Chapter II: Other Outbreaks in Illinois (1)

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.