Chapter X: PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS--Continued (4)

The National Urban League did hold its annual convention in
Detroit, October 15, 1919. William D. Haywood was not invited
to speak at this convention. Judging from the reference to
Haywood the term "Negro agitator" as applied to myself connotes
a most violently radical strain in whatever methods I might
be using to bring about better conditions for the Negro.

Throughout my ten years' connection with the League, I have
sought by courageous but practical methods to bring to the
Negro an opportunity in American life and have urged Negroes
to measure up in every way along lines of efficiency and be
satisfied with nothing but a square deal and equal opportunity
in our national life.

I have never suggested violence of any kind as a means toward
this end, nor, in fact, has the idea ever arisen in my mind
that this would be an effective means of attaining this end.

From the same Intelligence Bureau report this statement is taken: "Another recent report states that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with offices at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, is planning to flood the colored districts with I.W.W. literature."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a reputable organization of whites and Negroes numbering among its executive officers Hon. Moorfield Storey, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Arthur E. Spingarn, Oswald Garrison Villard, Mary White Ovington, and Dr. Charles E. Bentley. It has no relation with the I.W.W. and has never planned any distribution of I.W.W. literature.

6. RUMOR WITHIN THE NEGRO GROUP

The _Chicago Advocate_, a Negro paper of an irresponsible, sensational type, published under large headlines a report of a run on the Lincoln State Bank. The reason alleged was indignation over the refusal of the white officials of the bank to lend money on Negro property in Hyde Park. The bank officials were accused of discrimination in favor of an organization of men in Hyde Park who were making every effort to keep Negroes segregated within the "Black Belt." The Pyramid Building and Loan Association was said to have requested the loan. Since nearly 90 per cent of the depositors of the bank were supposed to be Negroes, the act was considered an insulting disloyalty to Negroes who supported the institution.

A number of Negroes, believing that their savings were in danger, rushed to the bank. Soon there was an actual run, and for several days long lines of depositors passed through the bank and carried away their savings. More than $243,000 was withdrawn. The report proved to be without foundation, and the three largest and most influential Negro newspapers aided in restoring normal business relations. The president of the bank charged the head of the Building and Loan Association and the editor of the newspaper that published the story with responsibility for this rumor.

7. RUMORS OF ATROCITIES

Of the type of rumor which has had effect upon the sentiments of Negroes concerning the Chicago riot, the following quotations from a pamphlet entitled _The Chicago Race Riots_, by Austin D. N. Sutton, a Negro, provide a good example:

In an investigation made personally by me, beginning about
five o'clock Wednesday afternoon, July 30, until far into the
evening, visiting the districts from Forty-seventh Street,
East to Indiana Avenue, West to Wentworth Avenue, South to
Fifty-fifth Street, I found a little short street between
Forty-eighth and Fifth Avenue called Swan Street, that is not
easily located, and very little known by the general public.
Eye-witnesses said that men, women and children were being
attacked and killed and thrown into the sewer, and no account
of their whereabouts has ever been given.

I found about twenty refugees who had been run away from their
homes on Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth and Fifth Avenue, also
Wentworth and Princeton avenues. Their homes had been burned,
and they were made to flee for their lives. I have the names
and addresses of more than one hundred cases investigated, one
more horrible case, where a young colored boy was gasolined
and burned after having been killed and where colored women
in the Stock Yards district were attacked and their breasts
cut off. These things were perpetrated by the whites upon
peaceful law-abiding blacks, some of whom had been residents
for twenty-seven years in that neighborhood.

Thorough inquiries were made by the Commission into these alleged atrocities, and no evidence was found to show that anyone was "gasolined and burned" during the riot or that any colored women's breasts were cut off.

8. RUMORS AND THE MIGRATION

The rumors in circulation in the South at the beginning of the migration of Negroes to the North were responsible for the presence in Chicago of many who heard them. It is hard to conceive how the tale that the Germans were on their way through Texas to take the southern states could have been believed, yet it is reported that this extravagant rumor was taken seriously in some quarters.

On the outskirts of Meridian, Mississippi, a band of gypsies was encamped. The rumor gained circulation that the Indians were coming back to retake their land, lost many years ago. Further it was declared that the United States government was beginning a scheme to transport all the Negroes from the South to break up the Black Belt. Passed from mouth to mouth unrestrainedly, the tale became an established verity for many Negroes.

It was declared on the word of honor of "one in a position to know" that the packing-houses in Chicago needed and would get 50,000 Negro workers before the end of 1917. One explanation of the belief that the South was overrun with labor agents is the fact that Negroes at the South saw in every stranger a man from the North looking for laborers and their families. If he denied it, they thought that he was concealing his identity from the police, and if he said nothing, his silence was regarded as affirmation.

Hundreds of disappointments of prospective migrants were traced to the rumor that a train would leave on a certain date, sometimes after the presence of a stranger in town; they would come to the station prepared to leave, and when no agent appeared, would purchase their own tickets to the North. Wages and privileges in the North were greatly exaggerated. Some men, on being questioned, supposed that it was possible for any common laborer to earn $10 a day and that $50 a week was not unusual. The strength of this belief was remarked by several social agencies in Chicago which attempted to supply migrants with work. The actual wages paid, though much in excess of what they had been receiving, were disappointing. Similarly in the matter of privilege and "rights," it was later discovered by the migrants that unbounded liberty was not to be found in the North. Many cases of grotesque misconduct of newly arrived migrants in Chicago, against which more sober-minded Negroes preached, possibly had root in exaggerated reports of "freedom and privilege" in the North which had reached the South.[94]

III. MYTHS

There arise among groups of people various stories with little or no basis in fact, which, through repetition and unvaried association with the same persons or incidents, come to be regarded as true. These stories, when they persist through years and even through generations, are myths. They are usually the response to a prejudice or a desire.

In general they have some plausible and apparent justification. In turn they lend stability not only to the beliefs out of which they were born, but to themselves. Frequently they are the result of the assumption that because two things happen at the same time they are connected by the relationship of cause and effect. So long as these stories are uncorrected they hold and exercise a marked degree of control over personal conduct.

Myths are important in any consideration of the instruments of opinion-making. Fernand von Langenhove, a Belgian scientist associated with the Solvay Institute for Sociological Study at Brussels, has made probably the first researches in this field. He took as his material the reports spread in Germany by German soldiers concerning the Belgian priests. These myths, for the most part unfounded, began to spread and eventually were taken up by German authorities and given the stamp of official sanction. The reports were investigated and found to be false and libelous by German authorities themselves. The method by which these myths arose is thus described in his book _The Growth of a Legend_:

Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange
rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place.
They were reproduced by the press and they soon permeated
the whole of Germany.... Public credulity accepted these
stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without
hesitation and indorsed them with their authority. Even the
Emperor echoed them and, taking them for a text, advanced in
the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the
President of the United States, the most terrible accusations
against the Belgian people and clergy.

... It was the German army which, as we have seen, constituted
the chief breeding ground for legendary stories. These were
disseminated with great rapidity among the troops; the liaison
officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the victualling
posts assured the diffusion of them....

Submitted to the test of the German military inquiry these
stories are shown to be without foundation. Received from the
front and narrated by a soldier who professes to have been
an eye witness, they are nevertheless clothed in the public
view with special authority. Welcomed without control by the
press, the stories recounted in letters from the front appear,
however, in the eyes of the readers of a paper clothed with
a new authority--that which attaches to printed matter. They
lose in the columns of a paper their individual and particular
character.... The statements thus obtain a substance and an
objectivity of which they would otherwise be devoid. Mixed
with authentic news, they are accepted by the public without
mistrust. Is not their appearance in the paper a guaranty of
accuracy?...

All these pseudo-historical publications are, however, only
one aspect of the abundant literary production of the Great
War....

So one finds in this literature of the lower classes the
principal legendary episodes of which we have studied the origin
and followed the development; accommodated to a fiction, woven
into a web of intrigue, they have undergone new transformations;
they have lost every indication of their source; they are
transposed in the new circumstances imagined for them; they
have usually been dissociated from the circumstances which
individualize them and fix their time and place.

The evolution of myths concerning Negroes shows a striking resemblance to these mentioned by von Langenhove. In this category would fall the myths concerning Negro mentality, or the closing of the frontal sutures at the age of fourteen; the "rape myth," or the belief that some character weakness and inordinate sexual virility in Negroes make them rapists by nature; and the "insurrection myth," or the recurrent assertion and belief that Negroes are plotting the downfall of the government. These are general in their acceptance. They illustrate the tendency of authors observed by Langenhove in his study "to incorporate new ideas with the complex old ones and show that they are not surprising and that all earlier facts tend to prove it." The efforts of some recent writers on the Negro question may be noted.

In 1895 R. M. Bache[95] made one of the first experimental studies of the relative mentality of the white, Negro, and Indian races. His study was based on only ten Negroes. He began with an assumption of the inferiority of Negroes and was satisfied that he had proved it. In his tests the whites were slowest in reacting to the visual, auditory, and electrical stimulation, the Indians were quickest, and the Negroes about midway between. He deduced from this that the whites were superior, the Indians next, and the Negroes the lowest of the group. The Negroes he explained were slower than the Indians because they were of mixed white and Negro blood and had inherited the effects of slavery, while the Indians' mode of life compelled them to rely upon quick movement. Therefore he said the Indian was of a higher race than the Negro. Dr. Vogt, a German anthropologist, is responsible for the statement: "On examining the brain of a Negro I find a remarkable resemblance between the ape and the Negro, especially with reference to the development of the temporal lobe." He made this deduction from the examination of the skull of one Hottentot Negro woman.

A. T. Smith made association and memory tests and concluded[96] that the Negro child was psychologically different from the white child in power of abstraction, judgment, and analysis. He took a single Negro boy as typical.

For the purpose of studying myths pertinent to this inquiry instances were taken from the testimony in race riots, both in East St. Louis and Chicago. The excerpts which follow illustrate the tendency of myths to create and give currency to rumors:

NEGROES SECRETING ARMS

I returned in about an hour and learned from Col. Tripp
that it had been reported that Negroes were forming and had
large quantities of arms and ammunition at a saloon on the
northeasterly corner of Nineteenth and Market Avenue; at the
time the small detachment of troops remaining at the City
Hall was loaded into an auto truck and Col. Tripp, Lieut.
Col. Clayton, Chief of Police Ransom Payne and myself, in my
automobile proceeded to the saloon and pool-room located at the
northeasterly corner of Nineteenth Street and Market Avenue,
where it was reported there were large stores of ammunition
and arms.

We accompanied Col. Tripp into the building and found perhaps
fifteen or eighteen Negro men; Col. Tripp ordered them to
surrender arms and there being no ready compliance with the
order, he thereupon ordered them searched and found one man who
had a number of loaded shot-gun shells. [Testimony by Thomas
L. Fekete, Jr., city attorney of East St. Louis, at East St.
Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

NEGROES PLANNING ATTACK

_Question_: Now what happened Tuesday?

_Answer_: Well, Tuesday I spent most of my time in the City
Hall except when we would be sent out on false alarms, calls
from the different parts of the city. That was practically all
of our work there then. There was no rioting on Tuesday, but
they continued calling from different parts of the city that
Negroes were forming and ready to attack, and we would send
men, whenever they were available, out with squads, two squads
of men to investigate, but invariably it was a false alarm.
[Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser at East St. Louis Inquiry into
Conduct of Militia.]

CONCEALING ARMS FOR INSURRECTION

We then searched the building, particularly the dwelling
quarters above these rooms, for arms which it had been alleged
Dr. L. N. Bundy had stored at this place. We found that Dr.
Bundy had sent two cartons of his property to this place for
safe-keeping and on opening the cartons, we discovered that they
contained no firearms or ammunition, but contained automobile
supplies and some stationery. [Testimony by Col. S. O. Tripp
at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

NEGROES ARMING AND PLANNING AN ATTACK

Then we commenced to get reports from different parts of the
city that Negroes were arming, getting ready to attack. One of
the persistent rumors was there were two hundred Negroes armed
around Sixty and Bond streets some place there. That rumor
was so persistent that Col. Tripp ordered me to take Company
B down and investigate it and the police sent one policeman
along to show us the way and show us the place where it was
supposed to be. We got down there within probably three blocks
of the place and the policeman told us we better not get too
close without forming a line of skirmishers, which I did. I
divided the company into two platoons. One platoon under the
Company commander and the other under the first lieutenant, and
we combed that district all through. The policeman deserted
us as soon as we started out and we were all left alone. We
combed all over for an hour or probably more.

_Question_: Who was the commander of Company B?

_Answer_: Captain Eaton. We did not find a single thing except
two Negroes who just came out of a house. We searched them and
they were armed and we arrested them. We brought these back
with us when we came perhaps an hour or an hour and a half
later.

_Question_: Is there anything else that night?

_Answer_: Yes, it was not very long until we got rumors that at
about 27th and 28th and Tudor that the Negroes and whites were
in a pitched battle. That is about two miles I think southeast,
and they asked me to go out and look into the situation and
take a squad of men with me ... we got to Eighteenth and Bond
and we were perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead of the truck and
we were fired upon. We stopped the car and Brown returned the
fire. We could see smoke coming from a vacant lot and by that
time the truck came up and we formed a line of skirmishers
and went through and could not find a single thing.

The Chief of Police was advised, on rumor, that Negroes were
forming in the Black Belt for the purpose of marching on the
whites. In response to this rumor, the witness [Col. S. O.
Tripp], the Acting Mayor [Fekete], and the military officials
left for the seat of the purported mobilization of Negroes,
but found that the report was untrue. The record shows that
during this temporary departure of authorities, military and
civil, acts of lawlessness were being exerted against Negroes
in other sections of the city. [Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser
at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

ARMED AND MASSED ATTACKS BY NEGROES

... As we got to 27th and Tudor I found a first lieutenant of
the Missouri National Guard there. I afterwards found out his
name was Crawley. He had one soldier with him. He called him his
orderly. I think his name was Murphy. There they were perhaps
a dozen young men, about eighteen or twenty, armed with rifles
and were lined up at 28th Street there under trees, that is
behind trees, at least it looked that way in the night, and
perhaps a half a block more north it looked to me two houses
were burning; it was a big fire; they were burning, and they
claimed that the Negroes had been firing at them and they
were returning the fire, and I guess that is where the report
came from. He advised me that it was a little dangerous work
up there and that we had better form a few men, form a line
of skirmishers, and I sent one bunch to the east side of the
fire to see what we could find in there. So I did that. I gave
Capt. Easterday a bunch of men, one detachment, and Lieut.
Brown another, one on each side, and then Lieut. Crawley and
one private went right through the center of it, right next to
the place seemed deserted and we could not find anybody and
we waited for the other detachments to come out and they did
not find anything and I walked around, it seemed on the west
side of the block, between 27th and 28th Streets, and I saw a
couple of fellows sticking their heads up over the fence, the
fence of an old two story brick building, and I hollered. I
thought perhaps it was Lieut. Crawley and waited for him and we
found a bunch of Negroes in there, perhaps twenty-five of them.
Lieut. Crawley and myself lined them up and searched them and
there was not a Negro who had any arms or ammunition, and we
asked if there were any more in the house, and they said this
private came in and already had three of us. So Lieut. Crawley
said if I guard the ones outside he would go inside and run
the rest out, so in the neighborhood of one hundred fifty or
two hundred came out, men, women and children and we searched
all of them but did not find anything on them. [Testimony by
Thomas L. Fekete, city attorney at East St. Louis Inquiry into
Conduct of Militia.]

1. THE RAPE MYTH

It is the common belief among whites that Negroes are rapists by nature. In this belief are involved the "fear obsession" of Negro men, held by many white women, fear of the "social equality" bugaboo, condonings of lynchings, and repressive social restriction as well as attempts at legislative restraints. The persistency of these assertions and this belief point to an interesting peculiarity of popular opinion.[97] There have been cases of rape involving Negroes, but they have contributed no such preponderance as would justify the wholesale charge against the Negro race. The tendency is to stress Negro sex offenses as though they alone constituted almost the whole of revolting crime. The usual proportion of white sex offenses is lost in the general statistics of crime. In the South, where it was first persistently asserted that Negro men have an abnormal tendency to sexual crimes, each crime, or attempted crime, and in many cases even suspected crime, of this sort has registered itself in a lynching.

In the twenty-year period between 1883 and 1903 there were lynched in the South 1,985 Negroes. Rape was assigned as the cause in 675 cases. In 1,310 cases other causes were given. James Welden Johnson, field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has prepared figures on lynchings and sex offenses charged to Negroes which point out the misrepresentation in easy but persistent charges and the unquestioning acceptance of them by the public. He says:

Whenever the Negro protests against lynching, nearly all
southern newspapers and a great many northern newspapers call
upon him to deprecate the crime which leads to lynching. The
authentic statistics on lynching prove the falsehood on which
this propaganda is based. In the past thirty-five years fifty
Negro women have been lynched. In the twelve-month period,
August, 1918-August, 1919 [when the statement was prepared]
five Negro women were lynched.

LYNCHINGS
===========+===========+==============
| | Number
Years | Lynchings | Charged with
| | Rape
-----------+-----------+--------------
1914-18[98]| 264 | 28
1883-1903 | 1,985 | 675
-----------+-----------+--------------

When the Congressional Committee on Immigration in 1911 made its study of crime in the United States, an investigation was made of 2,262 cases in the New York Court of General Sessions, and in that investigation it was found that the percentage for the crime of rape was lower for Negroes than for either the foreign-born whites or native whites.

NEW YORK COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS[99]

1911 Rape
Native-born whites .8 per cent
Foreign-born whites 1.8 per cent
Negroes .5 per cent

Contrast these records, bad as they may appear, with the records for New York County, which is only a part of New York City, and we find that in this one county in the single year of 1917, 230 persons were indicted for rape. Of this number, 37 were indicted for rape in the first degree.

INDICTMENTS AND LYNCHINGS FOR RAPE

===============================+========+======================+========
Place | Year | Crime | Number
-------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------
Number indicted by Grand Jury, | 1917 | Rape | 230
New York County | | |
Number of whites indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 37
Grand Jury, New York County | | |
Number of Negroes indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 0
Grand Jury, New York County | | |
Number of Negroes lynched in | {1914} | Charged with rape | 28
entire United States | {1918} | |
-------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------

That is, in just a part of New York City the number of persons
indicted for rape in the first degree was nine more than the
total number of Negroes lynched on the charge of rape in the
entire United States during the period 1914-1918. Among these
thirty-seven persons indicted by the New York County Grand
Jury, there was not a single Negro. The evidence required by
the Grand Jury of New York County to indict a person charged
with rape must be more conclusive than the evidence required
by a mob to lynch a Negro accused of rape.

In Chicago the statistics of sex offenses tell a significant story. Chicago judges in the criminal courts were questioned by the Commission on their experience to test the foundation of this belief. Their replies were practically unanimous. Some of them are given:

_Judge Pam_: You talk about sex cases. Whether you call them
rape cases or crimes against children, I have more serious
rape cases against white than I have against colored people.
The most serious case I had was about ten days ago, and I
sentenced the man to life imprisonment. I never had such a
case involving a Negro.

_Commissioner_: We read a great deal in the papers about rape
in the South. How does the colored man stand on that matter
in comparison to the white man?

_Judge Thompson_: Practically the same.

_Commissioner_: You spoke about crimes involving sex. What
is your experience with regard to whether they are committed
more often by colored persons than whites?

_Judge Trude_: I don't think in Chicago they are committed
more by Negroes than whites.

_Judge Thompson_: In my work with the criminal court I was
astounded at the large number of crimes involving the sexual
abuse of children, but I remember no case in which a colored
defendant was charged with that crime. Almost all other races
were represented, but I don't remember one colored man charged
with the abuse of a child.... I tried many of those cases,
but never tried a colored man for that offense. I would say
the majority of them were slavic or German; practically no
Scandinavian.

_Dr. Adler, State Criminologist_: We had the same thing here
in Chicago of a colored man sent to the penitentiary on a
charge of attempted rape or something of that sort, where the
identification was made by a child of six or eight years who
picked him out in a crowd under suspicion. No such evidence
ought to be accepted. We are perfectly sure, and everybody
else agrees that such evidence is not sufficient to warrant
the action.

2. THE SEX MYTH

_East St. Louis riot._--The records of the Congressional Investigating Committee contain much evidence of the use of this myth in fomenting riots. Edward F. Mason, representing the interests of labor, gave a vivid account of the report that Negro men had committed vicious acts of assault against white girls in the East St. Louis streets. He stated further that 200 white women were among the 1,200 persons present at the meeting on the night of May 28, just prior to the riot, and that "we brought these girls along to see if we couldn't teach--we wanted to wake him [the mayor] up. He was in a trance. He couldn't see the thing like we did."

Alois Towers emphasized in his testimony the sentiment among the whites of East St. Louis just prior to the outbreak:

Mr. Chairman, yesterday I made the statement that the great
influx of Negroes was responsible for the riot. I want to
try and show some of the feelings that developed after this
great influx of Negroes. It was a terrible feeling in the
air. Everyone felt that something terrible was going to
happen. On the street comers, wherever you went, you heard
expressions against the Negro. You heard that the Negro was
driving the white man out of the locality--by moving into
the white neighborhood--that the whites were being forced out
of their localities. Stories were afloat on the streets and
on the street cars of the worst kind that would inflame the
feelings. For instance, I heard one story so persistently that
I commenced to think later on there might be some truth in it.
First I thought it was just originated by some who might want
to inflame the feelings of the people. I heard stories of this
kind and I heard it no less than a dozen times on the streets
of East St. Louis, that Negroes had made the boast that they
were invited to East St. Louis; that great numbers of white
people were taken away for war purposes; and that _there would
be lots of white women for the Negroes in East St. Louis_....
The whole country became fearful. You could hear the same
discussions away from East St. Louis. People were inflamed and
their feelings were directed against big employers of East
St. Louis, feeling that they were responsible for the great
influx of Negroes.

Of actual assaults against white women there was found no evidence. Testimony by the mayor before the Military Committee investigating the conduct of soldiers adds substantiation to this fact:

_Q._: Now did you hear of any other complaints of these colored
men from any source as to their conduct and behavior when
they first came here other than being imported here to work
in large numbers?

_A._: Yes sir.

_Q._: What do you know about it?

_A._: Some complaints that they were sticking up people, holding
up people at night time, and various other police violations.

_Q._: Now were these complaints verified by the records, or
otherwise?

_A._: I think they were, they were arrested and locked up,
got trial and punishment, the usual procedure of the Police
Department and Courts.

_Q._: You keep in pretty close touch with these Police Court
Proceedings?

_A._: Yes sir.

_Q._: So you would say that there were more colored people
arrested and convicted for such offenses as you mentioned than
there were four or two years ago?

_A._: I have not made that comparison, but I would think so.

_Q._: Any other offenses except larceny and robbery?

_A._: No.

_Q._: Any sex outrages?

_A._: No.

_Q._: No complaints or prosecutions that white women were
outraged by colored men?

_A._: No sir.

[Board of Inquiry, East St. Louis, Ill.]

_Washington riot._--The Washington race riot was precipitated by reports of alleged attacks upon white women by Negroes. These reports were featured in the daily newspapers with large front-page headlines, and suggestions were made that probable lynchings would follow the capture of the Negroes. The series of reported assaults totaled seven. In each it was claimed that a Negro had assaulted a white woman. When the fury and excitement of the riot had subsided and the facts were sifted, it was found that of the seven assaults reported, four were assaults upon colored women. Three of the alleged criminals arrested and held for assault were white men, and at least two of the white men were prosecuted for assaults upon colored women. It further developed that three of the assaults were supposed to have been committed by a suspect who at the time of the riots was under arrest.

_Waukegan riot._--A story with the implication that a sex issue was involved was the significant feature of the riot between marines from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, aided by citizens of Waukegan, and the Negro residents of Waukegan. It is entirely likely that the outburst was wholly precipitated by the entirely false report that "Mrs. Blazier, the wife of Lieutenant Blazier," was "attacked" by Negro boys.[100] Lieutenant Blazier, it developed, was unmarried and had no woman occupant in the car.

_Chicago riot._--The most atrocious murder of the Chicago riot of 1919 was precipitated by a report involving an Italian girl. The story circulated that she had been killed by a Negro. Joseph Lovings, an innocent Negro, chanced into the neighborhood on a bicycle. He was set upon and murdered. The coroner found fourteen bullet wounds, many stab wounds, contusion of the head, and fractures of the skull bones and of the limbs. The report proved a myth, for no girl was killed by anyone during the riot. The Negro killed was innocent of any injury, and if a girl was injured it had not been learned by whom the injury was inflicted. There had been no previous rioting on the West Side, where the murder was committed, and no further clashes followed it. The usual report of the burning of the Negro which followed an assault was also circulated, and this was false and unfounded.

In the frenzy of the rioting in Chicago a report gained circulation that white women were being attacked by Negroes. Some reports picked up by newspapers asserted that women were being shot as the riot grew. The _Chicago American_ during the riot pertinently made a plea for cool-headedness and intelligence in receiving reports. In an editorial it thus importuned the citizenry:

Don't circulate wild stories that tend to infuriate respectable
citizens, both white and black. They are trying to suppress
the hoodlums who have been responsible for all the rioting.

Don't believe every infuriating report you hear, and don't
repeat them to others more credulous than yourself.

Depend on the _American_ to tell you what happened just as
accurately as careful, intelligent reporting will permit.

The most notable instance of inflammatory faking was observed
in one newspaper (not the _American_) yesterday afternoon. It
ran across its front page in big type the heading: "Women Shot
as Riots Grow." It was based on an incoherent, unsubstantiated
rumor which later investigation proved has no foundation.

The same information was received by the _Evening American_
from the detective bureau, where the report was received. The
_American_ published a few lines announcing that the police
had received such reports. Men were rushed out, but the report
could not be verified, and this newspaper withdrew further
publication of the unverified report.

At Chicago Heights a race riot was reported on August 7, 1920. It was said in the press that a Negro motor-cyclist had run down a Hungarian boy. The actual report circulated was that a Negro had struck an Italian girl. The latter report was not true; the first one, contrary to press reports, did not start a riot. In fact, there was no riot.

In the racial clash of September 20, 1920, the sex myth again arose.[101] Immediately after one of the Negroes had struck Barrett down, the trio ran. Few persons actually knew what had occurred. Excitement waxed high when the wild report flew about that a Negro had attacked a white woman. A mob of several thousand men, women, and children formed to storm the church in which they had sought refuge.

An investigator from the Commission, sent out immediately after the clash, picked up traces of this myth in the sentiments of white residents of the neighborhood.

There was a story which everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know concerning trouble on the street-car lines between Negroes and whites. A middle-aged Irish woman on Union Avenue, who had been with the crowd at the church, gave the following account of it: "Not long ago, a Negro knocked a white woman off the cars. It never appeared in the papers. I never go on the cars where they [Negroes] are. You couldn't get me to go on a State Street car line."

A barber at Forty-fifth Street and Emerald Avenue said:

There was some trouble the Saturday before Labor Day. A Negro
gave the conductor a dollar bill, and the conductor said
he hadn't change and told him to get off the car. As he was
getting off, he knocked against a white woman, and seven men
in an automobile who were right behind the car saw him and
chased him. They brought him up to the alley right across the
street, beat him up, and cut up his head something awful.

IV. PROPAGANDA

Both whites and Negroes have recognized the value of propaganda as an instrument of opinion-making. Both employ it, sometimes openly, sometimes insidiously. Its effects may be unmistakably observed in much of the literature about the Negro. It is the purpose here to give attention to certain forms of propaganda now in circulation, with a view to defining roughly their place in the manufacture of sentiment on the race question in Chicago. In spite of similarity it would be obviously unfair to lump all sorts of propaganda, good and bad, under one general classification. It is possible, however, to classify different types from the examples which came to the attention of the Commission, as follows: (1) educational, (2) radical and revolutionary, (3) malicious, (4) defensive.

1. EDUCATIONAL PROPAGANDA

Propaganda on the race situation with a true educational purpose seems to be confined largely to organizations composed of both whites and Negroes, who make joint appeals to both groups. An example is the publicity campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This Association definitely asserts that it can best accomplish its ends by reaching "the conscience and heart of the American people," and publicity is the weapon. The _Crisis_ magazine is the principal organ of the Association, although the public is reached through various other channels.

From the report of the Association for 1919, the following figures covering the circulation of information is obtained: During that year 1,138,900 copies of the _Crisis_ were sold; officers of the Association traveled 101,009 miles, delivered 286 addresses, including eleven in Chicago, and contributed nineteen special articles, not including special releases, of press material to magazines of wide circulation.

2. RADICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PROPAGANDA

A broad basis of appeal to Negroes as a group is provided in their economic status. Placed by circumstances near the bottom of the industrial ladder, victims of exploitation, restlessly resentful of practices employed against them because of class as well as race, it might be reasoned that they would be vitally interested in a revolution, industrial if not social. The Industrial Workers of the World has reasoned after this fashion and, probably because class meant more to it than race, extended open arms to Negro workers. This appeal was even stronger in view of the attitude of partial exclusion adopted by many trades unions. To strengthen its organization, ally with it a restless group, 90 per cent of whom are laborers, while at the same time providing an unmistakable demonstration of its own disregard for race lines in its so-called struggle for "industrial freedom," the I.W.W. directed a definite propaganda toward the Negro group, and founded it upon a very human desire. Thousands of letters and pamphlets were addressed, "To the colored workingmen and women," calling them fellow-workers. Excerpts from one of them follow:

There is one question which, more than any other, presses upon
the mind of the worker today, regardless of whether he be of
one race or another, of one color or another, the question of
how he can improve his conditions, raise his wages, shorten
his hours of labor, and gain something more of freedom from
his master, the owners of the industry wherein he labors.

To the black race, who, but recently, with the assistance
of the white men of the northern states, broke their chains
of bondage and ended chattel slavery, a prospect of further
freedom or _real freedom_ should be most appealing.

For it is a fact that the Negro worker is no better off under
the freedom he has gained than under the slavery from which
he has escaped. As chattel slaves we were the property of
our masters and, as a piece of valuable property, our masters
were considerate of us and careful of our health and welfare.
Today, as wage workers, the boss may work us to death, at the
hardest and most hazardous labor, at the longest hours, at
the lowest pay, we may quietly starve when out of work and the
boss loses nothing by it and has no interest in us. To him the
worker is but a machine for producing profits and when you,
as a slave who sells himself to the master on the installment
plan, become old, or broken in health or strength, or should
you be killed while at work, the master merely gets another
wage slave on the same terms.

We who have worked in the South know that conditions in lumber
and turpentine camps, in the fields of cane, cotton and tobacco,
in the mills and mines of Dixie, are such that the workers
suffer a more miserable existence than ever prevailed among
the chattel slaves before the great Civil War. Thousands of
us have come and are coming northward, crossing the Mason and
Dixon line, seeking better conditions. As wage slaves we have
run away from the masters in the South, but to become the wage
slaves of the masters in the North. In the North we find that
the hardest work and the poorest pay are our portion. We are
driven while on the job, and the high cost of living offsets
any higher pay we might receive.

The only problem then, which the colored worker should consider,
as a worker, is the problem of organization with other working
men in the labor organization that best expresses the interest
of the whole working class against the slavery and oppression
of the whole capitalist class. Such an organization is the
I.W.W., the _Industrial Workers of the World_, the only labor
union that has never, _in theory or practice_, since its
beginning, twelve years ago, barred the workers of any race or
nation from membership. The following has stood as a principle
of the I.W.W., embodied in its official constitution since
its formation in 1905:

"By-Laws. Article I--Section 1

"No working man or woman shall be excluded from
membership in Unions because of creed or color."

If you are a wage worker you are welcome in the I.W.W. halls,
no matter what your color. By this you may see that the I.W.W.
is not a white man's union, not a black man's union, not a
red or yellow man's union, but a _working man's union_. _All
of the working class in one big union._

In the I.W.W. all wage workers meet on common ground. No
matter what language you may speak, whether you were born in
Europe, in Asia or in any other part of the world, you will
find a welcome as a fellow worker. In the harvest fields where
the I.W.W. controls, last summer saw white men, black men and
Japanese working together as union men and raising the pay of
all who gathered the grain. In the great strikes the I.W.W.
has conducted at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the woolen mills,
in the iron mills of Minnesota and elsewhere, the I.W.W. has
brought the workers of many races, colors and tongues together
in victorious battles for a better life.

The foundation of the I.W.W. is _industrial unionism_. All
workers in any division of any industry are organized into an
_industrial union of all_ the workers in the _entire industry_;
these _industrial unions_ in turn are organized into _industrial
departments_ of connecting or kindred industries, while all are
brought together in the _central organization of the Industrial
Workers of the World--one big union of all the working class
of the world_. No one but actual wage workers may join. The
working class cannot depend upon anyone but itself to free it
from wage slavery. "He who would be free, himself must strike
the blow."

When the I.W.W. through this form of _industrial unionism_
has become powerful enough, it will institute an _industrial
commonwealth_; it will end slavery and oppression forever and
in its place will be a world of the workers, by the workers,
and for the workers, a world where there will be no poverty
and want among those who feed and clothe and house the world; a
world where the word "master" and "slave" shall be forgotten;
a world where peace and happiness shall reign and where
the children of men shall live as brothers in a world-wide
_industrial democracy_.

Another pamphlet published a hideous picture of a lynching in the South. In both of these pamphlets the appeal is about the same and may be summarized as follows:

The Negro is oppressed. He is subjected to the worst possible
cruelties and indignities. The working men are oppressed.
Negroes have left one slavery for another which is shared
by white workers. Race hatred is played upon by capitalists
to keep the two races apart and thus thwart their efforts at
improving their condition. The I.W.W. union will unite all of
the oppressed of all colors and all languages. One big union
of defensive brotherhood, not only in America but throughout
the world.

3. MALICIOUS PROPAGANDA

Anti-Negro propaganda is not wholly new in the North, but it has usually been carefully concealed. Recently there have been several conspicuous instances of open and organized effort to influence the minds of white persons against Negroes. The slogans, charges, and incriminations have included, with gross exaggeration, not only all of the actual but all of the fancied and rumored defects of Negro character. Ignorance and suspicion, fear and prejudice, have been played upon violently. A group of South Side real estate dealers and owners, anxious to preserve exclusively for whites sections of the city known as Hyde Park and Kenwood, formed themselves into an organization to protect property values on the assumption that the presence of Negroes depreciated real estate values. Since they did not own or control enough property to be in themselves effective, they sought to awaken the white residents to the "danger that menaced them." Funds were raised, meetings held, a journal started, bills and posters distributed, and many letters circulated. A bulletin was widely distributed with this heading:

YOUR RIGHTS AND MINE
A Short Symposium on Current Events as Applied to and Effecting Realty
Values in Kenwood and Hyde Park

It began by disclaiming any desire to foment or foster race antagonism, but stated its determination to work insistently and persistently along legal lines for the elimination of undesirables of whatever brand or color whose residence in this section lowered the value of real estate. The remainder of the bulletin, however, was devoted to a discussion of the Negro. A letter to Mayor Thompson from the president of the Association mentioned the vicious element of Negroes "haranguing about constitutional rights," aided by the Negro press, claiming social equality, and then attributed the riot to the scattering of Negroes in white residential sections. It spoke of a feeling that was rampant because the "legal rights of Negroes have been placed above his moral obligation to the white people." The _Chicago Tribune_ was quoted twice and the Chicago Real Estate Board once on the desirability of segregation. The _Daily News_ afforded a fourth quotation from an article in which three solutions were advanced--amalgamation, deportation, and segregation. As to amalgamation the article said: "Every white man would rather see the nation destroyed than adopt that method."

The _Property Owners' Journal_ became so bitter in its utterances that the protests of whites forced its discontinuance. A few selections from the _Journal_ picture the character of the campaign:

What a reputation for beauty Chicago would secure if visitors
touring the city would see crowds of idle, insolent Negroes
lounging on the South Side boulevards and adding beauty to
the floricultural display in the parks, filling the streets
with old newspapers and tomato containers and advertising the
Poro-system for removing the marcelled kinks from Negro hair
in the windows of the derelict remains of what had once been
a clean, respectable residence.

THE NEW NEGRO

Negroes are boasting, individually and through the colored
press, that the old order of things for the Negro is changing
and that a new condition is about to begin. As a result of
the boastful attitude, the Negro is filled with bold ideas,
the realization of which means the overturning of their older
views and conditions of life. The Negro is unwilling to resume
his status of other years; he is exalting himself with idiotic
ideas on social equality. Only a few days ago Attorney General
Palmer informed the Senate of the nation of the Negroes'
boldest and most impudent ambition, sex equality.

From the Negro viewpoint sex equality, according to Mr.
Palmer, is not seen as the equality of men and women; it is
the assertion by the Negro of a right to marry any person whom
he chooses, regardless of color. The dangerous portion of
their outrageous idea does not consist in the accident that
some black or white occasionally may forget the dignity of
their race and intermarry. That has happened before; doubtless
it will recur many times. Where the trouble lies is in the
fact that the Department of Justice has observed an organized
tendency on the part of Negroes to regard themselves in such
a light as to permit their idea to become a universal ambition
of the Negro race.

As a corollary to their ambition on sex equality, it is not
strange that they are attempting to force their presence as
neighbors on the whites. The effrontery and impudence that
nurses a desire on the part of the Negro to choose a white as
a marriage mate certainly will not result in making the Negro
a desirable neighbor. That fact alone is enough to determine
the property owners of this district to declare to the Negroes
that they must stay out. As neighbors they have nothing to
offer. "They lived for uncounted centuries in Africa on their
own resources, and never so much as improved the make-up of
an arrow, coined a new word, or crept an inch nearer to a
spiritual religion," and it is a certainty that their tenure
of those unfortunate buildings now occupied by them will not
be improved by a single nail if it is left to the Negro to
provide and drive the nail.

Keep the Negro in his place, amongst his people, and he is
healthy and loyal. Remove him, or allow "his newly discovered
importance to remove him from his proper environment and the
Negro becomes a nuisance." He develops into an overbearing,
inflated, irascible individual, overburdening his brain to such
an extent about social equality that he becomes dangerous to
all with whom he comes in contact; he constitutes a nuisance
of which the neighborhood is anxious to rid itself. If the new
Negro desires to display his newly acquired veneer of impudence
where it will be appreciated we advise that they parade it in
their own district. Their presence here is intolerable.

As stated before, every colored man who moves into Hyde Park
knows that he is damaging his white neighbor's property.

Therefore, he is making war on the white man.

Consequently, he is not entitled to any consideration and
forfeits his right to be employed by the white man.

If employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes
who reside in Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's
property it would soon show good results.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR HYDE-PARKERS

Their solid vote is the Negroes' great weapon. They have a
total vote in Chicago of about 40,000. This total vote is cast
solid for the candidate who makes the best bargain with them.
When both our principal political parties are split, and when
each of them has two or more candidates in the field, this
solid block of 40,000 becomes a possible power and might be
able to defeat or elect a candidate.

This vote situation is the foundation of the Chicago Negro's
effrontery and his evil design against the white man's property.
He feels that he holds the balance of power and that he can
dictate the policy of any administration that happens to be
elected by his controlling black vote.

He therefore becomes arrogant, insulting, threatening. He
abuses his rights and liberties and feels that he is perfectly
safe in doing so for the reason that as he controls this block
of votes he believes that he can practically dictate to the
police department, the city administration and the courts.
Consequently he is bold.

Now then, white property owners and voters, this vote situation
must be corrected. It is time for you to think and ponder.
Remember this, that this Negro vote power could not exist except
for the fact that the candidate who caters to it is traveling
on his belief that the white man will vote the ticket any
way. The white voter is not supposed to think, nor to indulge
in any investigations of a candidate to ascertain whether or
not the candidate is favorable or inimical to his interests.
No, the white voter is supposed to be a blind ass who has no
care for his own interests, who does not know or care to know
of the foul plots against him, who has no knowledge of what
is going on around him, but who simply does as he is told and
walks to the polls as in a dream, having eyes and seeing not,
ears and hearing not, and religiously casts his vote for the
ticket and against his own interests.