Point 5:  Racial violence and law enforcement neglect occured in Chicago.

Racial violence and the abuse of police power was a fact of everyday life in the South.  Over 1,100 lynchings of African Americans occured between the beginning of the 20th century and the outbreak of World War I.  The vast majority of those lynchings occured in the South (312 Franklin).  In 1920 the Cleveland Advocate  repinted an article from the Toledo Pioneer entitled "Lynch Law National Disgrace".

"During the year 1919, eighty-four persons were lynched, of whom seventy-eight were Negroes and of whom ten were men who had served in the world war.  In thirty-four of these seventy-eight cases, the victims of the mobs were taken from officers and jails, and in some cases without resistance on the part of the officers, and in some cases by connivance between officers and the mob... and of the seventy-eight all were murdered in Southern states except the Negro victim of the Omaha riots."

In an interview with Charles Johnson in 1917, a migrant from Mississipi stated that "a few years ago a Negro killed a policeman 3 miles from his home. Mob killed the Negro and destroyed 5,000 worth of Negro property around him. He began to feel the insecurity of living there."
 

In the first couple of decades of the 20th century race riots occured all over the country.  In Atlanta in 1906 a white mob killed four African Americans and destroyed black homes and property.  Similar Southern riots occured in Statesboro, Georgia in 1904 and Brownville, Texas in 1908 (312 Franklin).  The riots were not limited to below the Mason-Dixon line.  Two riots in Springfield, Ohio in 1904 and 1906 and one in Springfield, Illinois in 1908 ravaged African American communities.  The mob leaders in each of these riots were not punished for their crimes (317 Franklin).

Numerous Northern riots occured during the summer of 1919 with the most serious outbreak in Chicago (350 Franklin).  The riot was preceded by house bombings with minimal police intervention, discouraging African Americans from owning homes in white neighborhoods.

"In a number of cases during the period from January, 1918, to August, 1919, there were bombings of colored homes and houses occupied by Negroes outside of the “Black Belt.” During this period no less than twenty bombings took place, yet only two persons have been arrested and neither of the two has been convicted, both cases being continued."
("Chicago and It's Eight Reasons": Walter White condsiders the causes of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot)
 

"This recent explosion could have been easily prevented by the police," exclaimed the Defender.  But not only did the police seem to be uninterested in protecting the property of blacks, "It really appears" that they have been "giving aid and comfort to a certain element of violators of the law."  The police belatedly detailed a squad to protect the family, but the very next night the lobbed explosives onto the roof of the Harrison house froma vacant flat next door.  The dweller's skylight was destroyed and more windows shattered.  Someone had unlocked the flat to admit the bombers and had re-locked it afterward, but the police did not question the occupants of the adjacent building or those leaving it after the explosion."
("Contested Neighborhoods and Racial Violence: Prelude to the Chicago Riot of 1919", by William M. Tuttle, Jr. Journal of Negro History © 1970)

The white violence displayed by the house bombings along with the law enforcement discrimination climaxed in the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.

"In all parts of the city, white mobs dragged from surface cars, black passengers wholly ignorant of any trouble, and set upon them. An unidentified man,    young woman and a 3 month old baby were found dead on the street at the intersection of 47th   street and Wentworth avenue. She had attempted to board a car there when the mob seized her, beat her, slashed her body into 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   pole, triumphantly, while the crowd hooted gleefully. All the time this was happening, several  policemen were in the crowd, but did not make any attempt to make rescue until too late."
("Ghastly Deeds of Race Rioters Told" Chicago Defender article August 2, 1919)

An August 16, 1919, Cleveland Advocate entitled "30 Race Men Indicted in Chicago Riot Probe; Only Three Whites" showed the NAACP's disgust with the discrimination in law enforcement.

"If the machinery of justice in Chicago cannot procure the apprehension and the punishment of the white men who burned and bombed Negro houses, who stoned and brutally assaulted innocent Negro, who made necessary the presence of the militia with bayonets and loaded rifles, then Chicago justices will become as notorious as Chicago police."
(NAACP quote in the August 16, 1919, Cleveland Advocate)

Point 6

Back to Presentation Page