II. OTHER OUTBREAKS IN ILLINOIS…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.