years,
put him to carrying melted iron in a ladle, which is a real
man's job, and make good at it, and I think he's going some!
We had one man who did that and did it well. He was a helper
that the different foremen tried to get hold of, wanted to
have him with them.
Public service: The probation department of the juvenile court reported
six Negro employees. "The colored employees are intelligent, efficient
persons. With one exception they are probation officers. One employee
is in charge of the probation clerk's office and not only works with
white clerks but directs the work of nine white persons."
The office of the recorder of deeds reports seventeen Negro employees
in the folio or record-writing department. "The employees are marked
on their efficiency. Percentages of efficiency run from 94.5 to 98 per
cent among the colored clerks, and several of them averaged 97.9 per
cent and 98 per cent for the past three years."
Stock Yards: "Negroes make skilled workmen. They are among the best of
what are known as 'knife-men' we have."
Whether Negro labor shows greater efficiency in a working unit composed
entirely of colored workers or in a mixed unit of Negro and white workers
is an unsettled question. Only a few employers expressed an opinion on
this point (not affording a sufficient basis for generalization), but it
is interesting to note that of four foundries, one favored the separate
unit and three the mixed unit, while a large food-products company had
found both satisfactory.
Several employers mentioned the fact that, because of his knowledge of
English, the Negro is frequently more efficient than the foreign-speaking
worker. One wool warehouse company, for example, reported that Poles were
satisfactory under the old method of shipping wool in carloads from a
single shipper, but the new system, with shipments of hundreds of sacks
tagged with the names of as many shippers, required laborers unloading
the cars to separate the shipments into sections. This the Poles were
unable to do, while the Negroes did the work very efficiently.
_Reliability._--Does the Negro require more supervision than the white
worker in order to secure equally good results? An opinion was expressed
on this point by ninety-two employers; sixty-three (thirty manufacturing
and thirty-three non-manufacturing establishments) considered that
the Negro did not require more supervision while twenty-eight (sixteen
manufacturing and thirteen non-manufacturing establishments) considered
that he did. The general superintendents of two of the large packing
companies expressed contrary views on this point during one of the
conferences. One said:
Negroes do not require as much supervision as some of those
racial groups who do not understand the language. We can talk
to a man and tell him what to do, where to go to do the work
and how to do it, we can accomplish a whole lot more than if
we had to send an individual with him constantly from place to
place to show him how to do it. To that extent the Negro has
the advantage over the man who cannot talk the English language.
The superintendent of the other company expressed the opinion that
Negroes require more supervision than white workers:
For example, when they are working together in groups,
especially after pay-day, they are inclined to wander into
isolated spots and shoot craps. We've a good deal of trouble
of that kind. They spend their money when they get it more
recklessly than white people.
The representative of a food-products company with 500 Negro employees
in the working force of 3,000 stated that the company had found no need
of greater supervision of Negro workers than of white.
A representative of a taxicab company employing 250 colored workers stated:
We have some colored employees we trust absolutely and as far
as any white employees. We have some colored men in the garage,
and they take more supervision not because they are colored
but because they lack education and are shiftless, but this
you would find in the same grade of white workers.
A preliminary questionnaire returned by the president of a laundry company
employing eighty-two Negroes out of a total of 110 employees reported:
We have a number of exceptionally good and reliable Negro
employees. These men and women need very little supervision.
We get some, who have never worked in industries, who require
more supervision and are not very steady. On the whole we are
pleased with our Negro employees.
_Regularity._--Of the employers interviewed, fifty-seven (twenty-three
manufacturing and thirty-four non-manufacturing establishments) expressed
an opinion that "absenteeism" among colored workers was no greater than
among white workers, while thirty-six employers (twenty-four manufacturing
and twelve non-manufacturing establishments) reported that it was greater.
In this connection the habits of the southern Negro, commented upon
above, would naturally exercise great influence. The superintendent of
one of the packing companies employing 2,084 Negroes reported:
Previous to the war and up to the war the Negro was the poorest
in attendance in the plant. Since the war his attendance
compares favorably with any other class of employees in the
Yards. It is pretty hard to explain excepting this, as they
lived here longer they acquired better habits, I mean more
ambition, and ambition brought about the necessity for better
methods of living, better clothing, and they required more
money and I guess they found out in a short time that work
brought its compensations.
The tendency to work and accumulate a little and then take a vacation
is no more pronounced among the colored workers than among the white
workers, according to the representative of a food-products company
employing 500 Negroes out of a total of 3,000 employees.
_Labor turnover and "hope on the job."_--Of the fifty-two employers
expressing an opinion on the comparative labor turnover of Negro
and white workers twenty-four (eleven manufacturing and thirteen
non-manufacturing establishments) considered the labor turnover about
equal, and twenty-eight (eighteen manufacturing and ten non-manufacturing
establishments) considered the turnover greater among the Negro workers.
Closely connected with the question of labor turnover among Negroes is
the question of "hope on the job," as one alert Negro expressed it. The
desire to secure improved conditions of work and higher wages is shared
by all workers irrespective of race. If Negro workers are not allowed to
advance to better positions in a given plant, or if they are discriminated
against by having their efficiency underrated by foremen, the turnover
of Negro labor will naturally be high. The attitude of foremen largely
determines whether Negro workers will succeed or fail. Superintendents
of large plants realizing this fact have taken special care to educate
foremen in the treatment of Negro labor.
For example, the superintendent of a tannery with 175 Negroes out of a
total of 600 employees notified his foremen that he intended to use Negro
labor, and that any foreman who felt that he could not teach colored
workers would have to yield his place to someone who could. Frequent
lectures to foremen were necessary to make them realize that fairness to
Negro labor meant tolerance of a beginner's awkwardness and shortcomings
and refraining from the use of insulting terms such as "nigger," etc.
Another company reported that when it attempted to fill skilled positions
with Negroes the foremen said they would never be able to teach them as
long as they lived. "It couldn't be done." The foremen were told they
had to do it, and they now agree that it can be done and are "quite won
over to the point of employing Negroes." The experience of this plant
led the superintendent to the conclusion that no particular race is
especially fitted for any given kind of work.
The superintendent of a foundry employing 2,500 men, of whom 427 are
Negroes, said:
The foremen told me one time that they never could get a
colored man to grind because he was afraid of the wheel. I
thought we'd better try out a few of them. We found that was
not the fact at all. One of the best grinders we now have is
a colored man.
In discussing the attitude of foremen toward colored labor, the
superintendent of another large foundry made this significant statement:
I think 50 per cent of what trouble we who employ Negro labor
have is due to inefficient foremen, and the failure is in
the foreman directly over the man to understand the Negro.
As I see it, the Negro must be handled differently from the
Pole whom we have usually had in the common labor capacity.
We cannot handle the Negro the same as we could the Pole. Our
foremen have not been accustomed here in Chicago in our shops
to handling Negroes, and at times I have a real fight to see
a Negro get an absolutely square deal.
The industrial secretary of the Chicago Urban League, referring to a
large firm engaged in the manufacture of machinery, remarked:
I find the attitude of the company liberal. Negroes are
advanced to high-grade positions, although some foremen need
education in order to have them take the proper attitude toward
the employment of Negroes. One foreman set their efficiency
down to 75 per cent; the matter was taken to the efficiency
department and his statement was found to be untrue. This bears
out the point that Negroes will not succeed where foremen do
not intend them to succeed.
Despite occasional statements that the Negro is slow or shiftless,
the volume of evidence before the Commission shows that Negroes are
satisfactory employees and compare favorably with other racial groups.
4. NEGRO WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
Before the war created openings in industry for Negro women, they were
even more definitely restricted in their choice of occupations than were
Negro men. Restricted opportunity is evident from the fact that, in 1910,
almost two-thirds of the gainfully occupied Negro women in Chicago were
engaged in two occupational groups, "servants" and "laundresses not in
laundries," these being included among those in domestic and personal
service who numbered more than three-fourths. The enumeration of Negro
women gainfully employed in Chicago in 1910 classified in the census
according to industries is given in Table XXVII.
[Illustration: NEGRO WOMEN AND GIRLS EMPLOYED IN A LAMP-SHADE FACTORY
Work room is poorly lighted and generally unattractive.]
TABLE XXVII
NEGRO WOMEN GAINFULLY OCCUPIED IN CHICAGO IN 1910,
CLASSIFIED BY INDUSTRIES
========================================+=========+===========
| | Percentage
Industry | Number | of Total
----------------------------------------+---------+-----------
Manufacturing and mechanical industries | 998 | 11
Trade and transportation | 96 | 1
Professional service | 323 | 4
Clerical occupations | 163 | 2
Domestic and personal service: | |
Laundresses not in laundries | 2,115} |
Servants | 3,512} | 78
Other domestic and personal service | 1,336} |
General and unclassified occupations | 337 | 4
+---------+-----------
Total gainfully occupied | 8,880 | 100
----------------------------------------+---------+-----------
TABLE XXVIII
NEGRO WOMEN IN FIFTY ESTABLISHMENTS CLASSIFIED BY INDUSTRIES IN 1920[72]
==============================+==========+=========+=========|============
|Number of | | Total | Total
|Establish-| Total | Negro |Negro Women
Industry | ments |Employees|Employees| Employees
|Reporting | | |
------------------------------+----------+---------+---------+------------
Manufacturing: | | | |
Tanneries | 1 | 600 | 175 | 50
Iron and steel | 3 | 10,435 | 1,729 | 74
Slaughtering and packing | 3 | 20,990 | 4,818 | 437
Cooperage | 2 | 327 | 106 | 30
Clothing | 9 | 1,405 | 203 | 202
Other needle trades | 3 | 775 | 325 | 325
Box making (paper) | 3 | 995 | 143 | 104
Miscellaneous | 3 | 1,543 | 95 | 73
+----------+---------+---------+------------
Totals | 27 | 37,070 | 7,594 | 1,295
| | | |
Non-manufacturing:[73] | | | |
Hotels | 4 | 550 | 250 | 69
Taxicab upkeep | 1 | 1,600 | 250 | 100
Laundries | 16 | 1,511 | 664 | 543
Mail order | | | |
(clerical occupations)[74]| 2 | ... | 1,773 | 1,400
+----------+---------+---------+------------
Totals | 23 | ... | 2,937 | 2,112
------------------------------+----------+---------+---------+------------
To learn the special problems concerning Negro women in industry,
one conference was devoted to the industries recently opened to them.
Representatives of four establishments employing a total of 1,713 Negro
women attended the conference. The investigation of the 101 establishments
(employing five or more Negroes) disclosed the presence of women in a
large majority of cases, but in a number of instances the management
was unable to tell the sex of workers from the records kept and gave the
investigator the total number of Negroes employed without classification
by sex. Of the 137 establishments reporting, forty-two had no Negro
women employees; forty-five kept no separate sex records; fifty reported
separately the number of Negro women workers.
Comparing the industries in which Negro women were employed in 1910 with
the figures quoted for 1920, a striking increase is seen in the total
engaged in manufacturing, 998 being the total Negro women reported for
all manufacturing establishments in Chicago in 1910, as compared with
1,295 Negro women reported by twenty-seven establishments in 1920.
Comparisons for special industries and occupations show the contrasts
between 1910 and 1920 in Table XXIX.
TABLE XXIX
=================================================+======+=======+==========
| | |Number of
Industry | 1910 | 1920 |Establish-
| | | ments
-------------------------------------------------+------+-------+----------
Sewers and sewing-machine operators in factories | 25 | 527 | 12
Slaughtering and packing-house operatives | 8 | 437 | 3
Box making (paper) | 3 | 104 | 3
Tanneries | 0 | 50 | 1
Clerical occupations | 163 | 1,400 | 2
Laundry operatives | 184 | 543 | 16
Taxicab cleaning | 0 | 100 | 1
-------------------------------------------------+------+-------+----------
Labor shortage was given as the reason for employing Negro women and
girls by all of the firms employing them in large numbers. The outlook
for Negro women in industry when there is a labor surplus is uncertain.
Employers employing 1,713 Negro women represented at a conference,
May 18, 1920, agreed that there were no indications of a reduction of
employment. This question is considered at length hereafter in "Future
of the Negro in Chicago Industries."
EXPERIMENTS WITH NEGRO WOMEN WORKERS
Employers' opinions regarding the character of Negro labor without
reference to sex were considered above. Particular comments concerning
male workers were quoted there, comments upon women workers are now
given. Four employers of Negro women in large numbers within the past
two years gave the Commission the benefit of their experience. They were
two mail-order concerns, a manufacturer of automobile spring cushions,
and a wholesale millinery shop.
[Illustration: NEGRO WOMEN EMPLOYED ON POWER MACHINES IN A LARGE APRON
FACTORY
This concern when it increased its number of Negro women combined its
four shops and moved into this modern daylight factory building.]
The mail-order house which established a large office for Negro entry
clerks in September, 1918, was the first to try the experiment. It had
no precedent to guide it and "did not know how the colored girl would
act in business." The unit was opened with ninety girls, and increased in
the fall of 1919 to 650 girls, who were given the promise of advancement
and Negro supervision. In the early summer of 1920, when the investigator
visited this office, there were 311 girls at work, as follows:
Operators on Elliott-Fisher machines 30
Mail-order workers 76
Instructing new girls 9
Checkers 138
Supervisors 5
Mail opening, sorting, etc. 27
Posting 26
They were above the average in education, 75 per cent being high-school
graduates and 12 per cent having had two or more years in college.
The employment manager said that misunderstandings had arisen
occasionally, due to the colored girl being oversensitive and suspicious.
"The colored girl seems to suspect that her employer is going to put
something over on her. She is suspicious of any whites that come in her
vicinity and is ready to believe that any white person is prejudiced
against her on account of race."
The Negro welfare worker for this unit suggested that what might seem
supersensitiveness was often overzealousness on the part of girls who have
not had experience enough to judge their limitations or qualifications.
Being eager to succeed, they are very much disappointed when advancement
does not reward their efforts: "I think the best type of colored girl
we have in business is very ambitious. This is her first opportunity,
and she feels that she is really a pioneer making history for her race.
She is possibly a little overzealous, but can be made to get the right
attitude and accept it all very gracefully."
Another characteristic of Negro girls, in the opinion of the employment
manager, was an "excitable nature" which made it possible for a good
leader to influence them readily:
They complain of a change of supervisors, for instance. You
attempt to shift supervisors from one point of the office to
another and you immediately receive a petition signed by all
the girls, saying, "We love So-and-So, and please don't change
her." This is not to be criticized too harshly, but it does
represent something that does go on. It shows inexperience. The
white girl would expect that those things would take place.
The colored girl, not having been in the office very long,
would feel that the fact that the supervisor was changed was
something derogatory to the supervisor.
The whites didn't want to act as instructors, and the colored
girls didn't want to receive instructions from the whites. By
being very careful in the girls that were selected, and showing
the white girls where they were wrong, and then attempting to
show the colored people that these girls were not to exercise
supervision, but were merely to be instructors, both sides
came to an understanding on it, and we had pretty good results.
The white girls that we had over there became very used to it
and usually hated to leave, but we have always insisted that
they leave as soon as the girls learned the work.
During the conference on Negro women in industry the representative of
this mail-order establishment was asked why the Negro workers were put
into a separate unit instead of being intermingled with white girls. He
answered:
The first reason is that we haven't any room. The second is,
I imagine, because the officials who started the office and
who have carried it on since felt that it wouldn't be policy.
We haven't discussed the question because we've never had
occasion to consider such a move seriously. Our main office
is not large enough to accommodate any more employees than
we have white employees in the house. We keep that office
constantly recruited up to its present strength, and there has
never been any necessity or any reason to seriously consider
bringing colored girls in with the white girls....
Another thing to consider there would be the type of girl that
we employ. They are all young girls, mostly under twenty-five
years, and they don't think for themselves; they are influenced
very easily by what other girls say. You take one girl in an
office of that size who was very anti-colored, and it wouldn't
be very long until her sentiment would spread and pretty soon
you'd have a strong sentiment against the colored girls.
If a colored girl should want to obtain employment in that
part of our concern where we now employ all white girls, even
if she were very competent she would undoubtedly have some
trouble in securing employment in that department.
The result of the experiment with the colored unit, he said, was highly
satisfactory: "We have been very favorably impressed.... The girls have
made very rapid progress, in fact they surprised all of us. Their progress
along lines of leadership, as supervisors, etc., has been remarkable."
About six weeks after this conference the colored unit was closed. The
reasons given were lack of business, trouble with the lessor of the
office, and failure to find another convenient location. A letter of
recommendation was given to each employee showing that her service had
been satisfactory, and a letter was also sent to the Urban League, through
which the women had been employed, explaining why it had been necessary
to close the office and emphasizing the fact that this action should not
be considered in any sense a reflection upon the Negro workers employed.
The other mail-order house opened a unit for Negro women in the fall
of 1918, with 650 women who worked until the end of the "fall rush" in
January, 1919. In the following fall the unit was again opened, with
1,050 Negro women; and the office was still in operation in 1920. This
office was just outside the "Loop" district. The sudden influx of Negro
girls there caused complaints by the local restaurants, fearing the loss
of old patrons in handling this new business. The company then installed
an "at cost" cafeteria service. The work of these girls was clerical,
billing, labeling, addressing, etc. Considering their inexperience,
their service has been highly satisfactory. The employment manager said:
"It's not a defect in their minds, it's a defect in the country. They
haven't had the opportunity to gain the education and experience needed
for responsibility; the Negro girl is equal to the Italian or Bohemian
in working ability and superior for executive work, such as instructing
or supervising." Among 143 girls interviewed in the entry offices of
these two mail-order houses only three expressed dissatisfaction with
the conditions of work. The girls seemed to take pride in the fact that
they had succeeded in "making good" in a new and attractive field of work.
The experiment of the establishment manufacturing automobile spring
cushions had a very modest beginning. A factory was rented in the Negro
residential area on the South Side, and twenty machines were installed
to test out Negro women as sewing-machine operators. Gradually the
number increased to 120 in this plant, and a second plant was opened in
the same vicinity with about the same number of operators. During the
year 1919-20 there were 250 Negro women employed as machine operators
in these two plants. The superintendent considered that they required
less supervision than the white workers in the company's other shops
and rated them equal to white workers in efficiency. "We could take our
best white girl and our best colored girl, and they earn about the same
amount of money on piecework rates, in the same number of hours."
The superintendent of the wholesale millinery establishment represented
in conference considered that the employment of Negro women in that
industry had outgrown the experimental stage. Although a long period
of training is necessary in order to become a skilled milliner (four
years for hand sewers, eight years for machine operators), Negro women
were keen to learn the trade and willing to accept the low wages paid
to beginners. Of the forty-seven Negro women employed on the day of the
investigator's visit, thirty-three received less than $12.00 a week
and forty-two received less than $15.00 a week. These women were all
employed as hand sewers, and in the opinion of the superintendent they
had done "just as well as the white. They learn as quickly and are as
persevering, and in every respect equal to the whites as far as their
work is concerned. We are absolutely satisfied with their work."
Other industries in which Negro women are engaged in considerable
numbers include laundering, the manufacture of clothing, lamp shades,
gas mantles, paper boxes, barrels, and cheese making. An investigator
from the Commission visited establishments employing Negro women in each
of these industries.
_Laundry operatives._--The fact that 543 Negro women laundry operatives
were reported by sixteen laundries, as contrasted with 184 in all Chicago
laundries in 1910, gives evidence of an increase in the number of Negro
women in this field proportionately much greater than the increase in
Negro population in Chicago in the same decade. The opportunity to work
in a laundry was practically denied to Negro women until labor shortage
forced laundry owners to tap this reserve labor supply. Negro women were
eager to desert work as domestic servants and "family washer-women,"
with the social stigma and restricted human contact involved, to enter
laundries where more independence was possible, hours were better
standardized, and association with fellow-workers enlivened the work
day. The employment department of the Urban League experienced great
difficulty in supplying the demand for domestic servants and laundresses
in the home, but had no difficulty in filling openings in laundries.
The work of Negro women in this field has proved satisfactory except
in a few establishments. Of the twenty laundries which reported Negro
labor satisfactory or unsatisfactory (included in Table XXVI), four
failed to report separate figures covering male and female employees.
Of the remaining sixteen establishments, twelve, with a total of 409
Negro women, reported Negro labor satisfactory, and four with a total
of 134 Negro women, reported Negro labor unsatisfactory. The complaint
in two instances was unwillingness to work overtime and on Sundays. In
both these instances the employees interviewed complained that hours
were long (nine-hour day) and the treatment by the management harsh and
inconsiderate.
Laundries which did not make a practice of requiring overtime and Sunday
work found Negro women workers cheerful, loyal, and industrious. The
employees interviewed in these establishments expressed satisfaction
with working conditions and with hours.
One efficiently managed laundry, employing seventy-six Negro women and
six Negro men, out of a total of 110 employees, reported: "We have a
number of exceptionally good and loyal Negro employees. These men and
women need very little supervision. We got some who have never worked
in industries. They require more supervision and are not very steady.
On the whole, we are well pleased with our Negro employees."
_Sewing-machine operators and sewers._--Denial of opportunity to enter
the sewing trades is evidenced by the small number of Negro women listed
in the 1910 census as sewers and sewing-machine operators in factories,
the number being twenty-five. That this exclusion was not because of any
natural inaptitude for sewing is indicated by the fact that the 1910
census listed 867 Negro women as seamstresses not in factories. Negro
women have entered millinery work and proved apt hand workers; they have
also proved efficient sewing-machine operators in the manufacture of
automobile cushions. The lampshade manufacturers employed Negro women
as hand sewers and found them to be efficient workers. The clothing
establishments which reported Negro women workers found them satisfactory
machine and hand workers, with the exception of one apron factory which
complained that they are shiftless, often unreasonable, and do not stick
to the job. An investigation of this establishment by the Urban League
disclosed the following facts: The shop was located in a shabby-looking,
unclean store, inadequately heated by a coal stove. The work day was
nine and one-half hours, and piece rates on several operations were so
low that it was impossible to earn a decent wage. In this case the large
labor turnover was evidently a healthy protest against poor working
conditions.
[Illustration: NEGRO WOMEN AND GIRLS IN A LARGE HAT-MAKING CONCERN
This shop has been partitioned for the accommodation of Negro women
workers. The workshop is unattractive and the lighting extremely poor
for the character of work required.]
_Other industries._--Three paper-box-making plants employing Negro
women were investigated. They reported that Negro women had proved
unsatisfactory, either slow or lazy. The experience of a cheese factory
is worth noting in this connection. Because Negro women appeared to be
slow at their work it was decided to measure their tasks. It was then
found that many were doing as well as and some better than the white
girls in whose places they were working.
Whether such tests had ever been made in the box-making plants does
not appear. The employees interviewed in one box factory complained of
low wages and no chance for advancement. Negro women in this plant were
averaging only $2.40 a day. A cooperage company reported fifteen women
stave carriers and fifteen machine operators. Negro labor in this plant
was reported satisfactory. Negro women in the garage of a taxicab company,
cleaning automobiles, have shown themselves not afraid of hard work;
100 Negro women were reported working in this capacity. Negro women as
Pullman-car cleaners have also proved satisfactory.
Before the war Negro women were popularly thought of as a class of
servants unfitted by nature for work calling for higher qualifications.
It is difficult to say how long this popular misconception might have
survived had it not been for the labor shortage which forced employers
to experiment with Negro women workers and to learn with surprise that
they were as teachable as white women and became as efficient workers
after receiving the necessary training.
IV. INDUSTRY AS THE NEGRO SEES IT
1. ATTITUDE TOWARD INDUSTRIAL OPPORTUNITIES
In order to learn the attitude of the Negro toward his work, and his
special problems, including the treatment accorded him by foremen and
by fellow-workers, 865 Negro employees were interviewed by a Negro
investigator at their work or at home. Less than 1 per cent of those
interviewed complained of disagreeable treatment by white workers.
Approximately one-half had no complaints to make about conditions of
work. On the contrary, they expressed themselves as being glad of the
opportunity to work and earn good wages.
The attitude of a large number of the workers interviewed is illustrated
by the following:
C---- W---- was referred to in one of the industrial conferences
before the Commission. The superintendent of the foundry said
he was the "star molder" in the plant. When interviewed C----
W---- said he had come to Chicago in 1910 from Kentucky because
he was tired of being a flunkey. He had been in the high school
for two years, but could only get work as janitor in a public
building in his home town. After coming here he worked in a
foundry as a molder's helper until he learned the trade. "I
was getting 38 cents an hour then, but I got on piecework and
my wages have steadily gone up. I'm an expert now and make as
much as any man in the place. I can quit any time I want to,
but the longer I work the more money it is for me, so I usually
work eight or nine hours a day. I am planning to educate my
girl with the best of them, buy a home before I'm too old,
and make life comfortable for my family. There is more chance
here to learn a trade than in the South. I live better, can
save more, and I feel more like a man."
R---- N----, who is working as a helper in the same foundry,
says he has just gone from one job to another. In the South
he worked on a section gang on the railroad most of the time.
"Didn't have to know much to get a job on the section gang--just
able to lift." Friends here wrote him of the chances to make
money, so he came because he was just drifting anyway. When he
got here he thought Chicago was "full of life." Every night
for a month he went to cabarets. He likes his work and his
wages. "My wife can have her clothes fitted here; she can try
on a hat and if she don't want it she don't have to buy it.
I can go anywhere I please on the cars after I pay my fare,
and I can do any sort of work I know how to do."
When M---- G---- came to Chicago in 1900 he thought it "the
biggest place in the world and the world didn't reach much
further. Life is easier here because you can make more money.
Working conditions are better than in the South, but they could
be better still." He worked as a butler in the South, but when
he came to Chicago he got out of personal service and became
a laborer in the Stock Yards. Later he went to Gary, Indiana,
to the steel works, where he is earning about $40.00 a week.
His wife is doing clerical work in a mail-order house and is
going to night school three nights a week to learn typing.
H---- B---- with his family left Mississippi in 1916 and came
to Chicago, where he found work as a coal heaver at $3.20 a day.
His wife sorted paper in a junk house at $10.00 a week, and his
daughter entered a canning department at the Stock Yards at
$18.00 a week. When Mr. B---- was interviewed in June, 1920,
he was working in the Stock Yards and earning $27.00 a week
for an eight-hour day. He said he didn't have to work nearly
as hard here as in the South and was earning enough money so
his wife could stay at home. "In the South you had to work
whether you wanted to or not unless you were very sick. White
people did not work there as they do here. They made the Negro
do the work. Men and women had to work in the fields. A woman
was not permitted to remain at home if she felt like it. If
she was found at home some of the white people would come to
ask why she was not in the field and tell her she had better
get to the field or else abide by the consequences. After the
summer crops were all in, any of the white people could send
for any Negro woman to come and do the family washing at 75
cents to $1.00 a day. If she sent word she could not come she
had to send an excuse why she could not come. They were never
allowed to stay at home as long as they were able to go. Had
to take whatever they paid you for your work."
M---- H---- "likes the air of doing things here." He is able to
earn enough to keep the family without having his wife go out
to work. There are four "youngsters," the oldest being eight
years old. Mr. H---- came to Chicago in 1918 from Tennessee.
He complained that there was not much work for a man in his
home town. He did whatever odd jobs turned up. People there
were talking about the chances in Chicago, so he came here and
went to work as a monument setter on the West Side. Later he
found a better-paying job in a mattress factory and was able
to send for his family. He is now working in a foundry and
makes $35.00 a week but finds it hard to live on this. If he
can go to night school he feels he will be able to earn more
money.
Mrs. L---- works as an entry clerk in a mail-order house and
likes everything connected with the place. She used to be a
maid in a private family but says she wouldn't work in service
again "for any money. I can save more when I'm in service, for
of course you get room and board, but the other things you have
to take--no place to entertain your friends but the kitchen,
and going in and out the back doors. I hated all that. Then,
no matter how early you got through work you could only go
out one night a week--they almost make you a slave. You can
do other work in Chicago and you don't have to work in such
places."
Mrs. L---- had taught school in Atlanta, Georgia. After her
husband died she had tried to get back in the school but
could not. Friends here advised her to move to Chicago, so she
sold her property in 1915 and came here. She got work in the
Stock Yards but gave music lessons on the side to help keep
up expenses. "I hated the surroundings at the Yards and the
class of people who worked there, so when I had a chance to
work in a mail-order house I changed. The first work here was
filing. I learned it very quickly and tried so hard to make
good that they made me a supervisor." She likes the freedom
of the North and the opportunities to advance in work. Her
ambition is to get into the public schools as a teacher.
Miss T---- S----, twenty-two years old, started to work when
she was fourteen, helping her mother cook for a large family
in Lexington, Georgia. Her mother died when she was about
seventeen, and she continued to work in the same family about
three years. Then some relatives persuaded her to come north
with them in 1919. She worked as a waitress in Chicago until
her cousin got her a job in a box factory. "I'll never work in
nobody's kitchen but my own any more. No, indeed! That's the
one thing that makes me stick to this job. You do have some
time to call your own, but when you're working in anybody's
kitchen, well, you're out of luck. You almost have to eat on
the run; you never get any time off, and you have to work half
the night, usually. I make more money here than I did down
South, but I can't save anything out of it--there are so many
places to go here, but down South you work, work, work, and
you have to save your money because you haven't any place to
spend it."
Many of those interviewed were grateful for the opportunity to work
overtime at overtime rates. A number complained that they were able to
spend but little time with their families, or in recreation, because
they were compelled to live in districts far from the plants in which
they worked, so that two, and often three, hours a day were wasted on
the cars. The Negroes who had come to Chicago within the past two or
three years as a rule were satisfied with conditions of work, including
hours, wages, and treatment.
2. COMPLAINTS ABOUT CONDITIONS OF WORK
Among the Negroes who had lived in Chicago for a longer period the
most insistent complaint was lack of opportunity for advancement or
promotion. This was occasionally coupled with the complaint that foremen
discriminated in favor of the white workers. In certain industries no
complaint of treatment by foremen was made, while approximately 10 per
cent of those interviewed in three industries (mentioned below) complained
of discrimination in favor of white workers, in the distribution of work,
in recognition of efficiency, or in permitting the earning of overtime
rates. The industries registering the greatest percentage of complaints
were: (1) foundry and iron and steel mills, (2) Stock Yards, and (3)
railroad dining-car and Pullman service. The common complaints in each
of these fields are considered briefly below.
_Foundries and iron and steel manufacturing._--The ninety-three Negro
employees interviewed in fourteen establishments in this field were of
different grades of skill: fifty-nine unskilled, twelve semi-skilled,
nineteen skilled, and three apprentices to skilled trades. The length of
time in the plant varied from a week to twenty years (forty-one employees
less than one year, and eighty less than five years). To the inquiry,
"Is anything wrong with your conditions of work?" fifty answered, "No";
sixteen complained that hours were too long (in these cases the men
were working a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week); ten complained
of low wages; six that foremen or straw bosses were not fair in the
distribution of work or of "heats"; four complained that straight-time
pay only was allowed for overtime, three that working gangs were reduced
without decreasing the work demanded or increasing the pay of the men
who remained; one thought that Negroes were paid lower wages than white
workers; one said the work in his plant was much dirtier than it need
be; and two were dissatisfied because shower or locker accommodations
were insufficient.
A foundry company employing twenty Negroes out of a total of eighty
employees was one of the establishments reporting Negro labor
unsatisfactory. Negroes interviewed there complained of harsh and unfair
treatment by bosses and said that Negroes usually did not stay longer
than thirty days. The employment manager of a large foundry employing 427
Negroes out of a total of 2,488 employees told the investigator that the
foremen in the plant would refuse to use Negroes if white labor could be
obtained, and if such a time should come the foremen would have their
way, because it took years to make a foreman, but a laborer could be
picked up any day. The investigator was not permitted to interview any of
the employees at this plant, but he visited some of them at their homes.
They complained of harsh treatment by foremen, reduction in piece rates
without notice, and discrimination in favor of white workers. The labor
turnover reported by this plant was 70 per cent for Negro as compared
with 14 per cent for white workers. This contrast is readily accounted
for when the attitude of foremen toward Negroes is known.
Negroes interviewed at one of the plants of another foundry company
employing seventy-five Negroes out of a total of 300 employees complained
that the foreman in one department established conditions discouraging to
Negro workers. He had an even number of Negro and white workers employed
as partners on a certain process of piecework rates, each doing one-half
of a joint task. When a man was absent, partners would be shifted about
so that a Negro worker would be left without a partner instead of a white
man. This handicapped the single worker by slowing down the process so
he could not earn a full day's pay. Complaint was also made that the
same foreman allowed white workers to accumulate a supply of material
for their work, although he ordered Negro workers to stop this practice,
thus forcing them to lose time in making frequent trips for material.
In a large iron and steel plant a few of the workers interviewed
complained of unfair and abusive treatment by foremen. Numerous
complaints had likewise come to the attention of the industrial secretary
of the Urban League, who took the matter up with the chief of the
industrial-relations department of the company. An investigation was
ordered, and it was found that a certain foreman had made a threat to
drive all the "niggers" from the department. This foreman, who had been
employed by the company for more than sixteen years, was discharged
as a result of the investigation. The company states that considerable
pressure has been brought to bear for the foreman's reinstatement, but
that it will not reinstate him because it wants his case to be a warning
to others in the plant who may be prejudiced against Negro workers. The
discharged foreman has been told that he may seek employment with the
company in some other capacity, with the loss of his seniority rights.
In contrast with conditions in the preceding cases, the investigator
found no complaints of mistreatment by foremen or other causes for
dissatisfaction among Negro workers at another foundry which employs
125 Negroes out of a total force of 466 employees. Negro labor in this
foundry was reported "satisfactory" and as efficient as white labor.
The attitude of foremen evidently contributed to the contentment and
success of Negroes in this plant.
_Stock Yards._--Interviews with seventy-four Negroes employed in the
Stock Yards disclosed much dissatisfaction with treatment by foremen.
Specific instances of discrimination were cited in great detail, leaving
no doubt in the mind of the investigator that these workers felt that
they did not have an equal chance with white workers in many departments
in the Yards. Some of those interviewed were well pleased with the
treatment of present foremen, but had worked in other departments in
the same plants where they said foremen had been unfair and insulting
to Negroes. The Negroes interviewed, with one exception, considered
their treatment by white fellow-workers good or "O.K." The following
are typical of the complaints made by the men interviewed in three of
the large establishments in the Yards:
G---- R---- had worked in one plant in the Yards for four
years. He said that he was not given a chance to make overtime,
while Poles who had not been with the company as long as he
had were given this privilege.
Another worker had been dismissed by a foreman when a white
worker in the boiler room had shut off the supply of water
for washing hogs. No blame was attached to the real offender,
but the Negro worker was discharged. He wrote a letter to
the general superintendent, who investigated and ordered his
reinstatement. The foreman then tried to reinstate him as a
new hand, which would deprive him of his seniority rights.
Another worker interviewed said that one assistant foreman had
openly made the statement that he would not work with "niggers."
The foreman over pipe fitters was accused of placing new
Negroes on the hardest work, with no one to give assistance.
He permitted white men to work as helpers for two or three
months, and then to quit for a month or two and return as pipe
fitters, advancing them over Negroes who had more training
for the work.
The foreman in the sheep-killing department of one of the plants
was said by one worker to make advancement difficult, if not
impossible, for Negroes. Another worker complained that this
foreman had recently taken one man off the jaw-trimming machine
but ran the chain just as fast, with the evident intention of
overtaxing the remaining Negroes and reporting that they were
not equal to the job.
The foreman in the hog-killing department was charged with
showing preference to the Poles in shoulder sawing. If a Negro
made complaint to the superintendent and was sent back with
instructions to the foreman, the latter would try to "burn"
the Negro out with work.
It would seem from the discussion of the representatives of the packing
companies before the Commission that the Negro in reality has little
opportunity for promotion in the Yards. There are no Negro foremen over
mixed gangs. The highest position a Negro is able to reach is that of
subforeman over a group of Negro workmen. The general superintendent of
one of the packing companies admitted that he had never tried out a Negro
as foreman over a mixed gang because he wouldn't want to work under a
Negro himself. Such an attitude on the part of a general superintendent
closes the door to experimentation and limits the opportunities of
even the most capable Negroes. It was this same official who said, as
previously noted, that Negro labor required more supervision than white
labor, and that the turnover of Negro labor was greater. Lack of "hope
on the job" would seem an adequate explanation of both conditions.
_Railroad dining-car and Pullman service._--Negroes are used as
dining-car waiters on all roads running out of Chicago which carry such
accommodations. Certain of the roads also use Negro cooks and kitchen
help. The dining-cars on all roads are in charge of white stewards. The
source of greatest complaint among the 204 Negro waiters interviewed
was the arbitrary use of authority by the stewards and the fact that
color bars Negro waiters from becoming stewards. They say that when
stewards are needed, intelligent and experienced Negroes are passed over
and white men, often entirely ignorant of the work, are taught their
duties by these Negroes and are then placed in authority over them. One
road carrying seven dining-cars uses white stewards on two cars and the
remaining five cars are in charge of Negroes called "waiters in charge."
Negroes complained that these men get little more than the wages of a
waiter, and in many cases do all that is required of steward and waiter.
The outstanding complaint concerned the drawing of the color line in
promotion. In view of the fact that many college graduates are serving
as waiters, it would seem absurd to say that Negro waiters are incapable
of performing a steward's duties, which consist of receiving and checking
supplies for the car, seating dining patrons and issuing checks to them,
having general supervision of the other employees on the dining-car, and
making daily reports to the car superintendent of business transacted.
Race prejudice on the part of administrative officials of railroads seems
to be the only explanation for barring Negroes from becoming stewards,
in view of the fact that Negro waiters have been used in dining-cars for
over forty years and have been accepted by the white traveling public
as a matter of course, though some contend that some patrons who accept
Negroes as waiters would object to seeing them in positions of stewards,
particularly if that brought white employees under them.
Negroes are employed in large numbers in Pullman cars as porters,
cleaners, cooks, and mechanics. The main complaint made by the sixty
porters interviewed was poor wages and necessity of dependency on tips to
make a decent living. The wages of porters, as stated by a representative
of the Pullman Company before the Commission, are:
The minimum rate for a porter on a standard sleeping or parlor
car is $60.00 per month; when running in charge of one car the
rate is $70.00 per month; when running in charge of a private
car the rate is $75.00 per month; but when operating in charge
of two or more cars the rate is $155.00 per month.
In 1914 the minimum was either $27.50 or $30.00 per month. Asked whether
the Government Railroad Administration had anything to do with the
increase granted by the Pullman Company, he indicated that the Pullman
Company was under the direction of the Railroad Administration.
Another complaint by Pullman porters was that no promotion was possible
for them, since only white men are used as Pullman-car conductors.
The explanation of the company, given by one of its representatives at
a conference with the Commission, was: "It is merely carrying out an
ancient and honorable custom--we started out with white conductors and
colored porters and have always continued that way."
Interviews with Negro workers revealed individual differences in attitude
and temperament, but the more ambitious and thoughtful Negroes expressed
the conviction that they were barred by color from positions for which
they were better qualified than the white men who held them. Their
complaints were largely variations of the same theme--race discrimination.
V. INDUSTRIES EXCLUDING THE NEGRO
Several important industries in Chicago have not yet employed Negroes.
The traction companies (both elevated and surface) do not employ them as
conductors, motormen, guards, or ticket agents. The large State Street
department stores have no Negro clerks, and taxicab companies do not
employ colored drivers. In these industries, which depend directly upon
the public for patronage, it is to be expected that the employing of
Negro help will be determined by the employer's views of the wishes of his
patrons. If there is any fear that they are unfavorable, any individual
employer in a competitive industry will hesitate to try the experiment
alone. The employment managers of five State Street department stores
made the following statements:
1. Our customers would object to colored salespeople, I am sure.
2. We have never employed any Negroes in our Chicago
establishments. I don't care to go into the matter. It will
not do you any good and will not do us any good.
3. Customers and white employees would object if they were
used as clerks.
4. No Negroes are ever employed because we have sufficient
white applicants.
5. If we ever tried using Negroes as clerks the white workers
would make trouble, I am sure of that. Our customers would
object. A good many are from the South and would make trouble
even if Chicago people did not.
One large taxicab company, employing 250 Negroes for repair work
and upkeep of automobiles, does not employ Negroes as drivers. A
representative of this company stated that the company had gone as far
as many employers, and often farther, in the employment of Negro labor;
that it had done this in a progressive way, one step after another, but
had "not yet got as far as employing Negro chauffeurs," although this
might come in time. When asked whether he thought such action would
affect the company's business unfavorably he said, "I do not know. It
is a matter that I have never thought about."
The Chicago Telephone Company does not employ Negro telephone operators.
Its only Negro employees are porters, window washers, and maids. A
representative stated that it has always had sufficient white applicants
for positions as telephone operators and has not considered taking on
Negro girls, although the suggestion has often been made that Negro
operators be used at the Douglas Exchange (located in the Negro area of
the South Side). This official thought there was very little possibility
that they would employ Negro operators in the future. He feared objection
from white employees.
In connection with the foregoing it may be borne in mind that the company
has answered complaints of poor telephone service within the past few
years with the statement that it is difficult to secure capable girls,
and that the Telephone Company is continually advertising for girls as
operators.
_Social waste involved._--The industrial secretary of the Urban League
has called attention to the large number of educated Negro girls who are
unable to secure industrial openings where education is required. It is
impossible to estimate how great a social waste is involved in relegating
trained and educated Negroes to inferior positions, and there is evidence
that such waste is considerable. Negroes with college training are found
working as waiters; young women college graduates are frequently forced
to serve as ladies' maids, theater ushers, or in some other capacity
where they are unable to use their educational training. The fact that
it was not difficult to find over 1,500 Negro women of more than average
education for clerical positions in two Chicago mail-order houses when
the opportunity offered is some indication of the extent of the social
waste when Negroes are not used in other positions which require training.
VI. RELATIONS OF WHITE AND COLORED WORKERS
The entrance of Negroes into new industries and occupations means that
the workers already in these fields will meet increased competition. The
self-interest of white workers in a given shop may therefore cause them to
resent the presence of Negro workers. On the other hand, through contact
and association with Negroes during working hours, white workers may come
to look upon Negroes, not as members of a strange group with colored skin,
but as individuals with the same feelings, hopes, and disappointments
as other people. Whether the hostile attitude prompted by self-interest
or the friendly attitude born of understanding, acquaintance, and daily
association will prevail in any given shop depends on many factors, over
some of which the workers involved have no control. Some of these are:
1. The attitude of the management when Negro labor is first introduced.
2. Circumstances under which Negroes are hired, whether because of
recognized labor shortage, or as strike breakers, or to reduce labor
costs.
3. The attitude and characteristics of the particular Negroes employed.
4. The attitude of the white workers toward Negroes as a result of
previous contacts with Negroes.
The spirit displayed in the shop is likely to spread beyond it and affect
relations between the races on the streets and in cars and other public
places. It is therefore important to know what the relations between
white and Negro workers are, both because of their importance to the
Negro in industry and their bearing on the broader social aspect of race
problems.
1. RACE FRICTION AMONG WORKERS
Information concerning race relations in industry was received from
employers through questionnaires returned by 137 establishments employing
a total of 22,337 Negroes, through interviews at places of business
with representatives of 101 employers, through industrial conferences
held by the Commission, and through interviews with 865 Negro workers.
Since the best judges of the existence of race friction would be the
Negro workers themselves, who would bear the brunt of any ill-treatment
resulting from such friction, it was considered that any extended canvass
of opinion among white workers beyond the inquiries made in connection
with the trade-union investigation was unnecessary.
Race friction between white and Negro workers sufficient to interfere
with output would militate against the use of Negro labor. The fact that
Negro labor has proved satisfactory in the great majority of cases where
it has been used is therefore indirect evidence that race friction is
not pronounced in Chicago industries. Direct evidence from employers
on this subject was also secured in answer to a specific question on
the point. Out of 137 establishments employing Negroes, which returned
questionnaires, only two reported that race friction was a disturbing
factor in their plants. The facts in these two cases were as follows:
In a steel-manufacturing plant there was a total of 1,300 employees, of
whom seventeen were Negroes, eleven men and six women. During the steel
strike of 1919 Negroes were employed in this plant in large numbers.
Feeling was antagonistic on the part of the whites, "particularly
Austrians and Slavonians." The total number of Negroes employed during
the strike and the turnover were reported as "an average force of 175."
Friction in the foregoing case was probably due to the heritage of
bitterness over the use of Negroes as strike breakers and to irritation
caused by the low grade of workers employed more than to difference
in color. They were described by the manager as "irresponsible and
shiftless."
In the other case fear of Negroes' competition rather than race prejudice
was apparently the cause of friction. The manager of a wholesale millinery
house employing forty-three girls in one department, out of a total of
700 employees, said:
We decided to take on colored help in June, 1919. Our white
people resented very much the fact of employing colored people
in our business, and I believe the blame, if there is any, lies
as much with the whites as with the blacks in the difficulties
we have had. I find a great resentment among all our white
people. I couldn't overcome the prejudice enough to bring the
people in the same building, and had to engage outside quarters
for the blacks. We had a meeting of our colored operators
after employing the hand workers. We thought it would be nice
if we would start a school for machine operators. It was, of
course, rumored that we were going to do this, and I received
a delegation from our sewing hall who said they resented the
idea. They wouldn't listen to it at all, and I had to abandon
the project. Their argument was: "If you let them in it won't
be long until we are out entirely." The attitude against the
colored is only the same as it was against the Slavs or the
foreign races when they first intruded in the field. There
was no prejudice, particularly against the color. In millinery
establishments in New York City colored girls and white girls
work together and do not seem to have any trouble, but, we
can't do it here.
The resentment felt by the white girls in this shop may be accounted for
in part by a fact to which the manager apparently attached no importance.
In speaking of the loyalty and good spirit of the Negro girls, he said
casually:
In a few instances, where we have had difficulty in getting
work done by the whites, we have been able to use the colored
workroom as a level. We have sent it over to them and gotten it
out. The white girls have refused either through stubbornness
or some condition to get the work out.
Friction was also reported between women employees in a plant where
relations between the men of both races were reported harmonious. This
plant which manufactures machinery, has a total of 6,647 employees,
including 1,225 Negro men and sixty Negro women. A representative of
the company said:
Among the girls we had quite a lot of trouble in some
departments against our hiring colored girls. To every colored
girl employed we lost five white girls. There was friction in
the washrooms due probably to race, though it may have been
personal.
The report from a foundry employing 950 men, of whom 200 were colored,
said:
As a rule if any objection is made to working together it comes
from the white men (Polish) on the grounds that the colored
man is being given the preference.
A laundry company employing ten Negroes out of a total of thirty-five
employees, reported that when the first Negro girl was employed the
white girls threatened to quit. The manager asked them to wait a week
and, if they still objected, he would let her go. There was no further
objection; they grew to like her.
The reports of employers regarding the absence of friction between
white and Negro workers is borne out by the testimony of Negro workers
themselves. Among 865 Negroes interviewed in all the industries covered,
the number who complained of disagreeable treatment by white workers was
practically negligible. It is possible that some Negro workers among those
interviewed at their work places, sometimes with white fellow-workers
and foreman near by, felt hesitancy in voicing such complaints. But
the fact that the information was sought by an investigator of their
own race, and confidentially for the Commission, may be considered as a
factor likely to encourage the expression of any grievance, especially
if felt at all deeply.
Conditions of work in large foundries would seem to offer plenty of
opportunity for friction even where workers are all of the same race.
This is particularly true of foundries where the piecework system
prevails. The work is done in the confusion of smoke, heat, dust, and
noise, with men shouting at each other, each striving to be first to
receive this pouring of molten iron from the vats. Notwithstanding the
fact that the work is carried on under great tension, the ninety-three
Negroes interviewed in fourteen foundries, when asked how they got along
with the white men with whom they worked, said: "Good," "Fine," or used
other words to indicate friendly relations. Not a single complaint was
made against treatment by white workers in any of the foundries or iron
and steel establishments investigated.
One interesting instance of happy working relations in which several
nationalities of whites were involved was found at Hull-House. A Negro
has been in charge of the Coffee House there for six years. He had nine
employees working under him: three Negro girls, one German boy, one
Greek man, two Polish girls, and two Italian women. The Greek man and
the two Polish girls were in the employ of the Coffee House when he took
charge. The others have all been employed for a considerable period. In
commenting upon the amicable relations of people representing so many
different races and under a Negro manager, he said, "We are all working
for a living, and there will be no discrimination. It is very simple.
The thing to do is to get acquainted."
2. WORKERS REFLECT ATTITUDE OF MANAGEMENT
When the employment of Negroes is decided upon, there is an effort to
make the change with as little disturbance as possible to white workers.
Frequently the manager tries to imagine himself in the place of his
white workers in order to discover what their reaction will be. In so
doing, he considers, not what they will think or feel, but what a man
with his own social background would feel in their position. The attitude
of the management therefore determines whether Negro workers shall be
segregated or treated like other workers in the plant without regard to
color. Separation once decided upon and partitions erected, white workers
may insist upon the distinction being maintained where they would not
have raised the point in the first instance. Establishments following
both courses gave the Commission the result of their experiences. Of 101
establishments employing five or more Negroes each, eighteen maintained
separate lavatory and toilet accommodations for Negro workers. This
condition was accepted without complaint in some establishments, while
in others it was a source of dissatisfaction among the Negro workers,
who resented this manifestation of "Jim Crowism" in the North. The fact
is worthy of note that the eighteen establishments reporting separate
accommodations or separate departments for colored workers employed but
2,623 Negroes out of a total of 22,337 covered by the investigation, or
slightly more than 11 per cent. The remaining 89 per cent, or 19,714,
were using all accommodations in common with white workers.
One large foundry company employing 427 Negroes out of a total of 2,488
employees tried a different method in each of its three plants. In one
a partition in the locker and shower rooms was erected, to which the
Negro workers objected. The general superintendent said he would not
have consented to the erection of the partition in the first place, but
he was afraid to take it down. In the second plant separate lavatory
accommodations were provided in connection with separate departments for
Negro and white workers on different floors, and there was no trouble.
In the third plant, where no color distinctions were made, all workers
using the same lavatory accommodations, the manager never heard of any
complaint from white or Negro workers.
In another foundry employing 125 Negroes out of a total of 466 employees
the representative said that the Polish workers had objected "that the
colored people used the showers and basins all the time and they did not
get a chance to. We checked up on this and limited some of our showers to
colored only, and we only had two men use the white showers in something
like two weeks, time, and in the colored there was something like 200
baths taken." The use of the same accommodations in this plant caused
no further complaint after this incident. Another foundry reported that
the white and Negro workmen ate lunch and smoked together. There were no
separate accommodations and there was no ill-feeling whatever. Another
firm employing 500 Negroes out of a total of 3,000 employees reported:
"The relationship between our Negro and white employees is very friendly.
During the past year we have not had a single encounter of any kind
between the white and colored workers. They work together in most of our
departments, use the same locker rooms and washrooms, and eat in the same
restaurant in the plant." In one foundry the superintendent was nearly
compelled to install separate accommodations because of stealing in the
locker rooms. Suspicion was aroused against the Negro workers, and the
white workers had a shop meeting to demand separate accommodations. The
manager said: "The same day the janitor caught a red-headed Irish boy
red-handed. We paraded him through the shop and made quite a grandstand
operation out of it, and it ended my troubles from that time on, but if
I hadn't caught him I might have had to maintain separate locker rooms."
There were only six establishments which maintained separate departments
for Negro workers. In some cases segregation was effected by a partition;
in others by maintaining a complete Negro unit in a different part of
the city. The second plan has worked satisfactorily, but segregation by
partition in the same plant is resented by Negro workers. Representatives
of the largest employers of Negro labor expressed the opinion that
erecting a partition, by drawing the "color line," causes friction which
in all probability would not otherwise appear.
The industrial secretary of the Urban League, who has been actively
interested in extending the range of opportunity for the Negro in
industry, firmly believes that the attitude of the management on racial
matters is reflected by the employees, that wherever an uncompromising
stand is made for fair play for all employees, racial differences do
not cause annoyance. He cites the following incident as one of several
tending to support his view:
During the fall of 1919 the general manager of the S----
F---- P---- Company was approached on the subject of employing
colored girls. To our surprise, it was discovered that colored
girls were already employed by him in all branches of the
industry, and mixed freely with white employees. There was no
discrimination in the character or kind of work or the use of
plant facilities. Mr. N---- explained that he had never thought
of segregating white and colored workmen, and the wisdom of
his plan had been proved by the experience of his father, who
employs both white and colored girls, but keeps the groups
separated by a partition. According to Mr. N---- the partition
had been a source of trouble for the reason that the placing
of the partition itself indicated that the company intended
to make a difference between white and colored workers. This
put each group in a frame of mind which caused them to resent
the presence of any worker on the side of the partition on
which she was not employed. The elder Mr. N---- realized his
mistake but did not dare to take the partition down, fearing
that by so doing he would precipitate further trouble which
would result in the most desirable girls in each group quitting
the plant.
Foremen, because they personify the management in the mind of the workmen,
play a large part in shaping the attitude white workers adopt toward
Negroes. If the foremen are antagonistic or insulting in their treatment
of the Negro, white workers find favor with the foremen by adopting the
same attitude. A construction company employing sixty Negroes reported:
There were always difficulties with this gang when the Italian
foreman was here, as he constantly endeavored to place Italians
at work displacing some very good Negro workers. When I was
sent here I dug under the difficulties and found the Italians
were very clannish and were using the foreman to carry out
the plan of giving every Italian who came along a job, at the
expense of some Negro's job. I am a French Canadian and have
worked with colored men before. After failure in trying to get
Italians to see how bad the old system was, I was forced to
let all the Italians go. I have an excellent gang of Negroes
now.
The representative of a large foundry said:
I believe I have a harder time to get the Polish foremen to
handle Negro help than any other. Our foremen are accustomed
to handling the Polish workers pretty rough. While employers
don't want that, it goes on that way. A Pole is "cussed" around
and does not care what he is called. It's all the same to
him, but a colored man is a pretty thin-skinned individual.
You call a colored man something, and he will grab his hat
and is gone. He thinks that when the foreman uses those words
he means it. He will not stand for the same kind of language
that the Polak will.
3. USE OF NEGRO LABOR TO UNDERMINE WAGES
If Negroes are introduced into a plant during a strike and retained
afterward, a period of strained relations between white and Negro workers
is almost certain to ensue. They are given a similarly unfavorable
start when they are introduced to reduce labor costs. In the smaller
establishments, where wages and conditions of work were not well
standardized, white workers were suspicious that Negroes were working
for lower wages, and the Negroes suspected that they were being paid
lower wages than white workers. It is obvious that where mutual distrust
and suspicion are present, friction readily develops which may lead to
serious social consequences.
To what extent Negroes are being paid lower wages than white workers it
is impossible to say. In this connection the Chicago Urban League made
the following statement:
The charge of inequality in the wages of white and colored
workers is frequently made, but the League is not always
permitted to inquire into wage scales, and therefore
verification of some of these rumors has been impossible.
The League has taken up this matter with such companies as
----, ----, ----, and numerous others, with the result that
in each instance the statement has been made that white and
colored workers receive the same pay for the same work. There
is a deep-seated suspicion, however, that this is not true. In
some cases this suspicion seemed to be justified. Complaints
have come to our attention where colored people have been
mistaken for white in the offices of the ---- Company and
employed at a higher rate of pay than that given colored girls
for similar work. This, however, has never been verified. Pay
inequalities have been explained away by larger experience,
seniority, superior production, etc., in favor of whites.
The employment manager of one company has told representatives
of the Chicago Urban League that the colored girls employed
in their South Side Branch Office started at a wage in excess
of that given white girls for similar work in their main office.
The statement can be correctly made, however, that many
employers of colored girls, particularly in the needle trades,
have refused to pay colored workers a wage equal to that of
white. There are well-known instances of sweatshop tactics
used on colored girls because of their inexperience in industry
and lack of organization.
An official of the Women's Garment Workers' Union reported
that ---- Company, upon finding that they had to pay the union
scale of wages, requested the local to supply white girls
instead of the colored girls who were already in his employ.
The colored girls were employed to replace the striking whites.
No complaint has come to our attention of inequality of wages
in union shops employing white and colored workers, or in any
of the larger industries. Colored workers are usually exploited
in the smaller shops. White workers have been known to refuse
to work in shops paying white and colored workers the same wage.
All of the representatives of employers appearing in conferences and all
but one of the representatives interviewed stated that Negro and white
workers were being paid equal wages in their establishments. The exception
was a wholesale hardware company where the employment manager admitted
paying Negroes "a dollar or two less per week" because they could not
be shifted from one department to another as readily as white workers
on account of prejudice of workers or foremen in certain departments.
It was learned that employers occasionally refuse to hire Negro unionists
when they learn they must pay them "white men's wages." Unionists allege
that even Negro employers object to paying Negroes the same union scale as
white workers. To the extent that Negro labor is being used to undermine
wage standards, misunderstanding and race friction develop.
4. RELATIONS OF WHITE AND NEGRO WORKERS DURING THE RIOT
In contrast with the violence that characterized street encounters during
the riots it is significant that no unfriendly demonstrations occurred
between workers in any of the establishments covered by the investigation,
according to statements made by representatives of employers. On the
contrary, white workers are said by employers to have expressed sympathy
in many ways with their Negro fellow-workers. The general superintendent
of one of the largest packing companies in the "Yards" emphasized the
good feeling that existed between the workers at this critical time:
I think this Commission ought to know that there wasn't a
single case of violence in what we call Packingtown during
the race riot, and the morning that the Negroes were brought
back to work in this packing-house there was not a single
argument--there wasn't a single indication in this plant of
any racial feeling. In fact the two classes of common labor
we have are the Slavs and the Negroes, and they met as old
friends. In many instances they put their arms around one
another's necks. In one particular instance a Negro and a
Pole got on an elevated truck and rode all around this plant
simply to signify to the rest of the workers that there was a
good spirit existing between the two. There was nothing in the
contact between the Negro and the Pole or the Slav that would
indicate that there had ever been a race riot in Chicago, and
there was nothing from the beginning of the race riot to the
end that would indicate that there was any feeling started in
the Stock Yards or in this industry that led up to the race
riot.
That there was at least one case of mob violence is shown by the report
of the coroner's jury which investigated the riots. William H. Dozier,
a colored man, was killed in the Stock Yards, according to this report.
The jury's finding in this case was:
We find that during the race riots at a point about Cook Street
and Exchange Avenue in the Union Stock Yards, and at about 7:15
A.M., July 31, 1919, deceased, a colored man, was struck by a
hammer held and wielded by one Joseph Carka, that the deceased
ran east on Exchange Avenue toward the sheep pens at Morgan
Street, that he was followed and chased by a mob of white men,
and that while so running the deceased was struck by a street
broom, held and wielded by one Joe Scovak, and that he was
also struck by a shovel in the hands of an unknown white man,
and by one or more stones or missiles thrown by one or more
unknown white men; injuries sustained causing death.
This was the only serious case of violence in the Stock Yards discovered,
although a number of rumors were investigated, which could not be
substantiated by facts.
Because of the nature of the work in the "Yards" and the presence of
knives and other dangerous implements which could be turned to ready use,
it is significant that more rioting, with deaths and injuries resulting,
did not take place. But it is also true that the riot, which started on
Sunday afternoon, became so serious by Monday morning that few Negroes
made an effort to reach their work at the Stock Yards.
VII. FUTURE OF THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO INDUSTRIES
The investigation of the Negro in industry points to the conclusion that
Negro labor has made a satisfactory record, and that there is little
race friction in evidence between white and Negro workers. What the
future will hold for him depends upon many complicating factors, some
of which are: renewal of immigration in large volume, depressed business
conditions, attempted reductions in labor costs, increasing unemployment,
falling wages, the announced determination of many employers' associations
throughout the country to undermine the strength of unions by establishing
the "open shop" which might involve the use of Negro labor, and the
admitted prejudice of foremen against Negro labor in many plants. It was
labor shortage which forced employers to experiment with Negro workers
in new fields. Whether Negro employees will be retained when a surplus
of white labor is available is an open question.
Employers' representatives, in April and May, 1920, stated (with one
exception) that no reduction in labor force was contemplated; that when
such reduction became necessary, efficiency and seniority rights would
determine which workers would be retained; that the question of color
would not enter into the decision in any way. The employment manager of
a firm employing a very large number of Negroes expressed the general
opinion of the employers' representatives when he said:
I feel that our house will continue to run a colored office
as long as they can run it as efficiently and economically as
they could a white office; while, on the other hand, if they
could not run it as efficiently and economically of course
they wouldn't run it, because it's just a matter of dollars
and cents, and as far as charity and good will goes, all good
business men have it, but they are not going to run their
business according to that entirely.
On the other hand, the employment manager of an establishment which had
experienced friction between white and Negro workers was of the opinion
that white workers resented the intrusion of Negroes. He thought that this
feeling would be a factor if a time came when there was an oversupply
of labor; that Negroes would then have to give way because no employer
would be strong enough to resist the resentment of white workers; and
Negro workers would thus be thrown out of work and would be a standing
menace to the community.
The investigations and inquiries of the Commission in industry took
place almost entirely in the period from March to September, 1920, and
the statistics concerning Negroes employed were gathered in the earlier
part of this period. During these months the general industrial situation
was such as to demand all the labor, both white and Negro, that could be
secured. In the autumn of 1920, however, a period of decline began, with
increasing unemployment. This affected both white and Negro workers. Its
own investigational staff no longer available for additional service,
the Commission sought information concerning these changed conditions,
so far as they affected Negro workers, from the industrial secretary of
the Chicago Urban League. Through its industrial department the League
places more Negroes in employment than any other agency in Chicago. The
industrial secretary made the following statement on November 20:
At the present time the unemployment among colored people
has reached what seems serious proportions. While there is
no indication that colored people are suffering more in this
respect than any other group, the constantly swelling number
is a cause for grave concern. For three weeks our employment
office has been crowded with job seekers. At first it appeared
that those who failed to take their work seriously suddenly
found themselves unable to get employment, but now hundreds
of men with good records have been forced out by temporary
"shut downs" and reduced forces of various plants.
During the working days included between November 15 and
20, our attendance record is 1,073 job seekers with only 131
openings. One month ago the attendance figure was 571 persons
for the equal period (259 men and 312 women).
Our labor reports for May, 1920, indicated an attendance of
941 males and 739 females; about 1,000 orders for male help
and about 500 for female help; there were 722 placements for
males and 371 for females. The total attendance was 1,680;
orders, 1,500; placements, 1,093.
A casual survey including most of the leading industries ...
shows a general decline and a letting off of workers. Some
few report difficulty in keeping their present forces.
There have been some complaints of discrimination against
colored workers, but few comparatively.... Most industries
are keeping their proportionate share of Negroes. In some
instances the proportion has been slightly increased....
During the week, workers have registered from cities in states
from Mississippi to Michigan. Detroit predominates, where the
automobile industries show a marked depression.
Women's work presents a very discouraging outlook. Hundreds
of needle workers are out of employment by the closing of
many of the smaller shops which employed colored girls. The
Women's Trade Union League reports many workers unemployed,
due to the slowness of the trade. Immigrant white girls are
said to be consuming much of the work offered to domestics....
Colored women seem in most cases as reluctant as ever to accept
domestic employment.
The present unemployment problem is probably as serious as
any the League has known. What shall become of the army of
jobless men is a problem serious and perplexing.
As a result of the necessity of reducing costs in response to depressed
business conditions, managers of establishments employing both white and
Negro workers may be tempted to pit Negro and white workers against each
other, paying Negro labor less than white labor as a means of forcing
down wages or undermining labor-union organizations. Such attempts would
certainly be conducive to increased racial animosity. On the other hand,
managers who are hostile to Negro labor may take advantage of the change
in the labor situation by discharging Negroes indiscriminately, replacing
them with white workers.
During the period of business depression which had already begun, both
white and Negro workers seemed certain to lose some of the advantages
which they had gained as a result of the labor shortage caused by the
war. After the industrial depression has passed, discrimination against
the Negro, to whatever extent it may exist, will make the recovery of
lost ground more difficult for Negro workers than for white workers.
In considering the question of race discrimination, it is evident that
the Negro who has lived in the North for a number of years feels keenly
the fact that color bars even the most capable members of his race from
the hope of promotion to executive or administrative positions, while
prejudice on the part of persons in authority prevents the rank and file
of Negroes from developing the degree of efficiency which they could
develop if they knew their efforts would be judged on merit alone. Where
advancement is precluded by color, the incentive supplied by recognition
of effort is lacking.
One door of escape from the discouraging prospects held out in industries
managed by white men, where there is no chance for promotion to executive
positions, is the opportunity for an increasing number of the more
ambitious Negroes to enter business among members of their own race.
According to Black's _Blue Book_ (1919-20) there were over 1,200 Negro
business houses and professional offices in Chicago in 1920. Among
others, the list included five banks, forty dentists, fifteen druggists,
twenty-four employment agencies, six hotels, three insurance offices,
forty-eight real estate offices, eleven newspapers and magazines, 106
physicians, seventy lawyers, 161 barber shops and billiard rooms, and 120
hairdressing parlors. Although the list of Negro business men in Chicago
is growing rapidly, it must necessarily remain but a small percentage
of the total Negro population. The great majority of Negroes gainfully
occupied will continue to be employees in industry. Therefore the fact
that a large number of Negroes feel that discrimination is practiced and
that, no matter what abilities they show, they can "go so far and no
farther" in industries managed by white men is of great importance in
any consideration of race problems. These men are the more thoughtful,
aspiring members of their race, and their opinion accordingly carries
more weight than the opinion of an equal number of care-free Negroes who
may consider that the high wages of the present are an offset for all
handicaps. Negroes who feel keenly the injustice of unequal opportunities
are the ones to seek expression in Negro newspapers and magazines with
the aim of arousing widespread resentment against race discrimination.
Men who frequently would not resent discrimination directed against
themselves are stirred to resentment by well-told recitals of injustice
to others. Specific instances may seem to be of trifling importance, but
in being retold they reach an ever-widening audience, which is constantly
growing more race conscious.
B. ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE NEGRO WORKER
I. INTRODUCTION
Industry involves the continuous contact of more whites and Negroes than
any other field. It therefore affords wide opportunity for the operation
of racial misunderstanding and friction. It is also a field in which the
lines of economic interest are so tightly drawn and so closely watched
that any misunderstanding or friction is thereby greatly accentuated.
Irritation and clashes of interest have been conspicuous in the relations
between labor unions and Negro workers. This friction has extended to
the relations between whites and Negroes generally. The efforts of union
labor to promote its cause and gain adherents have built up a body of
sentiment that cannot easily be opposed by non-union workers. The strike
breaker is intolerable to the union man. Circumstances have frequently
made Negroes strike breakers, thus centering upon them as a racial group
all the bitterness which the unionist feels toward strike breakers as a
class. This tends to increase any existing racial antipathy or to serve
as concrete justification for it.
On the other hand, Negroes have often expressed themselves as distrustful
of the unions because prejudice in the unions has denied them equal
benefits of membership. They often find that their first opportunity in
a new industry comes through the eagerness of a strike-bound employer
to utilize their labor at wages more than they have previously earned,
even if less than the union scale. This often tends to make them feel
that they have more to gain through affiliation with such employers than
by taking chances on what the unions offer them.
There is a gradually increasing sympathetic understanding by unionists of
the struggle of Negroes to overcome their handicaps, and an increasing
realization of the importance to the unions of organizing them. Negroes
are themselves showing more interest in efforts toward organizations, but
there is still much mutual suspicion and resentment in their relations.
To understand these relations it is necessary to know (1) the policy and
attitude of organized labor toward the Negro and how its expressed policy
is carried out in practice; and (2) what the Negro believes the facts to
be and what his attitude is toward organized labor. In its investigation
the Commission used the following methods of inquiry: Questionnaires
were sent to all labor organizations; interviews were held with union
officials and members, both white and Negro, with officers and members
of Negro "protest" unions, with non-union Negroes, and with persons
who were not connected with unions but had certain special information.
Ninety-one persons, of whom twenty-five were Negroes, were interviewed.
Trade-union meetings were attended by the Commission's investigator. Union
constitutions, magazines, convention reports, etc., were collected and
studied. Conferences were held by the Commission at which the following
labor leaders and organizers presented their information and views:
George W. Perkins, president of the International Cigarmakers' Union,
and prominent in the affairs of the American Federation of Labor since
its organization.
Victor Olander, secretary-treasurer, Illinois State Federation of Labor,
and vice-president of International Seaman's Union.
John Fitzpatrick, president, Chicago Federation of Labor.
W. Z. Foster, organizer of the American Federation of Labor in the steel
and packing industries.
A. K. Foote, Negro, vice-president of Stock Yards Labor Council and
secretary-treasurer, Local 651, Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher
Workmen of America.
I. H. Bratton, Negro organizer for Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher
Workmen of America.
John Riley, Negro organizer for the American Federation of Labor in the
Stock Yards district.
Max Brodsky, secretary-treasurer, Local 100, International Ladies'
Garment Workers' Union.
Agnes Nestor, president, Women's Trade Union League.
Elizabeth Maloney, treasurer and organizer, Chicago Waitresses' Union.
Robert L. Mays, Negro, president of an independent Negro union, the
Railway Men's International Benevolent and Industrial Association.
II. POLICY OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND OTHER FEDERATIONS
From its beginning the American Federation of Labor has declared a uniform
policy of no racial discrimination, although this policy has not been
carried out in practice by all the constituent autonomous bodies. At its
fortieth annual convention, held at Montreal, Canada, in June, 1920, a
plan was presented to "use every means in its power to have the words
'only white' members stricken out of the constitution" of the Brotherhood
of Railway Clerks, an organization which exercises jurisdiction over
100,000 colored employees, although barring them from membership, and
"admit the colored workers to full membership in their Brotherhood or
have them relinquish jurisdiction" over these Negro employees and allow
them to establish a brotherhood of their own.
This failed to receive favorable action, but a resolution was passed
reaffirming the position taken at the Atlantic City convention in 1919
that "where international unions refuse to admit colored workers to
membership, the American Federation of Labor will be authorized to
organize them under charters from the American Federation of Labor." This
means that in such cases the American Federation of Labor itself becomes
the national or international union of such locals. According to the
information given to the Commission by George W. Perkins, "the American
Federation of Labor has organized hundreds of local unions and thereby
directly attached to the American Federation of Labor colored workers."
President Gompers states: "Of the 900 unions affiliated directly with
the American Federation of Labor there are 169 composed exclusively of
Negroes."
A brief reference to the history of the national federations which
preceded the American Federation of Labor shows that the foregoing policy
has been followed since shortly after the Civil War.
The National Labor Union (1866-72), at its first convention in 1866, was
the first national federation of labor unions to deal with the problem of
meeting Negro competition after the Civil War. The formation of trades
unions among colored people was favored. In 1869 Negro delegates were
admitted to the annual convention. A separate national Negro Labor Union,
formed in 1869, was short-lived. The unfriendly attitude of the unions
toward the Negroes was the subject of bitter comment at the various
sessions of the latter organization. The Knights of Labor, which rose
to prominence after the decline of the National Labor Union, admitted
all workers without regard to color. Many Negroes in the South joined
the organization. When the leadership of organized labor shifted from
the Knights of Labor to the American Federation of Labor in the late
eighties, the Federation continued to express the policy of no racial
discrimination and has stood for that policy to the present time.[75]
At the convention of the American Federation of Labor in Atlantic City,
1919, there were present about fifty Negro delegates, men and women.
A large number of Negro delegates also attended the last convention of
the Federation at Montreal.
The policy of the Illinois State Federation of Labor was outlined to
the Commission by Victor Olander, secretary-treasurer, as follows:
The State Federation of Labor is under the jurisdiction of
the American Federation of Labor, and the laws governing the
national would necessarily govern the state federation, so
that in respect to law they are the same. I might add that
they are carrying out the law in much the same manner with
respect to the Negro. There hasn't been a convention of the
Illinois State Federation of Labor held in many years that
hasn't had in attendance Negro delegates. That is the usual
thing at every convention. There is no discrimination.
The Chicago Federation of Labor is the city central body of the various
local unions in Chicago which are connected with the American Federation
of Labor. Each of these local unions elects delegates to represent it
at the semi-monthly meetings of the Chicago Federation. Negro delegates
take an active part in these meetings, and are cordially received. The
Federation and its president have been very active in all efforts to
organize Negroes, especially in the Stock Yards, the steel industry,
and the culinary trades.
III. POLICY OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL UNIONS
In considering the policy of national and international unions, that
of the unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor will
be discussed first, and following this the policy of six of the most
important of the independent internationals.
1. UNIONS AFFILIATED WITH THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
The American Federation of Labor has consistently followed a policy of no
racial discrimination. It has, however, no power to compel its constituent
national and international unions to follow this policy. The question of
race discrimination by an autonomous national or international union has
been frequently the subject of spirited discussion at American Federation
of Labor conventions, but the outcome has been merely a recommendation
to the offending union that the discrimination be discontinued. Since
strict autonomy of national and international unions is recognized in
the constitution of the American Federation of Labor, no more effective
action can be taken.
In order to learn the racial policy of the 110 nationals and
internationals affiliated with the American Federation of Labor inquiries
were sent to each, and direct responses were received from sixty-nine.
The policy of twenty-five additional unions was learned through their
district councils or locals in Chicago. Thus all but sixteen of the 110
national and international unions in the American Federation of Labor
were covered. Of these, two were suspended from the American Federation
of Labor in 1919-20. Only three have locals in Chicago, and all have
little significance for Chicago. Information concerning the racial policy
of the sixteen unions not heard from was supplied by labor leaders in
touch with the whole union situation and able to speak with authority
on this subject.
Of the 110 national and international unions affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor, eight expressly bar the Negro by their constitutions
or rituals. These unions are: Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America,
International Association of Machinists, American Association of
Masters, Mates, and Pilots, Railway Mail Association, Order of Railroad
Telegraphers, the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America, American
Wire Weavers' Protective Association, and Brotherhood of Railway Mail
Clerks.
Thus 102 of the 110 national and international unions affiliated with
the American Federation of Labor admit Negroes. Not all of these unions,
however, have Negro members, notwithstanding the fact that Negroes are
eligible to membership. In accounting for the absence of Negro members,
twenty-eight national and international unions reported "no Negroes
in the trade," or "no applications ever received." Certain of the 102
nationals and internationals reported a small Negro membership with the
following explanations:
Eleven stated that employers discriminated against Negro members of the
union--wanted white men if they had to pay the union scale of wages.
Seven internationals and five delegate bodies reported that special
efforts were now being made to organize Negro workers.
Twelve internationals called attention to long periods of
apprenticeship--four had a three-year period, six a four-year period,
and two a five-year period--as a factor which accounted for the failure
of Negroes to join.
In their comments, some of these union officials unconsciously express
their prejudice, sometimes attributing traits to the Negro which they
seem to take for granted as being characteristic. The following are some
examples:
No Negroes have applied for membership in our union or did
not have nerve enough as it requires lots of climbing.
We do not have any Negroes in our organization, but there is
nothing in the constitution which prevents them from becoming
members after they have learned the trade. No one has ever
made application for a Negro. I judge this is because they
have to blow in the same pipe [in glass blowing].
I find nothing in our laws which bars Negroes from becoming
members of this union, but in my thirteen years in this office
I have never known one to make application for membership.
This may be due to the hazardous nature of our work.
Ours is usually very hard work. Negroes as a whole do not like
hard work. They instead very often prefer employment where
they can get along at their own gait or in their own way,
especially working in gangs.
National and international unions which had Negro members in appreciable
numbers reported the following facts:
Sixteen had Negro officers or organizers.
Twenty-three reported that relations between the races in the unions
were undisturbed by race prejudice.
Thirty-three stated that Negroes had belonged to the union for the
following periods:
Number of
Unions
2 years or less 12
2 to 4 years 8
4 to 6 years 1
6 to 8 years 2
8 to 15 years 4
20 years 4
25 years 1
35 years 1
2. UNIONS NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
There are a number of unions[76] not affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor, of which the most important are: the four railway
brotherhoods--Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, Brotherhood of Locomotive
Firemen and Enginemen, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, Order of Railway
Conductors of America--Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America; Industrial
Workers of the World (I.W.W.). The four railway brotherhoods exclude
the Negro by constitutional provision. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers
of America and the Industrial Workers of the World admit the Negro and
make special efforts to organize Negro workers. The I.W.W. has its main
foothold in the lumber, mine, and textile industries and does not have
any strong unions in Chicago.
Disregarding the classification of nationals and internationals based
upon affiliation with the American Federation of Labor, a review of the
figures presented above shows that 104 national and international unions
admit the Negro, and that twelve exclude the Negro by written provision.
The outstanding fact with reference to these twelve organizations is that,
with the exception of the Wire Weavers, they are all connected with the
transportation industry: seven are members of the American Federation of
Labor Railway Department and the other four constitute the big "railway
brotherhoods." The latter are sometimes referred to by members of the
unions as the "aristocrats in the labor movement." All of these unions,
except the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, have been organized more than
twenty years. None of the unions formed within the last twenty years,
except the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, excludes the Negro.
In these crafts, excepting such trades as carmen, machinists, clerks,
and firemen, it may be that in general the Negro would not be much of
a factor at present, because these trades demand an amount of education
and skill not yet possessed by a large percentage of Negroes. But this
by no means proves that the Negro would not acquire the necessary skill
and education if opportunities in these trades were actually open to him.
The Railway Department of the American Federation of Labor is composed
of fourteen craft unions, all but two of which exclude the Negro worker.
The Stationary Firemen and Oil Men of the American Federation of Labor
Railway Department are openly soliciting Negro members. The only other
craft organization which admits Negroes is the Maintenance of Way Craft,
which really means the common labor group. Negroes can get into this
craft through an auxiliary charter to a Negro local. Regardless of how
skilled or how intelligent the applicant may be, or how logically he
falls into some other craft, he can only come in through one or the
other of these two craft unions.
The attitude of the railway brotherhoods is typified in remarks made to
an investigator for the Commission by a member of the Brotherhood of
Railway Clerks who is now serving on an important public commission.
He was emphatic in upholding the brotherhood's policy of excluding
Negroes. "As long as the engineers have anything to say about it, they
certainly will not get in." He said that the modern locomotive was a
highly complicated and scientific mechanism, and that the Negroes "did
not have brains enough to run one."
As showing the contrasting view of another trade-union man, an employee
of the public commission mentioned said that he had been a member of the
United Mine Workers since 1901, and in that organization no color line
is drawn; that he had worked beside Negro miners and feels no prejudice.
He pointed out that the national conventions of the miners always have
a large representation of Negro delegates, and some of the ablest and
best speakers come from the Negro race. He expressed the feeling that
the policy of the railway brotherhoods is a mistake, and is a case of
"swell-headedness."
The general exclusion policy of the railway brotherhoods and certain of
the unions in the Railway Department of the American Federation of Labor
has created a feeling of bitterness among Negroes which spreads beyond
these crafts and is directed against unions in general, notwithstanding
the constructive and progressive policy of the many unions which admit
Negroes. In the transportation crafts it has led to the formation of a
"protest" Negro railway union.
_The Railway Men's International Benevolent Industrial Association._--This
organization is a labor union open to Negro railway employees. It is
a protest organization which has grown up because of the exclusion of
Negroes by the railway brotherhoods and certain unions in the Railway
Department of the American Federation of Labor.
The Association was organized May 12, 1915, and has seventeen locals
in Chicago and a membership of about 1,200, all railway employees. The
leaders of this group disclaimed any intention of building up "a rival
American Federation of Labor among Negroes," but stated that, as far as
they were personally concerned, they would be willing to affiliate with
the American Federation of Labor in its proper department, _providing_
all forms of discrimination in national and international unions, both
in constitution and practice, were done away with, and the Negro worker
was assured of equal treatment and opportunity with the white worker.
They realize that the highest welfare of both groups depends upon
co-operation. But, as to what the membership would want to do when that
time comes, they of course do not know.
Mr. Mays, the president of the organization, was asked by the Commission's
investigator what he would do in a situation where both Negroes and
whites were organized separately, and the whites were going out on a
strike and had requested the Negroes to come out also. He stated that
several such local strike situations had arisen in the South, and that
he had advised the Negro union in each of these cases to use its own
judgment, but that if it decided to support the white unions, it should,
before doing so, have a joint committee of both groups meet and make
it understood absolutely that any agreement finally reached with the
employers must include both groups on equal terms. In one case, after
such an agreement had been reached and the men had gone back to work,
the employer tried to keep out certain Negroes, but the white unionists
insisted that the agreement must be lived up to.
The officials of this organization are exceptionally capable Negroes;
its advisers are professional men, well educated and thoroughly familiar
with the history and tactics of white labor unions.
A more definite statement of the purpose and policies of this protest
organization was made before the Commission by R. L. Mays:
The Railway Men's International Benevolent Industrial
Association really protests as an organization against unfair
and bad working conditions of the employer and against unfair
practices on the part of the American Federation of Labor and
the railway brotherhoods.
This is the crux of the problem as we see it. We agree with
the policies and principles of the American Federation of
Labor so long as they are American and in the interests of the
workmen, but if their practices are against Negroes, then we
are against the American Federation of Labor unflinchingly.
_Question_: To what extent have you found their practices
unfair to the colored people?
_Mr. Mays_: There are fourteen unions in railway employment
in the American Federation of Labor. The United Brotherhood of
Railway Employees has been accepting Negroes in full membership,
but the other thirteen organizations do not accept Negroes in
membership. As a matter of fact, they are secured on contract,
which is the greatest holdback for the Negroes and breeds more
distrust on the part of the Negro in these places, so far as
the American Federation of Labor is concerned.
Before the roads were under government control certain
discriminatory practices were found in the South, but now
you will find colored men in certain skilled positions. In
the Brotherhood of Carmen, if a colored man is not organized
into the local union, he cannot advance automatically from
repair to car building. He might be a member of one of these
local unions chartered by and affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor. But under contract they say their members
must be white, and they use only white men. In the South our
men have enjoyed these jobs; under war conditions they were
brought here, but under this contract no Negro can be employed
as a carman, although he has all the experience in the world.
They refuse to take the colored man but take the white man.
No colored boy can go in as an apprentice and work up to a
skilled mechanic's position. Consequently they are reducing
the Negro railway worker to a position of common laborer and
automatically are keeping him down. If this is the condition
in the railways in the North, I say it will prevail everywhere.
I have said that it is a northern prejudice coming South.
[Illustration: OFFICERS OF THE RAILWAY MEN'S INTERNATIONAL BENEVOLENT
INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION]
IV. ATTITUDE AND POLICY OF LOCAL UNIONS IN CHICAGO
1. WHITE AND NEGRO MEMBERSHIP IN CHICAGO LOCAL UNIONS
Much effort was made to obtain statistics of white and Negro membership
in local trade unions in Chicago. Information was sought through requests
addressed to the national headquarters of all national and international
unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor for data as to
any local unions they might have in Chicago. Requests were also addressed
directly to these local unions as listed in a directory published by
the Chicago Trade Union Label League. Further requests were addressed to
local unions in Chicago directly affiliated with the American Federation
of Labor as listed in a directory of all such unions published by that
organization.
It was difficult to ascertain the exact number of local unions in
Chicago. Those covered embraced, however, as full a list as could be
supplied by trade-union offices in Chicago. But the president of the
Chicago Federation of Labor said that the number of local unions was
changing so continually by reason of the organization of new ones and
the consolidation of two or more into one, that no accurate list was
available.
Data for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and for the Railway
Men's International Industrial Benevolent Association were obtained
directly from those organizations.
Reports were received from the railway brotherhoods saying that they
exclude Negroes, but giving no data as to the number of white members.
The information which was obtained may be summarized as follows:
Members
371 local unions affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor, comprising locals of national and international unions
so affiliated, and also federal and local unions directly
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor 253,237
11 local unions of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America 40,000
17 local unions of the Railway Men's International Industrial
Benevolent Association 1,200
-------
294,437
The total Negro membership reported for Chicago by the foregoing
organizations was 12,106. The number of locals through which this Negro
membership was distributed cannot be stated with any approach to accuracy,
due to the fact that in a number of cases the district council or the
national body reported the membership for its Chicago locals jointly.
In such cases it could not safely be assumed that each of the locals in
question had Negro members. Disregarding all such cases, however, there
still remains a total of at least eighty-five Chicago locals for which,
individually, Negro members were reported.
It is interesting to note that, judging by the figures here shown as to
white and Negro membership in local unions in Chicago, the proportion of
Negro union members to the Negro population in Chicago is almost exactly
the same as the proportion of white members to the white population in
Chicago.
2. METHODS OF DEALING WITH NEGRO APPLICANTS
If the unions which bar the Negro are chosen as examples, organized labor
might appear to be very unfair to Negro workers. On the other hand, if
unions which admit them into the same locals and have Negro organizers
and officers are chosen as examples, it might appear that there was no
prejudice whatever against Negroes on the part of trade unions. Neither
extreme would represent the facts. On the basis of policy toward the
Negro, unions in Chicago may be divided into four classes or types.
These classes are:
A. Unions admitting Negroes to white locals.
B. Unions admitting Negroes to separate co-ordinate locals.
C. Unions admitting Negroes to subordinate or auxiliary locals.
D. Unions excluding Negroes from membership.
The existence of these classes indicates the fact that the union
attitude and policy toward the Negro cannot be summed up by any simple
generalization. Each class or type has its own policy, and even within
the class there are minor variations of attitude and policy.
A. UNIONS ADMITTING NEGROES TO WHITE LOCALS
Wherever and whenever Negroes are admitted on an equal basis and given
a square deal, the feeling inside the union is nearly always harmonious.
This is true in such unions as the Butcher Workmen's, Hodcarriers', Flat
Janitors', and Ladies' Garment Workers', which include important fields
of Negro labor in Chicago.
_Stock Yards' unions._--The Stock Yards' strike of 1904 was broken by
the use of Negroes. This was the opening wedge for the admittance to
the union of the large number of Negroes which followed. No organization
thereafter could hope to amount to anything in the Yards unless it took
in Negroes. From 1917 until the riot of 1919 Negroes in large numbers
were joining the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen's Union of
North America. Forty locals were formed. The Negro was welcome to join
any local he desired, whether it was predominantly Polish or Irish or
Negro. However, the majority gravitated to Local 651, which was composed
mainly of Negroes and had Negro officers and organizers and headquarters
near the "Black Belt."
This was not unnatural, since the headquarters of the various local unions
are distributed over the city with a view to their convenience for the
members. Most of the Negro members live within the "Black Belt." The
most active Negro organizer in the city is connected with this local.
Negroes living outside this area belong to the locals nearest their homes.
Efforts to organize Negro workers in the Yards are commented upon in
the _Negro Year Book_ of 1918-19 in the following paragraph:
That the unions are doing much to organize Negro labor is
indicated by the fact that of the more than ten thousand
Negro workers in the Chicago packing houses, over 60 per
cent are reported in the unions. The International Union of
Butchers' Workmen, which has jurisdiction over 90 per cent of
the employees in the packing houses of the country, has three
paid Negro organizers. In other lines of work there is equal
activity in organizing Negro labor.
The unions succeeded in securing an agreement under which Judge Samuel
Alschuler was mutually accepted by the packing companies and the unions
as an arbitrator on matters affecting working conditions in the Yards,
especially hours and wages. This agreement applies to all who work in the
Yards, whether in or out of the union, but, according to labor leaders,
union action and union money "put it across." Consequently there was
the feeling that all who benefited should join and help share in the
expense, and a feeling of hostility toward such Negroes, and whites
as well for that matter, who did not join because they found that they
could get all the benefits of the arrangement without paying dues.
While the Commission's investigator was interviewing the officials of
one of the unions of the packing industry at their headquarters, a number
of the white members dropped in to pay their dues. In conversation they
showed, quite unsolicited, that considerable feeling existed because the
Negro workers were not coming into the union. They felt that the Negroes
were receiving all the benefits secured for the workers by the unions
without paying their proportion of the expense of the organization. In
fact, several used rather strong terms with the words "fink" and "scabs."
The sentiment of the men present seemed to be that, while mistakes had
been made on both sides in the 1904 strike and since, the antagonistic
feeling had been pretty largely eliminated, as was shown by the large
Negro membership prior to the riot, and they said that every effort was
being made at that time and since to bring the Negro into the union.
Conferences had been held with Negro ministers and other organizations
explaining the position of the unions, literature had been distributed,
and a great deal of money had been spent through Negro organizers, and yet
the results were disappointingly small. These white union men contended
that they were opposed by an effective combination of "packers'" influence
hard to beat and intensively interested in keeping the races apart for
its own purposes in opposing union organization.
_The Hod Carriers_ have sixteen locals in Chicago with a large total
membership. No racial record is kept, but Negroes are admitted without
discrimination into all of the unions. A few years ago the Negro
membership was between 1,200 and 1,400; at present with an increase of 300
to 500 from the South, the secretary of the executive council estimates
the total Negro membership to be at least 1,700, most of whom have joined
two locals. The president of the Evanston union and the vice-president
of the Chicago Heights union are colored. No feeling of discrimination
exists, all being treated alike as long as they pay their dues and live
up to the rules. The Hod Carriers have joint arbitration agreements with
the employing contractors' associations in this industry, and no strikes
have been called since 1900.
_The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union_ is another illustration
of a union which accords Negroes the same treatment as white members,
and where the relationship is entirely harmonious. This union has never
drawn the race, creed, or color line and is trying to leave out the word
"white" and "colored" from its minutes and reports. The Negro girls came
into this industry as strike breakers within the last three years.
The officials of this union, in interviews and in testimony before the
Commission, claimed that whenever any friction did arise it was due
to the fact that the employers in this industry discriminated against
Negro girls and paid them less than white girls. The agreement between
the ladies' garment manufacturers and the union provided a weekly
wage of $37.40 for skirt and dress operators--85 cents per hour for a
forty-four-hour week. Negro operators in non-union factories for the
same work were being paid from $18.00 to $25.00 per week. Union skirt
and dress finishers were being paid $26.40 per week--60 cents per hour
for forty-four hours. Negro operators in non-union factories averaged
$15.00 per week for the same work and frequently worked longer than
forty-four hours.
The relations of whites and Negroes in the union were discussed before
the Commission by Max Brodsky, a representative of the union, who said:
As a result of the 1917 strike we have now about 450 colored
women workers in our industry. We lost the strike, and this is
how the colored women got into our industry. Now the union knew
the object of the colored women coming into our industry, and
we decided to have them organized just like the white women
and girls, so we established this particular union. They are
at present conscientious union girls and women. It was the
policy of the union not to discriminate against the colored
women who broke the strike in 1917. This helped us.
At the same conference, Agnes Nestor, president of the Women's Trade
Union League, testified as follows:
_Miss Nestor_: In the ladies' garments work, the unions have
taken in colored girls on the same basis as the white girls.
They made a colored girl a chairman of their shop meeting.
There is no feeling there with them as far as I know.
_Miss McDowell_: Didn't they elect a colored girl as shop
steward where they had both white and colored girls?
_Miss Nestor_: Yes.
As an illustration of employers' discrimination against Negro workers,
and of the efforts of the union to protect Negroes when they become
members of the union, the case of a manufacturer was cited whose shop
had only Negro workers. Shortly after the union had organized them they
were locked out. Later the employer was willing to settle "providing
you sent us a set of white workers." The union refused to do this and
called a strike.
The union claimed that in many recent cases where Negro girls were sent
out on jobs the employers would refuse them when they found out that
they had to pay them the same scale as white workers. During 1917-18,
owing to the war, the manufacturers worked in harmony with the unions
because they had to; since the war, and largely within the first few
months of 1920, the manufacturers have opened many shops on the South
Side employing only non-union colored girls. In the various strikes
in which this union has been engaged for this same period, the strike
breakers have been Negro girls secured for the employers through a Negro
minister acting as a labor agent or solicitor.
_The Flat Janitors' Union_ has a membership of approximately 5,000, of
whom 1,000 are Negroes. It includes many nationalities with strong racial
feelings, yet, as stated by Mr. Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago
Federation of Labor, rarely is any complaint made against this union by
Negroes.
Interviews with the president and other officials, attendance at a
session of the Executive Board, and attendance at a crowded meeting of the
union, where transaction of general business, nomination of candidates
for the coming election, and initiation of new members occurred, gave
the Commission's investigator ample opportunity for observation of the
attitude toward Negroes.
This union, organized in 1904, started out with a Negro as recording
secretary and business agent. At the time of the interviews, the
vice-president and three members of the Executive Board were Negroes.
These had been elected for a three-year term. At the general meeting
attended, the Negro officers were renominated unanimously to hold office
for a period of five years. In addition, several more Negroes were
nominated as stewards and as delegates to the Chicago Federation of Labor.
According to the members, discrimination in this craft is practiced by
the flat and apartment owners. The experience of the union is that as
soon as a Negro is taken into the union and demands the union scale the
owner calls up the union and says, "If I have to pay these wages I'm
going to get a good white man."
The position taken by the union is that if a Negro has had the job he
must be allowed to stay there and get the scale, and the union will back
him up in the fight for it. The threat of a strike against a building
is usually effective.
Inquiry among Negro janitors in the residence districts brought up a
case in which one Negro claimed that Negroes were forced into the union
and then usually found themselves discriminated against by the white
members, especially by Belgians, and soon or later, were squeezed out of
the good jobs. However, this Negro admitted that he had not attended a
union meeting since his initiation, except to stop in to pay his dues,
and that he had never made a complaint to the Negro officer of the
union. The officers of the union admitted that there was, in the many
racial groups in this craft, strong racial feeling, especially among
Austrians and Belgians, who seemed to feel that whenever a janitor died
or left the job, or an assistant or helper was needed, such job should
always be filled with members of their own nationality. However, the
Negro officials claimed that with three Negroes on the Executive Board
and a Negro vice-president, any complaint coming from a Negro would
surely be fairly dealt with; but that unless their attention was called
to unsatisfactory conditions the union could not be expected to know of
them, and in such cases it was not the union that was to blame, but the
member himself.
Frequently, in those unions in which the Negroes are not admitted into
the same locals with the whites, the reasons given for putting them
into separate locals or auxiliaries is that the white members object
to the close physical contact or association in meetings, especially
where there is some element of ritual in connection with the meetings.
At the meeting of the Janitors' Union attended by the investigator,
new pass words were given out, and all members, white and Negro, had to
come before the Negro vice-president, who whispered the words to each
and they in turn repeated them to him. Not the slightest hesitancy was
noted on the part of the white members, but rather a hearty handshake or
a slap on the back seemed to be the rule. Again, in taking in nineteen
new members, four of whom were Negroes, the major part of the ceremony
was performed by the Negro vice-president. At this meeting, packed to
standing-room and attended by well over a thousand members, Negroes were
a large percentage of those present. These were not confined to a group
by themselves, but were scattered in all parts of the hall and seemed
to be in cordial conversation with the white members.
A number of interesting comments by members and officers of unions
admitting Negroes on equal terms with whites were volunteered, either
in interviews or in correspondence. In one union of 700 highly skilled
workers receiving $1.50 an hour, or $12.00 a day, no Negroes were found
to be members, although they are not barred by the constitution. It was
suggested that the five-year apprenticeship period discouraged Negroes. It
was further noted that admittance was by a two-thirds vote, a provision
which could easily result in the exclusion of any race which two-thirds
of the members did not like. The investigator's report of his interview
says:
The business representative of this union was strongly of
the personal opinion that unions had made a mistake in ever
admitting the Negro into any of the unions. He claimed that
the employers' only interest in them was as a lever to keep
wages down for the workers.
Two other members of the League took a contrary position and
held that Negro labor was in the field, and that while the
employer's interest in the Negro was simply to play one group
against another to keep expense down as low as possible, it
was really up to labor itself to solve the question and that
the Negroes must be taken into unions. They admitted that
undoubtedly prejudice existed, but that it was gradually being
overcome.
Other comments are as follows:
From an officer of the Teamsters and Chauffeurs: "We have had one Negro
holding office as trustee for several years. So feeling is brotherly."
From an officer of a specialized mechanics' union: "There has been no
sign of race feeling or hatred since we have been organized. We have
six officers (one colored). I myself, being colored, have no complaints
whatever against my white brothers."
From a Negro officer of the Mattress Makers: "Discrimination and race
prejudice does not exist in this union. We are one happy family. It seems
impossible to organize the other Negro mattress makers. Would appreciate
some assistance."
B. UNIONS ADMITTING NEGROES TO SEPARATE CO-ORDINATE LOCALS
Certain unions organize Negroes into separate locals which are in all
respects co-ordinate with the white locals belonging to the same unions.
The reason for maintaining separate Negro locals is either (1) preference
of the Negro workers for locals of their own, or (2) unwillingness of
white workers to admit Negroes to white locals. It often seemed that
the second indicated the real situation, the first reason being given
as an excuse for it.
The important factor is the reason for the existence of separate Negro
locals rather than the fact of separation. This is illustrated by the
experience of the Painters' and Musicians' unions on the one hand, and
that of the Waiters' Union on the other.
During July, 1920, twenty Negro painters applied to the Painters' District
Council for membership in the Painters' Union. They passed the required
examination but, instead of being placed in the existing Painters' Union,
were given temporary working permits which identified them as members of
"South Side Colored Local." They immediately suspected that some effort
was being made to place them in a separate Negro local in which they
could not get the full benefits of union membership. They then went to
discuss the matter with the editor of a Negro paper which had expressed
the point of view of many Negroes concerning labor unions in its editorial
columns. This editor told them his belief that the Painters' District
Council was merely duplicating the practices of several other unions in
the city, and was attempting to limit these men to a "Jim Crow" union.
They returned to the president of the District Council, who explained
that he had to keep track of all temporary permits issued, and inasmuch
as the charter for their local was not yet issued he could not know
the number until issued. He had to put the description on the cards to
identify the men temporarily.
A charter for the local was given from national headquarters, and the
new cards were issued, designating them simply as members of Local No.
----. The membership of this local, exclusively Negro, grew from twenty
to seventy-five in two months. One of the Negro officials of the local
stated that its members had been working in all parts of the Chicago
District, including the North Side and Evanston, and that they had
a representative on the District Council. The attitude of the white
workers, he stated, was a little cool on the first day, but there is
now no evidence of friction. He thought that the members of this local
were well pleased and happy.
_The Negro Musicians_ are organized into a strong separate local,
chartered in 1902. It has a membership of approximately 325. It has held
the Municipal Pier dance-hall contract for three years, and besides
many other contracts in the city. It furnishes players for various
occasions for a considerable territory outside of Chicago. This group
much prefers its own union, but works jointly with the large white union,
the Chicago Federation of Musicians, whenever matters come up affecting
both organizations. Both unions have the same wage scale.
Where Negro workers are permitted to join white locals but prefer to have
their own colored local there is no feeling that they are discriminated
against, occasional joint meetings with white locals being characterized
by friendly interest and good fellowship. Where, however, a union closes
the door of its white locals to Negroes and organizes them into separate
locals because the white members object to contact with Negroes, a very
difficult situation exists. This condition is illustrated by the methods
of the Waiters' Union in Chicago.
Negro waiters are not admitted into the white Waiters' Union, but are
placed in the Pullman Porters and Dining-Car Waiters' Union, which is
a local affiliated with the same international as the white Waiters'
Union. The makeshift of putting Negro waiters, although employed in city
hotels, restaurants, and cafés, into this local is pointed to by Negroes
as unmistakable evidence of discrimination.
The culinary strike in Chicago, which started May 1, 1920, resulted in
failure for the unions concerned largely because Negroes acted as strike
breakers. This is easily accounted for by the fact that seventeen years
ago Negro waiters lost their positions in many of the first-class hotels
and restaurants in the business district through circumstances in which
they felt that they had been "double-crossed" by the unions, of which
they then were members.
The Negro strike breakers in 1920, however, found themselves again
displaced, this time through the action of employers. A typical instance
was found in the restaurant of a hotel patronized largely by people of
German descent, the managers as well as many of the former waiters being
of German extraction. These waiters, some of whom had been employed for
many years in this restaurant, were members of the union and went out
when the strike was called. The managers replaced them with Negroes.
The latter filled the positions with apparent satisfaction for nearly a
year, when suddenly they were all discharged and the old waiters taken
back.
A regular patron of the restaurant, a man of German descent, expressed
vigorous views upon the "injustice" with which the Negroes had been
treated by the management, which should have appreciated their service
through the period when the former waiters caused trouble. He said he had
always found the Negroes efficient and willing, and many of them "very
intelligent fellows." Although of the same nationality as the managers
and the former waiters, many of whom he had known for years, he did not
let this national feeling blind him to what he considered most unfair
treatment of the Negroes. He said that he had discussed the matter with
one of the managers and had been told that the reason why the Negroes had
been discharged and the old waiters taken back was because of complaints
against the Negroes by patrons of the restaurant. He added, "I think
that's bunk."
A change in the officers of the Waiters' Union at the recent election
has placed in power a group which recognizes that the entire policy of
the culinary unions must be co-ordinated and proper provision made for
the large Negro element in the field. If this is not done, it is felt
that a rival Negro union may be organized, similar to that organized
by the Negro railway workers. In fact, even now a beginning has been
made toward such an organization by a few high-grade Negro waiters who
have been in active charge of the waiters of several of the large hotel
dining-rooms during the recent strike.
C. UNIONS ADMITTING NEGROES TO SUBORDINATE OR AUXILIARY LOCALS
The practice of admitting Negroes to subordinate locals appears to be
very unusual in Chicago. The investigation disclosed only one instance
where the policy of the union was to admit Negroes only to subordinate
locals. The Commission is not at liberty to publish the name of this
union, which makes the following provision for Negro locals in its
constitution:
Where there are a sufficient number of colored helpers they
may be organized as an auxiliary local and shall be under
the jurisdiction of the white local union having jurisdiction
over that locality; and minutes of said auxiliary local must
be submitted to duly authorized officers of said white local
for their approval.
In shops where there is a grievance committee of the white
local, grievances of members of said auxiliary local will be
handled by that committee.
Members of auxiliary locals composed of colored helpers shall
not transfer except to another auxiliary local composed of
colored members, and colored helpers will not be promoted to
... or helper apprentice; and will not be admitted to shops
where white helpers are now employed.
Auxiliary locals will be represented in all conventions by
the delegates elected from the white local in that locality.
The officials of this union stoutly maintain that the provisions above
quoted are not discriminatory, and they are at a loss to explain why
attempts to organize Negro workers in Chicago into auxiliary locals have
not met with success.
D. UNIONS EXCLUDING NEGROES FROM MEMBERSHIP
Chicago locals which exclude the Negro do so either in conformity with
the laws of their national unions or in the exercise of "local option."
Locals belonging to the national and international unions which bar the
Negro by written provision in their constitutions or rituals are obliged
to follow the same racial policy as their parent bodies. This number
includes the Chicago locals belonging to the eight American Federation of
Labor national unions which exclude the Negro, and the locals of the four
railway brotherhoods which likewise exclude the Negro by constitutional
provision.
In addition to the locals which are bound to follow the policy of their
nationals, there are certain other locals which are known to reject
Negro applicants. By allowing their locals to practice "local option"
or to require a majority or two-thirds vote for election to membership,
the progressive policy of certain American Federation of Labor national
and international unions which admit the Negro is nullified.
The Machinists' Union has frequently been referred to as a union which,
although complying in its constitution with the American Federation of
Labor policy of no racial discrimination, still effectually bars the
Negro by a provision in its secret ritual. In effect, however, there is
no real difference between such a policy on the part of the Machinists'
Union and that of the unions which apparently practice exclusion as
an unwritten law. With the Machinists' Union must then be grouped such
unions as the Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance,
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers of America, and United
Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters of United States and Canada. The
Electricians' Union has only one Negro member out of a total membership
of 11,000 in Chicago.
V. ATTITUDE OF NEGROES TOWARD UNION ORGANIZATION
From its attitude toward labor unions the Negro population of Chicago
may be considered in four groups: (1) racial leaders outside the labor
movement--ministers, editors, politicians, etc.; (2) Negroes with a
special interest in opposing unions; (3) Negro workers outside of the
unions; (4) Negro workers within the ranks of the unions.
1. RACIAL LEADERS OUTSIDE OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Within this group are found many sincere workers for the welfare of the
race. Their attitude is determined by the apparent practicability of
courses of action for Negroes in relation to the unions. These attitudes
again depend upon their familiarity with the principles and purposes of
unionism. They recognize that the entrance of large numbers of Negroes in
industry has been recent. The belief is that the employers rather than
the labor unions provided this first opportunity, and since, under most
frequent circumstances, the holding of these positions has been due to
the kindly attitude of employers, they felt that first loyalty was due
to them.
They have also been affected by experiences with labor unions which in
the past have not been disposed to accept Negroes freely into membership
with them.
Although the interest of employers in securing Negroes has not always
been merely the granting of an opportunity for work, where Negroes
have entered as strike breakers they have usually remained. This recent
entrance into industry has made them, for the first time, a considerable
factor, and they feel that the unions, recognizing their importance
to the accomplishment of union aims, are making appeals to them for
membership, not out of a spirit of brotherhood, but merely to advance
their purposes.
These considerations have largely determined the attitude of many Negro
leaders, especially the ministers, some of whom have been requested
by employers to recommend members of their congregations for jobs in
various fields of industry. At a recent industrial convention of Negro
organizations controlling the employment of thousands of Negro workers, it
was decided that Negroes would not be sent as strike breakers to plants
where the strikers' unions accepted Negroes, and that they would advise
Negroes to join the unions wherever possible, but that where Negroes
are offered positions by employers in trades where Negroes are excluded
from the unions, they would not be advised to forego the opportunity.
An intelligent Negro woman, who has been active in trying to acquaint
ministers with union aims and methods, commented upon the fact that
until recently Negro ministers knew very little about unionism, except
that employers were opposed to it. This was enough to influence many
ministers to urge Negro workers to stay out of labor unions and thus
demonstrate their loyalty to employers who had given them a chance in
industry.
A prominent Negro leader, a member of the Illinois legislature, stated
his position respecting unions, at one of the industrial conferences
held by the Commission, as follows:
I want to confess that I have never felt that I could
intelligently advise the colored people who ask me whether
laboring people should join the unions. It has been the opinion
of the leaders of our race for years that employers of labor
felt more kindly toward colored labor and were less concerned
about the color of the workmen--were only concerned about the
character of the service. We felt as leaders of the race that
the labor employer was given a square deal much more than the
employee himself.... We had a strike here of waiters several
years ago when the Kohlsaat lunchroom waiters were involved.
I was the president of a men's Sunday club, and some labor
agitators got the colored boys to join the white Waiters'
Union, and I remember when the matter came before the club I
told them, "They raised your wages to the white man's scale,
and the white men are raising you out in the street," and that
is what they did too.... I have been somewhat influenced by
that experience.
2. NEGROES WITH A SPECIAL INTEREST IN OPPOSING UNIONS
The rift between employers and labor unions has provided a field of
exploitation for certain less responsible Negroes. Their operations
have occasioned bitter feeling between Negroes and labor unions and have
accomplished little or nothing for the Negro workers. A Negro editor of
a small and irresponsible paper advises Negro workers not to join the
white man's union, but instead to join a union which he has formed and of
which he is president. He is looked upon with suspicion by representative
Negroes of Chicago, who believe that he is willing to sacrifice the best
interests of the race to serve his own purposes. A well-informed Negro
outlined the method employed by the editor in question to represent
himself to employers of labor as one who controls large numbers of Negro
laborers. In furtherance of this plan, which appears to have prospered,
he organized a group which he called the "American Unity Labor Union."
The appeal on the one hand to Negroes was that white unions would not
admit them on an equal basis and that white employers preferred Negro
non-unionists to white unionists and would pay them the same wages while
according them better treatment. To white employers he represented the
Negroes as being opposed to unions because they were white men's unions,
and as such discriminated against Negroes, and that they belonged in
large numbers to his organization, which was designed to improve the
quality of Negro labor by increasing Negro pride in special and unmixed
endeavors.
That certain employers did give money for this kind of service is apparent
in several instances. A Negro ex-clergyman secured for a long period
something like $2.00 per capita for every Negro supplied by him to any
one of ten iron foundries in the Calumet district.
The following are typical of advertisements which appear regularly in
the paper of the Negro editor referred to above:
WANTED
100 Building Laborers to work in the city of Chicago at Building
Scale Wages. Union Job. If you are not a Union man you can
get a permit to work as a Union Man at ---- Indiana Avenue.
Do not pay $33.00 to join a white man's union, when you can
join the black man's union for $5.00 and work on any building
in Chicago.
WAGE EARNERS CLUB
American Unity Labor Union was organized March 10th, 1917,
Chicago, Illinois.
GET A SQUARE DEAL WITH YOUR OWN RACE
Time has come for Negroes to do now or never. Get together
and stick together is the call of the Negro. Like all other
races, make your own way; other races have made their unions
for themselves. They are not going to give it to you just
because you join his union. Make a union of your own race;
union is strength. Join the American Unity Packers Union of
the Stock Yards, this will give you a card to work at any
trade or a common laborer, as a steam fitter, electrician,
fireman, merchants, engineers, carpenters, butchers, helpers,
and chauffeurs to drive trucks down town, delivering meat as
white chauffeurs do for Armour's and Swift's, or other Packers.
A card from this Union will let you work in Kansas City, Omaha
and St. Louis, or any other city where the five Packers have
packing houses.
This Union does not _believe in strikes_. We believe all
differences between laborers and capitalists can be arbitrated.
Strike is our last motive if any at all.
_Get in line for a good job. You are next. Office, ---- Indiana
Ave._
THE WORKING MEN'S CLUB
Join the American Unity Steel and Metal Union, a Union of your
own race with officers of your own race with a President. A
card from this Union will entitle you to work any place in the
United States as a steel and iron worker, craneman, engineer,
molders, rail straighteners, and any job that it takes brains
and skill to do and common laborer. _Join one big union and
demand a square deal with your own strength_. 8 hour day's work.
_Get in line for a good job. You are next. Office, ---- Indiana
Ave._
All classes and kinds of work waiting for good people in our
Association.
During the latter part of December, 1920, the editor in question visited
the large daily newspapers in Chicago and presented an article which
purported to tell of a large mass meeting of his union at which this
group decided that they would work at the Stock Yards, steel mills, and
all other plants in Chicago and the Calumet region and at all foundries
and factories at a 15 per cent discount on wages previously paid for
skilled labor, and 10 per cent on common-labor wages. Although only one
paper gave any attention to this statement, the opinion of some of the
more responsible Negroes was expressed in a Negro newspaper in Chicago,
which characterized the man as "a public nuisance" and his story as
"bunk."
3. NEGRO WORKERS OUTSIDE OF UNIONS
Negro workers outside of the union ranks often do not see any necessity
for unionism or do not understand its aims and methods; many are frankly
suspicious of the good intentions of white unionists toward Negroes;
others condemn unions generally because of some bitter experience with
a particular union, while still others are enthusiastic believers in
unionism and expect to join a union at some time. Several shades of
opinion are illustrated by the following quotations taken at random from
interviews with a large number of Negro workers.
H---- G----, thirty-four years old, left a farm in Georgia
to come to Chicago in October, 1919. Employed as a laborer
in a paper-box manufacturing plant. He said he didn't know
much about unions but couldn't see what good they were doing.
They made prices go up, but wages didn't go up with prices.
If unions did any good he would join, but he can't see that
they do.
W---- W---- had spent nearly all of his life hauling logs to
be made into ties for railroads. When he came here from the
South he worked as a trucker in the Quartermaster's Department
of the army until the department closed. After loafing half a
month, he got his present job trucking at a box factory. Unions
would be all right, in his opinion, if they let all of the
men in who would do right, but when they don't, they do more
harm than good. He used to belong to the Butchers' Union at
the Stock Yards and "got along fine," but he quit butchering.
He intends to get back in a union if possible. Strikes are
too hard on the man that "ain't in the union; strike out here
recently and now we can't make overtime and we hardly make
enough in regular time to live on. Unions are secret--I can't
remember all the bunk about them now, but you pay dues and go
to meetings, something like a lodge I guess. If anything goes
wrong on your job you tell it in meeting, and your branch of
the union takes it up with the people. You don't have any of
that worry on yourself. They are all right if you are on the
inside, but mighty hard if you ain't."
J---- McN----, forty-two years old, had been a farmer in the
South all of his life until he came to Chicago in January,
1920, and went to work in the Yards as a meat trimmer. He has
been asked to join the unions but hasn't done it as yet--he
isn't quite sure they mean a square deal by the colored man,
although he can't see why they would ask him to join if they
didn't. Don't know much about the "workings of 'em" but they
pull together, sort of "lodge like." He thinks everybody who
belongs is mighty "close mouthed" about what they do at the
meetings. He knows that they pay dues and have assessments, that
they look after sick members and have some sort of initiation.
J---- L----, fifty-two years old, is foreman over the truckers
in a box factory. He said: "Unions ain't no good for a colored
man, I've seen too much of what they don't do for him. I
wouldn't join for nothing--wanted me to join one at the Yards
but I wouldn't; no protection; if they had been, the colored
men who belonged might have worked while the riot was going on;
only thing allowed out there then was foreigners. If a thing
can't help you when you need help, why have it? That's the way
I feel about unions. I tell you they don't mean nothing for me."
H---- S----, twenty-four years old, had lived in Chicago only
two months. He said: "Well I don't know, you see these other
folks been here longer than me; they ain't joined, and I reckon
they know more about it than me. No, they didn't have no unions
where I comed from--ain't nothing there anyway but farmers.
I reckon, though, if I had a chance I might join. They can't
do much harm here to a fellow."
J---- H----, thirty-eight years old, came up from Alabama
in 1916 with about thirty other men during the big rush from
the South. They went to work almost immediately at the Stock
Yards, where he worked as a laborer, stripping bacon. After
he quit this he was out of work for nearly a month. He heard
about the wool mills. They put him on the very first day and
he has been there ever since.
He does not belong to a union. He "would join one if I had a
chance and it meant anything to me materially." He does not
understand them, "can't understand why they strike and keep
men out of work."
M---- L----, forty-two years old, came to Chicago from Tennessee
in 1894. He said: "I tried every job under the sun since I
came. My first job was porter in the Palmer House; made good
tips here but not very much salary. Changed to bellboy; was
finally made head bellboy; stayed there four years; boss made
me mad and I quit. Along about this time I met my wife. I
wanted to make her think I was a regular man, so got a job as
a laborer in a foundry. Since then I've gone from one foundry
to the other. Work got so hard I quit one time; went on the
road; stayed there for about four years, then went back to the
foundry work; worked for Illinois Malleable for three years
first time; had trouble with straw boss; he fired me; went
to McCormick's but they didn't pay so well, so I got back on
my old job. Yes, unions are the best thing in the world for
a working man. If I'd been in a union my boss couldn't have
fired me that time. I wish it was so you could join a union
regardless of your color. We need protection on our jobs as
well as the white man. I guess though that time is coming. I
don't know much about the workings of a union, but I do know
it's a protection to the man who belongs."
F---- D----, twenty-eight years old, does not belong to a
union because there are no unions in the car shops where he
works. He says unions are the best things in the world if the
right kind of people are at the head, and if all the fellows
will join, but when half of them won't join, unionism won't
do because it just means loss of your job.
R---- R----, thirty-four years old, has been working in Chicago
three months at his regular trade as a stove joiner. He learned
to join stoves at a mill in Helena. He has never had a chance
to join a union, but all the white men in the mill at Helena
belonged, and they fared lots better than the Negro men. He
wants to join one here the very first chance he gets. He is
a skilled laborer, knows he can put out as much work as any
man doing his line of work, feels he should be paid as much
as anyone else, and knows the only way this can happen to him
is to get in a union where he has some protection and backers.
There is a union where he is, but he hasn't been asked to join
it yet. He says he has found out that the colored man, if he
wants the same thing as a white man gets, has to get in things
with them.
Mrs. N---- M---- found work as a maid in a Chicago hospital
after she was deserted by her husband. She wants to save money
enough to run her while she takes "nurse training." She did
not know anything about unions until she went to the hospital.
The nurses there had a union, and she saw just how much they
can mean to people. "They usually make the employers do the
right thing by the people; unless the nurses asked too much
they got what they wanted." That was what made her decide she
wanted to be a nurse; she saw how square they were with each
other, and how the union made them pull together regardless of
whether or not they liked each other. That is what she liked
about the unions: "They make you treat the other fellow right
regardless how you feel toward him."
Nellie W----, age thirty, doing clerical work in a large
mail-order establishment, said that "unions don't mean anything
to colored people. The only reason they let them in when they
do is so they can't become strike breakers." She didn't know
how her husband felt about unions, as they had never talked
about the matter, but she knew that she wouldn't join one.
O---- L----, thirty-eight years old, had migrated from Georgia
in the summer of 1917. To him unions are "the best thing that
ever came the colored man's way. Out here [in a box factory]
it doesn't make quite so much difference whether I'm in one or
not, but if I ever go back to my trade as plasterer, that's
the first thing I intend to try and do. You get protection,
you get more money, and then too the white man gets a chance
to see that you are not all for yourself, for when you are in
a union you work for everybody's good."
H---- has been a head waiter in a hotel. He believes the big
reason why Negroes are not strongly enthusiastic for unions
is because they feel they will not get square treatment. This
he based upon continual references to the 1903 waiters' strike.
The attitude of indifference or suspicion so frequently encountered among
Negro workers outside of the unions is attributed by white and Negro
labor leaders and union men to the following reasons: (_a_) traditional
treatment of Negroes by white men; (_b_) influence of racial leaders who
oppose unionism; and (_c_) influence of employers' propaganda against
unionism.
The traditional treatment of Negroes in the South, increasingly reflected
in the North, has made the Negro suspicious of the white man's sincerity.
Negroes, therefore, naturally feel that they will not get a "square deal"
in white unions. In support of this attitude the waiters' strike of 1903
is still cited as an instance of "double-crossing" by white unions.
This strike was so often referred to by Negroes as a justification for
their attitude toward labor-union policies that it seemed worth while
to attempt to learn the facts, even though seventeen years had elapsed
since the strike occurred.
Two organizers for the American Federation of Labor, a newspaper editor,
an officer of the Negro local during the strike, the head waiter of one
of the large hotels (all Negroes), and John Fitzpatrick, president of
the Chicago Federation of Labor, were asked to tell the facts.
Reports are conflicting in many instances. However, the explanations of
circumstances as presented to the Commission are as follows:
The union of cooks and waiters involved in the strike of 1903, affiliated
with the American Federation of Labor, had a membership of 20,000, of
whom over 2,000 were Negroes. The Negroes had only recently been taken
into the union as a separate local under their own officers. The strike
first centered on Kohlsaat's chain of restaurants. This lasted seven
weeks, during which time all of the union members were out. The strike
terminated in circumstances on which there is general disagreement.
Negroes state that the white unionists "double-crossed" them, and when
Kohlsaat refused to take back the Negro waiters who had walked out with
the whites the latter went back to work and left the Negroes without
jobs. It is known that during the general excitement the charter of
the Negro local was revoked, although no one appears to know how or by
whom this was done. The white union leaders have frequently attempted
to absolve the union of responsibility for this situation and place the
blame on the Kohlsaat restaurants and the _Chicago Herald_, controlled
by Kohlsaat. John Fitzpatrick, before the Commission, referred to the
incident thus:
_Commissioner_: Concerning the waiters' strike several years
ago, the Kohlsaat strike, were they unionized under your
direction in order to raise the scale of dinner men [they were
known as dinner men] to the union scale? What was the success
of it as far as the colored waiters were concerned?
_Mr. Fitzpatrick_: They weren't organized for financial
purposes. They were organized as workers. We felt they ought
to have our co-operation, so we went out to organize them. The
Kohlsaat newspaper was one of the instruments by which they
perpetrated the conspiracy, and some other papers went into
a scheme and tried to bring about an atmosphere of fear and
suspicion between the colored and white workers.
It was Sunday, and the charter of the colored workers was
in my possession. That night they met, and I was installing
officers at Twenty-third Street and Washington Avenue. That
morning the _Herald_ ran a front-page story, first column,
teeming with a set-up against organized labor and warning the
colored workers to beware.
When I got up on the platform I read the story to them and said,
"That sets up one side of the story, and there is a conspiracy
to destroy your rights. What do you want to do about it?"
They said, "We will go ahead. We know what the employers want
and you go ahead and instal us." They went ahead and got into
that strike. The employers said: "We are going to supplant
colored men with white union girls." We told them we wouldn't
permit union girls to go on the job. The Kohlsaats begged of
us to give them white union women, and we refused to do so.
Now then, while this was going on, the newspapers had different
reports out, and they went out and had the charter of this
local revoked. How they did it, I don't know. But I have my
own notions how a newspaper operates. I think that a newspaper
has influence and money and other things, and that is the
only way I can account for that thing happening. They went to
the international organization to revoke the charter of this
organization.
This whole situation was obscured by a mass of charges and
counter-charges, but the fact that the strike failed was evident enough.
Regardless of what the facts actually were, there is a widespread belief
among Negro workers that the colored waiters were "double-crossed" by
white unions in this strike. Since it is men's belief about facts which
determines behavior, it is not surprising to find that Negro strike
breakers could be found in large numbers to take the place of waiters
who went on strike in May, 1920.
The influence of some employers is also a factor in the attitude of
Negroes toward labor unions. In many open shops the employers and unions
are engaged in a continuous struggle. In such cases, if persuasion and
argument fail, there is an effective instrument in strike breakers. For
this purpose Negroes have frequently been used. Instances in Chicago
are found in the strikes in the steel industry, the Stock Yards, and
the culinary industry. Many labor leaders and union members believe
that welfare clubs, company Y.M.C.A.'s, glee clubs, and athletic clubs
are encouraged and supported by employers as a substitute for a form
of organization which they cannot control. The subsidizing of social
movements and churches is regarded as one of the means employed by large
employers to insure this reserve of strike breakers. The union organizer
in the steel strike, W. Z. Foster, stated at one of the conferences held
by the Commission that, after an address to the Negro steel workers at
a church in Pittsburgh, the Negro preacher had said to him: "It nearly
broke up the congregation, but we decided you were going to speak here
in this church." The organizer continued:
Then I got the underneath of all this thing and found that
this church had lost a donation of $2,500.00 from the Steel
Corporation for allowing me to speak. They had tried to block
my speech to these colored workers in Pittsburgh. Whenever
it's a question of a donation to a poor, struggling church
like that, we know what usually happens.
The statement made by George W. Perkins, president of the Cigarmakers'
International Union, was typical of the view of labor leaders:
If you go to the root, you will find that economic reason; the
employers, not all of them but many of them, in our industry
as well as others, will divide the workers if they can. That
is the history all along. They will divide them, not because
they are black and white, but to keep them divided so they
won't unite in the organization.
Another labor leader, acting as an organizer in large industries in
various cities, stated at another conference:
I want to tell you that a strike breaker is a very precious
animal for the employer, and if he thinks he has a great
body of colored workers in this country who are apt to learn
trades with very little practice, as an inexhaustible well of
strike breakers, he is not going to stop at a little thing
like propaganda. He will find plenty of excuses to keep men
out of the union. In the Stock Yards, in the steel industry,
he will find arguments and he will carry on propaganda.
The difficulties inherent in the whole question of organizing Negroes
were probably best brought out before the Commission by W. Z. Foster,
who took a leading part in organizing Negroes in the Stock Yards, the
most important industry in Chicago so far as Negroes are concerned:
We found in the steel industry that the colored worker was
very unresponsive to organization. The same was true in the
packing industry. Let me give you first what steps we took in
the packing industry in Chicago in 1917, the big campaign which
resulted in the organization of men. The first meeting we had
we sat around a table and talked it over, and we realized that
there were two big problems, the organization of the foreign
worker and the organization of the colored worker. We shortly
dismissed the problem of organizing the foreign worker, but
we realized that to accomplish the organization of the colored
worker was the real problem. When we went into the packing-house
situation we were determined to organize the colored worker
if it was humanly possible to do so, and I think I can safely
say that the men who carried on that campaign realized fully
the necessity for the organization of the colored worker, not
wholly, or at least not only, from the white man's point of
view, but from his own point of view to a certain extent. In
other words, we were not altogether materialistic. We like to
think that we were a little bit altruistic in the situation.
There was a total employment of twelve or fourteen thousand.
We found that we had tremendous opposition to encounter.
First of all it took this attitude, that the colored man
would not be allowed to join the unions at all. We met that
broadcast with such circulars as those already shown. I wrote
some of them up myself as secretary of the council, inviting
these men in such a way that these colored men could not help
but realize that there was nothing to this argument that they
would not be allowed to join the union.... The next argument
that developed was, "Sure, the white man will take you into
his union because you are in the minority." But we fought all
of these arguments, and we organized a local union on State
Street.
Then the argument was raised that it was a "Jim Crow"
proposition. It was quite general along State Street that it
was a "Jim Crow" proposition. It seemed to make no difference
what move we made, there was always an argument against it,
so we overcame the "Jim Crow" argument by combining the white
locals and the black. We said to the boys: "This is not a
colored local. This is a neighborhood local of miscellaneous
locals. Any colored man can belong to this local." We told the
white men: "You are free to come in here and join this union."
Well, we punctured that argument that there was discrimination
in the Stock Yards, and I would challenge anyone to show where
the unions in the Stock Yards campaign have discriminated
against the colored man. There may have been isolated cases of
an individual here and there, but I will say this, and I was
on the organizing committee and probably in closer touch with
the situation than anyone else here in the city with those
four or five thousand colored workers that we organized, I
dare say that 40 per cent of the total amount of grievances
that were presented by all the workers in the Stock Yards came
from these colored workers, and the standing instructions were
to look after them very carefully....
But the more we tried to help the colored worker the more
intense the opposition was, because there was a force working
against us, and we could not help but feel it. We got it from
the colored people themselves, and it is a fact that some of
the organizers were actually afraid to go around to some of
these saloons and poolrooms where they congregated because of
the agents of the packers, or whoever was responsible for that
propaganda, and they felt that their lives were in danger....
Out in the Stock Yards we could not win their support. It could
not be done. They were constitutionally opposed to unions,
and all our forces could not break down that opposition....
We tried to make our appeal quite general in scope. We got
the best organizers. A good colored organizer is very rare--a
man who is thoroughly qualified to represent the trade-union
point of view. We tried to find one and picked out a colored
member of the Engineers' Union, a man highly honored in all
the trade unions of Chicago.... The reason the colored man
gave for not joining you will find in the circular "Beware of
the White Man's Union," and that the only way that they can
ever make any headway in the industry is to stick in with the
boss and then when there is a strike to step in and take the
jobs that are left there....
Race prejudice has everything to do with it. It lies at the
bottom. The colored man as a blood race has been oppressed for
hundreds of years. The white man has enslaved him, and they
don't feel confidence in the trade unions. But there is more
real fraternal feeling among the black and white workers than
in any other grade of society.... As soon as the colored man
becomes a factor in industry, he is going to be organized,
providing he does not become a victim to the line of tactics
that are laid out by the employer. In the steel strike he
lined up with the bosses.
4. NEGRO WORKERS WITHIN THE UNIONS
Negro workers inside the ranks of such unions as the Stock Yards',
Janitors', and Hodcarriers', types of the unions which accept Negroes
with complete equality, feel, with very few exceptions, that they are
being given a "square deal" by the unions. By coming into the unions
they say they have been able to secure better working conditions and
higher wages. They express satisfaction with the treatment accorded them
by white unionists on the job and at meetings, where the grievances of
Negro members are given the same attention as the complaints of white
members. The situation in the unions mentioned has been so fully described
already in this report that there is no need for further details on the
friendly relationship which exists between white and colored members of
these unions. Many Negro unionists look to labor organization as one of
the most promising solutions of race problems.
VI. THE NEGRO AND STRIKES
The attitude of Negro workers during strikes is closely connected with
the attitude of Negroes toward union organization. As stated before,
there are many cross-currents at work, some tending to keep Negroes out
of unions and others impelling them toward the unions. All the forces
at work to prejudice the Negro against union organization are factors
which help to explain his willingness to take the place of striking white
workers. The loyalty of the Negro during strikes by white employees
was referred to by a number of the representatives of large employers
attending the industrial conferences held by the Commission.
Some of the most conspicuous cases coming to the attention of the
Commission in which Negroes have taken the place of white strikers or
have remained at work during strikes are the following:
The Stock Yards strike of 1904 lasted from July 4 to the middle
of September. The general superintendent of one of the plants in
the Yards, appearing before the Commission, said: "The strike
was called at 12:00 o'clock. Every employee practically that
we had went out. Within two or three days we had any number
of colored employees return to work.... I'd say Negroes helped
us to break the strike by coming to work. A number of Negroes
that we understand belonged to the union did not remain out
more than two or three days. Practically all the Negroes came
back before the strike was called off."
The strike in the Corn Products Refining Company plant at Argo,
where, in the summer of 1919, before the strike, 300 Negroes
were employed, during the strike 900, and when it was over
about 500.
The steel strike of 1919. Representatives of several of the
iron and steel plants stated that Negroes had helped to break
this strike. The _Inter-Church World Movement Report on the
Steel Strike of 1919_ (p. 177) lists the "successful use of
strike-breakers, principally Negroes, by the steel companies" as
the second cause of the failure of the steel strike. "'Niggers
did it' was a not uncommon remark among company officials."
The waiters' strike in 1920.
Less important cases were the following:
A clothing shop where Negro women broke a strike in 1916
and continued in the employ thereafter. A wool warehouse and
storage company which used Negroes at slightly higher wages
to replace striking Polish laborers in 1916, and have since
continued to employ Negroes.
The strike of Pullman-car cleaners about 1916. Negroes were
used as strike breakers and have since been employed in large
numbers, men cleaning the windows and outside of cars and
Negro women doing most of the inside cleaning.
Many other instances where Negroes have been used as strike
breakers could be cited.
During a strike, feeling runs high and the word "strike breaker" or
"scab" carries with it a decided stigma among the strikers. White workers
ordinarily do not try to understand why the Negro acts as he does. They
do not reason that the Negro is often loyal to the employer because he
feels that the employer, sometimes at considerable risk, has opened to
him industrial opportunities which, translated into wages, mean better
living conditions for himself and his family. If the white worker took
into account the struggle of the Negro to gain entrance into the fields
outside of personal service, the latter's eagerness to take advantage
of any opening, however created, might be better understood and regarded
with more tolerant spirit.
What bearing this use of Negro labor has on the attitude of white workers
toward Negroes depends upon whether the subject is approached from the
point of view of the employer or of the trade unionist. Representatives
of the packing companies emphasized the employers' appreciation of the
Negro's loyalty and discounted the antagonism caused by Negroes serving
as strike breakers, while trade-union leaders and others having the
workers' point of view emphasized the seeds of dissension that were sown
by such action and contended that the good will of the employer gained
at such a cost was in reality a handicap to the Negro. White workers
feel that Negroes who serve as strike breakers are helping to earn for
their race the stigma of being a "scab" race. This is especially serious
in the case of Negroes, because color identification makes it easy to
focus hatred for the "scab."
Union leaders and social workers who participated in the conferences
held by the Commission condemned the practice of some private employment
agencies in sending Negroes to plants as strike breakers without informing
them that a strike was in progress. Investigations in several states
have disclosed such practices of some private employment agencies,
"misrepresentation of terms and conditions of employment" being the
most frequent abuse, according to the report of the Federal Commission
on Industrial Relations: "Men are not informed about strikes that may
be on at places to which they are sent, nor about other important facts
which they ought to know."[77]
Private employment agencies following such practices try to do so against
colored as well as white workers, although with probably less success
because of the ability of the Negro to speak English. However, the part
played by private employment agencies in supplying Negro strike breakers
in Chicago appears to be of relatively little importance. Ordinarily
agents of employers find Negro strike breakers directly by going into the
Negro residence section with autos or trucks and recruiting the number
of men desired. The industrial secretary of the Urban League made the
following statement regarding Negro strike breakers:
According to all information available to the Chicago Urban
League, it does not appear that any of the private employment
agencies except the one conducted by R. G. Parker, editor of
the _Chicago Advocate_, who advertised for cooks and waiters
to break the strike of the Cooks and Waiters' Alliance during
the National Republican Convention in June, 1920, have been
instrumental in strike breaking.
The method used in the organization of strike breakers among
colored people is not well defined. Generally labor scouts
work directly for companies affected by strikes. These scouts
have frequently applied to our office for workers, but we
have refused assistance. The men are usually gathered from the
streets, poolrooms, or wherever they can be found. It is the
policy of the Chicago Urban League not to interfere in strikes
unless the striking unions have refused to admit colored workers
to their membership. The League is not opposed to unionism,
but is interested primarily in the welfare of colored workers.
VII. ATTITUDE AND OPINIONS OF LABOR LEADERS
From the eleven representative labor leaders attending the trade-union
conferences held by the Commission, from the various interviews by the
investigators with these and other union officials and members, and from
letters received from labor officials from various parts of the United
States, it was apparent that there were certain definite views held by
most of these leaders as to the relationship of organized labor to the
Negro. These views are summarized and set forth in the following pages:
1. GENERAL PUBLIC HAS RACE PREJUDICE
Race prejudice exists generally in all groups of the white race and
only changes slowly. The worker is just as much subject to it in the
beginning as are the members of all other groups.
2. UNIONS FAIRER TO NEGRO THAN ARE OTHER GROUPS
The unions have given the Negro a fairer deal than other social
institutions or groups, such as department stores, clubs, churches,
theaters, fraternal organizations, hotels, and railways.
3. UNIONS BLAMED FOR CONDITIONS THEY CANNOT CONTROL
Unions are many times blamed for situations in which Negroes are not
admitted to an occupation or industry over which the unions have no
control, the exclusion existing because the attitude of either the public
or the employer prevents the entrance of Negroes into the industry. For
example, Negroes are not employed in Chicago as motormen or conductors on
surface or elevated transportation lines, as telephone operators by the
telephone company, as sales clerks in department stores, as chauffeurs
by taxicab companies, nor as upholsterers and drapers by firms sending
such employees to work in private homes.
The position taken by the unions is that they cannot organize a
miscellaneous public, but that they can only organize those that have the
jobs, that as long as street and elevated lines do not employ Negroes
as motormen and conductors the unions cannot take them in. True, there
might be objection on the part of the members in these unions, but
the question has never come up. Also the traction companies are not
in business to reform public opinion and so, because the public might
object, do not engage Negroes in these jobs. In this their position is
similar to that of the large taxicab companies, which, however, employ
non-union workers. They have Negroes in the garages but not as chauffeurs,
probably because they believe that the general public would object if
Negroes were employed as chauffeurs. In such cases the unions feel that
they are not responsible, any more than they are accountable for the
policy of the telephone company which engages no Negro operators. Among
other large businesses must be listed the department stores, which have
no Negroes as sales clerks.
Exclusion of Negroes from a trade or industry results in inability to
join the unions in such trades. This fact is well illustrated by the
Upholsterers' Union, which has three branches--furniture upholsterers,
drapers, and mattress makers. Upholsterers and drapers are frequently
sent out by the large stores to residences of customers, and the stores
will not risk offending customers by sending a Negro into their homes.
Consequently there are no Negroes in these branches of the union. The
mattress makers' local, on the other hand, has more Negro than white
members, and the secretary of the union is a Negro. This situation would
not be possible if Negroes were excluded from employment in mattress
factories. In view of the fact that the Upholsterers' Union freely
admits Negroes into the mattress makers' local, Negroes would also, no
doubt, be admitted into the locals of the upholsterers and the drapers
if employers hired Negroes for such work.
4. EXCLUSION POLICY CONDEMNED
The policy, wherever it exists, of excluding Negroes from unions, whether
by direct or indirect means, is considered wrong and shortsighted by
the great majority of labor leaders. They believe that the small group
of "aristocratic and conservative" unions cannot long withstand the
American Federation of Labor policy of organizing Negroes in local and
federal unions, nor the policy of the more progressive national and
international unions. As the number of Negroes increases in the unions
now admitting them, as the number of Negro delegates to city centrals,
like the Chicago Federation of Labor, increases, and as the number of
delegates to conventions of the State Federation of Labor and to the
American Federation of Labor increases each year, more and more pressure
is being brought to bear on these unions from without and also by the
progressive leaders from within, so that gradually all barriers will
be swept aside. That a gradual change is taking place in the policy of
many unions is evidenced by the following instances:
_International Brotherhood of Firemen and Oilers._--"In 1902 a local
union of Negro stationary firemen in Chicago could not be chartered
because the white local union would not give its consent."[78] In 1920
the president of Local 7, Chicago, reported as follows:
The symbol of our organization is, "We shall not discriminate
against creed, color or nationality." The membership of our
organization is open to the Negro as much as to any other
man who earns his living by the sweat of his brow. I should
say, offhand, that we have approximately about 100 Negroes
who are members of our Chicago local and who take an active
part in all of our deliberations. So far as has come under my
observation the feeling towards these men has always been of
the most cordial nature.
I am, however, free to say that we have found that a great many
of the employers, who do not desire to play fair, use the Negro
to offset any high standard of wages which the organization
may deem proper and just, and I have found, in my experience,
an endeavor on the part of some of the employers to only use
the Negro when he would want to maintain a lower standard of
wages, but when compelled by force of circumstances to pay a
living rate of wages, immediately a request would be made on
the organization that the Negro be removed and a white man
furnished. This we emphatically refuse to do. If the Negro
was efficient and competent to perform his duties prior to
the establishment of a living wage he certainly should be
competent enough to perform the same duties afterwards.
_Metal Polishers' International Union._--The general secretary informed
the Commission:
At the last international convention held, the question of
Negroes entering our trade was taken up, and the delegates
anticipated that, at some future time, Negroes would be
employed, and we felt that, if the manufacturers were left under
the impression that we would refuse to accept them into the
organization, it would be an incentive to the Manufacturers'
Association to import Negroes or hire them, so a resolution
was passed that any skilled polisher, buffer, or plater, even
though a Negro, should be admitted to our organization.
_International Association of Machinists._--Although at its convention
at Rochester, New York, in 1920, this union again voted down the
proposition to strike out the word "white" from its ritual, there was
significance in the fact that seven resolutions were introduced at the
convention to remove the excluding provision. These resolutions came from
unions in the following cities: two from different locals in Chicago;
one from Columbia, South Carolina; one from Akron, Ohio; one from New
Haven, Connecticut; one from Tucson, Arizona. Resolutions opposing came
from Bakersfield, California; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Whistler, Alabama;
and Savannah, Georgia. As an instance of enthusiastic appreciation of
the mutual advantage to whites and Negroes of joint effort in union
organization with no discrimination the following comment from an office
of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees' National Alliance was received
by the Commission:
We have one local union composed of white and colored
workers--that union is located in the city of Boston,
Massachusetts; roughly speaking, there are approximately 400
in a total membership of about 2,000; at our convention held
at Providence, Rhode Island, last August, one of the delegates
from that union was a colored man. Six years ago Boston colored
waiters woke up, and so did the whites, to the fact that for
decades they had been used one against the other by their
employers; they got together, and they affirm with considerable
emphasis that amalgamation has proved beneficial.
5. UNIONS INSTRUMENTAL IN REMOVING RACE PREJUDICE
Labor leaders emphasize the influence of contact in union meetings in
promoting a friendly understanding between white and colored members.
They point out the fact that the Negro ceases to be a stranger or an
object of prejudice when once he has identified himself with the union.
A common interest in common problems binds the members together, and
a spirit of loyalty to the union develops in the effort to realize the
aims of the group. White members come to have a more kindly feeling for
a Negro within the union group than they have toward a white man who
remains outside the union ranks. Said one union leader:
Some day the white worker is going to coax the black man to
line up with him; all that he needs is a crusader's heart
and a genuine desire to make the black man and himself free,
and when he succeeds there won't be, in the economic field at
least, the differences which now exist, due to this pitting
of one race against the other and both being walloped by the
action.
CHAPTER IX
PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS
The Negro in the United States: "A person of African blood (much
or little) about whom men of English descent tell only half the
truth, and because of whom they do not act with frankness and
sanity either toward the Negro or to one another--in a word,
about whom they easily lose their common sense, their usual
good judgment, and even their powers of accurate observation.
The Negro-in-America, therefore, is a form of insanity that
overtakes white men."--_The Southerner_ by Walter Hines Page.
The Stoic proverb, that "men are tormented by the opinions they have
of things rather than by the things themselves,"[79] applies as aptly
to the relations between the white and Negro populations as to other of
our problems. Because the "race problem" has been so vaguely stated, so
variously explained, and so little understood, discussions of it and the
conduct of whites and Negroes toward each other usually express feeling
rather than intelligence.
The public is guided by patterns of behavior and traditions generally
accepted, whether sound or unsound. False notions, if believed, may
control conduct as effectively as true ones. And pre-established notions
lose their subtle influence when it appears that their basis is in error.
White persons are generally uninformed on matters affecting Negroes
and race relations. They are forced to rely on partial and frequently
inaccurate information and upon traditional sentiments. This same
ignorance applies to Negroes, though not to the same degree; for they
know white people in their intimate personal and home relations and in
connection with their work in factories and stores. They read their books
and papers and often hear their discussions. Negroes are perhaps more race
conscious than whites because every day they must face situations which
remind them of their race. They are sensitive to moods and antagonisms
expressed in words and shown in manners. Their impressions from the white
group are subject to distortion as are those received by the whites from
them. Negroes manifest characteristics which, though the natural result
of their circumstances and experiences, are yet misunderstood and often
resented by the white group. For Negroes live and think in a state of
isolation which is almost complete; and no white group understands it,
or can fully understand it.
The riot of 1919 is an example of the effects of this isolation and
misunderstanding. The accumulated resentments, unchallenged mutual
beliefs and resultant friction, culminated in a surprising calamity and
wholesale bloodshed.
This chapter, therefore, has a thesis and a purpose. If these beliefs,
prejudices and faulty deductions can be made accessible for examination
and analysis, many of them will be corrected. If a self-critical
attitude toward these prejudices can be stimulated by typical examples,
a considerable step will have been taken toward understanding and harmony.
The study of public opinion in race relations attempted by the Commission
does not presume to set down definite laws of its working, or to tell all
about how it works. The aim is merely to make apparent and objective its
place and importance in race relations, to indicate some of the ways in
which it has developed; how it expresses itself, how it affects both the
white and Negro groups; how, in its present state, it is strengthened,
weakened, polluted, or purified by deliberate agencies or even by its
own action, and finally how it may be used to reduce, if not to prevent,
racial unfriendliness and misunderstanding.
The following plan is employed in presenting this branch of the subject:
1. Beliefs regarding Negroes, which greatly influence the conduct of
white persons toward them, are described as they apply in the local
environment, and their origin and background are traced suggestively to
their responsible literature and circumstances.
2. Types of sentiment which are variants of these basic beliefs are
presented with a view to making them intelligible, and to classifying
them according to resolvable factors of misunderstanding.
3. Since personal attitudes and beliefs are molded by traditions and
heritages apart from the exclusive influence of literature, material
collected through intimate inquiry is presented objectively to describe
the processes by which they appear to be created and to grow. Replies to
a searching questionnaire on attitudes and opinions express the result
of painstaking self-analysis.
4. Negro opinion on these same issues is described and illustrated with
a view to making it intelligible. Their views are listed and their
interpretations of current white sentiment are explained as far as
possible.
5. From the subjective aspect the study then turns to the instruments
by which these opinions are formed and perpetuated and the individual
attitudes created. The following are deemed the chief agencies: (_a_)
the press, (_b_) rumors, (_c_) myths, (_d_) propaganda. Conscious and
unconscious abuse of these instruments of opinion-making is pointed out
and explained.
6. Finally, means are suggested by which public opinion may, where it is
faulty, correct itself, and employ its own instruments in the creation
of wholesome sentiments among Negroes with respect to whites, and among
whites with respect to Negroes.
A. OPINIONS OF WHITES AND NEGROES
I. BELIEFS CONCERNING NEGROES
Literature concerning Negroes has been written chiefly by southern
students facing the problem in its most intense form and usually meeting
the most backward of Negroes. Negro habits have been objectively explained
and standards of judgment upon the entire group have usually been deduced
therefrom. This constitutes the bulk of serious literature on the subject
of the Negro; it is generally used in research into the problem.
In the North as in the South the assumptions regarding the Negro have
their basis in similar sources. The beliefs, in general, are the same,
though held by individuals in varying degrees. Though northerners do not
believe so firmly and with such emotional intensity all that southerners
believe about Negroes, yet they share these beliefs in proportion as
they have been influenced or informed by southerners. It may happen,
for example, that in a small northern town with but a handful of Negroes
there is no discernible distinction in the treatment accorded them. The
growth of the colony, however, can bring to the surface at first almost
undiscernible shades of the usual beliefs, and finally the identical
beliefs entertained by other communities.
There is, for example, no section of the country in which it is not
generally believed by whites that Negroes are instinctively criminal in
inclination. Some believe that they are criminal by nature and explain it
as a result of heredity; some feel that it is a combination of heredity
and environment; while others may feel that this inclination is due to
environment alone. How, indeed, may the belief be avoided? Crime figures
on Negroes are consistently unfavorable to any other conclusion. Students
have gone so far as to accept without question these figures and proceed
to explain that criminal tendency scientifically. This is also true as
to low mentality, sexual immorality, and a long list of other supposed
racial defects.
Below are presented some of the more important beliefs among whites about
Negroes that have become crystallized by years of unchallenged assumption.
They divide themselves into two general classes: (1) Primary beliefs, or
fundamental and firmly established convictions which have, all around,
the deepest effect on the attitude of whites toward Negroes. These are
usually presented as revealed by statistics, authorities, and research.
(2) Secondary beliefs, or the lighter modifications and variants of the
supposed attributes of Negroes included in the more important assumptions.
1. PRIMARY BELIEFS
_Mentality._--The chief of these is that the mind of the Negro is
distinctly and distinctively inferior to that of the white race, and so
are all resulting functionings of his mind.
This view is held by some to be due to a difference in species, by
others to more recent emergence from primitive life, and by others to
be due to backwardness in ascending the scale of civilization. For this
reason it is variously assumed as a corollary that the mind of the Negro
cannot be improved above a given level or beyond a given age; that his
education should be adapted to his capacities, that is, he should mainly
be taught to use his hands. Thus a teacher in one of the elementary
schools of Chicago finds that "colored children are restive and incapable
of abstract thought; they must be constantly fed with novel interests
and given things to do with their hands." Accordingly they are given
handicraft instead of arithmetic, and singing instead of grammar.
In seeking the opinion of white trades unionists on the admission of
Negroes to unions in Chicago, the Commission encountered in perhaps
the harshest form the conviction that Negroes were inherently unable to
perform tasks that white men did as a matter of course. A member of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers felt that no Negro had, or could
ever acquire, intelligence enough to run an engine. Employers frequently
expressed the belief that Negroes are incapable of performing tasks
which require sustained mental application. This view of their mental
weakness appeared in the following statement made before the Commission
by a school principal concerning her experience with Negro children:
So far as books are concerned there are set types of learning
which they take with great difficulty. Last Friday a colored boy
came to me and said, "I want to go back to the first grade." We
have gotten him in the third grade. He came to me and cried--a
great big boy--because he said the work was much too hard for
him, and he didn't want to study. His teacher was cross with
him and insisted he must get to work. It is an exception to
have a boy so frank. But I don't think the instance is far
from the truth. I have never had a white child complain that
he was graded too high and wanted to be put down. Sometimes
when they come in, they say to me: "I went to school in the
South, and I am in high fifth grade." "How long were you in
school in the South?" "Three sessions." Two months, and they
are in high fifth grade! I put them into the first or second
grade. Sometimes I can't fit them into the smaller grades, and
sometimes they resent it, but when they get into the actual
school work and find they can't do it, they can't complain. I
should say therefore that there is a certain amount of mental
backwardness found in colored children not found in whites.
A teacher in a Chicago public school said: "I believe like Dr. Bruner
[director of Special School, Board of Education] that when a Negro boy
grows a mustache his brain stops working."
A teacher in Moseley School said: "The great physical development of
the colored person takes away from the mental, while with the whites
the reverse is true. There is proof for this in the last chapter of
Ecclesiastes."
_Morality._--Another of these primary beliefs is that Negroes are not
yet capable of exercising the social restraints which are common to the
more civilized white persons. Sometimes it is said that they are unmoral
rather than immoral. This view, while charitably explaining supposed
innate defects of character, places them outside the circle of normal
members of society. Thus the assistant principal of a Chicago high school
attended by Negroes said:
When it comes to morality, I say colored children are unmoral.
They have no more moral sense than a very young white child.
Along sex lines they don't know that this is wrong and that
is wrong--that wrong sense isn't a part of them. Of course we
say they are immoral and a white child doing the same thing
under the same circumstances would be. The colored and white
children here don't get mixed up in immorality; they are too
well segregated. Not that we segregate them: the whites keep
away from the colored.
This belief appears in statements that there is no family life among
Negroes and but little respect, even in Chicago, for the ordinary
decencies; when serious students of society speak of the promiscuity
of colored women and men in sexual as well as social relations; and
when social institutions assume the impossibility of locating the real
father of children in a Negro family. Much public emphasis is given to
the subject of venereal disease among Negroes, and certain deductions
regarding this incidence of disease have resulted from comparative
statistics.
_Criminality._--The assumption back of most discussions of Negro crime
is that there is a constitutional character weakness in Negroes and a
consequent predisposition to sexual crimes, petty stealing, and crimes of
violence. Sexual crimes are alleged and frequently urged in justification
of lynching. Popular judgment takes stealing lightly, because Negroes
evidence a marked immaturity and childishness in it. It is supposed that
they appropriate little things and do not commit larger thefts. Crimes
of violence are thought to be characteristic of Negroes because crimes
involving deliberation and planning require more brains than Negroes
possess.
The president of a branch of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs
thus explained the decision of that organization not to discuss the
Negro question in its meetings:
Most of the presidents expressed themselves as against
discussion of the Negro question because as women's names
come out as being against the Negroes these women and others
of the club would have to live in fear of Negro men. A woman
must be careful not to put herself in a position of causing
them to have a grudge against her, as you know a white woman
has to fear a colored man.
A resident in an exclusively white residential district said:
Mother, sister, and I lived here alone and we had a car which
we kept in a garage in the back yard. Whenever we came in
at night we never used the back door, but always went around
front. Several times in walking up the back steps to the porch
we had been frightened by colored men sitting on the steps or
lying on the porch, and so we couldn't use that way into the
house.
Another white woman, in the course of a discussion of housing indicated
this fear of Negro men:
When we came here this was a nice neighborhood. After some
years a colored family moved in, then two or three more, and
more and more, until you see what we have here now. I tell
you the white people right on this street have to be afraid
for their lives.
Another, living on Langley Avenue, near Forty-third Street, said:
I don't hold any conversations with Negroes. It's better to be
on the safe side when you've got grown-up daughters. I worry
a good deal about my two daughters as they go and come from
work, but they've never had anything happen.
The principal of a Chicago public school was questioned by a visitor
concerning the attitude of white parents toward the association of
their children with Negro pupils in that school. "The white parents
are cautious about stirring up trouble," he said, "for they know the
emotional tendency of the colored to knife and kill."
Petty thefts by Negroes, especially of food, are regarded as annoying
evils most easily dealt with by a sort of half-serious firmness. A white
resident of a district largely inhabited by Negroes said:
A white neighbor keeps chickens in her back yard. She gets the
burglar alarm from the hen house sometimes twice in a week,
and the running thief is always colored.... The colored buy
whatever they want; they'll spend their last cent and not
worry about the next day. If they want a chicken for dinner
and it's $1 a pound, they buy it or steal it.
_Physical unattractiveness._--Objections to contact are often attributed
to physical laws which, it is said, make the sight or other sensory
impression of the Negro unbearably repulsive. This attitude is found in
protests against indiscriminate seating arrangements in street cars.
The word "black" has long been associated with evil and ugliness, and
it is not always a simple task to disassociate the idea from impressions
given by a black man. Not merely is the color regarded as repulsive, but
it is the further belief that Negroes have a peculiar and disagreeable
body odor. A Christian Science practitioner in Chicago, giving her
opinion of Negroes, had an idea that they carried a "musky odor," and
were therefore to be avoided. A student at the University of Chicago
and a resident of Hyde Park, talking with an investigator, said: "It is
conceded that the Negro in Chicago must have some place to live, but to
permit promiscuous distribution through scattered sections of the city
would tend to increase the difficulties rather than mitigate them, partly
because a white man would shrink from having a Negro live near him."
In the spring of 1919 there appeared in one of the Chicago daily papers
a series of articles on the Negro question. In describing the relations
between Negroes and whites in Chicago, the writer said:
A second phase of the situation, and the one that causes more
inutile railing than any other, is the crowding into the street
cars of colored people. Well, they must ride on street cars,
if only for the reason that most of them live remote from
their work. Even the North State Street line, that used to be
considered the special conveyance for "the quality," has come
to be known as the "African Central." If you can't stomach
it, you'll have to walk. They won't.
Living in neighborhoods infrequently visited by Negroes and where, as
a general rule, their occupancy is effectively discouraged, some white
residents occasionally express objections as based on a "natural physical
opposition." Following is a typical statement:
I came here six years ago and there was a very noisy set of
white people living in the apartment house back of mine. Four
years ago the landlord put them all out and rented to colored
families. We were all up in arms then; but say, I never had
nicer, more quiet, and respectable neighbors. Their children
all behave well, and we can't kick. But at the same time, black
people aren't what one would pick out to have around--I guess
it's just because they are black.
_Emotionality._--This is commonly regarded as explaining features of
conduct in Negroes, some of which are beautiful in their expression while
others are ugly and dangerous. The supposed Negro gift of song is thus
an accepted attribute of his emotional nature. So with his religious
inclination. This same emotionalism is believed to lead him to drink
and is frequently made to account for "his quick, uncalculated crimes of
violence." The natural expression of Negro religious fervor is supposed
to be noisy and frenzied. This view of the _Chicago Tribune's_ special
writer is, roughly speaking, the view of thousands of Chicagoans:
I passed grand old stone churches, once the pride of rich and
powerful white congregations, whither I used to be sent as a
reporter not so many years ago, to hear some of the premier
pulpiteers of this town. They are colored people's churches
now, and beneath the arches, where a sedate gospel once was
expounded you hear today the jubilant yell of the dusky brother
who has found grace....
The service was, indeed, an incident in a three weeks' series
of revival meetings they have been holding at Olivet. The
principal performer was the Rev. S. E. J. Watson, a revivalist
from Topeka, a big man--mulatto, I should say, or perhaps
quadroon--with a powerful voice, a masterly platform style,
and enormous ardor. He spoke fluently, used no notes, and
demonstrated a free, wide skill in homely imagery, which,
however, included no slang nor vulgarities, but was racy
of the plantation and the cabin kitchen. His picture of God
"opening the front door of this good old world every morning
to let in the sun" was one of the most gorgeous flights in
primitive poetry I ever heard, and his narrative, accompanied
by the most vivid pantomime, of the Roman soldiers lifting up
the cross after they had nailed Jesus to it was hardly less
than terrifying--it certainly was terrific--in its sweep of
passion and its reality of detail.
And so he wrought them to a high emotional state. Many were
crying. Then came the direct personal appeal to "the unsaved,"
the threat of the everlasting fire, and the "lifting up" again
and again of the thought of the all-forgiving, all-saving Jesus.
The soft crying became heavy, convulsive sobbing. One by one
the unsaved who made the surrender to whatever it was that had
been holding them back, were led to the seats near the pulpit.
Those who did not surrender promptly were evidently in terrible
stress, or thought they were. They emitted shrieks that, truly,
made my heart stand still, and I would have trembled for the
sanity of the poor creatures except that I observed from the
corner of my eye that the "saved" in the assemblage took the
shrieks with perfect equanimity.
2. SECONDARY BELIEFS
In addition to the primary beliefs there are others supposedly not so
serious or significant in their effects. These are usually modifications
of primary beliefs, and are accepted as a consequence of frequent and
almost unvaried repetition. In this manner these secondary beliefs have
edged their way into the popular mind.
George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken in a recent volume, _The American
Credo_, point out fairly striking instances of this tendency of the
American mind. They have compiled a series of 435 commonly accepted
beliefs covering a wide range. Among these 435 listed American beliefs
there are some very real ones which involve and include the following
popular notions about Negroes:
1. That a Negro's vote may always be readily bought for a
dollar.
2. That every colored cook has a lover who never works and
that she feeds him by stealing the best part of every dish
she cooks.
3. That every Negro who went to France with the army has a
liaison with a white woman and won't look at a colored woman
any more.
4. That all male Negroes can sing.
5. That if one hits a Negro on the head with a cobblestone
the cobblestone will break.
6. That all Negroes born south of the Potomac can play the
banjo and are excellent dancers.
7. That whenever a Negro is educated he refuses to work and
becomes a criminal.
8. That every Negro servant girl spends at least half of her
wages on preparations for taking the kink out of her hair.
9. That all Negro prize fighters marry white women and then
afterwards beat them.
10. That all Negroes who show any intelligence are two-thirds
white and the sons of U.S. Senators.
11. That the minute a Negro gets eight dollars he goes to a
dentist and has one of his front teeth filled with gold.
12. That a Negro ball always ends up in a grand free-for-all
fight in which several Negroes are mortally slashed with razors.
The most usual of these secondary beliefs which figure in the experience
of Negroes and whites in Chicago are apparently of southern origin. This
is due, not so much to any deliberate effort of southerners to infiltrate
them into northern race relations, as that northerners largely regard as
authoritative the experience of the South which holds almost nine-tenths
of the total Negro population.
Some of the secondary beliefs are:
1. That Negroes are lazy; that they are indisposed to, though not
incapable of, sustained physical exertion.
2. That they are happy-go-lucky; that their improvidence is demonstrated
in their extravagance, and that their reckless disregard for their welfare
is shown in a lack of foresight for the essentials of well-being. It is
asserted that they do not purchase homes and do not save their money;
that they spend lavishly for clothes to the neglect of home comforts and
the demands even of their health; that they work by the day, and before
the week is ended confuse bookkeeping by demanding their pay.
3. That they are boisterous. Hilarity in public places and especially
in their own gatherings is thought to be common. They are considered
as rude and coarse in public conveyances and are believed to jostle
white passengers sometimes without thought and sometimes out of pure
maliciousness.
4. That they are bumptious; that when a Negro is placed in a position of
unaccustomed authority relative to his group he has an unduly exaggerated
sense of his own importance and makes himself unbearable.
5. That they are overassertive; that constant harping on constitutional
rights is a habit of Negroes, especially of the newer generation; that
in their demands for equal rights and privileges they are egged on by
agitators of their own race and are overinsistent in their demands; that
they resent imaginary insults and are generally supersensitive.
6. That they are lacking in civic consciousness. Absence of community
pride and disregard for community welfare are alleged to be the common
failing of Negroes. It is pointed out that the "Black Belt" has been
allowed to run down and become the most unattractive spot in the city.
To this fact is attributed the tolerance of vice within this region.
Negroes generally, it is still believed, can be bought in elections with
money and whiskey. They are charged with having no pride in the beauty
of the city, and with making it unbeautiful by personal and group habits.
7. That they usually carry razors. Whenever a newspaper reporter is in
doubt he gives a razor as the weapon used. Some time ago a woman was found
murdered in a town near Chicago. She had been slashed with a razor, and
the broken blade was left beside her body. The murder was particularly
atrocious, and the murderer left no other clew. Several Negroes were
arrested on suspicion but were released when a white youth confessed
the crime.
A Negro lawyer said:
During the riot a Negro was arrested for having a razor in his
pocket. I was his attorney, and the evidence showed that he
always shaved at work. After having shaved at this particular
time, he put his razor in his pocket and forgot it. He started
home and was accosted by two officers, who searched him
and found the razor. The judge heard the evidence and then
whispered to me that he was going to give the fellow ten days
because "you know your people do carry razors." He asked me
if I thought it all right and I said that I did not.
8. That they habitually "shoot craps." The Negro's supposed fondness
for gambling is a phase of the belief concerning his improvidence. It
is not unusual for whites, in conversation with any Negro whom they do
not know well, when they wish merely to be friendly, to refer to dice.
Employers frequently say that Negroes never keep money because as soon
as it is earned it is thrown away on gambling with dice. The state's
attorney believed that the riot of July, 1919, began over a beach craps
game.
Negroes are believed to be flashy in dress, loving brilliant and gaudy
colors, especially vivid red. Again, they are believed by white unionists
to be natural strike breakers with deliberate intentions to undermine
white living standards. Similarly they are believed to be fond of gin.
Pauperism among them is believed to be unduly high, and they are thought
to have no home life.
II. BACKGROUND OF PREVAILING BELIEFS CONCERNING NEGROES
Lying back of the current opinions about Negroes is a chain of
circumstances involving the history of divers racial groups over hundreds
of years. Slavery placed a stamp upon Negroes which it will require many
more years to erase. Probably there would have been no doubt at all in
the minds of Americans that essential inequalities existed between white
and Negro had not their emancipation developed numerous unsuspected
qualities. Thomas Jefferson is responsible for the observation that "a
Negro could scarcely be found who was capable of tracing and comprehending
the investigations of Euclid." John C. Calhoun asserted that if a Negro
could be found capable of giving the syntax of a Greek verb he would be
disposed to call him human. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to
the Constitution fixed the Negro's status by law, and as soon afterward
as his broader contacts with American institutions provided an outlet
for more human participation, serious questions concerning his fitness
for citizenship were put. The first studies that followed have been
accepted for many years as the standard of judgment.
_Mentality._--Regarding Negro mentality, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, anatomist
of Harvard University, about 1870, said: "It cannot be denied that the
Negro and ourang do afford the point where man and the brute, when the
totality of their organization is considered, most nearly approach each
other."
As a corollary he adds:
The Negro may be a man and a worker in some secondary sense;
he is not a man and a brother in the same full sense in which
every Western Aryan is a man and a brother. To me the Negro
is repulsive.
The Negro is not yet a man and he is not yet a brother to the
white. It will take generations, no man can say how many, to
bring him to the level of supreme Caucasian man. He will have
to reduce the facial angle and he will have to have a more
spacious cranium before he can come into brotherhood with the
more advanced species of mankind.
Professor A. H. Keane, author of _Man Past and Present_, at least gave
some sanction to the disposition to regard the Negro and Caucasian races
as having nothing in common. To quote from his book, published in 1890:
No historic or scientific reason can be alleged why these
races, black or white, should be grouped together under one
appellation if by such name it is meant to convey the idea
that the human type can have any sanguinary affiliation. In
the Negro groups it is absolutely shown that certain African
races, whether born in Africa or America, give an internal
capacity almost identical of 83 cubic inches. It is demonstrated
through monumental, cranial and other testimonials, that the
various types of mankind have ever been permanent; have been
independent of all physical influences for thousands of years.
Dr. J. C. Nott, scientist and author of _Types of Mankind_ said:
It is mind and mind alone which constitutes the proudest
prerogative of man, whose excellence should be measured by his
intelligence and virtue. The Negro and other unintellectual
types have been shown in another chapter to possess heads
much smaller, by actual measurement in cubic inches, than the
white races; and although metaphysicians may dispute about
causes which have debased their intellects and precluded their
expansion, it cannot be denied that these dark races are,
in this particular, greatly inferior to the others of fairer
complexion.
This school of anthropology very clearly belongs to the period of slavery
when it was necessary to rationalize the wishes of persons who, in
order to treat Negroes as if they were mentally different, had first to
convince, then justify, themselves in so doing.
Following them was another type of scientific writers who, while assuming
that Negroes possessed brains, denied that they were like those of white
persons or ever could be.
G. Stanley Hall thought that the Negro's development came to at least
partial standstill at puberty. E. B. Tylor, author of _Anthropology_,
assumed, from the accounts of European teachers who had taught children
of the "lower" races, that after the age of twelve the colored children
fell off and were left behind by the white children. Odum thought that
the Negro child's mental development ended at the age of thirteen. None
of these opinions, however, was the result of experimentation. A. T.
Smith, author of _A Study of Race Psychology_, is responsible for the
association and memory study of what he called a "typical" Negro boy of
sixteen years. He discovered that "the Negro child is psychologically
different from the white child, superior in automatic power but decidedly
inferior in the power of abstraction, judgment and analysis." A. McDonald,
author of _Colored Children--A Psycho-physical Study_, gave physical
and mental tests in 1899 to ninety-one Negro children and concluded
that dulness in colored children sets in between thirteen and sixteen.
M. J. Mayo, author of _The Mental Capacity of the American Negro_, in
1913 studied 150 white and 150 colored high-school pupils in the schools
of New York, and found the efficiency of colored pupils 76 per cent of
that of the white. His selection included a large number of emigrants
from the South, which, he explained, would increase the quality of the
colored group, since only the more ambitious Negroes would seek to better
their conditions by moving North. No account was taken of the defective
school system of the South. Phillips made a study of retardation in the
schools of Philadelphia and concluded that the course of study was not
suited to Negroes, since colored children showed a greater degree of
retardation than the whites.
Charles Carroll's book on the Negro points out by texts drawn from the
Bible that the Negro is a beast created with an articulate tongue and
hands in order that he may serve his white master. To bear out this
theory Carroll's book says that man has been created in the image of
God, but since, as everyone knows, God is not a Negro, it follows that
the Negro is not in the image of God; therefore he is not a man.
There is a plain explanation of the origin of these beliefs. The science
of anthropology itself has remarkably advanced during the past fifty
years. When Negroes emerged from slavery, illiterate and unaccustomed
to freedom, it was natural that their condition should be accepted as
evidence that they could neither learn nor absorb the standards of the
civilization around them. But although their illiteracy, for example,
has decreased from 98 to 27 per cent, the original beliefs persist.
_Morality._--The reputation of Negroes for immorality is based largely on
southern authority and is historically explained by reference to slavery,
in which state immorality is asserted to have been common between the
master and the woman slave. There are many authorities on this character
trait. Perhaps the most pretentious study on this subject is by Howard
O. Odum in "Studies in History, Economics and Public Law," Columbia
University, 1910. It is called _A Study in Race Traits, Tendencies and
Prospects_. Writing of immorality among Negroes, Odum says:
It has generally been assumed that the Negro is differentiated
by a distinct sexual development. It is affirmed that the
sex development crowds out the mental growth. It is affirmed
that the period of puberty in boys and girls is marked by
special manifestations of wildness and uncontrol. It is true,
too, that the practices of the Negroes leave little energy
for moral and mental regeneration. Their lives are filled
with that which is carnal; their thoughts are most filthy
and their morals are generally beyond description. Again,
physical developments from childhood are precocious and the
sex life begins at a ridiculously early period. But granting
these truths, it is doubtful if there is sufficient evidence
to warrant such a conclusion. The Negro reveals a strong
physical nature; the sex impulse is naturally predominant. But
its manifestations are probably no more violent and powerful
than are the expressions of other feelings already suggested.
The Negro's sensuous enjoyment of eating and drinking and
sleeping, relatively speaking, are no less marked than his
sexual propensities. Likewise lack of control and extreme
manifestations characterize the discharge of other impulses.
It is true, again, that the part played by sexual life among
the Negroes is large for a people; but to state that the
Negro is inherently differentiated and hindered by a sexual
development out of proportion to other physical qualities is
quite a different proposition. But whether the question here
raised is answered in the affirmative or not, it still remains
that in the practical life of the Negro his better impulses
are warped and hindered by his unreasonable abuse of sexual
license. And it is safe to suggest that the Negro need hope
for little development of his best qualities until he has
learned to regulate and control his animal impulses.
Statistics on illegitimate births and abortions are frequently quoted
as evidence of Negro immorality. It is further asserted, with rarely
an attempt at correction, that these immoral tendencies are responsible
for rape and attempted rape of white women.
Tradition maintains that it is a part of Negro nature to desire a white
woman and similarly a part of his nature to be lacking in those restraints
and inhibitions which might control this desire. C. H. McCord, author of
_The American Negro as a Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent_, said:
"The average Negro is a child in every essential element of character,
exhibiting those characteristics that indicate a tendency to lawless
impulse and weak inhibition."
Numerous magazine articles and written studies in the South on this
subject have given weight to this belief through sheer repetition.
It is now not necessary to prove assertions or present an array of
instances; they are taken for granted. Allusions to the "well-known
immoral character" of the Negro or his instinctive tendency to commit
sex crimes appear to carry as strong an impress of certainty as proved
conclusions.
_Other supposed social characteristics._--Discussions of each of the
characteristics mentioned and many others are found in the literature
on the subject. It will suffice here to give selections typical of the
trend of descriptions to indicate the manner in which the picture of
the Negro in practically every phase of his life has been set. Of his
industrial habits Odum, in the social study of the Negro, says:
In any discussion of the economic situation this (the question
of the efficiency of Negro labor) is an important consideration.
A portion of the Negroes wander about and seek to get a living
as best they can without working for it; they must necessarily
live at the expense of the other Negroes and the whites. The
number of vagrants in every community is surprisingly large.
They are naturally divided into several groups; those who never
work but wander from place to place, never fixed and without
a home, stealing, begging, and obtaining a living from any
source possible. Such men never work except when forced to do
so in little jobs or on the streets or in the chain gang.
Of the Negro's social affairs he says:
The description of one of these [Negro] dances would be
repulsive. The Negroes have "good times" on such occasions
and will go a long distance to attend. The whole trend of the
dance is toward physical excitation; they are without order
and the influence is totally bad.
Of the condition of the Negro's home:
It will be seen that there is little orderly home life among
the Negroes. Health conditions and daily habits are no better
than the arrangement of the house. Sometimes an entire family
consisting of father, mother, large and small children occupy
the same rooms. Nor do they ventilate, and especially when any
of the inmates are sick they are loath to let in the fresh
air. Physicians testify that three or four often sleep in a
bed together; they do not change clothing before going to bed
in many cases, and often go for many days without a change of
garments. It has been suggested that the personal habits of
the Negroes are filthy; such is the case. Filth and uncleanness
are everywhere predominant.
Of his religion:
In spite of pretentions and superficiality, there is nothing so
real to the Negro as his religion, although it is a different
"reality" from what we commonly expect in religion. The Negro
is more excitable in his nature, and yields more readily to
excitement than does the white man. The more a thing excites
him, the more reality it has for him....
The criminal instinct appears to overbalance any consciousness
which makes for righteousness, and the Negro has little serene
consciousness of a clean record; he is ready to rush at any
surprising or suspicious turn of affairs. The Negro does not
value his word of honor; he apparently cannot always tell
the truth. Only about one in every ten will keep an important
engagement made in seriousness.
The Negro's conception of heaven and hell, God and the devil
are very distinct. Heaven is an eternal resting-place where
he shall occupy the best place. He sings of his heavenly home
in striking contrast to his earthly abode. Perhaps for the
reason that the Negroes have little satisfactory home life,
they expect to have a perfect home in the next life.
Of his finer emotions:
While it is doubtful if there is enough evidence to warrant a
full statement concerning the affections of the Negroes, it is
apparently based on the gregarious impulse and upon a passive
sympathy rather than upon individual emotions intellectually
developed. The emotion is rarely of long duration.... The
Negro mother rarely mourns for her wandering child, or sits
up at night waiting for his return or thinking of him. The
father shows little care except that of losing a laborer from
his work.... The Negro has no loved ones. Numbers were asked
for the names of those whom they considered friends or whom
they loved or those who loved them. The question was put in
various ways with different subjects, but the returns were the
same.... But as a rule the Negro is without friendship among
his own people.
It may help to comprehend the range of conclusions found in the
literature on the subject of Negro traits of character to note the array
of descriptive adjectives employed, thus: sensual, lazy, unobservant,
shiftless, unresentful, emotional, shallow, patient, amiable, gregarious,
expressive, appropriative, childish, religious, unmoral, immoral,
ignorant, mentally inferior, criminal, excitable, imitative, repulsive,
poetic, irresponsible, filthy, unintellectual, bumptious, overassertive,
superficial, indecent, dependent, untruthful, musical, ungrateful, loyal,
sporty, provincial, anthropomorphic, savage, brutish, happy-go-lucky,
careless, plastic, docile, apish, inferior, cheerful.
Much might be said of influences which have operated to counteract the
opinion-making literature as to the utterly hopeless condition of Negroes.
The object of this study, however, is not to attack these conclusions,
but merely to cite them as indicating how certain attitudes detrimental
to racial friendliness and understanding have had their rise.
In academic circles the more balanced opinions of anthropologists are
gaining some headway. Franz Boaz, probably the foremost anthropologist
in the United States, in _The Mind of Primitive Man_, maintains:
Our considerations make it probable that the wide differences
between the manifestations of the human mind in various stages
of culture may be due almost entirely to the form of individual
experience, which is determined by the geographical and social
environment of the individual. It would seem that, in different
races, the organization of the mind is on the whole alike,
and that the variations of mind found in different races
do not exceed, perhaps not even reach, the amount of normal
individual variation in each race. It has been indicated that,
notwithstanding this similarity in the form of individual mental
processes, the expression of mental activity of a community
tends to show a characteristic historical development.
This author in an article in the _Nation_ for December, 1920, comments
thus on Lothrop Stoddard's book, _The Rising Tide of Color_:
Mr. Stoddard's book is one of the long series of publications
devoted to the self-admiration of the white race, which begins
with Gobineau and comes down to us through Chamberlain and,
with increasingly passionate appeal, through Madison Grant
to Mr. Stoddard. The newer books of this type try to bolster
up their unscientific theories by an amateurish appeal to
misunderstood discoveries relating to heredity and give in
this manner a scientific guise to their dogmatic statements
which misleads the public. For this reason the books must be
characterized as vicious propaganda, and gain an attention
not warranted by an intrinsic merit in their learning or their
logic.
Each race is exceedingly variable in all of its features, and
we find in the white race, as well as in all other races, all
grades of intellectual capacity, from the imbecile to the man
of high intellectual power. It is true that intellectual power
is hereditary in the individual, and that the healthy, the
physically and mentally developed individuals of a race, if
they marry among themselves, are liable to have offspring of a
similar excellence; but it is equally true that the inferior
individuals in a race will also have inferior offspring. If,
therefore, it were entirely a question of eugenic development
of humanity, then the aid of the eugenist would be to suppress
not the gifted strains of other races, but rather the inferior
strains of our own race. A selection of the intelligent,
energetic and highly endowed individuals from all over the
world would not by any means leave the white race as the only
survivors, but would leave an assembly of individuals who
would probably represent all the different races of man now
in existence.
Jean Finot, in _Race Prejudice_, says:
When we go through the list of external differences which appear
to divide men, we find literally nothing which can authorize
their division into superior and inferior beings, into masters
and pariahs. If this division exists in our thought, it only
came there as the result of inexact observations and false
opinions drawn from them.
The science of inequality is emphatically a science of white
people. It is they who have invented it and set it going, who
have maintained, cherished, and propagated it, thanks to their
observations and their deductions. Deeming themselves greater
than men of other colours, they have elevated into superior
qualities all the traits which are peculiar to themselves,
commencing with the whiteness of the skin and the pliancy of
the hair. But nothing proves that these vaunted traits are
traits of real superiority.
W. I. Thomas, in _Sex and Society_, concludes his discussion of relative
mentality with this statement:
The real variable is the individual, not the race. In the
beginning--perhaps as the result of a mutation or series
of mutations--a type of brain developed which has remained
relatively fixed in all times and among all races. This
brain will never have any faculty in addition to what it now
possesses, because as a type of structure it is as fixed as
the species itself, and is indeed a mark of species. It is
not apparent that we are greatly in need of another faculty,
or that we could make use of it even if by a chance mutation
it should emerge, since with the power of abstraction we are
able to do any class of work we know anything about.
III. TYPES OF SENTIMENTS AND ATTITUDES
In the South the relations between the white and Negro races are
determined by custom as well as law, which, however, permit the close
personal relationships of family servants. In the North, when these
relations become more impersonal and contacts are widened through change
of occupation from domestic service to industry, these close personal ties
are weakened. There is no established rule of conduct binding on whites
and Negroes in their relations with each other; and although traditional
beliefs may influence present relations in the North, they do not always
dominate them. So it happens that there are to be found shades of opinion
concerning Negroes varying from deliberate indifference to vituperative
abuse of Negroes, whatever the subject, depending on one's beliefs about
them. The selections of sentiment which follow are examples collected
at random over the city--through interviews and discussions, from group
publications, speeches and reports. They illustrate the real sentiments
that white persons express when brought into contact with Negroes, or
when their opinions are solicited.
1. THE EMOTIONAL BACKGROUND
_Hostile sentiment._--The refusal of Policeman Callahan to arrest Stauber,
a white youth accused of throwing stones which resulted in the drowning
of Eugene Williams, is regarded as the significant incident precipitating
the riot of 1919 (see p. 4). Callahan was dismissed from the force, but
reinstated. One year later, when questioned by an investigator for the
Commission, he gave his racial philosophy freely in the following remarks:
So far as I can learn the black people have since history began
despised the white people and have always fought them.... It
wouldn't take much to start another riot, and most of the white
people of this district are resolved to make a clean-up this
time.... If a Negro should say one word back to me or should
say a word to a white woman in the park, there is a crowd of
young men of the district, mostly ex-service men, who would
procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder with me if trouble
should come from the incident.
The following is from a letter written by a white employee of Albert
Pick & Company:
Negroes in street cars refuse to double up with others of their
race, but seem to delight in sitting beside some dainty white
girl.
The Thirty-fifth Street cars are crowded by low-grade
"plantation niggers" who crowd on at Ashland Avenue via windows
and doors, then awkwardly step and fall over passengers; it is
maddening. About this time girls from Albert Pick & Company, the
Magnus Company, and the tailoring establishments are crowded
together breast to breast with Negroes. Often he falls asleep
and leans on his white seatmate's shoulder.
Laws should be urged preventing intermarriage.
Assaults upon white women are frequent, but hushed up by fear
of newspaper publicity, and the Negro is thus encouraged in
his felony.
In cases where a white girl is involved in an assault case
by a colored man, the white woman should be shielded, and her
name withheld from the newspapers and public, before and after
the trial. This will prevent race riots.
A movement is now afoot to declare a silent boycott against
employers of colored help.
A physician living on Oakwood Boulevard said: "The increasing amount
generally of sex immorality is being contributed to by mixing Negroes
and whites in schools and parks."
A teacher in the Felsenthal School said:
The colored people are coming from the South all the time,
for political purposes. It's propaganda for the colored man
to sit down by the white woman, and not to double up to make
room for the whites. Their papers tell them to do it. I was
the only white person in an empty car one day and a colored
man came in and took the seat beside me.
_Fear._--From _White Americans_ circulated in Chicago:
In the United States Negroes not only vote and hold office, but
the Negro vote is the deciding factor in the national elections,
and also in many of the northern cities, and they trade their
vote for jobs and offices and other privileges. The Negroes
control the great city of Philadelphia, and the press said the
Negro delegates at the Republican Convention in Chicago openly
offered to sell their support to the presidential candidate
who would pay the most money. Just think this thing over,
you sovereign United States citizens: the Negroes control the
elections, and thus your law-makers, judges, and officials;
and the Negroes have so much pull and confidence, that they
not only defend their political rights, but they start riots
and race wars, and openly threaten that they are going to make
the white folks stand around.
_Fear and pity._--A resident in the 6600 block on Langley Avenue said:
A colored family lives next door north of me, and you'll be
surprised when I tell you that I haven't been able to open my
bedroom window on that side to air that room for three years.
I couldn't think of unlocking the windows because their window
is so near somebody could easily step across into this house.
It's awful to have to live in such fear of your life.
When asked if she considered her neighbors so dangerous as that, she said:
Well, no, the woman seems pretty nice. I see her out in the back
yard occasionally and bid her the time of day out of charity.
You can't help but pity them, so I am charitable and speak.
Where the danger really is, is that you never know who's in
their house; they bring such trash to the neighborhood, even
if they are good and decent. How do I know what kind of people
this woman next door associates with? There's awful-looking
people sit on the front porch sometimes. Why, I couldn't sit
on my porch on the hottest day because I'd be afraid they
would come out any minute. And what white person will sit on
a porch next door to a porch with black ones on it? Not me,
anyhow, nor you either I hope.
_Hostile but resigned._--A resident near Dorchester Avenue and Sixtieth
Street said:
I have nothing against the black man as a black man. He comes
into my place of business (drug-store) and I sell him. Not
many come in, as there aren't a lot of colored people around
Sixty-third and Woodlawn or Dorchester. But I don't want to
live with niggers any more than you or any other white person
does. People who say, "I like the colored people and don't see
why others can't get along with them" don't talk practical
common sense. Theoretically all this talk is all right, but
you get a white man of this sort to come right down and live
with a nigger and he won't do it.
Niggers are different from whites and always will be, and that
is why white people don't want them around. But the only thing
we can do, it seems to me, is make the best of it and live
peaceably with them. The North can never do what the South
does--down there it is pure autocracy. I might say like Russia.
That might have worked here in the North from the start, but
can't be started now, and we wouldn't want such autocracy
anyway. They are citizens, and it is up to us to teach them to
be good ones. How it can be done I don't know--it will have to
come slow, and no one can give a solution offhand. Everybody
says, "We don't want the niggers with us." Well, here they
are, and we can't do anything. Must let them live where they
want to and go to school where they want to, and we don't want
to force their right away.
It is not uncommon to find in some circles and with many individuals
a resolute indisposition to discuss any phase of the Negro problem.
Convictions regarding the race are so firmly set and hostile that no
argument or appeal to fair-mindedness can alter their position.
"Eye Witness," a special writer for the _Chicago Tribune_, encountered
this state of mind in interviewing whites and Negroes for a series of
articles on the Negro question which appeared in the _Tribune_ in May,
1919. He characterized it as insensate and dangerous. His own statement,
published May 4, 1919, said:
Among men like publicists and administrators of large affairs,
who, when they discuss the problems and troubles of their
race, are wont to speak in a rational, or at least mannerly
way, there was often an unfeeling kind of don't-give-a-damn
cry when they talked on this subject that made one wonder how
they had managed so well in maintaining a human and successful
relationship with their white associates in business and with
their employees.
I heard more, far more, insensate language from the lips of
white men than of black men throughout the series of interviews.
The horrible part of that, to me, was that when a white employer
more or less accountable for the well-being of colored workmen,
or a publicist entrusted with a pen that forms and directs
opinions, had railed about "these damn niggers" they appeared
to think they had said something rather gallant and decisive,
for they would smile fatuously and expect acquiescence.
And more terrible than the language was the insensate state
of mind such language betrayed. The only way one could avoid
the suspicion that one was listening to a potential lunatic
or a desperately stupid person without a human or a community
sense, was to allow much for the vehemence of the American
tongue and to concede that these men don't mean one-tenth of
what they say. If they did they would be fomenters of race wars.
2. SENTIMENTAL RELATIONSHIPS
_Sentiment for the "old family servants."_--A white physician born in
the South said:
My father owned slaves. He looked out for them; told them what
to do. He loved them and they loved him. I was brought up during
and after the war. I had a "black mammy" and she was devoted
to me and I to her; and I played with Negro children. In a
way I'm fond of the Negro; I understand him and he understands
me; but the bond between us is not as close as it was between
my father and his slaves. On the other hand, my children have
grown up without black playmates and without a "black mammy."
The attitude of my children is less sympathetic toward the
Negroes than my own. They don't know each other.
_Paternal relationship._--In testimony before the Commission a witness
said:
The prejudice against the colored people in the South isn't as
strong in some instances as it is in the North. It's a queer
thing, but the white man in the South, and the white woman,
too, has a sort of paternal feeling that he must look after him
and that the colored man's interests are better in his hands
than if he is left to drift for himself. I don't state that
as an actual fact, but I believe it is true. That is their
point of view. They don't hate the colored man. They don't
dislike him, but I should say this, that they won't take him
into their homes. They don't dislike him, provided he keeps
his place. I believe the white people of the South think more
of the Negro than the white people of the North.
3. ABSTRACT JUSTICE
A trained nurse of Woodlawn said:
I meet colored people only on the cars. There are none anywhere
around here, I believe. I don't know how I would feel if they
came to Woodlawn to live. But they must live, and I hear their
quarters are getting too small. It seems that Chicago ought to
let them live somewhere. Some people treat Negroes terrible
and I think that is all wrong. Why can't we act respectably
toward colored people on the cars and treat them nice on the
street? We surely don't want to be like the people in the
South who make colored persons get off the walk when they come
along. But I see white people here almost that bad--can't see
a black man live.
The pastor of a church in Woodlawn said:
I have come to no final conclusion as to the best policy to
pursue in the adjustment of the race problem. I am thinking
about it a great deal and am deeply concerned over the whole
matter. In the present state of popular mind, there is no doubt
but property values are depreciated by the presence of Negro
tenants or property owners in residential sections. However,
if everyone felt as I do, it would not be so. I mean, provided
that the same general social standards were observed by all
nationalities in the city. It would be very fine, it seems to
me, to maintain certain standards in each neighborhood. Why
not bring pressure to bear on white landlords and make them
keep their property up to a given average standard in the
community, that only such a class of people will rent or buy
as are already there? I am very anxious that the Negro shall
be treated fairly. I do not want him to feel that I have stood
in the way of his opportunities and his rights.
A professor at the University of Chicago said:
The final solution, it seems to me, must come as a result of
honest and successful efforts for mutual understanding between
the races. There must be apparent on the part of the white
race an attempt to treat the Negro with justice, and I feel
sure that he will respond. I do not think the black race, as
a race, desires intermarriage more than the white race, yet
the assertion to the contrary is much overworked by the white
opposition in these neighborhoods.
A minister said:
All I want for the Negro is justice--then I think the economic
laws will settle this problem. Let the people interested try
justice; they will find it will solve the race problem faster
than any other course, just as it will solve any other problem.
Treat the bad Negro just as rough as you treat the bad white
man, but acclaim the good Negro after the same manner of your
acclamation of the good white man.
4. SENTIMENTS STRONGER THAN RACE PREJUDICE
_Class kinship stronger than race._--A Swedish employee in a department
store said:
We have quite a number of Negro neighbors where I live, and
several black men work with me, and I want to say I think
they are just as good as anybody. There are classes of people
in every race, and of course there is a rough element among
the blacks. Some highbrows try to make out that they are
representative, but I think opposition to the Negro in Chicago
comes from the "swell" class. I do not have any different
feeling for them than for the same kind of people in any other
race. I think race relations will get better in Chicago. The
workingman has learned that the Negro will treat him right
when he is treated right, and as soon as the other folks find
that out, things will be all right.
The secretary of the Cook County Labor Party said:
I have thought about this problem a good deal, and I think you
will find it is the so-called middle class that is making all
the trouble. The laboring-man does not care who his neighbor
is, so long as he is a good neighbor. I think you can trace
most of the racial activities to jealousy on the part of a
certain class of American citizens who are not any too wealthy
and feel constrained to maintain a sort of fictitious position
in life at the expense of anybody, in this case the Negroes.
You will find that the very well-to-do are not nearly so much
aroused over the problem.
A Japanese said:
I think it is simply a matter of race prejudice, which of course
means first of all that the color is not acceptable, while, in
the second place, they were imported to the United States as
slaves, and thus it always occurs in the American mind that
they are a lower class of people. Furthermore, as they were
slaves and the American does not like them, they don't have
equal opportunities to educate themselves up to such a degree
which means no more than environment. In the last place, they
want to keep away from them. I think it might be said that
they are willing to receive lower wages, which tends to lower
the wage system; thus the American worker suffers a good deal.
In the whole process the Negroes have been kept out of social
and political activities that would have given them a chance
to develop. Allow them to have these activities in the future
and they will make more rapid progress than they have even in
the past.
_General historical comparisons._--A Jewish resident of the West Side said:
I believe that the segregation movement is wrong because it
is unjust and because it is devoid of any principle whatever.
It has not risen out of the consideration of the needs of the
colored people, nor out of consideration of real advantages that
the whites might thereby gain. What is back of race prejudice?
Nothing more than the spirit of superiority and selfishness
which moves the aristocrats to move out of a neighborhood as
soon as a few common people move in. This is here too prevalent.
The segregation movement has its parallel in history. Who does
not remember the old Jewish Ghetto of Amsterdam, Frankfort,
etc., or the Pale of Russia? What has this segregation done
for the Jews? It curtailed their rise, depriving them of an
opportunity to develop, and I foresee the same result in the
new segregation movement, and therefore deem it a great public
evil and moral issue.
5. TRADITIONAL SOUTHERN BACKGROUND
A window dresser said:
I am from the South, and I am used to seeing the Negro kept
in his place. I would colonize them, every one of them, and
make them stay where they are put. I would colonize them in
Africa if I had to do it. There's where they came from and
there's where they belong. Of course, some few northern folks
say that they were taken away against their own wills, but I
say they ought to go back against their own wills.
The woman manager of a tailor shop, Fifty-fifth Street, said: "I am a
southerner, and I feel the way they all do about it. I guess you know
what I mean. I think the nigger should stay in his place."
6. GROUP SENTIMENTS
_Fear of social censure._--A property owner at Langley Avenue and
Fifty-fifth Street said:
"I am not proud to be living on the same street with Negroes,
so I never tell my friends--they would say: 'You must move
out.'"
George L. Giles Post of the American Legion is a Negro post with
headquarters at the South Side Branch of the Community Service.
Invitations to a musicale and dramatic entertainment for the benefit
of ex-service men were sent to all the local posts by the Community
Service. It was responded to by the adjutant of George L. Giles Post,
who received a reply from the executive secretary saying:
I am quite sure you will understand that our sending one to
the George L. Giles Post was a slip. Will you kindly let me
know if there are other Posts of colored men in the city?
Similar recognition of the force of public opinion may be found in
industry. The manager of a large industrial plant, speaking of Negro
workmen, said: "I have a feeling that white workers would object to
Negroes in any position but that of common laborers, although I have no
basis for this opinion." Another said: "I have heard whites remark that
they wouldn't want to work here if many colored were employed but none
left on that account."
7. ATTITUDES DETERMINED BY CONTACTS
_No contacts but a hostile attitude._--A resident at Drexel Avenue and
Sixty-fifth Street said:
I don't see many niggers around here; most of them are west
of Cottage Grove Avenue. I never had any dealings with them,
so can't tell you anything much. I know I don't want niggers
living next door to me, but I can't tell you why. Do you want
them next-door neighbors to you? There are some living down
in the next block--two families of them--between Sixty-fourth
and Sixty-fifth, and I guess they are pretty wild, but I have
never seen them. It's just what people tell me. I never had
any dealings with them.
_Generalization from a particular experience._--A teacher in the Wendell
Phillips High School said:
You can't trust the best of them. The minute you have your
back turned something disappears. They are the worst bunch of
little thieves I ever struck. A few weeks ago I had a colored
girl helping me fix costumes in my little office. During the
hour she was in there I was absent about five minutes. She
had hardly got out of the building before I discovered that a
dollar had disappeared out of my purse. I questioned her for
thirty minutes next morning, but not a word of confession.
Another time I had small change in the top drawer of my desk.
While I was teaching a class, two girls slipped into the office
and helped themselves to half of it. I surprised them when I
unexpectedly entered the office to get something. Everything
here that isn't tied or watched walks off. It didn't used to
be this way before the colored came in so thick; then I never
locked my office, and now I have everything under lock.
The proprietor of a woman's dress shop on Sixty-third Street said:
Little of my trade is colored, possibly 2 per cent. We do not
cater to colored trade. We do not want it. If colored people
come in, we will sell them if they buy quick and get out.
Our trade does not care to deal where colored people are also
accommodated.... You will find it pretty hard to be neutral in
Chicago. The more I know of niggers, the more I am convinced
that there is no good nigger but a dead one. I had a colored
helper who wanted tips every time he was asked to render
services outside of his recognized regular duties. I gave him
a good salary, $18 per week, and yet he was never satisfied,
and one day he got hold of the keys to the cash drawer and
ran away with $300.
_Exaggerated notion of prosperity._--A physician said:
I think that the solution of the race problem can come only by
recognition by white men of the Negroes' potential equality.
They are only fifty years out of slavery, and in that fifty
years they have progressed faster than the white race has
done in a hundred years. The Negro man of forty today is less
advanced than the white man of forty, but I expect his son
to be almost on a par with our sons, and his grandson will be
every whit as good. The husband of the colored woman who has
been getting our dinners for us for a number of years is making
more killing steers for Armour than I am. He makes $16 a day.
They have $12,000 worth of Liberty bonds. They are sending
all of their relatives through high school and declare they
will put them through the University of Chicago. In fact we
are compelling the Negro to get an education, and he cannot
help but progress. Colonizing the Negro is merely making him
bitter and postponing the day of settlement. Presently we shall
have with us under such a régime a race of comparative equals
very much disgruntled by the unfair treatment accorded them. I
think you will find that practically all the professional men
in this building, at least a very large percentage of them,
think as I do on this subject.
_Contact with servants._--A resident of Woodlawn said:
Practically my only contact with Negroes is with servants and
laundresses. I have had colored women working for me for many
years, and the majority of them I could not trust outside my
sight. By that I don't mean they would steal--they just weren't
dependable. It is all wrong for colored children and white
children to be in school together. There should be separate
schools, because the two races of children are as different
in everything as in their color.
The interviewing of hundreds of white persons, members of practically
every social class, reveals little information regarding the sources of
their beliefs about Negroes. Some think them instinctive; some hold that
their opinions are a result of observation; some, who make discernible
effort to stem the current of prejudiced views and remain fair, have
read the books of Negroes. But by far the greater number either admit
or otherwise give evidence of having absorbed their views from tradition.
Information by word of mouth, unquestioned statements, uncorrected
accounts, all continue to add credence to any current interpretation of an
act involving Negroes. The fault lies for the most part at the information
source. Fairly to judge the Negro group, or any member thereof, there
should be some unquestioned basis of fact, yet the assumption is common
that almost any Negro can be judged by what has been observed in the
conduct of the family cook or chauffeur, who no more represents the
whole or the majority of Negroes than a white cook or chauffeur can be
said to represent the whole or the majority of the white race.
IV. SELF-ANALYSIS BY FIFTEEN WHITE CITIZENS
To secure definite information upon this background twenty representative
white persons were selected at random, and eighteen carefully prepared
suggestive questions were put to each of them. The purpose was to draw
out the raw material of their unqualified opinions on the question
of the Negro, and to ascertain as far as possible the background in
their early experiences. The questions were suggestive in order to
compel a disclosure of mental attitudes. The only qualification in the
selection of persons was their probable capacity for self-analysis and
a willingness to answer. The length and difficulty of the questions put
made it necessary to limit the selection of persons to a few, who in
appreciation of the inquiry, could and would give it a careful study.
Fifteen of these persons entered into the spirit of the inquiry and
submitted the results of their self-scrutiny.
These fifteen include business and professional men and women, none
of whom, however, is actively associated with racial movements. They
represent probably a fair sample of sentiment and at the same time
ability to analyze accurately their own feelings and opinions.
The questions put were as follows:
1. Have you formed definite opinions about Negroes? Briefly,
what are they?
2. Do Negroes in your opinion possess distinguishing traits
of mentality or character?
3. As well as you can remember, on what facts, authorities,
information, sources, do you base your opinions?
4. What incidents or experiences involving Negroes either in
Chicago or elsewhere stand out in your memory?
5. As a child, did you have contacts of any kind with Negroes?
6. Can you recall any early prohibitions of association by
word or printed warnings of any sort, implied prohibitions in
institutional or social arrangements?
7. When were you first conscious of a racial difference?
8. Whom of your friends, acquaintances, favorite authors,
scholars, etc., do you regard as best fitted to speak with
authority on the question?
9. Do you ever inquire for information on this subject? Whom
do you ask? What Negroes do you know whom you would consider
leaders among colored people in Chicago? in the United States?
10. Did you ever read a Negro periodical? What did you think
of it?
11. What subjects of discussion most frequently lead to the
Negro?
12. In what circles is this subject most frequently discussed?
13. If it were in your power to make whatever social adjustment
you deemed wise, what disposition would you make of the Negro
population?
14. If Negroes obstinately objected to your plan and you still
had power, what would you do?
15. What do you think of the following propositions:
_a_) When you educate Negroes you increase their
demands. Either their education should be curtailed
or modified or their demands granted.
_b_) Prejudice has its principal basis in fear.
_c_) Isolating groups favors the unhampered
development of special group prejudices. Do prejudices
form a background of conflicts? The greater the
isolation, the greater the prejudices and, as would
naturally follow, the greater the chances of conflict.
_d_) A minority of the population should not expect
complete justice at the hands of an overwhelming
majority.
Their answers are given separately. The letters used to designate the
different persons are arbitrary.
A--
I have rather definite opinions of Negroes. As a class they
cannot be depended upon. They are shiftless and really must
be treated like children. I make allowance for the fact that
they have not the years of education back of them.
My opinions are based on visits made to the South and on
information obtained from relatives who live in the South
as well as from the colored help we have had. As a child my
contact with Negroes began with our Negro house servants,
and my first consciousness of a racial difference came while
visiting relatives in the South. I know but two persons who
might speak with authority on the race question. They are Edgar
A. Bancroft and Miss Mary McDowell. It is very seldom that I
inquire for information on this subject. People whom I know
are not interested in the problem.
The only Negroes whom I know are my present colored help and
those who have worked for me. I don't know whom to consider
leaders among the colored people either in Chicago or in
the United States. Concerning the Negro periodicals, I have
occasionally read copies of one of their newspapers which bore
out my opinion of their simple minds. Discussion of domestic
help and of newspaper articles about Negroes and sociological
conditions most frequently lead to the discussion of the
Negro in my circle. If it were in my power to do so, I would
segregate Negroes as to living quarters and do all possible
to help them educate and help themselves.
Concerning proposition (_a_) I agree that if you educate
Negroes, you increase their demands, but I also believe that
as they become educated, greater demands will arise in their
own groups.
In my opinion prejudice has its principal basis in the fact
that one can't depend upon Negroes.
I do not believe that it is necessarily true that a minority
of the population should not expect complete justice at the
hands of the majority if the proper appeal is made.
B--
I have more or less definite opinions about Negroes. I
believe that as a race they are entitled to more leniency and
consideration than we would give to adult whites because as a
race they are not as mature as whites. I think it is unfortunate
that we have such a race question to deal with, but we ought
to meet it squarely and insist that under the law Negroes
are entitled to equal protection and equal consideration. I
do not believe in any attempt at social equality because the
antipathy between whites and Negroes is so acute that such
attempt would not only break down itself but it would lead to
serious race difficulties. I think the Negro race has as much
right to protect its race purity as the white race. I believe
Negro women are entitled to the same protection from white men
that we demand on behalf of white women against black men. I
believe Negroes should have decent housing conditions, proper
social outlets and opportunities to earn a living at the same
wages paid white men for the same class and character of work.
They should share equally in the benefits of government, with
particular reference to schools, bathing-beaches, playgrounds,
parks, etc. They should be protected against exploitation by
employers, property owners, merchants, etc.
I do think Negroes possess distinguishing traits of both
mentality and character. For many years now I have come into
more or less personal contact with Negroes. I have been in
contact with them in public schools, in colleges, in politics
and in civic work. I cannot say that any particular incidents
or experiences stand out in my memory.
My opinions are based upon my personal observation, personal
contacts with Negroes and discussions with other white persons
having independent contacts. As a child I had practically no
real contact of any kind with Negroes. I don't recall now
any Negro children in any of my primary grades, and while
there were Negroes in my native city, they were few and in a
neighborhood far removed from my own home. I imagine that I
was first conscious of a racial difference when I first saw
a Negro.
I don't recall any early prohibition against association with
Negroes although I do recall clearly that the attitude of my
family and associates, generally, was not one of approval.
Negroes were regarded as an inferior race, and I think as a
child I gathered the impression that contact with them was to
be avoided. My feeling is that if in normal circumstances I had
been thrown into more or less contact with Negroes, prohibition
against association, except where absolutely necessary, would
have been forthcoming.
I have never formally asked for information on the subject, but
I have discussed the matter with a good many people and have
given thought to it. I know a good many Negroes, not only in
Chicago but outside, but I don't know many of them intimately.
Among the leaders of the Negroes in Chicago are Dr. Bentley,
Dr. George C. Hall, Edward H. Morris, Edward H. Wright, Louis
B. Anderson, Oscar De Priest. In the United States, since
the death of Booker T. Washington, I imagine that two of the
outstanding men are Mr. Moton and Professor Du Bois.
I am a subscriber to the _Crisis_. In general my feeling is
that the tendency of this periodical is to stimulate and foster
race feeling among the Negroes. I don't say this critically. It
may be the best thing to do, considering all the circumstances,
and anything that will make for growth in self-respect,
character and initiative on the part of the Negroes is to be
commended even if, at the same time, race spirit is fostered
and developed.
Generally speaking, I find that discussion most frequently leads
to the Negroes when there are questions of lynching, race riots,
crimes or disturbances in which Negroes are involved. It also
comes up in connection with public schools, churches, parks
and public transportation systems. I had it arise recently in
connection with the Naval Academy at Annapolis. My experience
is that this subject is most frequently discussed among those
interested in social problems.
I used to think that the Negro question might be best solved
if the Negroes would be colonized in some favorable spot in
Africa under an American protectorate until they were capable
of self-government. I realize, however, that no such scheme
ought to be attempted if the Negroes obstinately objected, and
in that event I would see to it, if I had the power, that they
were protected from exploitation, were given a square deal
and had the equal protection of the laws. They should have
schools adequate to their needs and average living conditions.
I believe the Negro race should be educated, but I believe
at the same time that the most solid foundation for the race
is education in accordance with the ideas of the late Booker
T. Washington as I understand those ideas. While I think this
type of education will mean more for the race in the long run
I believe at the same time that individual Negroes should have
an opportunity fully to develop individual capacities.
I think there is an element of fear in the prejudice of
Negroes, but I don't think this is the chief element. I think
the real basis for this prejudice is a racial antipathy that
is instinctive and fundamental in the white race. I imagine
that in individual cases where this prejudice does not exist
it is not because it was not there originally, but because it
has been overcome by reason and education. It isn't unlikely
that this prejudice is in the main grounded upon an instinct
in the white race to keep its strain pure and strong.
It seems to me that it isn't isolation so much as it is contact
that favors the development of race prejudice. If the Negroes
had never been brought out of Africa, we wouldn't feel the
prejudice that we do. Or, if they were restricted to one or
two southern states, prejudice in other parts of the country
would rapidly disappear. A community that has no Negro problem
is relatively free from prejudice. It is when the two races
come into contact that prejudices run riot and race conflicts
result. My own opinion is that if you should scatter the Negro
population throughout Chicago and its suburbs and put one
or two Negro families in every block, race prejudice would
increase enormously.
A minority of the population will not get complete justice
at the hands of an overwhelming majority. But this is true of
all minorities, whether racial, political, or religious. All
we can do is to keep working for an approximation to ideal
justice. A minority has the right to demand, and a majority
should be willing to grant, substantial justice and that is
all that can be expected in the present state of civilization.
C--
My opinion is that we must cling to the ideal of Lincoln--the
right of every human being to equality in the real sense of
the term. I have found, however, that Negroes are dull and
sensitive. These opinions are based upon observation at Tuskegee
and in this school--[the Lewis Institute]. Among my outstanding
experiences is a visit made to Tuskegee and meeting Booker
T. Washington. The visit showed great hope for the Negro. As
a child I had no contact aside from living in the same city
with them.
It has always been considered unwise in the circles in which
I moved for whites and blacks to associate socially. I first
became conscious of a race difference when a very small
child--about three years of age.
Booker T. Washington, Cable, Dunbar, southerners and northerners
who have traveled in the South are probably best fitted to
speak for Negroes. I do inquire of both Negroes and whites
for information. The only Negroes I know are working people.
Robert Jackson, alderman, and Ed. Green, lawyer. Booker T.
Washington's successor. I have read one Negro paper. It was
insistent in a very fair way on the political rights of the
Negro. Good. Lynchings, lying, stealing, and the attacking of
little girls are the subject of discussion that most frequently
lead to the Negro, and these occur principally among men who
have seen Negroes socially and women who have hired them.
As a solution I would colonize them in Africa, and if they
objected I would use all peaceable means to force them to go.
Regarding the propositions: Their education should be increased
and the demands produced by education met.
Prejudice has its basis in race repulsion. Unless the isolation
is African colonization, there will be group prejudices.
Every man or group should demand and get complete justice.
D--
I assume that it is a fact recognized by science that Negroes
are so different from whites that the two races cannot
be amalgamated. This fact interposes a barrier to social
relationships. I share in the general dislike of Negroes as
neighbors or traveling companions on the street cars. The white
race is responsible for the existence of the Negro problem in
America, and must submit patiently to the penalty for many years
to come. Lincoln's second inaugural is the best expression of
this thought. The Negro race is extraordinarily docile and easy
to handle. If surrounded by good living conditions and given a
proper education they would be good citizens. The progress of
their race since slavery, considering their many handicaps, has
been very creditable. The prejudice against them is probably
the most deep-seated of all American prejudices, and must be
reckoned with as one of the great factors in the problem.
In my opinion they are characterized by distinctly inferior
mentality, deficient moral sense, shiftlessness, good nature,
and a happy disposition. I have in mind no special facts,
authorities or sources of information on which I base my
opinions. I do, however, recognize the bearing of Christianity
on the problem, and find it impossible to formulate a viewpoint
which I can reconcile with the demands of Christianity.
We had a Negro family chauffeur some years ago who misconducted
himself so seriously as to have caused a very considerable
increase in the family prejudice against the race. If he had
been an Irish man our prejudice against him would not have
extended to his race. As a child I had no contacts with Negroes,
excepting one or two fellow-pupils in public schools of whom
I saw very little, and a few servants in the neighborhood who
were of the old-fashioned type, of pleasant memory.
I can recall no early prohibitions of association with Negroes.
There were so few in my neighborhood that they constituted no
real problem. As to implied prohibitions, I suppose I understood
at a very early age the existing social difference, although
I remember no instances of this.
I cannot remember when I first became conscious of a racial
difference, but I assume it was at a very early age.
I do not know that I can cite any friends, acquaintances,
favorite authors or scholars well fitted to speak with authority
on the question. Lincoln's views always seemed true to me, while
I have not been so favorably impressed by southern writers.
Every southerner I have ever met, no matter how reasonable
on other subjects, seemed to be incapable of looking at this
question with an open mind. His confidence that he knew all
about the Negro and the problem seemed absolute, and therefore
he was not in position to learn. I occasionally inquire for
information on this subject. Naturally most of the men of whom
I have made inquiries have been white, as I come in contact
with very few Negroes. I have, however, talked with Negroes
who have expressed their willingness to be segregated if the
segregation was complete enough to rid their district of all
whites, and give them fair living conditions. I cannot say that
I know any Negroes, although there are a few with whom I have
sufficient acquaintance to talk with them occasionally. As to
their leaders in Chicago, I have assumed that their political
leaders and their ministers were their leaders, the ministers
having a larger place of leadership than ministers among white
people. I used to come in contact occasionally with colored
lawyers who were capable men, and I believe leaders of their
race, and I understand that there is a colored physician, whose
name I cannot recall, who is the real leader of the best Negroes
in Chicago. Nationally I could not name any since the death
of Booker Washington, whom I very much admired, excepting Du
Bois whom I have heard speak, and with whose views I do not
sympathize. I do not remember ever reading a Negro periodical.
As I live on the South Side the subject of discussion most
frequently leading to the Negro is their encroachment on white
residence districts. Two years ago my church was given up to
a colored congregation, and the church into which we were
transferred is seriously threatened by the same invasion.
Property interests in a large part of the South Side bring up
the question, as does the unpleasantness of meeting them on the
street cars. I do not hear serious constructive discussion in
any circle. The invasion is deplored in all circles, social,
business, church and others.
I would not undertake to make any social adjustment on my
present information, except segregation of the Negroes in a
part of the South Side, and this only if it had the approval of
their own leaders. I do not approve of "Jim Crow" street cars
for Chicago, although I would not insist on their abandonment
in southern cities where they are already used, and I would
not favor any radical change if the better Negroes obstinately
objected.
I believe in educating Negroes, even though I am not sure
to what it will lead. I hope that as the race progresses the
prejudice against it will be modified. Still this prejudice is
so very great that I think it would be foolish for the Negroes
ever to seek a high station through demands. Probably many of
their demands should be granted, but they will make greater
progress by reckoning with the prejudice, and continuing their
present conciliatory attitude.
I do not believe that prejudice is based on fear. There is,
of course, a well-founded fear of many individual Negroes, but
I do not believe that the white race is conscious of any fear
of the Negro race as such. I think the prejudice is based on
the relative inferiority of the Negro race.
As a general proposition this is doubtless true that isolation
fosters prejudice. As applied to Negroes, however, it is
doubtful whether it would produce more conflict than the
present system. I would feel more hopeful of the overcoming
of the prejudice through more intimate contact with Negroes
if the difference between Negroes and white men were not so
fundamental.
As an abstract proposition the despotism of a majority cannot
be justified. I would say it is a very bad doctrine to spread
among a majority, but has in it a certain amount of practical
truth which the minority would do well to bear in mind.
E--
Negroes do possess distinguishing traits of mentality and
character. My opinions are based upon my personal observation.
As I knew the Negro in the South he was inclined to be indolent,
shiftless and lacking in a high sense of honesty, though
religious. His disposition is a happy one, and often his good
will is shown in many ways of gratitude and faithfulness. These
traits I have seen expressed in service as servants, in the
cotton fields, in their homes, and on town streets. In Chicago,
when the Negro has long been a resident here, having larger
advantages in education and employment, I find the colored
man honest in business and other transactions, diligent at
work, and inoffensive, but firmly standing for his citizenship
rights, and wanting to live peaceably. My Chicago experience
has been principally as a physician visiting in Negro homes.
When a boy I worked in the cotton fields with Negroes, and
I attended some of their religious meetings for the sake of
amusement. It was a social law in the South that we must not
eat at the same table with Negroes, and we were not to sit
with colored people when riding on street cars or on trains.
However, if a Negro was driver of a horse and buggy, the most
beautiful and refined woman might sit on the same seat with
the colored driver. White people visiting a colored church
were given seats to themselves, usually front seats. Colored
children could not attend white schools. At the age of six when
I first saw Negroes, I became conscious of a race difference.
I regard Rev. John R. Hayworth as fitted to advise on the
question. I have sought information from about twenty-five
Negroes when in their midst as their physician. I am acquainted
with at least a dozen Negro families but can give the names
of only three. I consider Alderman De Priest, Mr. Lucas and
Colonel Jackson leading colored men; Dr. George Hall is also
well known. I have never read a Negro periodical.
In Chicago the subject of undesirable neighbors leads to the
discussion of Negroes in our neighborhood improvement clubs.
Believing that both black and white people prefer to live
separately, I would make agreeable provision for separate
locations in which each might live and in so doing abide by
the wish of the majority and enforce its dictates.
The Negro should be given the advantage of education, culture
and good employment. We should expect to grant him better
living conditions on account of such advantages.
Prejudice against the Negro has its principal basis in not
understanding him, as well as fear and an inborn dislike for
people of another race.
There never seemed to be any conflicts in the South because the
whites and blacks occupied separate parts of towns. Colored
people in the South seem to prefer to live in communities to
themselves, because a bond of sympathy holds them together.
It is better for a minority to bear an injustice than for an
overwhelming majority to bear an injustice.
F--
Negroes should have the same rights as we.
I know of no distinguishing traits.
My opinion is based largely on reading, as I never lived in
the South. I had no early contacts. There were few Negroes
near, and none in my schools. As authorities I would mention
Professor Du Bois, Fannie B. Williams, Professor Graham Taylor.
I know an able colored woman, a member of the Chicago Woman's
Club and women who have worked in our home.
Occasionally I read a Negro periodical.
The discussion of lynchings and riots at home and church lead
most frequently to the Negro.
Our schools, trades and professions should be opened to Negroes
and they be permitted to take care of themselves. Let them
follow their own bent so long as it injures no one else.
Of course, when you educate Negroes you increase their demands.
Grant their demands.
Egotism and the jealousy that we whites are better are the
basis of prejudice.
It is true that a minority has no right to expect complete
justice from the majority, if Negroes reason from experience;
but the colored race probably has idealists who hope for better
future treatment.
G--
The trouble is with the whites; selfishness and pride have
caused the situation and the regulation of the Negro according
to faulty concepts of right will always fail. The Stock Yards
riots gave proof of equality in passion, cowardliness, and
unfairness between blacks and whites.
Negroes lag in evolution through hinderment. They may put
reason above emotion as they develop mentally, as do cultured
whites, but a better evolution may bring trained intuition
from crude emotion.
My opinions are based upon short trips South, residence in
Louisville and northern contacts, plus general reading.
My only contacts are on the streets.
Children's talk and the term "Nigger" just called my attention
to a race difference.
I know a few highly educated Negro pastors. I never read
Negro papers. The subject of interracial marriage leads to
the discussion of the Negro.
As a solution they should be distributed without boundaries,
among whites, as to residence, occupation and society. They
would not object; it is what they fight for--equality.
Negro faults are the result of retarded mental growth. Why
further retard them? The problem ceases to be as their mental
level rises. Prejudice is the result of selfishness in whites.
Your third proposition is absolutely true.
Injustice to the minority by the majority is unconstitutional,
un-Christian and unwise.
H--
My opinion is that the Negro is entitled to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness as well as the white. The very
fact that his skin is differently colored than mine is no
reason why he should not be free to develop himself mentally,
morally, and physically the same as I do. Observation is basis
of my opinion. No contacts or warnings as a child. No friends
particularly familiar with question.
I have given this matter some little consideration, and have
discussed it with some Negroes as well as many white men. It
is my opinion that the consensus of opinion among Negroes to
whom I have talked is that they have no particular desire to
mix socially with the white man, but that they do feel they
should be given opportunity for development along those lines
for which they are best fitted. I am not acquainted particularly
with any of the leaders in this movement anywhere.
I read no Negro periodical. Racial equality is the subject
that leads to the Negro.
In all circles where general subjects are usually discussed
the question of the Negro arises.
Until the white man is ready to give the Negro a square
deal, I would suggest that he be segregated, and given every
opportunity for development possible under such segregation.
If they objected I would insist upon majority rule.
Nothing is gained by keeping the Negro ignorant, any more than
would be gained by keeping the white man ignorant. Education
of all of our races will bring about the world's salvation.
Prejudice among white women has its basis in fear but not
particularly among men. This is partly due to the publicity
given to all acts against women by Negroes, in my judgment.
The history of the world has proved that most of the races on
earth tend to group themselves, which is the natural thing,
because of the community of interest.
Until the Golden Rule is accepted unanimously majority rule
will continue to be the human law and under our present world
political arrangements, it seems to be about as fair as any
arrangement could be.
I--
The Negro seems to me to be evolutionally handicapped, but
possesses the qualities of children--imitativeness, affection,
loyalty, receptiveness, lack of responsibility, carelessness,
improvidence. They also seem to me to lack racial pride, for
which their history in this country may well account. There
are fine Negroes and those who are as worthless as "poor white
trash." To judge them all by either the best or the worst would
be manifestly unfair. I feel that they have, as a race, never
had a fair chance for their finest development.
I have lived among them and practiced medicine in their families
for ten years.
The most tender, loving service, beyond monetary recompense,
of one Negro woman who worked in my family for ten years. Her
intimate, gentle, faithful services to members of my family
in health and sickness will always endear her to us and make
us more conscious of the possibilities of members of that race.
The community in which I was raised had so few Negroes
that there was no occasion for contacts or prohibitions to
association. I suppose as a boy I first became conscious of
race difference.
I have discussed this question with intelligent Negroes, have
heard some fine sermons by Negro preachers, and am somewhat
familiar with the writings of Booker T. Washington and Du Bois.
I do not read their periodicals.
Mention of the servant cited in a foregoing question, newspaper
accounts of lynchings, house-bombings most frequently lead to
discussion of Negroes among our personal friends.
I feel that Negroes would be happier if segregated in
neighborhoods which allowed contact with the dominant race. I
feel that they are as unhappy to be isolated among whites as
the whites would be to be isolated among Negroes. I feel they
should have the right to live under decent conditions, with
those things which make life livable and enjoyable. Probably
part of my unwillingness to have them for neighbors lies
in the fear of undesirable neighbors (bad citizens), in the
fear of property depreciation which would follow, and because
of the lack of interests in common that make for neighborly
intercourse. I suppose I am as inconsistent as others in this,
for in my heart I have no prejudice of which I am aware, yet I
believe I am infected with the universal indefinite prejudice,
if I could but analyze it thoroughly.
Their education should not be curtailed, but enlarged. Their
demands should be granted if not incompatible with the common
good.
It is probably true that prejudice is based on fear, a result of
the abuse of female slaves by the whites in slavery time, and
the resultant desire on the part of a few Negroes engendered
during the reconstruction period by the carpet-baggers, to
have social equality. I have discussed this subject of "social
equality" with intelligent, fine Negroes, and believe they
meant what they said when they assured me that among decent
Negroes there is no more desire for this than there is among
the white people. I feel that it is a bugaboo, useful in
increasing fear and prejudice against the Negro.
By segregation, I did not mean isolation, but the natural
grouping together of Negroes under wholesome conditions, but
which permitted their contact through employment, through
meetings for the common good, with the dominant race.
Even a minority has the right to expect and demand justice
in opportunity to develop industrial, social and spiritual
growth. I recognize that education of both whites and blacks is
necessary to overcome fear and prejudice and make this possible.
J--
My opinion, which is still open to conviction, is that the
Negro race overlaps the white race throughout the bulk of the
frequency curves of distribution of intelligence of the two
races; but the average of the Negro race is probably lower
than that of the white race, and among the extreme varieties
the Negroes probably go lower and the whites higher than the
similar varieties of the other race. This refers to distribution
of inherent capacity. But I believe that many of them are
modifiable and differ only in their average distribution from
similar qualities in whites. Also that certain distinguishing
traits may be so adjusted to the circumstances under which
Negroes are educated and employed as to be distinctly
advantageous, both to themselves and to society.
Aside from my conversation with southerners, I have made
a special study of the Negro problem in connection with my
undergraduate work, and again at the University of Pennsylvania.
I am familiar with a number of worth-while sources which can
be listed on request. I lived for four winters in St. Louis,
where I saw a great many Negroes, but knew none. Some excitement
was caused there by an instructor inviting a mulatto school
principal to address our sociology class. There was no protest
here in Evanston. I also passed through the South, and stopped
twice at New Orleans.
As a child in Portland, Oregon, I had two Negro nurses. At the
age of perhaps seven or eight years, one of my nurses returned
for a visit, and I was teased by companions for kissing her.
That was my first consciousness of a racial difference.
My authorities and sources of importance are the N.A.A.C.P.,
Urban League, the Race Relations Commission, and certain
Negroes. I might also mention the two Spingarns and Mr. Roger
Baldwin. I know C. S. Johnson, T. Arnold Hill and the colored
members of the Commission, together with the union leaders whom
I heard. W. E. B. Du Bois, Haynes, Dr. Roman, J. W. Johnson,
T. A. Hill, I regard as leaders among the Negroes.
I read the _Crisis_, and occasional newspapers. The _Crisis_
is good except the fiction; the newspapers are rather poor.
Race relations, mob action, venereal disease, and housing
questions lead to discussion of the Negro.
As a solution I suggest equal facilities, spontaneous
segregation, spontaneous co-operation in common interest,
education in matters of sex. In this program there would be
no compulsion involved--unless possibly upon the whites.
Their education should be modified and their demands granted
so far as they can be harmonized with the general good.
The main question involved in prejudice seems to me whether
it is an interest or an instinct. If it is an interest then
changes in social organization may with comparative ease abate
the fear and the prejudice. If it is an instinct then we can
only deal with it by repression and sublimation of a more
deeply psychological character.
I question whether the prejudice is greater the greater the
isolation. The word isolation should be analyzed into physical
or economic on the one hand, and psychological on the other.
Plato asked, "What is justice?" The answer can never be final,
and one's concept of it is usually colored by interest. A
sociological definition of justice is in terms of harmony
or harmonization of interests. Complete harmony never does
exist, else we should have no thought and no progress, but
harmonization of interests can be a continuous process, and
is not irreconcilable with the existence of minorities and
majorities.
K--
I have formed no definite opinions about Negroes. I am inclined
to the opinion that generally the balance is found on the
side of the white races. In general I believe they possess
distinguishing traits of mentality and character. I find it
very difficult, however, to define my opinion regarding this.
When I was in high school in Petersburg, Illinois, from 1895 to
1898, the school had an attendance of about forty. There were
two Negroes, a boy and a girl. The boy's name was John Gaddie.
I have the impression now that they both acted as though they
were out of place. I found John a likeable boy. I think all
of the members of the school liked him. I particularly liked
him, so paid considerable attention to him, to which John
reacted in a decided manner. He never forgot it. I do not like
to shake hands with Negroes. I avoid it whenever I can, but
I never had any hesitancy in shaking hands with John. After
finishing school, I went to college and John went to work. His
work was some sort of manual labor. From time to time when I
went back to Petersburg I saw John, always spoke to him, shook
hands with him and talked to him. John appreciated this very
much and acted as though he regarded it a condescension on my
part. I am not aware that I feel toward any other Negro as I
feel toward John Gaddie.
I was first conscious of a racial difference when I first
knew the Negro, which was when I was about fifteen years of
age. In the small town of Petersburg (about 3,000 inhabitants)
the Negroes there, as here in Chicago, lived in a segregated
district. There were no clashes between the Negro and the
whites but the racial difference was obvious enough.
I know very few Negroes. I know too little to be in a position
to consider anyone as a leader among the colored people in
Chicago or the United States. I never read a Negro periodical.
The subjects most frequently leading to the discussion of the
Negro are riots, housing problems, certain industrial problems,
and, here in Chicago, politics.
The fact that the Negroes obstinately objected quite logically
would not interfere with making any adjustment which seemed
"wise." The social adjustment which seemed "wise" would have
to be based on the possibility of objection on the part of
the Negro. If the leaders were obstinate, some other solution
would have to be worked out, but if the leaders saw that it
was wise and for the best interest of the masses I would insist
that the plan be tried out.
I do not comprehend what is meant by "demand." It may mean
ambition for social standing in the sense of intermingling with
the whites. It may mean other things. No matter what it means,
I am not impressed, if the statement is true, that it is any
reason for not educating the Negro. I am not impressed that
it becomes necessary either to curtail or modify the Negro's
education or to grant their demands whatever they may be.
I do not think it true that prejudice has its basis in fear.
So far as I am familiar with it there is naturally a very
high degree of segregation of the Negro as to living quarters
everywhere. I am not aware that the segregation which we now
find of habitation brings about the development of special group
prejudices. Undoubtedly, if there are or were such prejudices
they would form the background of conflicts. It doesn't seem
to me to follow that the greater the isolation the greater
the prejudice.
There never is complete justice; but if a minority may not
expect justice at the hands of an overwhelming majority it can
expect no justice at all. The justice, if it comes at all, will
be at the hands of an overwhelming majority. Theoretically, in
this country all are entitled to justice. I know no reason why
this should not be true in a practical sense. Furthermore, I
see no reason why a minority may not only expect but demand,
at the hands of an overwhelming majority, justice. It seems
to me that if the overwhelming majority hoped to prosper, it
would see to it that justice was dispensed to the minority.
I do not find myself ready to place the Negro on an equal
basis with the white in every respect, that is, socially and
otherwise. I do not regard the failure to so place the Negroes
as injustice to them.
L--
In general, I like the Negro, but I lament his presence in
this country in large numbers. I have never heard a solution of
the Negro problem. Their distinguishing traits are ignorance,
good nature, mental weakness, and physical strength.
I have never heard of good arguments for extensive isolation.
M--
I have a strong prejudice, but it is undefined. For instance,
the hair of Negroes always holds a peculiar fascination, but
under no consideration could I touch it, but there was always
a great curiosity about it. I was undecided whether or not I
should shake hands or in any way touch a colored skin, but I
am quite sure I would never do it from choice. The everyday
contacts on street cars are the only personal experiences I
have had. The fascination of watching them is constant.
When I was about two years old a family moved into the village
bringing with them an old colored nurse. She was too old to
work, and my childish remembrance is that she always sat in
the corner near the fireplace with a pipe in her mouth. I did
not know that the Negro could do anything else.
When I was about five years old a Negro came to the village
and opened a barber shop. I remember my father telling mother
about the Negro and how he took the three small children down
to see "Snowball" as a matter of curiosity. My reaction was
that the Negro was not a person such as I was accustomed to
seeing, although there was no feeling of classing him as an
animal.
The third contact came when I was half-grown. My father was
prominent in politics and on election day the table was kept
set so that anyone sent from the polls could have a meal.
By some chance a Negro was sent and ate. After he had gone I
remember seeing my mother take the plate and other dishes out
in the yard and scour them with brick dust, evidently with an
idea that something had rubbed off.
My information is largely taken from the books of Booker T.
Washington. I admired Dunbar's poems when they were current in
the newspapers and magazines. I have not seen any of them for
many years but remember vividly, "When the Bread Won't Raise."
I was naturally familiar with _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, both as a
book and a play in Civil War days. I do not consciously seek
for information on the subject of Negroes and do not personally
know any Negroes. Outside of the names which appear in the
press I do not know of any Negro leaders and could not be sure
of correct information as to those who are well known.
I have never seen a Negro periodical and have so rarely heard
Negroes discussed that no conclusions can be given. The Negro
is rarely a topic of conversation in my circle.
As a solution they might be nationalized if possible, somewhere
and somehow, like the Japs. Liberia is a failure largely
because of white leadership and policy. Some portion of the
earth should be set aside where the Negroes can be a nation,
perhaps in Africa. They have a right to work out their own
problems in their own ways.
All Negroes should be educated as highly as possible. They have
a right to it because they are Americans. If demands follow
this education, it is right they should be granted.
There is no personal fear of Negroes as a basis of my prejudice.
I agree with the third proposition as to isolation.
Majority's injustice to minority is always true in politics,
religion, everyday dealings. Is not peculiar to relations
between white and colored.
N--
My views are more impressions than opinions. I have a distinct
aversion to close association with Negroes generally. On the
other hand I have a distinct liking for particular Negroes
whom I have been thrown with. Aside from the more educated
ones, they seem to me to be of a sluggish mentality and of
somewhat low moral character. They seem to have more of the
animal in them. I am not sure that this is not an impression
rather than an opinion.
I have no basis for my views except my own experience and what
I have read in papers and periodicals.
I had two Negro classmates in college; I saw a good deal of
Negroes as a boy; and I have known Negroes, some well educated,
since I came to Chicago from the law school.
Although my contacts were largely casual, I particularly
remember one very old Negro man whom I regarded as a sort
of patriarch and of whom I was a little bit afraid. Then I
recall vividly my impression of the filth and sordidness of
"darky-town" in the small city in which I lived as a boy. I
was never forbidden, so far as I can remember, to associate
with Negroes. In public school there was no separation of the
races. As a small boy, it seems to me my playmates in school
were partly Negroes. Of course the Negroes, as is usual, lived
in a separate part of the city. I should say that this seemed
to me then to be a natural and necessary arrangement. Negroes
were black and we were white. That was about all there was to
it.
Very early I became race conscious, I should say along about
the fourth or fifth grade in school, perhaps even before.
I regard as authorities on the question teachers or officers
of Fisk University, Tuskegee Institute, those who have to do
with criminals; employers of Negroes; persons who have dealt
with Negroes as a class as well as individually. Booker T.
Washington's writings should be an authority.
I have made very few inquiries for information. I know few
Negroes in Chicago. Those that I do know are of the better
educated type. Some of them, I think, have been at Fisk
University. I do not know the leaders in the city, nor do I
know the leaders in the country; but I should say they are
the heads of the great Negro universities and colleges, like
Fisk, Tuskegee, Lincoln Institute. Booker Washington was, of
course, a leader. I do not know who his successors are.
So far as I know, I have seen only one Negro periodical, some
years ago. The article I read in it I happened to be interested
in because I was dealing with the subject of it, and it was
undoubtedly a prejudiced article founded on misinformation and
a rather wilful disregard of facts. As I recall the paper as
a whole its main motive and purpose was an apparent hatred of
the white race. I realize that this is not enough to base an
opinion on.
The discussion of labor, politics, especially questions
connected with southern politics, almost any question relating
to the South, education, home missions, living conditions,
the servant problem, crime, most frequently lead to the Negro.
It would hardly be feasible to send Negroes out of the country
as a whole; they are needed in the industrial world, and it
would not be a Christian act to deport them. Nor does it seem
right or practicable or just to segregate them entirely. They
need education and the help that comes from association with
those who are further along in the polite amenities. On the
other hand, unless they are somewhat segregated racial troubles
are sure to arise when a Negro tries to settle, say, in the
same block with upper class whites. I am not sure that it might
not be a good plan if one or two of the southern states could
be turned over to the Negroes, but if this is done they should
be allowed to govern themselves and should be protected from
exploitation from unscrupulous whites.
It seems to me that race prejudice is not based principally
on fear, but rather on a natural aversion or shrinking from a
man of another color. It is almost as elemental as fear. We
fear any uneducated, ignorant and brutal man, whether he be
white, red, black or yellow. We have an aversion, as I have
said, to close association with any man of another color, even
though he be educated. I do not know whether this aversion is
curable by any method or not.
I am inclined to agree with the third proposition, and I
suppose the fourth proposition is regrettably true.
The outstanding feature in the answers to the queries: "Have you formed
definite opinions about Negroes?" and "Do Negroes, in your opinion,
possess distinguishing traits of mentality or character?" is the great
variation in opinions. As a race they are "shiftless," "childish,"
"docile," "evolutionarily handicapped," "undependable," "some of
them good," "they have as a mass a lower level of inherent capacity,"
"disliked in the mass," "liked as individuals," "entitled to the same
leniency and consideration as whites," "entitled to the same rights as
whites," "lacking in racial pride," "loyal," "imitative," "affectionate,"
"improvident."
The feelings toward Negroes are as varied. There is aversion to close
association, a distinct dislike, a desire that Negroes should have equal
rights and privileges, a desire that they should have the same rights, a
feeling that Negroes have been mistreated and exploited, a feeling that
selfishness and pride of white persons have caused the present racial
situation, and a conviction that present behavior toward the Negro is
faulty and wrong. Lincoln is twice mentioned but with different meanings.
The trend of sentiment, while unfavorable toward Negroes, maintains some
sort of ideal. Although childish, they "must be trained," "although we
dislike their presence, we must submit to our penalty for years to come,"
etc. Some are not sure of their opinions. Some call them impressions or
regret a lack of knowledge. A general summing up would show a desire to
be fair in spite of unfavorable opinions.
The questions regarding the disposition they would make of Negroes if they
could entirely control the situation were put to get views uninfluenced
by considerations of present practicability. The play of circumstances,
opinion, ethical considerations, and difficulties were excluded from
consideration. The trend of replies was toward segregation, even to
the extent of colonization in Africa. There were curious anomalies,
like segregation without Jim Crow and segregation for the Negro's own
happiness. Others would distribute them without boundaries throughout the
social system. When segregation is generally mentioned it is conditioned
on the consent of Negroes.
Interesting answers are made on propositions (_a_), (_b_), (_c_), and
(_d_), covering education, prejudice, isolation, and justice. In spite
of unforeseen danger, it is pretty generally agreed that Negroes should
be educated, even though their demands are thus increased. There is less
agreement on granting demands. The analysis of prejudice brought a wide
variety of opinions. Repulsion, natural aversion, social equality and
the sex complex, selfishness of whites, egotism and inborn dislike, as
well as fear, are accredited as forming the basis of prejudice.
The problem of isolation was essentially a problem of segregation. Strange
to say, although the trend of some was toward isolation, there was a
majority belief that isolation would increase conflict and friction. The
ethical problem developed in general the opinion that there does exist
a disparity between what is and what should be.
The unwisdom of an unjust course of social conduct is recognized, but
is for the most part held to be warranted by the peculiar difficulty
of present relations. Here, probably as nowhere else, the problem was
compared with other general problems not involving race.
The experiences on which opinions are based divide into definite classes:
1. Experiences in the South.
2. Experiences with individual Negro servants.
3. Experiences with individual Negroes of intelligence.
4. General observation.
The actual basis of opinions as stated by the persons themselves provides
an interesting question.
The question concerning early childhood experiences was put to draw
out, if possible, impressions unconsciously insinuated or consciously
obtained but perhaps discounted and forgotten through subsequent years of
intermittent relations. It was successful in bringing to light incidents
of striking significance. The answers, indeed, show striking elements in
the heritage of racial consciousness. Impressions gained in early life
require many facts to unsettle or remove.
Most important in considering the trustworthiness of information sources
are the replies to the question: "Whom of your friends, acquaintances,
favorite authors, scholars, etc., do you regard best fitted to speak with
authority on the question?" There are mentioned seven Negroes and ten
white persons. Of the four local Negroes mentioned, two might be regarded
as well informed; one has been out of public life for fifteen years,
and the other, although by no means an authority, probably could provide
interesting information. Of the Negro national figures, Washington, Du
Bois, and Dunbar are mentioned, Washington three times, Dunbar and Du
Bois once. Booker T. Washington died in 1915. Paul Laurence Dunbar, the
poet, died in 1906. Practically all of the white persons mentioned have
been at some time connected with movements to improve conditions among
Negroes. George W. Cable wrote for the most part stories of the Creole
South.
It is strange, though, that in answering the question, "Who are the Negro
leaders?" so many gave the names of politicians, who are not the real
leaders of Negroes. About half of those who answered had never read a
Negro periodical, and half of those who had read them considered their
influence pernicious.
V. PUBLIC OPINION AS EXPRESSED BY NEGROES
The practice of "keeping the Negro in his place" or any modification of
it in northern communities has isolated Negroes from all other members
of the community. Though in the midst of an advanced social system and
surrounded by cultural influences, they have hardly been more than exposed
to them. Of full and free participation they know little. The pressure
of the dominant white group in practically every ordinary experience has
kept the attention and interests of Negroes centered upon themselves,
and made them race conscious. Their thinking on general questions is
controlled by their race interests. The opinions of Negroes, therefore,
are in large measure a negative product.
It is probably for this reason that most of their expressions of opinion
take the form of protest. This same enforced self-interest warps these
opinions, giving exaggerated values to the unconsidered views of the
larger group, increasing sensitiveness to slights, and keeping Negroes
forever on the defensive. Extreme expressions, unintelligible to those
outside the Negro group, are a natural result of this isolation. The
processes of thought by which these opinions are reached are, by virtue
of this very isolation, concealed from outsiders. Negroes by their words
alone may often be judged as radical, pernicious, or fanatic. Without
the background of their experiences it is no more possible for their
views to be completely understood than for Negroes to understand the
confessed prejudices of white persons, or even their ordinary feelings
toward Negroes.
Negroes know more of the habits of action and thought of the white
group than white people know of similar habits in the Negro group. For
Negroes read the whites' books and papers, hear them talk, and sometimes
see them in the intimacy of their homes. But this one-sided and partial
understanding serves only to make the behavior of the whites more keenly
felt. Until these differences, long held as taboo, are thoroughly
understood and calmly faced, there is small chance of satisfactory
relations.
The opinions of Negroes on this question are as various as the white
opinions of the Negro. Their response may reflect, the sentiment of the
larger group; it may take a conciliatory turn, or, it may be exclusively
self-centered in disregard, if indeed not in defiance, of the white
group. The rapid growth of the Garvey movement[80] is a good example of
this last type of opinion. There is harmony of opinion on ultimates, but
on programs, processes, and methods there are differences among Negroes
that reach the intensity of abusive conflicts.
No Negro is willing to admit that he belongs to a different and lower
species, or that his race is constitutionally weak in character. All
Negroes hope for an adjustment by virtue of which they will be freely
granted the privileges of ordinary citizens. They are conscious, however,
of an opposition in the traditions of the country and actually meet
it daily. Conflict arises from opinions as to methods of combating and
overcoming the opposition with the greatest gain and smallest loss to
themselves.
Thus we come to hear of different schools of thought among Negroes.
Booker T. Washington is contrasted with W. E. B. Du Bois, and Du Bois is
contrasted with Owen, Peyton, and Colson, and they, in turn are contrasted
with Garvey. Among individual Negroes opinion is determined by experience
as well as tradition. The Negro house-servant does not feel toward white
persons as does a Negro common laborer. The independent professional man
holds an opinion essentially different from the social worker. Yet they
are all governed by those trends of sentiment protective of the Negro
group, and in crises either act upon them or suffer the group's censure.
An instance of the strength of Negro group opinion appeared in a tragic
by-product of the Chicago riot. A Negro prominent in local political and
social circles was sought out as a leader, and asked for an interview by
a reporter of the _Chicago Tribune_ during the riot. In the published
interview he was reported as saying: "This is a white man's country,
and Negroes had better behave or they will get what rights they have
taken away." This aroused a solid Negro sentiment against him; his life
was threatened; for several weeks he had to have police protection; he
was finally ostracized; and in less than a year he died. His friends
asserted that he was slanderously misquoted, and that his death was due
largely to the resulting criticism.
The more balanced opinions may be found among Negroes who have developed
a defensive philosophy. Race pride and racial solidarity have sprung from
this necessity. The term radical is used to characterize Negroes whose
views and preachments are in advocacy of changes which to the general
white public appear undesirable. It will be observed that most of the
so-called radicals are southern Negroes now living in the North. They
know by experience the meaning of oppression. Contrasts with them are
sharper and the desire for change is more insistent, because they can
appreciate differences.
Frequently this "radicalism" is no more than a matter of interpretation by
white persons and possibly an oversuspicion. For example, Attorney-General
A. Mitchell Palmer, in his report on the investigations of his department,
referred to the bitter protests of Negro publications against lynching
and disfranchisement as radical and incendiary documents. This report
is headed, "Radicalism and Sedition among the Negroes as Reflected in
Their Publications." It reads in part as follows:
There can no longer be any question of a well-concerted movement
among a certain class of Negro leaders of thought and action
to constitute themselves a determined and persistent source of
a radical opposition to the government, and to the established
rule of law and order.
Among the more salient points to be noted in the present
attitude of the Negro leaders are, first, the ill-governed
reaction toward race rioting; second, the threat of retaliatory
measures in connection with lynching; third, the more openly
expressed demand for social equality, in which demand the sex
problem is not infrequently included; fourth, the identification
of the Negro with such radical organizations as the I.W.W. and
an outspoken advocacy of the Bolsheviki or Soviet doctrines;
fifth, the political stand assumed toward the present federal
administration, the South in general, and incidentally, toward
the peace treaty and the League of Nations. Underlying these
more salient viewpoints is the increasingly emphasized feeling
of a race consciousness in many of these publications always
antagonistic to the white race and openly, defiantly assertive
of its own equality and even superiority. When it is borne in
mind that this boast finds its most frequent expression in the
pages of those journals whose editors are men of education, and
in at least one instance, by men holding degrees conferred by
Harvard University, it may be seen that the boast is not to be
dismissed lightly as the ignorant vaporing of untrained minds.
Neither is the influence of the Negro press in general to be
reckoned with lightly. The _Negro World_ for October 18, 1919,
states that "there are a dozen Negro papers with a circulation
of over 20,000, and scores with smaller circulation. There
are half a dozen magazines with a large circulation and other
magazines with a smaller circulation, and there are easily over
fifty writers who can write interesting editorials and special
articles, written in fine, pure English, with a background of
scholarship behind them." Notwithstanding the clumsiness of
expression of this particular assertion, the claim is not an
idle one. It may be added that in several instances the Negro
magazines are expensive in manufacture, being on coated paper
throughout, well-printed, and giving evidence of the possession
of ample funds.
In all the discussions of the recent race riots there is
reflected the note of pride that the Negro has found himself,
that he has "fought back," that never again will he tamely
submit to violence or intimidation. The sense of oppression
finds increasingly bitter expression. Defiance and insolently
race-centered condemnation of the white race is to be met with
in every issue of the more radical publications, and this one
in moderateness of denunciation carries its own threat. The
Negro is "seeing red," and it is the prime object of the leading
publications to induce a like quality of vision upon the part
of their readers. A few of them deny this, notwithstanding
the evidence of their work. Others of them openly admit the
fact. The number of restrained and conservative publications
is relatively negligible, and even some of these ... have
indulged in most intemperate utterance, though it would be
unfair not to state that certain papers--I can think of no
magazines--maintain an attitude of well-balanced sanity....
The _Messenger_ for October is significant for one thing above
all others. In it for the first time a Negro publication comes
out openly for sex equality.[81]
It is the sentiment briefly sketched in the foregoing pages that summons
attention. What are Negroes actually thinking? How are they being affected
by what the general public is thinking? What do they want? Against what
are their protests directed? What kinds of group sentiments are being
developed and how significant are they as to subsequent relations between
the two groups?
This report merely sets out examples of those views in the hope of
showing the beliefs that control the conduct of Negroes in Chicago.
1. RACE PROBLEMS
_Criticism of Negro leaders._--A Negro attorney said:
I have read numerous articles written by prominent colored
men on the subject of Negroes moving North, and I have heard
many of them speak. But few of them, in my opinion, will
bear rigid criticism. They are wanting in genuine expression
of true conditions. Those writers and orators who have some
personal motive for their expression do not necessarily speak
with absolute frankness.
A Negro worker said:
Our leaders are not interested enough in the welfare of the
race. As soon as they reach some little place of fame they
try to get off to themselves.
_Contacts as basis for respect._--A Negro professional man said:
When in school in Oberlin my professor in debating and oratory
was so prejudiced that he would not let the other colored
boy and me be on teams together. We asked him repeatedly,
but he always refused. We decided to work on a debate for all
there was in it and compel him to recognize the fact that we
could measure up to the other members of the class. When we
finished he praised our work in the highest terms. After that
he began to take an interest in me and finally told me that he
did not know anything about Negroes and just felt that there
was nothing worth while in them. He tried to persuade me to
teach, and when I left he gave me one of the best letters of
recommendation that I have ever seen. That shows what contact
can do.
_Not a race problem._--A Negro business man said:
There is no race problem; if the white people would only do as
they would be done by we would not have need of commissions
to better conditions. This won't be done, but an easier plan
is to enforce the law. The laws are good enough but they are
not enforced. Riots grow out of hate, jealousy, envy, and
prejudice. When a man becomes a contented citizen there will
be little chance of causing him to fight anyone. Give us those
things that are due us--law, protection, and equal rights--then
we will become contented citizens.
_For better race relations in Chicago._--A Negro alderman said:
1. Pass a vagrancy law that will take the idle, shiftless and
intolerant hoodlum off the streets. Put the burden of proof
on the one so arrested.
2. Close all vicious poolrooms and dens of vice, and permit
no boy under nineteen years of age to enter poolrooms.
3. Forbid loitering on the street corners, especially transfer
points.
4. Prohibit vicious and race-antagonizing campaign speeches
on the streets of the city and in public halls. Races must
not be arrayed against each other.
5. Make more rigid the habeas corpus act, tighten up on the
parole and probation laws and enforcement of the truancy law.
6. Stop the newspapers from referring to the territory occupied
by the colored people as the "Black Belt."
7. Inciting and inflammatory headlines in the newspapers must
be stopped.
8. Open the gates of employment to all races in our public
utilities, such as street-car and elevated-road service,
Chicago Telephone Co. exchanges, Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co.,
and the Commonwealth Edison Co.
9. Better housing for the colored people and improvement
of the district in which a vast majority of them reside by
turning certain streets into boulevards, building small parks
and playgrounds, and let the city or South Park Commissioners
build a bathing-beach equal to any other for the benefit and
comfort of all races along the water front, between Twenty-ninth
and Thirty-ninth streets. This without lines or thought of
segregation and for the benefit of a neglected part of our
tax-paying community.
10. Apprehend and convict the bomb throwers by placing in
command of our police-stations officers who will do their
duty and place patrolmen on duty who will not sympathize with
this lawless element of our citizenry. Greater still, insist
that the state's attorney do his full duty in prosecuting the
people who are responsible for inciting these criminal acts.
11. Safeguard the rights of all races in our public parks and
on the public highways.
12. Give us a man's chance in the field of labor, and we will
prove that we are no burden to any other race of people.
2. THE EMOTIONAL BACKGROUND
_An old settler._--The sentiment presented below is probably the
unpolished feeling of a Negro who was born in Chicago before the fire of
1871, and has lived here since. His grandfather owned the property where
the post-office now stands. He was at one time a member of the Central
Y.M.C.A. (white). For two and a half years he was assistant bookkeeper
in a white bank in Memphis, Tennessee. He said:
Prejudice has been on the increase in Chicago since 1893.
Southerners came to the World's Exposition and many of them
remained. They brought their prejudices with them. On the cars
they would order colored people to get up and give their seats
to them. This resulted in fights, and when the cases were
taken to court colored people won as many cases as whites. I
took my grandmother to the fair and on the street car I had an
altercation with a white southerner who called her "Auntie."
He tried to hit me, and I got out my gun to shoot him. A
Columbian guard and detective grabbed me. When the case was
called I was discharged.
Hyde Park is a nest of prejudice. These southerners moved out
there. Southern clubs are established throughout the country.
They get northernized and want straight-haired mulatto maids
for their mistresses and call them typists. The southern white
boys get jobs on newspapers in the North and work for nothing
in order that they may write articles and editorials against
Negroes and spread the doctrine of the South.
A good many years ago colored people lived in good homes and
the Irish lived in shanties. They used to call them "flannel
mouth," "mick," and "shanty Irish." It used to be that only
colored men of light complexion could secure jobs as porters
on certain railroads. In 1908 the Archbishop of the Diocese of
the Catholic Church issued an edict that white communicants
should not worship at the Thirty-sixth and Dearborn streets
church. The whites still go there, however. The very fact that
the G.A.R. invited the Confederate veterans to march in the
same parade on Memorial Day goes to show that prejudice against
Negroes is increasing. They are combining. These southern
societies in Chicago which foster race prejudice should be
exposed.
_Abyssinians._--During the summer of 1920 a group of self-styled
"Abyssinians," in a spectacular demonstration,[82] killed two white
men and seriously wounded two Negroes, one of whom was a policeman.
Neither whites nor Negroes could give any further explanation of the
affair than that it was an ignorant outburst of fanatics. Although the
demonstration was announced as part of a membership drive in a "Back to
Africa Movement," there was a definite racial sentiment in the appeals
to unlettered Negroes. This sentiment was calculated to solidify the
fanatic group, while, at the same time, by its anti-social dogma, it
placed this group in opposition to the safety and well-being of the
community. Meetings and speeches and anti-racial dogma, founded upon
unusual interpretations of the Bible, gave their sentiments a religious
fervor and a racial aim. Thus these sentiments grew, uncorrected by
outsiders, and finally expressed themselves in criminal but significant
conduct. The significance of these sentiments is apparent in the
attitude of a sympathizer with the movement, expressed to one of the
Commission's investigators several weeks before the outbreak made the
movement unpopular. He is a shopkeeper, and most of his trade is among
Negroes. His business with whites is wholly with wholesale dealers. In
his treatment of those who came into his store during the interview he
was rude and discourteous. He said:
I am a radical. I despise and hate the white man. They will
always be against the Ethiopian. I do not want to be called
Negro, colored, or "nigger." Either term is an insult to me
or to you. Our rightful name is Ethiopian. White men stole
the black man from Africa and counseled with each other as to
what to do with him and what to call him, for when the Negro
learned that he was the first civilized human on earth he
would rise up and rebel against the white man. To keep him
from doing this it was decided to call him Negro after the
Niger River in Africa. This was to keep him from having that
knowledge by the Bible, for his right name was Ethiopian.
This was done so we could always be ruled by the white man. I
will call your attention to the Bible. There is not one word
of evil against the Children of Israel and Ethiopia written
in it. Ethiopia came out of Israel and God said they are his
people and he will be their God. He also says after the 300
years of punishment he will never go by [desert] Israel again
and will be with him for ever and ever. We find by the Bible
that he, the Ethiopian, is the only child of God.
The three hundred years of punishment are up, and this is the
year of deliverance. It started in 1619 when we were stolen from
Africa and made slaves. God is taking care of the black man.
Some great destruction will take place, but God's chosen people
will be all right. White passers-by from other neighborhoods are
the only people who trouble us. They will call you insulting
names or try to annoy you in a hundred little ways. The white
people in the neighborhood are all right. Two white men ran
down an old pet rooster of mine this morning. They were on a
motor-cycle and picked him up, carried him off, paying no heed
to me, as I ran two blocks after them.
_Ready for trouble._--A Negro ex-soldier said:
I went to war, served eight months in France; I was married,
but I didn't claim exemption. I wanted to go, but I might as
well have stayed here for all the good it has done me.... No,
that ain't so, I'm glad I went. I done my part and I'm going
to fight right here till Uncle Sam does his. I can shoot as
good as the next one, and nobody better start anything. I ain't
looking for trouble, but if it comes my way I ain't dodging.
_Agitation and discussion._--A Negro lawyer said:
Agitation by the press, both white and colored, does nothing
but create dissension. The religious and political leaders have
gone from one extreme to the other. Formerly the Negroes were
cringing and ingratiating when dealing with the whites. Now
they are trying to be radical in order to gain notoriety. There
is nothing to be gained in either being servile or radical.
I have had indignities heaped upon me by the white man. Why,
my mother was ill when a white man in Georgia took every bit
of our furniture from us, pulling the bed from under her. She
screamed with pain each time they moved the bed, but they left
her on the floor. I swore that I would kill that man and for
many years held hatred against him. Now I know it is wrong
and only hope that he has learned better.
_A Negro and a mob._--How does a Negro feel when he is being hunted or
chased by a mob? Few persons are able to analyze their emotions under
such stress. It happens, however, that a Negro university student fell
victim to the sportive brutality of a gang of white men in a clash in
September, 1920, and after being chased and hunted for five hours and a
half in an unfriendly neighborhood escaped uninjured. He recounted his
experience in an effort at a purely objective study of his emotions.
While at work in a plant just outside Chicago he became ill and was
forced to leave early. Unaware that a riot was in progress, he left
a street car to transfer in a hostile neighborhood. As he neared the
corner one of a group of about twenty young white men yelled: "There's
a nigger! Let's get him!" He boarded a car to escape them. They pulled
off the trolley and started into the car after him. His story follows:
The motorman opened the door, and before they knew it I jumped
out and ran up Fifty-first Street as fast as my feet could
carry me. Gaining about thirty yards on them was a decided
advantage, for one of them saw me and with the shout "There he
goes!" the gang started after me. One, two, three, blocks went
past in rapid succession. They came on shouting, "Stop him!
Stop him!" I ran on the sidewalk and someone tried to trip me,
but fortunately I anticipated his intentions and jumped into
the road. As I neared the next street intersection, a husky,
fair-haired fellow weighing about 180 pounds came lunging at
me. I have never thought so quickly in all my life as then, I
believe. Three things flashed into my mind--to stop suddenly
and let him pass me and then go on; to try to trip him by
dropping in front of him; or to keep running and give him a
good football straight arm. The first two I figured would stop
me, and the gang would be that much nearer, so I decided to
rely on the last. These thoughts flashed through my mind as
I ran about ten steps. As we came together, I left my feet,
and putting all my weight and strength into a lunge, shot my
right hand at his chin. It landed squarely and by a half-turn
the fair-haired would-be tackler went flying to the road on
his face.
That was some satisfaction, but it took a lot of my strength,
for by this time I was beginning to feel weak. But determination
kept me at it, and I ran on. Then I came to a corner where a
drug-store was open and a woman standing outside. I slowed
down and asked her to let me go in there, that a gang was
chasing me; but she said I would not be safe there, so I turned
off Fifty-first Street and ran down the side street. Here
the road had been freshly oiled and I nearly took a "header"
as I stepped in the first pool, but fortunately no accident
happened. My strength was fast failing; the suggestion came
into my mind to stop and give up or try to fight it out with
the two or three who were still chasing me, but this would
never do, as the odds were too great, so I kept on. My legs
began to wobble, my breath came harder, and my heart seemed to
be pounding like a big pump, while the man nearest me began
to creep up on me. It was then that an old athletic maxim
came into my mind--"He's feeling as tired as you." Besides,
I thought, perhaps he smokes and boozes and his wind is worse
than mine. Often in the last hundred yards of a quarter-mile
that thought of my opponent's condition had brought forth the
last efforts necessary for the final spurt. There was more than
a medal at stake this time, so I stuck, and in a few strides
more they gave up the chase. One block further on, when I
had made sure that no one was following me on the other side
of the street, I slowed down to walk and regained my breath.
Soon I found myself on Forty-sixth Street just west of Halsted
where the street is blind, so I climbed up on the railroad
tracks and walked along them. But I imagined that in crossing
a lighted street I could be seen from below and got down off
the tracks, intending to cross a field and take a chance on
the street. But this had to be abandoned, for as I looked over
the prospect from the shadow of a fence I saw an automobile
held up at the point of a revolver in the hands of one member
of a gang while they searched the car apparently looking for
colored men.
This is no place for a minister's son, I thought, and crept
back behind a fence and lay down among some weeds. Lying there
as quietly as could be I reflected on how close I had come to
a severe beating or the possible loss of my life. Fear, which
had caused me to run, now gave place to anger, and a desire
to fight, if I could fight with a square deal. I remembered
that as I looked the gang over at Fifty-first and Ashland
I figured I could handle any of them individually with the
possible exception of two, but the whole gang of blood-thirsty
hoodlums was too much. Anger gave place to hatred and a desire
for revenge, and I thought if ever I caught a green-buttoned
"Ragen's Colt" on the South Side east of State that one of
us would get a licking. But reason showed me such would be
folly and would only lead to reprisals and some other innocent
individual getting a licking on my account. I knew all "Ragen's"
were not rowdies, for I had met some who were pretty decent
fellows, but some others--ye gods!
My problem was to get home and to avoid meeting hostile
elements. Temporarily I was safe in hiding, but I could not
stay there after daybreak. So I decided to wait a couple of
hours and then try to pass through "No Man's Land"--Halsted to
Wentworth. I figured the time to be about 11:30 and so decided
to wait until 1:30 or 2:00 A.M., before coming out of cover.
Shots rang out intermittently; the sky became illumined; the
fire bells rang, and I imagined riot and arson held sway as of
the previous year. It is remarkable how the imagination runs
wild under such conditions.
Then the injustice of the whole thing overwhelmed me--emotions
ran riot. Had the ten months I spent in France been all in
vain? Were those little white crosses over the dead bodies of
those dark-skinned boys lying in Flanders fields for naught? Was
democracy merely a hollow sentiment? What had I done to deserve
such treatment? I lay there experiencing all the emotions I
imagined the innocent victim of a southern mob must feel when
being hunted for some supposed crime. Was this what I had
given up my Canadian citizenship for, to become an American
citizen and soldier? Was the risk of life in a country where
such hatred existed worth while? Must a Negro always suffer
merely because of the color of his skin? "There's a Nigger;
let's get him!" Those words rang in my ears--I shall never
forget them.
Psychologists claim that it is in the face of overwhelming
forces that man is prone to turn to the Supreme Being. I was
no longer afraid, only filled with righteous indignation and
a desire to get out of danger. But mingled emotions shook me,
and a flood of tears burst forth. In the midst of it I found
myself praying fervently to God against the injustice of it
all, for strength and help to go through safely, and thanks for
my deliverance from the gang which had chased me. Then relief
came from all these pent-up feelings with the determination
to get up and try to go through--and to fight, if necessary.
I began to speculate on means. A freight train came along, and
the impulse came to jump on it and ride out of town until the
trouble was over, but the knowledge of only 15 cents carfare
in my pocket compelled the rejection of this idea. I thought
of phoning to a friend to come and get me in his car, but
this was futile, for where could I find a phone and be safe
in that neighborhood? Some clothes on a line in a yard across
the field offered a disguise, but even dressed as a woman I'd
need a hat, and that idea had to be abandoned. With resources
at an end, I picked up four rocks for ammunition and started
out.
For four blocks I glided from shadow to shadow, through alleys.
A couple of dogs nearly "spilled the beans" when they barked
just as an automobile came down the street. I dove for cover
until the car had disappeared and then emerged. At Forty-ninth
Street and Union Avenue I climbed up on the railroad tracks
and cautiously walked along them in the darkness. All of a
sudden a block ahead appeared what seemed to be about ten men
standing on the tracks, so I dropped to the ground and made a
pair of binoculars out of my hands. For what seemed like five
minutes I watched these forms then decided they were uprights
on a bridge and went on. Imagination and fear can play tricks,
and this was one of them.
Finally I found myself at Thirty-seventh and Stewart streets,
having been walking northeast instead of east as I thought.
I climbed down to the street and walked through back lanes
until I saw the Sox ball park. All was quiet, so I came out
and crossed Wentworth Avenue. At State and Thirty-seventh
I saw two colored fellows waiting for a car and ran up to
them. Putting my hands on their shoulders I said, "Gee! I'm
glad to see a dark skin." Then I related my experience. They
assured me the "fun" was all over, and I was thankful. It was
twenty-five minutes to four, just five and a half hours after
I had started for home from work. A white man came along,
and my first impulse was to jump on him and beat him up. But
again reason told me he was not responsible for the actions of
a gang of rowdies, and he was as innocent as I had been when
set upon.
Is such an experience easily forgotten? Recent events would
prove to the contrary. I vowed that morning never to let
the sun set on me west of Wentworth Avenue, and never to go
into that section unprotected, even in daytime. On a recent
Sunday the papers came out with an "Extra" about 11:00 P.M.,
announcing a "Big South Side Fight." I went to the door and
hailed a boy. Just then an automobile with men standing on
the running-board came around the corner. The possibility
of another riot flashed through my mind and without looking
at the paper I snapped off the light, closed the door, and
prepared for trouble if it came my way. But the "Fight" had
been a gunman's war. This is just indicative of the caution
such an experience develops. It is not a fear, but a wariness
in uncertainty.
3. DEFENSIVE POLICIES
To stimulate group morale and solidify the sentiments of Negroes for
unified opposition to what they regard as oppressive measures of white
people, many tactics are employed. The most common of these is that of
interpreting the aims and ambitions of Negroes to white persons and of
defending themselves generally against criticism. A selection of types
of this "defensive" sentiment is given.
A Negro attorney said:
The only way to gain favorable public opinion is to create
favorable press notices. A certain amount of agitation is
necessary on the part of colored papers to educate the race
as to what it is entitled to. The American white race has been
very successful in its propaganda that colored people are not
entitled to certain things. This has caused many Negroes to
believe that they are not as good as the white people.
The press can be a source of evil or of good. It depends upon
the point of view. The difficulty lies in the fact that the
white press has the wrong attitude, usually. A great deal of
harm is done by paid workers who will give interviews that
will sustain the viewpoint of the papers. Others desirous of
newspaper notoriety are guilty of the same offense. Usually
those interviewed are not capable of giving exact opinions and
viewpoints. Those capable of doing justice to the situation
are not sought by reporters. During the time when there is
more calm and people are in a position to give thoughtful
consideration to the question, no effort is made to find out
the attitude of substantial citizens. If this were done the
papers would get somewhere.
A letter from a Negro thanking the editor of a northern paper for a fair
editorial said:
The colored citizens realize fully the extent to which
propaganda is spread against them in the average newspaper
under the guise of news, and when they find someone who knows
that too, and who is strong enough to help, as is the ----
[newspaper], they thank him with all the strength of their
hearts, although their lips may remain mute.
_Negro sentiment regarding racial news in the white press._--A Negro
weekly paper said:
Whatever be the cause or the motive there is apparently a
well organized plan to discredit the race in America and to
bring estrangement between fellow Americans. A short-sighted
... press is contributing to this estrangement by playing
upon the passions of the undiscriminating and thoughtlessly
by its glaring and sensational headings, emphasizing rumours
of alleged crimes by Negroes.
_Flattery as a means of promoting tolerance._--A popular Negro orator said:
I think that the great trouble with us already is that we have
allowed the white people to settle too many things for us.
The nation gave you constitutional freedom, but no man can
make you truly free except you yourself. The white man hates
nothing worse than a coward, and the American white man is the
most remarkable human being the world ever knew. He is God's
superman. As white and black have one destiny beneath the Stars
and Stripes, so have we the common duties of citizenship....
Woodrow Wilson is my leader. What he commands me to do I shall
do. Where he commands me to go I shall go. I had naught of
ill will toward Von Bernsdorf until Wilson pointed him out
as a national menace. Whom Woodrow Wilson cannot receive into
fellowship, I cannot receive.
A Negro resident of Chicago for fourteen years, formerly of Louisiana,
said:
I went to Wilson's last inauguration in Washington and tried to
talk to the President. I got in the gate, but the guard would
not let me go farther without a pass. I went into every place
that men were allowed to enter and found no "Jim-Crowing" in
any public place. The nearest approach to it was in the printing
department of the government. There were several colored girls
all working at the same table. In other departments I had
seen white and colored together. I went into every washroom
on every floor of one building and must have washed my hands
twenty times.
_Negroes, real Americans._--A letter from a Negro workman to Governor
Lowden said:
Why is it that intelligent colored people, the real Americans
and the most humble and purest nation that ever trod the soil
of America since they have been here--we have never thrown
any bombs; we have never written a black-hand letter and what
disgrace and shameful things we do it was learned to us by
our foreparents' masters down south because they taught them
to steal and murder and do all other most disgraceful things.
We have never bombed any white people's homes, but I cannot
see into it why it is that all nations such as the Polish,
Japan, Chinaman, Mexican, German and Russ and now you see what
they have done to this country; they have done everything to
overthrow this Government and have got the I.W.W. and the Red.
Where have we done such dirty deeds? We have enriched this
soil of America with our blood in every war for this country
and then cannot live where we want to as an American citizen.
We even shed our blood in France to save someone else money
and their homes, and the thanks we got when we come back was
a big race riot which I do believe was started by southern
white men to put a disgrace on the North because the North do
not lynch and burn as they do. Of course I know you cannot do
anything by yourself. But if you can get enough men who have
got a backbone to protect the ones who have always protected
them this outrage could be stopped. I read a piece in the
_Herald-Examiner_ that it would be a riot here; that has
poisoned the minds of so many people. So now I hope you will
try to stop such trouble.
_Defensive philosophy; silence does not mean contentment._--A Negro
educator said:
Many white men of high intellectual ability and keen discernment
have mistaken the Negro silence for contentment, his facial
expression for satisfaction at prevailing conditions, and his
songs and jovial air for happiness. But not always so. These are
his methods of bearing his troubles and keeping his soul sweet
under seeming wrongs. In the absence of a spokesman or means
of communication with the whites over imagined grievances, he
has brightened his countenance, smiled and sung to give ease
to his mind. In the midst of it all he is unable to harmonize
the teachings of the Bible which the white Christian placed
in his hands with the practices of daily life. He finds it
difficult to harmonize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man, and his faith is put to the test in that "Providence"
which enslaved his ancestors, corrupted his blood and placed
upon him stigmas more damaging than to be a leper or convict
by making his color a badge of infamy and his preordained
social position at the bottom of human society. So firmly has
his status been fixed by this "Providence" that neither moral
worth, fidelity to trust, love of home, loyalty to country or
faith in God can raise him to human recognition.
_Votes for Negroes._--The _Crisis_ for January, 1921, said:
The astonishing thing about the Bourbon South is its
intellectual bankruptcy when it comes to the Negro. It
continually assumes that the Negro is a fool. Some Negroes are
fools, but the proportion among them is steadily decreasing,
while that among the Bourbons seems to increase. When the
average white Southerner faces the problem of racial contact
he has absolutely nothing to offer except what he offered
in 1861, namely: the Will of God, Force and Bloodshed, and,
"The best friend in the world to the Negro is the Southern
white man--the only one who truly loves him." We quote from
our ever-delightful friend, the editor of the _Macon_ (Ga.)
_Telegraph_.
The tragedy of the situation is that this man believes what
he says. He knows absolutely just the "place" for which God
made "niggers"; but to support this sincere belief he spreads
falsehoods. He says that the woman suffrage party by its secret
machinations "probably" caused the blood shed in the Florida
elections! He threatens murder for black men who want to vote,
and almost weeps over the misguided Negroes who have left the
Empire State of lynching and gone to Chicago.
There seems to be in this man's mind absolutely no conception
of the tremendous, increasing, unswerving development of the
Negro. To him all aspiration, unrest, and complaints of black
folk are conspiracies of whites. For the blacks he has no
program, no vision, except that they stay where they have always
been, growing more content with "Jim-Crow" cars, lynching and
disfranchisement.
It is inconceivable to the mentality of this section of the
white South that such a program is absolutely impossible.
That if, in the end, the price we must pay for aspiration to
modern manhood is death, and death in the most horrible form
of public torture and burning like that in Florida, if to live
we must die, then the South will have us to kill. Any man who
does not prefer death to slavery is not worth freedom....
The black man must vote. Every Southerner with brains knows
this. The Negro is awaiting his enfranchisement with greater
patience than the South has any right to expect. But he will
not wait forever. If he sees gathering signs of sanity--a
willingness to let the intelligent and thrifty vote, an honest
effort to establish law and order and overthrow the rule of
the mob, a desire to substitute honest industrial conditions
in place of the organized and entrenched theft of black wealth
upon which southern industry is based today--such a program,
tardy and slow and inadequate though it be, may count on the
infinite patience and long suffering of Ethiopia.
4. RACE CONSCIOUSNESS
_Ancient Order of Ethiopian Princes_:[83]
TO MY KINSMEN.--In a broad sense, the words "Negro" and "Nigger"
have no historical significance. They are used synonymously
in the white man's dictionary. "Negro" is a pure Spanish word
meaning "black." The word "Negro," therefore, may be descriptive
of a race, but not the name of it. In reality "Negro" is an
alias, or nickname applied to us originally, in much the same
contemptuous spirit as the black boy is called "Rastus" or
"Sambo."
The white man writes his history for us to study, makes his
scenario with his heroes and heroines for us to admire, and
supplies our newspapers. Through these instrumentalities he
almost entirely controls our thought.
Remember that "a word is the sign of an idea." The kind of an
"idea" that the "sign" stands for depends upon our teaching.
If we associate a word, then, with a noble or degraded idea,
we have been taught to do so.
You can easily prove this by experimenting with certain words
for yourself. After repeating each word tell what your idea
is and what you see: (1) Roman, (2) Paradise, (3) Statesmen,
(4) General. Is the idea or picture you get degraded? No. The
White Press, history, reel and teacher have taken care of that.
Now take the following words: (1) Lynched, (2) Jim Crow, (3)
Disfranchised, (4) Negro.
What is the result? The words "Lynched," "Jim Crow,"
"Disfranchised," are the signs of degraded ideas. Moreover,
"Negro" is very apt to creep into each one of the three mind
pictures and conversely one of the three into the "Negro" mind
picture.
Do you understand? Now why is that? That is what Ethiopic
culture teaches, through the "Ancient Order of Ethiopian
Princes."
If we believe that we come from nowhere and have no history
but that of a slave, our substance will be the charity of our
oppressors, and our future handicapped by doubts and fears.
Ancient history knows no "Negro," but ancient history does
know Ethiopia and Ethiopians. Change a family's name and in a
generation you cannot tell whether its foreparents were rogues
or saints. It is the same with a race. You cannot trace your
ancestors through the name "Negro."
Take away our birthright, our ancient honorable name,
"Ethiopian" and you have stopped the very fountain of our
inspiration. If we are "Negroes" we are by the same dictionary
also, "Niggers." The moment we realize, however, that we are
"Ethiopians," we can see the beams from the lamps of Ethiopian
culture lighting a pathway down the shadowy ages, and the
fires of ambition are rekindled in our hearts, because we
know that we came from the builders of temples and founders
of civilization.
Study this.
_Contrasts of North and South._--An investigator's report on home
conditions of retarded children said:
The mother is eager to learn, and constantly talks of wanting
to attend night school if the opportunity ever offers itself.
She is eager for her girl to complete her education and wants
her to take a business course so she will be independent. "A
white man can take everything from the colored man but his
learning," Mrs. ---- said repeatedly.
In coming to Chicago she wasn't sure what she would find, but
she had heard that colored people had a show here. She brought
her child here to give her one. Chicago seems like heaven to
her now when she thinks of what she had been through in the
South.
When the investigator asked her about the church to which she
belonged she said: "Olivet. I goes every Sunday and Wednesday
nights to prayer meeting just to thank God that he let me live
to go to a place of worship like that, a place where my people
worship and ain't pestered by the white men."
The Chicago riot provoked probably the first full expressions of sentiment
from Negroes in their own press. Underlying them are attitudes toward
present race relations. There is a strong note of resentment, and the
announcement of the birth of a "New Negro."
The war is credited with bringing about this change. More than 250,000
young Negroes, the pick of the race in health and intelligence, had
returned to the United States, presumably with changed ideas, and perhaps
with growing cynicism as to promises of fair treatment. Perhaps for
the first time in American history the Negro group fought in the 1919
riot as a body against mob violence. The idea that these disorders are
a result of active opposition to distasteful practices is prominent in
practically every Negro discussion. "The Negro race is facing about" is
a familiar statement. Said one Negro newspaper:
It is the utter ignoring of the Negro in the community life
that is responsible for these outbreaks. The controlling whites
were absolutely out of touch with the Negroes, and the races
came together in a quarrel and there was no means by which
the trouble could be settled.
A monthly magazine, the _Favorite_, said:
If the white man thinks that the rights, privileges and ordinary
pursuits of the Negro can now be annulled at this stage of the
world's affairs, he certainly has "another thought coming."
This Washington revolt is only the "handwriting on the wall."
Don't squeeze the Negro too hard; if you do you squeeze him to
the bursting point. The young Negro of today is far different
from his foreparents, and will not be content with anything
less than a fair deal.
The _New York American_ said:
The dangerous enemy of his race is the colored man that
advocates force as a remedy. There is such a thing as being
outnumbered beyond any hope.
A Negro newspaper replied:
There is such a thing, too, as a noble preference of death
to a life of slavery. Do Hearst and Arthur Brisbane think
the sentiment of "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" belongs
exclusively to a white skin?
A poem in the _Crusader_ and republished in the _Messenger_ and several
other periodicals, carries this same idea:
IF WE MUST DIE
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While around us bark the mad and hungry dogs
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die--oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us, though dead!
Oh, kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us still be brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but--fighting back!
--CLAUDE MCKAY
_Defensive measures justified._--The general belief among Negroes is
that resistance to violence is justified. Some view this display of
counterviolence as simply defensive measures, some as retaliation, which
in substance means the same.
The _Washington Eagle_, a Negro newspaper, commenting on the beginning
of the Washington riot, said:
Notwithstanding the fact that these mobs, increasing in number
and in violence each evening, were allowed to harass law-abiding
colored citizens for three consecutive evenings, the colored
citizens showed no signs of revenge or retaliation. But when
the situation became so terrible that colored citizens could
endure it no longer they rose up almost as one man, and,
adhering to the first law of human nature, which says that
self-preservation is the first law of nature, they armed
themselves "to the teeth," to use the phrase of one of the
local newspapers. It was only when they showed this disposition
to fight back that the riot ceased.
The _Messenger_, a Negro magazine, said:
The world knows not that the new Negroes are determined to
observe the primal law of self-preservation whenever civil
laws break down; to assist the authorities to preserve order
and prevent themselves and families from being murdered in
cold blood. Surely, no one can easily object to this new and
laudable determination.
_Opinions of Negroes regarding the conduct of the police._--Negro
condemnation of the police seems general. From a large selection of
comments two are given. The _Favorite_ said:
History proves that nearly all race riots are started by white
policemen. East St. Louis, Houston and Washington, D.C., have
had terrible cataclysms provoked by white bluecoats who in
nine cases out of ten carry their prejudices with them whenever
they enter black belts. Instead of acting in behalf of law and
order white policemen usually act in behalf of some passion
that tells them Negroes are convenient brutes. For the safety
of the twenty-five thousand colored and ten thousand whites in
the Second Ward of Chicago we ask that every white patrolman
in the district be replaced by a colored bluecoat. Chicago
must not be added to the list of American cities cut off from
civilization by race riots, and it is up to Mayor William Hale
Thompson and Chief Garrity to see that the honor of that city
is preserved.
The _Washington Eagle_ thought most of the trouble was due to the
overbearing attitude of the police. It said:
Bishop Cottrell, wiring from Holly Springs, Miss., wants the
President to call a conference of representatives of both races
to consider the matter of mob law. We doubt if the President
will take the trouble to do anything of the kind: while he
is thinking it over the police in every place had better be
instructed to have more respect for the rights and feelings of
the Afro-American people. Most of the trouble is to be found
in the insolent and overbearing attitude of the police.
_Negro opinions regarding white newspapers._--It is asserted by numerous
Negro papers that certain white papers spurred the rioters to greater
lawlessness in the Washington outbreak, and in some cases settled the
date and place of assembly for attacking parties. The _Afro-American_
quoted from the _Washington Post_ an excerpt headed "Mobilizing for
Tonight," and reading:
It was learned that a mobilization of every available service
man stationed in or near Washington or on leave here has been
ordered for tomorrow evening near the Knights of Columbus hut
on Pennsylvania Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth streets. The
hour of assembly is 9 o'clock and the purpose is a "cleanup"
that will cause the events of the last two evenings to pale
into insignificance. Whether official cognizance of this
assemblage and its intent will bring about its forestalling
cannot be told.
The _Afro-American_ added:
Commenting on this article Secretary Shillady of the
National Association declares: "In view of the fact that the
'mobilization' announced by the _Washington Post_ had not been
ordered by any authority, military or civil, does not the
passage show intent by the _Washington Post_ to bring about
such mobilization?"
Another Negro paper in Washington carried the criticism farther:
Editorials are supposed to concern those topics that are most
important to the community in which they are written. No one
can deny the importance of the race riots that disgraced the
name of fair America's Capital during the present week; yet
two of the leading daily papers of the city found everything
to fill their editorial columns but the proper attempts
to discourage mob violence and a disposition to place the
blame where it justly belongs. The rioting, in itself, was a
deplorable disgrace, but a greater disgrace is that the daily
newspapers should have encouraged the rioting by the glaring,
ugly headlines that they gave it, rather than discourage the
riots in editorials.
The _National Defender and Sun_ replied to an editorial of the _Chicago
Tribune_:
In a recent edition of the _Chicago Daily Tribune_, which calls
itself the world's greatest newspaper, in discussing the recent
race riot in Chicago, it had this to say: "Can the two races
continue to live in peace in Chicago without segregation? We
have for some time criticized the South for its treatment of
its black citizens. We believe since the race riot in Chicago
that segregation, separate cars, will be the only cure to
prevent race riots in the future." We are very much surprised
at the statement of the _Chicago Tribune_. Does the world's
greatest newspaper forget that Atlanta, Ga., Memphis, Tenn.,
Arkansas and Texas, had great race riots, and that all of the
above-named states have their Jim Crow laws and segregated
district?
The _New York Age_ had this to say:
So much clamor and bad blood have been aroused by the repeated
charge of assaults attempted upon women in the city of
Washington, that more than ordinary significance attaches to
a news item found tucked away in an inconspicuous position
on an inside page of the _Washington Times_. It was headed:
"Woman Now Denies She Was Attacked," and read as follows: "The
case of an alleged attack on Mrs. Minnie Franklin, 1361 K.
Street Southeast, by two Negroes near Fifteenth and H. Sts.,
Northeast, Thursday night, was closed last night when according
to detectives, the woman said the story was a fabrication.
Several headquarters detectives questioned the woman yesterday
and then went over the ground where the alleged attack was
supposed to have occurred, but could find no evidence of a
struggle."
This reported case of "assault" had "scare" headlines at the
time it was supposed to have occurred, and it looked as if
the daily papers were trying to provoke another riot. Later,
by the admission of the accuser, the police and the press,
the charge was shown to be groundless. Time and again these
charges of assaults have been shown to be "faked," and the most
credulous should be brought to see the necessity of searching
investigation before pronouncing the accused guilty. Hysteria,
by newspaper suggestion, may be at the foundation of many a
case of reported "assault."
_Charges of southern propaganda in the North._--A wide distinction has
been made by Negro observers between the Washington and Chicago riots,
the former being called a typical southern, and the latter a typical
northern, riot. Reasons for this are given in the different forms of
incentive to rioting. The Washington reasons were largely sentimental
and bore a striking resemblance to the Atlanta riot about 1906. Reports
of attacks on white women, played up in the newspapers, were sufficient
to set the current going. The sentiment of the South is said to have
been behind this outbreak. Said the _Chicago Defender_:
It is easy to see that the southern white man is at the
bottom of race riots in the northern cities to which we have
migrated in recent years.... It is idle to suppose that the
black man was the only migrator from the South; every northern
community is practically overrun with southern whites of both
sexes. In many of the northern cities a majority of the white
women employed as clerks and saleswomen in department stores,
telephone operators and other fields of industry are from the
South. In every place where men are utilized, including public
officials, judges and prosecuting attorneys, some of them are
also from the South.
_Remedies._--The _Chicago Defender_ said:
To emphasize the fact that no self-respecting citizen had
anything to do with the disgraceful affairs recently witnessed
here and in Washington, thousands of circulars have been
distributed by our people and to our people filled with good,
wholesome advice as to being good, law-abiding citizens. Our
only salvation lies in harmony, and both elements must come to
understand that each is necessary to the other, and that with
all pulling together, democracy for America will no longer be
a theory, but a reality.
The foregoing examples of sentiment by no means cover the varieties of
Negro opinion. They are merely illustrative of different types. The
peculiarities of group behavior which appear to be the attributes of
the Negro group would doubtless show themselves in any other groups
similarly placed in the social scale. There would at the same time be
no more likelihood of their being understood. Situations develop which
appear to the uninitiated white observer strange and even dangerous.
That they do represent very definite and calculated programs of action
within certain circles of the Negro group may be illustrated by a few
examples.
At a garment manufacturer's plant thirty colored girls were employed in
a separate unit. When a white girl was employed, the colored girls walked
out. They explained that when they first began work in a plant employing
white girls a precedent for this action was given. If white girls were
too proud to work with colored girls, then colored girls should be too
proud to work with white girls. It required much effort on the part of
the Urban League to correct their viewpoints.
A short time ago there was considerable agitation among certain groups
of Negroes over the appointment of a Negro principal for one of the
elementary schools. His appointment was strongly opposed by Negroes.
Although this may have seemed inexplicable to white people, the action
was not wholly illogical from the viewpoint of Negroes. The school in
question, near the Negro residential area, had an attendance of about
70 per cent Negro children. Negroes reasoned thus: If a Negro principal
were appointed the white teachers would eventually resign or for one
reason or another be transferred; the white parents then would withdraw
their children because there would be no white teachers, and so the first
step would be accomplished toward segregation of Negroes in the public
schools. It was segregation that was opposed, although the advancement
of one of their number must be sacrificed.
Marcus Garvey, a West Indian Negro, with a remarkable genius for
organization, four years ago began a venture on a commercial basis and
developed it into a definite racial movement. He conceived the notion
of establishing trade relations with Africa, and accordingly organized
a steamship line. It was a large undertaking. There were few large Negro
investors, and if money was to be raised it had to come in numerous small
amounts rather than in a few large ones. Again, if commercial relations
were to be established, there must be intelligent Negroes at the African
end. The effort grew into another "Back to Africa" movement. To increase
interest it was necessary to campaign actively, using appeals calculated
to arouse the great mass of Negroes. This Garvey did with such success
that his "Back to Africa" slogans created a far larger movement than
his original commercial proposition. The Universal Negro Improvement
Association attracted more interest and members. The _Negro World_, a
newspaper with a constant and powerful appeal to racial pride, racial
solidarity, and racial independence, is the organ of the movement. During
the summer of 1920 a great convention was held. A provisional president
of the Black Republic was elected, and was acclaimed the recognized
leader of the black people of the world. The women were organized into
"Black Cross" nurses and it was planned to establish a "Black House" in
Washington. The movement has been widened to include the black peoples
of the British colonies and Africa. An alliance of sympathy has been
declared with peoples similarly disadvantaged. Thus Ireland's contention
for home rule is supported, in spite of the supposed general hostility
between the Negroes and the Irish in the United States. The movement is
credited with 4,000,000 followers in different parts of the world.
VI. OPINIONS OF FIFTEEN NEGROES ON DEFINITE RACIAL PROBLEMS
What are Negroes thinking? Few white persons know the intimate reactions
of Negroes to problems which they face daily. Yet it is obvious that the
conduct of Negroes in practically every phase of life is determined by
these very sentiments, which for the white world remain a closed book.
It was with this in mind that a series of questions was put to seventeen
Negroes whose intelligence and public-mindedness qualified them for
critical self-analysis as well as dispassionate examination of racial
issues as they affect the minds, behavior, and policies of Negroes as a
group. Ten of these Negroes lived in Chicago and represented an ordinary
type of the intelligent Negro. Five of them lived outside of Chicago.
Included in this latter number were two Negroes whose writings have
been widely read and who may be said to exercise some influence over
the thinking of Negroes.
The fifteen whose replies are presented here included business men,
physicians, ministers, school teachers, lawyers, and social workers.
Two were women.
ARE RACE RELATIONS IMPROVING?
_Question_: Putting aside for the moment the question of right
and wrong and the iniquity of the causes back of present
relations, do you believe that the relations are becoming
better or worse, or are they at a standstill?
_Answers_:
1. Better, decidedly better. If it becomes unprofitable to lynch
Negroes, or unprofitable to shoot them up in riots, they will
probably more and more be let alone. The riots in Chicago and
Washington mean that not only Negroes will lose their lives.
They also indicate to me that the Negro feels that his back
is more and more to the wall, and he is bestirring himself. So
long as he is satisfied, his case is hopeless. When he begins
to force respect he will usher in the dawn of a new day. Again
there is an increasing number of evidences that white people
are waking up to the conditions. Negroes feel that some of
the "Study Groups" are ineffective, but the fact remains that
at one time the race question was not deemed worthy of study
except by Negroes. When all is said, I would rather be living
in 1920 than in 1870.
2. The relations are becoming worse. Relatively speaking, race
relations in America have not kept pace with progress in many
fields along other lines. The great desideratum is that the
Negro change his point of view.
3. The present relations between the races seem more tense than
formerly. This is due to the fact that Negroes have developed
within the past few years a greater race consciousness, a
great race respect. The immigration from the South which
permitted him to enter into the industrial life of the North
with very few hindrances, to partake of its civic life without
an ever-constant reminder of race, was one of the main factors
in increasing race consciousness and race respect. Another
factor was the treatment as equals and fellow human beings of
the Negro soldiers by the French soldiery and people. These
things have caused the Negro to demand the respect which he is
entitled to as a man and the privileges due him as a citizen.
The whites at the present time still object to giving him
these. This causes friction. I believe, however, that it will
be lessened as soon as the whites realize that these demands
of the Negro will not be withdrawn but will continue to be
made with greater insistence.
4. Better.
5. Much was gained through the war. However, at the present
time things seem to be at a standstill.
6. Racial relations between all races were never more acute
nor more keenly felt and resented than during the present day.
7. Conditions, I believe, are getting a little better.
8. I don't believe that consideration of right and wrong
influences fundamental reactions. One's conception of advantage
and disadvantage determines the character of every act. I
believe that all social relations are in a state of flux and
that with the improvement of mankind which is coming with
the evolution of a sense of higher values there will be an
improvement in human relationships.
9. Race relations on the whole are growing worse instead of
better, and they are crystallizing in the wrong direction. The
whites are adjusting their conscience to their conduct, and
are consciously or unconsciously justifying violation of the
Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount,
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the
United States at the behest of race prejudice.
10. They are becoming distinctly worse as each year solidifies
the hatred and crystallizes the opinions of the whites which
immediately subsequent to the Civil War were in a chaotic state.
11. The last year or so has shown that riots are more quickly
started. In our opinion race relations are likely to get much
worse, especially if the present flood of European immigration
continues. But getting worse to become better is much like
a boil which, after it gathers and breaks, leaves the body
in a healthier condition. Negroes are becoming more and more
determined to enjoy their constitutional rights.
12. I am in doubt.
13. I am an optimist. I believe relations are becoming better.
OPINIONS ON SOLUTION
_Question_: Do you believe that money and the acquisition of
wealth make an appreciable difference in the degree of respect
in which Negroes are held by their white neighbors, or in the
treatment they receive?
=========================+=============+================+===================
Economic Progress[84] | 1866 | 1919 | Gain in
| | | Fifty-three Years
-------------------------+-------------+----------------+-------------------
Homes owned | 12,000 | 600,000 | 588,000
Farms operated | 20,000 | 1,000,000 | 980,000
Businesses conducted | 2,100 | 50,000 | 47,900
Value of church property | $1,500,000 | $85,900,000 | $84,400,000
Wealth accumulated | $20,000,000 | $1,100,000,000 | $1,080,000,000
-------------------------+-------------+----------------+-------------------
_Answers_:
1. Yes, money and wealth are the root of all good and evil.
In North Carolina, a rich Negro, McCary, who, it was alleged,
had been caught in intimate relations with a leading white
woman, was sued for money damages instead of being lynched.
Money and wealth must be widely diffused enough to make an
appreciable difference, however; isolated cases of wealth
ordinarily engender friction and hatred.
2. No, because I personally know many who are highly respected
and kindly treated in their communities though in very humble
circumstances.
3. I believe that money or wealth causes more respect to be
accorded within white people's hearts, but it is more likely
to increase racial feeling than to lessen it. The element
of jealousy among poorer whites probably gives rise to such
statements as keeping the Negro in his place. The whites of
better circumstances merely use these existing feelings to
gain their own selfish ends.
4. Yes, and no. Money is power. The power over a man's
subsistence is the power over his will. The individual who
has money is sought because he is in a position to confer
advantages. He is likewise hated because he can inflict
pain. Were race prejudice logical and based upon reason and
not hysteria, the procurement of money and the consequent
demonstration of basic equality would improve conditions.
However, the majority of persons do not think but are exploited.
Religious dogmas and racial antipathies being useful adjuncts
in the process are sufficient to outweigh material or rational
considerations.
5. Absolutely.
6. The possession of money causes whites to accord the Negro
more respect and better treatment if the particular Negro can
intelligently handle his affluent situation so as to demand
such.
7. I think that money and the acquisition of wealth make an
appreciable difference in the degree of respect in which Negroes
are held by their white neighbors; not that the prejudice
against the race is reduced considerably or possibly to any
extent, but because men worship dollars, and if they are
possessed by Negroes, Negroes fall in for additional respect
as the holders of wealth.
8. I believe that the acquisition of wealth causes marked
increase in respect, provided that a fairly large group of
Negroes in that community respectively are the possessors; but
for merely one or two persons to acquire wealth in a community
is not likely to inspire respect. It may cause its opposite.
I assume, of course, that a fair intelligence was necessary
to secure the wealth.
9. Intelligence and wealth are necessary to the self-respect
of the Negro. I doubt not that in many instances they would
increase racial friction for the time being; but the time
must come and is now near at hand, when the white race must
recognize that the whole is greater than any of its parts. A
community like Chicago, for instance, cannot be intelligent if
the Negro is ignorant; it cannot be competent if the Negro is
inefficient; it cannot be virtuous if the Negro is vicious;
it cannot be healthy if the Negro is diseased. Intelligence
and wealth will not of themselves solve the race problem, but
the problem cannot be solved without intelligence and wealth.
10. Money and wealth do make a difference in the amount of
respect accorded to individuals, as they lessen the causes for
class antagonism. The white man accords esteem to those who
are able to secure good clothing, decent homes, education,
and indulge in what are considered luxuries. These things,
too, increase the respect the Negro has for himself and make
him demand respect from others. The treatment accorded him is
not likely to be changed as his advancement tends to increase
hatred among the whites whom he rises above, and a desire not
to treat him as an equal among those whose level he reaches.
11. Money, commerce, rule the world. The average white man is
happiest when he sees the Negro down. But if the Negro has
money he is willing to conceal his prejudice and trade with
him. Money, in the possession of no matter whom, commands fear,
which is the nearest most human beings get to having respect
for others. While one rich Negro in a town, in most instances,
would receive pretty much the same treatment as other Negroes,
yet a hundred rich Negroes in that same town would certainly
make a big difference. Apply this ratio to the nation. A rich
Negro, even in Georgia or Mississippi, certainly has a far
pleasanter lot than a poor white.
12. Yes.
13. Yes, it does for white people. To quote a friend, "It is
easy for anybody to be respectful and courteous to a million
dollars." This is especially true of Americans.
_Question_: Do you believe that if Negroes were 100 per cent
literate it would make any great difference in race relations?
Are general and higher education likely to widen the breach
between Negroes and white persons, increase intolerance,
resentment, sensitiveness to insults, or can a quieted process
of adjustment or complete fusion of interests be expected?
==================================+==========+=============+=============
Educational Progress[85] | 1866 | 1919 | Gain in
| | | Fifty-three
| | | Years
----------------------------------+----------+-------------+-------------
Per cent literate | 10 | 80 | 70
Colleges and normal schools | 15 | 500 | 485
Students in public schools | 100,000 | 1,800,000 | 1,700,000
Teachers in all schools | 600 | 38,000 | 37,400
Property for higher education | $60,000 | $22,000,000 | $21,940,000
Annual expenditures for education | $700,000 | $15,000,000 | $14,300,000
Raised by Negroes | $80,000 | $1,700,000 | $1,620,000
----------------------------------+----------+-------------+-------------
_Answers_:
1. Education will help decidedly, especially that kind of
education which gives Negroes a command of some special
accomplishment in any field of endeavor. Higher education will
not in my opinion widen the breach if Negroes will consciously
and deliberately set out to educate white people as to their
ideals, ability and character, and at the same time labor to
increase the spirit of self-help and self-confidence among
their own group which will serve to decrease ignorance and
irresponsibility among the less fortunate and untrained members
of the race.
2. I conceive that literacy in itself is a cure for nothing
except illiteracy. One-hundred-per-cent literate Negroes
without proper use of their literacy may even make matters
worse. General and higher education may be expected to make
matters better only if there is general and higher education
among whites and the education on both sides is of the right
kind. In America, at present, education, where it touches
race lines, appears to be more propaganda than education. It
is reported that some histories of reconstruction taught to
Negroes by the state in parts of the United States emphasize
and detail their shortcomings and omit their virtues. Obviously
such education is education for mistrust, unrest, conflict.
It educates the races apart, and its logical consequence is
conflict. I am ready to answer, then, that general and higher
education which emphasizes likeness and passes over without
undue attention unlikeness, education which aims to have men
live in harmony and cooperation and does not aim to array
classes against classes and races against races by omissions
and emphasis, may be expected to better our race relations
in the United States provided it finds lodgment in the school
systems of both races.
3. If 10,000,000 literate Negroes were environed with
100,000,000 white men, the majority of whom were below their
cultural level, the dominant minds among the whites would
arouse ethnic antagonisms as an economic weapon to be used in
promoting their selfish ends. I believe that there is not a
single force, ethical, religious, or of any type, sufficiently
powerful to cause an individual to forego what he believes to
be his highest advantage, and the appeal to group instincts
is the easiest method of securing mass action.
4. If Negroes were 100 per cent literate they would certainly be
more sensitive to insults and more resentful. I should expect
a great increase in racial differences, unless those Negroes
imbibed a tendency to non-resistance. That, however, is far
from likely. With universal literacy, a larger acquaintance
with current events and conditions, Negroes could immeasurably
improve their living conditions, but their contacts with the
whites would be far more unpleasant.
5. One hundred per cent literacy among Negroes would make a
huge difference. In the long run it would lessen the breach
between Negroes and white persons, for Negroes would strive
for equality. The most essential thing is to produce a change
in the mental equipment of the Negro. The white man's mind
will take care of itself. What is needed is a more balanced
and equal meeting of the minds. But there would be bloodshed
at the beginning.
6. Resentment and sensitiveness to insults will increase
on the part of Negroes as they grow in intelligence, but as
their spirits rebel more insistently and positively against
insults, it cannot help but have its effect upon white men who
ignorantly mistreat them, and if the respect growing out of
love does not follow, the respect growing out of tolerance,
as in the case of the Jews in America, will ensue and result
in recognition of equal intelligence and culture.
7. Literacy must be 100 per cent on both sides to bring about
a "complete fusion of interests" or a "quieted process of
adjustment." Intelligent Negroes among uneducated whites would
aggravate the situation.
8. If Negroes were 100 per cent literate they would command
more respect, because men always command more respect when
they are intelligent.
9. I believe in education first, last, and always as a leveller
and as a bulwark of defense. There is no race prejudice among
broadly cultured people. Art knows no such distinctions.
10. (_a_) Yes. (_b_) Not, if at the same time the education
of the whites is broadened and made more general. (_c_) Better
education of both races will facilitate a fusion of interests,
beginning probably in economic relations.
11. It would make them much more bitter, for (_a_) the Negro
would be more sensitive to injustice and have more of the
combative spirit which literacy usually gives, and (_b_)
whites would be more jealous and anxious to show the Negro
his place. I believe that such an intensification of the
struggle is desirable and necessary, as I don't believe that
the brilliant ideas necessary for solution of the race problem
can come other than as the children of the most intense and
bitter racial conflict. Of course it would defeat its purpose
if such a conflict were bloody, as then we would have a long
period of the nauseating burden such as America suffers with
today, viz.: the North attempting to reconcile the South.
12. Literacy will make a difference also in race relations. The
difference will increase in degree as literacy advances beyond
the mere ability to read and write to a wider participation
in every field of educational or intellectual endeavor. As
far as I have been able to observe, the breach between whites
and Negroes is widened as Negroes advance in education and
culture. The educated Negro rarely comes in contact with the
white man as a menial or laborer--the only point of contact
which the great majority of white people want. He will respect
the Negro teacher, lawyer, doctor, or business man who knows
his work thoroughly and can do as well as he. He is not likely,
however, to find any reason to co-operate with this class of
Negroes, and the Negroes do seek such co-operation.
13. (_a_) Yes. (_b_) In slavery times whites made it a crime to
teach Negroes to read. That desire, in up-to-date garb, remains
in the breast of most whites today. To many white persons a
Negro of superior talent and refinement is a more detestable
production than the most pronounced rogue. Most white persons,
even of the best quality, are secretly displeased at a Negro
of this type. They were brought up to regard Negroes as being
below them, and the sight is a blow to their vanity. (_c_) A
dollar talks much more sweetly than Emerson or Shakespeare and
even Christ to most men, therefore a process of adjustment or
complete fusion of interests will be effected chiefly through
trade relationship, not esthetics.
_Question_: If unrestricted suffrage were given Negroes
throughout the United States, would matters be helped?
_Answers_:
1. Equal suffrage between the races in some parts of the country
would doubtless precipitate a temporary disturbance, but it
is not thinkable that under democratic institutions any group
or class can be permanently or for a long while refused equal
participation in the government under which they live and by
which they are controlled. Shall we do evil that good may come?
2. Every appreciable increase in power among Negroes will be
met with jealousy and repression by the whites. Unrestricted
suffrage does not mean much when people have guns at the polls
and dare other people to vote. Its inception would mean acute
racial trouble, I think, but if the Negroes used the same
means and methods to register their vote as the whites do to
keep them from registering it, and kept it up long enough,
ultimately conditions would be very much improved where Negroes
constitute about half the population of a unit.
3. Yes. Even though Negroes might not vote intelligently at
the outset, they would tend to vote for their own welfare.
The Negro does not feel wholeheartedly that he is a part
of the American people. But with the vote he would be in a
better position to work for common ends. Though voting for the
capitalist parties would not mean much to the Negro, a vote
for the money barons is better than no vote at all.
4. Unrestricted suffrage is a right as well as a privilege. It
is essential for building up the sense of responsibility and
loyalty among any group of people in a democracy founded on the
ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
5. Yes, the ballot is a protection which the Negro now is
intelligent enough to use and keep. In the present segregated
condition of the Negro, the ballot has a genuine property value.
Police protection, better lighted and better paved streets, I
am convinced, must come to him through the ballot or else he
does not get them.
6. Unrestricted Negro suffrage would help a great deal in
securing for Negroes the things it is possible to secure through
the use of the ballot. Political parties, as well as the Negro
himself, would realize the power of Negro suffrage and would
doubtless be inclined to cater to that vote. The exercise of
such unlimited suffrage is likely to increase for a time the
tenseness in race relations, as the whites would not readily
give up the domination they have secured. The agitation in
Ohio and in the Middle West over the exercise by the Negro of
his suffrage shows how clearly the white man fears the power
of the ballot when used by the Negro.
7. Other things remaining the same, it would not.
8. Not necessarily by that fact alone. The ultimate value of
the right of suffrage is conditioned by the intelligence with
which that right is used.
9. This goes without saying. In Chicago, Negroes exercise
considerable influence in the city administration, because
of their strong political power. The same is true of New York
and Cleveland. Apply this to the nation.
10. Yes.
11. Yes, if we had a third party with racial cohesion.
12. Suffrage to be effective must be taken and not conferred.
"Who would be free, himself must strike the blow." A man has
no right that he can't protect and defend.
_Question_: How about religion as a solvent of racial
difficulties and differences?
=========================+=========+===========+===================
Religious Progress[86] | 1866 | 1919 | Gain in
| | | Fifty-three Years
-------------------------+---------+-----------+-------------------
Number of churches | 700 | 43,000 | 42,300
Number of communicants | 600,000 | 4,800,000 | 4,200,000
Number of Sunday schools | 1,000 | 46,000 | 45,000
Sunday-school pupils | 50,000 | 2,250,000 | 2,200,000
-------------------------+---------+-----------+-------------------
_Answers_:
1. Religion, if it ever becomes a vital force in the everyday
affairs of people, will be one of the greatest forces in
solving race difficulties. At the present time its influence is
practically nil. The average church is still calling worn-out
theology religion; those which have adopted a more modern and
practical view of religion are too few to exert any influence
in race problems.
2. Religion per se, to my mind, has failed, but Christianity,
the spirit manifested by Jesus Christ in his life and which
he commanded his followers to imitate, if adopted in its vital
truth and simplicity by all professing Christians, could solve
all the difficulties.
3. Religion might be helpful in solving racial difficulties
if it were tried--but it has not been very largely tried yet.
4. Religion as a solvent of racial difficulties is necessary,
but both groups will need to practice it to the same degree.
5. The religion of America, or of any other country, is merely
an index to the national character. Religion expresses itself
in the church, and the church is a capitalistic institution.
Expressed religion in America, because its pecuniary existence
largely depends upon the rank and file of the people who
support it, will not rise above the prejudices and folkways
of that rank and file. Religion will not solve many racial
difficulties or differences.
6. Religion hardly touches the deeper motivations. It may
regulate details, but usually the priest-craft succeeds by
sophistry, emphasis or omission in avoiding certain fundamental
issues in their religious exhortations. It often appears that
the preacher is retained to idealize the crassness of the
world, and unpleasant things are simply taboo. He must look
to his salary.
7. It has no utility. It had no utility in the world war and
so a fortiori could have no utility in our race problem where
more bitter issues are involved.
8. Unfortunately religion has little sanction over the social
conduct where interest and passions are involved. This was too
sadly manifested in the world war. It is to be hoped, however,
that there may arise a moral and spiritual renaissance under
whose sanction religion may exercise controlling influence
over the frictional relations among men.
9. Very much overestimated is religion as a solvent of racial
differences. Neither Negroes nor whites have enough confidence
in it to put it into practical application. No one thing will
bring about the Negro's real emancipation. The fight must
be carried on in every sphere where prejudice has vitiated
relations.
10. Religion has failed to solve the racial difficulties and
differences in America because its principles have never been
practiced by the people. Religion has remained a beautiful
theory. If the religious principles were practiced there would
be no racial difficulties.
11. Utterly valueless. The average individual cannot think.
He lives only in the concrete. Material advantages outweigh
philosophical benefits. Deprive religion of the moving force
of fear which its exponents engender, and it will entirely
cease to be dynamic.
12. The religion of Christ will prove a solvent if men ever
give it a trial.
13. Religion, in our opinion, has never settled any question.
Nothing else contains so much the germs of strife. Mankind,
throughout the ages, has never been able to agree on it. The
history of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa is one long record
of warring religions.
SOCIAL ADJUSTMENTS
_Question_: What are some of the most pronounced mental
complexes experienced in adjusting your personal desires and
expectations to the present social system?
_Answers_:
1. A constant haunting feeling when in the presence of white
persons that they desire to shun me because of my color; that
they are eager to use me to further their ends under the guise
of piety or patronizing the "good-feeling-toward-your-people"
attitude. I suffer from time to time an acute embarrassment
because of uncouth conduct in the presence of white persons
on the part of uncultured Negroes. Such conduct embarrasses me
generally, but the presence of white persons who are supposed to
be inimical seems to be the dominant element in the situation.
2. The most pronounced mental complex which I experience in
adjusting my desires and expectations to the present social
system is not the "inferiority complex" with which most
Negroes are charged by the whites. I desire all that the social
system affords; but as to expectation it is necessary for me
to use auto-hypnotism to make myself expect it in order that
I can present to the white man the front of optimism, the
necessary air of expectancy to secure success. The shocks and
disappointments which a Negro must constantly experience tend
to get him in the attitude of expecting nothing.
3. I can't describe the mental complexes, but some are caused
by situations such as these: I go to the library to get a book,
and I am told that I must sit in a seat among dusty shelves
of newspaper files at a table marked "For colored people"; in
order to see a play I have to sit in the gallery. I submit to
that and when I get to the theater, I am told that no seats
are reserved for colored people. I go to a lecture by the Hon.
Mr. So and So (white) and he discusses the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, creating much enthusiasm
among the unthinking and some of the thinking. Then the next
morning I take up the paper of which the same gentleman is the
editor, and read a sneering editorial on the race question,
and so on.
4. Personally, I am able to impersonalize my relation to the
situation, and experience no mental perplexities. I try to
preserve a rational attitude in an irrational environment and
objectify cruelty, injustice and wrong. I know that I as an
individual am not Jim Crowed, or disfranchised or socially
isolated; it is the race to which I belong. My only perplexity
is how to remove these racial, not personal, disqualifications.
5. Determination to fulfill my personal desires in spite of
the present social system; a loss of respect for the white
man's sense of justice.
6. The arrogance of the poor ignorant white man and the
snobbishness of the middle class. This is the stumbling-block
for the future of our race to overcome.
7. Trying to get white persons, as employers, etc., to accept
me as a man first of all, then to judge me on my merits,
irrespective of my color. Trying to attain to the same degree
of success and liberty of any other man of my training and
experience in spite of the world in which I live.
8. Amused and almost cynical tolerance. A desire to reap
the greatest possible advantages from the system, without
permitting my intelligence to admit that it is right because
it is personally advantageous.
9. My desires are never adjusted to the present "social system";
they are constantly out of harmony with the practices of our
so-called democracy, as these practices relate to the Negro.
10. If this question means what I think it does, space will
not permit an intelligent answer.
11. A hyper-sensitiveness in regard to the subject Negro;
a tendency to see racial antagonism as a motive of conduct
in every act of white persons when perhaps it is sometimes
absent; a hesitancy about entering public places or approaching
individuals for fear of rebuff or insult; a withdrawal into a
Negro world in which almost every thought and act are colored
by a racial aspect before a humanitarian one, are some of the
mental complexes experienced in a greater or less degree by
almost every colored person.
_Question_: Do you believe that Negroes are prejudiced against
white persons?
_Answers_:
1. Some are, but the prejudice is due to nurture rather than
to nature.
2. Prejudice means pre-judgment. Negroes come into the world
to find most white persons disliking them. They grow up in
an atmosphere where they find whites ready to insult them
because of the color Nature saw fit to give them. Therefore,
knowledge, not prejudice, causes Negroes to dislike whites.
Human beings, and even dumb animals, love only those who
love them. The average Negro is, however, quick to drop this
defensive attitude when he meets a fair-minded white person.
Perhaps too easily, as he is often taken advantage of by shrewd
whites disguised as friends.
3. I do not believe that Negroes are inherently prejudiced
against the white race. Personally, I have absolutely no such
prejudice. I do not believe that the white race is inherently
prejudiced against the Negro, but that it is wholly a feeling
stimulated by social opinion which can be modified and
controlled. I put in evidence the facts: First, when social
pressure is removed, white women marry Negro men, and white
men marry Negro women. Second, the superior always shows
prejudice against the inferior, whether superiority is claimed
on basis of wealth, culture, birth, or position. The prejudices
of inferior against superior is never so pronounced as that
of superior against inferior. Natural antipathy is mutually
reciprocal. Third, some white persons are less influenced by
it than others. Fourth, race antagonism as such is scarcely
discernible where Latin civilization and the Catholic religion
are in control. Fifth, it does not exist in the Mohammedan
dispensation. Sixth, the experience of thousands of Negro
soldiers in France proves its comparative absence. Seventh,
race prejudice seems to be principally the vice of the Teuton
and the Anglo-Saxon, which must be subject to ultimate control.
It will not be quite so strong among Germans as it was before
the war.
4. I do not believe that Negroes as a race are prejudiced
against white people, although I am conscious of an increasing
prejudice against white people on the part of many individual
Negroes, especially educated colored women who live in the
South and resent keenly the indiscriminate approaches of white
men.
5. Many Negroes are cynical of all the professions of white
men. They often express their hatred of white people openly.
I think, however, that feeling is more prevalent among the
younger Negroes than among the older ones.
6. Many pretend to be. Most of them are not.
7. Yes, 98 per cent of them are.
8. Not as individuals. They are affected by the spirit of
mass hostility to dissimilar masses based upon the desire to
appropriate and retain advantages. Racial prejudices are the
products of the will of dominant individuals evoking responses
from weaker intelligences and serving the purpose of the
dominating mind.
9. If so, to a very slight extent. What feeling most Negroes
have is created almost solely to offset the prejudice and
antagonism of the whites. The prejudice of the whites I might
describe as primary; that of the colored, secondary.
10. Yes; too much so among some groups.
11. Negroes in most cases are very much prejudiced against
whites.
12. Yes. The difference lies in the degree. Prejudice is
artificial. It is learned. The white boy and girl have been
"taught" more prejudice than the Negro. Negroes seldom teach
prejudice outright. When they learn it, it is inescapable.
America is a school, I fear, at present where even the most
backward learns something of prejudice whether he will it or
not.
13. I believe there is a strong prejudice against white persons.
This antipathy is, I believe, not based on racial unlikeness,
but on resentment because of cruel treatment as an inferior.
_Question_: Are you ever conscious of a feeling of racial
inferiority or even the desire to compensate for a supposed
inferiority?
_Answers_:
1. I attribute inferiority and superiority alike to individuals,
not race. I have every confidence that my race is capable of
producing as great men, and proportionately as many of them,
as any other race under the sun. I trace to environment the
responsibility for not releasing their energy upon constructive
work, but concentrating it upon gaining a living or a chance
to gain a living. Many times I feel the desire to compensate
for a supposed inferiority, because I believe in nailing a
lie wherever possible.
2. I never have a feeling of racial inferiority or a desire to
compensate for a supposed inferiority (with reservations). I am
usually cognizant of the fact that most white people consider
the Negro an inferior. This often causes the bristles to rise
on my back.
3. Personally, at no moment of our lives. The Negro is really
superior in stamina. His race is progressing, while the whites
appear to be standing still. The white race has had seven
thousand years or more of education and civilization, yet in
this prosperous republic today the average white person is
comparatively poor and possesses little education. The Negro,
in spite of the oppressive handicap due to color, is progressing
along all lines, commercial, professional and artistic.
4. I am never conscious of racial inferiority, but I am a firm
believer in the theory that any human being will be whatever
his environment and his heredity will make of him, regardless
of the color of his skin or the form of his skull. One in
considering this point of view should be sure not to confuse
the words "inferiority" and "inequality."
5. No.
6. I feel no desire to apologize to the world because I am a
colored woman; I had to be of some race, and here I am.
7. No. I believe that accidents of environment determine
relative positions.
8. Decidedly no! I believe absolutely in my own worth as a man
and as a Negro and defer only to wider experience, knowledge,
or skill, whether possessed by white persons or Negroes.
9. No!
10. No.
11. I never have a feeling of racial inferiority or a desire
to compensate for a supposed inferiority.
12. Personally, I am absolutely unconscious of any feeling of
racial inferiority. I recognize the control of social forces
and influences which may seem too strong to be overcome at
present. I simply suffer it to be so now.
13. I have never felt any racial inferiority, though always
when thrown in school work or business with white people
the desire to do my work as well or better than they is very
strong. This desire comes primarily from a desire to show that
the Negro is not inferior in his ability.
NEGRO PROBLEMS
_Question_: Do you believe that there should be recognized
leaders of Negroes? Are there such persons whom you regard as
qualified for leadership? Discuss their merits and demerits.
_Answers_:
1. As long as the dominant power treats with us as with Negroes
rather than as with American citizens, there will be need of
recognized leaders; but these leaders should be chosen by the
Negroes themselves, not chosen and imposed by others.
2. Yes and no. Theoretically and ultimately, no. Practically
and immediately, yes. In any clearly differentiated group the
spokesman should come from and grow out of conditions within
the group. In a community in which there were cultural and
not ethnic divisions there would be no need for Negro leaders.
What was good for the hive would be for the good of each bee.
However, in a community in which color is a target, defensive
alliances under the best possible leadership are a _sine
qua non_. I am too close to the problem to have sufficient
perspective to attempt the discussion of personalities.
3. Logically, no. Practically, under present conditions it is
imperative to have Negro leaders. Where people do not read
much, do not study much, they are incapable of doing much
thinking. Better a bad leader under such circumstances than
no leader at all. The very clashes between rival leaders with
their several points of view force the rank and file to attend
to conditions and compare conflicting views. This often marks
the beginning of interests in striving to improve conditions.
The merits of leaders are considered in another place.
4. I do not think that it will be possible, or advisable, to
attempt to appoint or elect leaders for Negroes. Naturally men
and women of exceptional powers will be recognized by those
of less developed powers as leaders of thought in various
connections in their several localities.
5. There should be no recognized leaders of Negroes except those
who are selected from groups or bodies of Negroes--selected by
them for a particular purpose or a particular cause. I do not
believe in Negro leadership secured by members of the white
race and then handed to our group as a leader without first
having had the endorsement of the Negroes themselves.
6. Yes. Emmet Scott, Dr. Du Bois and Mr. Grimke. Mr. Scott has
great executive ability. Dr. Du Bois is a great philosopher
and an ardent race rights advocate. Mr. Grimke a scholar and
wise counsellor. This combination as Leaders' Council would,
in my opinion, conserve our best interests. Mr. Scott is too
much of an opportunist for an ideal leader, Dr. Du Bois is too
radical at times, Mr. Grimke is too much of an intellectual
recluse.
7. There should be recognized leaders of Negroes, recognized
by Negroes because of their merits in their particular fields
of endeavor. There are Negroes qualified for such leadership
today, but their affiliations with organizations largely
or partly supported by philanthropic whites negative their
usefulness.
8. I believe every community should develop its own leadership.
A great deal of our present leadership is too largely clerical
and political and therefore not free, broad, and independent.
We need a leadership which is free, courageous, and which
possesses a program and definite objective.
9. I do not approve self-appointed leadership or leadership
bestowed by white friends because they can command funds. If
there are to be leaders, they should be chosen by selection so
that there can be "solemn referendum." With this qualification,
there are a large number of Negroes whom I would vote for as
leaders. The trouble now is that our so-called leaders are
not responsible to those whom they are supposed to represent.
10. There should not be; as soon as one appears, destructive
influences are brought to bear upon him both from within and
without, making of him within a short period an extremely
artificial and useless guide, but who is followed, nevertheless,
by Negroes blindly to their own great injury.
11. I believe firmly in the capacity of the race for
self-leadership. Any people can govern themselves better than an
outsider is apt to govern them, unless the alien is willing to
become naturalized in the group he aspires to lead. The white
race at present is unable or unwilling to become naturalized
in the Negro group.
12. The basis of Negro leadership should rest on the ability
to develop within the masses a desire and the power to obtain
better homes, education and their privileges as citizens without
belittling themselves or adopting the toadying attitude. Any
individual who is striving in a community to secure these
things for his people should be considered a leader. The mere
ability to write a book, edit a magazine, or publicly express
the cause of the Negro is not a sufficient qualification for
leadership even though it does bring national prominence.
13. (_a_) Under the circumstances, yes. (_b_) Useless to discuss
this. People usually choose as their leaders those who express
most strongly prevailing sentiments. (_c_) The followers are
their own judges of merit and demerit.
_Question_: What, in your opinion, are some of the greatest
mistakes of prominent Negroes in their policies or stand on
racial issues?
_Answers_:
1. Most are honest, I think, but emphasize too much some one
pet solution, such as "Get Property," "Industrial Education,"
etc. Many are insincere, using their influence to feather
their own nests, letting the race go hang. An intolerance
among Negroes themselves for those among their number who have
different opinions as to the wisest courses in arriving at
the better conditions which they equally are trying to bring
about. Some characteristics possessed by most of the so-called
leaders may be summed as follows:
Don't bother and leave all in the hands of God.
Overestimation of the Negroes' present attainments,
eulogies instead of information.
Oratory of denunciation only, raising prejudice
against whites but offering no course of action or
thought leading to improvement either of Negroes
personally or individually, or as a race.
A disinclination to tell the blunt truth when
interracial conferences offer the opportunity for
an exchange of views.
2. The greatest mistake that leaders usually make is that of
failing to study the problems towards the solution of which
they are working. They also are not willing to co-operate with
leaders along other lines.
3. Selfishness and lack of moral backbone in the face of
possible financial loss.
4. To accept that there is a purely racial psychology. And to
think, act, or accept as a Negro and not as a man.
5. (_a_) Compromising attitude; (_b_) depending on support
of white people financially and morally; (_c_) failure to
co-operate freely with all cases among the Negroes themselves.
6. Lack of absolute frankness with white people about mind and
feeling of Negroes; lack of absolute frankness with Negroes
about their own shortcomings and failure. I believe that many
men are overcoming this weakness.
7. Short-sightedness. They seem not to look ahead and see the
consequence of their arrangements and concessions. Most of them,
because of the manner of their selections, are unacquainted
with history, sociology, etc. They see the present, not even the
present generation. They fall into advices and concessions today
which prove a noose tomorrow. There is lack of poise. Often
they seem to know nothing of a means. There is no intermediate
ground; it simply is or it is not. This absolutism inevitably
leads to trouble. This of course does not apply to all of our
leaders.
8. The greatest mistakes of prominent Negroes in their stands:
A statesman is supposed to be the fusion of two necessary
elements: (1) the theorist, such as we have in our college
professors and most of our writers; and (2) the practical
politician who can get things done. The main fault with most of
our prominent Negroes in their policies and behavior is that
they never accomplish this fusion; all fall very definitely
into either group one or group two, and either group by itself
is helpless.
9. The greatest mistake of prominent Negroes, in my judgment,
is that they pay too great a deference to the attitude of the
white race rather than to the inherent demands of humanity.
Jesus refused to defer to the arrogance of Pilate, although
he exercised the power of life or death.
10. Faulty perspective due to improper training; failure
to grasp the economic significance of race prejudice; and a
tendency to preach the doctrine of non-resistance when they get
rich and fat. The younger crop of Negroes, armed with modern
scientific education are remedying the first two. Time will
show whether they will prove more unselfish.
DEFENSIVE PHILOSOPHY
_Question_: If it may be assumed that there are conditions which
are intolerable, or, at least, a constant source of irritation
to Negroes, it is to be expected that some defensive philosophy
is necessary to give poise, dignity, and self-respect. What is
your philosophy? What basic philosophical considerations, even
if not crystallized into dogma, support your outlook on life,
or that of Negroes of your acquaintance and general point of
view?
_Answers_:
1. I believe racial solidarity, as I conceive it, to be the
defensive philosophy of many Negroes. My own philosophy, if I
have one, is summed up in the belief that potentially the Negro
has the same qualities making for success and usefulness as
any other group. All he needs is an even break. I believe in
an offensive program to teach pride in their achievements and
prepare themselves for keen, hard competition all along the
line. I believe in attacking the indifference and ignorance
of white people which is largely the basis of prejudice, by
educating them to respect and believe in the self-defending,
non-favor-asking, justice-demanding Negro.
2. My philosophy rests upon two propositions. The first is
borrowed from the Latin "I am a man; nothing human is foreign
to me." The second is: A man is entirely the product of his
environment. (Heredity is the sum of our former environments.)
Given, then, an essential equality in all men, temporary
advantages are the results of environment. Self-preservation
and its corollary, the desire for the preservation of species,
are fundamental traits, and the Israelites, killing those who
said Sibboleth and not Shibboleth, have their prototype in those
who make non-conformity in hair, color, speech or culture, a
crime and inferiority stamp. It seems rational to suppose,
however, that man may evolve sufficient mentality, and far
enough away from the brute, to make differences in culture and
not physical characteristics the basis of distinctions. Until
then the pursuit of pleasure and advantage is the proper aim
of life.
3. The Negro maintains his self-respect and dignity in the
face of intolerable conditions because of his natural optimism
and his hope for and belief in the approach of a better day.
I teach my children that they should not seek companionship
with any other children who reluctantly associate with them,
not that my children should consider themselves in any way
inferior or unequal, but that they should be possessed of too
much personal pride to wish association with those who would
not be pleasant and agreeable.
4. My philosophy is a pessimistic one. There is often a sense
of hopelessness. To live in the white group makes it incumbent
on me to overcome many presumptions on their part. On the
other hand, to create mutual understandability is a phase of
aggressive conduct I follow. To conduct one's self in a more
socially acceptable way, viz., to do a certain thing better than
any member of the dominant group, is another excellent mode of
enhancing social values. But the best way of all is to assume
an offensive attack, and place the white group or individual
on the defensive at all times. This can be accomplished only
by a superior type of mind.
5. Never submit passively to unnecessary indignities. Keep
alive the spirit of protest against all injustice from black
or white. I am just as good or at least my right to decent
treatment is as good as that of any other man. I am what I
think and do, not what some other person does to me or thinks
about me.
6. My experience with the segregation tendency has taught me
to look down upon the system. It bristles with contradictions,
being foolishly fastidious, fanatically unreasonable, and
usually carried out by the uncultured element. Moreover, the
promoters of the system are not ready to discuss the matter;
it is simply taboo. The immoral forays of members of this
super-sensitive "superior race" coupled with criminal economical
advantages maintained by intimidation aside from being tragic
lends a subtle hypocrisy which does not escape even the casual
observer. Add to this the hysteria of the thing and you have a
medley of the ludicrous hypocritical, illogical, and hysterical.
Any man then who is honest and self-respecting easily comes to
feel himself superior to the promoters of the institutions.
One moves among these conditions with a feeling probably not
unlike that of Socrates among the Athenians, although, if he
chances to be a man of color, with far less freedom of conduct
and speech.
7. My philosophy would be that by our conduct as a group we
will be able to disprove the principles upon which the white
man's intolerance is based; we should assert our rights and use
propaganda to change the white man's point of view civically,
morally and in the economic world.
8. I am firmly convinced that a dignified friendly attitude
towards the white race is the wisest course for the Negro:
education, industry, and good manners will win for us more
real tolerance and consideration than continued agitation and
bitterness. Truth and justice will demand fair play in time,
and sentiment must be molded by appeal to intelligence and
finer sentiments through undisputable facts.
9. Cultivate a wholesome discontent with untoward conditions
and use every lawful means to improve these conditions, so
that it may not be said that we are satisfied with unjust
discriminations. "The talent for misery is the fulcrum of
progress."
SEGREGATION AND RACIAL SOLIDARITY
_Question_: What, to your mind, is the distinction, either in
point of view or definite racial aim, between segregation and
"racial solidarity"?
_Answers_:
1. Segregation implies coercion by the dominant group.
Racial solidarity implies certain subjective tendencies
of like-mindedness. Racial solidarity may be enhanced by
segregation but it thrives best if its causes have their roots
in the will to progress rather than the will to exist amidst
oppression. Though segregation may aid the tendency toward
racial solidarity, neither segregation nor racial solidarity
are to be advised in a modern civilization. Racial solidarity
for protective reasons with strong limitations (never legal)
may be advisable today in America.
2. The definite racial aim of segregation is to prevent the
contact of races physically; to prevent Negroes from living
with the whites in their neighborhoods and vice versa; to keep
themselves separate as a group, thus making segregation of
schools and other institutions a natural sequence. Whereas, the
aim of racial solidarity is to focus the financial, economic,
political and social strength of the group for the purpose
of meeting the attacks of the white race as well as for the
solution of group problems; for example, solid financial
strength would mean Negro business houses of every description,
banks, etc.; it would mean that the race as a unit would
withdraw its patronage and support from any institution or
business that discriminated against members of their group;
they would boycott as a unit any brand of goods made by a firm
dealing unjustly with colored patrons, etc. It means that
politically the group would throw its strength to the party
whose principles are in harmony with the welfare of the Negro.
3. Segregation presupposes a force from without which seeks
to compel those of the same race or nationality or religious
belief to remain among themselves, separated from those
of another group supposedly superior. Grouping together
either for purposes of living or of religious worship or for
other purposes, with the idea of developing a group or race
consciousness and thus to develop "pride of race," presupposes
a force from within--that is a conscious desire of the people
themselves to develop the latent powers within their own group
through intensive application.
4. Negroes tend to flock together as do members of other
racial groups. I do not regard this as segregation. When an
effort is made from without to group them together, which
carries along with it restrictions of movement, residence or
activity, we have segregation. Racial solidarity seems to me
to be the conscious or unconscious reaction to segregation.
It is a doctrine of revolt.
5. Segregation means to me regulation of racial contacts by law
or force between white and colored people. Racial solidarity is
a natural development of massing because of race congeniality.
6. Segregation and racial solidarity differ fundamentally
and essentially in the motive prompting the individual act to
be discussed. Segregation is the forcing apart of any group
into a less favorable environment in order that advantage or
position may accrue to those in authority. Race solidarity
represents the active part in the same rôle, and is the effort
of individuals to utilize similarity of aims or of situation
as the basis of an offensive or defensive alliance.
7. Racial segregation is harmful as a social aim. Racial
segregation is the result of the attempt of a more powerful
group to impose its ideas of racial inferiority upon a weaker
group. The weaker group in its attempt to defeat this program
rightly adopts racial solidarity as a definite aim in order to
strengthen itself both to resist discrimination which usually
follows segregation and to attack the vicious and narrow-minded
motives of proponents of racial segregation.
8. Voluntary segregation is a step, consciously or unconsciously
taken, toward racial solidarity.
9. It seems to me that segregation and racial solidarity differ
in that the latter is merely a mental attitude whereas the
former, though it includes a certain mental attitude, is chiefly
characterized by a sort of hysterical physical separation.
Racial solidarity obviously can exist among groups separated by
considerable distance, as among Jews. When the mental attitude
is not, or is felt not to be, adequate to effect the desired
separation among races, then a sort of hysteria ensues and
separation is one of the forms in which this hysteria expresses
itself. On the whole we may have reason to doubt its efficacy,
for it bears a relation to race solidarity akin to that which
legal restraint bears to moral restraint.
It seems probable that both racial solidarity and segregation
aim at the same thing. Segregation, it seems to me, in the
long run must prove a poor means to the end, and it would
not require a very imaginative person to think that in its
crass forms it may destroy the very end it aims to achieve by
creating a prejudice of a violent and consuming sort.
10. The term "segregation" in current discussion connotes legal
compulsion, whereas "racial solidarity" implies voluntary
union of the colored group under the compulsion of internal
feeling or social influences.
11. Segregation, either voluntary or forced, is purely an
objective situation, a setting apart in a definite location
from one's fellows. Racial solidarity is subjective and is
the feeling of cohesion between persons of the same race.
Segregation is undoubtedly a factor in intensifying this
feeling of the consciousness of kind.
12. The distinction between segregation and "racial solidarity"
is in a point of view, viz.: racial solidarity concerns the
interior of the Negro, his psychosis, as to its inclusion of
a cohesive spirit; segregation concerns the exterior of the
Negro, is looking at the situation from the viewpoint of the
whites and relates to the barriers opposed by the whites to
his unlimited expansion. Voluntary segregation may seem to
point to the mind and viewpoint of the Negro rather than the
whites, but voluntary segregation does not become a practical
problem until the whites attempt to use it as a precedent, in
which case it becomes after all a matter of the viewpoint of
the whites.
13. It would appear that there is a very fundamental difference
between segregation and racial solidarity as the terms are
now used in the United States relative to the Negro. By racial
solidarity it is generally understood that there is some sort of
a physical separation which has been decreed by a law, as for
example: the various residential segregation laws enacted some
years ago and the segregation laws relative to the separation
of races in public conveyances, etc. Racial solidarity, it may
be said, is largely volitional, whereas segregation, as the
term now is generally used, has back of it an enacted law or
the idea of having an enacted law.
A still more fundamental distinction is that racial solidarity
does not turn upon the receiving of benefits from privileges
or things that are for all the public; segregation, on the
other hand, has to do almost exclusively with the restriction
of privileges relating to the free use of things that are
for all the public, as for example, the free use of public
conveyances, public places, the establishing of residences, etc.
14. Segregation aims to herd Negroes together in order that they
may be cheated of the rights of citizenship the more easily.
Racial solidarity urges Negroes to get together in order that
they may fight segregation the more effectively. "National
solidarity" is, to our thinking, a far better weapon. Negroes
should endeavor to find out those whites who are their friends
and ask them to join in the fight for the enforcement of the
Constitution.
_Question_: A large number of Negroes are in agreement on
the matter of separate colored churches with colored pastors,
and, more recently, colored bishops. Yet this is an argument
used by many exponents of the segregation idea, both whole
and partial, for other separate institutions. Candidly, what
is your opinion on the subject?
_Answers_:
1. Separate churches, etc., are but a part of the system of
segregation inherent in the social fabric of America. This
question is therefore not fundamental or basic enough. As
a matter of logic and sociological analysis, since I do not
favor legal or customary segregation, I cannot favor separate
churches, which are but a reflex of enforced segregation.
Therefore I do not favor other separate institutions. Yet, I
at all times favor free assemblage and organization whatever
the social system is or may be. If separate institutions are
"desired" by the group and this "want" is not cramped by such
considerations as factors like American public opinion, then
separate institutions are in order. The test is the free and
unimpaired development of the group.
2. The "colored" church is itself an anomaly. The very idea
is logically ridiculous. From the practical standpoint it is
the result of the un-Christian attitude of churches which
preceded it and largely brought it into being. If I had to
join a church now, I hope I should decide according to the
doctrines and tenets rather than according to the race of the
pastor and communicants. If any consideration should guide me
rather than the doctrines, it would be to go where I could do
the most good.
3. The idea of using the fact of the Negro's preference for
his own church, governed by its own ministry, as a reason for
segregation not only is absurd but is a weak reason for the
manifestation of race prejudice. That Negroes prefer to be
together in religious worship is a well-established fact; that
they wish their church to be governed by their own ministers
and bishops is equally well established; that such desire is
natural and human, one must admit; but that this perfectly
normal desire should become a reason for forcing upon the Negro
other separate institutions is not justifiable. There is a fine
distinction between the performance of one's religious rites and
the activities necessary to maintain and foster these (which
becomes social in character), and the business arrangements
of getting an education, being conveyed somewhere, buying a
meal, or paying to hear a world-famed artist. The former is
part of one's private life and as such is a matter of choice
and should be confined to those who are closest to him by race
and spiritual conception. The latter are affairs of business
wherein one wishes something and pays for it; and as long as
he has the necessary greenback, expects to be accorded the
rights and courtesies given any citizen of the city or state.
The French, the Italian, nearly every nationality, have their
own churches, their own ministers, and worship in their own
tongue. But no one ever hears anything about segregating the
Frenchman or the Italian for that reason.
4. The latter plan, racial solidarity, is not at all
inconsistent with the spirit of democracy even when it means
the development of separate colored churches or the appointment
of colored bishops for colored churches in the denominations
where the color line is not so sharply drawn.
5. In my opinion, the Negroes as a whole are not in harmony and
agreement on colored churches as such. It is a condition that
has been pushed upon them; a means to the end. If Negroes were
treated just as any other member of a white church, and given
the same opportunity to advance to positions of honor within
the church, ministers, priests, bishops, etc., regardless of
color, there would be no Negro churches.
6. It is this universal spirit which causes Negroes to desire
Negro churches and Negro bishops, because the dominant minds
can more easily secure advantages when in an environment in
which they conform to the majority pattern and are not parts
of a clearly differentiated minority.
7. Separate colored churches in some degree are necessary
in order to build up racial solidarity as described above.
In other words, a strong defensive many times makes for an
effective offensive.
8. Separate colored churches have never seemed to me to be
necessary.
9. I am convinced that a limited race separation is not
only desirable but unavoidable. There is a wide stretch of
possibilities between absolute segregation and unlimited
social communication. To argue that because Negroes have and
want ministers and teachers of their own color, therefore they
should want absolute segregation, strikes me as a bit absurd.
There are at least two justifications: it may be thought
that the Negro ministers and teachers understand our racial
aspirations better and can better impart instructions leading
to a realization of them.
10. Wherever Negroes find themselves segregated in schools
and churches by choice or control, they should have teachers,
preachers and overseers of their own race. Long distance
leadership is neither desirable nor effective. This leadership
will acquire requisite efficiency by survival of the fittest.
11. The motivation of any separate institutions should be the
basis of its approval or disapproval. If Negroes of their own
volition develop Negro churches, banks, clubs, stores or other
organizations as a means of developing enterprise or initiative,
or for providing better opportunities of work for young men
and women of our race, I am in accord with such separation.
If, however, such separation is forced on them especially
in public places, such as hotels, restaurants, theaters and
railroads, a separation which sets the Negro apart from the
general public, I believe it should be condemned and fought
against.
12. It is argued that if many of our leading Negroes agree
upon the expediency of complete racial separation in church
life, they are inconsistent in not applying it to all matters
concerning the Negro. The answer to this is as follows: The
highest end of the Negro is the same as that of the man of any
other race, viz.: complete self-expression and development
of his individuality; in deciding upon what he shall accept
or reject in any case this must be his guiding principle;
between being a nonentity in the "white" church and partially
expressing himself in a Negro church, he naturally chooses
the latter, choosing it not as the _summun bonum_, but solely
as the lesser of two evils; between having the Negro officers
in the world war and having Negro officers who are trained
in a separate camp, he considers the latter less injurious.
But give the Negro a choice between a separate church where
only partial self-expression can be possible, and a "white"
church which would give him full opportunity for individual
expression, and he would not hesitate a moment in choosing
such a "white" church.
13. Separate colored churches, colored pastors and colored
bishops represent more or less a voluntary action of colored
people and are indicative of racial solidarity in just the
same way as Jewish churches having Jewish rabbis represent
Jewish solidarity.
14. As a slave the Negro was welcome to worship at the
white church. As a citizen he is not. The white church is a
semi-public institution, being more social than religious in
its tone. Since Negroes are not wanted, their only recourse
is to have their own churches. And if their own churches,
why a white pastor or bishop, when Negro preachers quite as
competent can be found?
OPINION-MAKING
_Question_: On what instruments ordinarily responsible for the
making of public opinion do you rely for your opinions? With
what reservations do you accept what you read in the white
press? To what degree are you influenced by the opinions of
colored persons?
_Answers_:
1. Of course I read daily papers, magazines and books and attend
lectures and seek every possible means to learn the trend
of thought and philosophy of life as it develops throughout
civilization. However, whenever the Negro question is treated,
I always approach with suspicion the arguments presented by
white people. I always read expressions forecasting the approach
of democracy with the knowledge that but few white writers
and speakers think of the colored races in their utterances.
The colored newspapers are much more fair than the whites,
but even they, at times, are inclined to bias.
2. Magazines, colored and white papers, public speakers. I
accept with great reservation what I read in the white press. I
am influenced to a small degree by the opinions of the colored
papers.
3. The daily papers, the _Nation_, the _New Republic_, the
_Crisis_, the _Messenger_, the _Literary Digest_, the _Socialist
Review_, the colored papers, and other scattered organs from
here, there and everywhere. The dependence I put upon these
white papers is hard to state in words. If in a white paper I
see something favorable to the Negro on a question of fact,
I take it at face value. On questions of opinion, I draw my
own conclusions from my own study and experience, wherever
possible. Likewise in a colored paper I take at face value
on a question of fact anything favorable to the white view.
Otherwise I draw my own conclusions.
4. (_a_) Daily papers, lectures and magazines. (_b_) Always
with reservations on any subject, especially on race records.
(_c_) Not very much outside of a few good magazines.
5. Every article in white or Negro press is read with the idea
that the bias of the writer must be discounted and that the
conclusions cannot be accepted, but that one's conclusions
must be made from the aggregate of the facts gleaned from every
available source bearing upon the subject under discussion.
Leading New York newspapers: _Herald_, _Times_,
_World_, _Tribune_, _Call_.
Leading American monthlies: _World's Work_,
_American_, _Metropolitan_.
Leading American weeklies: _Nation_, _New Republic_,
_Freeman_.
Leading American quarterlies: _Yale Review_, _American
Journal of Sociology_, _Non-Partisan Review_.
Leading New York Negro weeklies: _New York Age_,
_Negro World_.
Leading Negro monthlies: _Messenger_ and _Crisis_.
I read all these papers with great reservations as
to their truth and good judgment.
6. Newspapers, magazines, legislative action, personal
contacts. The white press will always justify suspicion and the
traditional grain of salt with reference to its news concerning
Negroes. White news reporters know too few actual facts about
Negroes and are too hemmed about by traditional prejudices to
be reliable news gatherers in this field. Colored newspapers
are, in my opinion, becoming increasingly more reliable in
their expression of the thoughts and mind of Negroes, although
many times they suffer from the same disease with reference
to white people which besets white reporters.
7. History and observation. I habitually question unfavorable
comment, because the prejudice and the training of the writers
must be considered. Colored papers, unless paid to do otherwise,
are more likely to exaggerate reports favorable to the Negro.
Therefore some reservations must be made on account of the
prejudice and the lack of training of many of the writers.
8. I believe that the information I get from the instruments
ordinarily responsible for public opinion influences my opinion
but little at any particular moment. I seem to have a theory of
present-day tendencies in American institutions with reference
to the Negro, and I accept items from these instruments merely
as confirmations or negations of my opinions. Usually the
negations are so few and far between that I can look upon them
as sports or the "exception that proves the rule." Perhaps
the _Crisis_ figures most prominently in forming my opinion.
At least when my opinion is formed, I am unable to account
for it by any small number of books, or other publications. I
read regularly the _New York Age_, the _Negro World_, and from
time to time many other Negro newspapers; I read the _Crisis_,
the _Messenger_, the _Century_, _Review of Reviews_, _World's
Work_, _Outlook_, _Independent_, and various scientific articles
bearing on the Negro and such reviews of an even larger number
of articles as appear in the _Psychological Bulletin_ and
similar publications from time to time.
Nearly always when I read, the white press items concerning
the Negro are looked upon as carefully selected and shaped
for propaganda. By a careful and studied system of emphasis
and omission such items can be made to prove most any point.
There are exceptions, such as the _Independent_ editorials,
etc. Colored newspapers influence my opinion little directly.
The items of real news are accepted at face value, there being
no appeal, and these are referred to a more or less stable
theory of the situation. The theory changes so gradually that
I am unable to tell what items exert the greatest influence.
9. I read the dailies and the _Crisis_, _Messenger_ and
_Amsterdam News_. I accept what all of them say with great
reservation, though I naturally give more credence to report
of Negro topics in Negro papers than in white papers.
10. I regret to say that the Christian church and the religious
press, which should be the chief reliance in shaping public
opinion in the moral direction, are all but negligible factors.
More race prejudice will be shown in Chicago in the churches
on next Sunday morning than in the schools on the following
Monday. Religion failing, the chief reliance for the present
must be upon the secular agencies such as science, politics,
trade, business and the public press and platform. The Negro
himself must shape and direct righteous public opinion. Moral
reform comes through the public, who feel the need of it. The
Negro press is greatly hampered by restrictive and controlling
influences, but on the whole it is, perhaps, the most righteous
voice in America now crying in the wilderness.
11. I rely on books, magazines and newspapers for facts on
which to base opinions. With the exception of a few weeklies,
and a few radical newspapers and magazines, I believe the white
press is hostile towards the Negro. Whatever I read concerning
him, in the daily papers especially, I take with a grain of
salt. In matters of race problems the Negro papers usually
present the facts of the case fairly. I am inclined to accept
their views about such matters. Their opinions about other
phases of life, in which race is not predominant concern, I
take also with a grain of salt or not at all.
12. Personally we rely on facts, not opinions. Hardly anything
in the white press regarding Negroes is to be believed. It
rarely, if ever, mentions good about Negroes. The white press
is the chief instrument used for fostering the exploitations of
Negroes. Most of the news is cooked and doctored to fan race
hatred. A few white editors would perhaps write more fairly
were they free. Personally very little. Nearly every Negro
newspaper that we know, though, aims sincerely to benefit
Negroes. While the judgment of the Negro editor is often at
fault, his heart is honest. It is infinitely safer for Negroes
to accept the judgment of a Negro editor than that of a white
one.
_Question_: Specifically what constitutes the offensiveness
in the manner in which the subject "Negro" is handled in some
of the local white papers and what sensitive spots do these
methods of handling touch?
_Answers_:
1. There is a suggestion of inferiority and degradation in
the usual handling of the subject "Negro" by the local white
papers; they generally use the subject in connection with
something evil or unlovely; seldom discussed with credit or
praise. This affects race honor, race pride, and race love.
2. Withholding the titles Miss and Mrs. from the names of
colored women.
Crime headlines, parading Negro crime and criminals.
Printing misstatements of facts but not the denials
of them.
Continual suggestions of "proper limitations upon
Negro activity" along lines innocent where other
races are concerned.
A patronizing attitude toward the Negro and his
activities.
3. I detest the use of the word "Negro" as it is spelled with
a small _n_. I shrink from the feminine "Negress." "A colored
American" is not distasteful to me at any time.
4. The realization that an inferior man whose face is white
can, by appealing to white racial consciousness, outstrip his
superior by the utilization of mass cohesion. My feeling is
one of thwarted ambition rather than offended sensibilities.
5. Spelling of "Negro" with a small _n_.
Negro caricatures--always a joke and easily handled.
The Negro as criminal is the general view.
Nothing said about the Negro on the progressive side.
Negro naturally inferior. I need only refer to the
Harding episode.
6. The assumption that all Negroes are intellectually and
morally inferior. The implication that certain crimes are
peculiar to the Negro. The application of opprobrious epithets,
so common in some papers. The statement that the race is
satisfied with the treatment it receives in public places.
7. Undue prominence and emphasis upon the social aspect of
news which is purely personal. Evident failure to obtain or
give expression to the Negro point of view.
8. The tendency in my community to connect the Negro in public
print with some offensive or boorish or irresponsibly humorous
incident is the most annoying use of the word "Negro." By
careful emphasis and omissions, the word "Negro" comes to be
associated with irresponsible, apish, or silly conduct on the
one hand or criminality on the other.
9. Among the other things I take offense at the way the local
white papers cannot report crimes committed by Negroes without
a big headline, often on the front page, stating that "Brutal
Negro Commits Outrage"; I object to the use of the word
"Negress," to spelling Negro with a small _n_; and particularly
I object to the sins of omission of these newspapers in
that they never attempt any news which may construct better
relations, e.g., such as could be obtained if they secured
on their reportorial staff an intelligent Negro who knew the
needs and aspirations of his people. My sensitiveness upon this
results from two things: (1) it wounds my self-respect, and
(2) I hate to see race struggle consciously and effectively
fomented by the powerful press.
10. The white race as a whole seems to disregard the just
sensibilities of the Negro race, and does not scruple to use
offensive terms and epithets which would be violently resented
by any other group of American citizens. I have no objection
to the term Negro used in a descriptive sense for the entire
racial group.
11. The word Negro is still printed in many papers with a
small _n_. A general attitude to ridicule Negroes is sometimes
evident. Recently a baby contest was held in New York in which
there were entered several Negro babes; some of them took
prizes. One paper spoke of them as "dusky belles." Very often
when a colored woman is mentioned in the papers it is written
in this manner: "Katherine Jones, a negress." The recent
discussion of Senator Harding's lineage showed that most of
the papers considered it a "vile and contemptuous slander";
the possession of Negro blood seemed to be a polluting element
which could only mean degradation.
12. The word Negro is wrong, altogether. Prejudice is the
only reason for its use. Capitalizing might help, but does it
modify the treatment?
The editor of the _Crisis_, whose opinions are read by millions of
Negroes, was one of the five Negroes living outside of Chicago to
whom the foregoing questions were put. He sensed in them an insidious
attempt to make Negroes confess that they preferred ill treatment,
riots, segregation by proscription, and Negro Ghettos. Acting upon this
conviction, he warned the Negroes of the country to watch the white
members of this Commission. The article is given as it appeared in the
January 1921 issue of the _Crisis_:
CHICAGO
We would advise our Chicago friends to watch narrowly the
work and forthcoming report of the Interracial Commission
appointed by the Governor of Illinois after the late riot.
The Commission consists of colored men who apparently have
a much too complacent trust in their white friends; of white
men who are too busy to know; and of enemies of the Negro race
who under the guise of impartiality and good will are pushing
insidiously but unswervingly a program of racial segregation.
They have, for instance, sent a "questionnaire" to prominent
colored men, consisting of fifteen questions, which with all
their surface frankness and innocence seek to betray black folk
by means of the logical dilemma of "segregation" and racial
"solidarity." By subtle suggestion these queries say: If you
believe in colored churches, why not in colored ghettos? Does
not Negro advancement increase anti-Negro hatred? Are not
Negroes prejudiced against whites? Are not the mistakes of
Negro leaders manifest? And so on.
Indeed, if a professed enemy of black folk and their progress
had set out to start a controversy so as to divide the Negroes
and their friends in counsel and throw the whole burden of such
hasty outbreaks of race hate as the East St. Louis, Washington,
and Chicago riots upon them, he would have framed just such
a questionnaire as has been sent out by this Commission.
The _Crisis'_ view of the questions is presented in the following contrast:
THE QUESTIONNAIRE THE "CRISIS" VERSION
What, to your mind, is the If you believe in colored
distinction, either in point of churches, why not in colored
view or definite racial aim, ghettos?
between segregation and "racial
solidarity"?
A large number of Negroes are
in agreement in the matter of
separate colored churches with
colored pastors, and, more
recently, colored bishops. Yet
this is an argument used by
many exponents of the segregation
idea, both whole and partial, for
other separate institutions.
Candidly, what is your opinion
on this subject?
Do you believe that if Negroes Does not Negro advancement
were 100 per cent literate it increase anti-Negro hatred?
would make any great difference
in race relations? Are general
and higher education likely to
widen the breach between Negroes
and white persons, increase
intolerance, resentment,
sensitiveness to insults, or
can a quieted process of
adjustment or complete fusion
of interests be expected?
Do you believe Negroes are Are not Negroes prejudiced
prejudiced against white persons? against white persons?
Do you believe there should be Are not the mistakes of
recognized leaders of Negroes? Negro leaders manifest?
Are there such persons whom
you regard as qualified for
leadership? Discuss their merits
and demerits.
What in your opinion, are some of
the greatest mistakes of prominent
Negroes in their policies or stand
on racial issues?
At the time of this article the Commission had made no report of its
findings whatever, and there was no possible basis for the accusation
of bias. When a Negro living in Chicago explained that the questionnaire
was prepared by a Negro member of the Commission's staff, the editor of
the _Crisis_ replied that "whoever framed the questionnaire of which I
speak in the _Crisis_ or advised its framing had a bias against Negroes.
Of that I have not the slightest doubt, and what I was doing was simply
to warn the public of this bias."
CHAPTER X
PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS--_Continued_
B. INSTRUMENTS OF OPINION MAKING
I. THE PRESS
We cannot escape the conclusion that the press is the most
powerful institution in this country. It can make men, it can
destroy men. It can conduct crusades; it can put an end to
crusades. It can create propaganda; it can stifle propaganda.
It can subvert the Government; it can practically uphold
the Government. It is at once the most powerful agency for
good in the United States and the most dangerous institution
known under our system of Government. More than all this,
despite theoretical laws which restrain abuses of the Press,
so determined are the American people that its freedom shall
not be abridged that they have written into the Constitution
of the United States (Amend. I) the express provision that
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom ... of
the press," and in practice the Press is free to destroy men,
institutions and races, or to make them live, the power being
limited only by the conscience and sagacity of the men who
compose this powerful Fourth Estate.
--EDMUND BURKE
Sound opinions depend always upon accurate statements of facts. Upon the
objective information which the press is supposed to provide, the public
depends to guide its thinking. If the information source is polluted,
pollution may be expected in the opinions based upon it. When the public
is deluded by distortions of fact, one-sided presentations, exaggerations,
and interpretations of fact controlled by definite policies of whatever
sort, a situation is created which will inevitably accomplish great
damage.
Race relations are at all times dependent upon the public opinion of the
community. Considering the great number of delicate issues involved, the
careful handling of this kind of news is a question of great concern and
has been the subject of much comment and criticism both by Negroes and
whites. These criticisms are frequent and vehement. Negroes in Chicago
almost without exception point to the Chicago press as the responsible
agent for many of their present difficulties. Throughout the country it
is pointed out by both whites and Negroes that the policies of newspapers
on racial matters have made relations more difficult, at times fostering
new antagonism and enmities and even precipitating riots by inflaming
the public against Negroes. For example, the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America, in its report on the church and social
work, makes this comment: "We observe also with regret and deep concern
.. the continuing incitement to riot by certain public officials and
periodicals, especially the partisan press with its misrepresentation
and inflaming spirit."
Said the _Survey_ magazine, May 15, 1920: "The custom of newspapers to
ridicule the efforts of colored people is a gratuitous insult that they
have to meet on every hand."
The _New Republic_ observes editorially: "Race riots within a week of
one another occurred in Washington and Chicago.... The press made a race
question of individual crime, and the mob, led by marines and soldiers,
took up the issue which the press had presented to them."
Negroes are loud in their condemnation of the press throughout the
country. Says one Negro newspaper:
Whatever be the cause of the motive, there is apparently a
well-organized plan to discredit the race in America and to
bring estrangement between fellow-Americans. A short-sighted
... press is contributing to this estrangement by playing upon
the passions of the undiscriminating, and thoughtlessly, by
its glaring and sensational headlines, emphasizing rumors of
alleged crimes by Negroes.
The Associated Negro Press accuses the Associated Press of fostering
ill feeling and hatred between whites and Negroes. It says:
The Associated Press (white) ... always in its first paragraph
... attributes the source of trouble to our people "molesting
white women." That, the Associated Press knows, is always fuel
for the fire of the fury.... It arouses certain elements of
whites to indignation by the thoughts of the ever "burly black
brutes," and it stirs the people of our group to a state of
fighting, mad by the folly of it.
The _Philadelphia Tribune_, a Negro paper, said: "Daily papers keep up
mob sentiment. They continue to fan the riot flames into a destructive
blaze."
The method of news handling now in practice in the Chicago Press, white
and Negro, appears to contribute in effect to strained relations between
the races. This condition prompts a more than casual inquiry into these
methods.
A few examples will illustrate. On the night of July 20, 1920, following
the demonstration of a group of Negro fanatics, the self-styled
"Abyssinians," a prominent newspaper printed in large headlines: "Race
Riot--Two Whites Slain." The paper was an extra and widely distributed.
At Sixty-third and Halsted streets four Negro ministers returning from
a church conference in Gary, Indiana, were set upon by a mob of whites
who had merely read the report, and were beaten unmercifully.
On January 23, 1920, the following article appeared in the _Chicago
Herald-Examiner_:
STUDENTS DEFY NEGRO TEACHER
Pupils' Strike Starts at Altgeld School over Substitute;
Parents Support Them
A revolt which threatened to require settlement by the Board
of Education developed yesterday in the eighth grade of the
Altgeld School, Seventy-first and Loomis streets. Two of the
pupils have been suspended, others threaten a general walkout.
Pickets are to be established about the school today, several
students promised tonight to urge a general strike. The regular
teacher was ill with influenza yesterday.
PUT NEGRO GIRL IN CHARGE
The only available substitute was a Negro girl, Effie Stewart,
normal graduate and accredited eighth-grade instructor. She
was taken to the schoolroom by Principal J. W. Brooks and
given charge. As the principal left pandemonium broke loose.
Disregarding the efforts of the teacher to restore calm,
several of the boys arose and harangued the class to ignore
the substitute. Half a dozen of the pupils left the room.
REFUSE TO OBEY HER
The teacher directed one of the pupils, Paul Brissono, to
summon Principal Brooks to the room. Paul flatly refused. He
walked out and reported the trouble to his parents at 1406 West
Seventy-third Street. Genevieve Lindy, 6744 Laflin Street,
next was told to go to the Principal's office for help. She
declined and went home. Principal Brooks ordered both pupils
suspended. He said the facts would be placed before the district
superintendent, John A. Long. In the meantime many of the
parents of eighth-grade pupils took a stand supporting their
children.
The Commission sent investigators to check up the facts as a thorough
test of a report which most whites believed and most Negroes did not
believe. The Negro teacher in question, the school principal, the
superintendent of schools, and some of the parents of white children
in the school were interviewed. The following is the result of the
Commission's investigation:
_a_) Every item noted by the press in this case was contradicted
by the principal and teachers.
_b_) Principal Brooks stated that "the only part of the story
that the newspapers gave straight was the color of the young
lady teacher."
_c_) Superintendent of Schools Mortensen stated that there
was no basis whatever for the story, and that no more trouble
happened than often happened when mischievous boys took
advantage of the absence of the regular teacher.
_d_) Miss Stewart, the colored substitute teacher involved,
stated that she was assigned to the Altgeld School on Monday, to
the Pullman School Tuesday, and back to the Altgeld Wednesday.
On Monday she had charge of the eighth grade. About twenty-five
minutes before recess five or six boys came to her stating that
they had been appointed as monitors for that day and asked to
be excused. This request was granted by Miss Stewart. Shortly
afterward Miss Deneen, a white teacher, brought the boys back
into the room, stating that they had been disorderly; she
deprived them of their monitorship. One boy, Paul, mentioned
in the article, resented this and was impudent to Miss Deneen.
He was suspended by Miss Deneen to take effect the next day
and to return only on condition that he made apologies for
his conduct. He was present in the room on the same afternoon.
Miss Stewart first knew about the supposed strike when she read
it in the morning paper. She stated that she had no trouble
with any of the students during the entire day, and there was
no occasion to call in the principal, Mr. Brooks. Miss Deneen
also had some trouble with a girl in the same room. Miss Stewart
had no trouble either with Paul or the girl mentioned in the
case. Mr. Brooks at no time during that day was called into
the room.
_e_) The parents of the children were incensed over the false
publicity given them.
_f_) The suggestive effect of this report was immediate. At
the Coleman School, according to the principal, the children
were greatly excited over the account and looked upon it as
a precedent which had not occurred to them. She thought that
such publicity, even if true, could have no good effect upon
the minds and conduct of the children.
The prominence given to the idea of "striking" also had its effect.
Discussions of strikes for other causes followed in the Pullman School.
Later, in February the students of the Crane Technical School threatened
a strike because of the removal of a teacher from the junior staff to
the high-school staff.
On June 18, 1918, a Negro organization expressed the views of Negroes
on the _Chicago Tribune's_ handling of a news article entitled: "Negro
Benefit Carries Mammy to Pearly Gates." The occasion of the article was
a musical recital given by Negro artists at the Auditorium and patronized
by many cultured whites and Negroes. It was a benefit performance in aid
of the families of Negro soldiers. The letter of protest to the editor
of the _Tribune_ read:
On Saturday, June 15, there appeared in your paper what
purported to be an account of a meeting and concert at the
Auditorium held for the benefit of Negro soldiers' families.
Despite the fact that it was distinctly a patriotic affair,
presenting on its program colored artists of unquestioned
talent, and rendered in such a manner as to evoke the warmest
praise from an appreciative and music loving audience, your
reporter saw fit to tell of it by reciting what he knew or
thought he knew about Negro "mammies."
The body of the article contains sixty-two lines. Thirteen
of these are devoted to mention of the names of the colored
artists, ten to a description of the crowd, which, by the
way, was inaccurate, fourteen to another list of notables in
attendance and twenty-five to an enraptured dissertation on
"mammies." Not only is this reference grossly irrelevant, but
to colored people it is positively distasteful as everyone
should know by now.
The caption of the article "Negro Benefit Carries Mammy to
Pearly Gates" could by no stretch of fancy be taken as the
heading for an account of a musical concert.... There is no
complaint against the limited appreciations of your reporter,
neither do we protest against his fondness for the adolescent
idol of his black mammy; but as a news item the account is
ridiculously improper and out of place.
The patriotic endeavors of the colored people of this city have
more than once been discouraged by just such thoughtlessness
and incomprehension. You would do a great service to colored
people and to our government in the prosecution of the war if
in such accounts as appear you cause to be eliminated such
personal reminiscences and irritating irrelevancies as are
calculated to make patriotism difficult and racial relationship
unsettled.
1. GENERAL SURVEY OF CHICAGO NEWSPAPERS
It was assumed by the Commission that so far as the ordinary reading
public is concerned the study of the three Chicago white daily papers with
the largest circulation and the three Negro weekly papers most widely
read would provide an adequate basis for a test of news handling, and
for measuring the effect on the public of accounts of racial happenings.
The papers selected are listed in Table XXX.
TABLE XXX
============================+==================+=======================
| | CIRCULATION[87]
NAME OF PAPER | PUBLISHED +-----------+-----------
| | Week Days | Sundays
----------------------------+------------------+-----------+-----------
White | | |
_Chicago Tribune_ | Every morning | 439,262 | 713,966
_Chicago Daily News_ | Every afternoon | 404,726 |...........
| except Sundays | |
_Chicago Herald-Examiner_ | Every morning | 289,094 | 596,851
Negro | | |
_Chicago Defender_ | Weekly | 185,000 |...........
_Chicago Whip_ | Weekly | 65,000 |...........
_Chicago Searchlight_ | Weekly | 10,000 |...........
----------------------------+------------------+-----------+-----------
For the two-year period 1916 and 1917 the Commission listed from
the _Chicago Tribune_, the _Chicago Daily News_, and the _Chicago
Herald-Examiner_ 1,551 articles on racial matters. Of these articles 1,338
were news items, 108 were letters to the press, and 96 were editorials.
Table XXXI classifies these items according to subject:
TABLE XXXI
Number
Subject of Articles
Riots and clashes 309
Crime and vice 297
Soldiers 199
Politics 99
Housing 89
Ridicule 63
Illegitimate contacts 61
Sports 56
Migration 45
Personal 39
Special columns 33
Education 18
Meetings 17
Art 8
Business 5
-----
Total 1,338
These figures do not represent all articles appearing on racial issues
during the two-year period. Many additional articles appeared in early
editions and not in the editions examined.
Generally these articles indicated hastily acquired and partial
information, giving high lights and picturing hysteria. Frequently they
showed gross exaggeration. The less sensational articles, permitting a
glimpse of the stabler side of Negro life, were less than seventy-five.
The subjects receiving most frequent and extended treatment in these
three papers were: crime, housing, politics, riots, and soldiers. In
analyzing the articles themselves, under these specific headings, it
appears that the appeal to the interests of the public is founded on
definite assumptions in the public mind. It has come to be recognized by
both whites and Negroes, but more especially by the latter, that crime
is most often associated with the publication of Negro news in white
newspapers.
_Crime._--The University Commission on Southern Race Problems in a
recommendation to the white college men of the South said:
Colored people feel very keenly about the way crime committed,
or alleged to have been committed, by Negroes is played up
in the newspapers. We never see the Negro's good qualities
mentioned. As a rule, when a Negro's name appears in the
newspapers he has done something to somebody, or somebody has
done something to him. It may be true that the newspaper's
attitude toward the Negro does not influence white public
opinion as much as the Negro thinks, but it is bound to affect
the point of view of those white people who do not know the
Negro.
As between North and South this press handling of racial matter seems
but a question of degree. For a public which depends upon newspapers
for its information an inordinately one-sided picture is presented. This
emphasis on individual crimes specifying Negroes in each offense tends
to stamp the entire Negro group as criminal. The following headings in
white newspapers will suggest the inference of the public as to whether
or not Negroes are criminally inclined:
NEGRO ROBBERS ATTACK WOMAN NEAR HER HOME
Tear Open Her Waist in Search for Money, but Fail to Find $6 Which She Had
POLICE HUNT FOR NEGRO WHO HELD UP WOMAN
Scour Englewood District for Short Black Man Who Threatened
Girls with Revolver
NEGRO SLAYER ESCAPES FROM JAIL
AUSTIN WOMAN ATTACKED IN OWN HOME BY NEGRO
WOMAN SHOCKED BY NEGRO THIEF
Mrs. John W. Beckwith Surprises Black Burglar in Her Home
RESCUE NEGRO FROM MOB THAT THREATENED LYNCHING
Morgan Park Police Save William Shaw Who Attacked Woman from
Infuriated Crowd
NEGRO ATTACKS WOMAN. HER SCREAMS BRING HELP
Mrs. Joseph Westhouse Dragged into Dark Passageway on South Side Street
ARREST NEGRO SUSPECT. FIND MUCH IN POCKET
Earnest Wallace Identified by Three Men as Ku Klux Robbers Who
Held Them Up
MASKED NEGRO ROBS AS WHITE
Arthur Hood Learns to Disguise Voice in Prison; Uses Talent
GIRLS FLEE FROM NEGRO
Accused Wm. Brewere of Following Them
NEGRO TROOP RUNS AMUCK. THREE MEN ARE WOUNDED
NEGRO STANDS WITH KNIFE OVER SLEEPER IN PARK
NEGRO CAMP INTRUDER ARRESTED AFTER FIGHT
CORONER CLEARS POLICEMAN FOR KILLING NEGRO
NEGRO SHOT DEAD TRYING TO ESCAPE AFTER CRIME
NEGRO ATTACKS DANCER IN ROOM OFF LOOP STAGE
Purpose Robbery
SAILORS CHARGE NEGRO INSULTERS IN EVANSTON
The frequent mention of Negroes in connection with crime by the white
press has the following effects:
1. It plays upon the popular belief that Negroes are naturally criminal.
2. The constant recounting of crimes of Negroes, always naming the race
of the offender, effects an association of Negroes with criminality.
3. It frequently involves reference to sex matters which provides a
powerful stimulant to public interest.
4. It provides sensational and sometimes amusing material, and at the
same time fixes the crimes upon a group with supposed criminal traits.
The beliefs handed down through tradition concerning the weak moral
character of Negroes and their emotional nature are thus constantly
and steadily held before the public. Police officers, judges, and other
public officials are similarly affected, consciously or unconsciously,
by these beliefs and by the constant mention of Negroes in relation to
crime. Arrest on suspicion, conviction on scanty evidence, and severe
punishments are the results. A vicious circle is thus created.
Crimes involving only Negroes as offenders and victims receive little
newspaper attention. It might be supposed that they are uninteresting
because there is no element of race conflict. As long as crimes are
committed within the group, and this group is regarded as an isolated
appendix of the community, there is little public interest in them, and
consequently little news value. When, however, a member of the isolated
group comes into conflict with the community group, whether in industry,
housing, or any relation, it assumes a wider significance, and the
information appears to become news of importance in the judgment of the
press.
Instances of purely Negro crime, which in the community at large would
have a strong appeal to public interest, take on news value only when
the ludicrous or grotesque can be pictured. For the most part, this
type of article is written by a reporter with some reputation for wit.
He inserts the expected Negro dialect, whether with or without warrant,
and proceeds to make an amusing story.
_Negro soldiers._--News interest in articles on Negro soldiers appears
to be founded largely on sentiment. During the war Negro soldiers,
especially from Illinois, were given unstinted praise by the public and
the newspapers. Illustrative headlines follow:
CHICAGO SOLDIERS ARE READY
Col. Dennison Declared to Reporter That Regiment 1,038 Strong Ready
for Call to War
COLORED MEN SERVED IN THE COLONIAL ARMY
Washington Favored Their Enlistment, but for a Time There Was Opposition
TO TRAIN COLORED MEN FOR OFFICERS
COLORED TROOPS TO GO SOUTH
Baker Says the 8th Illinois Will Be Sent to Camp Logan
DRAMATIC FAREWELL TO COLORED TROOPS
Cheers of Crowd Show Chicago Loyalty to Men of 8th Infantry
COLOR LINE WORRIES EXEMPTION BOARDS
Negro District Officials Wonder How They Can Furnish 40 Per Cent All White
TOBACCO FOR NEGRO SOLDIERS
Texas Club Will Give Midnight Benefit to Aid Fund
NEGRO STEVEDORES TO FRANCE
Colored Workers Are Being Organized into Four United States Regiments
ARMY IGNORES COLOR LINE
Negro Troops Ordered to Every Cantonment Where Available. War
Department Not Affected by Protest, Latest Ruling Shows
8TH REGIMENT IS ORDERED TO HOUSTON
Chicago Colored Infantry to Be Accorded Same Privilege as White Soldiers.
Overrule City's Protest
COLORED SOLDIERS HELP LOAN
Col. Dennison's Men in the 8th Infantry Are Enthusiastic
8TH REGIMENT READY TO BEGIN BOND DRIVE
Spirit Shown by Officers Insures Good Response from Colored Soldiers
ORGANIZE NEGRO LABOR UNITS
U.S. Army Will Soon Have 24 Companies of Colored Volunteers
_Politics._--In politics the listed articles were confined almost
exclusively to suggestions of corruption, unfavorable criticism of Negro
politicians, and treatment of Negro political support of Mayor Thompson
as blind, careless, and venal loyalty.
The following headings on listed news items will indicate the character
of emphasis:
MAYOR'S RULE SCORED BY VOTERS' LEAGUE
Since Harding retired from Council, Moores has collapsed entirely. In combination
with his colleague, Oscar De Priest, colored, he has become a partisan, willing to
go to any length in behalf of the politicians fighting the Council.
M.L.V. URGES DEFEAT OF MAYOR'S CLIQUE. SECOND WARD, NEGRO
WARD, NO RECOMMENDATIONS
HOT ON TRAIL OF VOTE FRAUDS LETTER
E. H. Green's (Negro) Communication to Dr. Leroy N. Bundy (Negro)
May Reach Grand Jury
Alderman De Priest (Negro) Involved
All Interested in Rounding Up Colored Republican Voters Talk of Colonizing
FIVE IN HOT FIGHT IN SECOND WARD
It is said, however, that W. R. Cowan (Negro) and L. B. Anderson (Negro)
have best chance.
COLORED MAN IN SENSATION
St. Louis Dentist Said to Have Revealed Election Fraud
EAST ST. LOUIS BRIBERS SAFE
Attorney-General Brundage says they are immune under law. These men were
accused in confession of Bundy (Negro).
BLACK AND TANS WIN POINT
Will Have Half the Delegation from Louisiana to Republican
National Convention
DE PRIEST QUITS ELECTION RACE AT G.O.P. ORDER
Indicted Alderman Ducks Impending War in Second Ward
3,000 NEGROES CHEER ATTACK ON ROOSEVELT
NEW YORK ELECTS ITS FIRST NEGRO TO THE LEGISLATURE
Ed. A. Johnson
MAYOR LOSES BIG WARDS
In recognition of what the second ward did, the administration has made more
Negro appointments than ever before in Chicago. Yesterday the City Hall forces
were led by Alderman De Priest, Corporation Counsel Ettleman, Dr. A. J. Cary,
and Edward Wright. Morris won by 4,050 over Bibb.
IMPORT NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH TO SWING MID-WEST
NEGRO LEADER EJECTED FROM HUGHES QUARTERS
E. H. Green Told to Move On When Authorship of Letter Is Traced
NEGRO VOTE MANIPULATION ALLEGED IN EAST ST. LOUIS
_Housing._--The subject of the housing of the Negro is interesting because
of its peculiar connection with: (_a_) segregation; (_b_) bombing; (_c_)
neighborhood antagonisms; (_d_) alleged depreciation of property; (_e_)
Hyde Park-Kenwood efforts to keep Negroes out of the district.
During 1917 the _Tribune_ carried six articles on Negro housing. One
was the mention of the purchase of a $75,000 lot by Mme. C. J. Walker,
a colored woman living in New York. Two related to the efforts of white
residents to keep Negroes out of white residence districts; two were
devoted to the effort of white residents to put Negroes out of white
districts; and one to a meeting of realty men at which, it was alleged,
angry Negroes "blasted harmony on a housing plan." The plan in question
was a segregated Negro district to which Negroes objected. Trends of
subjects treated in news items are given:
ST. LOUIS VOTES TODAY ON NEGRO SEGREGATION
OFFERS HER HOME TO NEGROES ONLY
West Side Woman Adopts Novel Revenge in Row with Neighbors
Due to Spite Fence
NEGROES MAY BUY HOUSE ADJOINING SPITE FENCE
Owner of Property Will Sell to Colored People Only in Plan for Revenge
RACE QUESTION LEFT TO BLACKS
Negro Committee Given Power to Act in Morgan Park Feud
COMMITTEE REPRESENTING BOTH SIDES TO SUGGEST SOLUTION AT
NEXT MEETING
Com. L. T. Orr and Chas. R. Bixby, White, and G. H. Jackson, and
G. R. Faulkner, Colored
RACE QUESTION TAKEN TO COURT
Morgan Park Negro Alleges Conspiracy to Close His Building
NEGRO SUBURB PLANNED AFTER ENGLISH GARDENS
Dunbar Park, Prepared by Frances Barry Byone
OAK PARK NEGRO HOME SET AFIRE. SEES WHITE MAN
Shoots as Arson Suspect Stumbles over Hedge Screaming
Second Attempt at Blaze
NEGRESS BUYS LONG ISLAND LOT AMONG HOMES OF RICH
Mme. C. J. Walker $75,000 Lot
SEGREGATION OF NEGROES SOUGHT BY REALTY MEN
Plan Legislation to Keep Colored People from White Areas
ANGRY NEGROES BLAST HARMONY IN HOUSING PLAN
Bolt Meeting at Realty Board with Threats to Fight
NEGRO OWNER OF FLAT HOUSE TO WAR BACK
Eugene F. Manns--Property in Morgan Park
COURT BLOCKS NEGRO INVASION
Injunction to Halt Move until Improvements Are Put In
RACE SEGREGATION IS RENT BOOSTER'S AIM
Owners Hope to Prevent Encroachments of Either Colored or White Citizens
TRY TO KEEP NEGRO OUT OF BLACK BELT
Colored Organizations Do Not Want Newcomers to Go to Old District
URGE RACE SEGREGATION LAW
Members of Real Estate Board to Move to Save South Side
TAKE UP HOUSING OF NEGROES
Two White and Two Colored Realty Dealers Consider the Problem
_The migration._--The migration provided a subject of sufficient interest
to stimulate a number of articles. Hordes of illiterate and impecunious
Negroes were pouring into the city, according to some reports, at the
rate of forty carloads a day; they brought smallpox and low living
standards, imperiled health, and created a dangerous problem for the
city. The combined estimates from day to day in the press would give a
number of arrivals in Chicago, equal to or even more than the migration
to the entire North. Thus the articles ran:
COMMITTEE TO DEAL WITH NEGRO INFLUX
Body Formed to Solve Problems Due to Migration to Chicago from South
WORK OUT PLANS FOR MIGRATING NEGROES
Influx from the South Cared For by the Urban League and Other Societies
OPPOSES IMPORTING NEGROES
Illinois Defense Council Moves to Stop Influx from South
2,000 SOUTHERN NEGROES ARRIVE IN LAST TWO DAYS
Stockyards Demand for Labor Cause of Influx
RUSH OF NEGROES TO CITY STARTS HEALTH INQUIRY
Philadelphia Warns of Peril, Health; Police Heads to Act
NEGROES ARRIVE BY THOUSANDS--PERIL TO HEALTH
Big Influx of Laborers Offers Vital Housing Problem to City
SEEK TO CHECK NEGRO ARRIVALS FROM THE SOUTH
City Officials Would Halt Influx until Ready to Handle Problem
NEGROES LEAVING SOUTH; 308,749 IN FEW MONTHS
DEFENSE BOARD WARNED AGAINST NEGRO INFLUX
Investigators See Peril Such as Resulted in East St. Louis
HALF A MILLION DARKIES FROM DIXIE SWARM TO THE NORTH TO
BETTER THEMSELVES
NEGROES INCITED BY GERMAN SPIES
Federal Agents Confirm Reports of New Conspiracy in South; Accuse
Germans for Exodus from South
NORTH DOES NOT WELCOME INFLUX OF SOUTH'S NEGROES
NEGRO INFLUX BRINGS DISEASE
Health Commissioner Orders Vaccination of Arrivals to Check Smallpox
_Racial contacts._--Aside from the riots and clashes the most intensively
featured articles were those dealing with intimate racial contacts.
They dealt with intermarriage, positions of authority for Negroes,
intermingling of the races in resorts, and love affairs--in fact, the
usual taboo themes and "forbidden" interracial practices. Some of these
subjects are thus indicated:
WIFE VANISHES--HUSBAND SEEKS NEGRO
MAY PUT WOMAN ON TRIAL FOR PAYING NEGRO'S FARE
San Diego Case First Instance of Man Not Being Taken under Mann Act
LITTLE MARJORIE GAY, BUT AGED MAMMY MOURNS
Colored Woman Who Raised White Girl Says Officers Are Influencing Child
A STRANGE, TRUE STORY
On Frank Jaubert, manager of New Orleans City Belt Railroad, who was accused
of being a Negro. Reference to Marjorie Delbridge case.
MAMMY LOSES FIGHT TO KEEP DELBRIDGE GIRL
Girl Declared Incorrigible, Delinquent and Ward of Juvenile Court
DIXIE WOMAN TO GIVE MAMMY AND HER CHILD NEW HOME TOGETHER
Mrs. Brock Also Had a Mammy
ALL HER TROUBLES NEAR HAPPY END AS NEW HOME LOOMS WITH MAMMY
MAMMY KIDNAPS HER CHILD
Negress Seizes Delbridge Girl; Flees in Auto
MAMMY DENIES KIDNAPPING WARD
Search for Marjorie Delbridge Leaves Disappearance a Mystery.
Mrs. Brock Through
2. INTENSIVE STUDY OF CHICAGO NEWSPAPERS
A careful study of the three selected white daily papers was made covering
1918, the year preceding the riot, to note relative space, prominence,
importance, and the type of articles on racial matters. During the year
534 articles appeared on racial matters distributed among the three
papers as follows:
NEWS ITEMS ON RACIAL MATTERS--1918
No. Items
_Chicago Daily Tribune_ 253
_Chicago Herald-Examiner_ 157
_Chicago Daily News_ 124
---
Total 534
TABLE XXXII
CLASSIFICATION OF ARTICLES ACCORDING TO SUBJECT AND NEWSPAPER DURING 1918
Key:
A = No. of Articles
B = Amount of Space in Inches
=============================+==========+==========+==========+==========
| |"HERALD- | |
|"TRIBUNE" |EXAMINER" | "NEWS" | TOTAL
SUBJECT +----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----
| A | B | A | B | A | B | A | B
-----------------------------+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----
Crime and vice | 70 | 231 | 58 | 181 | 21 | 122 |149 | 534
Soldiers, war work | 33 | 136 | 21 | 88 | 28 | 196 | 82 | 420
Politics | 21 | 78 | 12 | 28 | 14 | 63 | 47 | 169
Riots | 15 | 80 | 5 | 19 | 2 | 3 | 22 | 103
Lynchings | 24 | 57 | 15 | 43 | 4 | 21 | 43 | 121
Editorials | 6 | 34 | 8 | 67 | 6 | 28 | 20 | 129
Organizations and movements | 13 | 25 | 8 | 22 | 4 | 27 | 25 | 75
Housing | 12 | 28 | 5 | 14 | 1 | 3 | 18 | 46
Personal and miscellaneous | 15 | 35 | 5 | 16 | 5 | 33 | 25 | 85
Industry, labor | 11 | 28 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 18 | 14 | 47
Athletic, sports | 8 | 12 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 24
Letters to editor and | | | | | | | |
"Voice of People" | 13 | 107 | 9 | 30 | 21 | 34 | 43 | 171
Migration | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 126 | 11 | 130
Propaganda | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 6
Race relations | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 9
Radicalism | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 4 | 10
Guide post | 0 | 0 | 4 | 59 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 59
Intermarriage | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7
Education | 3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8
Segregation | 4 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 15
Social service | 1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8
Theatrical | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1
-----------------------------+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----
Most of the published information concerning the Negro and issues
involving him magnifies his crimes and mistakes beyond all reasonable
proportions. The Chicago public is aware of the sentiment against morons
created by the newspaper practice of calling persons who attack women
or girls morons--an unscientific classification, of course, since all
who attack women are not morons. Negroes frequently say that if each
crime committed by a "red-headed" man were listed as a crime committed
by a "red-headed" man, a sentiment would soon be created sufficiently
hostile to provoke prejudice against all red-headed men.
In 1918 there were more than 90,000 Negroes in Chicago. Practically all of
the more serious crimes in this group, especially those involving whites
and Negroes, were given publicity. This simple notation of crimes may be
a part of the routine of journalism. It does not, however, explain the
obvious appeal to passion found in many of them or even the prominence
given to articles of a certain type. Crimes, riots, intermarriage,
lynchings, and radicalism were the subjects of articles which, in their
repetition and accumulative significance, presented a disproportionately
unfavorable aspect of the Negro population.
The _Chicago Tribune_ published, in 1918, 145 articles which, because of
their emphasis on crimes, clashes, political corruption, and efforts to
"invade white neighborhoods" definitely placed Negroes in an unfavorable
light. Of this number, twenty-three appeared on the first page of the
first section and twenty on the first page of the second section. It
also published eighty-four articles dealing with Negro soldiers, sports,
industry, and personalities, which, aside from flippancy in treatment,
did not place Negroes in an unfavorable light. Of this number, two were
on the first page of the first section and three on the first page of
the second section. The relative length of articles indicates another
possible effect on the public. The unfavorable 145 articles contained
487 inches of printed matter, while the less colorful items contained
223 inches.
Front-page space amounting to eleven inches was given to favorable
articles, and 158 inches to unfavorable. Of the articles concerning
Negro soldiers appearing on the first page, four of the eleven inches
concerned a report that two Negro soldiers had been killed following a
dispute at Camp Merritt between a white sergeant and a Negro trooper.
The _Herald-Examiner_ published ninety-seven unfavorable and thirty
favorable articles. Of this number, thirty-one unfavorable and six
favorable appeared on the front page.
The _Chicago Daily News_ devoted thirty-three articles to unfavorable
publicity and fifty-one to publicity of a favorable sort. Of these,
eighteen unfavorable and eighteen favorable appeared on the first page.
_Bombing publicity._--The bombing of the homes of Negroes is an expression
of lawlessness which in an orderly community should not be tolerated.
The primary function of the newspaper is to report the facts. Upon this
basis the public may then pass its judgment. In the case of a bombing
it might be supposed that an orderly community would wish to know the
persons involved, the damage effected, the motive, the action of the
police and the result of efforts to capture the perpetrators of the act.
Ordinarily this is done in most cases of lawlessness and in bombings
not involving racial issues.
Of the forty-five racial bombings which took place in Chicago between July
1, 1917, and June 18, 1920, fourteen were not mentioned in any of the six
large dailies of the city.[88] Of the remaining thirty-one, seven were
reported in one paper, ten in two papers, nine in three papers, while
five appeared in four papers. Not one of the forty-five cases appeared
in more than four papers. Although there might have been a total of 270
news reports of these bombings only seventy-four actually appeared. Of
the forty-five bombings the _Tribune_ and _Herald-Examiner_ each reported
twenty, the _Post_ fourteen, the _News_ eleven, the _Journal_ eight,
and the _American_ one. In all cases the reports openly recognized that
these bombings were not the result of individual grievances but involved
organized effort and activity on the part of groups or communities in
the practice of throwing racial bombs. It was generally referred to as
a "race bomb" or "race war bombs." Typical headings were:
_Journal_, April 7, 1919:
RACE HATRED BOMB HURLS SIX FAMILIES FROM BED
_Journal_, November 19, 1918:
BOMB HOME OF AGED NEGRO. EXPLOSION SEEN AS PROTEST BY WHITES
_Journal_, March 6, 1920:
ATTRIBUTE BOMB TO SOUTH SIDE RACE WAR
_Journal_, March 31, 1920:
ANOTHER BOMB IN RACE WAR. OWNER SELLS BUILDING TO NEGROES
DESPITE OBJECTION OF NEIGHBORS
_Herald-Examiner_, May 25, 1920:
NEGRO CLUB IS BOMBED. SOME BLAME POLITICS
_Chicago Tribune_, May 25, 1920:
NEW RACE WAR WRECKS PORCH OF NEGROES' CLUB. THE CLUB IS
COMPOSED OF 600 COLORED PERSONS
_Herald-Examiner_, June 13, 1920:
TWO BUILDINGS BOMBED. RACE PREJUDICE BLAMED
_Herald-Examiner_, December 28, 1919:
RACE WAR BOMB INJURES WOMAN
_Herald-Examiner_, September 24, 1918:
POLICE SAID BOMB WAS INTENDED TO INTIMIDATE NEGROES WHO
RECENTLY MOVED INTO THAT NEIGHBORHOOD
_Herald-Examiner_, April 7, 1919:
A RACE WAR IS GENERALLY BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN BEHIND A
BOMB EXPLOSION EARLY THIS MORNING AT
4212 ELLIS AVE.
_Herald-Examiner_, April 4, 1920:
RACIAL DIFFERENCE RESPONSIBLE FOR BOMB
_Journal_, March 20, 1919:
BELIEVE BOMB THROWING CONTINUATION OF A FEUD CARRIED ON BY THE WHITES
AND BLACKS IN THE DISTRICT WHERE NEGROES HAVE BEEN ALLOWED
TO OCCUPY BUILDINGS FORMERLY OCCUPIED BY WHITE PEOPLE
In two instances a racial bombing was considered significant enough to
occupy more than nine inches of one column. This space was given by the
_Tribune_ and the _Herald-Examiner_.
Jesse Binga, a Negro banker, was bombed five times. The article in the
_Daily News_ was five inches long. In the _Herald-Examiner_, April 20,
1919, there appeared an article, "Curious Boy Drops Bomb as It Explodes."
The article covered eleven inches, of which eight inches were given to
the story of a boy who picked up a bomb in the street and dropped it as
a lady signaled him to drop it because it might be an explosive. At the
end of this article were appended three inches containing a narrative
of a racial bombing at 4722 Indiana Avenue where Wimes & Lassiter, Negro
real-estate dealers, had an office.
The fifth bombing directed against Mr. Binga is treated humorously in
spite of the serious damage done to his home.
The average length of racial bombing articles was about four and one-half
inches. The explanations of motive offered were stereotyped in character
and involved assumptions which it is not considered necessary here to
analyze. It was explained that the person bombed was a Negro or that he
had moved into a "distinctly white residential district," against which
encroachment bombing had been instituted as an intimidating or expulsive
measure. It was sometimes stated that the person was a real estate agent
negotiating with Negroes concerning property in "restricted" districts.
This sort of explanation was either stated in the headline or appended
at the end in a brief sentence. The reports in the papers apparently
undertook merely to notify the public that bombings had happened. The
following are examples of press treatment of race bombings:
_Herald-Examiner_, May 25, 1918:
This building was occupied by Negro families.... The white residents
objected to the Negroes.
_Post_, November 19, 1918:
BOMB SHATTERS NEGRO HOME IN "WHITE DISTRICT"
_Tribune_, March 19, 1919:
BINGA PROPERTY WAS WRECKED
Binga is an agent for buildings. He is colored, and has been leasing apartments
formerly occupied by white tenants to colored.
_Post_, March 20, 1919:
Police are investigating whether the bombs were thrown by members of the
Janitors' Union retaliating against Jesse Binga, colored real estate dealer who had
been hiring non-union janitors, or whether intended as another warning to the colored
people to keep out of residential districts that have been hitherto exclusively white.
_Post_, April 7, 1919:
BOMB EXPLODES IN FLAT WHERE NEGRO MOVED IN
_Tribune_, April 7, 1919:
BOMB SET OFF IN NEGRO FLATS
White residents of the district had held indignation meetings because he had
peopled his building with colored folks.
_Herald-Examiner_, April 20, 1919:
OFFICE OF WIMES & LASSITER, NEGRO REAL ESTATE DEALERS,
WAS THE TARGET
_Tribune_, May 18, 1919:
NEGRO FAMILY ON GRAND BOULEVARD OBJECT OF BOMB
_Post_, June 13, 1919:
TWO BOMB BLASTS ON FRINGE OF NEGRO DISTRICT
_Post_, January 6, 1920:
BOMB DAMAGES HOME OF NEGRO ON GRAND BOULEVARD
Ernest Clark moved in recently. He is a Negro. All his neighbors are white.
_Daily News_, February 2, 1920:
WHILE A BOMB WAS EXPLODED ANOTHER BATTLE IN THE SOUTH SIDE
RACE WAR OVER THE SEGREGATION OF BLACKS IN
RESIDENTIAL DISTRICTS
_Daily News_, February 10, 1920:
BUILDING RECENTLY SOLD TO APPOMATTOX CLUB, A NEGRO ORGANIZATION
_Daily News_, February 13, 1920:
TWO BOMBS TOSSED
... against encroachment of Negroes in white residential districts.
_Herald-Examiner_, March 11, 1920:
SOUTH SIDE HOUSE SOLD TO NEGROES BOMBED
_Journal_, March 24, 1920:
BOMB SHAKES BUILDING. DEAL FOR SALE OFF
The prospective buyer was talking with ---- when there came a loud noise.
[Buyer was colored.]
A typical example of newspaper reports of the bombings of Negro homes
appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_ of April 4, 1920:
BOMB BLASTS IN FRONT OF NEGRO FLAT BUILDING
A black powder bomb was exploded last night in front of the
vestibule of a four-story flat building 423 E. 48th Place,
occupied by Negroes. The building is owned by Robert B. Jackson,
who lives on the second floor. He recently purchased it from
Louis Cohen. The apartment is in the neighborhood peopled
mainly by whites, and the police believe racial differences
are responsible for the bomb. The explosion did slight damages.
No one was hurt.
One of the typical shorter reports also appeared in the same paper May
25, 1918:
BOMB EXPLODES BEFORE HOME OF NEGRO FAMILIES
A bomb exploded in the front of 4529 Vincennes Avenue early
this morning, wrecked the front porch of the structure and
broke windows for a block around. The building is occupied by
Negro families. White residents objected to the Negroes.
Similar language was used in all the articles.
Most of the articles carried a suggestion of a race war on the South
Side. Many of the reports helped to contribute to popular anticipation
of future trouble. For example, in the _Post_ of January 6, 1920, page
1, column 3, a bombing was reported thus: "A bomb early today damaged
the residence at 4404 Grand Boulevard which was said to have been a
Negro 'sniping-post' during the race riot last summer."
The home at 4404 Grand Boulevard was owned and occupied by Mrs. Byron
Clarke, and was not a sniping-post during the riot. It had been bombed
four times, once while officers were guarding it. All papers used the
expression, "No one was hurt." Property destruction was usually dismissed
with statements like these: "All the glass was shattered"; "the front
porch was demolished"; "about $---- damage was done"; or "the damages
were slight." The _Daily News_ was exceptional in using the word "outrage"
three times.
Two reports gave accounts of arrests, and all others in which police
activity was mentioned merely said, "The police are investigating." None
of the articles gave the results of any such investigation, other than
that the police generally attributed the "hurling of the bomb" to the
occupants of a black touring-car. The articles contained no condemnation
of the bombings as lawlessness or crime except in the case of a bombing
at 3401 Indiana Avenue, where a child was killed May 1, 1919. The _Chicago
Tribune_ spoke of this death as an incident of that bombing.
One of the two arrests above referred to was that of a janitor who was not
able to explain sufficiently his presence in or about a building which
had just been bombed. He was taken into custody but was soon dismissed.
The other arrest was that of the nephew of a prominent business man
living in the neighborhood of the bombed property.
During the time from February, 1918, to February, 1919, prior to the
Chicago riot, there were eleven bombings in the city. If each paper
had reported each bombing there would have been sixty-six reports.
Only seven reports actually appeared. During the six weeks immediately
preceding the Chicago race riot, there were seven racial bombings. Of a
possible forty-two reports, only four appeared, or two bombings in two
papers. Thus violent and criminal expressions of hostility which might
have been checked by arousing the public conscience silently continued.
The resentment of Negroes increased, and the ignorance of the larger
white public remained undisturbed. The articles were apparently written
without much investigation. Upon the fifth bombing of Mr. Binga's home,
the _American_, _Herald-Examiner_, and _Chicago Daily News_ quoted Mr.
Binga as saying, "This is the limit; I am going." Mr. Binga declares
that he did not say this, that he did not even see a reporter, and that
he had not moved.
During the nine months following the riot, publicity on bombings increased
to several times the former amount. Beginning in March, 1920, the articles
again showed slackened interest. The _Tribune_ and _Herald-Examiner_,
usually giving most frequent publicity to such matters, missed about
every other one. The _Post_ had no reports, the _Journal_ two, the _News_
four, and the _American_ none. Seven bombings took place from March 1
to July 1.
The apparent indifference toward race bombings in the minds of editors,
officials, and the public was indicated by the relative prominence given
to a race bomb which threatened life and damaged property as compared
with an "odor bomb" dropped in a moving-picture theater.
On the first page of the _Tribune_ of February 11, 1921, under the caption
"Crow Raid Opens Inquiry into Bombs," were seventeen inches of space
reporting cases of "odor bombs" and emphasizing the determination of the
state's attorney to make investigation. At the bottom of the adjoining
column were four inches devoted to a dynamite race bomb which damaged
a three-story apartment and involved menace to life. No reference was
made to any effort by the state's attorney or the police to investigate.
Similar prominence was given to the "odor bomb" in the _Herald-Examiner_.
An editorial in the _Tribune_, February 14, 1921, condemning bombing
made no reference to the fifty-six race bombings of recent record, but
did refer to other bombing aimed at white citizens. The editorial reads:
THE BUSINESS OF BOMBING
Anthony D'Andrea, whose aldermanic campaign meeting Friday
night was broken up by a bomb which injured seventeen persons,
speaks with some indignation on the matter as indicating a bad
moral slump in political methods. If it had been a union labor
bomb, apparently, it would have been of no great importance.
"I'm a union man myself," he explains. "I wouldn't care if
they threw a bomb at my house. That's all in the game."
On the latter point D'Andrea is right. It is "all in the game,"
but the game is one which gets out of control of the players.
It is because bomb throwing has come to be accepted as "all in
the game" of union labor warfare that it is now being extended
to political warfare. The man, the gang, or the organization
which sanctions or adopts bombing as a method of obtaining
results in ordinary activities cannot expect to be able to
restrict the use of such methods to one line of business.
Originally the bomb was a political weapon, as in the hands
of the Russian nihilists. In late years it has grown popular
with labor leaders of a certain class. Such bombings as the
recent one at the Tyson apartments, ascribed by the police to
labor troubles, and the repeated odor bomb outrages at movie
theaters, are sufficient illustrations of its use by labor.
The post-office bombing in 1918 and the numerous so-called
race-bombs exploded on the South Side are illustrative of the
widening use of bombs. In such progress D'Andrea should not be
surprised that the bomb is being adopted by ward politicians.
Properly applied, a good bomb can be expected to neutralize
half a dozen or so precinct captains. Bomb throwing is becoming
a business.
Friday night's bombing is a perfectly logical development. As
a result several men may be cripples for life, if they do not
die. It is time such logical developments are stopped. Among
the scores of bomb outrages of the last few years, so far as
we recall, there has not been a single case of punishment of
the perpetrators. They are justified in believing that they are
safe. As long as they retain that belief they will continue
to extend the business of bombing. One thing will stop it.
That is drastic punishment. Any person who throws a bomb is
a potential murderer. Life in prison is none too severe a
penalty. Good detectives can trap some of these men and good
prosecution can send them to prison. It should be done and
done now.
_The Abyssinian affair._--The "Abyssinian affair" referred to earlier
in this part of the report, was treated with remarkably good judgment by
the press. It is to be believed that further clashes were avoided by the
effective way in which the newspapers pointed out that the demonstration
was the work of fanatics rather than a race riot. Two days later, however,
the _Chicago Tribune_ published an article ascribing the Abyssinian
murders to "racial reds." The article ran:
"ABYSSINIAN" MURDERS BARE RACIAL "REDS"
Leaders Lay Unrest to Du Bois Creed
Shocked by the fantastic violence of Sunday night, when a United
States sailor and a citizen were killed by pseudo-Abyssinian
zealots, thoughtful colored leaders began a determined effort
yesterday to stamp out anti-white exploitation and to bring
about better understanding....
This type of exploitation, they say, is aimed at the more
ignorant among the colored masses. It carries the same appeal
as the glittering promises of the I.W.W. and the Communists
to the illiterate and ignorant among the whites.
According to Negro leaders, this exploitation is based upon the
theory of _social equality_. Its motive can be seen, they say,
in recent utterances and writings of Negro intellectuals, in
which a high pitch of "social equality" fervor is established
as a panacea for the ills of the race. This theory, translated
and exaggerated into ambiguous prophecies by the soap-box
orator, is slowly being percolated through the masses of a
race as yet generally unprepared by education to understand it.
Chief among the writers whose works have been of this
intellectual caliber is Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois.... His latest
volume, a "best seller" entitled _Darkwater_, has been widely
circulated. It is a volume of almost super-intellectual caliber,
and is bitter in tone.
In _Darkwater_, which is taken simply as a typical volume,
are found the teachings, colored leaders say, which have been
seized upon by those who, under the shadow of Dr. Du Bois'
reputation among colored folk, would seek to incite and exploit.
The "colored leaders" quoted were F. L. Barnett, R. S. Abbott, and A. H.
Roberts. They did not impute any such danger to Mr. Du Bois' books. Mr.
Barnett, for example, mentioned the exploitation of the "Back to Africa"
movement by Jonas and Redding, while Mr. Abbott and Mr. Roberts spoke
of the lack of sympathy among Negroes for criminal types like Jonas and
Redding. The article then stated the "Du Bois Creed," saying:
The agitators have used considerable skill in exploiting the
Negroes by use of doctrines which they have taken from Dr. Du
Bois, as expressed in _Darkwater_. Here are some of them:
"The world market most widely and desperately sought today
is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and
profit is most abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless
because the white world despises 'darkies.'"
This is given as the underlying premise for the late war.
"But what of the darker world that watches?" the author
continues. "Most men belong to this world. With Negro and
Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they form two-thirds
of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is a
belief in colored men. If the uplift in mankind must be done
by men, then the destinies of the world will rest ultimately
in the hands of darker nations."
The article quoted from _Darkwater_ a chapter, which, by cutting the text,
left a suggestion of sex intimacy between a colored bank messenger and
a white girl very different from the intention of the author. The entire
article was calculated, through its suggestion and insinuation, to rouse
racial antagonism. It is doubtful whether the "Abyssinian" leaders, who
were ignorant fanatics little known within the Negro group, had read
Du Bois' books. With all its wildness and fatuousness the movement was
directed away from America and from whites. A photograph of Du Bois was
published with the caption:
KARL MARX OF NEGROES
Noted Colored Philosopher Whose Works Are Used by Agitators to
Stir Race Hatred
_Miscegenation._--Similarly dangerous treatment is apparent in an article
which appeared in the _Tribune_ of November 6, 1920, under the heading:
"Miscegenation is O.K.'d in New Constitution."
The article called attention to a proposed provision in the new state
constitution of Illinois against public discrimination on account of
color, which was intended to put into the constitution rights already
guaranteed by state laws. According to the article this law was
tentatively agreed upon "during the newsy days surrounding the Republican
National Convention and escaped the notice of the public generally."
The article said:
Under the basic law, if adopted, a colored man and woman
will be entitled to buy vacant seats of a grand opera box,
otherwise occupied by whites. A Mongolian--if a citizen--and
a mesochromic bride cannot be denied a vacant flat in the most
"exclusive" apartment building.
A law prohibiting the Japanese, as in California, from owning
land, will be illegal. Two colored people may take two of the
four seats in the Blackstone restaurant beside the wives of
two packers.
A member of the convention said yesterday that it is as broad
and comprehensive as it can be made. He claimed that this
sentence in the constitution will prevent the Legislature
from prohibiting in any way the colored citizen from getting
all the rights and privileges accorded to other citizens.
According to this constitutional delegate and lawyer the new
constitution, as now worded, will prevent segregation of the
Negroes, Jim-Crow cars, or special schools for the colored.
A Negro lawyer said that the Morris section only recognizes
openly the rights of equality which were settled by the Civil
War and enunciated in an amendment to the federal Constitution.
The remainder of the article dealt in brief with fifteen other decisions
of the Convention. These decisions were merely stated and not commented
upon.
_Newspaper handling of the "back of the Yards" fire._--At the close of
the Chicago riot fire was set to a large number of houses back of the
Stock Yards. Since these were the homes of white persons, principally
Lithuanians, it was generally assumed that it was an act of retaliation
by Negroes. Articles in the newspapers strengthened the belief. The
_Chicago Daily News_ article gave a full account of statements made by
Fire Marshal O'Connor to the effect that Negroes were responsible. It
stated that the police and militia were combing the South Side for a
band of eight Negroes, alleged automobile fire bugs. These men, it was
said, were stalled in an automobile at West Fifty-fifth and South Wood
streets ten blocks south of the fire; when the police reached Fifty-fifth
Street the Negroes had repaired their car and fled. John R. McCabe, Fire
Department attorney, was reported as being positive that the fire was
started by Negroes.
Investigation was made by the Commission to ascertain the facts concerning
Negro responsibility for these incendiary fires. The state's attorney
declared that no records had come to his office implicating Negroes, and
that he had no information, except rumors which he seriously questioned.
The records, he thought, were held at the Stock Yards police court.
Inquiry at this police station disclosed the fact that no Negroes had
been apprehended on this charge, and the belief was expressed that the
act was committed by white men with blackened faces. The fire marshal's
office had no record other than unsubstantiated rumors spread by persons
living in the district. The matter had been dropped for lack of evidence.
_Negro revolt._--On January 4, 1920, during the general crusade against
"reds" the _Herald-Examiner_ published a two-inch headline across the
top of the first page saying:
REDS PLOT NEGRO REVOLT
I.W.W. Bomb Plant Found on South Side
The article mentioned below alleged secret activities of Negroes and
their plans to revolt against the government. The bomb plant and many of
their secret plans were reported to have been discovered by the state's
attorney's office. The article further stated: "In Chicago it was learned
that the headquarters for Negro revolutionary propaganda are centered
in these four organizations: The Free Thought Society, Universal Negro
Improvement Association, Negro Protective League, and Soldiers and
Sailors Club."
Each organization named was, as a matter of fact, open to the public,
though patronized almost entirely by Negroes. The Negro Improvement
Association was by no means secret in its plans; it published a newspaper
in which they were set forth. The slogan of this organization was then
and is now, "Back to Africa," and not "Down with the United States."
The Free Thought Society mentioned is the Chicago Free Thought Educational
Society. The following is a declaration of its principles:
In order to achieve a better understanding of the phenomena
of nature, for ourselves and for such of our fellow-men as
shall care to become affiliated with us, we do hereby bind
ourselves by the following declaration of principles.
First: That the attainment of truth shall be the fundamental
purpose of the work of this society and all its members.
Second: That truth shall be recognized as that body of
conclusions which may be logically drawn from the facts of
nature as evidence by the five senses, or may be demonstrated
mathematically.
Third: That we abstain from all dogma, insisting upon a fair
and impartial investigation of all subjects and at all times.
Fourth: That we do recognize a universal kinship binding
together in one common band all members of the human society
regardless of race, color or sex.
Among its members are W. E. Mollison, F. D. Summers, and among its
honorary members are F. Percy Ward, lecturer for the Chicago Rationalist
Society, and Clarence S. Darrow. The Negro Protective League is an
employment office and day nursery. The full name of the organization is
the Negro Equal Rights and Protective Association.
The Soldiers and Sailors Club is a community house located on the South
Side and a branch of the local War Camp Community Service. It served
during war time as a recreational and social center for returning
soldiers, and in 1920 became the South Side Branch of Community Service,
Incorporated. At the time of the article it was under the general
supervision of the Chicago Community Service, of which Eugene T. Lies,
formerly of the United Charities, was director.
_Newspaper handling of the Waukegan riot._--Considerable excitement was
occasioned by reports in all the Chicago daily papers of a race riot
in Waukegan, about thirty-six miles north of Chicago. The first news
reports gave the following versions:
THE BEGINNING OF THE RIOT
_Chicago Tribune_, June 1, 1920:
A group of Negro boys in Sheridan Road stood about stoning
passing automobiles for several hours, finally shattering a
windshield on the car of Lieut. H. B. Blazier and injuring
Mrs. Blazier.
_A throng of sailors and marines were passing when Mrs. Blazier
was injured and they immediately chased the Negro boys. The
chase led to the Sherman House, a rooming place for Negroes,
and when the persons living there defended the boys and sought
to drive off the sailors, there was a prospect of serious
trouble._
_Chicago Daily News_, June 1, 1920:
According to the police a thirteen-year-old colored boy and his
little sister had been in ambush near Sheridan Road throwing
stones at passing automobiles. _One of the stones_ struck the
windshield of a car driven by a coal dealer, Chas. Bairscow,
according to Assistant Chief of Police Thomas Tyrrell, and
injured a woman occupant of the car. Another shattered the
windshield of the car of Lieut. A. F. Blasier a naval officer.
Mrs. Blasier was cut by flying glass. When he drove into
the city Lieut. Blasier told several sailors of the affair
and the news quickly spread. The town was alive with marines
and sailors on "shore leave." They concentrated in the town
square and upon a signal made an attack on the Sherman House,
a hostelry occupied by Negroes.
CLASHES
_Chicago Tribune_, June 1, 1920:
For hours there were individual instances of attacks by both
whites and Negroes in various parts of the town.
_Chicago Daily News_, June 1, 1920:
A general man hunt ensued. One group stormed the postoffice
and tried to break open the doors, as it was thought a Negro
was hiding there. Another made an attack on the house of Ike
Franklin, colored. Ike had fled. Another group chased a Negro
across the Genesee bridge in the center of the town. It had
nearly captured him when the blue-jacket guards arrived in
trucks. Under command of Provost Marshall Lieut. A. C. Fisher
the town was quickly cleared. The police arrested the following
six marines: Thomas Levinger, Charles Thrawle, John Smith,
Burney Poston, Herman Blockhouse and Harold Denning.
RACE RIOTS AND THE POLICE
_Chicago Daily News_, June 1, 1920:
Acting Chief Tyrrell, after a cursory investigation, said that,
as far as he could learn, Policeman Frank Bence, on whose beat
the trouble started, was not in the vicinity at the outbreak.
He said that if this proved true the man would be dismissed.
The policeman said he was making a tour of alleys at the time
of the stone throwing and knew nothing of it.
Inquiry by the Commission brought out the following facts: The first
newspaper accounts of the riot indicated that Lieutenant Blazier and his
wife were driving in one automobile, and that Mr. Bairscow was driving
in another automobile. The story was that Mrs. Blazier was injured by
glass from the windshield broken by stones, and that a woman occupant
of the Bairscow car was similarly injured. Lieutenant Blazier and Mr.
Bairscow were driving in the same car, the windshield of which was broken,
instead of separate cars. There was no woman in the car and Lieutenant
Blazier has no wife.
The story was telephoned into the _Tribune_ by a member of the staff
of the _Waukegan Sun_. This was the source of the report of the woman
being injured.
The stoning occurred one block away from the Sherman House, occupied by
Negroes.
_Negro housing in Chicago._--The housing situation has frequently
occasioned alarm on the part of whites and bitterness of feeling toward
Negroes. Many newspaper articles, by their play upon racial fears, have
increased the tension between the two groups. An example of this type
of article is given:
WHITE TENANTS FEAR NEGROES WILL BUY BLOCK. FIRE CHIEF'S
RESIDENCE ONE OF THOSE IN DANGER
Twenty-six houses on the old Chicago university campus in East
Thirty-fourth Street, between Cottage Grove Avenue and Rhodes
Avenue, are about to be sold to colored people, according to
the tenants....
"I'm going to offer the houses to the present occupants at
prices ranging from $6,000 to $7,000 on easy terms," Mr.
O'Brien said. "Of course if they don't accept I'm going to
do the best I can. I can't predict how things will turn out
until the tenants have given me their reply. They'll be around
tomorrow.
"Among the residents of the block are Fire Chief Thomas
O'Connor, Dr. William E. Hall, and Dr. M. J. Moth.
"The tenants are all worried. Colored people have learned
of this sale and for days have been walking up and down and
pointing out houses, discussing, apparently, what they intended
doing and where they planned to live. Unless every one of
the twenty-six buys his house it will not remain a white
neighborhood. And I don't believe we can get everyone to buy"
[_Chicago Tribune_, February, 1920].
Inquiry by the Commission disclosed a situation similar to that underlying
many discussions of "exclusive areas." The article was written by a
member of the _Tribune_ staff. It was learned at Mr. O'Brien's office
that he had come to that office inquiring about the matter. A member
of the O'Brien firm stated to him that he did not think the matter had
any racial significance because the firm intended to sell the houses to
present tenants, all of whom happened to be white.
_Labeling fights as "riots."_--Attention might be called to the suggestion
in articles which treat trivial disputes and street fights as race
riots. On August 4, 1920, the _Evening Post_ published an article headed:
"Negroes Held to Grand Jury after Riot in Street Car."
The article related a dispute over a car seat ending in a fight in which
one man was stabbed. The entire article is given:
Six Negroes were arraigned in the South Chicago court today,
charged with having started a "near" race riot in a Cottage
Grove Avenue car last night. They were: Isaac Nelson, 3256
South Park Avenue; Henry Broadnax, 3235 Calumet Avenue; Samuel
Bound, 3127 Cottage Grove Avenue; Albert McMurry, 3027 Cottage
Grove Avenue; Abe Mitchell, 3703 South La Salle Street and
Walter McConnor, 538 West 45th Street.
McConnor, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon,
is said to have taken a seat which Herbert Douglas, 1637 East
78th Street, offered to a woman passenger.
In the scuffle which ensued, Douglas received a stab from a
knife in the hands, it is alleged, of McConnor, and was taken
to the South Chicago hospital. The Negroes were held on bonds
of $400 to $3,500, pending jury trials.
In May, 1920, the _Tribune_ gave eight inches to an article with the
headline: "Race Riot and Labor Riot in New England." The item reported a
fight between a Negro waiter and a Harvard student in one of the college
dining-halls. To show how trivial the incident was the article said in
part:
The trouble began when Mayer (a colored waiter) made a slighting
remark to Wilson (a white student) and, grabbing him by the
hair struck him in the face. Wilson, in an attempt to defend
himself, grabbed a water pitcher, and as he raised it, Mayer
drew a revolver and pointed it at Wilson. Immediately the
student body was in an uproar and rallied to the defense of
Wilson.... The police are searching for Mayer.
The _Daily News_ referred to a "riot" precipitated by a colored chef's
remarks. The incident referred to loud talking in the kitchen of a Greek
restaurant and the chef's swearing at a cook which was overheard by
a woman in the dining-room. She objected, and the police were called.
Another such article appeared in the _Tribune_ under the heading: "Women
in Riot. White versus Negro in Reformatory." The article told of state
troops, local police, and a chaplain having been mobilized to stop a
"race riot." The casualties given were one policeman bitten by a girl
and several state troopers kicked and scratched.
An instance of undiscriminating news handling appeared in the _Chicago
Tribune_ of July 24, 1917. During the race riot in East St. Louis, while
the front pages of all the papers were filled with descriptions of the
horrors, an article appeared in the fourth column of the first page,
along with the East St. Louis riot news. It occupied fourteen inches and
bore the heading: "Whites Were Firing at Blacks near Scene of Murder.
Four Negroes Jailed after Slaying of Aged Man." Of the fourteen inches,
six were given to an account of the murder in Chicago of a saloon-keeper
by a Negro in which mobs of Negroes were said to have flourished guns;
four inches were given to a totally irrelevant report that two young
white girls were chased through Washington Park by a Negro; three inches
more to a further account of the first murder, and one inch to a report
that a Negro was shot by a policeman.
On the second page was an eleven-inch article with the large headline:
"Lawyer Warns Negroes Here to Arm Themselves." Underneath was a five-inch
report concerning a Negro held for trial on a girl's story of an attack.
Nine inches were given in another article to a warning by Chicago labor
leaders that "the influx of blacks" to replace the strikers in the plants
was bringing a riot peril to Chicago. Under this article was an account
of the freeing of a policeman for killing a Negro; and beneath this an
article from Orange, Texas, with the headline: "Negro Shot Down Trying
to Escape after Crime." Also on the same page nine inches were devoted
to a condemnation of black politics in East St. Louis, and three inches
to a minor clash in which a Negro was reported to have drawn a knife
when attacked by six white youths. Two inches were given to the account
of a clash between Negroes and whites in New York City and seventy-two
inches to accounts of the East St. Louis riot.
The emphasis was on the work of the mob and the fact that Negroes were
replacing strikers in East St. Louis, and that this was responsible
for the riot. Some of the reports of Chicago incidents proved to be
inaccurate. It developed that Charles A. Maronde, a saloon-keeper, who
was supposed to have been killed by Negroes, his death precipitating a
clash between Negroes and white persons, actually died of heart failure.
There was no connection and no apparent reason for inserting the incident
of the white girls being chased through the park by a Negro. This report
was hearsay and was joined to the article in this manner: "About the
time the Negroes were being fired upon, two young white girls were being
chased by a Negro through Washington Park."
The item concerning the Negro held for trial on the charge of a white that
he had attacked her, turned out to be the imaginings of a young girl,
which involved a forty-three-year-old Negro, whose character had never
before been questioned, and who, as the facts developed, was entirely
innocent. Linked up in this article was an account of disciplining in
the county jail; 150 prisoners had been locked in their cells and placed
on bread and water because they were found shooting craps in the "bull
pen."
_Flippant treatment and ridicule of Negroes._--The "human-interest"
newspaper story is undoubtedly one of the most effective means of gaining
public attention. But it presents a single incident from which the
reader is likely to apply characteristics vividly set forth concerning
an individual to the group of which the individual is a member. It
therefore leads to unfair judgments of the group when the characteristics
are not representative of the group, even if they are representative of
the individuals. It may be written with genuine humor and with the best
of intentions, or perhaps only with thoughtlessness of the effect. But
that does not obviate the sense of injury when the group involved feels
itself misrepresented and held up to ridicule.
Newspaper flippancy concerning Negroes has found a sensitive spot
among members of the race. Often there are suggestions and exaggerated
descriptions that can be characterized as nothing else than ridicule.
Negroes especially resent misrepresentation of Negro weddings, since no
accounts are given by white newspapers of more representative weddings.
A NEGRO WEDDING
"Yassah, I'se tuh git hitched up. I'se heighty-six and Emily's
sixty-nine, but we done got license.
"Yassah, I am de man you is huntin'. Yes, suh, I'se agwine to
git hitched with Emily Holland. De carryings-on are agwine to
come off tomorrow night. Emily done got lonely like and I'se
getting no 'count.
"I was in the wah wid de march to de sea, and I got fo' minie
balls. One ob em took two ob my toes. I'se a-carrying de otha
ball in my frame. Uncle Sam done provided fo me now wid a
pension. It am enuf fo me an' Emily. It ain't too much, cause
in de days ob de wah I done lay in trenches and fit all night
in cold water."
BULLET IN HIS LAIGS
"I knowed how to bust bad coons in de army and I was p'moted
to sahgent in Co. E, 60th Reg., U.S.A. Now comes the achings
of bullets in my laigs and chest and I feel like I cain't walk
no mo. Den it am de time when I wants a wife to look at me.
Emily say she ain't ready fo to take on no mo 'sponsibility.
Den I argufies with her.
"'How comes this heah 'sponsibility talk'? I say.
"'Taint no how come 'bout it,' she says, 'You is a ol' man.'
"'So is you a ol' woman,' I says."
IS YOU OR IS YOU AIN'T?
"Den we jaw aroun' about it for a long time. Yestiddy I say,
'Emily you all hab done been widout a husband fo' nigh onto
22 yeah.' She don't say nothin'. I talks 'bout it some mo',
then I says, 'Emily, is you gwine to be my wife or is you
ain't?' She says 'Yes' and den we get de license. Now we hab
done got de ministah and it am all ready. I'se feelin' kinda
sprightly like tonight and unless my misery comes on me thar
sho'ly am agwine to be some 'spicious carryings-ons in dis
abode tomorrow night" [_Chicago Tribune_, January 11, 1916].
During the war Negroes were as seriously engaged in battle and as freely
sacrificing their lives as other soldiers. When deeds of heroism were
cabled back to the United States, Negroes at home expected serious
reports of the activities of the sons, husbands, and brothers whom they
had given up to fight for their country. Exception was taken by them to
newspaper treatment of a serious feat as merely ludicrous. For example:
BLACK YANK BAGS HUN; MAJOR WEARS CAPTAIN'S MONOCLE
Paris, Sept. 7 (Delayed). During the recent American advance
out of Château Thierry, a Red Cross captain was looking about
for suitable hospital sites, when he met an American Negro
soldier marching along toward Château Thierry, following close
behind a German major. The Negro had transferred his pack from
his own back to the back of the German officer, and had also
transferred the German major's monocle to his own eye. Thus
equipped the black warrior was parading triumphantly down the
road. As he passed the Red Cross captain he called out, "I
say, look here what dis Niggah done got" [_Chicago Evening
Post_].
The following is a news report, with dialect, which was supposed to have
been cabled from Paris:
NEGRO STEVEDORE COMING BACK "BY WAY OF NEW OHLEENS"
August 17 (Delayed). George Washington Henry Clay Smith, Negro
stevedore at one of the American base ports, expressed the
feeling of a large part of the expeditionary force about ocean
travel. "When dis heah wah is ovah," he said, "you-all will
nevah see me goin' back across dat ole ocean. Ahm not goin'
back to United States that away. Ahm goin' back by way of New
Ohleens" [_Chicago Evening Post_, September 9, 1918].
"Crap shooting" is ordinarily regarded as the peculiar pastime and passion
of Negroes. Popular expectation is fed by newspaper stories of these
games, made even more humorous by dialect, and the frequent implications
of levity in religious matters. Such stories would probably be enjoyed
by Negroes if they did not have the effect of picturing this trait as
an exclusively Negro form of gambling.
Or again, the newspaper plays up a supposed superstition of the Negro
in such an article as appeared in the _Chicago Tribune_ of January 1,
1920, under the heading "Negroes Driven to Jail in Big Black Hearse."
Pseudo-serious newspaper reference was made to Negro street sweepers as
the "official chamber maids" of the city in an article in the _Chicago
Herald_ of March 31, 1916, headed:
BLACK BIRDS AS WHITE WINGS
Negroes Supplant Sons of Italy as City's Official Chambermaids
Or again, a Negro saves a white man from a mob and is called a "darky"
in the report of the incident:
DARKY PASTOR SAVES WHITE AUTOIST FROM NEGRO MOB
Newport News, Va., Oct. 27.--The attempt here today of a mob
of Negroes to lynch Isadore Cohen after his automobile had
run over a Negro child was frustrated by R. H. Green, a Negro
preacher, who fought off the white man's assailants long
enough to let him escape in the car. Cohen is held without
bond [_Chicago Tribune_, October 28, 1920].
A Chicago colored boy is pictured at the Salvation Army Camp at Glen
Ellyn. Under the picture is the title "Rastus." He has been given a
piece of watermelon to complete the picture.
JOY SUPREME
"Come here, you Rastus, and git yo' pitcher took t' show how
glad you are."
Rastus was glad and Rastus came hither, but he was so glad
about going to the Salvation Army Camp yesterday with several
hundred boys and girls from the poorer districts that he failed
to register the smile his mammy demanded.
The annual camp of the Salvation Army at Glen Ellyn opened in
the afternoon. In the morning the first group of children left
over the Northwestern Railroad. Practically every nationality
was represented [_Chicago Tribune_, July 3, 1920].
Another picture is given in another issue of a little Negro boy at the
Juvenile Detention Home. It is headed "Losted," and carries the suggestion
of loose family life:
LITTLE PICKANINNY WHO WAITS FATHER AND MOTHER TO CLAIM HIM
Who's lost a little colored boy about four years old? He's
at the Juvenile Detention Home. He says his mother is "Mis'
Brown" and his father "Mistuh Parsons."
He's got an inexpensive lavalliere for identification, a dime
with a hole in it. He keeps the dime on his neck by means of a
piece of string that runs through the hole [_Chicago Tribune_].
3. NEWSPAPER POLICY REGARDING NEGRO NEWS
The policy of a newspaper in handling racial news can be better determined
by studying its articles and editorials than by asking the editors.
In fact, when the editor of the _Tribune_ was asked concerning this
matter he referred the Commission to the columns of his paper. It would
be difficult to find a definite policy on the race question stated and
consistently followed out by any newspaper in all items affecting race
issues. Ordinarily when misleading emphasis, misinterpretation, and
distortions of fact occur, they are due to the ignorance concerning
Negroes which is fairly general among white persons, rather than to
any inclination to injure a disadvantaged group of people. Reporters
and editors frequently use, doubtless unwittingly, terms unnecessarily
irritating to Negroes. Individual notions of relations between whites
and Negroes determine the character, color, and emphasis of articles
and editorials.
A conference of editors of the white press was held to discuss these
matters with the Commission. The white press was represented by Edgar T.
Cutter, district superintendent of the Associated Press, W. A. Curley,
managing editor of the _Chicago American_, Victor F. Lawson, editor
of the _Chicago Daily News_, and Julian Mason, managing editor of the
_Chicago Evening Post_. A brief questionnaire was filled out and returned
by Joseph M. Patterson, editor of the _Chicago Tribune_.
A. EDITORIAL POLICY
_Chicago American._--The _Chicago American_ had recently adopted a policy
of eliminating the racial designation, "Negro" or "colored," unless some
special circumstance made the mention of race of particular news value.
Said Mr. Curley:
There was a meeting at which newspaper men were gathered
together with some representatives of the colored race down
in a clubhouse on Grand Boulevard, the Appomattox Club, and we
were informed then that there was a feeling among the Negroes
that the newspapers emphasized in crime stories particularly
the fact that a man was a Negro. Our publisher and I discussed
it, and we decided that there was no more reason to emphasize
that it was a Negro bandit than that it was an Irish or Jew
bandit.
Our general policy has been that we must treat the Negro with
the same consideration and tolerance as we give any other
nationality. When he had those troubles here before [the riot
of July, 1919] we had some editorials to that effect.
Since the date of the meeting mentioned, the _American_ has consistently
maintained this policy. Its editorials prior to that time had shown a
spirit of tolerance and fairness. During the riot especially it published
editorials designed to aid in the restoration of order.[89] It published
perhaps the strongest of local newspaper editorials condemning the
bombing of Negro homes.
_Chicago Daily News._--The _Chicago Daily News_ in its reference to
Negroes used the expression "colored." Although it had sometimes published
articles which were not representative, it had often given space and
prominence to news concerning Negroes which presented them in a more
favorable light. This was clearly manifested during the world-war.
Its interest in a serious treatment of Negro affairs was shown in two
special series of articles, the first by Junius B. Wood, the second by
Carl Sandburg, both published later as booklets. These articles were
well received and gave a necessary balance to the more usual publication
of stories involving Negroes only in crimes. In a special column of
the _Daily News_, "The Human Side of Things," many articles have been
published relating to efforts for social welfare among Negroes.
Concerning the use of the racial designation in reporting crimes, Mr.
Lawson explained that he considered it appropriate to mention race,
as, for example, in giving an account of a lynching or the bombing of a
Negro home. The racial designation, he believed, gave significance to
the article. This consideration, he believed, balanced references in
other cases. He said:
The newspaper point of view is to use the national, or
professional, or racial distinction, the word giving the
distinction, wherever it interprets the news that is being
printed. There are some places where the character of the thing
that is being told naturally suggests the name Negro, or the
word Presbyterian, or Jew or Gentile or German or English, or
Irish, and the newspaper never stops to suppress that. On the
contrary it puts it in as interpreting fully the character of
the news that is being told.
Concerning news items unnecessarily provoking race antagonism, as, for
example, reports of speeches by a candidate for governor of Illinois
on "White Supremacy," he thought that most of the papers as well as his
own "played it down."
The statements of Mr. Lawson on other questions of policy are quoted:
_Mr. Lawson_: We regard items describing constructive work by
Negroes or items indicating their advancement as better news
than articles indicating degradation or criminality on their
part. The _Daily News_ endeavors to appeal to all readers
alike. Instructions in news handling comprehend the employment
of fairness, conservatism, and candor; special instructions
based on these principles are issued to cover special cases.
The terms "darky," "nigger," "coon," "shine," "wench," and
"negress" are not employed by members of the staff in writing
news articles and are rarely admitted to any class of matter.
The style of the _Daily News_ for many years has been to
speak of the Negro as a colored man and the Negroes as colored
people. When "Negro" is used it is rarely capitalized.
_Commissioner_: Is it objectionable?
_Mr. Lawson_: No, simply the style of the paper; typographic
styles of paper vary. Some papers capitalize more than others.
Some papers always spell the word "Bible" with a capital _B_. We
don't. It simply follows the style of the paper. Dialects are
very seldom employed in the news stories. They are not used to
ridicule any race or nationality. The _Daily News_ recognizes
the importance and delicacy of the race problems in Chicago in
its news columns as elsewhere in the paper. It aims to assist
constructive movements, eliminate sensationalism, and quiet
prejudice, while at the same time presenting truthfully such
facts as may be of interest and proper to the reading public
as a whole. I think, perhaps, I ought to emphasize that last
thought to this extent: the newspaper impulse is to print
the news, that is the controlling, dominating purpose of the
newspaper mind, to print the news. But circumstances will at
times suggest some particular expression of that impulse. Many
times, as Mr. Curley told you, we don't print the news, we
suppress it in the public interest.
_Chairman_: But that is a difficult self-control.
_Mr. Lawson_: Yes, I think so. To err is human, to print the
news is the natural impulse of newspaper people, but we do
recognize--I know all newspapers recognize--a very definite
responsibility that, in so far as it lies within a reasonable
discretion and a reasonable ability to act, they must consider
always the general public interest in any grave matter. I think
Mr. ---- struck a very important interpretative status when
he said he didn't like to have the designation of the race in
any respect used as an expression of ridicule. Of course, that
goes without saying. No newspaper that is wise, let alone a
newspaper that is fair, will deliberately inflict derision on
any class of its readers. It is a foolish thing to do aside
from anything else, and anything that would seem to suggest a
deliberate intent to bring the Negro race into derision, every
man in the room would resent and properly. But I think, as I
said before, that at times a purpose of derision is imagined
when there hasn't been any. I think that is true and I don't
think that it is surprising. If I were a member of a race that
was fighting its way all the time toward a square deal and a
fair show, I presume I'd be supersensitive about some things.
_Herald-Examiner._--The _Herald-Examiner's_ principal handling of
the race issue has been through the presentation of news items. The
term of designation employed is "Negro." On several occasions the
_Herald-Examiner_ has made commendable effort to show in its columns that
a friendly spirit exists between the two races. Most notable of these
efforts was the picture of whites and Negroes fraternizing in an effort
to restore order immediately after the "Abyssinian affair," in which
two white persons were killed and several Negroes, including a Negro
policeman, were injured. Some of its editorials on the Negro question
were headed:
NEGRO EDUCATION
Education the Best Solvent for the Negro Problem (Based on the Report of
the Chamber of Commerce of the United States)
DISLOYALTY AND LYNCHING
East St. Louis Massacres Have Not Been Properly Published. A Gulf
Separates Governor Lowden's Denunciation of the Riot and
the Treatment Accorded Slayers
THE BLACK MAN STOOD PAT
On the Loyalty of Negroes
NO "PATRIOTIC" MOBS
A Condemnation of Mob Violence in Illinois
On the other hand, some of the most emphasized misrepresentations of
Negroes have appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_, as, for example, the
story of the "Negro revolt,"[90] and various riot articles.
_Chicago Tribune._--The _Chicago Tribune_ stated its policy of
handling Negro news to be one of "fair dealing and recognition of the
difficulties." The managing editor stated that the _Tribune_ used dialect
in cases of kindly human-interest stories, refrained from the use of
terms like "darky," "coon," "Negroes," etc., and employed the term Negro,
capitalizing the _N_. The last practice was begun at the instance of Negro
leaders. During the threatened race riot the _Tribune_ sought the aid of
leading Negro newspapers in Chicago. There were no definite instructions
regarding the handling of Negro news matter. The difficulties in race
relations recognized by the editors of the _Tribune_ are to be found in
the following editorials:
WHITE AND BLACK IN CHICAGO
It is possible for whites and Negroes to live in peace in
Chicago. They have done so for years, in normal conditions
and in normal times. They have managed to live without much
prejudice. There has been good feeling. The Negro has had
political equality. There has been an attempt to give him a
fair representation in public affairs and not to resent his
presence there.
We admit frankly that if political equality had meant the
election of Negro mayors, judges, and a majority of Negroes in
the city council the whites would not have tolerated it. We do
not believe that the whites of Chicago would be any different
from the whites of the South in this respect....
We have been able to extend the essentials of citizenship to
the Negroes freely because the whites are dominant in numbers.
All the essentials are in the possession of the Negro. He is
not Jim-Crowed by law. A line is drawn by usage. The law in
fact forbids what actually is done. It is a futile law because
it encounters instinct.
Legally a Negro has right to service anywhere the public
generally is served. He does not get it. Wisely he does not ask
for it. There has been an illegal, non-legal, or extra-legal
adjustment founded upon common sense which has worked in the
past, and it will work in the future.
The fact is that so long as this city is dominated by whites,
whether because of their numbers without force or by their
force if they were in the minority, there will be limitations
placed upon the black people. They will be limitations which
will not work an injustice to the black people, who have a
right to their own development.
There is no objection to economic equality. There is a decided
objection to the exploitation of black labor. During the war
many Negroes were brought from the South. Thousands of them
went into the Stock Yards. The war shut off the supply of
common labor. The South supplied the want.
Thus the population of blacks doubled in war times. Concerns
which brought the Negro here to exploit him damaged the
community by throwing a race question upon it. Concerns which
needed the Negro and put him upon an equal basis with the
whites, without importing cheap labor to take the jobs of
whites, were legitimately supplying their need for labor.
The race issue in California grew out of the fact that the
Japanese were cutting under the price of white labor. That
will produce race troubles as quickly as anything.
Concerns may have been derelict in not considering the housing
problem. The imported Negroes could not live in the streets
or vacant lots. They had to get under roofs, and in getting
under roof they suddenly established new contact with white
neighborhoods.
In this change there was bound to be trouble unless precautions
were taken. In the present case there is no evidence of
precaution and some of provocation. It is possible for that
question to adjust itself. Such realty movements cannot take
place without friction, but the friction need not lead to
riots. The city is steadily shifting in residential character.
Some of the people affected by the shifts do not like it,
but in normal times the readjustment is not disturbing to the
community. A spread of factories may change the character of
a section. A spread of Negroes may do the same thing.
A writer once summed up the Negro question by saying, "The
North has the principles and the South has the Negroes." We are
coming to have the Negroes, and we want to keep the principles
so far as they are applicable.
Industrial radicalism, expressed in the I.W.W. propaganda among
the Negroes, will not help us to keep them. Thuggery will not
help us to keep them. A rebellion by the Negroes against facts
which exist and will persist will not help us to keep them, but
we are confident that the situation in Chicago is susceptible
of being handled in the fashion it always has been handled.
UNSETTLING THE RACE PROBLEM
... Regardless of what may be considered the justice of the
claims of the races, the fact undeniably is that white and
black will not mix in quantity. For this reason--the reason
reached by the jury--the remedy seems obvious: there must be
a plane upon which the races can live socially distinct but
industrially co-operative.
We are not disposed to think that the mass of the Negroes want
social equality in the full sense of the term. The _Tribune_
has had many intelligently composed letters from Negroes
disclaiming any such desire. We believe the Negroes want an
opportunity to develop their own society. If this is true
there ought not be widespread objection to social segregation,
directed by themselves and upon the theory of wholesome living
conditions.
But against what we think is an inherent disregard for exact
social equality there is appearing a very insidious propaganda
among the Negroes. Whether it is being circulated as a radical
irritant calculated to disturb political conditions or merely is
the parlor philosophy of eager sociological transcendentalists,
there is no means of determining.
The propaganda urging agitation for social equality may have
every support under the law and under what ought to be human
justice, but while fortified by what ought to be, it flies in
the face of what is....
The blacks form less than 10 per cent of the population of the
United States. They have less than one-tenth of a ghost of a
show if the relations between white and black become bitterly
hostile. The average black man and the average white man get
along fairly well. Unless something happens to arouse their
race prejudices and instincts they live by tolerance which may
not be a solution of race difficulties, but it is a method of
life and it is practical.
There is plenty of evidence just now that something is raising
the race question. There is evidence, it is said, to support the
story that agents had played on the imagination and ignorance
of Negroes in Arkansas inciting them to arise against the
whites and take their lands. Agitators have tried to excite
the blacks. Some misguided sentimentalists have tried to
organize whites and blacks for the compulsory recognition of
social equality--a propaganda which is even more vicious than
the red propaganda. There are numerous elements and factors
of disorder, and the consequences already have been bad....
The position of the Negro is not a preferred one in American
society. The Negro is at an economic disadvantage. He is
needed in the South and has been brought into the North to
meet labor emergencies, but he does not have an open field
of work. These disadvantages cannot be removed by discussing
them. They exist in race instincts and, along with the other
disadvantages which the Negro meets, arise from causes not at
the control of the reasoning faculties.
No sensible person imagines that he knows what to do about the
race problem because he does not know a method of eradicating
race instincts, and he would not want to eradicate them if
he knew how. A person may know what will surely happen if the
race instincts become inflamed and not have the slightest idea
how to prevent contact from flaming into violent action.
We know that if it comes to violence the blacks will get the
worst of it. We know that the situation as it exists now has
many possibilities of danger. Both North and South have had
enough violence. Both may have more. Communities may not be
able to stop agitation or effectively to counteract it, but they
can see that the processes of law are applied with severity.
Law strong enough to make the races live in peace will allow
them to find their own ways of living in the same communities.
B. HANDLING OF NEGRO NEWS
_Chicago Evening Post._--The _Post_ is an afternoon paper. It does not
carry a large amount of news on racial matters. The policy of this paper
was thus expressed by the managing editor, Mr. Julian Mason:
We have always checked information very carefully because we
have had a very close Negro sympathy for years and because
we have had editorial writers who have had special contacts.
For instance, during the race riots we were constantly in
communication with a young Negro, Mr. Jackson, a Y.M.C.A. man,
a fine man. We checked up with him every single day. We used
to call up Mr. Barnett and some of the others.
We use the word "Negro" and the Negro dialect in what you call
feature stories. I don't know why we should deprive American
life of that flavor. We also use the word "darky" once in a
while in a humorous sense, but not in news items.
_The Associated Press._--Mr. Edgar T. Cutter, district manager, Western
District, the Associated Press, said in his testimony before the
Commission:
The Associated Press is a non-money-making, non-sectarian,
non-political organization. It is made up of over 1,260 daily
papers. It is a mutual organization, and it gets its news by
an exchange among the members. Aside from that, in big cities
like Chicago we have our own bureaus which collect news in
certain events. In Chicago the Associated Press gets its news
from the five daily papers that are members, and from the city
news bureau. This city news bureau, by the way, is kept up
by the Chicago papers and therefore is supervised by them and
carries the same class of news. Now on a big story such as the
race riots, the Associated Press got its news from all these
sources, and it also sent a staff man who was experienced in
general newspaper work to the South to investigate for himself
so we should get the absolute facts. The Associated Press
makes a practice of covering only news of general interest,
and it has made its reputation on the covering of facts. It
never handles editorials, nor does it ever make a comment on
any news. If a piece of news is not of general interest, at
least throughout the state, it doesn't attempt to handle it. It
confines itself to news that is of general interest throughout
the country, and therefore it covers these matters very briefly.
_Question_: Do you personally in your representative capacity
handle any of the news from the southern states?
_Mr. Cutter_: Only as it passes through here. Each district
passes on its own news, but we verify it if it ever appears
to be incorrect. But any item that reflects upon any person
or upon any organization, even if we get it from our own
newspapers, is first checked up to its source, if that is at
all possible, and then if there is a matter of controversy and
only one side has been stated, we always try to get a statement
from the other side, from some head official. In case of Negro
news, we have many times had as our representatives leading
Negroes. Negro organizations have come into our office and we
have solicited news from them....
In cases of lynchings and such things from the South, the
Associated Press often has used twenty-five or fifty words and
just let it pass with the mere fact. Where we have covered
crime in full, big cases, very often it has been upon the
demand of the members of the organizations.
News concerning Negroes is handled just the same as any news
of any nationality. We use the words, "Negro" and "colored."
And it is always the desire of the Associated Press and the
attempt of the Associated Press not only not to injure any
person but to show the proper respect to all religions, races,
and all classes of society. It makes no difference whether
we would capitalize the word "Negro" or not. Our copy goes to
the newspaper and, as Mr. Lawson says, they follow their own
ideas in that....
In all of our services we attempt to suppress news that we
think might stir up race relations involving Japanese, Mexicans,
Negroes, or any others, and we follow the lead of newspapers.
_Question_: What is the extent to which news from these members
of the Associated Press is verified when it comes from regions
or localities where there may be prejudice?
_Mr. Cutter_: Wherever there is any question of the news or
wherever there are two sides, as in the labor question, we send
a staff man out from headquarters who makes his reputation
and that of the Associated Press upon covering both sides of
the story equally. He knows very readily that if he doesn't
cover that with thorough fairness, he is going to hear from
it later from one side or the other.
_Chicago American._--Mr. William H. Curley, managing editor of the
_Chicago American_, gave the following information:
Of course as to accuracy, we check that up the same as we do
any item. We find out where the item came from; if it is a
police item we find out who is responsible for it and send
reporters immediately to cover it and rely upon them for
accuracy regarding the report.
_Question_: Let me ask whether you do that with the same care
and precision that you do in the case of a white man that is
involved.
_Mr. Curley_: Absolutely.
_Question_: That is no insinuation against the newspapers,
but, for instance, it is said that in the courts, if a man is
a colored man he doesn't have the same thoughtful care that
a man has if he is a white man.
_Mr. Curley_: A good many items, of course, come from the City
Press that supplies all the newspapers. If it is a matter that
is trivial, of course a newspaper won't send a special reporter
but relies upon the City Press for accuracy. In a crime story
we eliminate the word "Negro" unless there is some reason for
it. We don't use any of the terms, "darky," "nigger," "coon,"
"shine," "wench," or "negress."
_Question_: Do you get news unsolicited regarding Negroes any
more than other persons?
_Mr. Curley_: We don't take any news that comes in over the
telephone without checking it.
_Question_: Regarding items coming from the South, is there
any particular care or checking used to see whether they are
true stories, trustworthy or not?
_Mr. Curley_: You have to take that as it comes because that
is your news service. In other words, they are supposed to
use their care down there the same as we do here. We have to
rely on that.
_Chicago Daily News._--
_Mr. Lawson_: Sources of information are the same as in the case
of other news, and in addition matter originally in Negroes' own
publications, bulletins of welfare organizations, etc. Generally
speaking, it may be said that more news on this subject comes
from outside sources such as telephone tips and correspondence
than from members of the staff. Perhaps 10 per cent comes from
the Associated Press. This is an arbitrary estimate. The same
methods are used to determine the accuracy of news concerning
the Negroes that are used under other circumstances. The _Daily
News_ does not publish any news except after determining its
accuracy to the best of its ability. No special reporter may
be said to be assigned to news of Negroes, but owing to his
special study of the conditions in Chicago, however, Carl
Sandburg is on occasion called into consultation or assigned
a topic for investigation. I may say that years ago the Negro
poet Dunbar was a reporter on the _News_.
Negro news is received from the Associated Press in the same
manner as other news. It is not often re-written, and then
only when the subject-matter is local to Chicago. Headlines
are written to conform to the text of the article. The _Daily
News_ is in touch with very reliable and well-informed Negroes
in whom, because of long experience, it has confidence. It
obtains information from them and seeks their viewpoint on
serious matters. We regard items describing constructive work
by the Negroes or items indicating their advancement as better
news than articles indicating degradation or criminality on
their part. The _Daily News_ endeavors to appeal to all readers
alike.
_Chicago Tribune._--The following is taken from the replies in the
questionnaire returned by Mr. Joseph M. Patterson, editor of the _Chicago
Tribune_:
The sources of Negro news are the same as sources of other
news. Some comes from the staff; some from the City News
Bureau. Some of the local news concerning Negroes comes from
reporters. No news of any consequence is received by telephone
or correspondence. The Associated Press treats it on the same
basis as other news. To insure accuracy the usual methods of
inquiry are employed. However, most of this news comes from
responsible news bureaus. Articles are re-written but only
for condensation. During the threatened race riot the aid of
leading Negro newspapers was sought to check information on
serious matters. Each item is judged on its merits.
4. THE NEGRO PRESS
Among the considerations which have been urged by Negroes as making
necessary the establishment of the Negro press are:
1. The indifference of white newspapers to the Negro group, their emphasis
on the unfortunately spectacular, and the consequent loss of items of
interest among Negroes throughout the country.
2. The importance of developing the morale of the Negro group, creating
a solidarity of interest and purpose for measures of defense, correcting
the impressions created by general opinion, and centering the attention
of Negroes upon themselves and their destiny. There has never been
sufficient capital for the adequate development of the Negro press. The
purpose, however, has been served of collecting items of interest from
all sections of the country, although they lack the facilities of so
efficient an agency as the Associated Press.
For a time practically all of the northern Negro newspapers fell under
the condemnation of the United States Attorney-General's office.[91]
They were accused of radicalism and incitation to violence. Frequent
criticisms of the Negro press declare it dangerous to the interests of
cordial race relations. Ex-President Taft in the _Philadelphia Ledger_
said: "The editors of the colored press should be reasoned with to cease
publishing articles, however true, having inciting effect."
Commenting on criticisms of this kind, Isaac Fisher, editor of the _Fisk
University News_, said:
Since the Washington and Chicago riots, the colored newspapers
have been bitterly arraigned in some quarters for being
responsible for race hatred. But the singular part of the
indictment is that these papers are not accused of "falsifying"
the record, but of stating the grounds of the Negro's
resentment; and there is growing up a school of thought which
argues that the colored papers should refrain from publishing as
news any facts, even though true, which serve to increase the
bitterness of the colored people against the white people. The
comments made by those who charge the Negro press with being
the cause of race antagonism are unanimous in interpreting as
"incendiary" all statements of facts whose bare recital makes
the Negro discontented with present conditions.
It should also be noted that the charge of inciting to race
hatred is laid against the Negro press specifically for the
period which has followed the end of the late war; whereas the
charge of inciting white people to wrath against the Negro is
an old one which has been repeated again and again during the
past thirty years.
But, while the Negro press is not as old as the white press
and cannot possibly be charged with having "been on the job"
quite so long, it is true, nevertheless, that some of its
members have cast all prudence to the winds since the signing
of the armistice, and have entered a mad race with the most
"yellow" of yellow white journals in vitriolic race attacks,
in this case upon all white people, in the attempt to meet
the "yellow" white press more than half way.
Whatever the relative degree of culpability, "yellow" journalism
is as reprehensible when supported by a part of the Negro press
as it is when upheld by a part of the white press. The Negro
might just as well learn now the lesson which the white man
must learn if he would save the civilization which he has been
laboring so long to perfect, i.e., that one's color and race
do not excuse wrongdoing. If it is wrong for a white newspaper
to make white people hate colored people, how can it be right
for a Negro newspaper to make colored people hate white people?
A. CLASSIFICATION OF ARTICLES
The news items in Negro papers show a bias in reporting the opposite of
that of many white papers. They emphasize the Negro's view, frequently
to the point of distorting fact. If anything, they might be said to
provide a compensatory interpretation of the news. The three Negro
newspapers selected for study mentioned and briefly characterized in
the foregoing pages will show a classification of news items appearing
during a forty-week period.
In addition to general news items concerning Negroes, the _Defender_
gave one page to sporting news, one page to theatrical news, two pages
to personal news items sent in by correspondents in other cities, and
one page to local personal items. On its editorial page two and one-half
columns each week were devoted to health articles by Dr. Wilberforce
Williams.
The _Whip_ gave one page to sports, one to theatrical news and
organization articles, one to out-of-town personal news items and one
to local personal items. Its editorial page devoted one column to "Legal
Hints to Women," one-half column to "Health Hints," one column to "Legal
Catechism," and two columns to editorials from other papers.
The _Searchlight_ gave one page to theatrical, local personal news, and
church notes. The editorial page contained two half-columns each week
by "The Man about Town."
TABLE XXXIII
===============================================================
|"DEFENDER"| "WHIP" |"SEARCHLIGHT"
SUBJECTS +----------+----------+-------------
| Local Articles
---------------------------+----------+----------+-------------
Crime | 53 | 46 | 42
Racial clashes | 6 | -- | 1
Education | 2 | 9 | 11
Business | 4 | 26 | 14
General news not involving | | |
race issues | 5 | 66 | 65
Vice | 14 | 8 | 10
Bombing | 5 | 10 | 10
Politics | 26 | 60 | 61
Social work | 6 | 9 | 17
Public meetings | 2 | 16 | 13
Religion | 7 | 18 | 34
Science | 2 | 5 | 4
Negro progress | 2 | -- | 17
Negro soldiers | -- | 6 | --
Courts | 4 | 24 | 2
Discrimination | 3 | 9 | 1
Race contacts | -- | -- | --
Lynchings | -- | -- | --
Industrial relations | 8 | 10 | 1
Philanthropy | -- | 2 | --
Personal | 9 | -- | 34
Jim Crow | 1 | 1 | 3
General local welfare | 2 | 11 | 3
Art | -- | 3 | 1
General race relations | -- | 22 | 1
+----------+----------+-------------
| Local Space
+----------+----------+-------------
Crime | 586 | 497 | 669
Racial clashes | 42 | 156 | 16
Education | 21 | 52 | 46
Discrimination | 23 | 62 | 101
Business | 58 | 199 | 187
General news not involving | | |
race issues | 23 | 555 | 441
Vice | 112 | 89 | 201
Bombing | 50 | 121 | 98
Politics | 512 | 741 | 893
Social work | 24 | 41 | 110
Public meetings | 84 | 130 | 66
Religion | 59 | 238 | 257
Science | 59 | 30 | 46
Negro soldiers | -- | 57 | 48
Courts | 19 | 130 | 9
Race contacts | -- | 116 | --
Industrial relations | 72 | 400 | 13
Philanthropy | -- | -- | --
Personal | 113 | 45 | 176
Jim Crow | 6 | 8 | 98
Art | -- | 12 | 2
General local welfare | 35 | 78 | 13
General race relations | -- | 273 | 156
South | 7 | 105 | 152
Africa | 4 | -- | --
Migration | -- | -- | --
+----------+----------+-------------
| Out-of-Town Articles
---------------------------+----------+----------+-------------
Crime | 282 | 152 | 32
Racial clashes | 19 | 18 | 4
Education | 54 | 42 | 74
Business | 31 | 10 | 14
General news not involving | | |
race issues | 81 | 104 | 138
Vice | 31 | 3 | --
Bombing | -- | -- | 2
Politics | 27 | 46 | 85
Social work | 12 | 6 | 42
Public meetings | 14 | 12 | 8
Religion | 36 | 23 | --
Science | -- | 4 | --
Negro progress | 28 | -- | 40
Negro soldiers | 11 | 11 | 33
Courts | 15 | 24 | 15
Discrimination | 30 | 21 | 10
Race contacts | 9 | 3 | 3
Lynchings | 32 | 54 | 32
Industrial relations | 8 | 16 | 22
Philanthropy | 11 | 4 | 2
Personal | 105 | 9 | 5
Jim Crow | 6 | 6 | 2
Art | 1 | 7 | 5
General race relations | 15 | 60 | 44
South | 38 | 50 | 5
Africa | 1 | 12 | 4
Migration | 2 | 3 | 5
+----------+----------+-------------
| Out-of-Town Space
+----------+----------+-------------
Crime | 1,082 | 833 | 191
Racial clashes | 136 | 148 | 43
Education | 174 | 223 | 421
Business | 112 | 40 | 73
General news not involving | | |
race issues | 216 | 434 | 538
Vice | 154 | 7 | --
Bombing | -- | -- | 5
Politics | 132 | 233 | 365
Social work | 40 | 41 | 164
Public meetings | 103 | 76 | 35
Negro progress | 82 | 244 | 198
Soldiers | 50 | 46 | 153
Courts | 120 | 108 | 66
Discrimination | 145 | 13 | 49
Race contacts | 44 | 32 | 13
Lynchings | 239 | 407 | 215
Industrial relations | 29 | 67 | 119
Philanthropy | 32 | 21 | 11
Personal | 213 | 48 | 20
Jim Crow | 36 | 21 | 13
Art | 2 | 22 | 19
General race relations | 124 | 382 | 308
South | 202 | 42 | 69
Africa | 21 | 55 | 18
Migration | 6 | 8 | 26
---------------------------+----------+----------+------------
NOTE.--A much smaller period for study for Negro papers is necessary
since practically all items appearing contain some reference to race.
TABLE XXXIV
===========================+=============+=============+==============
| "DEFENDER" | "WHIP" |"SEARCHLIGHT"
SUBJECTS +-------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------
|Article|Space|Article|Space|Article|Space
---------------------------+-------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------
General race relations | 12 | 137 | 39 | 525 | 53 | 868
Propaganda | 3 | 60 | 3 | 65 | 1 | 6
Constructive suggestions | 11 | 168 | 15 | 306 | 5 | 92
Criticism of leaders | 3 | 30 | 10 | 185 | 5 | 31
Criticisms of white | | | | | |
persons or organizations | 6 | 101 | 6 | 83 | 4 | 59
Political propaganda | 30 | 398 | 10 | 154 | 17 | 251
Discrimination | 7 | 65 | -- | -- | 5 | 36
Industry | 5 | 39 | 4 | 65 | 6 | 39
Education | -- | -- | 3 | 35 | 5 | 53
South | 5 | 68 | 5 | 96 | 6 | 52
Negro progress | 5 | 57 | 9 | 265 | 14 | 111
General news, etc. | 3 | 42 | 12 | 174 | 9 | 83
Housing | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 6
Miscellaneous | 3 | 39 | -- | -- | -- | --
Provoked by incidents | | | | | |
inimicable to Negroes | 1 | 9 | 1 | 15 | -- | --
---------------------------+-------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------
_Crime publicity._--Sensational news was featured in each of the papers,
especially cases in which whites and Negroes were involved. The intention
appeared to be to present the Negro's side of the story. A measurement
of news interest on different types of crime articles is possible in
Table XXXV with space in inches.
TABLE XXXV
LOCAL AND OUT-OF-TOWN CRIMES COMBINED
=============+==============+==============+==============+===============
| CRIMES | CRIMES | CRIMES | CRIMES
| INVOLVING | INVOLVING | INVOLVING | INVOLVING
| ONLY NEGROES | NEGRO V. | WHITES V. | ONLY WHITES
NEGRO | | WHITE | NEGROES |
NEWSPAPERS +--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+------
| No. of |Space| No. of |Space| No. of |Space| No. of |Space
|Articles| |Articles| |Articles| |Articles|
-------------+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+------
_Defender_ | 233 |1,032| 90 | 467| 55 | 260| 4 | 31
_Whip_ | 75 | 495| 70 | 440| 44 | 350| 8 | 44
_Searchlight_| 26 | 121| 37 | 440| 11 | 67| 1 | 2
-------------+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+------
The method of presentation of articles revealed the strongest
characteristic of Negro journalism. In this connection a random selection
of headlines is interesting:
CRIMES INVOLVING WHITE ASSAILANTS AND NEGRO VICTIMS
"Free White Woman Who Killed Attorney"
"Threatens Mother and Babes with Axe"
"Bowman Milk Driver Brutally Assaults Woman"
"Crime of Postmaster Starts Serious Trouble"
"Commits Suicide to Escape Mob"
"Baby Girl Assaulted by White Farm Hand"
"Maid Is Robbed by White 'Iceman'"
"Stepped on Man's Foot in Street Car; Shot"
"Wouldn't Say 'Mister'; Is Beaten to Death"
"Kills White Man for Girl's Honor"
"Convict White Man on Rape Charge"
"Protects Wife's Honor; Slain by Land-Owner"
"White Tenants Kick on Living in Same Building with Owner"
"White Woman Confesses Lies on Colored Men"
"Kills Negro Minister for Stepping on His Foot"
"White Confectioner Arrested for Refusing to Serve Trotter"
"To Pay $750 for Attack on Negro Woman"
"White Girl Robs Father's Bank; Elopes with Negro Taken in Rooming
House; Half of Stolen Wealth Recovered"
"Two Boys Shot; Crowd Blames White Man"
CRIMES INVOLVING NEGRO ASSAILANTS AND WHITE VICTIMS
"Laundryman Stabbed in Controversy over Price"
"Boy Pupil Rebels at Scolding; Shoots Teacher"
"Slayer Captured, Tried, Hanged, in 24 Hours"
"Quarrel over Price of Cotton; Farmer Is Shot"
"Hold Three for Murder of White Infantryman"
"Haunted by Man's Face He Killed; Surrenders"
CRIMES INVOLVING ONLY NEGROES
"Woman Who Took a Life to Die Herself"
"Mother Kills Self and Babe with Gas"
"Wife Slayer Must Serve 20-Year Term"
"Raids on Homes Net Pullman Goods"
"Woman Dynamites Jail to Free Her Lover"
"Bullet Strikes Brass Chain, Man's Life Saved"
"Girl to Die on Gallows; Slew Rival"
"Cost Girl Her Life to Stop Love Affair"
Definite differences of news value were noted, between articles appearing
in Negro papers and those in white papers on the same topics. The items,
for the most part, carried a specific appeal. Where the item was of
general interest and appeared in both white and Negro papers, the facts
usually corresponded.
The difference again lies in emphasis and prominence. Headlines for the
same news, as shown in white and Negro papers, follow:
WHITE NEWSPAPERS NEGRO NEWSPAPERS
"Jim Crow Law Is Upheld by "Highest Court Upholds Jim Crow Law.
U.S. High Court" Separate Cars for White and Colored
[_Chicago Tribune_, People Declared Legal in Kentucky"
April 20, 1920] [_Chicago Searchlight_,
April 24, 1920]
"Miscegnation is O.K.'d in New "Morris Gets Civil Rights into
Constitution. Negroes Given Constitution. Victory for Race Won
All the Rights of Whites" at Springfield"
[_Chicago Tribune_, [_Chicago Whip_,
Nov. 6, 1920] July 10, 1920]
"Phillips High School for "Jim-Crow School Scheme Exposes
Colored Pupils, Principal Attempt to Inaugurate Separate
Suggests" Schools in Chicago--Discovered
[_Chicago Tribune_, and Opposed"
March 8, 1920] [_Chicago Searchlight_,
July 31, 1920]
"Accuse Perrine of Color Line
Ruling. Principal of Wendell
Phillips Openly Attacked by
Public Who Saw Children Jim
Crowed at Commencement; Ask His
Removal; Ministers Feared as
Betrayers"
[_Chicago Defender_,
July 3, 1920]
_Group control._--Although the Negro population does not rely upon the
Negro press for authentic general news it does rely upon it for news
concerning Negroes. The _Chicago Whip_ devotes two columns of the paper
to a section called "Under the Lash of the Whip," the "You Know 'Em,
Editor," and "Nosey Knows." Persons who become offensive to the principles
supported by the _Whip_ are put "Under the Lash." "Nosey Knows" and the
"You Know 'Em, Editor" attempt to hold individual conduct of Negroes to
conventional standards by the threat of semi-publicity, for example:
You know those new "loop hounds." I know them because they go
to the loop for the purpose of visiting--no object of buying
anything. Well, tell them it's alright to go to the loop, but
they don't have to attract everybody's attention for blocks
around with their loud talk, using their ignorant, non-sensical
expressions. And should they get hungry while down there and
feel like having lunch, don't stand outside the door of a
restaurant with a surprised look on their faces--just tell
them to walk right in, in an orderly and sensible manner and
order what they want. They don't have to slip in like thieves.
You know the restaurants where those household insects known
as flies are very prevalent. I know you know them, because
they are all along State Street, Thirty-first and Thirty-fifth.
Well, if you don't mind, kindly tell some of those proprietors
that there is a way of ridding their places of such nuisances.
You probably don't know that lady who resides in a prominent
building in the vicinity of Thirty-first Street and Indiana
Avenue, and who tried to enveigle a young girl on the street
car to her flat by telling her that she could meet some high
class doctors and lawyers there. Well, you may not know her now,
but if you watch the columns of the _Whip_ you will know her
because she is gradually working her way to the penitentiary
by the route of the seduction law. Everybody will know her then.
The _Searchlight_ carries a column by "The Man about Town" which is
similar in character. Two examples of its criticism of Negro conduct were:
The gang that hangs around the "pillars of knowledge" in the
county building every day at noon is becoming so obnoxious
that they are attracting the attention of everybody who enters
the building.
Politicians from every section of the city crowd there and
shoot off their "hot air" in a loud tone of voice. They seem
to think that the future of the country depends on what they
say or do.
They have become so bold in their actions they have begun to
stop some of our race women and engage them in conversation
around that historic spot.
Now boys, cut out that "rough stuff" and take a walk around
the block at noon and let the fresh air blow on your beautiful
carcass; if you don't the sheriff will ask you to do so, or
he may take some of you fellows to the North Side. Don't make
yourself a nuisance around the city hall and county building.
Hear me, boys.
Another thing that is very disgusting is the arrogance of the
girl waitresses in some of these race restaurants. Instead of
striving to please the patrons they act as though they were
doing you a personal favor to serve you, and when you are
through with your meal you must thank them for so doing and
leave a piece of money at the cash stand for them. If you don't
do that the very next time you go into that restaurant the
waiter will not want to wait on you. The poor proprietor of
the place, if he or she is one of the "brothers" or "sisters,"
is almost helpless in the matter because if he opens his mouth
to one of these so-called waitresses about the mistreatment
of their guests he is minus a waiter. Go down in the loop and
see how the other folks attend to business and treat patrons.
Awake, folks, from your slumber; you are fast asleep. Do you
hear me?
A fight on vice in the Second Ward was begun by the _Searchlight_ and
finally given strong emphasis by the local daily papers.
B. NEGRO NEWSPAPER POLICY
Although Negroes for their general news depend upon the white press,
with its superior facilities, they look to the Negro press for full and
specific news covering the activities of Negroes. The editorial columns,
as well as the arrangement of news items and writing of headlines, are
aimed at building up the morale of the Negro group. Frequently an attempt
is made to get these papers into the hands of whites to acquaint them
with the Negro's point of view.
A conference was held by the Commission with several Negro newspaper men.
The Negro press was represented by R. S. Abbott, editor and publisher of
the _Chicago Defender_; Nahum D. Brascher, editor-in-chief, and Claude
Barnett, director of the Associated Negro Press; Willis N. Huggins,
editor of the _Upreach Magazine_; and R. E. Parker, editor of the _Chicago
Advocate_.
Mr. Brascher, of the Associated Negro Press, said:
The colored newspapers have recently gotten up to the point
where most of us are proud to have them seen in the hands of our
white friends and it is only through them that they can really
get our viewpoint. We cannot hope to have the daily newspapers
give our viewpoint and the aspirations and struggles that we
are making, and some of the things that we are suffering. I
am very much interested in having the editorial feeling of
the newspaper get to the white people. Sometimes they may
be termed as radical. I found in recent months that some of
the weekly papers published in the South are saying things
editorially that I would question about saying even here in
Chicago, and, as we say in common parlance, getting away with
it. I have in mind now one particular instance. In Houston,
Texas, week before last, the entire circulation list of the
_Houston Informer_ was stolen out of its office. The theft
was attributed to the new organization of the Ku Klux Klan.
The daily papers of Houston came out condemning that move, and
also condemning the idea of the Ku Klux Klan, and this young
man has an editorial in last week's issue that is one of the
strongest I have ever seen on the matter, backed probably by
some of the strong things that have been said in the daily
papers.
Now if we could have people of Chicago know just how the
sentiment is changing in the South in favor of a square deal and
mutual toleration, we could soon get to a point where there'd
be no fear on either side of working out our salvation, you
might say, along co-operative lines.
Another instance concerned the _Plain Dealer_ in Birmingham,
Ala. The Ku Klux Klan paraded the streets of that city about
three weeks ago and in an editorial this paper came out and
stated that if that was done to frighten the colored people,
they had to do something different, because whenever they
began to terrorize and came down into the neighborhood where
colored people lived somebody there would be ready to meet
them. That is a pretty strong statement for Birmingham, and
they got away with it.
The _Chicago Defender_ gives the greatest amount of space to criminal news
of a sensational type in the field of racial happenings. It is a great
favorite in the South with Negroes because it publishes news condemning
the practices of the South in terms forbidden to southern Negro journals.
Of a circulation of 185,000, two-thirds of which is outside of Chicago,
it was largely responsible for stimulating the migration to the North.
The term "Negro" is used occasionally in the _Defender_. Its policy is
to use the term "race" man, where it is necessary to distinguish Negro
from other groups. Adopting the opposite policy from the white papers,
it places "white" after persons not Negroes to mark the distinction.
Concerning this, Mr. R. S. Abbott, editor of the _Defender_, said:
We use that as a bridge, as you might say, which we intend to
blow up pretty soon. We are leading the people away from the
word "Negro," especially in our papers. And in cases where
white men are well known in the country we never even put
"white" after their names. We never put "colored" after a
colored man's name in this city.
The _Defender's_ editorials are as a rule carefully written, balanced,
and critical, at times in contrast with the popular appeal of the news
articles. The _Whip's_ editorials usually are on some aspect of the
general race problem in the United States. They are characterized by
strong pronouncements of the views of Negroes and violent criticism of
practices alleged to be inimicable to Negroes. An editorial from each
of the papers will indicate the trends of interests. The first is from
the _Defender_:
JUST BETWEEN OURSELVES
Character is what we are; reputation is what other people think
we are. We get only the respect we demand; no more, no less.
One of the greatest barriers to our progress is the individual
who attempts to curry the favor of the whites by whom he is
employed by openly humiliating and insulting others of his
same flesh and blood. Because sections of this country reek
with color prejudice, must we lend a helping hand to those
who foster segregation, discrimination and "Jim Crowism" in
general? And yet that is just what many are doing.
In the railroad service as waiters and porters we have a
monopoly, and those whose runs require them to cross the Mason
and Dixon line are often confronted with situations that require
good common sense in handling. In many states the law requires
the blacks and the whites to be separated on transportation
lines, dining-rooms, places of amusement, etc. There is no
question as to whether these laws are just or unjust. They
are at least temporary laws and must be obeyed. But there is
something mentally wrong with the porter or the waiter who
lends himself to such measures, whether under orders from his
superiors or not.
Admitting that to disobey such orders means the loss of a
job, there are other jobs that pay a better wage where a
man does not have to sacrifice his principles to hold. What
other group of people in the world have those that could be
induced at any price to place their heel on the neck of even
the humblest member of their race? Are we less human, less
interested in the welfare of our race than they? Are we still
puppets, still chattels, still ignorant of the fact that as
we respect ourselves, so others will respect us? This matter
is put squarely up to you, Mr. Porter; to you, Mr. Waiter.
Will you play the part of a man and refuse to humiliate your
people? Will you cease playing the part of a spy? Will you
singly and collectively tender your resignation to employers
who require you to "Jim Crow" one of your own? If you will do
these things there is only one thing that can happen--a speedy
repeal of the offensive legislation.
Recently a young woman who was able to "pass" entered the
Washington (D.C.) railroad station café and was given a seat
at a table with several other ladies. Soon there entered
two refined, well-dressed, unmistakably colored, young women
who took seats at an unoccupied table. Immediately a colored
waiter rushed over to them and after a few minutes of whispered
conversation the embarrassed patrons followed the waiter to
a far corner of the café, where semi-screened off they were
permitted to dine. So enraged was the first young woman that
she boldly went to the desk where stood the white higher-ups
and several waiters, and gave them a curtain lecture they
doubtless will not soon forget, not failing to tell them her
own nationality. This incident happened in Washington, the
seat of our government, where the doctrine of democracy is
preached but not practiced.
Things worth having are worth fighting for. We must make
sacrifices. If it is the policy of certain business places
to discriminate let us not be a party to the discrimination.
Let it be firmly fixed in the mind that we are a vital part
of this nation's life, that we are a necessary "evil," that
our places cannot and will not be filled with whites, no
matter how drastic is our stand, providing we have right on
our side, which we undoubtedly have in this instance. This
heart to heart talk applies to those engaged in other lines of
endeavor as well as it does to those who follow railroading.
Many who run barber shops, for instance, display the sign,
"For whites only." If we did not realize that these evils are
the direct result of ignorance and lack of racial pride, it
would indeed be discouraging. But, truly, we are still a child
race. We must not be flattered by the tales of our marvelous
advance during the last fifty years into dropping our oars
and resting on our laurels, for we have barely started up the
hill called success. When we have reached the first milestone
on our journey--racial solidarity--the rest of the way will
be comparatively easy. Success has come to the Jew and to the
Japanese because they are clannish. Black isn't a bad shade;
let's make it popular in complexions as well as in clothes.
This is from the _Whip_:
WHO'S AFRAID?
If the white races of the world are so sure of their inborn
and inherent supremacy, if they are so sure that they are the
salt of the earth and the born rulers of human kind, it appears
to us as strange indeed that they should fear that their glory
will be usurped, their power depreciated, and their world-wide
domination seriously challenged.
As a general rule, the giant does not fear the pigmy, neither
does man, the acme of civilization, fear that his civilization
will be eclipsed by a new order of apes. Should the tribes
and clans of the highest developed gorillas seek to overrun
the accomplishments of humanity, no one would say, "Beware of
monkey domination." Man, according to his own concepts, is only
a little lower than the angels and the monkey just a little
lower than himself. The white races claim that their darker
brothers are lower in the graduated scale of their own making
than themselves, yet they cry out, "Beware of the Yellow Peril
and behold the Black Plague."
If the white races possess the keys to knowledge and the
passwords to progress as well as the elixirs of strength,
why should they fear danger of "Black domination" and "Yellow
dictation"? The white man, even through the maze of his own
conceit and out of the trance of his self-hypnotism, sees that
"he and his heirs" shall not forever inherit the face of the
earth.
The black and yellow races are breaking the white man's monopoly
of organized brain and wealth. The white man sees this and in
his own bigotry knows that these people are not his inferiors
in latent abilities. He knows that the same fire of genius
burns in the breasts of the black and yellow races as did in
the dark and mediaeval ages. He knows that black and yellow
men can unravel the mysteries of nature and the intricacies of
science. He knows that creative and constructive ability has
been beaten down by his might but yet it lives. The white races
know that their present achievements are small in comparison
with those which will be accomplished. It is feared that in the
future, not in the mediate or immediate, but not far distant
nevertheless, that the sleeping giant will awaken, shake off
the listlessness of a thousand years and put into action again
the powerful dynamo of his great reign and shake the world
again.
We do not object to the cry of "Beware of the Yellow Peril
and behold the Black Plague." It is the involuntary shriek of
danger which is a part of man's reaction. White people know
that they are not superior to the dark races. They know that
the raillery about dark people being innately and inherently
inferior is nothing more than the outcropping of race prejudice,
color hatred and ignoble fear. They fear that should they lose
the power of might and brute force, and equal opportunities
are gained by the dark people, that they will be dethroned
and surpassed. For this reason they warn of the unfitness and
undesirability of their darker brothers. They ruthlessly declare
that Japanese, East Indians and Negroes are not their equals
and justify all of their tyranny upon this foolish subterfuge.
We are tired of subterfuge and evasiveness. If the white man
wishes to maintain his power at the expense of the dark people
of the world, let him cease his prattlings about charity, human
kindness and benevolence. Let him admit that he is afraid of
the rising tide of color and fear shakes his entire system.
Let the world know that the cry of inferiority and unfitness
is not conscientious and that apprehension clouds the brow of
white humanity.
An editorial in the _Searchlight_ read:
CLEANING UP THE "BLACK BELT"
"Death Corner" has a local reputation which bespeaks an
abominable state of affairs. Nice respectable persons dare not
visit it unless heavily escorted. The "East Side" in New York
provokes a shiver by the very sound of the name. The "Black
Belt" carries the same dark background of hovering evil. One
is expected to regard black belts as isolated plague-spots
full of lurking pitfalls for unsuspecting innocents. It is
spoken of as "that Black Belt down there." Little girls go
there and go wrong and you never hear of them again. When
trouble is threatened in the city the police force is dumped
into it with clubs and pistols and rifles, patrol wagons,
flivvers and ambulances. For you can never tell what is likely
to break out in a place with so many mysterious corners and
vicious characters. When the morals of the city come under
scrutiny the crusaders send up a howl of helplessness for the
rampant vices in that "Black Belt down there." The entire city
believes it to be a bad place. The neglect of it is a standing
disgrace to the city, and yet the only means of cleaning it up
and bringing it up to the standard of the community as a whole
discovered so far is by keeping the handful of white persons
out of it. The protests against the mixed cafés, by far the
loudest and most severe, seem to represent the sole spirit
and motive of the effort. No attention is paid to the iron
circle tightening around this section and making it practically
impossible for Negroes to move out. No attention is paid to
the rundown schools in the district. No one is interested in
providing recreation facilities for the thousands of colored
children growing up in the streets. No one of these reformers
and critics has suggested that a branch of the public library
be made convenient. The Juvenile Protective Association, an
association whose purpose is to prevent criminality, walks
around the district and speaks about it as disparagingly as
the rest. The old Committee of Fifteen had no representative
there to detect the out-cropping of vicious places. It had been
thus for the eight years of its existence. And yet epithets
are hurled at the district, and it is called bad names and
the city turns up its nose and goes on.
C. NEGRO NEWS SOURCES
Negro newspapers are published weekly because they cannot compete with
the daily papers in providing any part of the public with news from day
to day.
For out-of-town news, the news letters of correspondents and accounts of
incidents by specially designated representatives make up a large portion
of the reports. All the papers have the service of a clipping bureau.
Items in local papers are noted and, when practicable, the newspapers
telegraph to some responsible person in town to send a full account of the
incident. Traveling men from Chicago and friends of the paper scattered
throughout the country also contribute to the news supply. News letters
containing personal items are still continued in the _Defender_ and are
said to be responsible for the first extension of its circulation. The
_Defender_ and the _Whip_ have small staffs of reporters to cover local
news. The objects of the Associated Negro Press were thus outlined by
Mr. Barnett, a representative of that organization:
It is an organization of affiliated newspapers. We serve
eighty-nine newspapers throughout the country, the total
circulation of these papers as given to us for advertising
purposes running a little in excess of 400,000....
We handle items only that are of national importance because
we are a national news service. We gather all out of town items
that we are able to gather for the same reason, if they are of
national importance. As a news service we would not take any
purely local item in Chicago unless it would interest readers
in every section of the country. We also get service from a
clipping bureau.
It all relates to the interests of the colored people. If there
is anything which affects the country at large, which also
has either an indirect or a direct influence upon our group,
we feature it, but as a rule most of the news which we gather
is about things which particularly affect colored people.
II. RUMOR
Rumors which significantly affect race relations consist largely of
unfounded tales, incorrectly deduced conclusions, or partial statements
of fact with significant content added by the narrator, all of which are
given easy and irresponsible circulation by a credulous public during
the excitement of a clash. Examples of this type of irritating untruth
were found in the Chicago riot.
The number of Negroes killed during the riot (twenty-three Negroes
and fifteen whites) has been magnified in popular accounts beyond all
reasonable limits of credibility. It is popularly believed that more
persons were killed than official records indicate. The exaggeration
has not been confined to reports involving Negroes. For example, there
was a report in circulation that more than seventy-five white policemen
were killed during the riot. The rumor was traced to the half-jesting
remark of a policeman that, as a member of a benefit organization, he
had paid death dues on a number of policemen greater than the total
deaths of the riot as popularly estimated at the time. This number was
placed at seventy-five. The director of the Civic Bureau of the Seattle
Chamber of Commerce, writing to a friend in Chicago, asked for authentic
information concerning the number of Negroes killed during the riot. He
sought the information because, he said, the industrial editor of the
_Outlook_ had told him that police officers said that "more than 2,000
Negroes were killed in the race riot," and that a certain labor report
placed the number at 1,700. Suspecting that even the latter number was
too large, although the police mentioned 10,000 wounded and killed, he
wrote for information.
1. AN IMPRESSION STUDY
A special impression study was made with a class of forty-nine students
in the University of Chicago, to measure the effect upon them of
word-of-mouth rumor, gossip, and newspaper stories concerning the 1919
riot. Specific questions were asked concerning their understanding as to
the number of whites and Negroes killed and their source of information.
The students ranged in age from twenty to twenty-five years. Each was
asked to indicate in the order of their influence upon him the sources
of information which gave him his understanding of the magnitude of the
riot. The following is a compilation from their statements.
Ten were out of the city at the time and got their information chiefly
through newspapers published elsewhere. Their average opinion of
the number killed was fifty-five. Thirteen were informed chiefly by
second-hand stories quoting relatives who were in Chicago, policemen
interviewed, and others, and their general impression of the number
killed averaged 209. Thirty-three got their information from newspapers
both in and out of the city, and their average impression of the number
killed was 115. Twenty-four of those who were residing in Chicago got
their information chiefly from newspapers published in the city, and
their average impression was that 131 were killed.
A point of interest in comparison is that those who were out of town and
read out-of-town newspapers believed seventy-three were killed, while
those who got their information through local publications thought 131
were killed. One young woman made this interesting comment:
I think a very conservative estimate of the number killed
would be about 450 or 500. My first source of information,
newspapers. My father also told me of the affair and he is a
medical director of an insurance company and therefore was in
a more or less good position to know.
A young man said:
There were at least 200 people killed in the race riot.
Sources of information: a policeman who was stationed at
Forty-seventh Street and Wentworth, my own direct observations,
and conversations with people who live in the Black Belt.
Another young man said:
About 200 were killed. Chief source of information a review
of Carl Sandburg's pamphlet, and newspaper stories.
Another young woman thought that about 150 were killed. She said that
her father maintained an office at Forty-third Street and St. Lawrence
Avenue, which is in the Negro district. Another said:
If I remember correctly, about forty black and white people
were killed and several hundred wounded, and there was a loss
of several thousand dollars worth of property by fire. The
chief information that impressed me was personal experiences.
I witnessed one mob of 2,000 whites take a Negro on the West
Side and burn him to death. The newspaper gave me my information
of atrocities on both sides.
Another stated that he believed the number killed in the race riot in
Chicago was about 275, and continued:
I base my guess on reports of the newspapers, i.e., the dailies
of the city and particularly one weekly paper which in my
opinion is entirely unbiased in such matters, the _Weekly
Socialist_. I personally saw four Negroes lynched and shot to
death.
It might be expected that a fairly balanced type of impression would
come from university students. The effect of rumor stands out from
the examination of this highly selected group. In exaggeration the
word-of-mouth rumors led, followed by rumors circulated by newspapers
and alleged first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses.
Rumors from policemen and relatives placed the average number of persons
killed at 209, the largest average of the lot. This is significant when
taken with the reports given in the foregoing pages which emanated from
policemen. Undoubtedly their experiences were of such a nature as to make
exaggeration easy and plausible. They were living in conditions far from
normal, and their impressions were greatly magnified by the stress and
the excitement of events. The out-of-town students were less affected
by word-of-mouth rumor, and consequently their impressions showed the
smallest average of persons killed.
Personal experiences show more vividly than anything else the
unreliability of much of the testimony from observation that gives such
frequent rise to rumor. One student said he saw a mob of 2,000 whites
take a Negro on the West Side and burn him to death. Records show that
only one Negro was killed on the West Side (Joseph Lovings). He was shot
and stabbed many times, but not burned.[92] Another student "personally
saw four Negroes lynched and shot to death." No Negroes were lynched in
the riot.
2. THE BUBBLY CREEK RUMOR
A persistent rumor during the riot served to provide an explanation of
the unaccounted deaths of the riot. It had plausibility and soon was
accepted and even repeated on the floor of Congress in Washington as a
fact. Bubbly Creek is a small branch of the Chicago River extending to
the Stock Yards. Into it flows a great deal of waste from the slaughter
houses. The surface of the water is thick with the scum of decomposed
substances, hair, and trash. Bodies could be thrown into it and remain
undetected for a long time. A rumor became current that bodies of riot
victims were thrown into this stream. It became so persistent that efforts
were actually made to discover them. Even when no bodies were found, the
rumor did not weaken. Examples of how it cropped up in various ways are
given:
A man told a friend of mine, I can furnish the name of that
man; a man told him that he saw fifty-six bodies taken out of
Bubbly Creek. [A juror in the coroner's inquest.]
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.
One Negro said that a mob of white men knocked a colored woman down,
cut her up frightfully, and then took her baby and dashed its brains out
on the street-car tracks. He was of fair complexion and could easily be
taken for white. He said:
I came upon the mob as they were laughing and shouting. Why I
could have torn every one of the white cusses in a thousand
pieces. Just think, they stood there laughing and shouting
over what they had done. Why every drop of blood in my body
boiled and at that moment I swore to God in heaven that I'd
kill some white man if I swung for it.
This report was not substantiated by wide and thorough inquiry by the
Commission.
_Rumor in the East St. Louis riot._--Under "Myths," hereinafter discussed,
are given stereotyped sex stories circulated to produce antagonistic
sentiment toward Negroes. Many rumors, however, which had no relation
to sex crimes were circulated at the time of the East St. Louis riot.
The following example taken from the testimony before one of the boards
of inquiry pictures the effective use at East St. Louis of a rumor
concerning an imaginary smallpox epidemic:
_Mr. Tower_: Other statements I heard were that people
feared an epidemic of smallpox; that the County Hospital had
been burdened for months with an average of thirty cases of
smallpox.... The whole County became fearful. You could hear
the same discussions away from East St. Louis. People were
inflamed, and their feelings were directed against the big
employers of East St. Louis feeling that they were responsible
for the great influx of Negroes.
4. RUMORS PREDICTING RIOTS
Rumors that persist usually have some plausibility. The series which
follows contains elements of possible truth. Rumors predicting race
riots in Chicago centered about fixed dates on which excitement often
existed each year. Thus July 4, a holiday celebrated with fireworks and
noise in which shots would not be noticed, was the date set in popular
expectation for the Chicago riot that broke out almost three weeks later.
Signs had been posted in Washington Park to the effect that Negroes
would be driven out of the park on that date.
All this expectation undoubtedly caused preparation for trouble. It is
conceivable that this preparation at least accentuated the violence of
the riot which began on July 27.
Hallowe'en night, when ruffians could mask and take reprisals with less
fear of identification or detection than ordinarily, was the next date in
popular expectation. An official report to Washington by a governmental
agency on "Radicalism among Negroes," carried the rumor thus:
... A report was received at this office to the effect that
an uprising of Negroes in Chicago has been planned for the
night of October 31, 1919. This report came in a somewhat
vague form, through children attending schools located in the
colored districts. The Negroes were aroused over a report to
the effect that the white residents of a certain South Side
district were planning to drive out all colored inhabitants.
The police were informed of the situation.
No riot occurred at or near that date.
May 1, 1920, was next rumored as the date when a riot would start
surpassing in violence any that had yet occurred. Labor parades were
planned in Chicago for May 1, 1920. It is also moving day, many residence
leases then expiring. Thousands of Negroes, it was widely said, would be
told to leave Hyde Park. Negroes, it was further said, had no intention
of leaving and would oppose ejection even with force. This rumor was
taken up and circulated by responsible authorities. As early as April
20, 1920, this article appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_:
U.S. SEES RACE RIOTS HERE MAY 1
Warning that race riots may occur in the South Side Negro
districts May 1 was sent yesterday to John H. Alcock, first
deputy superintendent of police, by the army intelligence
department. The exact nature of the warning could not be learned
and no information could be obtained as to the supposed source
of the predicted trouble, but it is expected to arise when
Negro families move into new homes in white sections of the
South Side.
Numerous bombings have given strength to the belief that more
trouble may develop this summer. Official notice to the police
department is said to have been made by E. J. Rowens of the
army intelligence staff.
No comment on the warning could be obtained from Chief of
Police John J. Garrity or Superintendent Alcock. Capt. Michael
Gallery of the Deering St. Station said that he believed such
reports were absurd.
"I have been all through the Negro section of my district
today," said Capt. Gallery. "All is serene and the Negroes are
happy. I do not believe that there will be any trouble this
summer."
Capt. Thomas Caughlin of the Cottage Grove Ave. Station in
whose district the riots started last summer, said he was
always prepared and on the lookout for trouble in his territory.
An inquiry based upon this "May 1" rumor came to the Commission. The
manager of a West Side restaurant told the Commission that a Negro girl
in his employ had asked him whether it would be safe for her to come to
work on that day. Her sister had been warned in a friendly way by white
fellow-waitresses in a downtown restaurant that she should not risk
coming to work that day, "because there is going to be a race riot."
On May 1, as was to have been expected, thousands of persons were armed
and ready for the anticipated clash.
No riots occurred. The report was later denied by the Army Intelligence
Department.
Labor Day, 1920, was next set. Rumors flying fast were picked up by
agents from the state's attorney's office. Reports by these agents from
day to day show the persistence of the rumor. For example:
The U.S. Club which had planned to hold a meeting August 28,
did not hold the meeting because they expected another race
riot on Labor Day.
On August 28, Negroes in the barber shop on ---- State Street
were carrying guns. Many went to Gary and Hammond to stock up
against Labor Day but found that hardware dealers would not
sell.
On August 29 little else was talked about in the Black Belt
outside the coming riot on Labor Day. The statement of Garrity
[chief of police] that an extra cordon of police would patrol
the Black Belt was taken as confirmation of the rumor August
20.
_An averted clash._--Seeley Street on the West Side is a district
where Negroes infrequently go. On the night of May 1, one of the dates
scheduled in rumors and reports for a race riot in Chicago, the daughter
of a pressroom foreman was returning home at night. As she passed an
alley a man grabbed her by the arm and attempted to drag her into the
alley. She managed to struggle away and ran home, reporting the incident
incoherently to her father. Immediately he armed himself and went out
looking for the assailant.
Near the alley where the incident occurred, a lone Negro was standing
dressed in overalls. Across the street was a clubroom in which were a
number of white men. When he saw the Negro his first impulse was to shoot.
The Negro, however, gave no indication of being hunted, but reached into
his pocket, looked at his watch, and continued to stand there.
It occurred to the father that he had not learned from the girl whether
it was a white man or a Negro who had attempted to attack her. He went
back home and asked, and she said it was a white man.
5. RUMORS CONCERNING NEGRO RADICALS
During the country-wide excitement over radicals caused by the activities
of the Department of Justice in the fall of 1919, the Chicago office of
the United States Army Intelligence Bureau sent to Washington reports
concerning Negro organizations. These reports were founded upon scarcely
anything more than suspicion due to lack of information and acquaintance
with the Negro group. One section of a report made in October, 1919, read:
A convention of the colored organization known as the National
Urban League was held in Detroit on October 15, 1919, at which
Eugene Kinkle Jones, Negro agitator, presided. Mr. Jones has
his headquarters at 127 East 23rd Street, New York City. Wm.
D. Haywood was invited to speak at this convention.
The National Urban League is an organization of responsible Negroes and
whites, with branches in thirty-one cities. It numbers among its executive
officers L. Hollingsworth Wood, A. S. Frizzell, Robert R. Moton, Mrs.
Julius Rosenwald, George W. Seligman, and Mrs. Booker T. Washington.
Its avowed purposes are:
1. Try to show social welfare agencies the advantage of co-operation.
2. Secure and train social workers.
3. Protect women and children from unscrupulous persons.
4. Fit workers for work.
5. Help to secure playgrounds and other clean places of amusement.
6. Organize boys' and girls' clubs and neighborhood unions.
7. Help with probation oversight of delinquents.
8. Maintain a country home for convalescent women.
9. Investigate conditions of city life as a basis for practical work.
Concerning the reference to William D. Haywood and E. K. Jones, this
statement was received by the Commission from E. K. Jones:
The National Urban League did hold its annual convention in
Detroit, October 15, 1919. William D. Haywood was not invited
to speak at this convention. Judging from the reference to
Haywood the term "Negro agitator" as applied to myself connotes
a most violently radical strain in whatever methods I might
be using to bring about better conditions for the Negro.
Throughout my ten years' connection with the League, I have
sought by courageous but practical methods to bring to the
Negro an opportunity in American life and have urged Negroes
to measure up in every way along lines of efficiency and be
satisfied with nothing but a square deal and equal opportunity
in our national life.
I have never suggested violence of any kind as a means toward
this end, nor, in fact, has the idea ever arisen in my mind
that this would be an effective means of attaining this end.
From the same Intelligence Bureau report this statement is taken: "Another
recent report states that the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People with offices at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, is
planning to flood the colored districts with I.W.W. literature."
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a
reputable organization of whites and Negroes numbering among its executive
officers Hon. Moorfield Storey, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Arthur E.
Spingarn, Oswald Garrison Villard, Mary White Ovington, and Dr. Charles
E. Bentley. It has no relation with the I.W.W. and has never planned
any distribution of I.W.W. literature.
6. RUMOR WITHIN THE NEGRO GROUP
The _Chicago Advocate_, a Negro paper of an irresponsible, sensational
type, published under large headlines a report of a run on the Lincoln
State Bank. The reason alleged was indignation over the refusal of the
white officials of the bank to lend money on Negro property in Hyde
Park. The bank officials were accused of discrimination in favor of an
organization of men in Hyde Park who were making every effort to keep
Negroes segregated within the "Black Belt." The Pyramid Building and
Loan Association was said to have requested the loan. Since nearly 90
per cent of the depositors of the bank were supposed to be Negroes, the
act was considered an insulting disloyalty to Negroes who supported the
institution.
A number of Negroes, believing that their savings were in danger, rushed
to the bank. Soon there was an actual run, and for several days long
lines of depositors passed through the bank and carried away their
savings. More than $243,000 was withdrawn. The report proved to be without
foundation, and the three largest and most influential Negro newspapers
aided in restoring normal business relations. The president of the bank
charged the head of the Building and Loan Association and the editor of
the newspaper that published the story with responsibility for this rumor.
7. RUMORS OF ATROCITIES
Of the type of rumor which has had effect upon the sentiments of Negroes
concerning the Chicago riot, the following quotations from a pamphlet
entitled _The Chicago Race Riots_, by Austin D. N. Sutton, a Negro,
provide a good example:
In an investigation made personally by me, beginning about
five o'clock Wednesday afternoon, July 30, until far into the
evening, visiting the districts from Forty-seventh Street,
East to Indiana Avenue, West to Wentworth Avenue, South to
Fifty-fifth Street, I found a little short street between
Forty-eighth and Fifth Avenue called Swan Street, that is not
easily located, and very little known by the general public.
Eye-witnesses said that men, women and children were being
attacked and killed and thrown into the sewer, and no account
of their whereabouts has ever been given.
I found about twenty refugees who had been run away from their
homes on Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth and Fifth Avenue, also
Wentworth and Princeton avenues. Their homes had been burned,
and they were made to flee for their lives. I have the names
and addresses of more than one hundred cases investigated, one
more horrible case, where a young colored boy was gasolined
and burned after having been killed and where colored women
in the Stock Yards district were attacked and their breasts
cut off. These things were perpetrated by the whites upon
peaceful law-abiding blacks, some of whom had been residents
for twenty-seven years in that neighborhood.
Thorough inquiries were made by the Commission into these alleged
atrocities, and no evidence was found to show that anyone was "gasolined
and burned" during the riot or that any colored women's breasts were
cut off.
8. RUMORS AND THE MIGRATION
The rumors in circulation in the South at the beginning of the migration
of Negroes to the North were responsible for the presence in Chicago of
many who heard them. It is hard to conceive how the tale that the Germans
were on their way through Texas to take the southern states could have
been believed, yet it is reported that this extravagant rumor was taken
seriously in some quarters.
On the outskirts of Meridian, Mississippi, a band of gypsies was encamped.
The rumor gained circulation that the Indians were coming back to retake
their land, lost many years ago. Further it was declared that the United
States government was beginning a scheme to transport all the Negroes
from the South to break up the Black Belt. Passed from mouth to mouth
unrestrainedly, the tale became an established verity for many Negroes.
It was declared on the word of honor of "one in a position to know"
that the packing-houses in Chicago needed and would get 50,000 Negro
workers before the end of 1917. One explanation of the belief that the
South was overrun with labor agents is the fact that Negroes at the
South saw in every stranger a man from the North looking for laborers
and their families. If he denied it, they thought that he was concealing
his identity from the police, and if he said nothing, his silence was
regarded as affirmation.
Hundreds of disappointments of prospective migrants were traced to the
rumor that a train would leave on a certain date, sometimes after the
presence of a stranger in town; they would come to the station prepared
to leave, and when no agent appeared, would purchase their own tickets to
the North. Wages and privileges in the North were greatly exaggerated.
Some men, on being questioned, supposed that it was possible for any
common laborer to earn $10 a day and that $50 a week was not unusual.
The strength of this belief was remarked by several social agencies
in Chicago which attempted to supply migrants with work. The actual
wages paid, though much in excess of what they had been receiving, were
disappointing. Similarly in the matter of privilege and "rights," it was
later discovered by the migrants that unbounded liberty was not to be
found in the North. Many cases of grotesque misconduct of newly arrived
migrants in Chicago, against which more sober-minded Negroes preached,
possibly had root in exaggerated reports of "freedom and privilege" in
the North which had reached the South.[94]
III. MYTHS
There arise among groups of people various stories with little or no
basis in fact, which, through repetition and unvaried association with
the same persons or incidents, come to be regarded as true. These stories,
when they persist through years and even through generations, are myths.
They are usually the response to a prejudice or a desire.
In general they have some plausible and apparent justification. In turn
they lend stability not only to the beliefs out of which they were born,
but to themselves. Frequently they are the result of the assumption that
because two things happen at the same time they are connected by the
relationship of cause and effect. So long as these stories are uncorrected
they hold and exercise a marked degree of control over personal conduct.
Myths are important in any consideration of the instruments of
opinion-making. Fernand von Langenhove, a Belgian scientist associated
with the Solvay Institute for Sociological Study at Brussels, has made
probably the first researches in this field. He took as his material
the reports spread in Germany by German soldiers concerning the Belgian
priests. These myths, for the most part unfounded, began to spread and
eventually were taken up by German authorities and given the stamp of
official sanction. The reports were investigated and found to be false
and libelous by German authorities themselves. The method by which these
myths arose is thus described in his book _The Growth of a Legend_:
Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange
rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place.
They were reproduced by the press and they soon permeated
the whole of Germany.... Public credulity accepted these
stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without
hesitation and indorsed them with their authority. Even the
Emperor echoed them and, taking them for a text, advanced in
the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the
President of the United States, the most terrible accusations
against the Belgian people and clergy.
... It was the German army which, as we have seen, constituted
the chief breeding ground for legendary stories. These were
disseminated with great rapidity among the troops; the liaison
officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the victualling
posts assured the diffusion of them....
Submitted to the test of the German military inquiry these
stories are shown to be without foundation. Received from the
front and narrated by a soldier who professes to have been
an eye witness, they are nevertheless clothed in the public
view with special authority. Welcomed without control by the
press, the stories recounted in letters from the front appear,
however, in the eyes of the readers of a paper clothed with
a new authority--that which attaches to printed matter. They
lose in the columns of a paper their individual and particular
character.... The statements thus obtain a substance and an
objectivity of which they would otherwise be devoid. Mixed
with authentic news, they are accepted by the public without
mistrust. Is not their appearance in the paper a guaranty of
accuracy?...
All these pseudo-historical publications are, however, only
one aspect of the abundant literary production of the Great
War....
So one finds in this literature of the lower classes the
principal legendary episodes of which we have studied the origin
and followed the development; accommodated to a fiction, woven
into a web of intrigue, they have undergone new transformations;
they have lost every indication of their source; they are
transposed in the new circumstances imagined for them; they
have usually been dissociated from the circumstances which
individualize them and fix their time and place.
The evolution of myths concerning Negroes shows a striking resemblance to
these mentioned by von Langenhove. In this category would fall the myths
concerning Negro mentality, or the closing of the frontal sutures at
the age of fourteen; the "rape myth," or the belief that some character
weakness and inordinate sexual virility in Negroes make them rapists
by nature; and the "insurrection myth," or the recurrent assertion and
belief that Negroes are plotting the downfall of the government. These
are general in their acceptance. They illustrate the tendency of authors
observed by Langenhove in his study "to incorporate new ideas with the
complex old ones and show that they are not surprising and that all
earlier facts tend to prove it." The efforts of some recent writers on
the Negro question may be noted.
In 1895 R. M. Bache[95] made one of the first experimental studies
of the relative mentality of the white, Negro, and Indian races. His
study was based on only ten Negroes. He began with an assumption of the
inferiority of Negroes and was satisfied that he had proved it. In his
tests the whites were slowest in reacting to the visual, auditory, and
electrical stimulation, the Indians were quickest, and the Negroes about
midway between. He deduced from this that the whites were superior,
the Indians next, and the Negroes the lowest of the group. The Negroes
he explained were slower than the Indians because they were of mixed
white and Negro blood and had inherited the effects of slavery, while
the Indians' mode of life compelled them to rely upon quick movement.
Therefore he said the Indian was of a higher race than the Negro. Dr.
Vogt, a German anthropologist, is responsible for the statement: "On
examining the brain of a Negro I find a remarkable resemblance between
the ape and the Negro, especially with reference to the development of
the temporal lobe." He made this deduction from the examination of the
skull of one Hottentot Negro woman.
A. T. Smith made association and memory tests and concluded[96] that the
Negro child was psychologically different from the white child in power
of abstraction, judgment, and analysis. He took a single Negro boy as
typical.
For the purpose of studying myths pertinent to this inquiry instances
were taken from the testimony in race riots, both in East St. Louis and
Chicago. The excerpts which follow illustrate the tendency of myths to
create and give currency to rumors:
NEGROES SECRETING ARMS
I returned in about an hour and learned from Col. Tripp
that it had been reported that Negroes were forming and had
large quantities of arms and ammunition at a saloon on the
northeasterly corner of Nineteenth and Market Avenue; at the
time the small detachment of troops remaining at the City
Hall was loaded into an auto truck and Col. Tripp, Lieut.
Col. Clayton, Chief of Police Ransom Payne and myself, in my
automobile proceeded to the saloon and pool-room located at the
northeasterly corner of Nineteenth Street and Market Avenue,
where it was reported there were large stores of ammunition
and arms.
We accompanied Col. Tripp into the building and found perhaps
fifteen or eighteen Negro men; Col. Tripp ordered them to
surrender arms and there being no ready compliance with the
order, he thereupon ordered them searched and found one man who
had a number of loaded shot-gun shells. [Testimony by Thomas
L. Fekete, Jr., city attorney of East St. Louis, at East St.
Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]
NEGROES PLANNING ATTACK
_Question_: Now what happened Tuesday?
_Answer_: Well, Tuesday I spent most of my time in the City
Hall except when we would be sent out on false alarms, calls
from the different parts of the city. That was practically all
of our work there then. There was no rioting on Tuesday, but
they continued calling from different parts of the city that
Negroes were forming and ready to attack, and we would send
men, whenever they were available, out with squads, two squads
of men to investigate, but invariably it was a false alarm.
[Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser at East St. Louis Inquiry into
Conduct of Militia.]
CONCEALING ARMS FOR INSURRECTION
We then searched the building, particularly the dwelling
quarters above these rooms, for arms which it had been alleged
Dr. L. N. Bundy had stored at this place. We found that Dr.
Bundy had sent two cartons of his property to this place for
safe-keeping and on opening the cartons, we discovered that they
contained no firearms or ammunition, but contained automobile
supplies and some stationery. [Testimony by Col. S. O. Tripp
at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]
NEGROES ARMING AND PLANNING AN ATTACK
Then we commenced to get reports from different parts of the
city that Negroes were arming, getting ready to attack. One of
the persistent rumors was there were two hundred Negroes armed
around Sixty and Bond streets some place there. That rumor
was so persistent that Col. Tripp ordered me to take Company
B down and investigate it and the police sent one policeman
along to show us the way and show us the place where it was
supposed to be. We got down there within probably three blocks
of the place and the policeman told us we better not get too
close without forming a line of skirmishers, which I did. I
divided the company into two platoons. One platoon under the
Company commander and the other under the first lieutenant, and
we combed that district all through. The policeman deserted
us as soon as we started out and we were all left alone. We
combed all over for an hour or probably more.
_Question_: Who was the commander of Company B?
_Answer_: Captain Eaton. We did not find a single thing except
two Negroes who just came out of a house. We searched them and
they were armed and we arrested them. We brought these back
with us when we came perhaps an hour or an hour and a half
later.
_Question_: Is there anything else that night?
_Answer_: Yes, it was not very long until we got rumors that at
about 27th and 28th and Tudor that the Negroes and whites were
in a pitched battle. That is about two miles I think southeast,
and they asked me to go out and look into the situation and
take a squad of men with me ... we got to Eighteenth and Bond
and we were perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead of the truck and
we were fired upon. We stopped the car and Brown returned the
fire. We could see smoke coming from a vacant lot and by that
time the truck came up and we formed a line of skirmishers
and went through and could not find a single thing.
The Chief of Police was advised, on rumor, that Negroes were
forming in the Black Belt for the purpose of marching on the
whites. In response to this rumor, the witness [Col. S. O.
Tripp], the Acting Mayor [Fekete], and the military officials
left for the seat of the purported mobilization of Negroes,
but found that the report was untrue. The record shows that
during this temporary departure of authorities, military and
civil, acts of lawlessness were being exerted against Negroes
in other sections of the city. [Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser
at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]
ARMED AND MASSED ATTACKS BY NEGROES
... As we got to 27th and Tudor I found a first lieutenant of
the Missouri National Guard there. I afterwards found out his
name was Crawley. He had one soldier with him. He called him his
orderly. I think his name was Murphy. There they were perhaps
a dozen young men, about eighteen or twenty, armed with rifles
and were lined up at 28th Street there under trees, that is
behind trees, at least it looked that way in the night, and
perhaps a half a block more north it looked to me two houses
were burning; it was a big fire; they were burning, and they
claimed that the Negroes had been firing at them and they
were returning the fire, and I guess that is where the report
came from. He advised me that it was a little dangerous work
up there and that we had better form a few men, form a line
of skirmishers, and I sent one bunch to the east side of the
fire to see what we could find in there. So I did that. I gave
Capt. Easterday a bunch of men, one detachment, and Lieut.
Brown another, one on each side, and then Lieut. Crawley and
one private went right through the center of it, right next to
the place seemed deserted and we could not find anybody and
we waited for the other detachments to come out and they did
not find anything and I walked around, it seemed on the west
side of the block, between 27th and 28th Streets, and I saw a
couple of fellows sticking their heads up over the fence, the
fence of an old two story brick building, and I hollered. I
thought perhaps it was Lieut. Crawley and waited for him and we
found a bunch of Negroes in there, perhaps twenty-five of them.
Lieut. Crawley and myself lined them up and searched them and
there was not a Negro who had any arms or ammunition, and we
asked if there were any more in the house, and they said this
private came in and already had three of us. So Lieut. Crawley
said if I guard the ones outside he would go inside and run
the rest out, so in the neighborhood of one hundred fifty or
two hundred came out, men, women and children and we searched
all of them but did not find anything on them. [Testimony by
Thomas L. Fekete, city attorney at East St. Louis Inquiry into
Conduct of Militia.]
1. THE RAPE MYTH
It is the common belief among whites that Negroes are rapists by nature.
In this belief are involved the "fear obsession" of Negro men, held by
many white women, fear of the "social equality" bugaboo, condonings of
lynchings, and repressive social restriction as well as attempts at
legislative restraints. The persistency of these assertions and this
belief point to an interesting peculiarity of popular opinion.[97] There
have been cases of rape involving Negroes, but they have contributed no
such preponderance as would justify the wholesale charge against the Negro
race. The tendency is to stress Negro sex offenses as though they alone
constituted almost the whole of revolting crime. The usual proportion of
white sex offenses is lost in the general statistics of crime. In the
South, where it was first persistently asserted that Negro men have an
abnormal tendency to sexual crimes, each crime, or attempted crime, and
in many cases even suspected crime, of this sort has registered itself
in a lynching.
In the twenty-year period between 1883 and 1903 there were lynched in
the South 1,985 Negroes. Rape was assigned as the cause in 675 cases.
In 1,310 cases other causes were given. James Welden Johnson, field
secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, has prepared figures on lynchings and sex offenses charged to
Negroes which point out the misrepresentation in easy but persistent
charges and the unquestioning acceptance of them by the public. He says:
Whenever the Negro protests against lynching, nearly all
southern newspapers and a great many northern newspapers call
upon him to deprecate the crime which leads to lynching. The
authentic statistics on lynching prove the falsehood on which
this propaganda is based. In the past thirty-five years fifty
Negro women have been lynched. In the twelve-month period,
August, 1918-August, 1919 [when the statement was prepared]
five Negro women were lynched.
LYNCHINGS
===========+===========+==============
| | Number
Years | Lynchings | Charged with
| | Rape
-----------+-----------+--------------
1914-18[98]| 264 | 28
1883-1903 | 1,985 | 675
-----------+-----------+--------------
When the Congressional Committee on Immigration in 1911 made its study
of crime in the United States, an investigation was made of 2,262 cases
in the New York Court of General Sessions, and in that investigation
it was found that the percentage for the crime of rape was lower for
Negroes than for either the foreign-born whites or native whites.
NEW YORK COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS[99]
1911 Rape
Native-born whites .8 per cent
Foreign-born whites 1.8 per cent
Negroes .5 per cent
Contrast these records, bad as they may appear, with the records for New
York County, which is only a part of New York City, and we find that in
this one county in the single year of 1917, 230 persons were indicted
for rape. Of this number, 37 were indicted for rape in the first degree.
INDICTMENTS AND LYNCHINGS FOR RAPE
===============================+========+======================+========
Place | Year | Crime | Number
-------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------
Number indicted by Grand Jury, | 1917 | Rape | 230
New York County | | |
Number of whites indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 37
Grand Jury, New York County | | |
Number of Negroes indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 0
Grand Jury, New York County | | |
Number of Negroes lynched in | {1914} | Charged with rape | 28
entire United States | {1918} | |
-------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------
That is, in just a part of New York City the number of persons
indicted for rape in the first degree was nine more than the
total number of Negroes lynched on the charge of rape in the
entire United States during the period 1914-1918. Among these
thirty-seven persons indicted by the New York County Grand
Jury, there was not a single Negro. The evidence required by
the Grand Jury of New York County to indict a person charged
with rape must be more conclusive than the evidence required
by a mob to lynch a Negro accused of rape.
In Chicago the statistics of sex offenses tell a significant story.
Chicago judges in the criminal courts were questioned by the Commission
on their experience to test the foundation of this belief. Their replies
were practically unanimous. Some of them are given:
_Judge Pam_: You talk about sex cases. Whether you call them
rape cases or crimes against children, I have more serious
rape cases against white than I have against colored people.
The most serious case I had was about ten days ago, and I
sentenced the man to life imprisonment. I never had such a
case involving a Negro.
_Commissioner_: We read a great deal in the papers about rape
in the South. How does the colored man stand on that matter
in comparison to the white man?
_Judge Thompson_: Practically the same.
_Commissioner_: You spoke about crimes involving sex. What
is your experience with regard to whether they are committed
more often by colored persons than whites?
_Judge Trude_: I don't think in Chicago they are committed
more by Negroes than whites.
_Judge Thompson_: In my work with the criminal court I was
astounded at the large number of crimes involving the sexual
abuse of children, but I remember no case in which a colored
defendant was charged with that crime. Almost all other races
were represented, but I don't remember one colored man charged
with the abuse of a child.... I tried many of those cases,
but never tried a colored man for that offense. I would say
the majority of them were slavic or German; practically no
Scandinavian.
_Dr. Adler, State Criminologist_: We had the same thing here
in Chicago of a colored man sent to the penitentiary on a
charge of attempted rape or something of that sort, where the
identification was made by a child of six or eight years who
picked him out in a crowd under suspicion. No such evidence
ought to be accepted. We are perfectly sure, and everybody
else agrees that such evidence is not sufficient to warrant
the action.
2. THE SEX MYTH
_East St. Louis riot._--The records of the Congressional Investigating
Committee contain much evidence of the use of this myth in fomenting
riots. Edward F. Mason, representing the interests of labor, gave a
vivid account of the report that Negro men had committed vicious acts
of assault against white girls in the East St. Louis streets. He stated
further that 200 white women were among the 1,200 persons present at
the meeting on the night of May 28, just prior to the riot, and that
"we brought these girls along to see if we couldn't teach--we wanted to
wake him [the mayor] up. He was in a trance. He couldn't see the thing
like we did."
Alois Towers emphasized in his testimony the sentiment among the whites
of East St. Louis just prior to the outbreak:
Mr. Chairman, yesterday I made the statement that the great
influx of Negroes was responsible for the riot. I want to
try and show some of the feelings that developed after this
great influx of Negroes. It was a terrible feeling in the
air. Everyone felt that something terrible was going to
happen. On the street comers, wherever you went, you heard
expressions against the Negro. You heard that the Negro was
driving the white man out of the locality--by moving into
the white neighborhood--that the whites were being forced out
of their localities. Stories were afloat on the streets and
on the street cars of the worst kind that would inflame the
feelings. For instance, I heard one story so persistently that
I commenced to think later on there might be some truth in it.
First I thought it was just originated by some who might want
to inflame the feelings of the people. I heard stories of this
kind and I heard it no less than a dozen times on the streets
of East St. Louis, that Negroes had made the boast that they
were invited to East St. Louis; that great numbers of white
people were taken away for war purposes; and that _there would
be lots of white women for the Negroes in East St. Louis_....
The whole country became fearful. You could hear the same
discussions away from East St. Louis. People were inflamed and
their feelings were directed against big employers of East
St. Louis, feeling that they were responsible for the great
influx of Negroes.
Of actual assaults against white women there was found no evidence.
Testimony by the mayor before the Military Committee investigating the
conduct of soldiers adds substantiation to this fact:
_Q._: Now did you hear of any other complaints of these colored
men from any source as to their conduct and behavior when
they first came here other than being imported here to work
in large numbers?
_A._: Yes sir.
_Q._: What do you know about it?
_A._: Some complaints that they were sticking up people, holding
up people at night time, and various other police violations.
_Q._: Now were these complaints verified by the records, or
otherwise?
_A._: I think they were, they were arrested and locked up,
got trial and punishment, the usual procedure of the Police
Department and Courts.
_Q._: You keep in pretty close touch with these Police Court
Proceedings?
_A._: Yes sir.
_Q._: So you would say that there were more colored people
arrested and convicted for such offenses as you mentioned than
there were four or two years ago?
_A._: I have not made that comparison, but I would think so.
_Q._: Any other offenses except larceny and robbery?
_A._: No.
_Q._: Any sex outrages?
_A._: No.
_Q._: No complaints or prosecutions that white women were
outraged by colored men?
_A._: No sir.
[Board of Inquiry, East St. Louis, Ill.]
_Washington riot._--The Washington race riot was precipitated by reports
of alleged attacks upon white women by Negroes. These reports were
featured in the daily newspapers with large front-page headlines, and
suggestions were made that probable lynchings would follow the capture
of the Negroes. The series of reported assaults totaled seven. In each
it was claimed that a Negro had assaulted a white woman. When the fury
and excitement of the riot had subsided and the facts were sifted, it
was found that of the seven assaults reported, four were assaults upon
colored women. Three of the alleged criminals arrested and held for
assault were white men, and at least two of the white men were prosecuted
for assaults upon colored women. It further developed that three of the
assaults were supposed to have been committed by a suspect who at the
time of the riots was under arrest.
_Waukegan riot._--A story with the implication that a sex issue was
involved was the significant feature of the riot between marines from
the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, aided by citizens of Waukegan,
and the Negro residents of Waukegan. It is entirely likely that the
outburst was wholly precipitated by the entirely false report that
"Mrs. Blazier, the wife of Lieutenant Blazier," was "attacked" by Negro
boys.[100] Lieutenant Blazier, it developed, was unmarried and had no
woman occupant in the car.
_Chicago riot._--The most atrocious murder of the Chicago riot of 1919 was
precipitated by a report involving an Italian girl. The story circulated
that she had been killed by a Negro. Joseph Lovings, an innocent Negro,
chanced into the neighborhood on a bicycle. He was set upon and murdered.
The coroner found fourteen bullet wounds, many stab wounds, contusion of
the head, and fractures of the skull bones and of the limbs. The report
proved a myth, for no girl was killed by anyone during the riot. The
Negro killed was innocent of any injury, and if a girl was injured it
had not been learned by whom the injury was inflicted. There had been
no previous rioting on the West Side, where the murder was committed,
and no further clashes followed it. The usual report of the burning of
the Negro which followed an assault was also circulated, and this was
false and unfounded.
In the frenzy of the rioting in Chicago a report gained circulation
that white women were being attacked by Negroes. Some reports picked
up by newspapers asserted that women were being shot as the riot grew.
The _Chicago American_ during the riot pertinently made a plea for
cool-headedness and intelligence in receiving reports. In an editorial
it thus importuned the citizenry:
Don't circulate wild stories that tend to infuriate respectable
citizens, both white and black. They are trying to suppress
the hoodlums who have been responsible for all the rioting.
Don't believe every infuriating report you hear, and don't
repeat them to others more credulous than yourself.
Depend on the _American_ to tell you what happened just as
accurately as careful, intelligent reporting will permit.
The most notable instance of inflammatory faking was observed
in one newspaper (not the _American_) yesterday afternoon. It
ran across its front page in big type the heading: "Women Shot
as Riots Grow." It was based on an incoherent, unsubstantiated
rumor which later investigation proved has no foundation.
The same information was received by the _Evening American_
from the detective bureau, where the report was received. The
_American_ published a few lines announcing that the police
had received such reports. Men were rushed out, but the report
could not be verified, and this newspaper withdrew further
publication of the unverified report.
At Chicago Heights a race riot was reported on August 7, 1920. It was
said in the press that a Negro motor-cyclist had run down a Hungarian
boy. The actual report circulated was that a Negro had struck an Italian
girl. The latter report was not true; the first one, contrary to press
reports, did not start a riot. In fact, there was no riot.
In the racial clash of September 20, 1920, the sex myth again arose.[101]
Immediately after one of the Negroes had struck Barrett down, the trio
ran. Few persons actually knew what had occurred. Excitement waxed high
when the wild report flew about that a Negro had attacked a white woman.
A mob of several thousand men, women, and children formed to storm the
church in which they had sought refuge.
An investigator from the Commission, sent out immediately after the clash,
picked up traces of this myth in the sentiments of white residents of
the neighborhood.
There was a story which everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know
concerning trouble on the street-car lines between Negroes and whites.
A middle-aged Irish woman on Union Avenue, who had been with the crowd
at the church, gave the following account of it: "Not long ago, a Negro
knocked a white woman off the cars. It never appeared in the papers. I
never go on the cars where they [Negroes] are. You couldn't get me to
go on a State Street car line."
A barber at Forty-fifth Street and Emerald Avenue said:
There was some trouble the Saturday before Labor Day. A Negro
gave the conductor a dollar bill, and the conductor said
he hadn't change and told him to get off the car. As he was
getting off, he knocked against a white woman, and seven men
in an automobile who were right behind the car saw him and
chased him. They brought him up to the alley right across the
street, beat him up, and cut up his head something awful.
IV. PROPAGANDA
Both whites and Negroes have recognized the value of propaganda as
an instrument of opinion-making. Both employ it, sometimes openly,
sometimes insidiously. Its effects may be unmistakably observed in
much of the literature about the Negro. It is the purpose here to give
attention to certain forms of propaganda now in circulation, with a view
to defining roughly their place in the manufacture of sentiment on the
race question in Chicago. In spite of similarity it would be obviously
unfair to lump all sorts of propaganda, good and bad, under one general
classification. It is possible, however, to classify different types
from the examples which came to the attention of the Commission, as
follows: (1) educational, (2) radical and revolutionary, (3) malicious,
(4) defensive.
1. EDUCATIONAL PROPAGANDA
Propaganda on the race situation with a true educational purpose seems to
be confined largely to organizations composed of both whites and Negroes,
who make joint appeals to both groups. An example is the publicity
campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. This Association definitely asserts that it can best accomplish
its ends by reaching "the conscience and heart of the American people,"
and publicity is the weapon. The _Crisis_ magazine is the principal organ
of the Association, although the public is reached through various other
channels.
From the report of the Association for 1919, the following figures
covering the circulation of information is obtained: During that year
1,138,900 copies of the _Crisis_ were sold; officers of the Association
traveled 101,009 miles, delivered 286 addresses, including eleven in
Chicago, and contributed nineteen special articles, not including special
releases, of press material to magazines of wide circulation.
2. RADICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PROPAGANDA
A broad basis of appeal to Negroes as a group is provided in their
economic status. Placed by circumstances near the bottom of the industrial
ladder, victims of exploitation, restlessly resentful of practices
employed against them because of class as well as race, it might be
reasoned that they would be vitally interested in a revolution, industrial
if not social. The Industrial Workers of the World has reasoned after
this fashion and, probably because class meant more to it than race,
extended open arms to Negro workers. This appeal was even stronger
in view of the attitude of partial exclusion adopted by many trades
unions. To strengthen its organization, ally with it a restless group,
90 per cent of whom are laborers, while at the same time providing an
unmistakable demonstration of its own disregard for race lines in its
so-called struggle for "industrial freedom," the I.W.W. directed a
definite propaganda toward the Negro group, and founded it upon a very
human desire. Thousands of letters and pamphlets were addressed, "To
the colored workingmen and women," calling them fellow-workers. Excerpts
from one of them follow:
There is one question which, more than any other, presses upon
the mind of the worker today, regardless of whether he be of
one race or another, of one color or another, the question of
how he can improve his conditions, raise his wages, shorten
his hours of labor, and gain something more of freedom from
his master, the owners of the industry wherein he labors.
To the black race, who, but recently, with the assistance
of the white men of the northern states, broke their chains
of bondage and ended chattel slavery, a prospect of further
freedom or _real freedom_ should be most appealing.
For it is a fact that the Negro worker is no better off under
the freedom he has gained than under the slavery from which
he has escaped. As chattel slaves we were the property of
our masters and, as a piece of valuable property, our masters
were considerate of us and careful of our health and welfare.
Today, as wage workers, the boss may work us to death, at the
hardest and most hazardous labor, at the longest hours, at
the lowest pay, we may quietly starve when out of work and the
boss loses nothing by it and has no interest in us. To him the
worker is but a machine for producing profits and when you,
as a slave who sells himself to the master on the installment
plan, become old, or broken in health or strength, or should
you be killed while at work, the master merely gets another
wage slave on the same terms.
We who have worked in the South know that conditions in lumber
and turpentine camps, in the fields of cane, cotton and tobacco,
in the mills and mines of Dixie, are such that the workers
suffer a more miserable existence than ever prevailed among
the chattel slaves before the great Civil War. Thousands of
us have come and are coming northward, crossing the Mason and
Dixon line, seeking better conditions. As wage slaves we have
run away from the masters in the South, but to become the wage
slaves of the masters in the North. In the North we find that
the hardest work and the poorest pay are our portion. We are
driven while on the job, and the high cost of living offsets
any higher pay we might receive.
The only problem then, which the colored worker should consider,
as a worker, is the problem of organization with other working
men in the labor organization that best expresses the interest
of the whole working class against the slavery and oppression
of the whole capitalist class. Such an organization is the
I.W.W., the _Industrial Workers of the World_, the only labor
union that has never, _in theory or practice_, since its
beginning, twelve years ago, barred the workers of any race or
nation from membership. The following has stood as a principle
of the I.W.W., embodied in its official constitution since
its formation in 1905:
"By-Laws. Article I--Section 1
"No working man or woman shall be excluded from
membership in Unions because of creed or color."
If you are a wage worker you are welcome in the I.W.W. halls,
no matter what your color. By this you may see that the I.W.W.
is not a white man's union, not a black man's union, not a
red or yellow man's union, but a _working man's union_. _All
of the working class in one big union._
In the I.W.W. all wage workers meet on common ground. No
matter what language you may speak, whether you were born in
Europe, in Asia or in any other part of the world, you will
find a welcome as a fellow worker. In the harvest fields where
the I.W.W. controls, last summer saw white men, black men and
Japanese working together as union men and raising the pay of
all who gathered the grain. In the great strikes the I.W.W.
has conducted at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the woolen mills,
in the iron mills of Minnesota and elsewhere, the I.W.W. has
brought the workers of many races, colors and tongues together
in victorious battles for a better life.
The foundation of the I.W.W. is _industrial unionism_. All
workers in any division of any industry are organized into an
_industrial union of all_ the workers in the _entire industry_;
these _industrial unions_ in turn are organized into _industrial
departments_ of connecting or kindred industries, while all are
brought together in the _central organization of the Industrial
Workers of the World--one big union of all the working class
of the world_. No one but actual wage workers may join. The
working class cannot depend upon anyone but itself to free it
from wage slavery. "He who would be free, himself must strike
the blow."
When the I.W.W. through this form of _industrial unionism_
has become powerful enough, it will institute an _industrial
commonwealth_; it will end slavery and oppression forever and
in its place will be a world of the workers, by the workers,
and for the workers, a world where there will be no poverty
and want among those who feed and clothe and house the world; a
world where the word "master" and "slave" shall be forgotten;
a world where peace and happiness shall reign and where
the children of men shall live as brothers in a world-wide
_industrial democracy_.
Another pamphlet published a hideous picture of a lynching in the South.
In both of these pamphlets the appeal is about the same and may be
summarized as follows:
The Negro is oppressed. He is subjected to the worst possible
cruelties and indignities. The working men are oppressed.
Negroes have left one slavery for another which is shared
by white workers. Race hatred is played upon by capitalists
to keep the two races apart and thus thwart their efforts at
improving their condition. The I.W.W. union will unite all of
the oppressed of all colors and all languages. One big union
of defensive brotherhood, not only in America but throughout
the world.
3. MALICIOUS PROPAGANDA
Anti-Negro propaganda is not wholly new in the North, but it has usually
been carefully concealed. Recently there have been several conspicuous
instances of open and organized effort to influence the minds of white
persons against Negroes. The slogans, charges, and incriminations
have included, with gross exaggeration, not only all of the actual but
all of the fancied and rumored defects of Negro character. Ignorance
and suspicion, fear and prejudice, have been played upon violently. A
group of South Side real estate dealers and owners, anxious to preserve
exclusively for whites sections of the city known as Hyde Park and
Kenwood, formed themselves into an organization to protect property
values on the assumption that the presence of Negroes depreciated real
estate values. Since they did not own or control enough property to be in
themselves effective, they sought to awaken the white residents to the
"danger that menaced them." Funds were raised, meetings held, a journal
started, bills and posters distributed, and many letters circulated. A
bulletin was widely distributed with this heading:
YOUR RIGHTS AND MINE
A Short Symposium on Current Events as Applied to and Effecting Realty
Values in Kenwood and Hyde Park
It began by disclaiming any desire to foment or foster race antagonism,
but stated its determination to work insistently and persistently along
legal lines for the elimination of undesirables of whatever brand or color
whose residence in this section lowered the value of real estate. The
remainder of the bulletin, however, was devoted to a discussion of the
Negro. A letter to Mayor Thompson from the president of the Association
mentioned the vicious element of Negroes "haranguing about constitutional
rights," aided by the Negro press, claiming social equality, and then
attributed the riot to the scattering of Negroes in white residential
sections. It spoke of a feeling that was rampant because the "legal rights
of Negroes have been placed above his moral obligation to the white
people." The _Chicago Tribune_ was quoted twice and the Chicago Real
Estate Board once on the desirability of segregation. The _Daily News_
afforded a fourth quotation from an article in which three solutions were
advanced--amalgamation, deportation, and segregation. As to amalgamation
the article said: "Every white man would rather see the nation destroyed
than adopt that method."
The _Property Owners' Journal_ became so bitter in its utterances that
the protests of whites forced its discontinuance. A few selections from
the _Journal_ picture the character of the campaign:
What a reputation for beauty Chicago would secure if visitors
touring the city would see crowds of idle, insolent Negroes
lounging on the South Side boulevards and adding beauty to
the floricultural display in the parks, filling the streets
with old newspapers and tomato containers and advertising the
Poro-system for removing the marcelled kinks from Negro hair
in the windows of the derelict remains of what had once been
a clean, respectable residence.
THE NEW NEGRO
Negroes are boasting, individually and through the colored
press, that the old order of things for the Negro is changing
and that a new condition is about to begin. As a result of
the boastful attitude, the Negro is filled with bold ideas,
the realization of which means the overturning of their older
views and conditions of life. The Negro is unwilling to resume
his status of other years; he is exalting himself with idiotic
ideas on social equality. Only a few days ago Attorney General
Palmer informed the Senate of the nation of the Negroes'
boldest and most impudent ambition, sex equality.
From the Negro viewpoint sex equality, according to Mr.
Palmer, is not seen as the equality of men and women; it is
the assertion by the Negro of a right to marry any person whom
he chooses, regardless of color. The dangerous portion of
their outrageous idea does not consist in the accident that
some black or white occasionally may forget the dignity of
their race and intermarry. That has happened before; doubtless
it will recur many times. Where the trouble lies is in the
fact that the Department of Justice has observed an organized
tendency on the part of Negroes to regard themselves in such
a light as to permit their idea to become a universal ambition
of the Negro race.
As a corollary to their ambition on sex equality, it is not
strange that they are attempting to force their presence as
neighbors on the whites. The effrontery and impudence that
nurses a desire on the part of the Negro to choose a white as
a marriage mate certainly will not result in making the Negro
a desirable neighbor. That fact alone is enough to determine
the property owners of this district to declare to the Negroes
that they must stay out. As neighbors they have nothing to
offer. "They lived for uncounted centuries in Africa on their
own resources, and never so much as improved the make-up of
an arrow, coined a new word, or crept an inch nearer to a
spiritual religion," and it is a certainty that their tenure
of those unfortunate buildings now occupied by them will not
be improved by a single nail if it is left to the Negro to
provide and drive the nail.
Keep the Negro in his place, amongst his people, and he is
healthy and loyal. Remove him, or allow "his newly discovered
importance to remove him from his proper environment and the
Negro becomes a nuisance." He develops into an overbearing,
inflated, irascible individual, overburdening his brain to such
an extent about social equality that he becomes dangerous to
all with whom he comes in contact; he constitutes a nuisance
of which the neighborhood is anxious to rid itself. If the new
Negro desires to display his newly acquired veneer of impudence
where it will be appreciated we advise that they parade it in
their own district. Their presence here is intolerable.
As stated before, every colored man who moves into Hyde Park
knows that he is damaging his white neighbor's property.
Therefore, he is making war on the white man.
Consequently, he is not entitled to any consideration and
forfeits his right to be employed by the white man.
If employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes
who reside in Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's
property it would soon show good results.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR HYDE-PARKERS
Their solid vote is the Negroes' great weapon. They have a
total vote in Chicago of about 40,000. This total vote is cast
solid for the candidate who makes the best bargain with them.
When both our principal political parties are split, and when
each of them has two or more candidates in the field, this
solid block of 40,000 becomes a possible power and might be
able to defeat or elect a candidate.
This vote situation is the foundation of the Chicago Negro's
effrontery and his evil design against the white man's property.
He feels that he holds the balance of power and that he can
dictate the policy of any administration that happens to be
elected by his controlling black vote.
He therefore becomes arrogant, insulting, threatening. He
abuses his rights and liberties and feels that he is perfectly
safe in doing so for the reason that as he controls this block
of votes he believes that he can practically dictate to the
police department, the city administration and the courts.
Consequently he is bold.
Now then, white property owners and voters, this vote situation
must be corrected. It is time for you to think and ponder.
Remember this, that this Negro vote power could not exist except
for the fact that the candidate who caters to it is traveling
on his belief that the white man will vote the ticket any
way. The white voter is not supposed to think, nor to indulge
in any investigations of a candidate to ascertain whether or
not the candidate is favorable or inimical to his interests.
No, the white voter is supposed to be a blind ass who has no
care for his own interests, who does not know or care to know
of the foul plots against him, who has no knowledge of what
is going on around him, but who simply does as he is told and
walks to the polls as in a dream, having eyes and seeing not,
ears and hearing not, and religiously casts his vote for the
ticket and against his own interests.
Wake up, white voters! Come out of your dream. Open your eyes
and ears. It is high time that you realize what is going on.
Hereafter in local affairs affecting your property and home
interests, there should be only one test of a candidate and
that one should be, "Will his election work for the betterment
of Hyde Park or for its deterioration?"
The Negro should be consistent. As he segregates his vote and
casts it all together in one block, so he should live together
all in one block.
Some of the slogans of the organization were: "Our neighborhood must
continue white"; "They shall not pass"; "Stay out of Hyde Park"; "We
base our rights on priority, majority and anthropological superiority."
The sentiment was contagious.[102] Other literature of even more
pronounced anti-Negro character followed. An unsigned card was distributed
in large numbers throughout the district during the presidential
campaign, showing a vicious looking Negro and words of warning for family
protection.
The attempt still further to instill fear and bitterness was manifest
in a pamphlet sent, by whom it is not known, to the wives of prominent
white residents of the city and particularly of Hyde Park, entitled _An
Appeal of White Women to American Womanhood_. It was a reprint from an
article in the _New Times_, which in turn reprinted an appeal from the
_German Women on the Rhine_. Although there could be slight connection
between the conduct of colored French colonial troops on the Rhine and
Chicago Negroes, its circulation in Hyde Park possibly helped to fan the
flames of race feeling which had already been so deliberately kindled.
The pamphlet detailed the "bestial ferocious conduct of Negroes against
German women."
4. DEFENSIVE PROPAGANDA
Within the Negro group there are to be found many defensive programs
designed for group protection. They rarely reach the point of organized
effort for the control of opinion. The essence in all appeals is
"protest," which is tacitly understood to be an effective sentiment to
circulate. The most striking illustrations of this type of propaganda are
those which follow definite provocations. The appeal of the propaganda
is directed first to Negroes as a means of cementing the group from
within, and indirectly to the whole group by way of impressing it with
the strength of solidified opposition to insults. One example of this
type will suffice.
Following the bombing of Negro homes and the inauguration of a campaign
of reckless propaganda against Negroes in the interest of exclusive
white residence neighborhoods, Negroes organized the "Protective Circle
of Chicago." The object of this organization was to "oppose segregation,
bombing and the defiance of the Constitution." The admitted method of
combating these objectionable practices was propaganda. The question
on which certain white people living in Hyde Park were greatly wrought
up was that of keeping Negroes out of "white residential districts."
Negroes were classed as "undesirables," and the efforts of the whites
in offensive propaganda were aimed at proving it. Fortunately for the
Negroes, an article appeared in a real estate publication, the _Real
Estate News_, presenting with unusual force an aspect of the neighborhood
dispute favorable to the contention of the Negroes. This was seized
upon by the Protective Circle, and the editor consented to elaborate it.
Twenty-five thousand copies were distributed among Negroes and whites,
residents of the district.
The heading "Solving Chicago's Race Problem," coupled with the fact that
the article had first appeared in a real estate periodical published by
whites, immediately attracted attention. The subheadings of the article
read: "South Side Property Owners Warned against Perils of Boycott
and Terrorism Being Promoted by Local 'Protective Associations,'"
"Conspiracies Violating Civil Rights Act Bring Danger of Heavy Damages
or Imprisonment," "A Complete Analysis of Chicago's Race Movement Proves
It to Be Small Factor in Causing Great Changes in Residential Values,"
and "How Influence of Stock Yards, Railroads, Auto Industry and City
Growth Force Big and Sweeping Changes on South Side of Chicago." One
paragraph of the article, printed in italics, ran:
Any association formed in Chicago for the purpose of, or having
among its aims, refusal to sell, lease or rent property to
any citizen of a certain race, is an unlawful association.
Every act of such an association for advancement of such an
aim is an act of conspiracy, punishable criminally and civilly
in the District Court of the United States. And every member
of such an association is equally guilty with every other
member. If one member hires a bomber, or a thug who commits
murder in pursuance of the aims of the association, all in
the organization may be found guilty of conspiracy to destroy
property or to commit murder, as the case may be.
At a mass meeting held by the Protective Circle at which there were
2,000 Negroes present, $1,000 was collected to advance this propaganda.
As the chairman of the meeting stated:
We wanted to get at the responsibility for these bombings and
intimidations, and we intended to give publicity to the Negro's
side of the story. Papers will not print the Negro's story.
We wanted to get this survey of white and colored property
owned, and whites and Negroes bombed, and send it to every
white person living in Kenwood, and just as we were about to
start on our task, there came like a flash out of the sky
an article by the editor of the _Real Estate News_. It was
a godsend. We have secured thousands of copies of this paper
and are buying more as fast as we can get funds. We intend to
send copies to every white person interested in this question.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The inquiries of this Commission into racial sentiments which characterize
the opinions and behavior of white persons toward Negroes lead us to
the following conclusions:
That in seeking advice and information about Negroes, white persons
almost without exception fail to select for their informants Negroes
who are representative and can provide dependable information.
That Negroes as a group are often judged by the manners, conduct, and
opinions of servants in families, or other Negroes whose general standing
and training do not qualify them to be spokesmen of the group.
That the principal literature regarding Negroes is based upon traditional
opinions and does not always portray accurately the present status of
the group.
Most of the current beliefs concerning Negroes are traditional, and
were acquired during an earlier period when Negroes were considerably
less intelligent and responsible than now. Failure to change these
opinions, in spite of the great progress of the Negro group, increases
misunderstandings and the difficulties of mutual adjustment.
That the common disposition to regard all Negroes as belonging to one
homogeneous group is as great a mistake as to assume that all white
persons are of the same class and kind.
That much of the current literature and pseudo-scientific treatises
concerning Negroes are responsible for such prevailing misconceptions
as: that Negroes have inferior mentality; that Negroes have inferior
morality; that Negroes are given to emotionalism; that Negroes have an
innate tendency to commit crimes, especially sex crimes.
We believe that such deviations from recognized standards as have been
apparent among Negroes are due to circumstances of position rather than
to distinct racial traits. We urge especially upon white persons to exert
their efforts toward discrediting stories and standing beliefs concerning
Negroes which have no basis in fact but which constantly serve to keep
alive a spirit of mutual fear, distrust, and opposition.
That much of the literature and scientific treatises concerning Negroes
are responsible for such prevailing misconceptions as that Negroes are
capable of mental and moral development only to an inferior degree, are
given to an uncontrolled emotionalism, and have a distinctive innate
tendency to commit crimes, especially sex crimes.
CHAPTER XI
SUMMARY OF THE REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION
THE SUMMARY
I. THE CHICAGO RIOT
1. BACKGROUND
In July, 1919, a race riot involving whites and Negroes occurred in
Chicago. For some time thoughtful citizens, white and Negro, had sensed
increasing tension, but, having no local precedent of riot and wholesale
bloodshed, had neither prepared themselves for it nor taken steps to
prevent it. The collecting of arms by members of both races was known
to the authorities, and it was evident that this was in preparation for
aggression as well as for self-defense.
Several minor clashes preceded the riot. On July 3, 1917, a white
saloon-keeper who, according to the coroner's physician, died of heart
trouble, was incorrectly reported in the press to have been killed by a
Negro. That evening a party of young white men riding in an automobile
fired upon a group of Negroes at Fifty-third and Federal streets. In
July and August of the same year recruits from the Great Lakes Naval
Training Station clashed frequently with Negroes, each side accusing
the other of being the aggressor.
Gangs of white "toughs," made up largely of the membership of so-called
"athletic clubs" from the neighborhood between Roosevelt Road and
Sixty-third Street, Wentworth Avenue and the city limits--a district
contiguous to the neighborhood of the largest Negro settlement--were a
constant menace to Negroes who traversed sections of the territory going
to and returning from work. The activities of these gangs and "athletic
clubs" became bolder in the spring of 1919, and on the night of June
21, five weeks before the riot, two wanton murders of Negroes occurred,
those of Sanford Harris and Joseph Robinson. Harris returning to his home
on Dearborn Street, about 11:30 at night, passed a group of young white
men. They threatened him and he ran. He had gone but a short distance
when one of the group shot him. He died soon afterward. Policemen who
came on the scene made no arrests, even when the assailant was pointed
out by a white woman witness of the murder. On the same evening Robinson,
a Negro laborer, forty-seven years of age, was attacked while returning
from work by a gang of white "roughs" at Fifty-fifth Street and Princeton
Avenue, apparently without provocation, and stabbed to death.
Negroes were greatly incensed over these murders, but their leaders,
joined by many friendly whites, tried to allay their fears and counseled
patience.
After the killing of Harris and Robinson notices were conspicuously
posted on the South Side that an effort would be made to "get all the
niggers on July 4th." The notices called for help from sympathizers.
Negroes in turn whispered around the warning to prepare for a riot; and
they did prepare.
Since the riot in East St. Louis, July 4, 1917, there had been others
in different parts of the country which evidenced a widespread lack
of restraint in mutual antipathies and suggested further resorts to
lawlessness. Riots and race clashes occurred in Chester, Pennsylvania;
Longview, Texas; Coatesville, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk,
Virginia, before the Chicago riot.
Aside from general lawlessness and disastrous riots that preceded the riot
here discussed, there were other factors which may be mentioned briefly
here. In Chicago considerable unrest had been occasioned in industry
by increasing competition between white and Negro laborers following a
sudden increase in the Negro population due to the migration of Negroes
from the South. This increase developed a housing crisis. The Negroes
overran the hitherto recognized area of Negro residence, and when they
took houses in adjoining neighborhoods friction ensued. In the two years
just preceding the riot, twenty-seven Negro dwellings were wrecked by
bombs thrown by unidentified persons.
2. STORY OF THE RIOT
Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1919, hundreds of white and Negro bathers
crowded the lake-front beaches at Twenty-sixth and Twenty-ninth streets.
This is the eastern boundary of the thickest Negro residence area. At
Twenty-sixth Street Negroes were in great majority; at Twenty-ninth
Street there were more whites. An imaginary line in the water separating
the two beaches had been generally observed by the two races. Under the
prevailing relations, aided by wild rumors and reports, this line served
virtually as a challenge to either side to cross it. Four Negroes who
attempted to enter the water from the "white" side were driven away by
the whites. They returned with more Negroes, and there followed a series
of attacks with stones, first one side gaining the advantage, then the
other.
Eugene Williams, a Negro boy of seventeen, entered the water from the
side used by Negroes and drifted across the line supported by a railroad
tie. He was observed by the crowd on the beach and promptly became
a target for stones. He suddenly released the tie, went down and was
drowned. Guilt was immediately placed on Stauber, a young white man, by
Negro witnesses who declared that he threw the fatal stone.[103]
White and Negro men dived for the boy without result. Negroes demanded
that the policeman present arrest Stauber. He refused; and at this
crucial moment arrested a Negro on a white man's complaint. Negroes then
attacked the officer. These two facts, the drowning and the refusal of
the policeman to arrest Stauber, together marked the beginning of the
riot.
Two hours after the drowning, a Negro, James Crawford, fired into a group
of officers summoned by the policeman at the beach and was killed by a
Negro policeman. Reports and rumors circulated rapidly, and new crowds
began to gather. Five white men were injured in clashes near the beach. As
darkness came Negroes in white districts to the west suffered severely.
Between 9:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. twenty-seven Negroes were beaten, seven
stabbed, and four shot. Monday morning was quiet, and Negroes went to
work as usual.
Returning from work in the afternoon many Negroes were attacked by white
ruffians. Street-car routes, especially at transfer points, were the
centers of lawlessness. Trolleys were pulled from the wires, and Negro
passengers were dragged into the street, beaten, stabbed, and shot.
The police were powerless to cope with these numerous assaults. During
Monday, four Negro men and one white assailant were killed, and thirty
Negroes were severely beaten in street-car clashes. Four white men were
killed, six stabbed, five shot, and nine severely beaten. It was rumored
that the white occupants of the Angelus Building at Thirty-fifth Street
and Wabash Avenue had shot a Negro. Negroes gathered about the building.
The white tenants sought police protection, and one hundred policemen,
mounted and on foot, responded. In a clash with the mob the police killed
four Negroes and injured many.
Raids into the Negro residence area then began. Automobiles sped through
the streets, the occupants shooting at random. Negroes retaliated by
"sniping" from ambush. At midnight surface and elevated car service was
discontinued because of a strike for wage increases, and thousands of
employees were cut off from work.
On Tuesday, July 29, Negro men en route on foot to their jobs through
hostile territory were killed. White soldiers and sailors in uniform,
aided by civilians, raided the "Loop" business section, killing two
Negroes and beating and robbing several others. Negroes living among
white, neighbors in Englewood, far to the south, were driven from their
homes, their household goods were stolen, and their houses were burned
or wrecked. On the West Side an Italian mob, excited by a false rumor
that an Italian girl had been shot by a Negro, killed Joseph Lovings,
a Negro.
Wednesday night at 10:30 Mayor Thompson yielded to pressure and asked
the help of the three regiments of militia which had been stationed in
nearby armories during the most severe rioting, awaiting the call. They
immediately took up positions throughout the South Side. A rainfall
Wednesday night and Thursday kept many people in their homes, and by
Friday the rioting had abated. On Saturday incendiary fires burned
forty-nine houses in the immigrant neighborhood west of the Stock Yards.
Nine hundred and forty-eight people, mostly Lithuanians, were made
homeless, and the property loss was about $250,000. Responsibility for
the fires was never fixed.
The total casualties of this reign of terror were thirty-eight
deaths--fifteen white, twenty-three Negro--and 537 people injured.
Forty-one per cent of the reported clashes occurred in the white
neighborhood near the Stock Yards between the south branch of the Chicago
River and Fifty-fifth Street, Wentworth Avenue and the city limits, and
34 per cent in the "Black Belt" between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth
streets, Wentworth Avenue and Lake Michigan. Others were scattered.
Responsibility for many attacks was definitely placed by many witnesses
upon the "athletic clubs," including "Ragen's Colts," the "Hamburgers,"
"Aylwards," "Our Flag," the "Standard," the "Sparklers," and several
others. The mobs were made up for the most part of boys between fifteen
and twenty-two. Older persons participated, but the youth of the rioters
was conspicuous in every clash. Little children witnessed the brutalities
and frequently pointed out the injured when the police arrived.
3. RUMORS AND THE RIOT
Wild rumors were in circulation by word of mouth and in the press
throughout the riot and provoked many clashes. These included stories
of atrocities committed by one race against the other. Reports of the
numbers of white and Negro dead tended to produce a feeling that the
score must be kept even. Newspaper reports, for example, showed 6 per
cent more whites injured than Negroes. As a matter of fact there were
28 per cent more Negroes injured than whites. The _Chicago Tribune_ on
July 29 reported twenty persons killed, of whom thirteen were white and
seven colored. The true figures were exactly the opposite.
Among the rumors provoking fear were numerous references to the arming
of Negroes. In the _Daily News_ of July 30, for example, appeared the
subheadline: "Alderman Jos. McDonough tells how he was shot at on South
Side visit. Says enough ammunition in section to last for years of
guerrilla warfare." In the article following, the reference to ammunition
was repeated but not elaborated or explained.
The alderman was quoted as saying that the mayor contemplated opening
up Thirty-fifth and Forty-seventh streets in order that colored people
might get to their work. He thought this would be most unwise for, he
stated, "They are armed and white people are not. We must defend ourselves
if the city authorities won't protect us." Continuing his story, he
described bombs going off: "I saw white men and women running through
the streets dragging children by the hands and carrying babies in their
arms. Frightened white men told me the police captains had just rushed
through the district crying, 'For God's sake, arm; they are coming; we
cannot hold them.'"
Whether or not the alderman was correctly quoted, the effect of such
statements on the public was the same. There is no record in any of the
riot testimony in the coroner's office or state's attorney's office of
any bombs going off during the riot, nor of police captains warning the
white people to arm, nor of any fear by whites of a Negro invasion. In
the Berger Odman case before a coroner's jury there was a statement to
the effect that a sergeant of police warned the Negroes of Ogden Park to
arm and to shoot at the feet of rioters if they attempted to invade the
few blocks marked off for Negroes by the police. Negroes were warned,
not whites.
4. CONDUCT OF THE POLICE
Chief of Police John J. Garrity, in explaining the inability of the
police to curb the rioters, said that there was not a sufficient force
to police one-third of the city. Aside from this, Negroes distrusted
the white police officers, and it was implied by the chief and stated
by State's Attorney Hoyne, that many of the police were "grossly unfair
in making arrests." There were instances of actual police participation
in the rioting as well as neglect of duty. Of 229 persons arrested and
accused of various criminal activities during the riot, 154 were Negroes
and seventy-five were whites. Of those indicted, eighty-one were Negroes
and forty-seven were whites. Although this, on its face, would indicate
great riot activity on the part of Negroes, further reports of clashes
show that of 520 persons injured, 342 were Negroes and 178 were whites.
The fact that twice as many Negroes appeared as defendants and twice as
many Negroes as whites were injured, leads to the conclusion that whites
were not apprehended as readily as Negroes.
Many of the depredations outside the "Black Belt" were encouraged by the
absence of policemen. Out of a force of 3,000 police, 2,800 were massed
in the "Black Belt" during the height of the rioting. In the "Loop"
district, where two Negroes were killed and several others wounded, there
were only three policemen and one sergeant. The Stock Yards district,
where the greatest number of injuries occurred, was also weakly protected.
5. THE MILITIA
Although Governor Lowden had ordered the militia into the city promptly
and they were on hand on the second day of the rioting, their services
were not requested by the mayor and chief of police until the evening
of the fourth day. The reason expressed by the chief for this delay
was a belief that inexperienced militiamen would add to the deaths
and disorder. But the troops, when called, proved to be clearly of
high character, and their discipline was good, not a case of breach of
discipline being reported during their occupation. They were distributed
more proportionately through all the riotous areas than the police and,
although they reported some hostility from members of "athletic clubs,"
the rioting soon ceased.
6. RESTORATION OF ORDER
Throughout the rioting various social organizations and many citizens
were at work trying to hold hostilities in check and to restore order.
The Chicago Urban League, Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A., American Red Cross,
and various other social organizations and the churches of the Negro
community gave attention to caring for stranded Negroes, advising them
of dangers, keeping them off the streets and, in such ways as were
possible, co-operating with the police. The packing companies took their
pay to Negro employees, and various banks made loans. Local newspapers in
their editorial columns insistently condemned the disorder and counseled
calmness.
7. THE AFTERMATH
Of the thirty-eight persons killed in the riot:
Fifteen met death at the hands of mobs. Coroner's juries recommended
that the members of the unknown mobs be apprehended. They were never
found.
Six were killed in circumstances fixing no criminal responsibility: three
white men were killed by Negroes in self-defense, and three Negroes were
shot by policemen in the discharge of their duty.
Four Negroes were killed in the Angelus riot. The coroner made no
recommendations, and the cases were not carried farther.
Four cases, two Negro and two white, resulted in recommendations from
coroner's juries for further investigation of certain persons. Sufficient
evidence was lacking for indictments against them.
Nine cases led to indictments. Of this number four cases resulted in
convictions.
Thus in only four cases of death was criminal responsibility fixed and
punishment meted out.
Indictments and convictions, divided according to the race of the persons
criminally involved, were as follows:
================================================
| NEGRO | WHITE
+-------+---------+-------+---------
| Cases | Persons | Cases | Persons
------------+-------+---------+-------+---------
Indictments | 6 | 17 | 3 | 4
Convictions | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2
------------+-------+---------+-------+---------
Despite the community's failure to deal firmly with those who disturbed
its peace and contributed to the reign of lawlessness that shamed Chicago
before the world, there is evidence that the riot aroused many citizens
of both races to a quickened sense of the suffering and disgrace which
had come and might again come to the city, and developed a determination
to prevent a recurrence of so disastrous an outbreak of race hatred.
This was manifest on at least three occasions in 1920 when, confronted
suddenly with events out of which serious riots might easily have grown,
people of both races acted with such courage and promptness as to end
the trouble early. One of these was the murder of two innocent white
men and the wounding of a Negro policeman by a band of Negro fanatics
who styled themselves "Abyssinians"; another was the killing of a white
man by a Negro whom he had attacked while returning from work; and still
another was the riotous attacks of sailors from the Great Lakes Naval
Training Station on Negroes in Waukegan, Illinois.
8. OUTSTANDING FEATURES OF THE RIOT
This study of the facts of the riot of 1919, the events as they happened
hour by hour, the neighborhoods involved, the movements of mobs, the
part played by rumors, and the handling of the emergency by the various
authorities, shows certain outstanding features which may be listed as
follows:
_a_) The riot violence was not continuous hour by hour, but was
intermittent.
_b_) The greatest number of injuries occurred in the district west and
inclusive of Wentworth Avenue, and south of the south branch of the
Chicago River to Fifty-fifth Street, or in the Stock Yards district. The
next greatest number occurred in the so-called "Black Belt": Twenty-second
to Thirty-ninth streets, inclusive, and Wentworth Avenue to the lake,
exclusive of Wentworth Avenue; Thirty-ninth to Fifty-fifth streets,
inclusive, and Clark Street to Michigan Avenue, exclusive of Michigan
Avenue.
_c_) Organized raids occurred only after a period of sporadic clashes
and spontaneous mob outbreaks.
_d_) Main thoroughfares witnessed 76 per cent of the injuries on the
South Side. The streets which suffered most severely were State, Halsted,
Thirty-first, Thirty-fifth, and Forty-seventh. Transfer corners were
always centers of disturbances.
_e_) Most of the rioting occurred after work hours among idle crowds on
the streets. This was particularly true after the street-car strike began.
_f_) Gangs, particularly of young whites, formed definite nuclei for
crowd and mob formation. "Athletic clubs" supplied the leaders of many
gangs.
_g_) Crowds and mobs engaged in rioting were generally composed of a
small nucleus of leaders and an acquiescing mass of spectators. The
leaders were mostly young men, usually between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-one. Dispersal was most effectively accomplished by sudden,
unexpected gun fire.
_h_) Rumor kept the crowds in an excited, potential mob state. The press
was responsible for giving wide dissemination to much of the inflammatory
matter in spoken rumors, though editorials calculated to allay race
hatred and help the forces of order were factors in the restoration of
peace.
_i_) The police lacked sufficient forces for handling the riot; they were
hampered by the Negroes' distrust of them; routing orders and records
were not handled with proper care; certain officers were undoubtedly
unsuited to police or riot duty.
_j_) The militiamen employed in this riot were of an unusually high type.
This unquestionably accounts for the confidence placed in them by both
races. Riot training, definite orders, and good staff work contributed
to their efficiency.
_k_) There was a lack of energetic co-operation between the police
department and the state's attorney's office in the discovery and
conviction of rioters.
The riot was merely a symptom of serious and profound disorders lying
beneath the surface of race relations in Chicago. The study of the riot,
therefore, as to its interlocking provocations and causes, required a
study of general race relations that made possible so serious and sudden
an outbreak. Thus to understand the riot and guard against another,
the Commission probed systematically into the principal phases of race
contact and sought accurate information on matters which in the past
have been influenced by dangerous speculation; and on the basis of its
discoveries certain suggestions to the community are made.
II. THE MIGRATION OF NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH
During the period 1916-18 approximately 500,000 Negroes moved from
southern to northern states. Some cities of the North received increases
in Negro population of 10 per cent to 300 per cent. The Negro population
of Gary, Indiana, increased from 383 in 1910 to 5,299 in 1920, an increase
of 1,283 per cent.
Chicago was in direct line for migrants from the South, especially
along the Mississippi Valley, and received approximately 65,000, who
constituted a large proportion of the increase of 148.5 per cent in
its Negro population in the last decade. These migrants definitely
accentuated existing problems of race contact and brought new problems
of adjustment and assimilation. Southern Negroes with southern manners,
habits, and traditions, and mostly from rural districts, became part of
a northern urban community. Knowledge of the causes of this movement of
Negroes will make easier an understanding of the difficulties following
it. These causes were economic as well as sentimental.
The South was paying to Negroes wages which varied from 75 cents a day
on a farm to $1.75 a day in certain city jobs. For two seasons the boll
weevil, a destructive pest, had been making heavy ravages upon the cotton
crops, ruining thousands of farms and throwing out of employment many
thousands of Negro workers. Lack of capital to carry labor through a
period of poor crops and over the normal intervals between planting and
harvesting largely increased Negro unemployment. Unsatisfactory living
conditions, on plantations and in segregated quarters of southern cities,
stimulated unrest. School facilities for Negro children, described as
lamentably poor even by southerners, increased dissatisfaction with
conditions in the South. The Negro illiteracy in fifteen southern
states was 33.3 per cent as compared with 7.7 per cent for whites. The
appropriations for teachers in the schools of these states on a per
capita basis was $10.32 for each white child, and $2.89 for each Negro
child.
On the other hand, the North was for the first time on a large scale
opening up opportunities for Negroes to earn a livelihood. The cessation
of immigration due to the war and the drawing of workers into military
service created a great demand for labor; and the opening of new
industries and the extension of old ones to meet the demands of the war
provided still greater opportunities. At the same time, these industries
were paying laborers from $3 to $8 per day, and offering shorter hours
and the opportunity for overtime work and bonuses. The North also offered
living accommodations which, although below standard for city dwellers,
were a vast improvement over most of the plantation cabins and frail
frame dwellings of the South. There are no segregated schools in the
North, and Negro children are offered identical school privileges with
white children.
Other causes of the migration, as stated by the migrants and otherwise
confirmed, were: lack of protection from mob violence, injustice in the
courts, inferior transportation facilities, deprivation of the right to
vote, "rough-handed and unfair competition of 'poor whites,'" "persecution
by petty officers of the law," and "persecution by the press."
Between 1895 and 1918, 2,881 Negroes were lynched in the United States,
and more than 85 per cent of these lynchings occurred in the South. The
_Atlanta Constitution_ declared that the heaviest migration of Negroes
was from those counties in which there had been the worst outbreaks
against Negroes.
_How the migration began._--The migration began early in 1916.
Hard-pressed industries in the East, principally in Pennsylvania, imported
Negroes from Georgia and Florida. During July of that year, 13,000 were
carried to Pennsylvania by one railroad company alone.[104] They wrote
back for their families and friends. Reports of high wages and good
treatment, aided by the hysteria of a mass movement, accomplished the
rest.
The migration was first noted in Chicago in 1917. It had been rumored
in the South that the Stock Yards needed 50,000 men; the city had
been regarded by Negroes as a future home since the World's Columbian
Exposition in 1893; it was the great city of mail-order houses, the home
of the _Chicago Defender_, a widely circulated Negro newspaper, the "end
of the railroad line," and the "top of the world" for Negroes. Negro
newspapers gave up their columns to migration news and urged southern
Negroes to go North. The movement soon became a mass movement; with
standards, songs, and watchwords the migrants began arriving in the city
faster than they could be absorbed into the population.
_The arrival in Chicago._--Prior to the migration, the majority of
Negroes in Chicago lived in a fairly limited area on the South Side,
principally between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth streets, Wentworth
Avenue and State Street, and in scattered groups east of State Street
to Cottage Grove Avenue. This area adjoined the old vice area, and many
houses of the vicinity had been abandoned by older Chicago Negroes.
Shortly after the migrants began to arrive, practically all available
houses had been taken and filled to overcrowding. On a single day the
Chicago Urban League found 664 Negro applicants for houses with only
fifty-five dwellings actually available for use by Negroes. At the same
time rents for Negroes were increased by from 5 to 50 per cent.
Meeting actual conditions of life in Chicago brought both exaltation and
disillusionment to the migrants. These were reflected in the schools,
in public amusement places, in industry, and in the street cars. The
Chicago Urban League and the various Negro churches and newspapers
assumed the task of making the newcomers "city folk." The difficulty of
adjustment showed itself in the great differences in habits of life and
employment. Craftsmen had to relearn their trades when thrown amid the
highly specialized processes of northern industries; domestic servants
went into industry; professional men had to re-establish themselves in
a new community.
Many Negroes sold their homes in the South and brought their furniture
with them. Reinvesting in property frequently meant a loss; the furniture
brought was often found to be unsuited to the tiny apartments or the
large abandoned dwellings that they were able to rent or buy.
Change of residence carried with it in many cases change of status.
The "leader" in a small southern community when he came to Chicago was
immediately absorbed into the great, struggling mass of unnoticed workers.
School teachers, male and female, whose positions in the South held
commendable prestige, had to go to work in factories and plants because
the disparity in educational standards would not permit a continuation
of their profession in Chicago.
The migrants visited by the Commission investigators, however, for the
most part gave evidence of satisfaction with their change of home, and
were pleased with the opportunity of voting, of sending their children
to schools, and of higher wages, and with the privilege of participation
in community life. Others felt the pressure of high rents and bad living
accommodations and complained against certain discriminations.
The fact is, however, that few Negroes have returned to the South, even
in response to insistent invitations and offers of free transportation
and better home conditions made by southern states that were left badly
in need of laborers as a result of the migration.
III. THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO
1. DISTRIBUTION AND DENSITY
The Negro population of Chicago, as reported by the Federal Bureau of the
Census, was 44,103 in 1910, and 109,594 in 1920. The increase during the
decade was, therefore, 65,491, or 148.5 per cent. Negroes constituted
2 per cent of the city's total population in 1910 and 4.1 per cent in
1920. The increase in the white population during the decade was 450,047,
or 21 per cent, bringing the number up to 2,589,104 in 1920. Counting
3,007 Chinese, Japanese, and Indians of whom there were 2,123 in 1910,
Chicago's total population in 1920 was 2,701,705.
This growth of the Negro population did not bring into existence any new
large colonies of Negroes, but merely expanded and increased the density
of areas in which they already lived. The areas of Negro residence are
listed under designations arbitrarily given for convenient reference.[105]
1920
SOUTH SIDE
Roosevelt Road--Fifty-fifth St.; Wentworth Ave.--Cottage Grove Ave.
Population: total, 376,171; Negro, 92,901.
_Woodlawn_
Sixty-first St.--Sixty-seventh St.; Eberhart Ave.--Grand Blvd.
Population: total, 8,861; Negro, 1,235.
_Lake Park Avenue Area_
Fifty-third St.--Fifty-seventh St.; Harper Ave.--Lake Park Ave.
Population: Negro, 238.
_Ogden Park Area_
Fifty-ninth St.--Sixty-third St.; Halsted St.--Loomis Blvd.
Population: total, 38,893; Negro, 1,859.
NORTH SIDE
North Ave.--Chicago Ave.; State St.--Larrabee St.
Population: Negro, 1,050.
_Ravenswood_
Lawrence Ave.--Montrose Ave.; Sheridan Road--Ashland Ave.
Population: Negro, 175.
WEST SIDE
Austin Ave.--Washington Ave.; Morgan St.--California Ave.
Population: Negro, 8,363.
MORGAN PARK AREA
107th St.--115th St.; Loomis St.--Vincennes Ave.
Population: Negro, 695.
2. NEIGHBORHOODS OF NEGRO RESIDENCE
_The South Side._--While the main colony of Chicago's Negro population
is located in a central part of the South Side, Negroes are to be found
in several parts of the city, ranging from less than 1 per cent to more
than 95 per cent in proportion to the total population. In some of these
neighborhoods whites and Negroes have become adjusted to one another; in
others they have not. One of these adjusted areas is the so-called "Black
Belt." Because 90 per cent of the Negroes of Chicago live there, it is
usually assumed that the area is 90 per cent Negro. The fact is very
different. The most densely populated section of the South Side area,
between Roosevelt Road and Thirty-ninth Street, Wentworth Avenue and Lake
Michigan, has a population of 54,906 Negroes and 42,797 whites. There
has been no noticeable friction in this area; and even during the riot
few whites living or engaged in business there were molested by Negroes.
Most of the whites killed or injured there came from other sections of
the city. The many large apartment houses and family hotels occupied
by whites are apparently little affected by the presence about them of
many Negroes. Relations in Woodlawn, where the Negro increase has been
relatively large, are for the most part friendly. No clashes have been
reported except in the one instance of a group of white boys who threw
stones at a building in which they saw Negroes. When they were arrested
it developed that they had come from another neighborhood. Following
the stirring up and organization of anti-Negro sentiment in Hyde Park,
an attempt was made to organize white Woodlawn property owners against
the "invasion" of the district by Negroes. This organization was not a
very great success. There have been no bombings in this district, and
no concerted opposition to the presence of Negroes as neighbors. Long,
amicable residence together and the good character of the Negroes as
well as the whites are probably important reasons for the absence of
friction. And it also should be said that in the Woodlawn district the
proportion of Negroes is so small that there has been no occasion for
much controversy over an alleged depreciation of property values on
account of Negro occupancy.
_The West Side._--On the West Side there has been a settlement of
Negroes for many years. Houses are cheaper there than on the South Side;
and although the general level of ordinary workingmen's homes compares
favorably with that on the South Side, there are few abandoned residences
formerly occupied by wealthy persons now available for Negroes. There has
been little friction within this area, in which 9,221 whites and 6,520
Negroes live. West Side Negroes, laborers for the most part, are generally
home-loving, hard-working people, desirous of improving conditions for
their children. Older settlers among them have been able to make their
adjustments without great difficulty, meeting with no serious antagonism
from white neighbors.
_The North Side._--On the North Side, Negroes live among foreign whites
and near a residential area of wealthy Chicagoans. The appearance of
the first Negro residents there occasioned little notice or objection.
They were for the most part house servants living near their work.
This neighborhood has experienced several complete changes in population.
It was first occupied by Irish, then by Swedes, then by Italians, who
are the present neighbors of Negroes. Friendly relations exist between
the Sicilians, who predominate, and their Negro neighbors. Some Negroes
live harmoniously in the same tenements with Sicilians. Their children
play together, and some of the Negro children have learned Sicilian
phrases so that they are able to deal with the Sicilian shopkeepers.
Elsewhere on the North Side the feeling between Italians and Negroes is
not so cordial.
_Non-adjusted neighborhoods._--In other sections the failure of Negro
and white neighbors to adjust themselves mutually has produced the most
serious phases of the Negro housing problem. A general housing shortage
may be relieved by the opening of new neighborhoods or the availability
of houses in various parts of the city, but for Negroes there is less
opportunity for thus relieving the housing shortage because of the
hostility of many white neighborhoods to the presence of Negroes.
White residents immediately south of the old West Side Negro residence
area objected to the moving in of Negroes, sending numerous threatening
letters to the newcomers and otherwise annoying them. In certain sections
of the North Side, Negro residents have been molested. On one occasion
shots were fired at their homes, and at other times warning signs with
pictures of skulls, crossbones, and coffins were posted. In the Lake
Park Avenue area on the South Side, Negroes are limited to a few blocks,
are not permitted to buy, and are discriminated against in practically
all restaurants and amusement places.
West of Wentworth Avenue, adjoining the South Side Negro residence area,
few Negroes live. The residents here are largely Irish working people and
distinctly hostile to Negroes, even to those merely passing through the
neighborhood. This area has many organized gangs and "athletic clubs,"
and its racial antagonisms appear to be traditional.
In Park Manor and Wakeford, between Sixty-ninth and Seventy-ninth
streets, Cottage Grove and Indiana avenues, excitement was created in
a new white settlement by an advertisement in a local paper addressed
to Negroes offering them houses there. The name of a white real estate
dealer living there was given. A demonstration followed, meetings were
held, and the real estate man was asked to explain. He asserted, and
it seems to have been the case, that the advertisement was the "spite
work" of an enemy.
Kenwood and Hyde Park: The neighborhood between Thirty-ninth and
Fifty-ninth streets, State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, just south
of the Negro residence area, has been termed a "contested neighborhood,"
because of the recent influx of Negroes. The "Black Belt" was already
overcrowded, and its occupants were seeking relief from deteriorated and
insufficient housing. The coming of thousands of Negroes from the South
made it overflow. With Lake Michigan flanking the east, encroaching
industry the north, and overcrowded, hostile neighborhoods the west,
the overflow inevitably went south into the west portion of Hyde Park
and Kenwood. Scattered through the South Side were numerous houses
and apartments that had been vacant for many years; and sales were
gladly made to the Negroes, many of the recent southern migrants having
considerable funds. In 1919, of the 3,300 owners of property in the region
embracing parts of Kenwood and Hyde Park and adjacent territory, 1,000
were Negroes. Already a popular agitation against the Negroes had been
begun by real estate men who formed the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property
Owners' Association. They increased and organized the prejudice against
the Negroes in a campaign "to make Hyde Park white." They held meetings,
published a weekly newspaper, and called upon property owners and other
real estate dealers to pledge themselves against renting or selling to
Negroes. In carrying out their program, they resorted to vilification,
ridicule, and disparagement of Negroes, accusing them of destroying
property values and robbing white people of their homes.
_Outlying neighborhoods._--Few outlying places welcome Negroes as
residents. Morgan Park, however, has offered homes for Negroes, and the
Negro population there has increased from 126 in 1910 to 695 in 1920. They
live for the most part on one side of the town near their own churches;
they own their homes and keep them attractive. School accommodations
are poor, many children leaving school early for that reason.
Robbins, another suburb, is entirely Negro, having a Negro mayor. The
town is difficult to reach, unattractive, and uninviting. About 400
hard-working Negroes occupying seventy houses are trying to develop
a town against the handicaps of lack of capital, swampy lands, and
inaccessibility.
_Depreciation of property._--One of the strongest influences in creating
and fostering race antagonism in Chicago is the general belief among
whites that the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood inevitably and
alone depreciates the market value of real estate, and this belief is
commonly accepted as a valid reason for unfriendliness toward Negroes
as individuals and as a race. Therefore the Commission felt that it was
important to learn what basis there is for this belief.
The principal influence of Negroes upon property values in a neighborhood
is psychological, due to the deep-seated and general prejudice of whites
against Negroes, which begets and sustains the belief that Negroes
destroy property values wherever they go. The facts as ascertained by
the Commission show that Negro occupancy in a neighborhood is more often
due to a prior depreciation of the property there than the depreciation
is due to Negro occupancy; and that it is unfair to place the entire
responsibility for loss of property values in a neighborhood upon Negro
occupancy. In other sections of the city, where there are no Negroes,
depreciation of property values has been produced by contacts between
populations differing in race, religion, or social standards. Race
prejudice produces the present conditions of social injustice toward
the Negro, and uses the depreciation of property which it causes, as a
new ground for such racial prejudice.
In virtually every neighborhood in Chicago where Negroes now live they
were preceded by two or more distinct groups of occupants, and an earlier
and often long-continued depreciation of property values is one of the
explanations of their presence. This depreciation of values has come
from several causes, such as natural physical deterioration, vacation
of old and large houses through the death of their original occupants
or their removal to new neighborhoods, or the encroachments of vice, or
business, or factories, and the like. In this way Negroes have found an
opportunity to rent or buy at figures that were comparatively low and
within their limited means.
The extension of Negro occupancy into the district between State Street
and Lake Michigan and Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth streets followed
such an earlier depreciation; and later, similar conditions had similar
consequences in the district between State Street and Cottage Grove
Avenue and Thirty-ninth and Sixty-third streets, where there has been
the most active opposition to the Negro influx.
In the first named of these two districts there are now about 20 per
cent more Negroes than whites. During the eighties and nineties this
area embraced the most fashionable residence district in Chicago, and
almost the entire Negro population lived in the adjoining area on the
west--from State Street to Wentworth Avenue and north of Thirty-fifth
Street. When the fashionable people of this district began to move to
the North Side, the deserted section began to depreciate, and costly
houses recently occupied by wealthy owners were thrown upon the market
and began to pass through the hands of real estate dealers and into the
possession of people belonging to a different social class. Physical
deterioration also played its part. Between 1900 and 1910, when the
first Negroes moved into Wabash Avenue--one street nearer to the old
fashionable district--the houses were at least twenty years old and many
of them much older. Real estate men estimate the natural depreciation of
such buildings at from 2 to 2½ per cent per year; so that in many cases
property once exclusive and of a high class had depreciated at least 50
per cent before there was any prospect of Negro occupancy.
In 1912 the old vice area west of State Street and northwest of this
exclusive area was broken up. The inmates, numbering at that time more
than 2,000, moved into the nearest large houses available where they could
ply their trade clandestinely. They could afford high rents, and owners
and agents profited accordingly. Cabarets, cafés, and saloons sought the
side streets, and buffet flats were opened. Raids and prosecutions called
attention to the changed character of the neighborhood, and property
values sank still lower. Many buildings affected by this decline were
bought up by real estate speculators and sold to Negroes who were eager
for housing. One speculator bought more than 1,400 such houses.
Then came the automobile industries with their showrooms, gas stations,
manufacturing plants, and accessory shops, even invading the boulevards,
and the desirability of adjacent residence property still further
declined.
After the coming of the Negroes the depreciation continued. It was clear
that the character of the neighborhood had definitely changed. Negroes
were frequently unable to make the needed extensive repairs while they
were paying for their property. There are other instances in this area
where property not owned by Negroes declined in value chiefly because
of its neglect by landlords.
In the district west of Cottage Grove Avenue, adjacent to Hyde Park
proper, depreciation had proceeded in much the same manner. This
neighborhood was temporarily congested in the period of the World's
Columbian Exposition in 1893, and hotels and apartment houses were built
far in excess of normal needs. Real estate men of that district have made
much of this point, stating that many of the houses there had been vacant
as long as fifteen years. The first "undesirables" were not Negroes,
but other national or racial groups of whites who were objectionable
to the original residents. Several factors have combined to make this
section less and less desirable for residence purposes. It is close to
the Stock Yards, with their offensive odors; and railroads flank it on
both sides, with their smoke and noise. The coming of the automobile
industries, the opening of boarding-houses, the southward movement of
the vice element, all had their adverse effect on property values before
Negroes moved east of State Street.
The widespread and deep-seated racial prejudice among whites against
Negroes, heretofore mentioned as a psychological basis for the belief that
the presence of Negroes is disastrous to property values, is directly
reflected in the unwillingness of whites to buy property close to that
occupied by Negroes and in their desire to sell, even at a sacrifice, when
Negroes move into the immediate neighborhood. While frequently the demand
for property among Negroes financially able to buy has not been large
enough to absorb realty offered for sale because of the reasons given
here, there are, on the other hand, some neighborhoods where the Negro
demand has provided a market for property that had long been unmarketable,
and in these neighborhoods there has been some increase in the value of
such property. It should be noted that the understandable bitterness of
feeling on this question of Negro entrance into white residence districts
has been intensified in some cases through exploitation, by both white
and Negro real estate operators, of anti-Negro prejudice and fear of
loss on account of Negro occupancy.
In brief, Negro occupancy depreciates the value of residence property in
Chicago because of the social prejudice of white people against Negroes,
and because white people will not, and Negroes are financially unable
to buy at fair market prices property thrown upon the market when a
neighborhood begins to change from white to Negro occupancy; nevertheless,
a large part of the depreciation of residence property often charged to
Negro occupancy comes from entirely different causes.
_Financial aspects of Negro housing._--One difficulty of Negroes in
handling their own housing problem is the attitude of real estate
mortgage and loan concerns with respect to property tenanted or likely
to be tenanted by Negroes. Such property is assumed to be a bad risk,
and, as a consequence, Negroes are charged more than whites and find it
difficult to secure mortgages to assist in purchasing and are greatly
handicapped in their efforts to improve property. This situation has its
basis in various beliefs concerning Negroes that are often unwarranted.
It developed from the inquiries of the Commission that mortgage brokers
were influenced to a large degree by opinions of prospective buyers of
Negro mortgages, and these prospective buyers in turn were influenced
by beliefs for which there was little basis. It was assumed, for
example, that Negroes were unreliable in business dealings. Conferences
were held by the Commission with the real estate men who handled the
greatest portion of Negro property, and many other real estate men were
interviewed by the Commission's investigators. Their testimony indicated
a buying capacity far beyond what was expected and showed that Negroes
had a good record for meeting their obligations. One real estate man who
has made a large number of sales to Negroes, stated that in the whole
of his experience there had been but two forfeitures, and neither of
these was due to negligence or carelessness. An increasing tendency to
buy was noted. This was easily explained by other facts gathered by the
Commission which indicated that it was easier for Negroes to buy than
to rent property, that during the period of the migration hundreds of
dwellings were offered for sale to Negroes on long-term payment plans,
and that many migrants who had sold their homes, farms, and belongings
in the South came to the city prepared to make substantial payments on
property. Many Negroes now own houses valued at from $10,000 to $20,000,
and in one instance $30,000.
Regarding Negro habits of saving, inquiries were made at all the
principal banks of the city's business section and of the neighborhood
where Negroes live. Those who were able to check up on Negro depositors
reported large sums deposited and invested. One trust and savings bank
had Negro deposits of $1,500,000 and another of $1,000,000; one state
bank had $650,000 and another $150,000. A large banking institution in
the "Loop" district had 4,000 Negro depositors.
Opportunities for using their own capital to relieve their housing
problems were limited by lack of opportunities for obtaining business
experience. All the concerns questioned regarding the practicability
of employing Negroes in such institutions were of the opinion that it
would not meet with the favor of the other employees and patrons.
_Bombings._--The antagonistic sentiment attributable to the Negro housing
situation both incited and condoned the fifty-eight bombings of homes
committed between July 1, 1917, and March 1, 1921. In these bombings
two persons, a Negro girl and an infant, were killed, many whites and
Negroes were injured, and damage done to property amounted to more than
$100,000. Negroes who purchased or rented property and whites who sold
or leased it were bombed. Thirty-two bombs were exploded within the area
bounded by Forty-first and Sixtieth streets, Cottage Grove Avenue and
State Street. Although Negroes in some cases were warned of the exact
dates on which they were to be bombed, and policemen were sometimes
on duty at the places where bombs were exploded, only two arrests were
made. One of those arrested was immediately released and the other was
never brought to trial. Protests to the authorities from Negroes have
been without effect, and a strong feeling of insecurity and resentment
has developed among them. It appears from evidence presented to the
Commission that bombings have been systematically planned. Many white
residents, objecting to the violence suggested and used to keep out
Negroes, withdrew from the neighborhood protective organizations, fearing
that they might be held responsible for the resulting lawlessness.
These protective associations have denied responsibility and declared
that they used only legitimate methods, such as foreclosure of mortgages
and refusal to deal with Negroes. During the summer of 1920, they stated,
sixty-eight foreclosures were effected.
3. THE NEGRO COMMUNITY
The Negro community in Chicago is virtually a city within a city. It
affords opportunity to observe how it is accomplishing its own adjustment
to the larger community, and how it attempts to function in its own
behalf and for the betterment of the community at large.
Negroes have lived in Chicago since its founding. In fact, the first
settler, in 1778, was a Negro, Jean Baptiste Point de Saible. There
were Negro property owners at the time of the city's incorporation in
1837. Before the Chicago fire in 1871 they lived near what is now the
"Loop" business district, north of Harrison Street on Clark and Dearborn
streets and on Lake Street on the West Side. Their homes were burned in
1873, and after that they settled in the territory adjoining what later
became the "red light" district near Roosevelt Road.
_Organization of the Negro community._--Partly from necessity and partly
from choice, Negroes have established their own churches, business
enterprises, amusement places, social agencies, and newspapers. The number
of their business places increased from about 1,200 in 1919 to about
1,500 in 1920. There are 651 places of business operated by Negroes on
South State Street, and 549 on the principal cross streets. The majority
of these places are those rendering personal service--barber shops,
restaurants, hair-dressing parlors, and undertaking establishments.
There are also two banks.
Organizations for social intercourse are numerous, consisting principally
of churches, fraternal societies, and social clubs. There are 170
congregations holding services in church edifices and in "store-front"
churches. Olivet Baptist Church has more than 10,000 members, the largest
Negro church membership in the world. It employs sixteen paid workers,
and during the last five years has raised more than $200,000. These
churches are the principal center for "face-to-face" relations and aid
greatly in the process of adjusting Negroes to civic responsibilities.
Forty-nine of these congregations own property valued at fully a million
and a half dollars.
The social and civic agencies are expressions of the group effort to
adjust itself to the community. There are in the Negro community distinct
organizations of this kind designed especially for Negroes, and branches
of general agencies located conveniently for use by Negroes. Of the
former type the Chicago Urban League is the most notable example. This
organization is a clearing-house for social work among Negroes, and
its activities include social investigations, an industrial bureau, and
child welfare. It has an executive board and officers composed of both
whites and Negroes, and a highly efficient staff of Negro workers. During
1920 more than 25,000 Negroes were assisted through this organization.
Provident Hospital is another example of this type.
Of the latter type the Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A. is an example. It is a
branch of the city Y.M.C.A., and has adjusted itself to the peculiar
social problems of its membership and community. Other agencies are the
Community Service, Wendell Phillips Settlement on the West Side, Butler
Community Center on the North Side, Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls,
Home for the Aged and Infirm, Indiana Avenue Y.W.C.A., Elaine Home Club,
Julia Johnson Home for Girls, Hartzell Center, and Illinois Technical
School for Colored Girls (a Roman Catholic institution).
Of the general social agencies with branches convenient for Negroes
are the American Red Cross, United Charities, Municipal Tuberculosis
Sanitarium, Abraham Lincoln Center. Although some of these branches are
poorly supported and undermanned, they represent efforts of the community
to care for itself. During 1920 six social agencies and twenty-seven
churches raised among Negroes $445,000 for social-welfare work.
IV. RACIAL CONTACTS
The problems arising out of various occasions, both voluntary and
enforced, for race association in Chicago, have, for convenience, been
included in this report under the general classification of "racial
contacts." Attention is given to contacts in the public schools, in
public recreation places, on transportation lines, and in other relations
exclusive of industry and housing which require special treatment. Negroes
in Illinois are legally entitled to all the rights and privileges of
other citizens. Actually, however, their participation in public benefits
in practically every field is limited by some circumvention of the law.
1. CONTACTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The public schools furnish one of the most important points of contact
between the white and Negro races because of the daily association
of thousands of Negro and white children at an impressionable age.
The Chicago Board of Education makes no distinction between the races
and keeps no separate records. Certain schools, therefore, with white
American, Negro, and white foreign-born preponderances, were selected
for special study.
_Physical equipment of schools._--Twenty-two schools located in and
near areas of Negro residence were selected and visited. Of these only
five, or 23 per cent, have been built since 1900, and four of these
five schools are in regions where the Negro population is smallest. The
ten schools serving the largest percentage of Negroes were built, one
in 1856, one in 1867, seven between 1880 and 1889, and only one after
1890. Of the 235 schools attended almost wholly by whites, 133, or 56
per cent, were built after 1899. The old buildings will not accommodate
modern equipment and cannot be enlarged. The absence of modern buildings
is in part due to the old residence areas in which Negroes must live.
The gymnasiums in fifteen of these twenty-two schools of predominant
Negro attendance are poorly equipped, and in the other seven schools
there are none. Playground space is about the same in all the schools,
and there was no exceptional overcrowding in schools attended largely
by Negroes except in one case where by the "shift" system a double
attendance was made possible. In the schools of mixed attendance one
instance was conspicuous: Fuller School--a branch of Felsenthal which
is well equipped, and under the same principal, who is an advocate of
segregation--is in a neighborhood where the percentage of Negroes is the
same as that around Felsenthal, but it has no playground, is run down,
and neglected. Yet it has 90 per cent Negroes, while Felsenthal has 38
per cent. Unmanageable white children are sent to Fuller.
_Retardation._--The question of retardation[106] of Negro children is of
serious concern in race relations, since this fact is urged by advocates
of separate schools as an unnecessary handicap for white children and a
reason for segregation. Twenty-four schools were selected, with the aid
of the Board of Education: six attended mainly by Negroes, six mainly
by white Americans, and twelve mainly by children of immigrants. Of a
total of 34,593 children there were 18,230, or 53 per cent, retarded--the
same percentage as in the entire city; 10,250, or 30 per cent, normal;
and 5,910, or 17 per cent, accelerated. In the schools attended mainly
by white Americans, 49 per cent were retarded; in those attended mainly
by children of immigrants 49 per cent; and in those attended mainly by
Negroes 74 per cent. The percentage of retardation in schools attended
mainly by Negroes ranges from 57 to 80 per cent; in schools attended
mainly by children of immigrants from 32 to 71 per cent; and in schools
attended mainly by white Americans from 40 to 62 per cent.
Predominating causes of this retardation of Negro children, according to
the Board of Education's classification, are: "late entrance to school,"
"family difficulties," "fathers or mothers working," "lack of education
in parents." The majority of retarded Negro children are southerners, and
their retardation can be readily understood when the gross inadequacies
of southern schools for Negroes are considered.
Among the whites, late entrance, inability to speak English, ill health,
backwardness, and low mentality are the various causes. It is interesting
to note that while it is often maintained that Negroes are mentally
weak and incapable, classification of retardation figures according to
causes does not bear out that theory. Negro children retarded from "late
entrance" have made excellent records in attaining a normal rating, some
completing three grades in a year.
One hundred and sixteen Negro children were picked at random for an
intensive inquiry by the Commission into causes of retardation. Of these,
101 had been in school before coming to Chicago; and of the 101 children,
eighty had lived in the South and had gone to southern schools; those
born and educated in the North showed no greater rate of retardation than
the whites. For much of the retardation the school facilities for Negroes
in the South appear to be responsible. In Mississippi, for example, only
eighty days' schooling is required in counties that do not absolutely
reject the compulsory-education law. Other causes found were inadequate
care and instruction at home due to the ignorance of parents, mothers
working out, poor parental discipline, and the physical condition of
homes.
_Contact problems._--A wide variety of opinions was found among principals
and teachers concerning the relations of white and Negro children.
Several principals were distinctly antagonistic to Negroes, and in their
schools the race relations of the pupils were not cordial. The most
important factor in determining the attitude of teachers as well as of
pupils was the attitude of principals. Kindergarten teachers found a
natural, pleasant relationship existing between the young white and Negro
children. As children grew older they became more race conscious, and in
the high schools friction frequently arose from race groupings in class
and social organizations. Negro teachers are assigned to schools attended
by both Negroes and immigrants, and apparently have no difficulties with
pupils or parents. Difficulties and bad feeling have been provoked by
the disposition of certain white teachers to adapt their instruction in
accordance with their assumptions concerning Negroes' mental and emotional
characteristics, putting stress on singing and handicraft instead of on
basic studies in arithmetic and grammar.
2. RECREATION
In its investigation of recreation places, the Commission listed 127
parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, and beaches under the supervision
of the Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches, and
of the South Park, West Park, and Lincoln Park commissions. Of these,
thirty-seven are in or near Negro areas. Though this figure represents a
fairly adequate distribution, it is not an accurate picture. Twenty-three
of these places are playgrounds attached to schools, fourteen being in,
and nine near, Negro areas; and only thirteen have more than 10 per
cent use by Negroes. Three bathing-beaches are within, and two near,
Negro areas, while only one has more than 10 per cent use by Negroes.
There are seven recreation centers near Negro areas, none within, and
only one with more than 10 per cent use by Negroes. Armour Square, for
example, is a recreation center bordering on the area of the largest Negro
population; but the hostility of whites, especially gangs of hoodlums,
attacks on Negro children, and the indifferent attitude of the director
render attendance by Negroes extremely hazardous. Of a daily attendance
of 1,500, less than 1 per cent are Negroes, despite the fact that over
50 per cent of the immediately surrounding population is Negro. Natural
barriers of distance, unofficial discrimination of officials, and the
hostility of neighborhood groups are largely responsible for the lack
of participation.
The beaches have presented the most difficult problems of race control.
The riot of 1919 began at the Twenty-ninth Street Beach, and since the
riot numerous smaller clashes have occurred there. At Thirty-eighth
Street, also on the edge of the largest area of Negro residence, Negroes
are entirely excluded, the policeman on duty and the attendant in
charge assisting in this exclusion to prevent clashes. In neighborhoods
with a small Negro population, attendance at the recreation places is
always much below the percentage of Negroes to the total population in
such neighborhoods, this being due to the hostility shown by whites,
especially of the hoodlum element, and also to the reluctance of Negroes
to go where they feel unwelcome.
_Contacts._--Most difficulties in parks and playgrounds have not
been caused by the behavior of Negroes there. Such complaints against
Negroes as have come from these contacts have concerned groups of rough
or domineering children at the playgrounds rather than adults. Two
playgrounds on the South Side make such complaints.
_Race relations of the children._--Lack of racial antagonism was reported
at a large number of playgrounds. Apparatus was used by both groups
without friction. Negro and white children mingled freely in their games
and in the swimming-pools, and both Negroes and whites played on baseball
and athletic teams. The occasional playground fights usually lack any
element of racial antipathy. "There might be personal misunderstandings
and disagreements between a white and a black just the same as between
two whites," said the director of Union Park, "but I wouldn't lay it
to race prejudice. They work together and play together and seem to
harmonize in most instances." When this director came to Union Park a
year ago he found a tendency among Negroes and whites to separate into
race groups, but steps were taken to bring them together in games of
various kinds, and toward the end of the season the director felt that
they "harmonized better and worked together more cordially than they did
before." When the Commission's investigator visited Union Park Playground
he saw small children of both races playing together on the same pieces
of apparatus--a Negro child on one end of a teeter ladder and a white
child on the other. Occasionally there is a disturbance, usually starting
from a dispute over the apparatus; but on the whole the children play
together peacefully.
_Voluntary racial grouping._--Voluntary racial grouping appears to be
more characteristic of the large parks and beaches which adults frequent
than of the playgrounds, which are used mainly by children. One instance
of voluntary grouping among children was found at Copernicus Playground.
The playing space is in the shape of an "L," one end intended for boys
and the other for girls, but by common consent the children divide along
race lines rather than sex.
In the general use of Lincoln and Washington parks the Negroes and whites
stay in separate groups. There has never been any difficulty, according
to the Lincoln Park representative, arising from the fact that Negroes
have taken possession of a spot desired by whites for a picnic or other
amusement. No part of either park is especially set aside for the use
of one race, and groups of both Negroes and whites are seen everywhere
in the parks, but they do not mingle.
Some directors attempt to regulate these contacts to avoid any mingling
of groups. At the Municipal Pier, for example, an investigator learned
that when Negro couples went on the dancing-pavilion floor the floor
manager informed them that they were not dancing properly and took them
to one side to acquaint them with the approved style of dancing; no
matter how well they danced, they were to be prevented from going on
the floor by the manager's judgment of their dancing. More recently,
however, Negroes have reported that they have been able freely to use
this dance floor.
Clashes in the various recreation places as early as 1913 were found to
have been started mostly by gangs of white "roughs." On one occasion,
for example, the secretary of boys' work of the Wabash Avenue department
Y.M.C.A. (for Negroes) conducted a party of nineteen Negro boys to Armour
Square. They had no difficulty in entering the park, but on leaving
they were assailed by crowds of white boys. Some of them were tripped,
trodden upon, and badly bruised. They took refuge in a neighboring
saloon, where they remained for a half-hour, when a detachment of police
scattered the white gang. On another occasion a group of boys from the
same institution were driven from the lake at Thirty-first Street.
In 1915 Father Bishop, of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, took a group
of Negro boys to Armour Square to play basket-ball. The entire party,
including Father Bishop, were beaten by white boys and their sweaters
taken from them. In the same year an attempt was made by a Negro boys'
club director to take seventy-five Negro boys through the Stock Yards.
They had received tickets of admission to the stock show. In spite of
the presence and efforts of four adult leaders, these boys were struck
by sticks and other missiles while passing from one section of the show
to another. Police assistance was required to get them from the pavilion
to the street cars.
Gangs of white boys, sixteen and seventeen years of age, from the
neighborhood of Fifty-ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue frequently
interfered with Negro participants in baseball games in Washington Park,
especially during the spring and summer of 1918 and 1919. They also
annoyed Negro couples on the park benches. Where the Negro showed fight,
minor clashes resulted. Park officials have not been able to restrain
the ill feeling which these conflicts engender.
Clashes were noted in Ogden Park as early as 1914 and frequently since
that time. A Negro playground director testified that he and other
Negroes had been slugged while attending band concerts or attempting to
use shower baths after a game in the park. At the boathouse in Washington
Park, in the early summer of 1920, there were numerous clashes between
Negroes and whites. In the following year, however, considerably fewer
instances of friction were reported. Playground directors are of the
opinion that friction is likely to occur where groups of Negro children
for the first time come into parks theretofore exclusively used by
whites. Adjustment is likely to follow after this period. In some cases,
however, when the proportion of Negroes has grown larger than that of
whites, a Negro director has been placed in charge of the park with the
unofficial understanding that it should be turned over to Negroes.
The two causes of neighborhood antagonism back of the friction in
the parks most commonly cited are the housing and sex problems. The
playgrounds and parks usually share in a general way the sentiments of
the mixed neighborhoods in or near which they are located.
One source of racial disorders is lack of co-operation between park and
city policemen. The park police stop a fight between white and colored
children and send them out of the park. When the fight is renewed outside
the park they have no power to interfere. Spectators may then get into
the fight, and serious clashes may be well under way before the city
police can be summoned.
The most important remedies suggested to the Commission for the betterment
of relations between Negroes and whites at the various places of
recreation were: (1) additional facilities in Negro areas, particularly
recreation centers which can be used by adults; (2) an awakened public
opinion which will refuse to tolerate the hoodlum and will insist that
the courts properly punish such offenders; (3) selection of directors
for parks in neighborhoods where there is a critical situation who have
a sympathetic understanding of the problem and will not tolerate actions
by park police officers and other subordinate officials which tend to
discourage Negro attendance; and (4) efforts by such directors to repress
and remove any racial antagonism that may arise in the neighborhood
about the park.
3. CONTACTS IN TRANSPORTATION
The study of contacts between whites and Negroes in street cars and other
public conveyances was prompted by a usually unexplained emphasis on
apparently trivial incidents connected with public conveyances, together
with the observation that the greatest disturbances during the riot of
1919 commonly occurred along transportation lines and at transfer points.
Although many clashes and other instances of racial friction on the street
cars were not serious enough to be reported to the newspapers or to be
made the subject of complaint, information obtained by investigators
for the Commission showed that the attitude of both Negroes and whites
toward each other was being affected by contacts on the cars.
As affecting attitudes on race relations, transportation contacts,
while impersonal and temporary, are significant for several reasons.
Many whites have no contact with Negroes except on the cars, and their
personal impression of the entire Negro group may be determined by one
or two observations of Negro passengers. Unlike contacts in the school,
playground, and workshop, transportation contacts are not supervised, and
if there is any dispute among passengers the settlement usually rests
with themselves. Suspicion or prejudice on either side because of the
difference in race accentuates any misunderstanding. And transportation
contacts, at least on crowded cars, involve physical contact between
Negroes and whites, which rarely occurs under other circumstances and
sometimes leads to a display of racial feeling.
The Commission's investigators, white and Negro, men and women, made many
trips for observation on the twelve lines carrying the heaviest volume
of Negro traffic and therefore involving the greatest amount of contact.
Counts of passengers, Negro and white, were made, behavior and habits
were noted, and passengers and car crews were drawn into conversation.
Officials of surface and elevated lines, starters, and station men were
interviewed. Instances of friction which came to the attention of the
Commission were noted and the circumstances studied.
Traffic counts made by the Chicago Traction and Subway Commission in 1916
showed 3,500,000 surface-railway and 500,000 elevated-railway passengers
carried in a twenty-four-hour day. Negroes constitute 4 per cent of
the city's population and probably about that percentage of the city's
street-car traffic. Negro traffic, however, instead of being scattered
over the city, is mainly concentrated upon twelve lines which traverse the
Negro residential areas and connect those areas with the manufacturing
districts where Negroes are employed. Because of this concentration the
proportion of Negroes to whites on these twelve lines is much higher
than 4 per cent, and on such lines as that on State Street, the principal
business street of the South Side Negro residence area, it often happens
that the majority of the passengers are Negroes.
There is no "Jim Crow" separation of races on street cars in Chicago.
Contacts of Negroes and whites on the street cars did not provoke any
considerable discussion before the period of migration of Negroes from
the South, when occasional stories of clashes began to be circulated;
and even then, such friction as developed did not come prominently to
public attention. Only one incident involving a clash was reported in
the newspapers. Even since the migration began, there have been very few
complaints based upon racial friction. The Elevated Railroad Company,
whose South Side line has the largest Negro traffic of any elevated
line, replied to inquiries that, except during the riot of 1919, when a
few cases of racial disorder were reported, there had been no complaints
from motormen or trainmen since 1918, when a trainman was cut by a Negro.
No complaints from white passengers had been received since the spring
of 1917, when white office workers objected to riding with Stock Yards
laborers, mainly Negroes, on the Stock Yards spur of the elevated. White
laborers in the Stock Yards mostly live within walking distance of their
work, but Negroes found it necessary to use car lines running east to
the main area of Negro residence. The Chicago Surface lines replied that
complaints due to racial friction were negligible.
Many of the migrants are laborers who must use these lines going to and
from work, and many of them are rough-mannered and entirely unfamiliar
with standards of conduct in northern cities. Another serious factor
is the recent entrance of Negroes into industry. Before the war the
great majority of Negroes gainfully employed were engaged in some form
of personal service which did not require use of transportation lines
in their working clothes to and from the manufacturing centers. The
migrants, many of them coming to a city like Chicago with no "Jim Crow"
segregation, felt strange and uncertain as to how they should act. In
fact, peculiarities of conduct on the part of these were noted by Negroes
of longer residence in Chicago, and it has been remarked by whites and
Negroes that they could tell a Negro migrant by his uneasy manner and
often by his clothing. Conspicuous points of behavior of migrant Negroes
before they became urbanized, which many whites noted and commented
on were: "loud laughter and talking," "old and ill-smelling clothes,"
"roughness and his tendency to sit all over the car." These are easy
to understand when one considers the background of the southern Negro.
There are, on the other hand, exceptional cases where Negroes have walked
miles rather than take a car, thus avoiding possible embarrassment. A
Negro who has been in Chicago for a long time is not self-conscious about
sitting near white persons. Negroes who get into trouble with whites
about insisting on their right to a seat often belong to the class of
suspicious and sensitive Negroes who fear that an attempt is being made
to segregate them, and sometimes they are simply "greenhorns."
Soiled and ill-smelling clothing was found to be an objection applying
to white as well as Negro laborers. These complaints came, for the
most part, from clerical workers who objected to physical contact with
persons who might "rub off." A difficulty involving this feature was
adjusted by one packing company by dismissing its clerical workers and
its laborers at different hours. A frequent source of misunderstanding
has been a situation in which it appeared that Negroes had taken seats
intended for white women. In several such cases thoroughly examined
by the Commission's investigators the difficulties were found to have
resulted from misunderstood actions.
Most of the difficulties in transportation contacts reported and generally
complained of seem to have centered around the first blundering efforts
of migrants to adjust themselves to northern city life. The efforts of
agencies interested in assisting this adjustment, together with the Negro
press and the intimate criticisms and suggestions for proper conduct
of Chicago Negroes, have smoothed down many of the roughnesses of the
migrants, and as a result friction from contacts in transportation seems
to have lessened materially.
4. CRIME AND VICIOUS ENVIRONMENT
Many students of the race problem look upon public crime records as a
register of the failure of Negroes to adjust themselves to the social
fabric. Study of infractions of law by Negroes, of provocation to
lawlessness, and of the history of their crimes would indeed reveal an
interesting background of their present behavior in relation to whites, if
such a study were possible from present records. The Commission carried
its investigations into this field and found no means of determining
how great a proportion of the city's crimes is committed by Negroes.
The prevailing impression that Negroes are by nature more criminal
than whites and more prone to commit sex crimes has restricted their
employment, increased unfair measures of restraint, and blackened the name
of the entire Negro group. Two important facts were apparent from the
Commission's study: (1) the danger inherent in the vicious environment
in which Negroes are forced to live, and (2) the misrepresentative
character of the statistics of Negro crime.
_Environment._--The limitations imposed on Negro residential areas have
provided undue cause and occasion for crime. The entire population, good
and bad, is thrown together, exposing children to the sight and temptation
of vice and immorality. Ninety per cent of the Negro population has
always lived near the city's former segregated vice districts, partly
because white sentiment excluded them from other neighborhoods, partly
because rents in the neighborhood of vice were low enough to meet their
meager economic resources, and partly because their weakness made their
protests against the proximity of vice less effective than the protests
of whites. When the vice districts were broken up and the inmates
scattered, they entered the better neighborhoods of Negro residence and
clandestinely plied their trade. In fact, according to the report of the
Chicago Vice Commission in 1911, at one time prostitutes were promised
immunity by the police if they confined themselves to a certain area
in which Negroes predominated. The spread of the Negro population has
always been accompanied by the spread of clandestine prostitution. The
Vice Commission's report said:
The history of the social evil in Chicago is intimately
connected with the colored population. Invariably the large
vice districts have been created within or near the settlements
of colored people. In the past history of the city every time
a new vice district was created downtown or on the South Side,
the colored families were in the district moving in just ahead
of the prostitutes. The situation along State Street from
Sixteenth Street south is an illustration.
So whenever prostitutes, cadets, and thugs were located among
white people and had to be moved for commercial or other
reasons, they were driven to undesirable parts of the city,
the so-called colored residential sections.
Most of the vicious resorts in the "Black Belt" are owned and operated
by whites and are not interfered with by the authorities. Protests
from Negroes have never succeeded in removing them. Opportunities for
wholesome recreation in the Negro districts are limited, and commercial
amusements, though probably no worse than in some other sections of the
city, are of a distinctly inferior type and carelessly supervised. In
such an infective environment it is not unnatural that many criminals
should be developed.
But the study of crime statistics, aside from showing the unreliability
of records due to careless methods of obtaining and presenting data,
revealed that Negroes suffer gross injustice in the handling of criminal
affairs. The general inaccuracy of criminal statistics is shown by the
fact, for example, that the police reported 1,731 burglaries, or persons
arrested for burglary, in 1919, while the Chicago Crime Commission
reported 5,509 burglaries during the first eleven months of that year.
The evidence at hand indicates that Negroes are debited with practically
all their crimes, while others are not. It further appears, from the
records and from the testimony of judges in the juvenile, municipal,
circuit, superior, and criminal courts, of police officials, the state's
attorney, and various experts on crime, probation, and parole, that
Negroes are more commonly arrested, subjected to police identification,
and convicted than white offenders; that on similar evidence they are
generally held and convicted on more serious charges, and that they are
given longer sentences. This bias, when reflected in the figures, serves
to bolster by false figures the already existing belief that Negroes
are more likely to be criminal than other racial groups.
V. THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO INDUSTRIES
Out of Chicago's Negro population of approximately 110,000 in 1920, it
is estimated that 70,000 were gainfully employed. The opportunity for
engaging in industry in large numbers came to Negroes following the
outbreak of the world-war. With the enormous demand from the belligerent
countries for American goods, existing establishments were enlarged and
new ones created. As an example of the increased demand for workers,
one of the packing-plants in the Chicago Stock Yards increased its force
during the war from 8,000 to 17,000. Immigration was almost wholly cut
off. The labor shortage became acute after the entrance of the United
States into the war in 1917. The migration of Negroes from the South
during that period was mainly in response to this demand.
Prior to the beginning of the war in 1914, Negroes had been virtually
limited to personal and domestic service in almost every city in the
North. In 1910 more than 60 per cent of those gainfully employed were
so engaged, 15 per cent in manufacturing, and 3 per cent in clerical
occupations. The Commission's inquiries covered 136 establishments
reporting five or more Negroes. In these were employed 118,098 whites and
21,987 Negroes--12,854 in manufacturing and 9,133 in non-manufacturing
industries.
1. INCREASE IN NEGRO LABOR
Between 1915 and 1920 there was a remarkable increase in the number of
Negroes employed in industries which before 1915 had either employed
them in small numbers or not at all. In a total of sixty-two such plants
there was an increase from 1,346 in 1915 to 10,587 in 1920, or more
than 1,000 per cent. Labor shortage, or inability to obtain competent
white workers, was the reason given in practically every instance for
the large increase in Negro employees.
Frequent complaints have been made that large employers, particularly
the packers, imported Negroes from the South and were thus responsible
for the difficulties that followed. Definite effort was made to determine
the facts, but the Commission found no basis for the statement.
2. CLASSIFICATION OF NEGRO WORKERS
Absence of standards of classification for skilled, semi-skilled, and
unskilled work invalidated the Commission's effort to classify Negro
workers. In sixty-six industries with definite divisions in grades of
work, it was found that out of 12,529 Negroes employed, 927 were skilled,
267 semi-skilled and 11,335 unskilled workers. In other returns, not
capable of full classification, ten establishments reported 304 Negro
molders; there were thirty-one Negro molders in 1910. Twelve factories
reported 382 machine operators; in 1920 the census reports showed only
twenty-eight.
Wages of Negroes in the branches of employment where they were permitted
to work were generally the same as for white workers. There were
instances, however, of discrimination in placing or keeping Negroes at
work on processes in which they could not earn as much as in processes on
which white men were engaged. Also there were instances of discrimination
in piecework, the foremen invariably giving Negroes only the jobs yielding
a low rate. For common labor the average wage was 45 and 50 cents an
hour for an eight-, nine- and ten-hour day for men; $15 to $20 a week for
women, and an average of $15 a week, with room and board, for domestics
were the going wages.
3. EMPLOYERS' EXPERIENCE WITH NEGRO LABOR
Whether or not the Negro will be able to hold the position in industry
made possible for him by the war depends much on employers' attitude
toward him as a worker. Common explanations given before this period as a
reason for not employing Negroes more were that they were lazy, shiftless,
irresponsible, and inefficient. Generalizations of this sort demonstrate
their weakness in the fact that employers were not speaking from their
own experiences. To reach a fair conclusion employers of Negroes in
large numbers were interviewed by the Commission's investigators.
Employers drew a distinction between northern and southern Negroes; they
thought that the latter had shortcomings when they first began work,
but that this was due to former habits of work and familiarity with
only simple industrial processes. Many of these southern workers were
irregular at first in reporting for work and frequently drew their wages
before pay day, thus confusing the bookkeeping. They were soon forced,
however, to abandon these habits.
One question asked of all employers was: "Has your Negro labor proved
satisfactory?" Of the 137 establishments employing five or more
Negro workers, 118 reported that Negro labor had proved satisfactory;
nineteen reported that Negro labor had not proved satisfactory. The 118
establishments reporting Negro workers as satisfactory employed 21,640
Negroes, while the nineteen reporting them as unsatisfactory employed
697. Comparing the efficiency of Negro and white workers, seventy-one
employers interviewed (thirty-four manufacturers and thirty-seven
non-manufacturers) considered the Negro equally efficient, twenty-two
employers (thirteen manufacturers and nine non-manufacturers) considered
the Negro less efficient. The seventy-one establishments included almost
all the large establishments. A few gave the Negro a higher rating than
the foreigners because of his knowledge of English.
Regarding reliability, ninety-two employers gave opinions. Sixty-three
(thirty manufacturers and thirty-three non-manufacturers) believed that
Negroes did not require more supervision than white workers, while
twenty-nine (sixteen manufacturers and thirteen non-manufacturers)
thought they required more supervision. Of the employers interviewed,
fifty-seven expressed the opinion (twenty-three manufacturers and
thirty-four non-manufacturers) that "absenteeism" among Negro workers was
no greater than among whites, while thirty-six reported it was greater.
One plant employing 2,084 Negroes stated that the better living standards
and ambitions had brought up the rating of Negro workers during the war
period.
4. LABOR TURNOVER
Of the thirty-two employers giving figures on relative labor turnover,
twenty-four (eleven manufacturers and thirteen non-manufacturers)
reported the Negro turnover to be the same as the white, and twenty-eight
(eighteen manufacturers and ten non-manufacturers) believed the turnover
to be greater. Closely connected with the labor turnover among Negroes
is the question of "hope on the job," as one Negro expressed it. When
Negroes are not allowed to advance to better positions in a given plant,
or are discriminated against by foremen underrating their efficiency,
the turnover in the plant is high.
5. NEGRO WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
Before the war Negro women were even more definitely restricted than Negro
men in choice of occupations. Two-thirds of those gainfully employed were
in two occupation groups: "servants" and laundresses, not in laundries,
and domestic servants. Of the 137 establishments studied, forty-two had
no Negro women employees, forty-five kept no separate records, and fifty
reported a total of 3,407 Negro women workers. Although this study does
not include all industries employing women, the total given represents
a large increase over the figure of 998 Negro women enumerated by the
1910 census as engaged in all industries in Chicago.
Many of the establishments in question had employed large numbers of Negro
women as an experiment and had found them satisfactory. One mail-order
house employed as many as 650 girls for clerical work. When the plant
was investigated in 1920, there were 311 girls, 75 per cent of whom
were high-school graduates, while 12 per cent had had two or more years
in college. These employers said the girls felt that they were making
history for the race and were, if anything, a little over-zealous. They
were thought to be excitable and suspicious of the actions of the white
girls.
Millinery establishments, manufacturers of clothing, lamp-shades,
gas-mantles, paper-boxes, and cheese makers reported satisfactory
experience with Negro women. Of twenty laundries employing Negro workers,
satisfactory or unsatisfactory, four did not keep separate records.
Twelve with 409 Negro women reported their work satisfactory, and four
with 134 Negro women reported it unsatisfactory. The chief complaint was
unwillingness to work overtime or on Sundays. In both instances, however,
employees interviewed complained that the hours were long (nine hours
a day) and their treatment by the management harsh and inconsiderate.
Of 865 Negro employees interviewed, less than 1 per cent complained
of disagreeable treatment by white workers and less than 50 per cent
complained of conditions of work. Others expressed themselves as glad
of the opportunity to earn good wages. Complaints against conditions of
work were found in the iron and steel mills, Stock Yards, and dining-car
and sleeping-car service.
6. INDUSTRIES EXCLUDING THE NEGRO
Several important industries have not opened their doors to Negroes
except as janitors and porters. Among these are the traction companies,
elevated and surface, the State Street department stores, and the taxicab
companies. Employers in these establishments express the belief that
the public would object to Negroes.
Attention has been called to the waste involved in the limitations of
Negroes in industry. Men with college training are forced to work as
waiters and porters, and young-women college graduates are frequently
forced to work as ushers in theaters and as ladies' maids. This condition
helps to account for the ease with which 1,500 Negro girls with more
than average schooling were recruited in less than two months for the
mail-order houses.
7. RELATIONS BETWEEN WHITE AND NEGRO WORKERS
Through working together friendliness between white and Negro workers
has been increased, according to prevalent views. Information concerning
relations was secured from all the 137 plants studied. Two reported that
race friction was a disturbing factor in the plants. Minor instances
of friction have occurred, but it appeared that as a rule the workers
reflected the attitude of the management. The setting up of partitions
separating the races developed an antagonistic sentiment, and in some
instances this antagonism was removed when the partitions were taken
down. Of 101 establishments visited eighteen, or 11 per cent, with 2,623
Negroes, maintained separate accommodations. This constituted a continuous
source of dissatisfaction for Negro workers, who felt themselves "Jim
Crowed." In the remaining 89 per cent, employing 19,714 Negroes among
more than 100,000 whites, all accommodations were used in common by both
races.
8. THE PERIOD OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
Following the war's inflation of industry a slump came in the winter of
1920-21. Common labor was reduced in all the large plants from 20 to
50 per cent. Negroes, mostly common laborers, suffered most from this
reduction. At one period there were as many as 15,000 Negroes unemployed
in Chicago. They were cared for during their enforced idleness by the
Urban League and Negro churches and by popular contributions from working
Negroes. The reduction of labor was usually carried out by employers
with some system, and few instances of gross race discrimination were
reported.
9. ORGANIZED LABOR AND NEGRO WORKERS
Clashing interests have manifested themselves conspicuously in the
relations between union labor organizations and Negro workers, and
this antagonism has been carried over into the relations of whites and
Negroes generally. The efforts of union labor to promote its cause have
built up a body of sentiment not easy to oppose by workers unsympathetic
toward the labor movement. Circumstances have frequently made Negroes
strike breakers, and thus centered upon them as a racial group all the
bitterness of the unionist toward strike breakers as a class.
On the other hand, Negroes have often expressed themselves as having
little faith in the union labor movement because the unions have
manifested prejudices against permitting them to share equal benefits
of membership; and again they have gained their first opportunity in a
new industry frequently through the desire of a strike-bound employer
to keep his plant running when his white employees have walked out.
From its beginning the American Federation of Labor has declared a uniform
policy of non-racial discrimination, but this policy has not been carried
out in practice by all its constituent or affiliated bodies. At several
of its conventions resolutions have been passed embodying the official
sentiment of the federation, but no means has yet been discovered to
effect a uniform policy of fair dealing throughout all its affiliated
bodies. Aside from those unions in which the membership privilege for
Negroes is modified, eight of the 110 national or international unions
affiliated with the American Federation of Labor explicitly bar the
Negro by provisions in their constitutions or rituals. These unions
are: Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of
America, International Association of Machinists, American Association of
Masters, Mates, and Pilots, Railway Mail Association, Order of Railroad
Telegraphers, the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America, and American
Wire Weavers' Protective Association.
The general exclusion policy of the railway brotherhoods and several
unions of the Railway Department of the American Federation of Labor
has created a feeling of bitterness among Negroes, many of whom are
employed in branches of the railway service. As a protest against this
policy there has been formed the Railway Men's International Benevolent
Industrial Association with seventeen locals in Chicago and a local
membership of 1,200. Mr. Mays, president of this organization, stated
that its purpose was merely to safeguard the ranks of Negro workers, and
said that it was ready to merge itself into the general unions as soon
as they were ready to accept them without discrimination and accord the
same privileges as white railway workers.
The Commission obtained information from local unions in Chicago with
a membership of 294,437, of whom 12,106 were Negroes. On the basis of
policy toward the Negro, unions in Chicago may be divided into four
classes or types:
A. Unions admitting Negroes to white locals
B. Unions admitting Negroes to separate or co-ordinate locals
C. Unions admitting Negroes to subordinate or auxiliary locals
D. Unions excluding Negroes from membership
Wherever and whenever Negroes are admitted on an equal basis and given
a square deal, the feeling inside the union is nearly always harmonious.
Examples of type A are the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen
of the World, Hodcarriers, Flat Janitors, and Ladies' Garment Workers.
In some of these organizations Negroes hold office.
Unions of type B give as reasons for organizing Negroes into separate
locals, first, preference of Negro workers for locals of their own,
and, second, unwillingness of white workers to admit Negroes to white
locals. The Negro Musicians' Union belongs to this type and has the same
wage scale as the white union. There appears to be little difficulty
here because there is no conflict in contracts for work in the city.
The painters, however, have had difficulties which have "hung fire" for
more than a year; after being given a temporary charter they still were
unable to work.
Unions of type C, admitting Negroes to subordinate locals, are few
in number, apparently because Negroes strongly resent this form of
affiliation. There is, however, one example of this type which permits
Negro helpers in a certain trade to be organized as an auxiliary under
the jurisdiction of the white local unions having jurisdiction over their
district. By constitution it is provided that their minutes be submitted
to the white locals and their grievances placed before the white locals.
The constitution also provides that there shall be no transfer of colored
helpers to any except Negro auxiliaries, and that Negro helpers shall
not be promoted to skilled trades or to helper apprentice, and shall
not be admitted to shops where white helpers are employed. These Negro
locals are represented by delegates selected by the white locals in
their districts.
Unions of type D, excluding the Negro from membership, do so either in
conformity with the laws of their national unions or in the exercise
of local option. In addition to the eight internationals which exclude
the Negro by constitutional provision, there are other locals which are
known to reject Negro applicants. The Machinists' Union, for example,
although complying in its constitution with the American Federation of
Labor policy of no racial discrimination, still effectually bars the
Negro by a provision in its secret ritual. With the Machinists' Union
must be grouped such unions as the Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers'
International Alliance, the Electrical Workers, and the Plumbers and
Steam Fitters.
Some Negro leaders, in view of these practices, have been strong in
their advocacy of non-affiliation with union organizations, holding that
the employers, after all, offer for Negroes the fairer terms, and that
they have, in fact, given Negroes their first opportunity in industry.
However, certain other Negroes have taken advantage of the rift between
employers and labor unions to exploit Negro laborers. They have played
upon racial sentiment to establish separate unions for Negroes, both
in lines of work where they are admitted to the general unions and in
lines of work where they are excluded. This type of leadership has been
irresponsible and dangerous; it has made ridiculously generous promises,
and has addressed its appeal to the less intelligent classes of Negro
workers. Its literature has in turn provoked extreme bitterness among
labor union members and officials, who have mistakenly accepted it as
representative of the sentiment of all Negro workers.
Interviews with Negro workers outside of the unions reveal an attitude
of indifference or suspicion which is attributed by both white and Negro
labor leaders and union men to the following reasons: (1) the usual
treatment of Negroes by white men, (2) traditional treatment of Negroes
by white men, (3) influence of racial leaders who oppose unionism, (4)
influence of employers' propaganda against unionism. Many of them, it
was learned, have a distorted view of the purposes and principles of
unionism, and many others, while sympathetic with the movement, object
to the practices of the locals. An experience frequently referred to was
the waiters' strike in 1911, when Negro union men walked out with white
union men and were replaced by white girls, while the white union men
returned to their jobs; since that time Negro waiters have been out of
the more desirable hotel jobs.
The explanations by labor leaders of the practices of local unions are
to the effect that while the general public race prejudice might be
expected in organizations of white workingmen, the unions, as a group,
are fairer to the Negro than other groups; that unions are blamed for
conditions which are really due to general public opinion. They cite
as an example the fact that Negroes are not employed in Chicago as
motormen or conductors on the surface or elevated lines because of
public objection, and that they cannot be organized until they are in
positions. Views were also expressed in condemnation of the exclusion
policy of one local. These union officials believe that the unions will
eventually be the most powerful agencies in the removal of race prejudice.
VI. PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS
A. OPINIONS OF WHITES AND NEGROES
The "Negro problem" is deeper and wider than the difficulties which center
about the more specialized problems of Negro housing, Negro crime, and
industrial relations involving Negroes. All such special studies conducted
by the Commission left a baffling residuum of causes of racial discord,
deep rooted in the psychology of the white and Negro groups in contact.
The beliefs and attitudes, firmly fixed and accepted prejudices of the
one race as to the other, grouped under the term "public opinion," thus
became the subject of a novel but most interesting inquiry.
Public opinion with respect to the Negro forms a body of sentiment so
definite and compact as to make it an excellent laboratory case for
analysis and study; but the Commission's aim in investigating it was
merely to make apparent and objective its place and importance in race
relations; to indicate some of the ways in which it has developed; how
it expresses itself; how it affects both the white and Negro groups;
how, in its present state, it is strengthened, weakened, polluted, or
purified by deliberate agencies or even by its own action; and finally
how it may be used to reduce, if not prevent, racial unfriendliness and
misunderstanding.
Public opinion is regarded here as a phase of the social mind, but
nevertheless as a definite reality. For purposes of examination,
therefore, its study gives attention to that body of sentiments, beliefs,
attitudes, and prejudices which, taken together, give to public opinion
its content and meaning.
To present this subject intelligently, the following plan has been
employed:
1. Beliefs and sophistications regarding Negroes, which exercise so great
an influence in determining the conduct of white persons in relation to
them, are described as they apply in the local environment, and in origin
and background are traced suggestively to their responsible sources in
literature and circumstance.
2. Types of sentiment which, in Chicago and similar northern communities,
are variants of these basic beliefs are presented with a view to making
them intelligible and classifying them according to resolvable factors
of misunderstanding.
3. Since personal attitudes and beliefs are molded by traditions
and heritages apart from the exclusive influence of literature, more
significant material collected through intimate inquiry is presented
objectively to describe the processes by which they appear to be created
and grow. Replies to a searching questionnaire on attitudes and opinions
are, in the instances quoted, the result of painstaking self-analysis.
4. The opinions and sentiments of Negroes on these same issues are
described and illustrated with a view to making them understandable,
and their interpretations of current white sentiment are explained as
far as possible.
5. The report then turns to the agencies by which these opinions are
made and perpetuated and the individual attitudes created. The chief of
these are: (_a_) the press, (_b_) rumors, (_c_) myths, (_d_) propaganda.
The conscious and unconscious abuse of these instruments of "opinion
making" is pointed out and explained.
6. Finally, the study is intended to suggest means by which public
opinion, where it is faulty, may correct itself and employ its own
instruments in the creation of wholesome sentiments among Negroes with
respect to whites, and among whites with respect to Negroes.
1. BELIEFS OF WHITES CONCERNING NEGROES
The conduct of individuals is largely determined by their attitudes toward
a subject and their general beliefs concerning it. Definite beliefs
concerning Negroes may be found in the North as well as in the South,
varying with the individuals who hold them, according to degrees of
contact with the Negro group and the individuals' traditional background.
These may be divided according to their character and effect into two
general classes: (_a_) primary beliefs or those fundamental and firmly
established convictions which have, all around, the deepest effect on
the conduct of whites toward Negroes and are pretentiously supported
by statistics, authorities, and scientific research; (_b_) secondary
beliefs, or modifications and variants of important assumptions as to
cardinal attributes.
_a_) _Primary beliefs._--Among these primary beliefs are the following:
1. Mentality: That the mind of the Negro is distinctly and distinctively
inferior to that of the white race. Some believe that this is due to
backwardness in ascending the scale of civilization; some that the Negro
belongs to a different species of the human family.
2. Morality: That Negroes are not yet capable of exercising social
restraints common to white persons; that they are unmoral as well as
immoral.
3. Criminality: That Negroes possess a constitutional character weakness,
and a consequent predisposition to sexual crimes, petty stealing, and
crimes of violence.
4. Physical unattractiveness: That physical laws prompt whites to avoid
contact with Negroes.
5. Emotionality: That Negroes are highly emotional and for that reason
are given to quick, uncalculated crimes of violence as easily as to
noisy and emotional religious expressions.
_b_) _Secondary beliefs._--As continued repetition of any plausible
statement without correction of its error eventually gives it credence,
these secondary beliefs have rooted themselves deep in the public
mind. Among other things it is believed that Negroes are: (1) lazy, (2)
"happy-go-lucky," (3) boisterous, (4) bumptious, (5) over-assertive, (6)
lacking in civic consciousness, (7) addicted to carrying razors, (8)
fond of shooting craps, (9) flashy in dress and like gaudy, brilliant
colors, especially red.
2. BACKGROUND OF PREVAILING BELIEFS CONCERNING NEGROES
Soon after the first emergence of Negroes from slavery their illiteracy
and general behavior in response to the novel experience of freedom
created situations which appeared to justify judgments concerning their
group traits. Scholars rationalized and tried to explain these apparent
traits: If they were illiterate as a group they must be incapable of
learning, and if they committed crimes, they must be fundamentally
lacking in social restraints.
Dr. Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard, Professor A. H. Keene, author of _Man
Past and Present_, Dr. J. C. Nott, author of _Types of Mankind_, and
almost all the other anthropologists of that period, gave the stamp of
scientific authority to the view that Negroes were of a different species
and could never reach the level of the Caucasian. Even more recently
mental tests were carried out on the same assumption and were made to
prove it in some instances where the facts were unexpectedly contrary.
Students of the race problem in the South continued to generalize about
Negro character from selected specimens, other more popular writers and
speakers, with their anecdotes, stories, and jokes, all of which went
uncorrected, tended to strengthen this body of beliefs to a point where
any difference of views was intolerable. Although the status of the Negro
has changed, the beliefs remain the same, and have led to bitterness and
resentment among Negroes, with consequent misunderstandings and friction.
In Chicago sentiments collected from a wide variety of sources and
involving the views of several thousands of white persons indicate the
persistence of these archaic beliefs and fears, so deep set and of such
long standing that they are assumed by many persons to be instinctive.
To secure definite information upon the traditional background of beliefs
concerning Negroes, fifteen white persons with no special interest in
Negroes were selected at random from professions, business, and other
vocations and submitted to a careful and searching inquiry. They were
asked eighteen carefully prepared questions to draw out the raw material
of their unqualified reactions on the question of the Negro and, as far
as possible, the background in their early experience. They were asked
for their opinions concerning Negroes, whether or not they believed
that they possessed distinguishing traits of mentality and character;
their attitudes were solicited by questions and propositions designed
to provoke an expression of attitude. Questions were put regarding
instances and experiences involving Negroes in their early experience;
their first consciousness of racial differences; their first contacts;
and information was sought on the definite sources of their knowledge
or opinions concerning Negroes.
All the persons questioned had clear-cut opinions and thought that Negroes
possessed distinguishing traits ranging from "affectionate loyalty" to
"mental and moral handicaps imposed by evolution." An abolitionist's
son, for example, thought that "Negroes should desire segregation";
a man who had observed Negroes at Tuskegee and Lewis institutes would
increase their education and meet the demands produced by education.
One whose only contact had been with his "black mammy" thought that
the Negroes were "affectionate and loyal, but lacking in racial pride,
though evolutionarily handicapped, possessing the qualities of children."
Another who had had an unfortunate experience with his Negro chauffeur
thought that Negroes were characterized by "distinctly inferior
mentality, deficient moral sense, shiftlessness, good-natured, and a happy
disposition." They knew little about the activities of Negroes, their
leaders, their papers, or their problems, and the sources on which they
relied for their information, except in two instances, were undependable.
3. NEGRO OPINION
Negroes, although exposed to various forms of social contact, have been
intellectually isolated from the white group. They have not participated
fully and freely in community and cultural activities. The pressure
of the white group in practically every ordinary experience has kept
their attention and interest centered upon themselves, and they have
become race conscious. Their thinking, therefore, on general questions,
whether they involve race relations or not, is conditioned and largely
controlled by the relation of these questions with group interests. The
opinions of Negroes, therefore, on race relations are largely negative.
White persons know very little about what Negroes are thinking, because
they are not familiar with their experiences; they frequently do not
accredit them with the sensibilities that they do possess; and are not
acquainted with the processes of thought by which the opinions of Negroes
are formed. Thus it is that many of the statements and expressions of
feeling of Negroes are unintelligible to persons outside of their group.
Similarly, many statements and expressions of feeling by white persons
are unintelligible to Negroes. But in the understanding of white persons
Negroes have the advantage, because they do read their papers, see them
in the privacy of their homes, and are forced constantly to interpret
their actions.
Among Negroes there may be found a group control as strong and binding
as among white persons. One striking instance of the operation of this
group control was the complete ostracism of a prominent Negro lawyer who
was reported to have made a public statement contrary to the views and
aspirations held by his group. When this Negro was reported in the press
to have said, "This is a white man's country, and Negroes had better
behave or they will get what rights they have taken away," he was first
snubbed, then his life was threatened, and for several weeks he was
forced to go about under police protection. He was seriously criticized
and finally ostracized. In less than a year he died. His friends declare
that he was slanderously misquoted.
The sentiments of Negroes fall into somewhat the same classification as
those of whites, but with one or two notable exceptions: there is (1) more
discussion of race problems, more criticism of the conduct of leaders,
more discussion of the practicability of programs of action; and (2) a
great deal of literature and other expressions concerning the development
of a defensive philosophy. In this latter are included various defensive
policies, the stimulation of race pride, the explanation of behavior, and
the struggle for status. There might also be included frequent evidences
of the development of race consciousness. The emotional background,
class consciousness, and the influences of group control are as evident
in the sentiments of Negroes as of white persons.
A wide selection of views was obtained from Negroes and presented
under the classifications in which they appeared naturally to fall.
To get a more precise statement of views, a questionnaire was sent to
Negroes representing a class intellectually able to subject themselves
to self-analysis and to discuss various confusing angles of the race
question. They were asked concerning interracial problems; whether or
not race relations appear to be growing better or worse; whether the
acquisition of wealth, or 100 per cent literacy, or unrestricted suffrage
could affect race relations; they were asked questions concerning their
adjustment to the present social system, their most pronounced mental
complexes experienced in adjusting personal desires to the present social
system; whether they were prejudiced against white persons; whether or
not they were conscious of a feeling of race inferiority, or of a desire
to compensate for a supposed inferiority. Concerning Negro problems
they were asked whether or not there should be recognized leaders of
Negroes; their criticisms of the policies of Negro leaders. Their racial
philosophy was solicited. They were asked the distinction that they made
between segregation and racial solidarity, and information was sought
on the agencies responsible for their opinions. A most interesting array
of views was secured, ranging from suspicion and abuse of the questions
themselves to dispassionate analysis.
The war has produced a new type of sentiment. It not only brought
disappointment and disillusionment for Negroes led into a new hope by the
promises that accompanied the manifest efforts to stimulate patriotism,
but actually gave to Negroes new experiences. Following the return of
Negro soldiers from France, measures of restraint were increased, and
from the usual lawlessness of the period of reconstruction they probably
suffered more severely than others because they are to a much larger
extent dependent upon law enforcement for security and comfort. Race
riots, which are an expression of both loose machinery of community
control and the development of a more determined resistance on the part of
Negroes, grew more frequent in number and more serious in consequences.
A new note was sounded in radical Negro literature, which appeared to
carry a very popular appeal.
B. FACTORS IN THE MAKING OF PUBLIC OPINION
1. THE WHITE PRESS OF CHICAGO
Aside from the agencies ordinarily responsible for providing the
individual with his views, there are others equally as powerful in
developing and influencing opinions. Most important of these is the
press. For that portion of the public which depends upon the press for
its contact with the Negro group and its information concerning it, this
agency holds a controlling hand. Throughout the country it is pointed
out, by both whites and Negroes, that the policies of many newspapers on
racial matters have made relations more difficult, at times fostering
new antagonisms and even precipitating riots by inflaming the white
public against Negroes. A study was made of the three principal white
daily newspapers of Chicago, covering a two-year period. Included in this
study were 1,347 news items, 108 letters to the press, and ninety-six
editorials on the Negro.
As an example of the type of publicity given to racial news concerning
Negroes and the types of articles considered to have good news value,
of the 1,338 articles published, 606, or nearly 50 per cent, dealt with
riots, crime, and vice. Each of these articles specifically identified
the persons involved as Negroes.
Constant identification of Negroes with certain definite crimes could have
no other effect than to stamp the entire Negro group in the public mind
as generally criminal. This in turn contributes to the already existing
belief that Negroes as a group are more likely to be criminal than others,
and thus they are arrested more readily than others. Publication of
their names with race identification and with the crimes alleged against
them keeps up a vicious circle. The unfortunate emphasis on sex offenses
involving race, the subtle fanning of latent animosities by innuendo and
suggestion, attaching the crime not only to the individual but to the
race, direct a current of fear, intolerance, and ill will against the
whole Negro group. An apt illustration, frequently cited by Negroes, is
that if each time a crime was committed by a red-headed man, he was so
described in telling of his crime, a popular fear and prejudice would
soon develop against all red-headed men.
Crimes involving Negroes alone receive little attention. As with the
Italians, as long as crimes are committed within the group, and this group
is regarded as an isolated appendix of the community, they hold very
little news value. When, however, a member of the isolated group comes
into conflict with the community group, whether in industry, housing,
or any relation, its representative significance is thus established,
and the information becomes news. Publicity on housing, for example,
stresses the conflict with other neighborhoods, the "invasion" of white
districts, and plans for segregation. News items on politics involving
Negroes get more space and prominence when they describe graft and
corruption. In the list of articles studied are included sixty-three
articles particularly ridiculing the Negro group.
Incidents occurring during the activities of the Commission were
checked up with reports of them appearing in the papers, and serious
misrepresentations of the Negro group were revealed. One example was
an article in the _Herald-Examiner_ on January 4, 1920, with two-inch
headlines across the entire first page: "Reds Plot Negro Revolt," "I.W.W.
Bomb Plant Found on South Side." The article mentioned the alleged secret
activities of Negroes and their plans to revolt against the government.
The bomb plant and many of their secret plans were reported to have
been discovered by the state's attorney. The article further said: "In
Chicago it was learned that the headquarters for Negro revolutionary
propaganda are centered in these four organizations: the Free Thought
Society, Universal Negro Improvement Association, Negro Protective
League, and the Soldiers and Sailors Club." The article and the reported
"discoveries" of the state's attorney's office are evidence of the
absurd ignorance frequently manifested by members of the white group
concerning the activities of Negroes. Each of the organizations named was
known to the Commission and visited by its representatives on numbers of
occasions. All of their meetings are open to the public, though attended
almost entirely by Negroes. The Universal Negro Improvement Association
publishes all of its plans in its newspaper, the _Negro World_. Its
slogan is "Back to Africa" and not "Down with the United States." The
Free Thought Society mentioned is an organization designed to provide a
medium of expression for persons who seek the "attainment of truth." Its
discussions concern religion and philosophy, and it numbers among its
members prominent Negro and white professional men. The Negro Protective
League is an employment office and day nursery. The full name of the
organization is the "Negro Equal Rights and Protective Association." The
Soldiers and Sailors Club is a community house located on the South Side
and a branch of the local War Camp Community Service. Eugene T. Lies,
formerly of the United Charities, was its director. The occasion of the
publicity in question was a convention of a national Negro Greek-letter
fraternity, which held its meetings in the auditorium of the Soldiers
and Sailors Club. This fraternity, like all others of its kind, excluded
non-members and by so doing aroused the suspicion of the newspaper's
informants. No correction appeared in the paper, and to date no further
"discoveries" have been made.
Articles of this type illustrate the possible effect on the public mind
of such misrepresentations of the Negro. One newspaper has abandoned its
policy of identifying Negroes with reports of incidents, in recognition
of the gross unfairness of the practice.
2. THE NEGRO PRESS
The development of the Negro press was stimulated by several necessities
important among which were:
_a_) The indifference of the white press to the Negro group; its emphasis
on the unfortunately spectacular, and the consequent loss of items of
interest about Negroes throughout the country.
_b_) The importance of developing the morale of the Negro group, creating
a solidarity of interest and purpose for measures of defense, correcting
the impressions created by general opinion, and centering the attention
of Negroes upon themselves and their advancement.
Three of the most important local Negro weekly papers were studied.
Their news items showed bias in reporting just the reverse of that which
characterizes the reports of many white papers. They emphasize the Negro's
view and may be said to provide a compensatory interpretation of the
news. When, for example, the _Chicago Tribune_ reports the approval in
the Illinois Constitutional Convention of a civil-rights bill with the
headline: "Miscegenation Is O.K.'d in New Constitution; Negroes Given All
the Rights of Whites," the _Chicago Whip_, a Negro newspaper, headlines
the same incident: "Morris Gets Civil Rights into Constitution; Victory
for Race Won at Springfield."
The most important function exercised by the Negro press is its control
of the Negro group and of their education in conduct. All of these papers
give considerable space to such popular education.
3. RUMOR
Rumor, if unchecked, can do incalculable damage to race relations.
Included under the term "rumor" are those unfounded tales, incorrectly
deduced conclusions, partial statements of fact with significant content
added by the narrator, all of which are given wide circulation and easy
credence by the public. Other forms of rumor are tales of unheard-of
brutality and of plots and plans which are either fabrications or partial
statements of fact and serve only to stimulate resentment, fear, and a
desire for retaliation. Of the rumors predicting riots, one example will
illustrate: During the riot a white man was caught in the act of 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
act by repeating to the police the current rumor that it was known that
Negroes had set fire to the houses of whites "back of the Yards."
A persistent tale circulated during and for a long time after the riot
was to the effect that the bodies of hundreds of Negroes were taken
from Bubbly Creek where they had been thrown after being killed by white
rioters. The story was so frequently repeated that it was accepted and
even repeated in Congress. It caused an intense feeling among Negroes.
Investigation by the coroner, Police Department, and other agencies showed
that no bodies had ever been thrown into Bubbly Creek or recovered from
it.
A rumor given official sanction and carried into the files of the
Department of Justice illustrates other possible dangers of this kind.
This rumor concerned two prominent and highly accredited organizations for
Negroes. Rumors connected them with "I.W.W. plots and plans to overthrow
the government." These reports were founded upon scarcely anything more
than suspicion due to lack of information and acquaintance with the
Negro group. The National Urban League, for example, an organization of
responsible Negroes and whites with branches in thirty-one cities, was
reported to have asked William D. Haywood, head of the I.W.W., to speak
at its convention in Detroit. This report grew out of the misreading of
the name of William Hayward, a United States district attorney in New
York, who is a member of the executive board and whose name appears on
the stationery of the organization. The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, also a reputable organization of whites
and Negroes, was reported to be "planning to flood the colored districts
with I.W.W. literature." This was entirely false, but the reports went
to the Department of Justice headquarters secretly and could not be
corrected by the persons most affected.
4. MYTHS
Group myths, like those about the American Indian, the Oriental, and the
Jew, are very common. Usually they are the expression either of a wish
or of fear, which sociologists call a negative wish. Mythical stories
and anecdotes about Negroes, accepted by whites, are usually popular.
Many of them may have had a reasonable origin, but as a matter of fact
have long outgrown it. So long as they are uncorrected they hold and
exercise a marked degree of control over personal conduct.
In the category of myths fall the popular beliefs of whites concerning
the mentality of Negroes, and the more definite myth that the mind of
the Negro child ceases to develop when he reaches the age of puberty.
The sex myth is always in evidence. It involves the fear obsession
of Negro men held by many white women, fear of miscegenation, the
condonation of lynchings, repressive social restrictions, as well as
attempts at legislative restraints. Negroes are by these myths shown to
have a predilection for sex crimes. This sex myth has been stressed in
almost every riot. It precipitated the Washington riot; it provoked the
most brutal murder of the Chicago riot, and it was responsible for the
brutality of the Omaha and Tulsa riots. Always resident in the background
of popular consciousness, it shows the same head and features in almost
every clash of races.
5. PROPAGANDA
Conscious control of public opinion by propaganda has been used with
tremendous effect by social, political, and religious organizations
seeking popularity and support for their movements and reforms. Both
Negroes and whites employed propaganda, sometimes openly, sometimes
insidiously. Racial propaganda has probably a more powerful appeal than
any other type because it is based upon the instinct of race and race
differences, rivalry and jealousy. The most common forms of propaganda
may be classified into the following types: (_a_) educational, (_b_)
radical and revolutionary, (_c_) defensive, (_d_) malicious.
The activities and programs of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People fall under the classification of educational
propaganda; this propaganda is directed to the white public principally
and is intended to change public opinion by providing a foundation of
actual facts for the public's judgment.
The more striking examples of the radical and revolutionary propaganda are
the appeals sent out by the Industrial Workers of the World to Negroes,
carrying their doctrines and extending open arms to Negro workers and
offering them what most other organizations refuse--the privilege of
association and membership on the basis of brotherhood.
Defensive propaganda is more apparent within the Negro group and is
usually designed for the purpose of combating aggression and injury
to their purposes and aspirations from without. The appeals of this
propaganda are directed first to Negroes as a means of cementing the group
from within, and indirectly to the white group by way of impressing them
with the strength of solidified opposition to insults. The Protective
Circle of Chicago, organized to "oppose segregation, bombing, and defiance
of the Constitution," admitted employing propaganda to accomplish its
purpose.
Malicious propaganda is by far the most dangerous because it is founded
upon race antagonism. In the appeal to the emotions facts are soon lost.
Anti-Negro propaganda is not wholly new in the North, but when employed
it has usually been done insidiously because "Negro-baiting is considered
in bad taste." Recently, however, there have been conspicuous instances
of open and organized efforts to influence the minds of whites against
Negroes. Ignorance and suspicion, fear and prejudice, have been played
upon deliberately. The stated purpose of the propaganda was to unite white
property owners in opposition to the "invasion" of other residential
areas by Negroes, but in the actual carrying out of the propaganda it
was extended to all Negroes, and many methods were employed which could
have no other effect than to arouse bitterness and antagonism leading to
clashes. The _Property Owners' Journal_, the organ of an association of
real estate men, became so violent in its preachments that the protest
of whites forced its discontinuance. Appeals were made not only to the
instinct of race but to the sex instincts and the protective instincts of
white men. A pamphlet sent to the wives of prominent residents in that
neighborhood, entitled _An Appeal of White Women to American Humanity_,
recounted the "horrible conduct of French Colonials on the Rhine and
the abuse of German white women," although there was little apparent
connection between the conduct of Chicago Negroes and that of the black
soldiers in the French Army of Occupation on the Rhine. This pamphlet,
however, served to increase the fears of Negro men by white women and
to arouse the resentment and hatred of white men.
THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION
Many of our citizens who were appalled by the rioting and murders of
1919, feeling the need of a solution of the problem dealt with in this
investigation, have hoped that this Commission might suggest some ready
remedy, some quick means of assuring harmony between the races.
Careful consideration of the facts set forth in this report shows that
no such suggestion is possible. No one, white or Negro, is wholly free
from an inheritance of prejudice in feeling and in thinking as to these
questions. Mutual understanding and sympathy between the races will be
followed by harmony and co-operation. But these can come completely only
after the disappearance of prejudice. Thus the remedy is necessarily
slow; and it is all the more important that the civic conscience of
the community should be aroused, and that progress should begin in a
direction steadily away from the disgrace of 1919.
Each member of this Commission feels that he has more understanding and
less prejudice than before its work began. Therefore we recommend the
thoughtful examination of the body of this report, so that all who read
our recommendations may weigh for themselves the evidence upon which
they are based.
Having in mind the basic facts in the problem of race relations and the
conclusions from a careful study of the various phases of these relations
in Chicago, the Commission presents for the consideration and action of
state and local authorities, and of the social agencies and citizens of
Chicago, the following recommendations and suggestions.
To the Police, Militia, State's Attorney, and Courts:
HANDLING OF RIOTS
1. We recommend that the police and militia work out, at the earliest
possible date, a detailed plan for joint action in the control of race
riots.
2. In accordance with such a plan, and in the event of race rioting,
we specifically recommend: (_a_) that the militia, white and Negro, be
promptly mobilized at the beginning of the outbreak; (_b_) that police
and deputy sheriffs and militia, white and Negro, be so distributed as
adequately to protect both races in white and Negro neighborhoods and to
avoid the gross inequalities of protection which, in the riot of 1919,
permitted widespread depredations, including murder, against Negroes in
white neighborhoods, and attacks in Negro neighborhoods by invading white
hoodlums; (_c_) that the police and militia be stationed with special
reference to main street-car lines and transfer points used by Negroes
in getting to and from work; (_d_) that substantial assurance be given
of adequate and equal protection by all agencies of law enforcement,
thus removing the incentive to arm in self-defense; (_e_) that in the
appointment of special peace officers there shall be no discrimination
against Negroes; (_f_) that all rioters, white and Negro, be arrested
without race discrimination; (_g_) that all reports and complaints
of neglect of duty or participation in rioting by police, deputy
sheriffs, or militia be promptly investigated and the offenders promptly
punished; (_h_) that all persons arrested in connection with rioting be
systematically booked on distinct charges showing such connection, in
order to avoid the confusion and evasions of justice following the riot
of 1919.
3. We recommend that, without regard to color, all persons arrested
in connection with rioting be promptly tried and the guilty speedily
punished.
BOMBINGS
4. We recommend prompt and vigorous action by the police, state's
attorney, and courts to suppress the bombings of Negro and white houses,
these acts being criminal and likely to provoke race rioting.
5. The testimony of court officials before the Commission and its
investigations indicate that Negroes are more commonly arrested, subjected
to police identification, and convicted than white offenders, that on
similar evidence they are generally held and convicted on more serious
charges, and that they are given longer sentences. We point out that
these practices and tendencies are not only unfair to Negroes, but weaken
the machinery of justice and, when taken with the greater inability
of Negroes to pay fines in addition to or in lieu of terms in jail,
produce misleading statistics of Negro crime. We recognize that these
practices and tendencies are in a large degree the unconscious results of
traditional race prejudice. We recommend to the police, state's attorney,
judges, and juries that they consider these conditions in the effort to
deal fairly (and without discrimination) with all persons charged with
crime.
6. We recommend that, in order to encourage respect for law by both
Negroes and whites, the courts discountenance the facetiousness which
is too common in dealing with cases in which Negroes are involved.
VICIOUS ENVIRONMENT
7. We recommend that the police, state's attorney, and other authorities
promptly rid the Negro residence areas of vice resorts, whose present
exceptional prevalence in such areas is due to official laxity.
POLICING OF PARKS AND BEACHES
8. We recommend better co-operation between the city and park police in
and near parks, bathing-beaches, and other public recreation places,
especially where there has been or is likely to be race friction; and
in the speedy punishment of persons guilty of stoning houses, molesting
individuals, or committing other depredations calculated to arouse race
antagonism.
"ATHLETIC CLUBS"
9. We recommend that the police pay particular and continuous attention
to the so-called "athletic clubs" on the South Side, which we have found
to be a fruitful source of race conflict, and that when race conflict
arises or is imminent the members and meeting places of such clubs be
searched for arms and that, if deemed necessary, such clubs be closed.
THE BARRETT MURDER
10. We commend the police for the prompt and effective action in the
Barrett murder case, September 20, 1920, which allayed public alarm and
averted a serious clash.
To the City Council and Administrative Boards, the Park Boards and the
Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing-Beaches:
CONTROL OF FIREARMS
11. We recommend that the most stringent means possible be applied to
control the importation, sale, and possession of firearms and other
deadly weapons.
SUPERVISION OF "ATHLETIC CLUBS"
12. In order to facilitate police supervision of so-called "athletic
clubs," we recommend that all such clubs be required to file with the
city clerk statements of their purposes and, at stated intervals, lists
of their members and officers, with their addresses.
SANITATION
13. We recommend that the authorities exercise their powers to condemn and
raze all houses unfit for human habitation, many of which the Commission
has found to exist in the Negro residence areas on the South and West
sides.
14. We recommend better enforcement of health and sanitary laws and
regulations in the care, repair, and upkeep of streets and alleys and
the collection and disposal of rubbish and garbage in areas of Negro
residence, where the Commission has found these matters to be shamefully
neglected.
RECREATION CENTERS
15. We recommend that the park and other proper authorities (_a_)
put an end to the present gross discrimination by white persons which
practically bars Negroes out of certain recreation centers near their
own congested residence area; and (_b_) that a recreation center of
adequate size and facilities be established for the use of both whites
and Negroes in the principal Negro residence area of the South Side; and
(_c_) that steps be taken to secure more adequately trained, competent,
and intelligent playground and recreation-center directors, white and
Negro, who shall be held responsible for racial clashes arising in places
under their direction and shall be required to interest themselves in
reducing and avoiding racial friction in their neighborhoods; and (_d_)
that proper equipment and supervision be provided at the Twenty-sixth
Street Bathing-Beach, where they are now almost wholly lacking; and (_e_)
that, in co-operation with the city police, the park police adequately
protect all citizens, without regard to color, in going to and from
parks, recreation centers, and playgrounds.
To the Board of Education:
MORE SCHOOLS IN NEGRO AREAS
16. We recommend that in the areas where the main part of the Negro
population lives, and where elementary-school accommodations are notably
deficient, buildings, equipment, and teaching forces be provided which
shall be at least equal to the average standard for the city, in order
that the present conditions of overcrowding, arrangement of pupils
in shifts, and the assignment of too large classes to teachers may be
remedied.
NIGHT SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY CENTERS
17. We recommend the establishment of night schools and community centers
in sections of the city not now adequately provided with such facilities.
COMPULSORY EDUCATION
18. Having found that many Negro children who quit school at an early
age, as in the case of similar white children, appear later as criminals
and delinquents, we urge strict enforcement of regulations as to working
permits for such children, and we especially recommend that truant
officers give attention to school attendance by the children of Negro
families migrating here from the South.
ATTITUDE OF PRINCIPALS AND TEACHERS
19. Since the attitude of principals and teachers vitally influences
the relations of white and Negro children in the public schools, we
recommend that special care be exercised in appointing principals and
teachers who have a sympathetic and intelligent interest in promoting
good race relations in the schools.
STUDENT ACTIVITIES
20. We recommend that public-school principals and teachers encourage
participation by children of both races in student activities as a means
of promoting mutual understanding and good race relations in such schools
and in the community.
To Social and Civic Organizations, Labor Unions, and Churches:
PROMOTION OF RACE HARMONY
21. Being convinced by our inquiry that much of the antagonism evinced in
the areas of marked hostility toward Negroes is founded upon tradition
which is itself without foundation in fact or justice, we recommend to
schools, social centers and agencies, churches, labor unions, and other
organizations in these areas, and to public-spirited citizens, white
and Negro, that they endeavor to dispel the false notions of each race
about the other and promote mutual tolerance and friendliness between
them.
22. We recommend that both white and Negro churches seek and use
means to improve race relations, and that these means include the
finding of frequent occasion for having their congregations addressed
by representatives of both races on the subject of race sympathy and
tolerance.
SOCIAL AGENCIES IN NEGRO COMMUNITIES
23. We commend the course of such agencies as the United Charities,
Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, and American Red Cross in
extending their work to the Negro community, and recommend that other
agencies whose work is similarly useful extend their work in like manner.
24. Recognizing and commending the practical efforts of the Interracial
Committee of the Woman's City Club, the Public Affairs Committee of the
Union League Club, and the Chicago Urban League, in promoting better
race relations, especially in the summer of 1920, when racial friction
was deemed imminent, we recommend that other organizations of the same
kind undertake like activities.
25. We recommend that the appropriate social agencies give needed
attention to dealing extra-judicially with cases of Negroes coming before
the morals and juvenile courts; also to cases of Negro children dropping
out of school too early in age.
OPPORTUNITY FOR RECREATION TRAINING
26. We recommend that Negroes, as well as whites, be given opportunity
for training for service in the city's public recreation facilities.
To the Public:
INTERRACIAL TOLERANCE
27. We are convinced by our inquiry: (_a_) that measures involving or
approaching deportation or segregation are illegal, impracticable and
would not solve, but would accentuate, the race problem and postpone
its just and orderly solution by the process of adjustment; (_b_) that
the moral responsibility for race rioting does not rest upon hoodlums
alone, but also upon all citizens, white or black, who sanction force
or violence in interracial relations or who do not condemn and combat
the spirit of racial hatred thus expressed; (_c_) that race friction
and antagonism are largely due to the fact that each race too readily
misunderstands and misinterprets the other's conduct and aspirations.
We therefore urge upon all citizens, white and Negro, active opposition
to the employment of force or violence in interracial relations and to the
spirit of antagonism and hatred. We recommend dispassionate, intelligent,
and sympathetic consideration by each race of the other's needs and
aims; we also recommend the dissemination of proved or trustworthy
information about all phases of race relations as a useful means for
effecting peaceful racial adjustment.
28. Since rumor, usually groundless, is a prolific source of racial
bitterness and strife, we warn both whites and Negroes against the
acceptance or circulation by either of reports about the other whose
truth has not been fully established. We urge all citizens, white and
Negro, vigorously to oppose all propaganda of malicious or selfish origin
which would tend to excite race prejudice.
29. We commend race contacts in cultural and co-operative efforts as
tending strongly to mutual understanding and the promotion of good race
relations.
30. We condemn the provocation or fostering of race antagonism by
associations or organizations ostensibly founded or conducted for purposes
of patriotism or local improvements or the like.
PERMANENT RACE-RELATIONS BODY
31. We recommend as of special importance that a permanent local body
representing both races be charged with investigating situations likely
to produce clashes, with collecting and disseminating information tending
to preserve the peace and allay unfounded fears, with bringing sound
public sentiment to bear upon the settlement of racial disputes, and
with promoting the spirit of interracial tolerance and co-operation.
To the White Members of the Public:
RACE ADJUSTMENT IN MIXED NEIGHBORHOODS
32. We call to public attention the fact that intensity of racial feeling
is not necessarily due to the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood,
either in the majority or minority, and that such feeling is not the rule
but the exception; and we cite as a conspicuous example the peaceful
conditions that have long obtained in the area between Roosevelt Road
and Thirty-ninth Street from Wentworth Avenue to Lake Michigan, in which
the Negro population in 1920 numbered 54,906 and the white population
42,797.
BETTER NEGRO HOUSING WITHOUT SEGREGATION
33. Our inquiry has shown that insufficiency in amount and quality of
housing is an all-important factor in Chicago's race problem; there
must be more and better housing to accommodate the great increase
in Negro population which was at the rate of 148 per cent from 1910
to 1920. This situation will be made worse by methods tending toward
forcible segregation or exclusion of Negroes, such as the circulation
of threatening statements and propaganda by organizations or persons
to prevent Negroes from living in certain areas, and the lawless and
perilous bombing of houses occupied by Negroes or by whites suspected
of encouraging Negro residence in the district.
We therefore recommend that all white citizens energetically discourage
these futile, pernicious, and lawless practices, and either co-operate
in or start movements to solve the housing problem by constructive and
not destructive methods.
DEPRECIATION AND PROPERTY RISKS
34. Testimony before the Commission and investigations made by it show two
important facts: (_a_) that depreciation of residence property generally
charged exclusively to the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood is
often largely due to other factors; (_b_) that many Negroes of this city
meet their obligations in such a manner as to make their home-building
and home-owning investments seem a more desirable risk than has been
generally supposed. We therefore recommend that these facts be taken
into consideration in connection with loans on Negro property.
ADVANCED RENTS FOR NEGROES CONDEMNED
35. We condemn and urge the discontinuance of the practice of property
owners who arbitrarily advance rents merely because Negroes become
tenants.
INFORMATION ABOUT NEGROES
36. We recommend that white persons seek information from responsible
and representative Negroes as the basis of their judgments about Negro
traits, characteristics, and tendencies, and thereby counteract the
common disposition, arising from erroneous tradition and literature, to
regard all Negroes as belonging to one homogeneous group and as being
inferior in mentality and morality, given to emotionalism, and having
an innate tendency toward crime, especially sex crime.
To the Negro Members of the Public:
RACIAL DOCTRINES
37. We recommend to Negroes the promulgation of sound racial doctrines
among the uneducated members of their group, and the discouragement of
propaganda and agitators seeking to inflame racial animosity and incite
Negroes to violence.
SUPPORT OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
38. We urge Negroes to contribute more freely of their money and personal
effort to the social agencies developed by public-spirited members of
their group; also to contribute to the general social agencies of the
community.
SPECIAL PROBLEMS
39. We recommend that the Negro community, through the extension or
establishment of the necessary social agencies, undertake to supply
means and encouragement for leisure activities, and undertake work among
Negro boys and girls along the lines of prevention of vice and crime;
also that it provide institutional care of dependent Negro children.
40. We particularly urge that Negroes vigorously and continuously protest
against the presence in their residence areas of any vicious resort,
and that they join in and support all efforts to suppress such places.
ADJUSTMENT OF MIGRANTS
41. We commend the important work done by the Chicago Urban League, the
Negro churches, and other organizations in facilitating the adjustment
of migrant Negroes from the South to the conditions of living in Chicago
and urge its extension. We also commend the work already done by Negroes
through community associations in bettering the appearance and sanitary
condition of housing and recommend its further extension.
RACE PRIDE
42. While we recognize the propriety and social values of race pride
among Negroes, we warn them that thinking and talking too much in terms
of race alone are calculated to promote separation of race interests
and thereby to interfere with racial adjustment.
To Employers and Labor Organizations:
ATTITUDE TOWARD NEGRO WORKERS
43. We have found that in struggles between capital and labor Negro
workers are in a position dangerous to themselves and to peaceful
relations between the races, whether the issues involve their use by
employers to undermine wage standards or break strikes, or efforts by
organized labor to keep them out of certain trades while refusing to admit
them to membership in the unions in such trades. We feel that unnecessary
racial bitterness is provoked by such treatment of Negro workers, that
racial prejudice is played upon by both parties, and that through such
practices injury comes, not alone to Negroes, but to employers and labor
organizations as well.
We therefore recommend to employers that they deal with Negroes as workmen
on the same plane as white workers; and to labor unions that they admit
Negroes to full membership whenever they apply for it and possess the
qualifications required of white workers.
NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS
44. We commend to the attention of employers who fear clashes or loss of
white workers by taking on Negro workers the fact that in 89 per cent
of the industries investigated by this Commission, Negroes were found
working in close association with white employees, and that friction
between these elements had rarely been manifested.
INDUSTRIAL AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES FOR NEGROES
45. In view of the limited field of employment within which Negroes are
restricted we recommend that employers in all lines enlarge that field
and permit Negroes an equal chance with whites to enter all positions
for which they are qualified by efficiency and merit. In this connection
especial attention is called to the fact that opportunity is generally
denied to Negroes for gaining experience in business methods through
service in responsible positions in business houses. Such opportunities,
if made available for them, would not only be of benefit to Negroes in the
development of sounder business methods among them and the building up of
their resources, but would also be a gain to the business establishments
and the community at large.
46. We have found that Negroes are denied equal opportunity with whites
for advancement and promotion where they are employed. As a measure of
justice we urge that Negroes be employed, advanced, and promoted according
to their capacities and proved merit. We call to the attention of those
concerned the high qualifications of many Negro workers in sleeping-car
and dining-car service, and recommend that when they deserve it and the
opportunity offers, they be made eligible for promotion to positions as
conductors and stewards.
TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS STRIKE BREAKERS
47. We point out as an injustice and a cause of racial antagonism the
practice of some employers who having hired Negroes as strike breakers
discharge them when the strike is settled to make places for former
white employees.
NEGRO WOMEN WORKERS
48. We find that employment of Negro girls at a smaller wage than white
girls and the denial to them of apprenticeship opportunities are a cause
of racial antagonism. We therefore recommend that the employment of
Negro girls be based on merit, with equality of wages, piece rates, and
apprenticeship opportunities with white girls; we also recommend that
Negroes in domestic employment rendering the same quality of service as
whites be paid at the same rate as white domestics.
RACIAL PEACE IN INDUSTRY
49. Realizing that the common welfare is involved in the employment or
non-employment of Negro workers, and seeking means to preserve racial
peace in industry, we recommend: (_a_) that where Negro employees are
dismissed for unsatisfactory service other Negroes, recommended by
reliable Negro organizations, be given an opportunity to replace them;
(_b_) that in times of industrial depression, employers reduce their
forces in such a manner that the hardships of unemployment may not be
disproportionately severe on Negro workers; (_c_) that where Negroes
are employed with whites at the same tasks they be given equal pay for
equal work and equal opportunity for piecework and overtime work; (_d_)
that Negro workers be given opportunity for advancement and promotion
according to merit and efficiency and without race discrimination; (_e_)
that Negro workers be afforded the opportunity to learn and engage in
the skilled processes of their employment; (_f_) that superintendents
closely supervise the relations of foremen with Negro workers and see
that there is no racial injustice or discrimination; (_g_) that employers
generally deal with Negroes, whether engaged in, or seeking opportunity
to engage in, manual labor or clerical work, without discrimination as
to race, and apply to them the same tests and conditions as to white
employees.
SEPARATE LABOR UNIONS
50. We strongly condemn the efforts of self-seeking agitators, Negro
or white, who use race sentiment to establish separate unions in trades
where existing unions admit Negroes to equal membership with whites.
To Negro Workers:
RELATIONS WITH UNIONS
51. We recommend that qualified Negro workers desiring membership in
labor organizations join unions which admit both races equally, instead
of organizing separate Negro labor unions.
RELATIONS WITH EMPLOYERS
52. We recommend that Negroes completely abandon the practice of seeking
petty advance payments on wages and the practice of laying off work
without good cause.
LEARNING TRADES
53. We recommend that Negroes avail themselves wherever possible of
opportunities in apprentice schools and classes.
54. We recommend to all Negroes dependent on manual labor the learning
of some skilled trade even though there is no present opportunity to
engage in it.
To the Street-Car Companies:
PROTECTION OF PASSENGERS
55. In view of the large number of racial assaults on persons riding
in street cars, we recommend that conductors and motormen be specially
instructed concerning protection of passengers, white and Negro, and be
rigidly held to the discharge of this duty.
OVERCROWDING
56. We recommend that at all loading-points where whites and Negroes
board cars in large numbers, starters be employed and overcrowding be
prevented as far as possible.
To Restaurants, Theaters, Stores, and Other Places of Public Accommodation:
EQUAL RIGHTS IN PUBLIC PLACES
57. We point out that Negroes are entitled by law to the same treatment
as other persons in restaurants, theaters, stores, and other places of
public accommodation, and we urge that owners and managers of such places
govern their policies and actions and their employees accordingly.
To the Press:
HANDLING OF NEWS INVOLVING NEGROES
58. In view of the recognized responsibility of the press in its general
influence upon public opinion concerning Negroes--especially important
as related to the suppression of race rioting--we recommend: (_a_) that
the newspapers generally, including the foreign-language press, apply
the same standards of accuracy, fairness, and sense of proportion, with
avoidance of exaggeration, in publishing news about Negroes as about
whites; in this connection special attention is called to the fact that
emphasis, greatly out of proportion to that given their creditable acts,
is frequently placed on the crimes and misdeeds of Negroes, who, unlike
other groups, are identified with each incident and thus constantly
associated with discreditable conduct; (_b_) that the manner of news
treatment be no different in the case of Negroes than in that of whites,
to the end that there shall always be the unwritten assumption that the
same responsibility for equal consideration of the rights of the one by
the other rests on whites and Negroes alike, in respect of the matter
involved in the publication; (_c_) that, in consideration of the great
ease with which the public is influenced against the whole Negro group
by sensational articles and headlines, the press should exercise great
caution in dealing with unverified reports of crimes of Negroes against
white women, and should avoid the designation of trivial fights as race
riots; (_d_) that in recognition of the dangers of racial antagonism
on the part of the ignorant, the unthinking, and the prejudiced of both
races, publication be made, as opportunities offer, of such matters as
shall in their character tend to dispel prejudice and promote mutual
respect and good will.
We specially recommend more frequent publications concerning: (1)
creditable achievements of consequence by Negroes; (2) their efforts
toward a higher cultural and social life, and (3) their improvement of the
physical conditions of their own communities; (4) the common obligation
of all citizens of all races to recognize in their interrelations the
supreme duty of strict obedience to the law, in spirit as well as in
deed; (5) verification, so far as practicable, of all news concerning
Negroes and their activities by reference to recognized Negro agencies
or responsible representative Negroes.
We further recommend the capitalization of the word "Negro" in racial
designation, and avoidance of the word "nigger," as contemptuous and
needlessly provocative.
HANDLING OF NEWS INVOLVING NEGROES AND WHITES
59. To the Negro press we recommend greater care and accuracy in reporting
incidents involving whites and Negroes, the abandonment of sensational
headlines and articles on racial questions, and more attention to
educating Negro readers as to the available means and opportunities of
adjusting themselves and their fellows into more harmonious relations
with their white neighbors and fellow-citizens, and as to the lines of
individual conduct and collective effort which will tend to minimize
interracial friction, promote their own social and economic development,
and hasten interracial adjustment.
CHICAGO, December 6, 1921
ROBERT S. ABBOTT
EDGAR A. BANCROFT
_Chairman_
WILLIAM SCOTT BOND
EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN
GEORGE C. HALL
GEORGE H. JACKSON
HARRY EUGENE KELLY
VICTOR F. LAWSON
ADELBERT H. ROBERTS
JULIUS ROSENWALD
FRANCIS W. SHEPARDSON
_Vice-Chairman_
LACEY KIRK WILLIAMS
GRAHAM ROMEYN TAYLOR
_Executive Secretary_
CHARLES S. JOHNSON
_Associate Executive Secretary_
APPENDIX
A. BIOGRAPHICAL DATA OF MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION
ROBERT S. ABBOTT, Editor.
Born, Savannah, Georgia; graduate, Hampton Institute; graduate,
Kent College of Law; owner and publisher, the _Chicago
Defender_.
EDGAR ADDISON BANCROFT, _Chairman_, Lawyer.
Born, Galesburg, Illinois; graduate, Knox College; graduate,
Columbia Law School; ex-president, Chicago Bar Association,
Illinois State Bar Association; trustee, Knox College, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and Tuskegee Institute;
Senator of Phi Beta Kappa.
WILLIAM SCOTT BOND, Real Estate Dealer.
Born, Chicago, Illinois; graduate, University of Chicago;
graduate, Kent College of Law; member, real estate firm William
A. Bond & Company; trustee, University of Chicago.
EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN, Lawyer.
Born, Salem, Massachusetts; graduate, Brown University;
graduate, Harvard Law School; for ten years judge of the
Illinois Appellate Court, First District; for some years
president, Chicago Branch of National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.
GEORGE CLEVELAND HALL, Physician and Surgeon.
Born, Ypsilanti, Michigan; graduate, Lincoln University;
graduate, Bennett Medical College; trustee, Provident Hospital;
vice-president, Chicago Urban League; orator at dedication of
Booker T. Washington memorial monument at Tuskegee, 1922.
GEORGE H. JACKSON, Real Estate Dealer.
Born in Canada; graduate, Cincinnati Law School; former
member, Ohio Legislature; president, Pyramid Building and Loan
Association.
HARRY EUGENE KELLY, Lawyer.
Born, Des Moines, Iowa; graduate, State University of Iowa;
former member, Colorado Legislature; for some years United
States district attorney for Colorado; former president, Denver
Bar Association; attorney for Interstate Commerce Commission;
regional counsel at Chicago for Director General of Railroads.
VICTOR F. LAWSON, Editor.
Born, Chicago, Illinois; graduate, Phillips Academy, Andover,
Massachusetts; owner, editor, and publisher, _Chicago Daily
News_ since 1876; ex-president and now a director, Associated
Press; founder, Daily News Fresh Air Fund and Daily News Free
Lectures; called "father of postal savings bank in America."
EDWARD H. MORRIS, Lawyer.
Born in Kentucky; for two terms representative in Illinois
General Assembly; member of Illinois Constitutional Convention,
1920-21; for eleven years Grand Master of the Colored Odd
Fellows of America.
ADELBERT H. ROBERTS, Lawyer.
Born in Michigan; student, University of Michigan; graduate,
Northwestern University Law School; for two terms representative
in Illinois General Assembly.
JULIUS ROSENWALD, Merchant.
Born, Springfield, Illinois; president, Sears, Roebuck &
Company; philanthropist, stimulated construction and contributed
$325,000 toward total cost of Y.M.C.A. buildings for Negroes
in thirteen cities; contributed over $1,000,000 toward rural
schools for Negroes in fourteen southern states; trustee,
Tuskegee Institute, University of Chicago, Rockefeller
Foundation.
FRANCIS WAYLAND SHEPARDSON, _Vice-Chairman_, lately Director of
Registration and Education, State of Illinois, under Governor
Lowden.
Born, Cincinnati, Ohio; graduate, Denison University;
postgraduate, Yale University; former professor of history,
University of Chicago; Senator of Phi Beta Kappa.
LACEY KIRK WILLIAMS, Minister.
Born, Eufaula, Alabama; graduate, Arkansas Baptist College;
pastor, Olivet Baptist Church, Chicago, since 1916 (largest
Protestant Church in America); president, Illinois General
Baptist State Convention; vice-president, Colored National
Baptist Convention.
B. THE STAFF OF THE COMMISSION
In selecting the staff to assist in carrying through the investigation
and the preparation of the report careful effort was made to find persons
well qualified by educational background and practical experience in
social work. The staff averaged fifteen in number during the eighteen
months of its existence. In all, thirty-seven people, twenty-two white
and fifteen Negro, were engaged, some of whom served throughout the
entire period and others for varying briefer periods. The personnel was
as follows:
_Executive Secretary_
GRAHAM ROMEYN TAYLOR. A.B., Harvard, 1903; resident, Chicago
Commons Social Settlement 1904-12; member, editorial staff,
the _Survey_ magazine 1905-16; special agent, United States
Census Bureau, 1910; author, _Satellite Cities, A Study of
Industrial Suburbs_, 1915, and many magazine articles; special
assistant to American ambassador to Russia, 1916-19.
_Associate Executive Secretary_
CHARLES S. JOHNSON. A.B., Virginia Union University, 1916;
Ph.B., University of Chicago, 1917; graduate student in social
science at the University of Chicago; special investigator of
migration of Negroes from the South for the Carnegie Foundation
for International Peace; director of the Department of Research
and Records of the Chicago Urban League.
INVESTIGATION
_Investigators with Supervisory Duties_
MADGE HEADLEY. New York School of Philanthropy 1910; assistant
secretary, Tenement House Committee, Charity Organization
Society, New York City, 1910-15; made studies of housing
conditions in Providence, Rhode Island, New York City, Sullivan
and Ulster Counties, New York; of rural juvenile delinquency
in Ulster County, New York, for Federal Children's Bureau;
and of industrial and garden cities in England; served with
American Red Cross in France housing and feeding refugees,
1917-19.
ALBERT E. WEBSTER. Ph.B., Alfred University, 1909; graduate
student, University of Chicago, 1909-12; Anti-saloon League
investigator, New York state, 1906-7; United Charities,
Chicago, 1911-16; unemployment study, Calumet district, 1914;
supervised Red Cross relief work in Indiana flood disaster,
1913; assisted in supervising relief work in Eastland disaster,
Chicago; directed various surveys in Chicago 1918-20; assistant
superintendent and field secretary, Juvenile Protective
Association, Chicago.
_Investigators_
H. H. ALLEN. Teacher of sociology three years, Northern Texas
Normal School; newspaper experience; graduate student University
of Chicago, studying for Ph.D.
RUTH ARNETT. University of Illinois; volunteer girls' workers,
War Camp Community Service; investigator for Red Cross, East
St. Louis riot relief.
ELSIE BALL. Attended Leander Clark College two years; Chicago
School of Civics and Philanthropy one year; resident director,
District Neighborhood House, 1915-17; American Red Cross,
1917-20.
ELIZABETH BENHAM. Teaching experience; worked on Federal Census,
1920; resident, University of Chicago Settlement; secretary,
Inter-racial Committee, Chicago Woman's City Club.
ELLA G. BERRY. Enumerator in Chicago for Federal Census, 1920;
Chicago School Census, 1918.
ANGELINE BROCKMEIER. A.B., University of Illinois, 1917; Chicago
School of Civics and Philanthropy, 1918; Federal Children's
Bureau, 1918-20; study of infant mortality in Gary, Indiana;
study of courts and children's cases; statistical experience.
JOSEPH H. COLLINS. Business course, Central Y.M.C.A.,
Philadelphia, 1904-5; inspector, Railway Audit and Inspection
Company, Philadelphia, 1907-16; assistant industrial secretary,
New York Urban League; welfare worker, Bush Terminal Company,
New York City, and American International Shipbuilding
Corporation, 1918-19.
ESTHER FULKS. Carnegie Technical Institute, Pittsburgh; special
courses in social science, University of Chicago, New York
University, and Hampton Institute; National Training School,
Y.W.C.A., New York; supervisor of physical training, public
schools, Charleston, West Virginia; industrial secretary,
Y.W.C.A., East St. Louis, Illinois; made surveys of industrial
opportunities, educational and recreational facilities, and
social agencies for Negroes in East St. Louis.
HENRY W. HAMMOND. A.B., New York University, 1909; secretary,
Goff Street branch, Y.M.C.A., New Haven, Connecticut, 1911-13;
boys' work secretary, Wabash Avenue branch, Y.M.C.A., Chicago,
1914-16; probation officer, juvenile court, Chicago, 1916-20.
DAN H. KULP. Graduate student, University of Chicago;
investigated recreation facilities, Providence, Rhode Island,
and prepared statistics; investigated industrial and racial
conditions in China; general director, Yangtsepoo Social
Center, Shanghai.
KATE F. MARKOVITZ. Assistant matron, Montana State Orphan
Asylum, 1911-12; Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy,
1913; officer, Chicago Juvenile Protective Association, 1913-16;
director, jail division, Cook County Bureau of Social Service,
1916-18; overseas secretary, Y.W.C.A., 1918-19; volunteer,
Hull-House, 1912-20.
LUCIUS L. MCGEE. Teacher, four years, Virginia Union University;
experience investigating Negro conditions, Richmond, Virginia;
graduate student, University of Chicago, studying for Ph.D.
EDITH W. RIDDLE. A.B., Vassar, 1898; assistant superintendent,
Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, 1905-6; resident,
Hull-House; boys' school and farm work, Michigan, 1907-10; club
organization, Goodrich Social Settlement, Cleveland, 1913-17;
Federal Children's Bureau, 1918; Association for Crippled and
Disabled Children, Cleveland, 1919.
PHILIP SHERMAN. A.B., Carleton College, 1919; one year Harvard
Law School; campaign auditor, Y.M.C.A. Building Fund, Sioux
Falls, 1919.
ALONZO C. THAYER. A.B., Fisk University, 1904; experience as
reporter, manager, and editor of newspaper, also experience
in real estate; assisted in industrial work of the Chicago
Urban League.
CHARLES H. THOMPSON. A.B., Virginia Union University, 1917;
M.A., University of Chicago, 1920; field work, neighborhood
study, Richmond, Virginia, 1917; comparative educational study,
Moseley School, Chicago, 1920.
PREPARATION OF REPORT
_Assistants in Compilation of Data_
LUCIEN V. ALEXIS. A.B., Harvard, 1917; assistant organizer,
colored work, War Camp Community Service, Trenton, New Jersey,
1919-20; director of education, South Side Division, Community
Service, Chicago, 1920.
HENRY A. RABE. University of Wisconsin, 1903-5; business
experience, Chicago, 1905-19; student, University of Chicago,
specializing in economics and sociology and investigating
industrial conditions in Chicago.
OLIVE H. RABE. Business experience, eight years; graduate,
Northwestern University Law School, 1916; practiced law three
years; student, University of Chicago, two years, specializing
in economics and sociology.
WINIFRED RAUSCHENBUSH. A.B., Oberlin College, 1916; organization
work, Ohio Suffrage Association, 1917; graduate student,
sociology, University of Chicago, 1918; prepared material for
book on foreign-language press by Professor Robert E. Park,
University of Chicago, 1918-20; prepared maps and graphs for
book by Professor W. I. Thomas, 1919.
NORMAN L. RITCHIE. Newspaper work, twenty years, New York,
Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Saratoga, and Plattsburg, New
York; editorial writer, _Chicago Daily News_, nine years;
director of education and information, Community Service,
Chicago, 1920.
FLORENCE TAYLOR. A.B., Vassar College, 1921; publicity,
research, and field studies, National Child Labor Committee,
New York City, 1913-18; personnel-management study, Collegiate
Bureau of Occupations, Chicago, 1920.
ELIZABETH WAGENET. A.B., University of California, 1914;
investigator, California State Commission on Social Insurance;
investigator, California Industrial Welfare Commission, having
charge of cannery investigation; assistant, department of
economics, Washington State University under Professor Carleton
Parker; on staff of War Labor Policies Board, Washington, D.C.
_Clerks_
GERALDINE DISMOND. A.B., University of Chicago, 1915; teacher,
Chicago public schools; special work for Chicago Urban League.
MARCELLE V. LAVAL. A.B., University of Illinois, 1920; editor,
State Water Survey Division, Department of Registration and
Education, State of Illinois, 1918-19.
JOSEPHINE TAYLOR. A.B., Smith College, 1920; volunteer, social
service department, Cook County Hospital, Chicago, summer of
1919.
C. EPITOME OF FACTS IN RIOT DEATHS
I. Deaths due to mob violence, and in which the coroners' jury recommended
members of the unknown mob be apprehended and held to justice, and in
which none of the members were so apprehended. The cases listed in this
category do not include all those due to mob violence, but only those
qualified as stated:
1. Eugene Williams
Race Negro
Date of death July 27
Approximate time of death Probably 4:00 P.M.
Place where death occurred Lake Michigan at foot of Twenty-
ninth Street
Manner in which death occurred Drowning
Quarrel arose on beach between Negroes and whites in regard to the use
of the beach. Many stones were thrown on both sides. Williams, in the
water, was prevented from landing because of stone-throwing and drowned
as consequence.
2. John Mills
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 5:35 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Normal Avenue, 150 feet
south of Forty-seventh
Street
Manner of wound Skull fracture; beating
Mob of 300 or 400 white people, all ages, attacked east-bound
Forty-seventh Street car, pulled the trolley from the wire, stopped the
car. White passengers alighted, Negro passengers hid under seats. From
twenty-five to fifty white men boarded car and beat the Negroes with
bats, clubs, bricks. Driven out from the refuge of the car, they ran for
their lives, chased by the mob. Mills ran from Forty-seventh Street into
Normal Avenue. A brick hit him in the back, halted him, and before he
could run again a young white man hit him on the head with a scantling.
He was left unconscious. Four other Negroes from this car were beaten
but not fatally.
3. Oscar Dozier
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 5:55 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-ninth Street and
Wallace Avenue
Manner of wound Stabbing; external violence
Dozier worked for the Great Western Smelting and Refining Works. The
foreman warned negroes not to try to go home till adequate protection
could be furnished. In spite of the warning Dozier was seen to crawl
over the fence around the works at 5:45 P.M. He was next seen breaking
away from a mob of 500 to 1,000 white men at Thirty-ninth Street and
Parnell Avenue. He ran west on Thirty-ninth toward Wallace, the crowd
throwing stones. Halfway down the block he fell. When rescued by the
police immediately afterward he was found to have a stab wound two inches
long over his heart.
4. Henry Goodman
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 7:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-ninth Street and
Union Avenue
Manner of wound External violence
Goodman, with other Negroes was returning from the Stock Yards on an
east-bound Thirty-ninth Street car. A truck stalled across the track
at Thirty-ninth Street and Union Avenue brought the car to a stop and
allowed white men to force an entrance through the front door and beat
the Negroes off the rear of the car. The chief weapon was the iron lever
used for opening the front door of the car. The Negroes tried to run east
to Halsted Street where there were police officers. The crowd pursued,
knocked Goodman down, and beat him. Apparently Goodman recovered from
the violence, but a week later it was necessary to remove him to the
hospital, where a skull fracture, with a small pebble imbedded in the
wound, was discovered. He died of tetanus on August 12. The wound was
first treated by Dr. William W. Bradley on the evening the deceased
was injured. The coroner's jury said, "Tetanus would probably not have
developed had the wound been thoroughly examined and properly cleaned."
5. Louis Taylor
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 9:40 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Root Street and Wentworth Avenue
Manner of wound Scalp wounds; skull fracture due
to external violence
Taylor, employed by the Chicago & Great Western Railway Co., had just
come off his run and was returning home on a south-bound Wentworth Avenue
car. Cars, both north and south bound, were attacked at Root Street
and Wentworth Avenue by a mob of 100 white people armed with clubs and
bricks. Taylor was found unconscious on the sidewalk, his watch and
suitcase missing, when the police arrived. He died August 1.
6. B. F. Hardy
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 11:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Forty-sixth Street and Cottage
GroveAvenue
Manner of wound External violence
Hardy was the only Negro passenger on a north-bound Cottage Grove Avenue
car crowded with white people. At Forty-seventh Street some of these
alighted. A mob of whites in the street saw the Negro and jerked the
trolley from the wire. The car came to a stop at Forty-sixth Place.
White passengers in a panic demanded to be let off. When the front door
was opened Hardy tried to hide in their midst and leave the car. He
was seen by the waiting mob, knocked down, and pounded with fists until
unconscious. He died the next day.
7. John Simpson
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 7:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-first Street between Wabash
Avenue and "L" alley
Manner of wound Bullet wound
Several accounts have been given of the killing of Simpson. The coroner's
jury says: "... Thirty-first Street near the said elevated station, being
well filled with a rioting and disorderly mob, mainly colored people,
a white man being pursued east on Thirty-first Street, at that time,
and that deceased was a police officer of the City of Chicago, and was
engaged as a police officer in preserving the peace in and about the
point indicated, and that a number of shots were fired from revolvers
held in hands of men unknown to this jury." Another account says Simpson
was shot by the Negro keeper of a poolroom on account of a previous
quarrel. Simpson did not regain consciousness after being shot.
8. Henry Baker
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 10:00 or 11:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 544 East Thirty-seventh Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound in skull
The bullet which caused Baker's death was one of a number fired on the
streets at the time. Baker was not on the street but in a second-story
window. It is not known whether this shot was one fired by white men from
a passing automobile or by one of a crowd of Negroes at Thirty-seventh
Street and Vincennes Avenue. The majority of witnesses gave the time
of the shooting of Baker as 11:00 P.M., but the coroner in his report
names 10:00 P.M. as the hour.
9. David Marcus
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 9:30 or 10:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 511 East Thirty-seventh Street
Manner of wound Bullet
Only one eyewitness, a white companion of Marcus, testified. He said
a Negro walked up to Marcus and shot him. The witness stopped to pick
up his friend, was advised by Negroes to get out of danger, but when
he persisted in lifting the wounded man, he himself received a bullet
wound in the arm. A bullet also pierced the window of a laundry at this
time. The coroner gives the time of shooting as 8:45, though most of the
testimony seems to indicate that it occurred about fifteen or twenty
minutes after the first shooting from automobiles which occurred at
approximately 9:15 to 9:30. The police report gives 10:45 as the hour.
10. Eugene Temple
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 5:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 3642 South State Street
Manner of wound Stab wound
Temple, owner of a laundry at the above address, left his place of
business to enter his automobile which stood at the curb. His wife and
another young woman accompanied him but were the width of the sidewalk
from him when he was attacked by three Negroes, robbed, and stabbed. The
murderers escaped in the crowd of Negroes which immediately gathered.
It was testified that Temple employed both Negroes and whites and had
never had any difficulties of a racial nature with his workers.
11. William J. Otterson
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 7:10 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash
Avenue
Manner of wound Skull fracture due to external
violence
A mob of about 500 Negroes at Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue was
stopping cars, beating white people, and throwing bricks. An automobile
bearing Otterson as a passenger turned from Thirty-fifth Street to go
south on Wabash Avenue. One of the stones and bricks hurled at the motor
car hit Otterson on the head, and he immediately became unconscious. He
was seventy-four years old and a plasterer by trade.
12. Stefan Horvath
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving wound 9:00 or 9:35 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Root and South State streets
Manner of wound Bullet wound
At the time Horvath was shot, there was a crowd of fifty to seventy-five
Negroes on the sidewalk, but only about three on the corner where the
shooting occurred. The only eyewitness who testified was a policeman
who saw the shooting from a distance of 400 feet. The three Negroes ran
after firing the shot, and could not be found later.
13. Edward W. Jackson
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 9:00 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Fortieth and Halsted streets
Manner of wound Shock and hemorrhage due to beating
Jackson had started to walk to work. At Fortieth and Halsted streets he
was attacked by four or five white men and beaten. He ran to Thirty-ninth
Street, where he was found by the police. No further information could
be obtained in this case.
14. Samuel Bass
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound Between 7:00 and 9:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Twenty-second and Halsted Sts.
or Union Ave.
Manner of wound External violence
Samuel Bass, on account of the street-car strike, was walking the five
and one-half miles from his work to his home when a gang of white men
knocked him down three times, and cut gashes in his nose and cheeks
with their shoes. Bass hid behind freight cars till a Jewish peddler
took him in his cart to State Street. A doctor was visited, but when he
learned that Bass had no money, he turned him away without treatment. He
was picked up by a passing patrol and taken to the hospital, where his
treatment was cursory. Apparently he recovered, but in two weeks gave
evidence of a hemorrhage on the brain from which he died September 5.
15. Joseph Lovings
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound About 8:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 839 Lytle Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound, stab wounds,
skull fracture
Lovings, returning home from work on a bicycle, rode through an Italian
neighborhood whose residents were much excited because it had been said
earlier in the evening that a Negro employee of a mattress factory near-by
had shot a little Italian girl. A mob filled the streets when Lovings
was sighted. He tried to escape by running down an alley between Taylor
and Gilpin streets, and then jumped back fences and hid in a basement.
The mob dragged him out, riddled his body with bullets, stabbed him, and
beat him. It was afterward rumored that his body had been burned after
being saturated with gasoline. This was proved not to be true.
II. Deaths due to circumstances creating no criminal responsibility:
1. Nicholas Kleinmark
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound About 6:58 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-eighth Place and Ashland
Boulevard
Manner of wound Stab wound
Scott, Brown, and Simpson, Negroes, were returning by street car from
work in the Stock Yards when the car was boarded by a mob of white men
who attacked the Negroes with clubs and bricks. Scott defended himself
with a pocketknife, while Kleinmark tried to beat him with a club. One
of the blows with the knife went home, and Kleinmark staggered from
the car mortally wounded. Scott was jailed and charged with murder. The
coroner's jury commented as follows: "It is the sense of this jury that
the conduct of the police at the time of the riot at this point, during
the subsequent investigation, and at the preliminary hearing at which
Joseph Scott was bound over to the grand jury without counsel, was a
travesty on justice and fair play."
2. Clarence Metz
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 11:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Forty-third Street between
Forrestville and Vincennes
avenues
Manner of wound Stab wound
Metz was one of an assaulting party of whites which roamed the streets
from Forty-third to Forty-seventh streets and from Grand Boulevard to
Cottage Grove Avenue on the night of the twenty-eighth. Three Negroes,
one of them Lieutenant Washington, U.S.A., were returning from a theater
with three Negro women by way of Forty-third Street. At the place
mentioned they were attacked by a mob of whites and beaten with fists and
clubs. One of the Negroes was shot in the leg. Lieutenant Washington,
threatened with an ax handle, defended himself with his pocketknife.
Metz was stabbed as a result. The coroner's jury said: "We find that
the group of colored people, en route to their home, were acting in an
orderly and inoffensive manner, and were justified in their acts and
conduct during said affray."
3. Berger Odman
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 8:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Sixtieth and Ada streets
Manner of wound Bullet wound
This shooting occurred just inside the Negro neighborhood near Ogden
Park. One of the numerous mobs threatening this neighborhood began to
move into it from Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth streets and Racine Avenue.
The vanguard, composed of young boys, went a few feet inside the Negro
area and fired directly at a Negro named Samuel Johnson. He returned
the fire with a rifle. Other Negroes also fired in the direction of the
boys. One of the latter, Odman, was fatally wounded. The coroner's jury
said: "We believe and find that the action of Samuel R. Johnson was
fully justified and recommend his discharge from police custody."
4. James Crawford
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 27
Time of receiving death wound 6:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Twenty-ninth Street and Cottage
Grove Avenue
Manner of wound Bullet wound
A mob of about 1,000 Negroes congregated at Twenty-ninth Street and
Cottage Grove Avenue, whence they had chased Officer Callahan, supposed
to have refused to arrest the alleged slayer of Eugene Williams.
Other policemen attempting to disperse the mob were assaulted. James
Crawford, Negro, fired a revolver directly into the group of policemen.
They retaliated and Crawford ran. A Negro policeman followed Crawford,
attempting to stop him by firing. Crawford was wounded and died on July
29. The coroner's jury asserted: "We further find that the shooting was
justifiable on the part of the police officer."
5. Thomas Joshua
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 7:00 or 7:30 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Fifty-first Street and Wabash
Avenue
Manner of wound Bullet wound
About 7:30 A.M., July 29, Lieutenant Day of the Police Department, his
son and daughter, and Policeman Mitchell rode down Fifty-first Street
in an automobile. As the automobile reached Wabash Avenue a colored boy
pointed a gun toward it. Day sprang out, drawing his pistol. It is said
that the boy fired and Day returned a shot. The boy ran, and Day fired
two more shots. A crowd of Negroes running from State Street came upon
the scene. The police escaped in a Yellow taxicab. Joshua was shot by
Lieutenant Day. While the testimony was a mass of contradictions, the
coroner's jury said: "We are of the opinion that Thomas Joshua came to
his death from revolver shots fired by the police officer in the discharge
of his duty."
6. Ira Henry
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 30
Time of receiving death wound 1:30 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound 4957 South State Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound
Policemen Keal and Sullivan were accompanying three Jewish families
from their residence on South State Street to the Fourth Precinct
police station. As the party passed 4957, Officer Sullivan saw a Negro
in an alley. He ran back to search him and received a bullet wound. He
returned fire. Keal ran to his assistance and fired other shots. Henry
was killed instantly. A Negro woman who was with Henry testified that
the first shot was fired by Sullivan, but this was not substantiated.
The coroner's jury said: "We are of the opinion that the officers were
fully justified, owing to the circumstances, in shooting the deceased."
III. Deaths due to the Angelus riot as to which no recommendations were
made by the coroner's jury:
1. Joseph Sanford
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 8:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash
Avenue
Manner of wound Bullet wound
2. Hymes Taylor
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 8:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash
Avenue
Manner of wound Bullet wound
3. John Walter Humphrey
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 8:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-fifth Street between Wabash
Avenue and the "L"
Manner of wound Bullet wound
4. Edward Lee
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 8:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound Thirty-fifth and State streets
Manner of wound Bullet wound
The Angelus riot centered at the intersection of Thirty-fifth Street and
Wabash Avenue, the location of the Angelus apartment house, occupied
at the time by whites; Thirty-fifth Street was crowded all the way to
State Street. It was at Thirty-fifth and State streets that a secondary
riot occurred, an aftermath of the Angelus riot, yet almost simultaneous
with it. The crowd of Negroes on these corners had been growing during
the afternoon, and stone-throwing had been prevalent. The rumor which
raised the mob to riot pitch was that a Negro boy had been shot by a
white tenant of the Angelus building. A search by the police failed to
produce a culprit. By eight o'clock a mob of about 1,000 to 1,500 Negroes
massed on the streets. To cope with the mob were between sixty to 100
policemen on foot and about twelve mounted officers.
About eight o'clock a Negro either threw some missiles or fired a shot
at a policeman. Immediately there followed a massing of the police at
the north of the intersection of the two streets. Evidence of an order
to fire was not produced, but simultaneously with the massing came a
volley. During this fire Sanford and Taylor were killed while trying
to escape into the entrance of the Angelus building. Shots followed at
Thirty-fifth Street and the "L," where a large number of the Negroes ran
for protection. Several were wounded, and Humphrey was killed. Almost
at the same time shots were fired at Thirty-fifth and State streets,
where Lee received his death wound.
The Lee case is the only one in which suspicion of deliberate shooting
rested upon anyone. Atrus Lee, brother of the deceased, accused Mounted
Policeman Brooks of firing directly at his brother. Brooks said that
shots were fired at him from north of the intersection, and that he fired
in the air and ran east. Drs. Anderson and Teffner, white, who saw the
shooting from Dr. Anderson's office windows, bore him out. The corner's
jury concluded: "We find that deceased was wounded by one of the shots
fired at Officer Brooks."
IV. Deaths in circumstances which seemed to involve specific persons
named by the coroner's jury for further investigation, but as to which
no indictments followed:
1. Joseph Schoff
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 30
Time of receiving death wound 5:00 or 5:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 4228 South Ashland Avenue
Manner of wound Stab wound
Schoff, walking on Ashland Avenue, accosted Jose Blanco repeatedly, "Are
you a Negro?" Receiving no response he swung at Blanco with his fist.
The latter stabbed Schoff under the heart, then walked on. As he was
about to enter the house of a friend the police arrested him. He admitted
that he had stabbed a man, but said he had done it in self-defense.
The coroner's jury reported: "We, the jury, are unable to agree as to
whether the accused, Jose Blanco, should be held to the grand jury upon
a charge of manslaughter.... We recommend that the coroner present this
evidence to the grand jury for consideration and determination."
2. Samuel Banks
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 30
Time of receiving death wound 11:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 2729 Dearborn Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound
At 11:00 P.M., July 30, three policemen patrolling State Street at
Twenty-eighth Street, heard a shot on Dearborn Street. At Twenty-sixth
Place they met about a dozen Negro ex-soldiers acting as police reserves
under doubtful orders and asked them to accompany them. They all went
into Dearborn Street. Sixteen-year-old Sam Banks saw them and ran for
refuge, dodging under the house steps at 2729. His running was taken
as evidence of guilt. The officers halted in front of the house. One
Francis, a Negro, also believing that because the boy ran he was guilty,
opened his door and pointed out the hiding-place of young Banks. The boy
ran into the passageway between the houses. A shot fired by one of the
officers took effect. Suspicion rested upon Patrolman O'Connor of the
Police Department and two of the ex-soldiers, Adams and Douglas. The
coroner's jury stated: "The jury is unable to determine whether one or
more individuals of the group was acting criminally and is not able to
determine which individual fired the shot.... We find that two of said
volunteers, Ed. Douglas and Charles Adams, are held on a charge of murder
in connection with the death of deceased. We find there is evidence of
the presence of Ed. Douglas, but no satisfactory evidence of the presence
of Charles Adams at the scene of the shooting. We recommend the discharge
of Charles Adams from police custody on the charge of murder."
3. Theodore Copling
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 30
Time of receiving death wound 10:00 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 2934 South State Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound
A gang of Negro boys passing 2920 South State Street saw the white man
and came back. A Negro, one Partee, was sitting outside the store. He
warned the watchman to get inside. Almost immediately shots were fired.
The only person injured was young Copling, who apparently was not in the
crowd but on the outskirts as a sightseer. Suspicion rested upon four
persons--Baker, Negro, leader of the gang; Partee, Negro, who warned
the watchman and was opposed to the gang; Torcello, white watchman; and
Graise, Negro, step-father of Copling, who had on previous occasions
threatened to kill the boy because of disagreements between them. The
coroner's jury said: "We recommend that the said Hanson Baker, and the
said Norman Partee, and the said Dan Torcello, and the said Louis Graise
be held to the grand jury on a charge of murder until discharged by due
process of law."
4. George Flemming
Race White
Date of receiving death wound August 5
Time of receiving death wound 9:00 or 9:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 549 East Forty-seventh Street
Manner of wound Wound (inflicted by bayonet)
The coroner's jury report said: "We find that deceased, in company with
several other young men, was at Forty-seventh Street and Forrestville
Avenue when they were ordered to move away by a police officer and that
they obeyed and were walking east; that the group were followed by one
Edgar D. Mohan, a soldier, armed with a rifle, bayonet fixed; that said
Mohan commanded the young men to move faster, accompanying the command
by twice stabbing and wounding one Thomas J. Fennessey in the right hip
and scrotum; and that he immediately after plunged the bayonet into the
back of deceased, the bayonet penetrating through the body. We recommend
that the said Edgar D. Mohan be held to the grand jury upon a charge of
manslaughter, until discharged by due process of law.
"Being informed by the attorney general of Illinois that the military
authorities of the state of Illinois have jurisdiction over acts of
the said Edgar D. Mohan while in the military service, and have in fact
assumed jurisdiction, a court martial being now in progress, we, the jury,
hereby amend the last paragraph of our verdict of September 12, 1919, to
read that 'Edgar D. Mohan be held to a court martial' instead of 'Edgar
D. Mohan be held to the grand jury.'" The court martial exonerated Mohan.
Statements made in the office of the state's attorney show that Flemming
was implicated in attacks in the neighborhood upon Negroes earlier in
the riot period and was known as the leader of an unruly group who made
a certain poolroom their hangout.
V. Deaths for which specific persons were subsequently indicted by the
grand jury:
1. Casmere Lazzeroni Race White Date of receiving death wound July 28
Time of receiving death wound 4:50 P.M. Place of receiving death wound
3618 South State Street Manner of wound Stab wound
The defendants were four Negro boys, Charles Johnson, eighteen; Frank
Coachman, sixteen; John Green, fourteen; and Walter Colvin, sixteen.
Lazzeroni, a sixty-year-old Italian peddler, driving a banana wagon on
State Street, was pursued by boys throwing stones who overtook him, jumped
on his wagon, and stabbed him with pocketknives. All except Johnson were
alleged to have confessed, and the confessions were given before the
grand jury by Policeman Deliege as he remembered them. They were not
read. The boys who confessed implicated the one who did not, Johnson.
Mrs. Dolly Herrmann identified all of the boys as being implicated.
The four boys were indicted and tried and on September 19, 1919, a verdict
of guilty was rendered against Colvin and Johnson. They were sentenced
to the penitentiary for life on December 17, 1919; the cases of Green
and Coachman were stricken off with leave to reinstate.
2. Joseph Powers
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 6:00 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Root and Emerald streets
Manner of wound Stab wound
A Negro, William Henderson, was walking west on Root Street on the
morning of July 29 going to work at the Stock Yards. He was overtaken
by another Negro whom he did not know, but who accompanied him down the
street. As they crossed Emerald Avenue they were met by two white men
walking east. One of these was Joseph Powers. He walked slightly behind
the other white man, whose identity was never discovered. It was not
known whether Powers was with this man or not. As the unknown white man
passed the two Negroes he struck out at them. The unknown Negro walking
with Henderson struck back, evidently with a knife in his hand, and hit
Powers, who was then abreast of the group, mortally wounding him. All the
participants ran except Powers. Henderson was the only one overtaken.
He was chased through alleys and brought down with stones and bricks
and severely beaten. From the description of the second Negro given by
Henderson, and the fact that another had been found wounded near this
spot, it was supposed at first that the second man was one Henry Renfroe.
The coroner's jury said: "We believe that William Henderson was guilty
of no wrong doing, and that if the unknown colored man should prove to
be Henry Renfroe, that he was acting in self-defense. We recommend their
immediate discharge from police custody. We further recommend that the
white men guilty of assault on William Henderson and his companion be
apprehended and punished."
Later Judge Tate, Negro, was identified as the companion of Henderson.
Both Negroes were indicted by the grand jury. On December 13, 1919, a
verdict of not guilty was returned against Tate and the case of Henderson
was nolle prossed.
3. Walter Parejko
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 7:30 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Fifty-first Street near Dearborn
Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound
4. Morris I. Perel
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 8:15 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Fifty-first and Dearborn streets
Manner of wound Stab wound
The same three defendants appear in both these cases, three young Negro
boys, Ben Walker, William Stinson, and Charles Davis.
There were no eyewitnesses in either case except the defendants involved,
and they did not appear in person before the coroner's jury, but
statements by them were either read or repeated by officials in charge.
Davis and Stinson declared that Walker shot Parejko. When the statements
were read to Walker, who had so far refused to make a confession, he
said Stinson stabbed Perel.
Parejko and his friend Josef Maminaki, laborers on the Grand Trunk
Railway, were going to work. According to Stinson the boys were sitting
on a bread box in front of a store when they saw the two white men.
Walker said, "Let's get this guy." Stinson answered, "Not me." Walker
said, "Stand aside now, boys; I will do my stuff." He fired and Parejko
was mortally wounded and Maminaki slightly wounded. Walker denied the
shooting. However, he told where the weapon could be found, and it was
brought before the coroner as evidence.
Perel was walking to his place of business going west on Fifty-first
Street. Near Dearborn Street four or five Negro men or boys jumped on him
and stabbed him. When he was found, it was discovered that his gold watch
had been forcibly severed from the chain and was missing. Someone said a
crowd of boys had been seen running south. According to the statement of
Ben Walker, "Fat Stinson jumped on him and stabbed him and hit him with
a club at the same time.... After he stabbed and hit him the whole gang
jumped on him." Afterward Stinson is reported by Walker to have said,
"I surely hit that guy," and to have displayed a pearl-handled knife.
The coroner's jury said in the Parejko case: "We recommend that the
said Ben Walker, the said William Stinson, and the said Charles Davis be
held to the grand jury upon a charge of murder until discharged by due
process of law." In the Perel case the jury said: "We recommend that the
said William Stinson be held to the grand jury upon a charge of murder
until discharged by due process of law."
They were indicted by the grand jury, and on January 9, 1920, a verdict
of not guilty was returned in each case.
5. Harold Brignadello (see p. 27)
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 10:30 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound 1021 South State Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound
Harold Brignadello was one of a crowd of white men who wandered south
on State Street and halted at No. 1021 and stoned the house. It was not
brought out whether the stone-throwing was done because Negroes lived in
the house, or was provoked by taunts from Negroes in the second-story
window. A Negro woman and two men appeared at the window, and when the
throwing did not stop, the woman raised her arm. A shot was fired into
the crowd, fatally wounding Brignadello. Police officers found in the
flat and arrested Emma Jackson, Kate Elder, John Webb, Ed Robinson, and
Clarence Jones. The coroner's jury recommended that they be held to the
grand jury upon a charge of murder until discharged by due process of
law, and that members of the unknown white mob be apprehended. The five
Negroes named were indicted, and on September 20, 1919, a verdict of
not guilty was returned as to each.
6. G. L. Wilkins
Race White
Date of receiving death wound July 30
Time of receiving death wound 1:30 P.M.
Place of receiving death wound 3825 Rhodes Avenue
Manner of wound Bullet wound
Wilkins, an agent for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, on his
rounds collecting, entered the house at 3825 Rhodes Avenue where several
Negro families live. While he was inside three young Negro men approached
one of the tenants who was sitting on the front porch, and one of them
asked who the white man was. This youth is alleged to have said, "We
don't want no damned insurance man here. What money we have got we want
to keep it." When Wilkins appeared, two of the youths stood on the curb,
and one went between two houses which Wilkins had to pass. As he went
by he was shot. It was said that Spurgeon Anthony and Willis Powell were
the two who stood at the curb, and John Washington was the one who went
between the houses. The coroner's jury recommended that the three be held
to the grand jury upon a charge of murder, and the grand jury indicted
them. On December 16, 1919, a verdict of not guilty was returned as to
Powell, and Washington was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years
in the penitentiary.
7. Paul Hardwick
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 5:00 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Wabash Avenue and Adams Street
Manner of wound Bullet wound
A mob of white civilians, soldiers, and sailors, who had been chasing
Negroes through the "Loop" district for the previous two or three hours,
beating and robbing them, and destroying property where Negroes were
not found, entered one of Thompson's restaurants where Hardwick was
breakfasting. Another Negro, one King, was also in the restaurant. The
mob set upon them, throwing food and dishes. Hardwick dodged into the
street and King hid behind a dish counter, where he was wounded with a
knife. Failing to catch Hardwick as he fled down Adams Street, one of
the rioters stepped to the curb and fired a revolver at him, bringing
him down. Several of the crowd robbed the corpse. At the time of the
coroner's jury hearing the only one of the mob identified was Ray
Freedman, aged seventeen. He was apprehended and charged with murder,
malicious mischief, and inciting to riot, but was not indicted. Later
Edward Haines was connected with the case, indicted, and on February
21, 1920, sent to Pontiac.
8. Robert Williams
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 29
Time of receiving death wound 6:15 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound At or near State and Van Buren
streets
Manner of wound Stab wound
The murder of Williams was the second riot killing in the heart of
Chicago's business district on the morning of July 29. Before Williams
died he said he had been assaulted by white men at State and Van Buren
streets. An eyewitness, a Negro, said he saw Williams running west on
the car track on Van Buren Street, followed by a mob of about 200 white
men. One of them, whom he positively identified as Frank Biga, stabbed
the deceased twice, but Williams continued to run for a distance after
that. A white man who saw Williams picked up at Harrison and State streets
also identified Biga as a man who all during the morning had led gangs
chasing Negroes. A woman went to a policeman and pointed out Biga as the
leader of riot mobs. The coroner's jury recommended that Biga be held to
the grand jury upon a charge of murder. At the time of the identification
of Biga by the woman the policeman arrested him, found a broken razor
in his possession, and had him booked for disorderly conduct, for which
he was fined $5 and costs in the boys' court and sent to the House of
Correction. The next day he broke out of the House of Correction and was
not again apprehended until he was implicated in the murder of a shoe
merchant, Fred Bender, on August 8, 1919. He killed Bender with a blow
on the head from an iron pipe. On February 18, 1920, Biga was sent to
the penitentiary for life.
9. William Dozier
Race Negro
Date of receiving death wound July 31
Time of receiving death wound 7:15 A.M.
Place of receiving death wound Stock Yards, Exchange Avenue about
Cook Street
Manner of wound External violence
Dozier, Negro, approached a meat curer employed in the superintendent's
office of Swift & Co. to ask if the Negroes were not going to have
protection in the Yards that morning. A white worker stepped out of the
crowd and struck at Dozier with a hammer. Dozier dodged and caught the
blow on the neck. He started to run east on Exchange Avenue. As he ran
he was struck with a street broom and shovel and other missiles; near
the sheep pens a brick felled him. The meat curer above mentioned and
an assistant identified one Zarka as the man who wielded the hammer.
Joseph Scezak was identified as the man who used the broom. The coroner's
jury recommended that these two be held to the grand jury on a charge
of manslaughter and also that the unknown participants be held upon the
same charge. Zarka and Scezak were indicted for murder, and on May 6,
1920, a verdict of not guilty was returned as to each.
D. TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF PERSONS INJURED IN
CHICAGO RIOT, BY DATE AND BY RACE
===============================================
| RACE |
DATE +-------+-------+---------+ TOTAL
| White | Negro | Unknown |
-------------+-------+-------+---------+-------
July 27 | 10 | 31 | 5 | 46
28 | 71 | 152 | 6 | 229
29 | 55 | 80 | 4 | 139
30 | 20 | 20 | 2 | 42
31 | 10 | 9 | 0 | 19
Aug. 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1
2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4
3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2
4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1
5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1
6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1
7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2
8 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1
9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1
Date unknown | 4 | 44 | 0 | 48
+-------+-------+---------+-------
Total | 178 | 342 | 17 | 537
-------------+-------+-------+---------+-------
INDEX
Abraham Lincoln Center, 150
"Abyssinians," murders by, 59;
group, 60, 480, 537
Addams, Jane, 19, 55
Adler, Herman M., 35
Aftermath of riot, 46
Ages of rioters, 13, 22
American Federation of Labor, 405
American Red Cross, 45, 150
Appreciation of property, 211
Arms and ammunition, 21
Arrests in riots, 328
Associated Negro Presses, 521
Associated Press, 553
"Athletic" clubs, 11, 55;
grand jury recommendation on, 16
Athletic teams, 253
_Atlanta Constitution_, 84
_Atlanta Independent_, 81
Attitudes, in public opinion, 457
Automobile raids, 6, 18
"Back of the Yards" fire, 7, 20;
newspaper handling of, 539
Barrett murder, 64
Bathing-beaches, 274
Beliefs concerning Negroes, 437;
background of, 445, 451;
of fifteen Negroes, 493;
held by fifteen white men, 459;
primary, 438;
secondary, 443
Biographical notes of Commissioners, 625
Black Belt, 6, 8;
"cleaning up the," 567;
concentration of police in, 36;
housing in, 184.
"Black and tan" resorts, 323
Board of Education, 239, 256;
Quincy, 235;
recommendations to, 643
Boaz, Franz, 450
Bombings, 117, 122;
newspapers on, 532
Bubbly Creek rumor, 32
Cabarets, 344
_Chicago American_, 548, 554
Chicago Commission on Race Relations:
appointments by Governor Lowden, xvi;
biographical sketches, 652;
plan of work, xvii;
staff, 653
_Chicago Daily News_, 116, 202, 212, 524, 548
_Chicago Defender_, 87, 492, 557
_Chicago Evening Post_, 553
Chicago Federation of Labor, 406
_Chicago Herald-Examiner_, 524, 550
Chicago newspapers, an intensive study of, 531
Chicago Real Estate Board, 216, 219
Chicago Riot, 1, 595;
background, 2;
beginning, 4;
clashes before, 53;
coroner's jury recommendations on, 49;
factors of, 9, 25;
Negro press on, 488;
outstanding features of, 48;
police orders, 37
Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, 184, 218
_Chicago Searchlight_, 557
_Chicago Tribune_, 453, 476, 524, 551
Chicago Urban League, 45, 104, 135, 146, 185, 193, 365, 368
_Chicago Whip_, 557
Chief of Police, 36
Children of immigrants, 256
Children, participation in riot, 22
Chronological story of riot, 5
Churches, 142;
pastors, 140;
property, 145;
relief work by, 144
City Council, recommendations to, 642
Civil Rights Act, 232
Clashes, 9;
minor, 53;
in parks, 288;
types of, 17
Commercial enterprises, 140
Conclusions, 594
Contacts;
in public place, 309;
racial, 231
Contested neighborhoods, 117
Convictions in riot, 48
Co-operative racial efforts, 326
Coroner's jury, 47;
recommendations of, 49
Courts:
injustice in, 85;
Negro in, 332
Crime, 327;
authorities on, 345;
beliefs concerning Negro, 440;
and environment, 341, 621;
impressions of Negro, 328;
the press on, 524
Criminal statistics, 328
_Crisis_, 515, 518
Crowds, 22
Cultural contacts, 325
Death of riot, 1;
epitome of facts, 655
Defensive philosophy, 508
Defensive policies, 484
Depreciation of property, 194;
after coming of Negroes, 200;
general factors in, 196;
in Hyde Park, 205;
in a Prairie Avenue block, 212
Deputy sheriffs, 43
Deterioration of property, 196
Discrimination:
in arrests, 35;
in courts, 352;
in public places, 310;
in public schools, 234;
in recreation, 277;
in wages, 365;
in work, 391, 419
Domestic workers, 370
Duke, Charles, 34, 201
East St. Louis Riots, 71;
Congressional Committee report on, 72
Efficiency, of Negro labor, 374
Elementary schools, 246
Emotionality, beliefs concerning Negro, 442
Employers, recommendations to, 647
Employment agencies, 431
Establishments employing Negroes, 361
Exclusive neighborhoods, 115
Experiments with Negro women workers, 380
Factors influencing growth of riot, 9, 25
Family histories, group of, 170
Financial resources of Negroes, 227
Financial support of Commission, xvii
Fire "back of the Yards," 539
Fitzpatrick, John, 415, 426
Fraternal organizations, 141
Gambling, 344
Gangs, 3, 7, 11;
murders by, 55
Garvey, Marcus, 60, 493
Gompers, Samuel, 364
Grand Jury Recommendations, 51
Growth of riot, 7
High schools, 252
Home ownership by Negroes, 215
Hotel employees, 368
Housing of Negroes, 152;
financial aspects of, 215;
newspaper handling of, 528, 542;
physical aspects of, 184;
types, 186
Hyde Park, 117;
depreciation of property in, 205
Identification, Bureau of, 335
Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, 150
Illiteracy, and race problems, 497
Immigrant children, 256
Incendiary fires, 20
Indictments in riot, 48
Industries:
attitude of Negroes toward, 385;
excluding Negroes, 391;
Negroes in Chicago, 357, 623;
relations of whites with, 393
Industry, recommendations, 647
Infective environment, 342
Injuries and deaths of riot, 10
Interracial efforts, 326
Investigators of Commission, 653
Italians, 19
Jones, Thomas Jesse, 82
Judges, testimony of, 345
Juvenile delinquency, 333
Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association, 118, 132, 204,
210, 589
Labor turnover, 377
Labor Unions and Negroes, 403;
attitude of locals toward Negroes, 412-20;
attitude of Negroes, 420;
opinions of labor leaders, 432;
and race prejudice, 435;
recommendations to, 643, 647
Lake Park Avenue, 107, 159
Legal status of Negroes, 232
Lithuanians, 8, 21, 160
Loans to Negroes on property, 220
Lodgers, 162
"Loop" rioting, 8, 20
Lynchings, 582
McDowell, Mary, 20, 55, 415
Membership in unions, 411
Mencken, H. L., 443
Mental complexes, of Negroes, 502
Mentality, beliefs concerning, 430, 445, 459
_Messenger_ magazine, 489, 490
Migrants in Chicago, 93, 97, 117, 169
Migration from South, 79, 602;
efforts to check, 103;
the press on, 529
Militia, conduct of, 40;
distribution of, 41;
recommendations to, 640
Minor clashes, 53
Misrepresentation of Negroes in press, 521
Mississippi, appropriations for white and colored schools, 82
Mob, a Negro and a, 481
Mobs, 22, 33
Morality, beliefs concerning, 439, 447, 459
Morgan Park, 107, 137
Myths, 577;
concerning Negro mentality, 579;
rape, 582;
sex, 584
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 148, 575
National Urban League, 575
Negro children, scholarship of, 256
Negro community, 139-52
Negro families, 152;
histories, 170;
housing, 152-230;
living, 165
Negro labor: classification of workers, 364;
compared with white labor, 374;
domestic, 370;
employers' experience with, 372;
future in industry, 400;
increase in, 362;
organized, 403, 429;
southern, 363;
use of, to reduce wages, 398
Negro and a mob, 481
Negro population of Chicago, 106;
trend, 135
Negro press, 132, 304;
and crime publicity, 557;
handling of news, 556;
policy, 563;
on race riot, 488;
recommendations to, 650;
sources of news, 567
Negro problems, 505;
radicals, 574;
revolt, 540
Negro soldiers, newspaper handling of, 524
Negro teachers, 247, 251
Negro women in industry, 367, 378
Negroes: in Chicago industries, 358;
discriminations against, 234;
in labor unions, 412;
and leaders, 505;
legal status in Illinois, 232;
and public opinion, 475;
recommendations to, 645
Neighborhood improvement associations, 192
Neighborhoods of Negro residence, 108, 113, 115
Newspapers, 60;
attitude of Negroes toward, 521;
on bombing, 532;
handling of Negro news, 523;
intensive study of, 531;
on migration, 529;
on Negro crime, 524;
on Negro housing, 528;
on Negro in politics, 527;
policy, 547, 563;
and the riot, 26, 44
North migration to, 29
North Side, 108, 112
Occupations of Negroes, 263, 358
Ogden Park, 107
Opinion-making: instruments of, 635;
among Negroes, 514
Opinions: of Negroes, 475, 493, 630;
of whites, 459, 630
Opportunities for Negroes: in industry, 357;
training for recreation directors, 296
Organizations, of Negroes, 141
Other outbreaks, 53
Outlying neighborhoods, 136
Overage in public schools, 239
Overcrowding, 156
Parents, attitudes of, 250
Park boards, recommendations to, 642
Parks and playgrounds, 275
Parole and probation, 335
Penal institutions, 338
Philosophy, racial, 508
Phyllis Wheatley Home, 149
Police: conduct of, 4, 5, 21, 33, 38, 66;
distribution of, in riot area, 37;
distrust of, by Negroes, 35;
raids on Negro clubs, 16;
recommendations to, 640
Politics, 3, 39;
the press on Negroes in, 527
Population: Negro and white in Chicago, 106, 605;
working, 357
Press: of Chicago, 520, 523;
handling of Negro news, 524;
opinions of Negroes regarding, 485, 514, 521;
recommendations to, 650
Propaganda: charges of, by Negroes, 492;
defensive, 592;
malicious, 589;
and public opinion, 587;
racial educational, 587
Property: appreciation of, 211;
depreciation of, 194
_Property Owners' Journal_, 121, 590
Prostitution, houses of in Negro area, 344
Protective Circle, 130, 593
Provident Hospital, 150
Psychological basis of Negro crime, 342
Public, the, recommendations to, 644
Public opinion, 436, 630;
expressed by Negroes, 475;
and propaganda, 587;
and rumor, 568
Public schools, 238;
contact problems, 244;
elementary, 246;
physical equipment, 241;
social activities, 254;
technical high schools, 256
Pullman porters, 369, 390
Race consciousness, 487
Race friction among workers, 393
Race prejudice, 503
Race problems, 478;
and acquisition of wealth, 495;
and illiteracy, 497;
opinions of Negroes on, 493;
opinions on solution of, 495;
and religion, 500; and suffrage, 499
Race relations, 436, 494;
in industry, 392
Racial contacts, 231, 613;
newspapers on, 530
Racial solidarity, 509
Radical propaganda, 587
"Ragen's Colts," 12, 14, 55, 482
Raids on Negro clubs, 15
Railroad Men's International Benevolent Industrial Association, 409
Railroad workers, 369
Ravenswood, 108
Recommendations of Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 639;
to Board of Education, 642;
to city council and administration boards, 642;
to Negroes, 646;
to places of public accommodation, 649;
to police, militia, state's attorney, and courts, 640;
to the press, 650;
to public, 644;
to social and civic organizations, 643;
to street-car companies, 649;
to white members of public, 645
Recreation, 271;
centers, 273;
contacts in, of school children, 266;
facilities for, 272
Religion:
beliefs concerning Negroes', 449;
and race problems, 499
Religious organizations, 142
Rents, 162
Restoration of order, 43
Retardation, 239, 256;
causes of, 258;
of Negro children, 261, 439
Ridicule, by press, 545
Riot area, 8
Riot deaths, epitome of facts concerning, 655
Riot injuries, 667
Robbins, Illinois, 138
Rumor, 5, 6, 19, 21;
of atrocities, 576;
"Bubbly Creek," 570;
in East St. Louis Riot, 572;
and migration, 576;
within Negro group, 575;
and the press, 25;
and public opinion, 568
Scholarship, 256
Schools:
contacts in, 238;
physical equipment of, 241
Segregation:
opinions of Negroes, 509;
opinions of whites, 459, 473
Sentiment:
group, 456;
of Negroes, 478;
types of, 437, 451
Sex crimes, 332
Social agencies, 146, 193
Social and civic organizations, recommendations to, 643
Social waste in Negro employment, 392
South:
educational facilities for Negroes in, 239;
injustice in courts in, 85;
migration from, 79;
traditions of, 456
South Side, 107, 156, 184; property depreciation on, 198
Springfield riot, 67
Staff of Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 653
State's attorney, 8, 34;
recommendations to, 640
Stock Yards, 44, 66;
Negro workers in, 389;
strike of 1904, 430;
unions, 412
"Store Front" churches, 144
Street-car clashes, 7, 10, 17
Street-car companies, recommendations to, 649
Strike-breaking, 412, 427
Strikes, participation of Negroes in, 430
Suffrage and race problems, 499
Summary of findings by Commission, 595
Thompson, Mayor William Hale, 40
Traffic:
concentration of Negro, 298;
distribution, 300
Transportation contacts, 297;
attitudes on, 452;
recommendations on, 649
Unions, 403, 439;
Negro membership in, 411
Union League Club, 46
United Charities, 150
Vice, 342
Vice Commission report, 343
Voluntary grouping, 249, 285
Volunteers, 42
Wages, 365
War, opportunities created by, 357
Waukegan, racial outbreak, 57;
newspaper handling of, 541
Wealth of Negroes, 495
West Side, 108, 111, 156, 191
Williams, Eugene, 4
Women in industry, 367, 378
Women and riot, 17
Women's Trade Union League, 402, 414
Woodlawn, 107, 111
Y.M.C.A., 46, 147
Y.W.C.A. (Indiana Avenue Branch), 149
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
FOOTNOTES
[1] For biographical data see p. 652.
[2] The members of this staff, with the previous training and
experience of each, are listed in the Appendix, p. 653.
[3] In the final revision of the report, the Commission decided
that the police statistics were, as a rule, too unreliable to
be made a basis of conclusions.
[4] Pages _infra_.
[5] Carl Sandburg, _The Chicago Race Riots_, chap, i, p. 1.
Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
[6] Thirty-first, Thirty-fifth, and Thirty-ninth streets are
chosen for special notice because these are transfer points
for north and south cars to east and west lines. The figures
given are for the first three days of the riot only. Other
days showed too few injuries to allow accurate conclusions.
[7] Figures compiled from police reports, state's attorney
reports, hospital reports, and Olivet Baptist Church reports.
[8] Testimony before the coroner's jury.
[9] Chief of Police Garrity was out of the city at the time
the riot began on Sunday, but returned on Monday.
[10] For brief description of cases see Appendix.
[11] Redding had admitted having shot Rose, and evidence
against others for their participation in the killing, while
not conclusive, was rather convincing.
[12] At the trial of these men six months later, Grover
Cleveland Redding and Oscar McGavick were sentenced to hang
for the murder of Rose and Hoyt. The others held for trial
were released. Redding has since been hanged.
[13] This statement is based mainly upon the report of this
special committee appointed by Congress to investigate the
East St. Louis riots and upon the stenographic report of
the testimony taken by it. This testimony, comprising 6,000
typewritten pages, was placed at the disposal of the Commission
through the courtesy of the chairman of the Committee,
Representative Ben Johnson, of Kentucky, and the interest and
co-operation of Representative James R. Mann, of Illinois.
[14] Negro migration in 1916-17, _U.S. Department of Labor
Report_, p. 67.
[15] In 1,055 counties.
[16] See "Contacts in Public Schools."
[17] _Colored Missions_, January, 1921.
[18] Johnson, _Migration to Chicago_.
[19] See "Negro Population of Chicago," p. 107.
[20] See "Gangs" and "Clubs" under "Racial Clashes."
[21] See "Clashes."
[22] See p. 186.
[23] See "Family Histories," p. 170.
[24] See discussion of non-adjusted neighborhoods, p. 113,
and of bombings, p. 122.
[25] See pp. 342 and 346.
[26] See "Contested Neighborhoods," p. 116.
[27] Olcott's "Land Value Maps," 1910 and 1920.
[28] Civil-rights cases are: _Williams_ v. _Chicago &
Northwestern Railroad Co._, 55 Ill. 185; _Baylies_ v. _Curry_,
128 Ill. 287; _Cecil_ v. _Green_, 161 Ill. 265; _People_ v.
_Forest Home Cemetery Co._, 258 Ill. 36; _Grace_ v. _Moseley_,
112 Ill. App. 100; _Dean_ v. _Chicago & N.W. R.R. Co._, 183
Ill. App. 317; _Thorne_ v. _Alcazar Amusement Co._, 210 Ill.
App. 173; _White_ v. _Pasfield_, 212 Ill. App. 73.
[29] _White_ v. _Pasfield_, 212 Ill. App. 73; 1918. A Negro
filed a bill in equity to enjoin the lessees of a public
pavilion and swimming-pool from excluding him therefrom. It
was held that a court of equity had no jurisdiction to enjoin
such a violation of the Civil Rights Act, but left the party
to his statutory remedies of either an action for damages or
criminal prosecution.
_Thorne_ v. _Alcazar Amusement Company_, 210 Ill. App. 173,
1918, was an action to recover the penalty provided by the
Civil Rights Act for refusing to permit a Negro woman to occupy
a theater seat for which she had purchased a ticket. Judgment
in favor of the plaintiff in the municipal court was reversed
in the appellate court on the ground that the municipal court
had no jurisdiction to impose penalties for criminal acts
occurring outside the city limits.
[30] School cases in Illinois are as follows: _Chase_ v.
_Stephenson_, 71 Ill. 383; _People_ v. _Board of Education
of Quincy_, 101 Ill. 308; _People_ v. _McFall and Board of
Education of Quincy_, 26 Ill. App. 319, affirmed, 124 Ill.
642; _People_ v. _Board of Education of Upper Alton School
District_, 127 Ill. 613; _Bibb_ v. _Mayor of Alton_, 179 Ill.
615; 193 Ill. 309; 209 Ill. 461; 221 Ill. 275; 233 Ill. 542.
[31] _Negro Education_, I, 33. Bulletin No. 38, 1916. Department
of the Interior, Bureau of Education. 2 vols.
[32] _Negro Education_, II, 14.
[33] _Ibid._, I, 23.
[34] _Ibid._, I, 28.
[35] _Ibid._, II, 15.
[36] Data obtained from _Directory of the Public Schools of the
City of Chicago_, 1919-20, published by the Board of Education.
[37] The figures after the name of the school throughout this
section refer to the percentage of Negro children in the school
in 1919-20.
[38] A preponderance of complaints from Negro parents could
easily be accounted for by a high proportion of Negro pupils.
[39] The figures in this column represent children who were
listed as being in "ungraded classes" in the Board of Education
records. They are not included with the column of "Retarded"
children because the grades of the "Retarded" children were
given in the board of Education records and were used in
determining the amount these children were retarded (see Table
XIV). The "Retarded Ungraded" children are included with the
"Retarded" children in determining the percentage of retarded
children.
[40] Many so-called southern "colleges" include elementary and
high school, as well as college work. The term is general and
does not mean necessarily an institution of the same academic
standing as a northern college.
[41] See illustration facing this page.
[42] Missing
[43] Of these 19,000 about 200 use the beaches, 4,100 the
playgrounds, 700 the recreation centers, and 14,000 the large
parks.
[44] See p. 12
[45] See _Report of Chicago Crime Commission_, p. 8.
[46] See "Racial Contacts"--"Physical Equipment of Schools,"
p. 241.
[47] _City Council Crime Committee Report_, pp. 40-41.
[48] See "Recreation," p. 272.
[49] In 1910 the number of Negroes gainfully occupied was
27,317, or 61.94 per cent of the total Negro population. The
percentage gainfully occupied in 1920 would be higher because
of the large number of men without families who migrated from
the South.
[50] Census Bureau, _Negro Population in the United States,
1790 to 1915_, p. 503.
[51] _Negro Population in the United States, 1790 to 1915_,
p. 90.
[52] _Ibid._, p. 503. Negroes gainfully occupied in the South,
4,592,353; in agriculture, 2,845,163.
[53] Emmett J. Scott, _Negro Migration during the War_, p.
92. "Carnegie Economic Studies," No. 16.
[54] "In many cases the Negro does not dare ask for a
settlement. Planters often regard it as an insult to be required
even by the courts 'to go to their books.' A lawyer and planter
cited to me the planter's typical excuse: 'It is unnecessary
to make a settlement when the tenant is in debt.' As to the
facts in the case, the landlord's word must suffice." From
report by W. T. B. Williams in _Negro Migration in 1916-17_,
p. 104. Bulletin of the U.S. Department of Labor, Division of
Negro Economics.
[55] Thirteenth Census, 1910, Vol. IV, Table VIII, pp. 544-47.
[56] The total number of establishments (manufacturing and
non-manufacturing) reported but not considered is fifty-nine,
employing a total of 111 Negroes, or less than ½ per cent of
the total number reported.
[57] This company formerly employed 200 Negroes.
[58] One mail-order establishment employing 350 Negroes is
omitted from this table owing to incomplete return of total
employees.
[59] This includes the following: public service, warehouse
storage, taxicab up-keep, telegraph, etc.
[60] Seven manufacturing establishments omitted on account of
insufficient returns.
[61] Two packing establishments employing 2,218 Negroes in
1920 have been omitted. They reported a large increase since
1914 but gave no definite figures.
[62] Five foundries employing a total of fifty men in 1920 have
been omitted owing to failure to report figures for preceding
years.
[63] Establishments omitted owing to insufficient returns.
[64] These figures include skilled and semi-skilled in three
packing establishments reporting that Negroes were employed
under each classification but giving no separate figures.
[65] Three establishments (lamp-shade, auto-cushion
manufacturing) not included. Failed to classify the employees
but reported that they had hand sewers and machine operators,
including skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled.
[66] Figures quoted for 1910 are taken from the Thirteenth
Census, 1910, Vol. IV, Table VIII, pp. 544-47.
[67] The contrast between these high wages and the wages which
Negroes coming from the South had previously earned is shown
in the study of family histories of migrant Negroes.
[68] The importation of these girls from the British West
Indies was noticed by the Commission after its period of
investigation had ended.
[69] Includes a scattering list of industries represented by
one to three establishments--Negro labor not important factor
in these industries.
[70] Includes three paper-box manufacturing plants with ten,
twenty, and 113 Negro employees, largely women; and cooperage
plant with ninety-six Negro employees and one sausage-casing
plant with ten Negro employees. These plants reported Negro
labor "slow," "lazy," or "unreliable."
[71] Representatives of a number of the 101 establishments
visited did not feel able to make a comparison between the
Negro and white workers.
[72] Of the eighty-seven establishments (employing five or more
Negroes) covered by the investigation but omitted from this
table, forty-two had no Negro women employees and forty-five
failed to classify Negro workers by sex.
[73] Missing
[74] One establishment failed to report total employees.
[75] F. E. Wolfe, _Admission to American Trade Unions_, pp.
113-17.
[76] It was impossible to get in communication with others
of the smaller scattered independent internationals besides
those mentioned. No directory is yet published.
[77] U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, _Final Report
and Testimony_ (1916), p. 111.
[78] F. E. Wolfe, _op. cit._, p. 128, n. 3.
[79] James Harvey Robinson, _Mind in the Making_.
[80] See p. 493.
[81] The _Messenger_ is pronounced in its stand for woman
suffrage.
[82] See p. 59.
[83] Prospectus issued in 1921.
[84] "Statistical Statement of Negro Progress in Fifty-three
Years," from _Negro Year Book_, 1918-19.
[85] "Statistical Statement of Negro Progress in Fifty-three
Years," from _Negro Year Book_, 1918-19.
[86] "Statistical Statement of Negro Progress in Fifty-three
Years," from _Negro Year Book_, 1918-19.
[87] Circulation figures as of 1920.
[88] This statement is based upon the available files. The
February file of the _Chicago Herald-Examiner_ for 1919 was
unavailable at the time this study was made.
[89] See p. 44.
[90] See p. 540.
[91] See p. 476.
[92] See coroner's statement, p. 32.
[93] See p. 33.
[94] Charles S. Johnson, _The Migration of Negroes to Chicago_.
[95] "Reaction Time with Reference to Race," _Psychological
Review_, II, 475-86.
[96] "A Study in Race Psychology," _Popular Science Monthly_,
L, 354-60.
[97] See "1. Primary Beliefs--Criminality," p. 440. In
questionnaire, return to question: "What subjects of discussion
most frequently lead to the Negro?" The reply is given:
"Lynching, lying, stealing, and attacking of little girls."
In commenting on the proposition: "Prejudice has its principal
basis in fear," the statement is made: "I believe this is true
among women; not particularly among men. This is partly due
to the publicity given to all acts against women by Negroes,
in my judgment."
[98] Does not include the Negroes killed in East St. Louis.
[99] Congressional Committee on Immigration.
[100] See p. 541.
[101] See Barrett case, p. 64.
[102] See discussion of this campaign in section on "Bombings,"
pp. 115-22.
[103] The coroner's jury found that Williams had drowned from
fear of stone-throwing which kept him from the shore.
[104] _The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh_, published in 1918
under the supervision of the School of Economics, University
of Pittsburgh; U.S. Department of Labor Bulletin, _Negro
Migration in 1916-17_, published in 1919.
[105] These do not embrace the whole of each area commonly
included under such designations. The population figures are
those of 1920.
[106] The standard in Chicago is Grade 1 for children six
years of age.
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