Race riot

“ They are the hoodlums of both races. But the law abiding whites and blacks are innocent victims.
Hotheads and smoking gun barrels have almost wrested the rule from the keepers of the peace.
It is worse than a calamity, this race rioting. It is a deadly, ghastly scourge, a dire contagion that is sweeping through a community for no reason except that mob violence is contagious.
It is up to the cool-headed men of Chicago to settle the great difficulty. It is up to the serious-minded business men of the city to get together and find a solution to a problem which has become so serious. ”

“ In all the discussions of the recent race riots there is reflected the note of pride that the Negro has found himself, that he has "fought back," that never again will he tamely submit to violence or intimidation. The sense of oppression finds increasingly bitter expression. Defiance and insolently race-centered condemnation of the white race is to be met with in every issue of the more radical publications, and this one in moderateness of denunciation carries its own threat. ”

“ In a recent edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which calls itself the world's greatest newspaper, in discussing the recent race riot in Chicago, it had this to say: "Can the two races continue to live in peace in Chicago without segregation? We have for some time criticized the South for its treatment of its black citizens. We believe since the race riot in Chicago that segregation, separate cars, will be the only cure to prevent race riots in the future." ”

“ No one can deny the importance of the race riots that disgraced the name of fair America's Capital during the present week; yet two of the leading daily papers of the city found everything to fill their editorial columns but the proper attempts to discourage mob violence and a disposition to place the blame where it justly belongs. ”

“ It is our belief that this element can be brought under control of the law, and it must be done if we are to remove the danger of rioting from any cause. Vicious hoodlumism, entirely aside from race hatred, was present in practically all of the thirty-eight killings, known as race riots. ”

“ In the past we Negroes have failed to appreciate what solidarity means. We have, on the contrary, been much divided. Since the riot we are getting together and devising ways and means of protecting our interests. The recent race riots have convinced 47 us that we must take steps to protect ourselves. Never again will we be found unprepared. ”

“ But admitting the worst charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the restraints of self-control and the law are thrown off.
With a people so excitable as the blacks of Jamaica, and among whom there existed so many causes of disaffection, the greatest promptitude of action was a virtue. ”

“ When a race riot of any description comes, they are always armed against you. You know what they have done for you in the last thirty years in the way of recognizing you decently as human beings and giving 11you an equal chance with other human beings to work out your destiny. ”

“ The New Republic observes editorially: "Race riots within a week of one another occurred in Washington and Chicago.... The press made a race question of individual crime, and the mob, led by marines and soldiers, took up the issue which the press had presented to them."
Negroes are loud in their condemnation of the press throughout the country. Says one Negro newspaper:
Whatever be the cause of the motive, there is apparently a well-organized plan to discredit the race in America and to bring estrangement between fellow-Americans. ”

“ Nine years erlier, in the very city where the legislature sat, what is said to be the first northern race riot had cost the lives of six people, left hundreds of Negroes homeless and shocked citizens into action far beyond the borders of the State. ”

“ The crowd became excited and finally threatened the house of the Negro family. A cry went up, "Hang the niggers! The niggers in the house are firing at every white man that passes!" The police searched the house and found an 1894 model rifle, ammunition, that would not fit, and a decorated sword. The six Negroes in the house were taken to the police station.
During the riot a white man was caught crawling beneath a house in which Negroes lived. ”

“ The white man who takes the most radical position in opposition to the Negro race will often be found loaning money to individual Negroes, feeding them and their families from his kitchen, or defending “his Negroes” in court or elsewhere. All of the more prominent white citizens of Atlanta, during the riot, protected and fed many coloured families who ran to them in their terror. Even Hoke Smith, Governor-elect of Georgia, who is more distrusted by the Negroes as a race probably than any other white man in Georgia, protected many Negroes in his house during the disturbance. ”

“ In our inquiry we have been assisted by the Stock Yards officials and workers, by adjacent property owners and residents, by private detective bureaus, the Police Department, Department of Health, State's Attorney's office, by observing and intelligent colored citizens, and by other agencies, and we are firmly of the opinion that these reports, so widely circulated, are erroneous, misleading, and without foundation in fact, the race riot victims numbering thirty-eight, and no more, nor are there any colored citizens reported to us as missing. ”

“ A saloon-keeper near Wabash Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, one of the leaders of these colored gamblers, was identified by a white woman as being in an automobile with five other Negroes exhorting colored men to riot after the drowning of Williams. ”

“ When the selective draft was voted by Congress, there arose cries against the sending of Negroes to certain sections, and petitions and delegations went to Washington to prevail with the officials. It was feared that race friction would lead to riots, and especially that there would be difficulty between the Negro soldiers and the civilian population. The Houston riot, occurring in 1917 just before Negro men were called to the camps, intensified this feeling and caused many cantonment cities to raise objections to the placing of Negro soldiers in the camps near them. ”

“ More than 250,000 young Negroes, the pick of the race in health and intelligence, had returned to the United States, presumably with changed ideas, and perhaps with growing cynicism as to promises of fair treatment. Perhaps for the first time in American history the Negro group fought in the 1919 riot as a body against mob violence. The idea that these disorders are a result of active opposition to distasteful practices is prominent in practically every Negro discussion. "The Negro race is facing about" is a familiar statement. ”

“ Consciousness of racial difference and more or less unconscious fear and distrust were increased and spread by the riot. Among the whites this was evidenced by the general belief that Negroes were gathering stores of arms and ammunition. Among the Negroes a growing race solidarity has been marked. There is a greater lack of confidence in the white man's law and machinery of protection. Continued bombings of Negro houses in mixed areas and failure to apprehend the culprits no doubt strengthen this attitude. ”

“ I just want to make that one point to this Commission, that never in the history of this community has the white race stood so low from the standpoint of crime as it does at the present time. White young men are banding together in gangs and deliberately going out and holding people up, right and left, and shooting them down. ”

“ A Negro and a mob.—How does a Negro feel when he is being hunted or chased by a mob? Few persons are able to analyze their emotions under such stress. It happens, however, that a Negro university student fell victim to the sportive brutality of a gang of white men in a clash in September, 1920, and after being chased and hunted for five hours and a half in an unfriendly neighborhood escaped uninjured. ”

“ His neighbors, Henry Watts from across the street, and Pete Tallant from next door, had been helping him with the windows, and now they were helping him with the bottle. They were discussing the native question. In a way, this was the beginning of the riot.
"It's not that I got anything against them, in their place," Henry Watts said. "Their place just ain't in an Earthman's town, that's all. They keep crowding in, first thing you know there'll be more natives than there is Earthmen, then you just watch out. ”

“ After the riot, when the Civic League, composed of the foremost white citizens of Atlanta, was organised, one of the first subjects that came up was that of justice to the Negro. Mr. Hopkins, the leader of the League, said to me: “We complain that the Negroes will not help to bring the criminals of their race to justice. One reason for that is that the Negro has too little confidence in our courts. ”

“ Despite the community's failure to deal firmly with those who disturbed its peace and contributed to the reign of lawlessness that shamed Chicago before the world, there is evidence that the riot aroused many citizens of both races to a quickened sense of the suffering and disgrace which had come and might again come to the city, and developed a determination to prevent a recurrence of so disastrous an outbreak of race hatred. ”

“ Crowds and mobs.—It may be observed that a crowd is merely a gathering of people while a mob is a crowd with its attention so strongly fixed upon some lawless purpose that other purposes are inhibited and it acts along the line of the one purpose. During the riot many crowds of curiosity seekers were transformed into vicious mobs when exciting rumors circulated and the suggestion of vengeance was made by leaders. ”

“ The methods of attack used by Negroes and whites during the riot differed; the Negroes usually clung to individual attack and the whites to mob action. Negroes used chiefly firearms and knives, and the whites used their fists, bricks, stones, baseball bats, pieces of iron, hammers. Among the white men, 69 per cent were shot or stabbed and 31 per cent were beaten; among the Negroes almost the reverse was true, 35 per cent being shot and stabbed and 65 per cent beaten. A colonel in charge of a regiment of militia on riot duty says they found few whites but many Negroes armed. ”

“ Crowds and mobs engaged in rioting were generally composed of a small nucleus of leaders and an acquiescing mass of spectators. The leaders were mostly young men, usually between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. ”

“ In contrast with the violence that characterized street encounters during the riots it is significant that no unfriendly demonstrations occurred between workers in any of the establishments covered by the investigation, according to statements made by representatives of employers. On the contrary, white workers are said by employers to have expressed sympathy in many ways with their Negro fellow-workers. ”

“ The Young Men's Christian Association was similarly active within the area of its efforts. Religious bodies, ministers' associations, and individual ministers exerted their influence over their respective groups by advising the citizens to "keep cool," "hold their heads," and generally to let the authorities settle the riot. Negro business men and one Negro alderman sent wagons through the streets bearing large signs which advised Negroes not to congregate on streets, engage in arguments, or participate in any way in the disorders. ”

“ Police attention upon arriving at the scene of a clash was directed more to removing the injured than apprehending the guilty. Where attempts were made to search out the offenders, it was next to impossible to get results on account of the keen race consciousness which made Negroes disclaim knowledge of Negro culprits and white people deny seeing specific white men act aggressively. ”

“ Those who do not care for this contact will stay away. Because a white woman will dance with a colored man or a white man with a colored woman there is no argument that a riot will follow. Persons who dance together are not so likely to fight as persons who stand at a distance and call each other bad names.
Rationally considered there is no ground for these contentions. They are insulting. If danger is ahead for the city when the Irish and Italians visit the same places of amusement or the Swedes and Lithuanians, then some thought will be given by Negroes to eliminating their dangers. ”

“ It was hard to believe that this well-built, bright, busy, windy 136city had, only eighteen months before, been the scene of a sanguinary riot, almost a massacre, in which many innocent coloured people lost their lives. ”

“ It is true that individual Negroes, by fiendish assaults on white women, now and then rouse men to frenzy, but statistics show that only about a fifth of the lynchings of Negroes are because of the 'usual crime.' Burning at the stake is never justifiable under any circumstance, and it is undeniable that in race riots scenes of horror have been enacted that are a disgrace to American civilization. ”

“ Negro crime is much fomented by the low drinking-shops in the city and in country, by the lack of home influence on growing boys and girls, by the brutalizing of young people who are sent to prison with hardened criminals, and in general, by close contact with the lowest element of the white race, which leads to crimes on both sides. It is a striking fact that where the Africans are most numerous there is the least complaint of crime. The so-called race riots are usually rows between a few bad Negroes and the officers of the law, or a group of aggrieved Whites. ”