University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1922

pp. xii - xvi (Foreward)

pp. xv - xxi (Introduction)

pp. xxiii-xxiv (The Problem)

pp. 595- 651 (Chapter 11 - Summary Of The Report And Recommendations Of The Commission)

transcription/facsimile book

CHAPTER XI

SUMMARY OF THE REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS

OF THE COMMISSION

THE SUMMARY

I. THE CHICAGO RIOT

1. BACKGROUND

In July, 1919, a race riot involving whites and Negroes occurred in Chicago. For some time thoughtful citizens, white and Negro, had sensed increasing tension, but, having no local precedent of riot and wholesale bloodshed, had neither prepared themselves for it nor taken steps to prevent it. The collecting of arms by members of both races was known to the authorities, and it was evident that this was in preparation for aggression as well as for self-defense.

Several minor clashes preceded the riot. On July 3, 1917, a white saloon-keeper who, according to the coroner's physician, died of heart trouble, was incorrectly reported in the press to have been killed by a Negro. That evening a party of young white men riding in an automobile fired upon a group of Negroes at Fifty-third and Federal streets. In July and August of the same year recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station clashed frequently with Negroes, each side accusing the other of being the aggressor.

Gangs of white "toughs," made up largely of the membership of so-called "athletic clubs" from the neighbourhood between Roosevelt Road and Sixty-third Street, Wentworth Avenue and the city limits--a district contiguous to the neighborhood of the largest Negro settlement--were a constant menace to Negroes who traversed sections of the territory going to and returning from work. The activities of these gangs and "athletic clubs" became bolder in the spring of 1919, and on the night of June 21, five weeks before the riot, two wanton murders of Negroes occurred, those of Sanford Harris and Joseph Robinson. Harris returning to his home on Dearborn Street, about 11:30 at night, passed a group of young white men. They threatened him and he ran. He had gone but a short distance when one of the group shot him. He died soon afterward. Policemen who came on the scene made no arrests, even when the assailant was pointed out by a white woman witness of the murder. On the same evening Robinson, a Negro laborer, forty-seven years of age, was attacked while returning from work by a gang of white "roughs" at Fifty-fifth Street and Princeton Avenue, apparently without provocation, and stabbed to death.

Negroes were greatly incensed over these murders, but their leaders, joined by many friendly whites, tried to allay their fears and counseled patience.

After the killing of Harris and Robinson notices were conspicuously posted on the South Side that an effort would be made to "get all the niggers on

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July 4th." The notices called for help from sympathizers. Negroes in turn whispered around the warning to prepare for a riot; and they did prepare.

Since the riot in East St. Louis, July 4, 1917, there had been others in different parts of the country which evidenced a widespread lack of restraint in mutual antipathies and suggested further resorts to lawlessness. Riots and race clashes occurred in Chester, Pennsylvania; Longview, Texas; Coatesville, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; and Norfolk, Virginia, before the Chicago riot.

Aside from general lawlessness and disastrous riots that preceded the riot here discussed, there were other factors which may be mentioned briefly here. In Chicago considerable unrest had been occasioned in industry by increasing competition between white and Negro laborers following a sudden increase in the Negro population due to the migration of Negroes from the South. This increase developed a housing crisis. The Negroes overran the hitherto recognized area of Negro residence, and when they took houses in adjoining neighborhoods friction ensued. In the two years just preceding the riot, twenty-seven Negro dwellings were wrecked by bombs thrown by unidentified persons.

2. STORY OF THE RIOT

Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1919, hundreds of white and Negro bathers crowded the lake-front beaches at Twenty-sixth and Twenty-ninth streets. This is the eastern boundary of the thickest Negro residence area. At Twenty-sixth Street Negroes were in great majority; at Twenty-ninth Street there were more whites. An imaginary line in the water separating the two beaches had been generally observed by the two races. Under the prevailing relations, aided by wild rumors and reports, this line served virtually as a challenge to either side to cross it. Four Negroes who attempted to enter the water from the "white" side were driven away by the whites. They returned with more Negroes, and there followed a series of attacks with stones, first one side gaining the advantage, then the other.

Eugene Williams, a Negro boy of seventeen, entered the water from the side used by Negroes and drifted across the line supported by a railroad tie. He was observed by the crowd on the beach and promptly became a target for stones. He suddenly released the tie, went down and was drowned. Guilt was immediately placed on Stauber, a young white man, by Negro witnesses who declared that he threw the fatal stone.

White and Negro men dived for the boy without result. Negroes demanded that the policeman present arrest Stauber. He refused; and at this crucial moment arrested a Negro on a white man's complaint. Negroes then attacked the officer. These two facts, the drowning and the refusal of the policeman to arrest Stauber, together marked the beginning of the riot.

1 The coroner's jury found that Williams had drowned from fear of stone-throwing which kept him from the shore.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 597

Two hours after the drowning, a Negro, James Crawford, fired into a group of officers summoned by the policeman at the beach and was killed by a Negro policeman. Reports and rumors circulated rapidly, and new crowds began to gather. Five white men were injured in clashes near the beach. As darkness came Negroes in white districts to the west suffered severely. Between 9:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. twenty-seven Negroes were beaten, seven stabbed, and four shot. Monday morning was quiet, and Negroes went to work as usual.

Returning from work in the afternoon many Negroes were attacked by White ruffians. Street-car routes, especially at transfer points, were the centers of lawlessness. Trolleys were pulled from the wires, and Negro passengers were dragged into the street, beaten, stabbed, and shot. The police were powerless to cope with these numerous assaults. During Monday, four Negro men and one white assailant were killed, and thirty Negroes were severely beaten in street-car clashes. Four white men were killed, six stabbed, five shot, and nine severely beaten. It was rumored that the white occupants of the Angelus Building at Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue had shot a Negro. Negroes gathered about the building. The white tenants sought police protection, and one hundred policemen, mounted and on foot, responded. In a clash with the mob the police killed four Negroes and injured many.

Raids into the Negro residence area then began. Automobiles sped through the streets, the occupants shooting at random. Negroes retaliated by "sniping" from ambush. At midnight surface and elevated car service was discontinued because of a strike for wage increases, and thousands of employees were cut off from work.

On Tuesday, July 29, Negro men en route on foot to their jobs through hostile territory were killed. White soldiers and sailors in uniform, aided by civilians, raided the "Loop" business section, killing two Negroes and beating and robbing several others. Negroes living among white neighbors in Englewood, far to the south, were driven from their homes, their household goods were stolen, and their houses were burned or wrecked. On the West Side an Italian mob, excited by a false rumor that an Italian girl had been shot by a Negro, killed Joseph Lovings, a Negro.

Wednesday night at 10:30 Mayor Thompson yielded to pressure and asked the help of the three regiments of militia which had been stationed in nearby armories during the most severe rioting, awaiting the call. They immediately took up positions throughout the South Side. A rainfall Wednesday night and Thursday kept many people in their homes, and by Friday the rioting had abated. On Saturday incendiary fires burned forty-nine houses in the immigrant neighborhood west of the Stock Yards. Nine hundred and forty-eight people, mostly Lithuanians, were made homeless, and the property loss was about $250,000. Responsibility for the fires was never fixed.

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The total casualties of this reign of terror were thirty-eight deaths--fifteen white, twenty-three Negro--and 537 people injured. Forty-one per cent of the reported clashes occurred in the white neighborhood near the Stock Yards between the south branch of the Chicago River and Fifty-fifth Street, Wentworth Avenue and the city limits, and 34 per cent in the "Black Belt" between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth streets, Wentworth Avenue and Lake Michigan. Others were scattered.

Responsibility for many attacks was definitely placed by many witnesses upon the "athletic clubs," including "Ragen's Colts," the "Hamburgers," "Aylwards," "Our Flag," the "Standard," the "Sparklers," and several others. The mobs were made up for the most part of boys between fifteen and twenty-two. Older persons participated, but the youth of the rioters was conspicuous in every clash. Little children witnessed the brutalities and frequently pointed out the injured when the police arrived.

3. RUMORS AND THE RIOT

Wild rumors were in circulation by word of mouth and in the press throughout the riot and provoked many clashes. These included stories of atrocities committed by one race against the other. Reports of the numbers of white and Negro dead tended to produce a feeling that the score must be kept even. Newspaper reports, for example, showed 6 per cent more whites injured than Negroes. As a matter of fact there were 28 per cent more Negroes injured than whites. The Chicago Tribune on July 29 reported twenty persons killed, of whom thirteen were white and seven colored. The true figures were exactly the opposite.

Among the rumors provoking fear were numerous references to the arming of Negroes. In the Daily News of July 30, for example, appeared the sub-headline: "Alderman Jos. McDonough tells how he was shot at on South Side visit. Says enough ammunition in section to last for years of guerrilla warfare." In the article following, the reference to ammunition was repeated but not elaborated or explained.

The alderman was quoted as saying that the mayor contemplated opening up Thirty-fifth and Forty-seventh streets in order that colored people might get to their work. He thought this would be most unwise for, he stated, "They are armed and white people are not. We must defend ourselves if the city authorities won't protect us." Continuing his story, he described bombs going off: "I saw white men and women running through the streets dragging children by the hands and carrying babies in their arms. Frightened white men told me the police captains had just rushed through the district crying, 'For God's sake, arm; they are coming; we cannot hold them.' "

Whether or not the alderman was correctly quoted, the effect of such statements on the public was the same. There is no record in any of the riot testimony in the coroner's office or state's attorney's office of any bombs going off

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 599

during the riot, nor of police captains warning the white people to arm, nor of any fear by whites of a Negro invasion. In the Berger Odman case before a coroner's jury there was a statement to the effect that a sergeant of police warned the Negroes of Ogden Park to arm and to shoot at the feet of rioters if they attempted to invade the few blocks marked off for Negroes by the police. Negroes were warned, not whites.

4. CONDUCT OF THE POLICE

Chief of Police John J. Garrity, in explaining the inability of the police to curb the rioters, said that there was not a sufficient force to police one-third of the city. Aside from this, Negroes distrusted the white police officers, and it was implied by the chief and stated by State's Attorney Hoyne, that many of the police were "grossly unfair in making arrests." There were instances of actual police participation in the rioting, as well as neglect of duty. Of 229 persons arrested and accused of various criminal activities during the riot, 154 were Negroes and seventy-five were whites. Of those indicted, eighty-one were Negroes and forty-seven were whites. Although this, on its face, would indicate great riot activity on the part of Negroes, further reports of clashes show that of 520 persons injured, 342 were Negroes and 178 were whites. The fact that twice as many Negroes appeared as defendants and twice as many Negroes as whites were injured, leads to the conclusion that whites were not apprehended as readily as Negroes.

Many of the depredations outside the "Black Belt" were encouraged by the absence of policemen. Out of a force of 3,000 Police, 2,800 were massed in the "Black Belt" during the height of the rioting. In the "Loop" district, where two Negroes were killed and several others wounded, there were only three policemen and one sergeant. The Stock Yards district, where the greatest number of injuries occurred, was also weakly protected.

5. THE MILITIA

Although Governor Lowden had ordered the militia into the city promptly and they were on hand on the second day of the rioting, their services were not requested by the mayor and chief of police until the evening of the fourth day. The reason expressed by the chief for this delay was a belief that inexperienced militiamen would add to the deaths and disorder. But the troops, when called, proved to be clearly of high character, and their discipline was good, not a case of breach of discipline being reported during their occupation. They were distributed more proportionately through all the riotous areas than the police and, although they reported some hostility from members of "athletic clubs," the rioting soon ceased.

6. RESTORATION OF ORDER

Throughout the rioting various social organizations and many citizens were at work trying to hold hostilities in check and to restore order. The Chicago

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Urban League, Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A., American Red Cross, and various other social organizations and the churches of the Negro community gave attention to caring for stranded Negroes, advising them of dangers, keeping them off the streets and, in such ways as were possible, co-operating with the police. The packing companies took their pay to Negro employees, and various banks made loans. Local newspapers in their editorial columns insistently condemned the disorder and counseled calmness.

7. THE AFTERMATH

Of the thirty-eight persons killed in the riot:

Fifteen met death at the hands of mobs. Coroner's juries recommended that the members of the unknown mobs be apprehended. They were never found.

Six were killed in circumstances fixing no criminal responsibility: three white men were killed by Negroes in self-defense, and three Negroes were shot by policemen in the discharge of their duty.

Four Negroes were killed in the Angelus riot. The coroner made no recommendations, and the cases were not carried farther.

Four cases, two Negro and two white, resulted in recommendations from coroner's juries for further investigation of certain persons. Sufficient evidence was lacking for indictments against them.

Nine cases led to indictments. Of this number four cases resulted in convictions.

Thus in only four cases of death was criminal responsibility fixed and punishment meted out.

Indictments and convictions, divided according to the race of the persons criminally involved, were as follows:

                   NEGRO           WHITE          
                                                  
                   Cases   Persons  Cases  Persons  
Indictments        6       17       3      4        
Convictions        2         3      2      2        
                                                    

Despite the community's failure to deal firmly with those who disturbed its peace and contributed to the reign of lawlessness that shamed Chicago before the world, there is evidence that the riot aroused many citizens of both races to a quickened sense of the suffering and disgrace which had come and might again come to the city, and developed a determination to prevent a recurrence of so disastrous an outbreak of race hatred. This was manifest on at least three occasions in 1920 when, confronted suddenly with events out of which serious riots might easily have grown, people of

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both races acted with such courage and promptness as to end the trouble early. One of these was the murder of two innocent white men and the wounding of a Negro policeman by a band of Negro fanatics who styled themselves "Abyssinians"; another was the killing of a white man by a Negro whom he had attacked while returning from work; and still another was the riotous attacks of sailors from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station on Negroes in Waukegan, Illinois.

8. OUTSTANDING FEATURES OF THE RIOT

This study of the facts of the riot of 1919, the events as they happened hour by hour, the neighborhoods involved, the movements of mobs, the part played by rumors, and the handling of the emergency by the various authorities, shows certain outstanding features which may be listed as follows:

a) The riot violence was not continuous hour by hour, but was intermittent.

b) The greatest number of injuries occurred in the district west and inclusive of Wentworth Avenue, and south of the south branch of the Chicago River to Fifty-fifth Street, or in the Stock Yards district. The next greatest number occurred in the so-called "Black Belt": Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth streets, inclusive, and Wentworth Avenue to the lake, exclusive of Wentworth Avenue; Thirty-ninth to Fifty-fifth streets, inclusive, and Clark Street to Michigan Avenue, exclusive of Michigan Avenue.

c) Organized raids occurred only after a period of sporadic clashes and spontaneous mob outbreaks.

d) Main thoroughfares witnessed 76 per cent of the injuries on the South Side. The streets which suffered most severely were State, Halsted, Thirty-first, Thirty-fifth, and Forty-seventh. Transfer corners were always centers of disturbances.

e) Most of the rioting occurred after work hours among idle crowds on the streets. This was particularly true after the street-car strike began.

f) Gangs, particularly of young whites, formed definite nuclei for crowd and mob formation. "Athletic clubs" supplied the leaders of many gangs.

g) Crowds and mobs engaged in rioting were generally composed of a small nucleus of leaders and an acquiescing mass of spectators. The leaders were mostly young men, usually between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. Dispersal was most effectively accomplished by sudden, unexpected gun fire.

h) Rumor kept the crowds in an excited, potential mob state. The press was responsible for giving wide dissemination to much of the inflammatory matter in spoken rumors, though editorials calculated to allay race hatred and help the forces of order were factors in the restoration of peace.

i) The police lacked sufficient forces for handling the riot; they were hampered by the Negroes' distrust of them; routing orders and records were not

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handled with proper care; certain officers were undoubtedly unsuited to police or riot duty.

j) The militiamen employed in this riot were of an unusually high type. This unquestionably accounts for the confidence placed in them by both races. Riot training, definite orders, and good staff work contributed to their efficiency.

k) There was a lack of energetic co-operation between the police department and the state's attorney's office in the discovery and conviction of rioters.

The riot was merely a symptom of serious and profound disorders lying beneath the surface of race relations in Chicago. The study of the riot, therefore, as to its interlocking provocations and causes, required a study of general race relations that made possible so serious and sudden an outbreak. Thus to understand the riot and guard against another, the Commission probed systematically into the principal phases of race contact and sought accurate information on matters which in the past have been influenced by dangerous speculation; and on the basis of its discoveries certain suggestions to the community are made.

II. THE MIGRATION OF NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH

During the period 1916-18 approximately 500,000 Negroes moved from southern to northern states. Some cities of the North received increases in Negro population of 10 per cent to 300 per cent. The Negro population of Gary, Indiana, increased from 383 in 1910 to 5,299 in 1920, an increase of 1,283 per cent.

Chicago was in direct line for migrants from the South, especially along the Mississippi Valley, and received approximately 65,000, who constituted a large proportion of the increase of 148.5 per cent in its Negro population in the last decade. These migrants definitely accentuated existing problems of race contact and brought new problems of adjustment and assimilation. Southern Negroes with southern manners, habits, and traditions, and mostly from rural districts, became part of a northern urban community. Knowledge of the causes of this movement of Negroes will make easier an understanding of the difficulties following it. These causes were economic as well as sentimental.

The South was paying to Negroes wages which varied from 75 cents a day on a farm to $1.75 a day in certain city jobs. For two seasons the boll weevil, a destructive pest, had been making heavy ravages upon the cotton crops, ruining thousands of farms and throwing out of employment many thousands of Negro workers. Lack of capital to carry labor through a period of poor crops and over the normal intervals between planting and harvesting largely increased Negro unemployment. Unsatisfactory living conditions, on plantations and in segregated quarters of southern cities, stimulated unrest. School facilities for Negro children, described as lamentably poor even by southerners, increased dissatisfaction with

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 603

conditions in the South. The Negro illiteracy in fifteen southern states was 33.3 per cent as compared with 7.7 per cent for whites. The appropriations for teachers in the schools of these states on a per capita basis was $10.32 for each white child, and $2.89 for each Negro child.

On the other hand, the North was for the first time on a large scale opening up opportunities for Negroes to earn a livelihood. The cessation of immigration due to the war and the drawing of workers into military service created a great demand for labor; and the opening of new industries and the extension of old ones to meet the demands of the war provided still greater opportunities. At the same time, these industries were paying laborers from $3 to $8 per day, and offering shorter hours and the opportunity for overtime work and bonuses. The North also offered living accommodations which, although below standard for city dwellers, were a vast improvement over most of the plantation cabins and frail frame dwellings of the South. There are no segregated schools in the North, and Negro children are offered identical school privileges with white children.

Other causes of the migration, as stated by the migrants and otherwise confirmed, were: lack of protection from mob violence, injustice in the courts, inferior transportation facilities, deprivation of the right to vote, "rough-handed and unfair competition of 'poor whites,' " "persecution by petty officers of the law," and "persecution by the press."

Between 1895 and 1918, 2,881 Negroes were lynched in the United States, and more than 85 per cent of these lynchings occurred in the South. The Atlanta Constitution declared that the heaviest migration of Negroes was from those counties in which there had been the worst outbreaks against Negroes.

How the migration began.--The migration began early in 1916. Hard-pressed industries in the East, principally in Pennsylvania, imported Negroes from Georgia and Florida. During July of that year, 13,000 were carried to Pennsylvania by one railroad company alone. 1 They wrote back for their families and friends. Reports of high wages and good treatment, aided by the hysteria of a mass movement, accomplished the rest.

The migration was first noted in Chicago in 1917. It had been rumored in the South that the Stock Yards needed 50,000 men; the city had been regarded by Negroes as a future home since the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893; it was the great city of mail-order houses, the home of the Chicago Defender, a widely circulated Negro newspaper, the "end of the railroad line," and the "top of the world" for Negroes. Negro newspapers gave up their columns to migration news and urged southern Negroes to go North. The movement soon became a mass movement; with standards, songs, and watch-words the migrants began

1 The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh, published in 1918 under the supervision of the School of Economics, University of Pittsburgh; U. S. Department of Labor Bulletin, Negro Migration in 1916-17, published in 1919.

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arriving in the city faster than they could be absorbed into the population.

The arrival in Chicago.--Prior to the migration, the majority of Negroes in Chicago lived in a fairly limited area on the South Side, principally between Twenty-second and Thirty-ninth streets, Wentworth Avenue and State Street, and in scattered groups east of State Street to Cottage Grove Avenue. This area adjoined the old vice area, and many houses of the vicinity had been abandoned by older Chicago Negroes. Shortly after the migrants began to arrive, practically all available houses had been taken and filled to overcrowding. On a single day the Chicago Urban League found 664 Negro applicants for houses with only fifty-five dwellings actually available for use by Negroes. At the same time rents for Negroes were increased by from 5 to 50 per cent.

Meeting actual conditions of life in Chicago brought both exaltation and disillusionment to the migrants. These were reflected in the schools, in public amusement places, in industry, and in the street cars. The Chicago Urban League and the various Negro churches and newspapers assumed the task of making the newcomers "city folk." The difficulty of adjustment showed itself in the great differences in habits of life and employment. Craftsmen had to relearn their trades when thrown amid the highly specialized processes of northern industries; domestic servants went into industry; professional men had to re-establish themselves in a new community.

Many Negroes sold their homes in the South and brought their furniture with them. Reinvesting in property frequently meant a loss; the furniture brought was often found to be unsuited to the tiny apartments or the large abandoned dwellings that they were able to rent or buy.

Change of residence carried with it in many cases change of status. The "leader" in a small southern community when he came to Chicago was immediately absorbed into the great, struggling mass of unnoticed workers. School teachers, male and female, whose positions in the South held commendable prestige, had to go to work in factories and plants because the disparity in educational standards would not permit a continuation of their profession in Chicago.

The migrants visited by the Commission investigators, however, for the most part gave evidence of satisfaction with their change of home, and were pleased with the opportunity of voting, of sending their children to schools, and of higher wages, and with the privilege of participation in community life. Others felt the pressure of high rents and bad living accommodations and complained against certain discriminations.

The fact is, however, that few Negroes have returned to the South, even in response to insistent invitations and offers of free transportation and better home conditions made by southern states that were left badly in need of laborers as a result of the migration.

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III. THE NEGRO POPULATION OF CHICAGO

I. DISTRIBUTION AND DENSITY

The Negro population of Chicago, as reported by the Federal Bureau of the Census, was 44,103 in 1910 and 109,594 in 1920. The increase during the decade was therefore 65,491, or 148.5 per cent. Negroes constituted 2 per cent of the city's total population in 1910 and 4.1 per cent in 1920. The increase in the white population during the decade was 450,047, or 21 per cent, bringing the number up to 2,589,104 in 1920. Counting 3,007 Chinese, Japanese, and Indians of whom there were 2,123 in 1910, Chicago's total population in 1920 was 2,701,705.

This growth of the Negro population did not bring into existence any new large colonies of Negroes, but merely expanded and increased the density of areas in which they already lived. The areas of Negro residence are listed under designations arbitrarily given for convenient reference. 1

1920

SOUTH SIDE

Roosevelt Road--Fifty-fifth St.; Wentworth Ave.--Cottage Grove Ave.

Population: total, 376,171; Negro, 92,901.

Woodlawn

Sixty-first St.--Sixty-seventh St.; Eberhart Ave.--Grand Blvd.

Population: total, 8,861; Negro, 1,235.

Lake Park Avenue Area

Fifty-third St.--Fifty-seventh St.; Harper Ave.--Lake Park Ave.

Population: Negro, 238.

Ogden Park Area

Fifty-ninth St.--Sixty-third St.; Halsted St.--Loomis Blvd.

Population: total, 38,893; Negro 1,859.

NORTH SIDE

North Ave.--Chicago Ave.; State St.--Larrabee St.

Population: Negro, 1,050.

Ravenswood

Lawrence Ave.--Montrose Ave.; Sheridan Road--Ashland Ave.

Population: Negro, 175.

WEST SIDE

Austin Ave.--Washington Ave.; Morgan St.--California Ave.

Population: Negro, 8,363.

MORGAN PARK AREA

107th St.--115th St.; Loomis St.--Vincennes Ave.

Population: Negro, 695.

1 These do not embrace the whole of each area commonly included under such designations. The population figures are those of 1920.

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2. NEIGHBORHOODS OF NEGRO RESIDENCE

The South Side.--While the main colony of Chicago's Negro population is located in a central part of the South Side, Negroes are to be found in several parts of the city, ranging from less than 1 per cent to more than 95 per cent in proportion to the total population. In some of these neighborhoods whites and Negroes have become adjusted to one another; in others they have not. One of these adjusted areas is the so-called "Black Belt." Because 90 per cent of the Negroes of Chicago live there, it is usually assumed that the area is 90 per cent Negro. The fact is very different. The most densely populated section of the South Side area, between Roosevelt Road and Thirty-ninth Street, Wentworth Avenue and Lake Michigan, has a population of 54,906 Negroes and 42,797 whites. There has been no noticeable friction in this area; and even during the riot few whites living or engaged in business there were molested by Negroes. Most of the whites killed or injured there came from other sections of the city. The many large apartment houses and family hotels occupied by whites are apparently little affected by the presence about them of many Negroes. Relations in Woodlawn, where the Negro increase has been relatively large, are for the most part friendly. No clashes have been reported except in the one instance of a group of white boys who threw stones at a building in which they saw Negroes. When they were arrested it developed that they had come from another neighborhood. Following the stirring up and organization of anti-Negro sentiment in Hyde Park, an attempt was made to organize white Woodlawn property owners against the "invasion" of the district by Negroes. This organization was not a very great success. There have been no bombings in this district, and no concerted opposition to the presence of Negroes as neighbors. Long, amicable residence together and the good character of the Negroes as well as the whites are probably important reasons for the absence of friction. And it also should be said that in the Woodlawn district the proportion of Negroes is so small that there has been no occasion for much controversy over an alleged depreciation of property values on account of Negro occupancy.

The West Side.--On the West Side there has been a settlement of Negroes for many years. Houses are cheaper there than on the South Side; and although the general level of ordinary workingmen's homes compares favorably with that on the South Side, there are few abandoned residences formerly occupied by wealthy persons now available for Negroes. There has been little friction within this area, in which 9,221 whites and 6,520 Negroes live. West Side Negroes, laborers for the most part, are generally home-loving, hard-working people, desirous of improving conditions for their children. Older settlers among them have been able to make their adjustments without great difficulty, meeting with no serious antagonism from white neighbors.

The North Side.--On the North Side, Negroes live among foreign whites and near a residential area of wealthy Chicagoans. The appearance of the first

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Negro residents there occasioned little notice or objection. They were for the most part house servants living near their work.

This neighborhood has experienced several complete changes in population. It was first occupied by Irish, then by Swedes, then by Italians, who are the present neighbors of Negroes. Friendly relations exist between the Sicilians, who predominate, and their Negro neighbors. Some Negroes live harmoniously in the same tenements with Sicilians. Their children play together, and some of the Negro children have learned Sicilian phrases so that they are able to deal with the Sicilian shopkeepers. Elsewhere on the North Side the feeling between Italians and Negroes is not so cordial.

Non-adjusted neighborhoods.--In other sections the failure of Negro and white neighbors to adjust themselves mutually has produced the most serious phases of the Negro housing problem. A general housing shortage may be relieved by the opening of new neighborhoods or the availability of houses in various parts of the city, but for Negroes there is less opportunity for thus relieving the housing shortage because of the hostility of many white neighborhoods to the presence of Negroes.

White residents immediately south of the old West Side Negro residence area objected to the moving in of Negroes, sending numerous threatening letters to the newcomers and otherwise annoying them. In certain sections of the North Side, Negro residents have been molested. On one occasion shots were fired at their homes, and at other times warning signs with pictures of skulls, crossbones, and coffins were posted. In the Lake Park Avenue area on the South Side, Negroes are limited to a few blocks, are not permitted to buy, and are discriminated against in practically all restaurants and amusement places.

West of Wentworth Avenue, adjoining the South Side Negro residence area, few Negroes live. The residents here are largely Irish working people and distinctly hostile to Negroes, even to those merely passing through the neighborhood. This area has many organized gangs and "athletic clubs," and its racial antagonisms appear to be traditional.

In Park Manor and Wakeford, between Sixty-ninth and Seventy-ninth streets, Cottage Grove and Indiana avenues, excitement was created in a new white settlement by an advertisement in a local paper addressed to Negroes offering them houses there. The name of a white real estate dealer living there was given. A demonstration followed, meetings were held, and the real estate man was asked to explain. He asserted, and it seems to have been the case, that the advertisement was the "spite work" of an enemy.

Kenwood and Hyde Park: The neighborhood between Thirty-ninth and Fifty-ninth streets, State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, just south of the Negro residence area, has been termed a "contested neighborhood," because of the recent influx of Negroes. The "Black Belt" was already overcrowded, and its occupants were seeking relief from deteriorated and insufficient housing.

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The coming of thousands of Negroes from the South made it overflow. With Lake Michigan flanking the east, encroaching industry the north, and overcrowded, hostile neighborhoods the west, the overflow inevitably went south into the west portion of Hyde Park and Kenwood. Scattered through the South Side were numerous houses and apartments that had been vacant for many years; and sales were gladly made to the Negroes, many of the recent southern migrants having considerable funds. In 1919, of the 3,300 owners of property in the region embracing parts of Kenwood and Hyde Park and adjacent territory, 1,000 were Negroes. Already a popular agitation against the Negroes had been begun by real estate men who formed the Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners' Association. They increased and organized the prejudice against the Negroes in a campaign "to make Hyde Park white." They held meetings, published a weekly newspaper, and called upon property owners and other real estate dealers to pledge themselves against renting or selling to Negroes. In carrying out their program, they resorted to vilification, ridicule, and disparagement of Negroes, accusing them of destroying property values and robbing white people of their homes.

Outlying neighborhoods.--Few outlying places welcome Negroes as residents. Morgan Park, however, has offered homes for Negroes, and the Negro population there has increased from 126 in 1910 to 695 in 1920. They live for the most part on one side of the town near their own churches; they own their homes and keep them attractive. School accommodations are poor, many children leaving school early for that reason.

Robbins, another suburb, is entirely Negro, having a Negro mayor. The town is difficult to reach, unattractive, and uninviting. About 400 hard-working Negroes occupying seventy houses are trying to develop a town against the handicaps of lack of capital, swampy lands, and inaccessibility.

Depreciation of property.--One of the strongest influences in creating and fostering race antagonism in Chicago is the general belief among whites that the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood inevitably and alone depreciates the market value of real estate, and this belief is commonly accepted as a valid reason for unfriendliness toward Negroes as individuals and as a race. Therefore the Commission felt that it was important to learn what basis there is for this belief.

The principal influence of Negroes upon property values in a neighborhood is psychological, due to the deep-seated and general prejudice of whites against Negroes, which begets and sustains the belief that Negroes destroy property values wherever they go. The facts as ascertained by the Commission show that Negro occupancy in a neighborhood is more often due to a prior depreciation of the property there than the depreciation is due to Negro occupancy; and that it is unfair to place the entire responsibility for loss of property values in a neighborhood upon Negro occupancy.

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In other sections of the city, where there are no Negroes, depreciation of property values has been produced by contacts between populations differing in race, religion, or social standards. Race prejudice produces the present conditions of social injustice toward the Negro, and uses the depreciation of property which it causes, as a new ground for such racial prejudice.

In virtually every neighborhood in Chicago where Negroes now live they were preceded by two or more distinct groups of occupants, and an earlier and often long-continued depreciation of property values is one of the explanations of their presence. This depreciation of values has come from several causes, such as natural physical deterioration, vacation of old and large houses through the death of their original occupants or their removal to new neighborhoods, or the encroachments of vice, or business, or factories, and the like. In this way Negroes have found an opportunity to rent or buy at figures that were comparatively low and within their limited means.

The extension of Negro occupancy into the district between State Street and Lake Michigan and Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth streets followed such an earlier depreciation; and later, similar conditions had similar consequences in the district between State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue and Thirty-ninth and Sixty-third streets, where there has been the most active opposition to the Negro influx.

In the first named of these two districts there are now about 20 per cent more Negroes than whites. During the eighties and nineties this area embraced the most fashionable residence district in Chicago, and almost the entire Negro population lived in the adjoining area on the west--from State Street to Wentworth Avenue and north of Thirty-fifth Street. When the fashionable people of this district began to move to the North Side, the deserted section began to depreciate, and costly houses recently occupied by wealthy owners were thrown upon the market and began to pass through the hands of real estate dealers and into the possession of people belonging to a different social class. Physical deterioration also played its part. Between 1900 and 1910, when the first Negroes moved into Wabash Avenue--one street nearer to the old fashionable district--the houses were at least twenty years old and many of them much older. Real estate men estimate the natural depreciation of such buildings at from 2 to 21/2 per cent per year; so that in many cases property once exclusive and of a high class had depreciated at least 50 per cent before there was any prospect of Negro occupancy.

In 1912 the old vice area west of State Street and northwest of this exclusive area was broken up. The inmates, numbering at that time more than 2,000, moved into the nearest large houses available where they could ply their trade clandestinely. They could afford high rents, and owners and agents profited accordingly. Cabarets, cafés, and saloons sought the side streets, and buffet flats were opened. Raids and prosecutions called attention to the changed character of the neighborhood, and property values sank still lower.

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Many buildings affected by this decline were bought up by real estate speculators and sold to Negroes who were eager for housing. One speculator bought more than 1,400 such houses.

Then came the automobile industries with their showrooms, gas stations, manufacturing plants, and accessory shops, even invading the boulevards, and the desirability of adjacent residence property still further declined.

After the coming of the Negroes the depreciation continued. It was clear that the character of the neighborhood had definitely changed. Negroes were frequently unable to make the needed extensive repairs while they were paying for their property. There are other instances in this area where property not owned by Negroes declined in value chiefly because of its neglect by landlords.

In the district west of Cottage Grove Avenue, adjacent to Hyde Park proper, depreciation had proceeded in much the same manner. This neighborhood was temporarily congested in the period of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and hotels and apartment houses were built far in excess of normal needs. Real estate men of that district have made much of this point, stating that many of the houses there had been vacant as long as fifteen years. The first "undesirables" were not Negroes, but other national or racial groups of whites who were objectionable to the original residents. Several factors have combined to make this section less and less desirable for residence purposes. It is close to the Stock Yards, with their offensive odors; and railroads flank it on both sides, with their smoke and noise. The coming of the automobile industries, the opening of boarding-houses, the southward movement of the vice element, all had their adverse effect on property values before Negroes moved east of State Street.

The widespread and deep-seated racial prejudice among whites against Negroes, heretofore mentioned as a psychological basis for the belief that the presence of Negroes is disastrous to property values, is directly reflected in the unwillingness of whites to buy property close to that occupied by Negroes and in their desire to sell, even at a sacrifice, when Negroes move into the immediate neighborhood. While frequently the demand for property among Negroes financially able to buy has not been large enough to absorb realty offered for sale because of the reasons given here, there are, on the other hand, some neighborhoods where the Negro demand has provided a market for property that had long been unmarketable, and in these neighborhoods there has been some increase in the value of such property. It should be noted that the understandable bitterness of feeling on this question of Negro entrance into white residence districts has been intensified in some cases through exploitation, by both white and Negro real estate operators, of anti-Negro prejudice and fear of loss on account of Negro occupancy.

In brief, Negro occupancy depreciates the value of residence property in Chicago because of the social prejudice of white people against Negroes, and because white people will not, and Negroes are financially unable to buy at fair market prices

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property thrown upon the market when a neighborhood begins to change from white to Negro occupancy; nevertheless, a large part of the depreciation of residence property often charged to Negro occupancy comes from entirely different causes.

Financial aspects of Negro housing.--One difficulty of Negroes in handling their own housing problem is the attitude of real estate mortgage and loan concerns with respect to property tenanted or likely to be tenanted by Negroes. Such property is assumed to be a bad risk, and, as a consequence, Negroes are charged more than whites and find it difficult to secure mortgages to assist in purchasing, and are greatly handicapped in their efforts to improve property. This situation has its basis in various beliefs concerning Negroes that are often unwarranted. It developed from the inquiries of the Commission that mortgage brokers were influenced to a large degree by opinions of prospective buyers of Negro mortgages, and these prospective buyers in turn were influenced by beliefs for which there was little basis. It was assumed, for example, that Negroes were unreliable in business dealings. Conferences were held by the Commission with the real estate men who handled the greatest portion of Negro property, and many other real estate men were interviewed by the Commission's investigators. Their testimony indicated a buying capacity far beyond what was expected and showed that Negroes had a good record for meeting their obligations. One real estate man who has made a large number of sales to Negroes, stated that in the whole of his experience there had been but two forfeitures, and neither of these was due to negligence or carelessness. An increasing tendency to buy was noted. This was easily explained by other facts gathered by the Commission which indicated that it was easier for Negroes to buy than to rent property, that during the period of the migration hundreds of dwellings were offered for sale to Negroes on long-term payment plans, and that many migrants who had sold their homes, farms, and belongings in the South came to the city prepared to make substantial payments on property. Many Negroes now own houses valued at from $10,000 to $20,000, and in one instance $30,000.

Regarding Negro habits of saving, inquiries were made at all the principal banks of the city's business section and of the neighborhood where Negroes live. Those who were able to check up on Negro depositors reported large sums deposited and invested. One trust and savings bank had Negro deposits of $1,500,000 and another of $1,000,000; one state bank had $650,000 and another $150,000. A large banking institution in the "Loop" district had 4,000 Negro depositors.

Opportunities for using their own capital to relieve their housing problems were limited by lack of opportunities for obtaining business experience. All the concerns questioned regarding the practicability of employing Negroes in such institutions were of the opinion that it would not meet with the favor of the other employees and patrons.

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Bombings.--The antagonistic sentiment attributable to the Negro housing situation both incited and condoned the fifty-eight bombings of homes committed between July 1, 1917, and March 1, 1921. In these bombings two persons, a Negro girl and an infant, were killed, many whites and Negroes were injured, and damage done to property amounted to more than $100,000. Negroes who purchased or rented property and whites who sold or leased it were bombed. Thirty-two bombs were exploded within the area bounded by Forty-first and Sixtieth streets, Cottage Grove Avenue and State Street. Although Negroes in some cases were warned of the exact dates on which they were to be bombed, and policemen were sometimes on duty at the places where bombs were exploded, only two arrests were made. One of those arrested was immediately released and the other was never brought to trial. Protests to the authorities from Negroes have been without effect, and a strong feeling of insecurity and resentment has developed among them. It appears from evidence presented to the Commission that bombings have been systematically planned. Many white residents, objecting to the violence suggested and used to keep out Negroes, withdrew from the neighborhood protective organizations, fearing that they might be held responsible for the resulting lawlessness.

These protective associations have denied responsibility and declared that they used only legitimate methods, such as foreclosure of mortgages and refusal to deal with Negroes. During the summer of 1920, they stated, sixty-eight foreclosures were effected.

3. THE NEGRO COMMUNITY

The Negro community in Chicago is virtually a city within a city. It affords opportunity to observe how it is accomplishing its own adjustment to the larger community, and how it attempts to function in its own behalf and for the betterment of the community at large.

Negroes have lived in Chicago since its founding. In fact, the first settler, in 1778, was a Negro, Jean Baptiste Point de Saible. There were Negro property owners at the time of the city's incorporation in 1837. Before the Chicago fire in 1871 they lived near what is now the "Loop" business district, north of Harrison Street on Clark and Dearborn streets and on Lake Street on the West Side. Their homes were burned in 1873, and after that they settled in the territory adjoining what later became the "red light" district near Roosevelt Road.

Organization of the Negro community.--Partly from necessity and partly from choice, Negroes have established their own churches, business enterprises, amusement places, social agencies, and newspapers. The number of their business places increased from about 1,200 in 1919 to about 1,500 in 1920. There are 651 places of business operated by Negroes on South State Street, and 549 on the principal cross streets. The majority of these places are those

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rendering personal service-barber shops, restaurants, hair-dressing parlors, and undertaking establishments. There are also two banks.

Organizations for social intercourse are numerous, consisting principally of churches, fraternal societies, and social clubs. There are 170 congregations holding services in church edifices and in "store-front" churches. Olivet Baptist Church has more than 10,000 members, the largest Negro church membership in the world. It employs sixteen paid workers, and during the last five years has raised more than $200,000. These churches are the principal center for "face-to-face" relations and aid greatly in the process of adjusting Negroes to civic responsibilities. Forty-nine of these congregations own property valued at fully a million and a half dollars.

The social and civic agencies are expressions of the group effort to adjust itself to the community. There are in the Negro community distinct organizations of this kind designed especially for Negroes, and branches of general agencies located conveniently for use by Negroes. Of the former type the Chicago Urban League is the most notable example. This organization is a clearing-house for social work among Negroes, and its activities include social investigations, an industrial bureau, and child welfare. It has an executive board and officers composed of both whites and Negroes, and a highly efficient staff of Negro workers. During 1920 more than 25,000 Negroes were assisted through this organization. Provident Hospital is another example of this type.

Of the latter type the Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A. is an example. It is a branch of the city Y.M.C.A., and has adjusted itself to the peculiar social problems of its membership and community. Other agencies are the Community Service, Wendell Phillips Settlement on the West Side, Butler Community Center on the North Side, Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls, Home for the Aged and Infirm, Indiana Avenue Y.W.C.A., Elaine Home Club, Julia Johnson Home for Girls, Hartzell Center, and Illinois Technical School for Colored Girls (a Roman Catholic institution).

Of the general social agencies with branches convenient for Negroes are the American Red Cross, United Charities, Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, Abraham Lincoln Center. Although some of these branches are poorly supported and undermanned, they represent efforts of the community to care for itself. During 1920 six social agencies and twenty-seven churches raised among Negroes $445,000 for social-welfare work.

IV. RACIAL CONTACTS

The problems arising out of various occasions, both voluntary and enforced, for race association in Chicago, have, for convenience, been included in this report under the general classification of "racial contacts." Attention is given to contacts in the public schools, in public recreation places, on transportation lines, and in other

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relations exclusive of industry and housing which require special treatment. Negroes in Illinois are legally entitled to all the rights and privileges of other citizens. Actually, however, their participation in public benefits in practically every field is limited by some circumvention of the law.

1. CONTACTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The public schools furnish one of the most important points of contact between the white and Negro races because of the daily association of thousands of Negro and white children at an impressionable age. The Chicago Board of Education makes no distinction between the races and keeps no separate records. Certain schools, therefore, with white American, Negro, and white foreign-born preponderances, were selected for special study.

Physical equipment of schools.--Twenty-two schools located in and near areas of Negro residence were selected and visited. Of these only five, or 23 per cent, have been built since 1900, and four of these five schools are in regions where the Negro population is smallest. The ten schools serving the largest percentage of Negroes were built, one in 1856, one in 1867, seven between 1880 and 1889, and only one after 1890. Of the 235 schools attended almost wholly by whites, 133, or 56 per cent, were built after 1899. The old buildings will not accommodate modern equipment and cannot be enlarged. The absence of modern buildings is in part due to the old residence areas in which Negroes must live. The gymnasiums in fifteen of these twenty-two schools of predominant Negro attendance are poorly equipped, and in the other seven schools there are none. Playground space is about the same in all the schools, and there was no exceptional overcrowding in schools attended largely by Negroes except in one case where by the "shift" system a double attendance was made possible. In the schools of mixed attendance one instance was conspicuous: Fuller School--a branch of Felsenthal which is well equipped, and under the same principal, who is an advocate of segregation--is in a neighborhood where the percentage of Negroes is the same as that around Felsenthal, but it has no playground, is run down, and neglected. Yet it has 90 per cent Negroes, while Felsenthal has 38 per cent. Unmanageable white children are sent to Fuller.

Retardation.--The question of retardation1 of Negro children is of serious concern in race relations, since this fact is urged by advocates of separate schools as an unnecessary handicap for white children and a reason for segregation. Twenty-four schools were selected, with the aid of the Board of Education: six attended mainly by Negroes, six mainly by white Americans, and twelve mainly by children of immigrants. Of a total of 34,593 children there were 18,230, or 53 per cent, retarded--the same percentage as in the entire city; 10,250, or 30 per cent, normal; and 5,910, or 17 per cent, accelerated. In the schools attended mainly by white Americans, 49

1 The standard in Chicago is Grade I for children for six years of age.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 615

per cent were retarded; in those attended mainly by children of immigrants 49 per cent; and in those attended mainly by Negroes 74 per cent. The percentage of retardation in schools attended mainly by Negroes ranges from 57 to 80 per cent; in schools attended mainly by children of immigrants from 32 to 71 per cent; and in schools attended mainly by white Americans from 40 to 62 per cent.

Predominating causes of this retardation of Negro children, according to the Board of Education's classification, are: "late entrance to school," "family difficulties," "fathers or mothers working," "lack of education in parents." The majority of retarded Negro children are southerners, and their retardation can be readily understood when the gross inadequacies of southern schools for Negroes are considered.

Among the whites, late entrance, inability to speak English, ill health, backwardness, and low mentality are the various causes. It is interesting to note that while it is often maintained that Negroes are mentally weak and incapable, classification of retardation figures according to causes does not bear out that theory. Negro children retarded from "late entrance" have made excellent records in attaining a normal rating, some completing three grades in a year.

One hundred and sixteen Negro children were picked at random for an intensive inquiry by the Commission into causes of retardation. Of these, 101 had been in school before coming to Chicago; and of the 101 children, eighty had lived in the South and had gone to southern schools; those born and educated in the North showed no greater rate of retardation than the whites. For much of the retardation the school facilities for Negroes in the South appear to be responsible. In Mississippi, for example, only eighty days' schooling is required in counties that do not absolutely reject the compulsory-education law. Other causes found were inadequate care and instruction at home due to the ignorance of parents, mothers working out, poor parental discipline, and the physical condition of homes.

Contact problems.--A wide variety of opinions was found among principals and teachers concerning the relations of white and Negro children. Several principals were distinctly antagonistic to Negroes, and in their schools the race relations of the pupils were not cordial. The most important factor in determining the attitude of teachers as well as of pupils was the attitude of principals. Kindergarten teachers found a natural, pleasant relationship existing between the young white and Negro children. As children grew older they became more race conscious, and in the high schools friction frequently arose from race groupings in class and social organizations. Negro teachers are assigned to schools attended by both Negroes and immigrants, and apparently have no difficulties with pupils or parents. Difficulties and bad feeling have been provoked by the disposition of certain white teachers to adapt their instruction in accordance with their assumptions concerning Negroes' mental and emotional

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characteristics, putting stress on singing and handicraft instead of on basic studies in arithmetic and grammar.

2. RECREATION

In its investigation of recreation places, the Commission listed 127 parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, and beaches under the supervision of the Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches, and of the South Park, West Park, and Lincoln Park commissions. Of these, thirty-seven are in or near Negro areas. Though this figure represents a fairly adequate distribution, it is not an accurate picture. Twenty-three of these places are playgrounds attached to schools, fourteen being in, and nine near, Negro areas; and only thirteen have more than 10 per cent use by Negroes. Three bathing-beaches are within, and two near, Negro areas, while only one has more than 10 per cent use by Negroes. There are seven recreation centers near Negro areas, none within, and only one with more than 10 per cent use by Negroes. Armour Square, for example, is a recreation center bordering on the area of the largest Negro population; but the hostility of whites, especially gangs of hoodlums, attacks on Negro children, and the indifferent attitude of the director render attendance by Negroes extremely hazardous. Of a daily attendance of 1,500, less than 1 per cent are Negroes, despite the fact that over 50 per cent of the immediately surrounding population is Negro. Natural barriers of distance, unofficial discrimination of officials, and the hostility of neighborhood groups are largely responsible for the lack of participation.

The beaches have presented the most difficult problems of race control. The riot of 1919 began at the Twenty-ninth Street Beach, and since the riot numerous smaller clashes have occurred there. At Thirty-eighth Street, also on the edge of the largest area of Negro residence, Negroes are entirely excluded, the policeman on duty and the attendant in charge assisting in this exclusion to prevent clashes. In neighborhoods with a small Negro population, attendance at the recreation places is always much below the percentage of Negroes to the total population in such neighborhoods, this being due to the hostility shown by whites, especially of the hoodlum element, and also to the reluctance of Negroes to go where they feel unwelcome.

Contacts.--Most difficulties in parks and playgrounds have not been caused by the behavior of Negroes there. Such complaints against Negroes as have come from these contacts have concerned groups of rough or domineering children at the playgrounds rather than adults. Two playgrounds on the South Side make such complaints.

Race relations of the children.--Lack of racial antagonism was reported at a large number of playgrounds. Apparatus was used by both groups without friction. Negro and white children mingled freely in their games and in the swimming-pools, and both Negroes and whites played on baseball and athletic

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 617

teams. The occasional playground fights usually lack any element of racial antipathy. "There might be personal misunderstandings and disagreements between a white and a black just the same as between two whites," said the director of Union Park, "but I wouldn't lay it to race prejudice. They work together and play together and seem to harmonize in most instances." When this director came to Union Park a year ago he found a tendency among Negroes and whites to separate into race groups, but steps were taken to bring them together in games of various kinds, and toward the end of the season the director felt that they "harmonized better and worked together more cordially than they did before." When the Commission's investigator visited Union Park Playground he saw small children of both races playing together on the same pieces of apparatus--a Negro child on one end of a teeter ladder and a white child on the other. Occasionally there is a disturbance, usually starting from a dispute over the apparatus; but on the whole the children play together peacefully.

Voluntary racial grouping.--Voluntary racial grouping appears to be more characteristic of the large parks and beaches which adults frequent than of the playgrounds, which are used mainly by children. One instance of voluntary grouping among children was found at Copernicus Playground. The playing space is in the shape of an "L," one end intended for boys and the other for girls, but by common consent the children divide along race lines rather than sex.

In the general use of Lincoln and Washington parks the Negroes and whites stay in separate groups. There has never been any difficulty, according to the Lincoln Park representative, arising from the fact that Negroes have taken possession of a spot desired by whites for a picnic or other amusement. No part of either park is especially set aside for the use of one race, and groups of both Negroes and whites are seen everywhere in the parks, but they do not mingle.

Some directors attempt to regulate these contacts to avoid any mingling of groups. At the Municipal Pier, for example, an investigator learned that when Negro couples went on the dancing-pavilion floor the floor manager informed them that they were not dancing properly and took them to one side to acquaint them with the approved style of dancing; no matter how well they danced, they were to be prevented from going on the floor by the manager's judgment of their dancing. More recently, however, Negroes have reported that they have been able freely to use this dance floor.

Clashes in the various recreation places as early as 1913 were found to have been started mostly by gangs of white "roughs." On one occasion, for example, the secretary of boys' work of the Wabash Avenue department Y.M.C.A. (for Negroes) conducted a party of nineteen Negro boys to Armour Square. They had no difficulty in entering the park, but on leaving they were assailed by crowds of white boys. Some

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of them were tripped, trodden upon, and badly bruised. They took refuge in a neighboring saloon, where they remained for a half-hour, when a detachment of police scattered the white gang. On another occasion a group of boys from the same institution were driven from the lake at Thirty-first Street. In 1915 Father Bishop, of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, took a group of Negro boys to Armour Square to play basket-ball. The entire party, including Father Bishop, were beaten by white boys and their sweaters taken from them. In the same year an attempt was made by a Negro boys' club director to take seventy-five Negro boys through the Stock Yards. They had received tickets of admission to the stock show. In spite of the presence and efforts of four adult leaders, these boys were struck by sticks and other missiles while passing from one section of the show to another. Police assistance was required to get them from the pavilion to the street cars.

Gangs of white boys, sixteen and seventeen years of age, from the neighborhood of Fifty-ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue frequently interfered with Negro participants in baseball games in Washington Park, especially during the spring and summer of 1918 and 1919. They also annoyed Negro couples on the park benches. Where the Negro showed fight, minor clashes resulted. Park officials have not been able to restrain the ill feeling which these conflicts engender.

Clashes were noted in Ogden Park as early as 1914 and frequently since that time. A Negro playground director testified that he and other Negroes had been slugged while attending band concerts or attempting to use shower baths after a game in the park. At the boathouse in Washington Park, in the early summer of 1920, there were numerous clashes between Negroes and whites. In the following year, however, considerably fewer instances of friction were reported. Playground directors are of the opinion that friction is likely to occur where groups of Negro children for the first time come into parks theretofore exclusively used by whites. Adjustment is likely to follow after this period. In some cases, however, when the proportion of Negroes has grown larger than that of whites, a Negro director has been placed in charge of the park with the unofficial understanding that it should be turned over to Negroes.

The two causes of neighborhood antagonism back of the friction in the parks most commonly cited are the housing and sex problems. The playgrounds and parks usually share in a general way the sentiments of the mixed neighborhoods in or near which they are located.

One source of racial disorders is lack of co-operation between park and city policemen. The park police stop a fight between white and colored children and send them out of the park. When the fight is renewed outside the park they have no power to interfere. Spectators may then get into the fight, and serious clashes may be well under way before the city police can be summoned.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 61

The most important remedies suggested to the Commission for the betterment of relations between Negroes and whites at the various places of recreation were: (1) additional facilities in Negro areas, particularly recreation centers which can be used by adults; (2) an awakened public opinion which will refuse to tolerate the hoodlum and will insist that the courts properly punish such offenders; (3) selection of directors for parks in neighborhoods where there is a critical situation who have a sympathetic understanding of the problem and will not tolerate actions by park police officers and other subordinate officials which tend to discourage Negro attendance; and (4) efforts by such directors to repress and remove any racial antagonism that may arise in the neighborhood about the park.

3. CONTACTS IN TRANSPORTATION

The study of contacts between whites and Negroes in street cars and other public conveyances was prompted by a usually unexplained emphasis on apparently trivial incidents connected with public conveyances, together with the observation that the greatest disturbances during the riot of 1919 commonly occurred along transportation lines and at transfer points.

Although many clashes and other instances of racial friction on the street cars were not serious enough to be reported to the newspapers or to be made the subject of complaint, information obtained by investigators for the Commission showed that the attitude of both Negroes and whites toward each other was being affected by contacts on the cars.

As affecting attitudes on race relations, transportation contacts, while impersonal and temporary, are significant for several reasons. Many whites have no contact with Negroes except on the cars, and their personal impression of the entire Negro group may be determined by one or two observations of Negro passengers. Unlike contacts in the school, playground, and workshop, transportation contacts are not supervised, and if there is any dispute among passengers the settlement usually rests with themselves. Suspicion or prejudice on either side because of the difference in race accentuates any misunderstanding. And transportation contacts, at least on crowded cars, involve physical contact between Negroes and whites, which rarely occurs under other circumstances and sometimes leads to a display of racial feeling.

The Commission's investigators, white and Negro, men and women, made many trips for observation on the twelve lines carrying the heaviest volume of Negro traffic and therefore involving the greatest amount of contact. Counts of passengers, Negro and white, were made, behavior and habits were noted, and passengers and car crews were drawn into conversation. Officials of surface and elevated lines, starters, and station men were interviewed. Instances of friction which came to the attention of the Commission were noted and the circumstances studied.

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Traffic counts made by the Chicago Traction and Subway Commission in 1916 showed 3,500,000 surface-railway and 500,000 elevated-railway passengers carried in a twenty-four-hour day. Negroes constitute 4 per cent of the city's population and probably about that percentage of the city's street-car traffic. Negro traffic, however, instead of being scattered over the city, is mainly concentrated upon twelve lines which traverse the Negro residential areas and connect those areas with the manufacturing districts where Negroes are employed. Because of this concentration the proportion of Negroes to whites on these twelve lines is much higher than 4 per cent, and on such lines as that on State Street, the principal business street of the South Side Negro residence area, it often happens that the majority of the passengers are Negroes.

There is no "Jim Crow" separation of races on street cars in Chicago. Contacts of Negroes and whites on the street cars did not provoke any considerable discussion before the period of migration of Negroes from the South, when occasional stories of clashes began to be circulated; and even then, such friction as developed did not come prominently to public attention. Only one incident involving a clash was reported in the newspapers. Even since the migration began, there have been very few complaints based upon racial friction. The Elevated Railroad Company, whose South Side line has the largest Negro traffic of any elevated line, replied to inquiries that, except during the riot of 1919, when a few cases of racial disorder were reported, there had been no complaints from motormen or trainmen since 1918, when a trainman was cut by a Negro. No complaints from white passengers had been received since the spring of 1917, when white office workers objected to riding with Stock Yards laborers, mainly Negroes, on the Stock Yards spur of the elevated. White laborers in the Stock Yards mostly live within walking distance of their work, but Negroes found it necessary to use car lines running east to the main area of Negro residence. The Chicago Surface lines replied that complaints due to racial friction were negligible.

Many of the migrants are laborers who must use these lines going to and from work, and many of them are rough-mannered and entirely unfamiliar with standards of conduct in northern cities. Another serious factor is the recent entrance of Negroes into industry. Before the war the great majority of Negroes gainfully employed were engaged in some form of personal service which did not require use of transportation lines in their working clothes to and from the manufacturing centers. The migrants, many of them coming to a city like Chicago with no "Jim Crow" segregation, felt strange and uncertain as to how they should act. In fact, peculiarities of conduct on the part of these were noted by Negroes of longer residence in Chicago, and it has been remarked by whites and Negroes that they could tell a Negro migrant by his uneasy manner and often by his clothing. Conspicuous points of behavior of migrant Negroes before they became urbanized, which many whites noted and commented on

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 621

were: "loud laughter and talking," "old and ill-smelling clothes, roughness and his tendency to sit all over the car." These are easy to understand when one considers the background of the southern Negro. There are, on the other hand, exceptional cases where Negroes have walked miles rather than take a car, thus avoiding possible embarrassment. A Negro who has been in Chicago for a long time is not self-conscious about sitting near white persons. Negroes who get into trouble with whites about insisting on their right to a seat often belong to the class of suspicious and sensitive Negroes who fear that an attempt is being made to segregate them, and sometimes they are simply "greenhorns."

Soiled and ill-smelling clothing was found to be an objection applying to white as well as Negro laborers. These complaints came, for the most part, from clerical workers who objected to physical contact with persons who might "rub off." A difficulty involving this feature was adjusted by one packing company by dismissing its clerical workers and its laborers at different hours. A frequent source of misunderstanding has been a situation in which it appeared that Negroes had taken seats intended for white women. In several such cases thoroughly examined by the Commission's investigators the difficulties were found to have resulted from misunderstood actions.

Most of the difficulties in transportation contacts reported and generally complained of seem to have centered around the first blundering efforts of migrants to adjust themselves to northern city life. The efforts of agencies interested in assisting this adjustment, together with the Negro press and the intimate criticisms and suggestions for proper conduct of Chicago Negroes, have smoothed down many of the roughnesses of the migrants, and as a result friction from contacts in transportation seems to have lessened materially.

4. CRIME AND VICIOUS ENVIRONMENT

Many students of the race problem look upon public crime records as a register of the failure of Negroes to adjust themselves to the social fabric. Study of infractions of law by Negroes, of provocation to lawlessness, and of the history of their crimes would indeed reveal an interesting background of their present behavior in relation to whites, if such a study were possible from present records. The Commission carried its investigations into this field and found no means of determining how great a proportion of the city's crimes is committed by Negroes.

The prevailing impression that Negroes are by nature more criminal than whites and more prone to commit sex crimes has restricted their employment, increased unfair measures of restraint, and blackened the name of the entire Negro group. Two important facts were apparent from the Commission's study: (1) the danger inherent in the vicious environment in which Negroes are forced to live, and (2) the misrepresentative character of the statistics of Negro crime.

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Environment.--The limitations imposed on Negro residential areas have provided undue cause and occasion for crime. The entire population, good and bad, is thrown together, exposing children to the sight and temptation of vice and immorality. Ninety per cent of the Negro population has always lived near the city's former segregated vice districts, partly because white sentiment excluded them from other neighborhoods, partly because rents in the neighborhood of vice were low enough to meet their meager economic resources, and partly because their weakness made their protests against the proximity of vice less effective than the protests of whites. When the vice districts were broken up and the inmates scattered, they entered the better neighborhoods of Negro residence and clandestinely plied their trade. In fact, according to the report of the Chicago Vice Commission in 1911, at one time prostitutes were promised immunity by the police if they confined themselves to a certain area in which Negroes predominated. The spread of the Negro population has always been accompanied by the spread of clandestine prostitution. The Vice Commission's report said:

The history of the social evil in Chicago is intimately connected with the colored population. Invariably the large vice districts have been created within or near the settlements of colored people. In the past history of the city every time a new vice district was created downtown or on the South Side, the colored families were in the district moving in just ahead of the prostitutes. The situation along State Street from Sixteenth Street south is an illustration.

So whenever prostitutes, cadets, and thugs were located among white people and had to be moved for commercial or other reasons, they were driven to undesirable parts of the city, the so-called colored residential sections.

Most of the vicious resorts in the "Black Belt" are owned and operated by whites and are not interfered with by the authorities. Protests from Negroes have never succeeded in removing them. Opportunities for wholesome recreation in the Negro districts are limited, and commercial amusements, though probably no worse than in some other sections of the city, are of a distinctly inferior type and carelessly supervised. In such an infective environment it is not unnatural that many criminals should be developed.

But the study of crime statistics, aside from showing the unreliability of records due to careless methods of obtaining and presenting data, revealed that Negroes suffer gross injustice in the handling of criminal affairs. The general inaccuracy of criminal statistics is shown by the fact, for example, that the police reported 1,731 burglaries, or persons arrested for burglary, in 1919, while the Chicago Crime Commission reported 5,509 burglaries during the first eleven months of that year. The evidence at hand indicates that Negroes are debited with practically all their crimes, while others are not. It further appears, from the records and from the testimony of judges in the juvenile, municipal, circuit, superior, and criminal courts, of police officials, the state's attorney, and various experts on crime, probation, and parole, that Negroes are more commonly arrested, subjected to police identification, and convicted than white

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 623

offenders; that on similar evidence they are generally held and convicted on more serious charges, and that they are given longer sentences. This bias, when reflected in the figures, serves to bolster by false figures the already existing belief that Negroes are more likely to be criminal than other racial groups.

V. THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO INDUSTRIES

Out of Chicago's Negro population of approximately 110,000 in 1920, it is estimated that 70,000 were gainfully employed. The opportunity for engaging in industry in large numbers came to Negroes following the outbreak of the world-war. With the enormous demand from the belligerent countries for American goods, existing establishments were enlarged and new ones created. As an example of the increased demand for workers, one of the packing-plants in the Chicago Stock Yards increased its force during the war from 8,000 to 17,000. Immigration was almost wholly cut off. The labor shortage became acute after the entrance of the United States into the war in 1917. The migration of Negroes from the South during that period was mainly in response to this demand.

Prior to the beginning of the war in 1914, Negroes had been virtually limited to personal and domestic service in almost every city in the North. In 1910 more than 60 per cent of those gainfully employed were so engaged, 15 per cent in manufacturing, and 3 per cent in clerical occupations. The Commission's inquiries covered 136 establishments reporting five or more Negroes. In these were employed 118,098 whites and 21,987 Negroes--12,854 in manufacturing and 9,133 in non-manufacturing industries.

I. INCREASE IN NEGRO LABOR

Between 1915 and 1920 there was a remarkable increase in the number of Negroes employed in industries which before 1915 had either employed them in small numbers or not at all. In a total of sixty-two such plants there was an increase from 1,346 in 1915 to 10,587 in 1920, or more than 1,000 per cent. Labor shortage, or inability to obtain competent white workers, was the reason given in practically every instance for the large increase in Negro employees.

Frequent complaints have been made that large employers, particularly the packers, imported Negroes from the South and were thus responsible for the difficulties that followed. Definite effort was made to determine the facts, but the Commission found no basis for the statement.

2. CLASSIFICATION OF NEGRO WORKERS

Absence of standards of classification for skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled work invalidated the Commission's effort to classify Negro workers. In sixty-six industries with definite divisions in grades of work, it was found that out of 12,529

624 THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO

Negroes employed, 927 were skilled, 267 semi-skilled and 11,335 unskilled workers. In other returns, not capable of full classification, ten establishments reported 304 Negro molders; there were thirty-one Negro molders in 1910. Twelve factories reported 382 machine operators; in 1920 the census reports showed only twenty-eight.

Wages of Negroes in the branches of employment where they were permitted to work were generally the same as for white workers. There were instances, however, of discrimination in placing or keeping Negroes at work on processes in which they could not earn as much as in processes on which white men were engaged. Also there were instances of discrimination in piece-work, the foremen invariably giving Negroes only the jobs yielding a low rate. For common labor the average wage was 45 and 50 cents an hour for an eight-, nine- and ten-hour day for men; $15 to $20 a week for women, and an average of $15 a week, with room and board, for domestics were the going wages.

3. EMPLOYERS' EXPERIENCE WITH NEGRO LABOR

Whether or not the Negro will be able to hold the position in industry made possible for him by the war depends much on employers' attitude toward him as a worker. Common explanations given before this period as a reason for not employing Negroes more were that they were lazy, shiftless, irresponsible, and inefficient. Generalizations of this sort demonstrate their weakness in the fact that employers were not speaking from their own experiences. To reach a fair conclusion employers of Negroes in large numbers were interviewed by the Commission's investigators.

Employers drew a distinction between northern and southern Negroes; they thought that the latter had shortcomings when they first began work, but that this was due to former habits of work and familiarity with only simple industrial processes. Many of these southern workers were irregular at first in reporting for work and frequently drew their wages before pay day, thus confusing the bookkeeping. They were soon forced, however, to abandon these habits.

One question asked of all employers was: "Has your Negro labor proved satisfactory?" Of the 137 establishments employing five or more Negro workers, 118 reported that Negro labor had proved satisfactory; nineteen reported that Negro labor had not proved satisfactory. The 118 establishments reporting Negro workers as satisfactory employed 21,640 Negroes, while the nineteen reporting them as unsatisfactory employed 697. Comparing the efficiency of Negro and white workers, seventy-one employers interviewed (thirty-four manufacturers and thirty-seven non-manufacturers) considered the Negro equally efficient, twenty-two employers (thirteen manufacturers and nine non-manufacturers) considered the Negro less efficient. The seventy-one establishments included almost all the large establishments. A few gave the Negro a higher rating than the foreigners because of his knowledge of

English.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 625

Regarding reliability, ninety-two employers gave opinions. Sixty-three (thirty manufacturers and thirty-three non-manufacturers) believed that Negroes did not require more supervision than white workers, while twenty-nine (sixteen manufacturers and thirteen non-manufacturers) thought they required more supervision. Of the employers interviewed, fifty-seven expressed the opinion (twenty-three manufacturers and thirty-four non-manufacturers) that "absenteeism" among Negro workers was no greater than among whites, while thirty-six reported it was greater.

One plant employing 2,084 Negroes stated that the better living standards and ambitions had brought up the rating of Negro workers during the war period.

4. LABOR TURNOVER

Of the thirty-two employers giving figures on relative labor turnover, twenty-four (eleven manufacturers and thirteen non-manufacturers) reported the Negro turnover to be the same as the white, and twenty-eight (eighteen manufacturers and ten non-manufacturers) believed the turnover to be greater. Closely connected with the labor turnover among Negroes is the question of "hope on the job," as one Negro expressed it. When Negroes are not allowed to advance to better positions in a given plant, or are discriminated against by foremen underrating their efficiency, the turnover in the plant is high.

5. NEGRO WOMEN IN INDUSTRY

Before the war Negro women were even more definitely restricted than Negro men in choice of occupations. Two-thirds of those gainfully employed were in two occupation groups: "servants" and laundresses, not in laundries, and domestic servants. Of the 137 establishments studied, forty-two had no Negro women employees, forty-five kept no separate records, and fifty reported a total of 3,407 Negro women workers. Although this study does not include all industries employing women, the total given represents a large increase over the figure of 998 Negro women enumerated by the 1910 census as engaged in all industries in Chicago.

Many of the establishments in question had employed large numbers of Negro women as an experiment and had found them satisfactory. One mail-order house employed as many as 650 girls for clerical work. When the plant was investigated in 1920, there were 311 girls, 75 per cent of whom were high-school graduates, while 12 per cent had had two or more years in college. These employers said the girls felt that they were making history for the race and were, if anything, a little over-zealous. They were thought to be excitable and suspicious of the actions of the white girls.

Millinery establishments, manufacturers of clothing, lamp-shades, gas-mantles, paper-boxes, and cheese makers reported satisfactory experience with Negro women. Of twenty laundries employing Negro workers, satisfactory or unsatisfactory, four did

626 THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO

not keep separate records. Twelve with 409 Negro women reported their work satisfactory, and four with 134 Negro women reported it unsatisfactory. The chief complaint was unwillingness to work overtime or on Sundays. In both instances, however, employees interviewed complained that the hours were long (nine hours a day) and their treatment by the management harsh and inconsiderate.

Of 865 Negro employees interviewed, less than 1 per cent complained of disagreeable treatment by white workers and less than 50 per cent complained of conditions of work. Others expressed themselves as glad of the opportunity to earn good wages. Complaints against conditions of work were found in the iron and steel mills, Stock Yards, and dining-car and sleeping-car service.

6. INDUSTRIES EXCLUDING THE NEGRO

Several important industries have not opened their doors to Negroes except as janitors and porters. Among these are the traction companies, elevated and surface, the State Street department stores, and the taxicab companies. Employers in these establishments express the belief that the public would object to Negroes.

Attention has been called to the waste involved in the limitations of Negroes in industry. Men with college training are forced to work as waiters and porters, and young-women college graduates are frequently forced to work as ushers in theaters and as ladies' maids. This condition helps to account for the ease with which 1,500 Negro girls with more than average schooling were recruited in less than two months for the mail-order houses.

7. RELATIONS BETWEEN WHITE AND NEGRO WORKERS

Through working together friendliness between white and Negro workers has been increased, according to prevalent views. Information concerning relations was secured from all the 137 plants studied. Two reported that race friction was a disturbing factor in the plants. Minor instances of friction have occurred, but it appeared that as a rule the workers reflected the attitude of the management. The setting up of partitions separating the races developed an antagonistic sentiment, and in some instances this antagonism was removed when the partitions were taken down. Of 101 establishments visited eighteen, or 11 per cent, with 2,623 Negroes, maintained separate accommodations. This constituted a continuous source of dissatisfaction for Negro workers, who felt themselves "Jim Crowed." In the remaining 89 per cent, employing 19,714 Negroes among more than 100,000 whites, all accommodations were used in common by both races.

8. THE PERIOD OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION

Following the war's inflation of industry a slump came in the winter of 1920-21. Common labor was reduced in all the large plants from 20 to 50 per cent. Negroes, mostly common laborers, suffered most from this reduction. At one period there were

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATION 627

as many as 15,000 Negroes unemployed in Chicago. They were cared for during their enforced idleness by the Urban League and Negro churches and by popular contributions from working Negroes. The reduction of labor was usually carried out by employers with some system, and few instances of gross race discrimination were reported.

9. ORGANIZED LABOR AND NEGRO WORKERS

Clashing interests have manifested themselves conspicuously in the relations between union labor organizations and Negro workers, and this antagonism has been carried over into the relations of whites and Negroes generally. The efforts of union labor to promote its cause have built up a body of sentiment not easy to oppose by workers unsympathetic toward the labor movement. Circumstances have frequently made Negroes strike breakers, and thus centered upon them as a racial group all the bitterness of the unionist toward strike breakers as a class.

On the other hand, Negroes have often expressed themselves as having little faith in the union labor movement because the unions have manifested prejudices against permitting them to share equal benefits of membership; and again they have gained their first opportunity in a new industry frequently through the desire of a strike-bound employer to keep his plant running when his white employees have walked out.

From its beginning the American Federation of Labor has declared a uniform policy of non-racial discrimination, but this policy has not been carried out in practice by all its constituent or affiliated bodies. At several of its conventions resolutions have been passed embodying the official sentiment of the federation, but no means has yet been discovered to effect a uniform policy of fair dealing throughout all its affiliated bodies. Aside from those unions in which the membership privilege for Negroes is modified, eight of the 110 national or international unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor explicitly bar the Negro by provisions in their constitutions or rituals. These unions are: Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America, International Association of Machinists, American Association of Masters, Mates, and Pilots, Railway Mail Association, Order of Railroad Telegraphers, the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America, and American Wire Weavers' Protective Association.

The general exclusion policy of the railway brotherhoods and several unions of the Railway Department of the American Federation of Labor has created a feeling of bitterness among Negroes, many of whom are employed in branches of the railway service. As a protest against this policy there has been formed the Railway Men's International Benevolent Industrial Association with seventeen locals in Chicago and a local membership of 1,200. Mr. Mays, president of this organization, stated that its purpose was merely to safeguard the ranks of Negro workers, and said that it was ready to merge itself into the general

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unions as soon as they were ready to accept them without discrimination and accord the same privileges as white railway workers.

The Commission obtained information from local unions in Chicago with a membership of 294,437, of whom 12,106 were Negroes. On the basis of policy toward the Negro, unions in Chicago may be divided into four classes or types:

A. Unions admitting Negroes to white locals

B. Unions admitting Negroes to separate or co-ordinate locals

C. Unions admitting Negroes to subordinate or auxiliary locals

D. Unions excluding Negroes from membership

Wherever and whenever Negroes are admitted on an equal basis and given a square deal, the feeling inside the union is nearly always harmonious. Examples of type A are the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of the World, Hodcarriers, Flat Janitors, and Ladies' Garment Workers. In some of these organizations Negroes hold office.

Unions of type B give as reasons for organizing Negroes into separate locals, first, preference of Negro workers for locals of their own, and, second, unwillingness of white workers to admit Negroes to white locals. The Negro Musicians' Union belongs to this type and has the same wage scale as the white union. There appears to be little difficulty here because there is no conflict in contracts for work in the city. The painters, however, have had difficulties which have "hung fire" for more than a year; after being given a temporary charter they still were unable to work.

Unions of type C, admitting Negroes to subordinate locals, are few in number, apparently because Negroes strongly resent this form of affiliation. There is, however, one example of this type which permits Negro helpers in a certain trade to be organized as an auxiliary under the jurisdiction of the white local unions having jurisdiction over their district. By constitution it is provided that their minutes be submitted to the white locals and their grievances placed before the white locals. The constitution also provides that there shall be no transfer of colored helpers to any except Negro auxiliaries, and that Negro helpers shall not be promoted to skilled trades or to helper apprentice, and shall not be admitted to shops where white helpers are employed. These Negro locals are represented by delegates selected by the white locals in their districts.

Unions of type D, excluding the Negro from membership, do so either in conformity with the laws of their national unions or in the exercise of local option. In addition to the eight internationals which exclude the Negro by constitutional provision, there are other locals which are known to reject Negro applicants. The Machinists' Union, for example, although complying in its constitution with the American Federation of Labor policy of no racial discrimination, still effectually bars the Negro by a provision in its secret ritual.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 629

With the Machinists' Union must be grouped such unions as the Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance, the Electrical Workers, and the Plumbers and Steam Fitters.

Some Negro leaders, in view of these practices, have been strong in their advocacy of non-affiliation with union organizations, holding that the employers, after all, offer for Negroes the fairer terms, and that they have, in fact, given Negroes their first opportunity in industry. However, certain other Negroes have taken advantage of the rift between employers and labor unions to exploit Negro laborers. They have played upon racial sentiment to establish separate unions for Negroes, both in lines of work where they are admitted to the general unions and in lines of work where they are excluded. This type of leadership has been irresponsible and dangerous; it has made ridiculously generous promises, and has addressed its appeal to the less intelligent classes of Negro workers. Its literature has in turn provoked extreme bitterness among labor union members and officials, who have mistakenly accepted it as representative of the sentiment of all Negro workers.

Interviews with Negro workers outside of the unions reveal an attitude of indifference or suspicion which is attributed by both white and Negro labor leaders and union men to the following reasons: (1) the usual treatment of Negroes by white men, (2) traditional treatment of Negroes by white men, (3) influence of racial leaders who oppose unionism, (4) influence of employers' propaganda against unionism. Many of them, it was learned, have a distorted view of the purposes and principles of unionism, and many others, while sympathetic with the movement, object to the practices of the locals. An experience frequently referred to was the waiters' strike in 1911, when Negro union men walked out with white union men and were replaced by white girls, while the white union men returned to their jobs; since that time Negro waiters have been out of the more desirable hotel jobs.

The explanations by labor leaders of the practices of local unions are to the effect that while the general public race prejudice might be expected in organizations of white workingmen, the unions, as a group, are fairer to the Negro than other groups; that unions are blamed for conditions which are really due to general public opinion. They cite as an example the fact that Negroes are not employed in Chicago as motormen or conductors on the surface or elevated lines because of public objection and that they cannot be organized until they are in positions. Views were also expressed in condemnation of the exclusion policy of one local. These union officials believe that the unions will eventually be the most powerful agencies in the removal of race prejudice.

VI. PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS

A. OPINIONS OF WHITES AND NEGROES

The "Negro problem" is deeper and wider than the difficulties which center about the more specialized problems of Negro housing, Negro crime, and industrial relations involving Negroes. All such special studies conducted by the Commission

630 THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO

left a baffling residuum of causes of racial discord, deep rooted in the psychology of the white and Negro groups in contact. The beliefs and attitudes, firmly fixed and accepted prejudices of the one race as to the other, grouped under the term "public opinion," thus became the subject of a novel but most interesting inquiry.

Public opinion with respect to the Negro forms a body of sentiment so definite and compact as to make it an excellent laboratory case for analysis and study; but the Commission's aim in investigating it was merely to make apparent and objective its place and importance in race relations; to indicate some of the ways in which it has developed; how it expresses itself; how it affects both the white and Negro groups; how, in its present state, it is strengthened, weakened, polluted, or purified by deliberate agencies or even by its own action; and finally how it may be used to reduce, if not prevent, racial unfriendliness and misunderstanding.

Public opinion is regarded here as a phase of the social mind, but nevertheless as a definite reality. For purposes of examination, therefore, its study gives attention to that body of sentiments, beliefs, attitudes, and prejudices which, taken together, give to public opinion its content and meaning.

To present this subject intelligently, the following plan has been employed:

1. Beliefs and sophistications regarding Negroes, which exercise so great an influence in determining the conduct of white persons in relation to them, are described as they apply in the local environment, and in origin and background are traced suggestively to their responsible sources in literature and circumstance.

2. Types of sentiment which, in Chicago and similar northern communities, are variants of these basic beliefs are presented with a view to making them intelligible and classifying them according to resolvable factors of misunderstanding.

3. Since personal attitudes and beliefs are molded by traditions and heritages apart from the exclusive influence of literature, more significant material collected through intimate inquiry is presented objectively to describe the processes by which they appear to be created and grow. Replies to a searching questionnaire on attitudes and opinions are, in the instances quoted, the result of painstaking self-analysis.

4. The opinions and sentiments of Negroes on these same issues are described and illustrated with a view to making them understandable, and their interpretations of current white sentiment are explained as far as possible.

5. The report then turns to the agencies by which these opinions are made and perpetuated and the individual attitudes created. The chief of these are: (a) the press, (b) rumors, (c) myths, (d) propaganda. The conscious and unconscious abuse of these instruments of "opinion making" is pointed out and explained.

6. Finally, the study is intended to suggest means by which public opinion, where it is faulty, may correct itself and employ its own instruments in the

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 631

creation of wholesome sentiments among Negroes with respect to whites, and among whites with respect to Negroes.

1. BELIEFS OF WHITES CONCERNING NEGROES

The conduct of individuals is largely determined by their attitudes toward a subject and their general beliefs concerning it. Definite beliefs concerning Negroes may he found in the North as well as in the South, varying with the individuals who hold them, according to degrees of contact with the Negro group and the individuals' traditional background. These may be divided according to their character and effect into two general classes: (a) primary beliefs or those fundamental and firmly established convictions which have, all around, the deepest effect on the conduct of whites toward Negroes and are pretentiously supported by statistics, authorities, and scientific research; (b) secondary beliefs, or modifications and variants of important assumptions as to cardinal attributes.

a) Primary beliefs.--Among these primary beliefs are the following:

1. Mentality: That the mind of the Negro is distinctly and distinctively inferior to that of the white race. Some believe that this is due to backwardness in ascending the scale of civilization; some that the Negro belongs to a different species of the human family.

2. Morality: That Negroes are not yet capable of exercising social restraints common to white persons; that they are unmoral as well as immoral.

3. Criminality: That Negroes possess a constitutional character weakness, and a consequent predisposition to sexual crimes, petty stealing, and crimes of violence.

4. Physical unattractiveness: That physical laws prompt whites to avoid contact with Negroes.

5. Emotionality: That Negroes are highly emotional and for that reason are given to quick, uncalculated crimes of violence as easily as to noisy and emotional religious expressions.

b) Secondary beliefs.--As continued repetition of any plausible statement without correction of its error eventually gives it credence, these secondary beliefs have rooted themselves deep in the public mind. Among other things it is believed that Negroes are: (1) lazy, (2) "happy-go-lucky," (3) boisterous, (4) bumptious, (5) over-assertive, (6) lacking in civic consciousness, (7) addicted to carrying razors, (8) fond of shooting craps, (9) flashy in dress and like gaudy, brilliant colors, especially red.

2. BACKGROUND OF PREVAILING BELIEFS CONCERNING NEGROES

Soon after the first emergence of Negroes from slavery their illiteracy and general behavior in response to the novel experience of freedom created situations which appeared to justify judgments concerning their group traits. Scholars rationalized and tried to explain these apparent traits: If they were illiterate as a group

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they must be incapable of learning, and if they committed crimes, they must be fundamentally lacking in social restraints.

Dr. Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard, Professor A. H. Keene, author of Man Past and Present, Dr. J. C. Nott, author of Types of Mankind, and almost all the other anthropologists of that period, gave the stamp of scientific authority to the view that Negroes were of a different species and could never reach the level of the Caucasian. Even more recently mental tests were carried out on the same assumption and were made to prove it in some instances where the facts were unexpectedly contrary. Students of the race problem in the South continued to generalize about Negro character from selected specimens, other more popular writers and speakers, with their anecdotes, stories, and jokes, all of which went uncorrected, tended to strengthen this body of beliefs to a point where any difference of views was intolerable. Although the status of the Negro has changed, the beliefs remain the same, and have led to bitterness and resentment among Negroes, with consequent misunderstandings and friction.

In Chicago sentiments collected from a wide variety of sources and involving the views of several thousands of white persons indicate the persistence of these archaic beliefs and fears, so deep set and of such long standing that they are assumed by many persons to be instinctive.

To secure definite information upon the traditional background of beliefs concerning Negroes, fifteen white persons with no special interest in Negroes were selected at random from professions, business, and other vocations and submitted to a careful and searching inquiry. They were asked eighteen carefully prepared questions to draw out the raw material of their unqualified reactions on the question of the Negro and, as far as possible, the background in their early experience. They were asked for their opinions concerning Negroes, whether or not they believed that they possessed distinguishing traits of mentality and character; their attitudes were solicited by questions and propositions designed to provoke an expression of attitude. Questions were put regarding instances and experiences involving Negroes in their early experience; their first consciousness of racial differences; their first contacts; and information was sought on the definite sources of their knowledge or opinions concerning Negroes.

All the persons questioned had clear-cut opinions and thought that Negroes possessed distinguishing traits ranging from "affectionate loyalty" to "mental and moral handicaps imposed by evolution." An abolitionist's son, for example, thought that "Negroes should desire segregation"; a man who had observed Negroes at Tuskegee and Lewis institutes would increase their education and meet the demands produced by education. One whose only contact had been with his "black mammy " thought that the Negroes were " affectionate and loyal, but lacking in racial pride, though evolutionarily handicapped, possessing the qualities of children." Another who had had an unfortunate experience with his Negro chauffeur thought that Negroes were characterized by "distinctly inferior mentality, deficient moral sense, shiftlessness, good-natured, and a happy disposition." They knew little about the activities of Negroes, their leaders, their papers, or their problems, and the sources on which they relied for their information, except in two instances, were undependable.

3. NEGRO OPINION

Negroes, although exposed to various forms of social contact, have been intellectually isolated from the white group. They have not participated fully and freely in community and cultural activities. The pressure of the white group in practically every ordinary experience has kept their attention and interest centered upon themselves, and they have become race conscious. Their thinking, therefore, on general questions, whether they involve race relations or not, is conditioned and largely controlled by the relation of these questions with group interests. The opinions of Negroes, therefore, on race relations are largely negative. White persons know very little about what Negroes are thinking, because they are not familiar with their experiences; they frequently do not accredit them with the sensibilities that they do possess; and are not acquainted with the processes of thought by which the opinions of Negroes are formed. Thus it is that many of the statements and expressions of feeling of Negroes are unintelligible to persons outside of their group. Similarly, many statements and expressions of feeling by white persons are unintelligible to Negroes. But in the understanding of white persons Negroes have the advantage, because they do read their papers, see them in the privacy of their homes, and are forced constantly to interpret their actions.

Among Negroes there may be found a group control as strong and binding as among white persons. One striking instance of the operation of this group control was the complete ostracism of a prominent Negro lawyer who was reported to have made a public statement contrary to the views and aspirations held by his group. When this Negro was reported in the press to have said, "This is a white man's country, and Negroes had better behave or they will get what rights they have taken away," he was first snubbed, then his life was threatened, and for several weeks he was forced to go about under police protection. He was seriously criticized and finally ostracized. In less than a year he died. His friends declare that he was slanderously misquoted.

The sentiments of Negroes fall into somewhat the same classification as those of whites, but with one or two notable exceptions: there is (1) more discussion of race problems, more criticism of the conduct of leaders, more discussion of the practicability of programs of action; and (2) a great deal of literature and other expressions concerning the development of a defensive philosophy. In this latter are included various defensive policies, the stimulation of race pride, the explanation of behavior, and the struggle for status. There might also be included frequent evidences

of the development of race consciousness. The emotional background, class

634 THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO

consciousness, and the influences of group control are as evident in the sentiments of Negroes as of white persons.

A wide selection of views was obtained from Negroes and presented under the classifications in which they appeared naturally to fall. To get a more precise statement of views, a questionnaire was sent to Negroes representing a class intellectually able to subject themselves to self-analysis and to discuss various confusing angles of the race question. They were asked concerning interracial problems; whether or not race relations appear to be growing better or worse; whether the acquisition of wealth, or 100 per cent literacy, or unrestricted suffrage could affect race relations; they were asked questions concerning their adjustment to the present social system, their most pronounced mental complexes experienced in adjusting personal desires to the present social system; whether they were prejudiced against white persons; whether or not they were conscious of a feeling of race inferiority, or of a desire to compensate for a supposed inferiority. Concerning Negro problems they were asked whether or not there should be recognized leaders of Negroes; their criticisms of the policies of Negro leaders. Their racial philosophy was solicited. They were asked the distinction that they made between segregation and racial solidarity, and information was sought on the agencies responsible for their opinions. A most interesting array of views was secured, ranging from suspicion and abuse of the questions themselves to dispassionate analysis.

The war has produced a new type of sentiment. It not only brought disappointment and disillusionment for Negroes led into a new hope by the promises that accompanied the manifest efforts to stimulate patriotism, but actually gave to Negroes new experiences. Following the return of Negro soldiers from France, measures of restraint were increased, and from the usual lawlessness of the period of reconstruction they probably suffered more severely than others because they are to a much larger extent dependent upon law enforcement for security and comfort. Race riots, which are an expression of both loose machinery of community control and the development of a more determined resistance on the part of Negroes, grew more frequent in number and more serious in consequences. A new note was sounded in radical Negro literature, which appeared to carry a very popular appeal.

B. FACTORS IN THE MAKING OF PUBLIC OPINION

I. THE WHITE PRESS OF CHICAGO

Aside from the agencies ordinarily responsible for providing the individual with his views, there are others equally as powerful in developing and influencing opinions. Most important of these is the press. For that portion of the public which depends upon the press for its contact with the Negro group and its information concerning it, this agency holds a controlling hand. Throughout the

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 635

country it is pointed out, by both whites and Negroes, that the policies of many newspapers on racial matters have made relations more difficult, at times fostering new antagonisms and even precipitating riots by inflaming the white public against Negroes. A study was made of the three principal white daily newspapers of Chicago, covering a two-year period. Included in this study were 1,347 news items, 108 letters to the press, and ninety-six editorials on the Negro.

As an example of the type of publicity given to racial news concerning Negroes and the types of articles considered to have good news value, of the 1,338 articles published, 606, or nearly 50 per cent, dealt with riots, crime, and vice. Each of these articles specifically identified the persons involved as Negroes.

Constant identification of Negroes with certain definite crimes could have no other effect than to stamp the entire Negro group in the public mind as generally criminal. This in turn contributes to the already existing belief that Negroes as a group are more likely to be criminal than others, and thus they are arrested more readily than others. Publication of their names with race identification and with the crimes alleged against them keeps up a vicious circle. The unfortunate emphasis on sex offenses involving race, the subtle fanning of latent animosities by innuendo and suggestion, attaching the crime not only to the individual but to the race, direct a current of fear, intolerance, and ill will against the whole Negro group. An apt illustration, frequently cited by Negroes, is that if each time a crime was committed by a red-headed man, he was so described in telling of his crime, a popular fear and prejudice would soon develop against all red-headed men.

Crimes involving Negroes alone receive little attention. As with the Italians, as long as crimes are committed within the group, and this group is regarded as an isolated appendix of the community, they hold very little news value. When, however, a member of the isolated group comes into conflict with the community group, whether in industry, housing, or any relation, its representative significance is thus established, and the information becomes news. Publicity on housing, for example, stresses the conflict with other neighborhoods, the "invasion" of white districts, and plans for segregation. News items on politics involving Negroes get more space and prominence when they describe graft and corruption. In the list of articles studied are included sixty-three articles particularly ridiculing the Negro group.

Incidents occurring during the activities of the Commission were checked up with reports of them appearing in the papers, and serious misrepresentations of the Negro group were revealed. One example was an article in the Herald-Examiner on January 4, 1920, with two-inch headlines across the entire first page: "Reds Plot Negro Revolt," "I.W.W. Bomb Plant Found on South Side." The article mentioned the

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alleged secret activities of Negroes and their plans to revolt against the government. The bomb plant and many of their secret plans were reported to have been discovered by the state's attorney. The article further said: "In Chicago it was learned that the headquarters for Negro revolutionary propaganda are centered in these four organizations: the Free Thought Society, Universal Negro Improvement Association, Negro Protective League, and the Soldiers and Sailors Club." The article and the reported "discoveries" of the state's attorney's office are evidence of the absurd ignorance frequently manifested by members of the white group concerning the activities of Negroes. Each of the organizations named was known to the Commission and visited by its representatives on numbers of occasions. All of their meetings are open to the public, though attended almost entirely by Negroes. The Universal Negro Improvement Association publishes all of its plans in its newspaper, the Negro World. Its slogan is "Back to Africa" and not "Down with the United States." The Free Thought Society mentioned is an organization designed to provide a medium of expression for persons who seek the "attainment of truth." Its discussions concern religion and philosophy, and it numbers among its members prominent Negro and white professional men. The Negro Protective League is an employment office and day nursery. The full name of the organization is the "Negro Equal Rights and Protective Association." The Soldiers and Sailors Club is a community house located on the South Side and a branch of the local War Camp Community Service. Eugene T. Lies, formerly of the United Charities, was its director. The occasion of the publicity in question was a convention of a national Negro Greek-letter fraternity, which held its meetings in the auditorium of the Soldiers and Sailors Club. This fraternity, like all others of its kind, excluded non-members and by so doing aroused the suspicion of the newspaper's informants. No correction appeared in the paper, and to date no further "discoveries" have been made.

Articles of this type illustrate the possible effect on the public mind of such misrepresentations of the Negro. One newspaper has abandoned its policy of identifying Negroes with reports of incidents, in recognition of the gross unfairness of the practice.

2. THE NEGRO PRESS

The development of the Negro press was stimulated by several necessities important among which were:

a) The indifference of the white press to the Negro group; its emphasis on the unfortunately spectacular, and the consequent loss of items of interest about Negroes throughout the country.

b) The importance of developing the morale of the Negro group, creating a solidarity of interest and purpose for measures of defense, correcting the impressions created by general opinion, and centering the attention of Negroes upon themselves and their advancement.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 637

Three of the most important local Negro weekly papers were studied. Their news items showed bias in reporting just the reverse of that which characterizes the reports of many white papers. They emphasize the Negro's view and may be said to provide a compensatory interpretation of the news. When, for example, the Chicago Tribune reports the approval in the Illinois Constitutional Convention of a civil-rights bill with the headline: "Miscegenation Is O.K.'d in New Constitution; Negroes Given All the Rights of Whites," the Chicago Whip, a Negro newspaper, headlines the same incident: "Morris Gets Civil Rights into Constitution; Victory for Race Won at Springfield."

The most important function exercised by the Negro press is its control of the Negro group and of their education in conduct. All of these papers give considerable space to such popular education.

3. RUMOR

Rumor, if unchecked, can do incalculable damage to race relations. Included under the term "rumor" are those unfounded tales, incorrectly deduced conclusions, partial statements of fact with significant content added by the narrator, all of which are given wide circulation and easy credence by the public. Other forms of rumor are tales of unheard-of brutality and of plots and plans which are either fabrications or partial statements of fact and serve only to stimulate resentment, fear, and a desire for retaliation. Of the rumors predicting riots, one example will illustrate: During the riot a white man was caught in the act of crawling beneath a house in which Negroes lived. In his pocket was found a bottle of kerosene. He confessed that his mission was arson and justified his act by repeating to the police the current rumor that it was known that Negroes had set fire to the houses of whites "back of the Yards."

A persistent tale circulated during and for a long time after the riot was to the effect that the bodies of hundreds of Negroes were taken from Bubbly Creek where they had been thrown after being killed by white rioters. The story was so frequently repeated that it was accepted and even repeated in Congress. It caused an intense feeling among Negroes. Investigation by the coroner, Police Department, and other agencies showed that no bodies had ever been thrown into Bubbly Creek or recovered from it.

A rumor given official sanction and carried into the files of the Department of Justice illustrates other possible dangers of this kind. This rumor concerned two prominent and highly accredited organizations for Negroes. Rumors connected them with "I.W.W. plots and plans to overthrow the government." These reports were founded upon scarcely anything more than suspicion due to lack of information and acquaintance with the Negro group. The National Urban League, for example, an organization of responsible Negroes and whites with branches in thirty-one cities, was

638 THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO

reported to have asked William D. Haywood, head of the I.W.W., to speak at its convention in Detroit. This report grew out of the misreading of the name of William Hayward, a United States district attorney in New York, who is a member of the executive board and whose name appears on the stationery of the organization. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also a reputable organization of whites and Negroes, was reported to be "planning to flood the colored districts with I.W.W. literature." This was entirely false, but the reports went to the Department of Justice headquarters secretly and could not be corrected by the persons most affected.

4. MYTHS

Group myths, like those about the American Indian, the Oriental, and the Jew, are very common. Usually they are the expression either of a wish or of fear, which sociologists call a negative wish. Mythical stories and anecdotes about Negroes, accepted by whites, are usually popular. Many of them may have had a reasonable origin, but as a matter of fact have long outgrown it. So long as they are uncorrected they hold and exercise a marked degree of control over personal conduct.

In the category of myths fall the popular beliefs of whites concerning the mentality of Negroes, and the more definite myth that the mind of the Negro child ceases to develop when he reaches the age of puberty. The sex myth is always in evidence. It involves the fear obsession of Negro men held by many white women, fear of miscegenation, the condonation of lynchings, repressive social restrictions, as well as attempts at legislative restraints. Negroes are by these myths shown to have a predilection for sex crimes. This sex myth has been stressed in almost every riot. It precipitated the Washington riot; it provoked the most brutal murder of the Chicago riot, and it was responsible for the brutality of the Omaha and Tulsa riots. Always resident in the background of popular consciousness, it shows the same head and features in almost every clash of races.

5. PROPAGANDA

Conscious control of public opinion by propaganda has been used with tremendous effect by social, political, and religious organizations seeking popularity and support for their movements and reforms. Both Negroes and whites employed propaganda, sometimes openly, sometimes insidiously. Racial propaganda has probably a more powerful appeal than any other type because it is based upon the instinct of race and race differences, rivalry and jealousy. The most common forms of propaganda may be classified into the following types: (a) educational, (b) radical and revolutionary, (c) defensive, (d) malicious.

The activities and programs of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fall under the classification of educational propaganda; this

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 639

propaganda is directed to the white public principally and is intended to change public opinion by providing a foundation of actual facts for the public's judgment.

The more striking examples of the radical and revolutionary propaganda are the appeals sent out by the Industrial Workers of the World to Negroes, carrying their doctrines and extending open arms to Negro workers and offering them what most other organizations refuse--the privilege of association and membership on the basis of brotherhood.

Defensive propaganda is more apparent within the Negro group and is usually designed for the purpose of combating aggression and injury to their purposes and aspirations from without. The appeals of this propaganda are directed first to Negroes as a means of cementing the group from within, and indirectly to the white group by way of impressing them with the strength of solidified opposition to insults. The Protective Circle of Chicago, organized to "oppose segregation, bombing, and defiance of the Constitution," admitted employing propaganda to accomplish its purpose.

Malicious propaganda is by far the most dangerous because it is founded upon race antagonism. In the appeal to the emotions facts are soon lost. Anti-Negro propaganda is not wholly new in the North, but when employed it has usually been done insidiously because "Negro-baiting is considered in bad taste." Recently, however, there have been conspicuous instances of open and organized efforts to influence the minds of whites against Negroes. Ignorance and suspicion, fear and prejudice, have been played upon deliberately. The stated purpose of the propaganda was to unite white property owners in opposition to the "invasion" of other residential areas by Negroes, but in the actual carrying out of the propaganda it was extended to all Negroes, and many methods were employed which could have no other effect than to arouse bitterness and antagonism leading to clashes. The Property Owners' Journal, the organ of an association of real estate men, became so violent in its preachments that the protest of whites forced its discontinuance. Appeals were made not only to the instinct of race but to the sex instincts and the protective instincts of white men. A pamphlet sent to the wives of prominent residents in that neighborhood, entitled An Appeal of White Women to American Humanity, recounted the "horrible conduct of French Colonials on the Rhine and the abuse of German white women," although there was little apparent connection between the conduct of Chicago Negroes and that of the black soldiers in the French Army of Occupation on the Rhine. This pamphlet, however, served to increase the fears of Negro men by white women and to arouse the resentment and hatred of white men.

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THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION

Many of our citizens who were appalled by the rioting and murders of 1919, feeling the need of a solution of the problem dealt with in this investigation, have hoped that this Commission might suggest some ready remedy, some quick means of assuring harmony between the races.

Careful consideration of the facts set forth in this report shows that no such suggestion is possible. No one, white or Negro, is wholly free from an inheritance of prejudice in feeling and in thinking as to these questions. Mutual understanding and sympathy between the races will be followed by harmony and co-operation. But these can come completely only after the disappearance of prejudice. Thus the remedy is necessarily slow; and it is all the more important that the civic conscience of the community should be aroused, and that progress should begin in a direction steadily away from the disgrace of 1919.

Each member of this Commission feels that he has more understanding and less prejudice than before its work began. Therefore we recommend the thoughtful examination of the body of this report, so that all who read our recommendations may weigh for themselves the evidence upon which they are based.

Having in mind the basic facts in the problem of race relations and the conclusions from a careful study of the various phases of these relations in Chicago, the Commission presents for the consideration and action of state and local authorities, and of the social agencies and citizens of Chicago, the following recommendations and suggestions.

To the Police, Militia, State's Attorney, and Courts:

HANDLING OF RIOTS

I. We recommend that the police and militia work out, at the earliest possible date, a detailed plan for joint action in the control of race riots.

2. In accordance with such a plan, and in the event of race rioting, we specifically recommend: (a) that the militia, white and Negro, be promptly mobilized at the beginning of the outbreak; (b) that police and deputy sheriffs and militia, white and Negro, be so distributed as adequately to protect both races in white and Negro neighborhoods and to avoid the gross inequalities of protection which, in the riot of 1919, permitted widespread depredations, including murder, against Negroes in white neighborhoods, and attacks in Negro neighborhoods by invading white hoodlums; (c) that the police and militia be stationed with special reference to main street-car lines and transfer points used by Negroes in getting to and from work; (d) that substantial assurance be given of adequate and equal protection by all agencies of law enforcement, thus removing the incentive to arm in self-defense; (e) that in the appointment of special peace officers there shall be no discrimination against Negroes; (f) that all rioters, white and Negro, be arrested without race discrimination; (g) that all reports and complaints of neglect of duty or participation in rioting by

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 641

police, deputy sheriffs, or militia be promptly investigated and the offenders promptly punished; (h) that all persons arrested in connection with rioting be systematically booked on distinct charges showing such connection, in order to avoid the confusion and evasions of justice following the riot of 1919.

3. We recommend that, without regard to color, all persons arrested in connection with rioting be promptly tried and the guilty speedily punished.

BOMBINGS

4. We recommend prompt and vigorous action by the police, state's attorney, and courts to suppress the bombings of Negro and white houses, these acts being criminal and likely to provoke race rioting.

5. The testimony of court officials before the Commission and its investigations indicate that Negroes are more commonly arrested, subjected to police identification, and convicted than white offenders, that on similar evidence they are generally held and convicted on more serious charges, and that they are given longer sentences. We point out that these practices and tendencies are not only unfair to Negroes, but weaken the machinery of justice and, when taken with the greater inability of Negroes to pay fines in addition to or in lieu of terms in jail, produce misleading statistics of Negro crime. We recognize that these practices and tendencies are in a large degree the unconscious results of traditional race prejudice. We recommend to the police, state's attorney, judges, and juries that they consider these conditions in the effort to deal fairly (and without discrimination) with all persons charged with crime.

6. We recommend that, in order to encourage respect for law by both Negroes and whites, the courts discountenance the facetiousness which is too common in dealing with cases in which Negroes are involved.

VICIOUS ENVIRONMENT

7. We recommend that the police, state's attorney, and other authorities promptly rid the Negro residence areas of vice resorts, whose present exceptional prevalence in such areas is due to official laxity.

POLICING OF PARKS AND BEACHES

8. We recommend better co-operation between the city and park police in and near parks, bathing-beaches, and other public recreation places, especially where there has been or is likely to be race friction; and in the speedy punishment of persons guilty of stoning houses, molesting individuals, or committing other depredations calculated to arouse race antagonism.

"ATHLETIC CLUBS"

9. We recommend that the police pay particular and continuous attention to the so-called "athletic clubs" on the South Side, which we have found to be a fruitful source of race conflict, and that when race conflict arises or is imminent the members and meeting places of such clubs be searched for arms and that, if deemed necessary,, such clubs be closed.

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THE BARRETT MURDER

10. We commend the police for the prompt and effective action in the Barrett murder case, September 20, 1920, which allayed public alarm and averted a serious clash.

To the City Council and Administrative Boards, the Park Boards and the Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing-Beaches:

CONTROL OF FIREARMS

11. We recommend that the most stringent means possible be applied to control the importation, sale, and possession of firearms and other deadly weapons.

SUPERVISION OF "ATHLETIC CLUBS"

12. In order to facilitate police supervision of so-called "athletic clubs," we recommend that all such clubs be required to file with the city clerk statements of their purposes and, at stated intervals, lists of their members and officers, with their addresses.

SANITATION

13. We recommend that the authorities exercise their powers to condemn and raze all houses unfit for human habitation, many of which the Commission has found to exist in the Negro residence areas on the South and West sides.

14. We recommend better enforcement of health and sanitary laws and regulations in the care, repair, and upkeep of streets and alleys and the collection and disposal of rubbish and garbage in areas of Negro residence, where the Commission has found these matters to be shamefully neglected.

RECREATION CENTERS

15. We recommend that the park and other proper authorities (a) put an end to the present gross discrimination by white persons which practically bars Negroes out of certain recreation centers near their own congested residence area; and (b) that a recreation center of adequate size and facilities be established for the use of both whites and Negroes in the principal Negro residence area of the South Side; and (c) that steps be taken to secure more adequately trained, competent, and intelligent playground and recreation-center directors, white and Negro, who shall be held responsible for racial clashes arising in places under their direction and shall be required to interest themselves in reducing and avoiding racial friction in their neighborhoods; and (d) that proper equipment and supervision be provided at the Twenty-sixth Street Bathing-Beach, where they are now almost wholly lacking; and (e) that, in co-operation with the city police, the park police adequately protect all citizens, without regard to color, in going to and from parks, recreation centers, and playgrounds.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 643

To the Board of Education:

MORE SCHOOLS IN NEGRO AREAS

16. We recommend that in the areas where the main part of the Negro population lives, and where elementary-school accommodations are notably deficient, buildings, equipment, and teaching forces be provided which shall be at least equal to the average standard for the city, in order that the present conditions of overcrowding, arrangement of pupils in shifts, and the assignment of too large classes to teachers may be remedied.

NIGHT SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY CENTERS

17. We recommend the establishment of night schools and community centers in sections of the city not now adequately provided with such facilities.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION

18. Having found that many Negro children who quit school at an early age, as in the case of similar white children, appear later as criminals and delinquents, we urge strict enforcement of regulations as to working permits for such children, and we especially recommend that truant officers give attention to school attendance by the children of Negro families migrating here from the South.

ATTITUDE OF PRINCIPALS AND TEACHERS

19. Since the attitude of principals and teachers vitally influences the relations of white and Negro children in the public schools, we recommend that special care be exercised in appointing principals and teachers who have a sympathetic and intelligent interest in promoting good race relations in the schools.

STUDENT ACTIVITIES

20. We recommend that public-school principals and teachers encourage participation by children of both races in student activities as a means of promoting mutual understanding and good race relations in such schools and in the community.

To Social and Civic Organizations, Labor Unions, and Churches:

PROMOTION OF RACE HARMONY

21. Being convinced by our inquiry that much of the antagonism evinced in the areas of marked hostility toward Negroes is founded upon tradition which is itself without foundation in fact or justice, we recommend to schools, social centers and agencies, churches, labor unions, and other organizations in these areas, and to public-spirited citizens, white and Negro, that they endeavor to dispel the false notions of each race about the other and promote mutual tolerance and friendliness between them.

22. We recommend that both white and Negro churches seek and use means to improve race relations and that these means include the finding of

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frequent occasion for having their congregations addressed by representatives of both races on the subject of race sympathy and tolerance.

SOCIAL AGENCIES IN NEGRO COMMUNITIES

23. We commend the course of such agencies as the United Charities, Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, and American Red Cross in extending their work to the Negro community, and recommend that other agencies whose work is similarly useful extend their work in like manner.

24. Recognizing and commending the practical efforts of the Interracial Committee of the Woman's City Club, the Public Affairs Committee of the Union League Club, and the Chicago Urban League, in promoting better race relations, especially in the summer of 1920, when racial friction was deemed imminent, we recommend that other organizations of the same kind undertake like activities.

25. We recommend that the appropriate social agencies give needed attention to dealing extra-judicially with cases of Negroes coming before the morals and juvenile courts; also to cases of Negro children dropping out of school too early in age.

OPPORTUNITY FOR RECREATION TRAINING

26. We recommend that Negroes, as well as whites, be given opportunity for training for service in the city's public recreation facilities.

To the Public:

INTERRACIAL TOLERANCE

27. We are convinced by our inquiry: (a) that measures involving or approaching deportation or segregation are illegal, impracticable and would not solve, but would accentuate, the race problem and postpone its just and orderly solution by the process of adjustment; (b) that the moral responsibility for race rioting does not rest upon hoodlums alone, but also upon all citizens, white or black, who sanction force or violence in interracial relations or who do not condemn and combat the spirit of racial hatred thus expressed; (c) that race friction and antagonism are largely due to the fact that each race too readily misunderstands and misinterprets the other's conduct and aspirations.

We therefore urge upon all citizens, white and Negro, active opposition to the employment of force or violence in interracial relations and to the spirit of antagonism and hatred. We recommend dispassionate, intelligent, and sympathetic consideration by each race of the other's needs and aims; we also recommend the dissemination of proved or trustworthy information about all phases of race relations as a useful means for effecting peaceful racial adjustment.

28. Since rumor, usually groundless, is a prolific source of racial bitterness and strife, we warn both whites and Negroes against the acceptance or circulation by either of reports about the other whose truth has not been fully

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 645

established. We urge all citizens, white and Negro, vigorously to oppose all propaganda of malicious or selfish origin which would tend to excite race prejudice.

29. We commend race contacts in cultural and co-operative efforts as tending strongly to mutual understanding and the promotion of good race relations.

30. We condemn the provocation or fostering of race antagonism by associations or organizations ostensibly founded or conducted for purposes of patriotism or local improvements or the like.

PERMANENT RACE-RELATIONS BODY

31. We recommend as of special importance that a permanent local body representing both races be charged with investigating situations likely to produce clashes, with collecting and disseminating information tending to preserve the peace and allay unfounded fears, with bringing sound public sentiment to bear upon the settlement of racial disputes, and with promoting the spirit of interracial tolerance and co-operation.

To the White Members of the Public:

RACE ADJUSTMENT IN MIXED NEIGHBORHOODS

32. We call to public attention the fact that intensity of racial feeling is not necessarily due to the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood, either in the majority or minority, and that such feeling is not the rule but the exception; and we cite as a conspicuous example the peaceful conditions that have long obtained in the area between Roosevelt Road and Thirty-ninth Street from Wentworth Avenue to Lake Michigan, in which the Negro population in 1920 numbered 54,906 and the white population 42,797.

BETTER NEGRO HOUSING WITHOUT SEGREGATION

33. Our inquiry has shown that insufficiency in amount and quality of housing is an all-important factor in Chicago's race problem; there must be more and better housing to accommodate the great increase in Negro population which was at the rate of 148 per cent from 1910 to 1920. This situation will be made worse by methods tending toward forcible segregation or exclusion of Negroes, such as the circulation of threatening statements and propaganda by organizations or persons to prevent Negroes from living in certain areas, and the lawless and perilous bombing of houses occupied by Negroes or by whites suspected of encouraging Negro residence in the district.

We therefore recommend that all white citizens energetically discourage these futile, pernicious, and lawless practices, and either co-operate in or start movements to solve the housing problem by constructive and not destructive methods.

DEPRECIATION AND PROPERTY RISKS

34. Testimony before the Commission and investigations made by it show two important facts: (a) that depreciation of residence property generally charged

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exclusively to the presence of Negroes in a neighborhood is often largely due to other factors; (b) that many Negroes of this city meet their obligations in such a manner as to make their home-building and home-owning investments seem a more desirable risk than has been generally supposed. We therefore recommend that these facts be taken into consideration in connection with loans on Negro property.

ADVANCED RENTS FOR NEGROES CONDEMNED

35. We condemn and urge the discontinuance of the practice of property owners who arbitrarily advance rents merely because Negroes become tenants.

INFORMATION ABOUT NEGROES

36. We recommend that white persons seek information from responsible and representative Negroes as the basis of their judgments about Negro traits, characteristics, and tendencies, and thereby counteract the common disposition, arising from erroneous tradition and literature, to regard all Negroes as belonging to one homogeneous group and as being inferior in mentality and morality, given to emotionalism, and having an innate tendency toward crime, especially sex crime.

To the Negro Members of the Public:

RACIAL DOCTRINES

37. We recommend to Negroes the promulgation of sound racial doctrines among the uneducated members of their group, and the discouragement of propaganda and agitators seeking to inflame racial animosity and incite Negroes to violence.

SUPPORT OF SOCIAL AGENCIES

38. We urge Negroes to contribute more freely of their money and personal effort to the social agencies developed by public-spirited members of their group; also to contribute to the general social agencies of the community.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS

39. We recommend that the Negro community, through the extension or establishment of the necessary social agencies, undertake to supply means and encouragement for leisure activities, and undertake work among Negro boys and girls along the lines of prevention of vice and crime; also that it provide institutional care of dependent Negro children.

40. We particularly urge that Negroes vigorously and continuously protest against the presence in their residence areas of any vicious resort, and that they join in and support all efforts to suppress such places.

ADJUSTMENT OF MIGRANTS

41. We commend the important work done by the Chicago Urban League, the Negro churches, and other organizations in facilitating the adjustment of migrant

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 647

Negroes from the South to the conditions of living in Chicago and urge its extension. We also commend the work already done by Negroes through community associations in bettering the appearance and sanitary condition of housing and recommend its further extension.

RACE PRIDE

42. While we recognize the propriety and social values of race pride among Negroes, we warn them that thinking and talking too much in terms of race alone are calculated to promote separation of race interests and thereby to interfere with racial adjustment.

To Employers and Labor Organizations:

ATTITUDE TOWARD NEGRO WORKERS

43. We have found that in struggles between capital and labor Negro workers are in a position dangerous to themselves and to peaceful relations between the races, whether the issues involve their use by employers to undermine wage standards or break strikes, or efforts by organized labor to keep them out of certain trades while refusing to admit them to membership in the unions in such trades. We feel that unnecessary racial bitterness is provoked by such treatment of Negro workers, that racial prejudice is played upon by both parties, and that through such practices injury comes, not alone to Negroes, but to employers and labor organizations as well.

We therefore recommend to employers that they deal with Negroes as workmen on the same plane as white workers; and to labor unions that they admit Negroes to full membership whenever they apply for it and possess the qualifications required of white workers.

NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS

44. We commend to the attention of employers who fear clashes or loss of white workers by taking on Negro workers the fact that in 89 per cent of the industries investigated by this Commission, Negroes were found working in close association with white employees, and that friction between these elements had rarely been manifested.

INDUSTRIAL AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES FOR NEGROES

45. In view of the limited field of employment within which Negroes are restricted we recommend that employers in all lines enlarge that field and permit Negroes an equal chance with whites to enter all positions for which they are qualified by efficiency and merit. In this connection especial attention is called to the fact that opportunity is generally denied to Negroes for gaining experience in business methods through service in responsible positions in business houses. Such opportunities, if made available for them, would not only be of benefit to Negroes in

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the development of sounder business methods among them and the building up of their resources, but would also be a gain to the business establishments and the community at large.

46. We have found that Negroes are denied equal opportunity with whites for advancement and promotion where they are employed. As a measure of justice we urge that Negroes be employed, advanced, and promoted according to their capacities and proved merit. We call to the attention of those concerned the high qualifications of many Negro workers in sleeping-car and dining-car service, and recommend that when they deserve it and the opportunity offers, they be made eligible for promotion to positions as conductors and stewards.

TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS STRIKE BREAKERS

47. We point out as an injustice and a cause of racial antagonism the practice of some employers who having hired Negroes as strike breakers discharge them when the strike is settled to make places for former white employees.

NEGRO WOMEN WORKERS

48. We find that employment of Negro girls at a smaller wage than white girls and the denial to them of apprenticeship opportunities are a cause of racial antagonism. We therefore recommend that the employment of Negro girls be based on merit, with equality of wages, piece rates, and apprenticeship opportunities with white girls; we also recommend that Negroes in domestic employment rendering the same quality of service as whites be paid at the same rate as white domestics.

RACIAL PEACE IN INDUSTRY

49. Realizing that the common welfare is involved in the employment or non-employment of Negro workers, and seeking means to preserve racial peace in industry, we recommend: (a) that where Negro employees are dismissed for unsatisfactory service other Negroes, recommended by reliable Negro organizations, be given an opportunity to replace them; (b) that in times of industrial depression, employers reduce their forces in such a manner that the hardships of unemployment may not be disproportionately severe on Negro workers; (c) that where Negroes are employed with whites at the same tasks they be given equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for piecework and overtime work; (d) that Negro workers be given opportunity for advancement and promotion according to merit and efficiency and without race discrimination; (e) that Negro workers be afforded the opportunity to learn and engage in the skilled processes of their employment; (f) that superintendents closely supervise the relations of foremen with Negro workers and see that there is no racial injustice or discrimination; (g) that employers generally deal with Negroes, whether engaged in, or seeking opportunity to engage in, manual labor or clerical

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 649

work, without discrimination as to race, and apply to them the same tests and conditions as to white employees.

SEPARATE LABOR UNIONS

50. We strongly condemn the efforts of self-seeking agitators, Negro or white, who use race sentiment to establish separate unions in trades where existing unions admit Negroes to equal membership with whites.

To Negro Workers:

RELATIONS WITH UNIONS

51. We recommend that qualified Negro workers desiring membership in labor organizations join unions which admit both races equally, instead of organizing separate Negro labor unions.

RELATIONS WITH EMPLOYERS

52. We recommend that Negroes completely abandon the practice of seeking petty advance payments on wages and the practice of laying off work without good cause.

LEARNING TRADES

53. We recommend that Negroes avail themselves wherever possible of opportunities in apprentice schools and classes.

54. We recommend to all Negroes dependent on manual labor the learning of some skilled trade even though there is no present opportunity to engage in it.

To the Street-Car Companies:

PROTECTION OF PASSENGERS

55. In view of the large number of racial assaults on persons riding in street cars, we recommend that conductors and motormen be specially instructed concerning protection of passengers, white and Negro, and be rigidly held to the discharge of this duty.

OVERCROWDING

56. We recommend that at all loading-points where whites and Negroes board cars in large numbers, starters be employed and overcrowding be prevented as far as possible.

To Restaurants, Theaters, Stores, and Other Places of Public Accommodation:

EQUAL RIGHTS IN PUBLIC PLACES

57. We point out that Negroes are entitled by law to the same treatment as other persons in restaurants, theaters, stores, and other places of public accommodation, and we urge that owners and managers of such places govern their policies and actions and their employees accordingly.

650 THE NEGRO IN CHICAGO

To the Press:

HANDLING OF NEWS INVOLVING NEGROES

58. In view of the recognized responsibility of the press in its general influence upon public opinion concerning Negroes--especially important as related to the suppression of race rioting--we recommend: (a) that the newspapers generally, including the foreign-language press, apply the same standards of accuracy, fairness, and sense of proportion, with avoidance of exaggeration, in publishing news about Negroes as about whites; in this connection special attention is called to the fact that emphasis, greatly out of proportion to that given their creditable acts, is frequently placed on the crimes and misdeeds of Negroes, who, unlike other groups, are identified with each incident and thus constantly associated with discreditable conduct; (b) that the manner of news treatment be no different in the case of Negroes than in that of whites, to the end that there shall always be the unwritten assumption that the same responsibility for equal consideration of the rights of the one by the other rests on whites and Negroes alike, in respect of the matter involved in the publication; (c) that, in consideration of the great ease with which the public is influenced against the whole Negro group by sensational articles and headlines, the press should exercise great caution in dealing with unverified reports of crimes of Negroes against white women, and should avoid the designation of trivial fights as race riots; (d) that in recognition of the dangers of racial antagonism on the part of the ignorant, the unthinking, and the prejudiced of both races, publication be made, as opportunities offer, of such matters as shall in their character tend to dispel prejudice and promote mutual respect and good will.

We specially recommend more frequent publications concerning: (1) creditable achievements of consequence by Negroes; (2) their efforts toward a higher cultural and social life, and (3) their improvement of the physical conditions of their own communities; (4) the common obligation of all citizens of all races to recognize in their interrelations the supreme duty of strict obedience to the law, in spirit as well as in deed; (5) verification, so far as practicable, of all news concerning Negroes and their activities by reference to recognized Negro agencies or responsible representative Negroes.

We further recommend the capitalization of the word "Negro" in racial designation, and avoidance of the word "nigger," as contemptuous and needlessly provocative.

HANDLING OF NEWS INVOLVING NEGROES AND WHITES

59. To the Negro press we recommend greater care and accuracy in reporting incidents involving whites and Negroes, the abandonment of sensational headlines and articles on racial questions, and more attention to educating Negro readers as to the available means and opportunities of adjusting themselves and their fellows into

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 651

more harmonious relations with their white neighbors and fellow-citizens, and as to the lines of individual conduct and collective effort which will tend to minimize interracial friction, promote their own social and economic development, and hasten interracial adjustment.

CHICAGO, December 6, 1921

ROBERT S. ABBOTT

EDGAR A. BANCROFT

Chairman

WILLIAM SCOTT BOND

EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN

GEORGE C. HALL

GEORGE H. JACKSON

HARRY EUGENE KELLY

VICTOR F. LAWSON

ADELBERT H. ROBERTS

JULIUS ROSENWALD

FRANCIS W. SHEPARDSON

Vice-Chairman

LACEY KIRK WILLIAMS

GRAHAM ROMEYN TAYLOR

Executive Secretary

CHARLES S. JOHNSON

Associate Executive Secretary