Chicago race riot of 1919

Unlike Southern cities at the time, Chicago did not segregate most public accommodations. However, in the early 20th century, Chicago beaches were unofficially racially segregated. African Americans had a long history in Chicago, with the city sending Illinois's first African-American representative, John W. E. Thomas, to the state legislature in 1876, but even so, the community had been relatively small through the 19th century. While blacks in 1900 were only about one percent of the total population of a city that had seen large European immigration, Chicago's black population expanded in the early years of the 20th century. By 1910, thousands of African Americans were moving from the South to Chicago, as a major destination in the Great Migration to industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest, fleeing lynchings, segregation and disenfranchisement in the Deep South. The revived Ku Klux Klan in the South committed 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 in 1919. alongside earlier waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Ethnic groups were possessive of their neighborhoods, which their young men often patrolled against outsiders. Because of agricultural problems, Southern whites also migrated to the city, about 20,000 by this period. The postwar period also found tensions rising in numerous rapidly growing cities where people from different cultures jostled against each other and competed for space. In 1917, the privately run Chicago Real Estate Board established a policy of block-by-block segregation. New arrivals in the Great Migration generally settled in older black neighborhoods on the South Side. By 1920, the area held 85% of Chicago's African Americans, whether middle class, upper class or poor. In the post-war period, military veterans of all groups were looking to re-enter the work force despite the post-war economic slump. Some whites resented African-American veterans. At the same time, African-American veterans exhibited greater militancy and pride serving to protect their country, in units such as the Illinois 8th Infantry. They expected to be treated as full citizens after fighting for the nation. In Chicago, the Irish-dominated social and athletic clubs were closely tied to the political structure of the city, some acting as enforcers for politicians. As the first major group of 19th-century European immigrants to settle in the city, the Irish had established formal and informal political strength. The Irish had long patrolled their neighborhood boundaries against all other ethnic groups, especially African Americans, and, as white-ethnic gangs began attacking people in African-American neighborhoods, the police — overwhelmingly white and increasingly Irish American — seemed little inclined to stop them. An example of ethnic territoriality was the Bridgeport community area, an Irish neighborhood just west of the Black Belt. There, the Hamburg Athletic Club, whose members included a 17-year-old Richard J. Daley, future mayor of Chicago, contributed to gang violence in the area. Meanwhile, newspapers carried sensational accounts of African-American crime. ==The Riot==

) at 35th and S. State St. in the Douglas community area Longstanding racial tensions between whites and blacks exploded in five days of violence that started on July 27, 1919. On that hot summer day, on an unofficially segregated Chicago beach, a white man threw stones at Eugene Williams when he crossed the unmarked and unofficial 'color line' between the white and black sections of the 29th Street beach. Williams drowned. Tensions escalated when a white police officer prevented a black police officer from arresting the white man responsible for Williams's death, Attacks between white and black mobs erupted swiftly. At one point, a white mob threatened Provident Hospital, many of whose patients were African American. The police successfully held them off. There were also attempts by the ethnic Irish gangs to incite Southern and Eastern European immigrant communities to violence against blacks, although they had no history of such hostility. In one instance, members of the Irish Ragen's Colts donned blackface and set fire to Lithuanian and Polish homes in the Back of the Yards in an attempt to incite this community to join them against African Americans. Contrary to the violence, some cooperation also occurred, with some whites seeking to help save Eugene Williams, reporting other whites to the police, denouncing the violence, and bringing food to black communities. The Chicago mayor's office was informed of a plan to burn down the black area and run its residents out of town. There were also sporadic violent attacks in other parts of the city, including the Chicago Loop. Because of the rioting, 38 people died (23 African American and 15 white), and another 537 were injured, two-thirds of them African American; African-American patrolman John W. Simpson was the only policeman killed in the riot. Approximately 1,000 residents were left homeless after the fires. Many African-American families left by train during the riot, returning to their families in the South. To help restore order, Chief of Police John J. Garrity closed "all places where men congregate for other than religious purposes". Illinois Governor Frank Lowden authorized the deployment of the 11th Illinois Infantry Regiment and its machine gun company, as well as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd reserve militia, a total of 3,500 men. The Cook County Sheriff deputized between 1,000 and 2,000 ex-soldiers to help keep the peace. With the reserves and militia guarding the Black Belt, the city arranged for emergency provisions to provide its residents with food. White groups delivered food and supplies to the line established by the military, who passed them on to African Americans for distribution within the Black Belt. While industry was closed, the packing plants arranged to deliver pay to certain places in the city so that African-American men could pick up their wages. Once order was restored, Lowden was urged to create a state committee to study the cause of the riots. He proposed forming a committee to write a racial code of ethics and to draw up racial boundaries for activities within the city. and File:Chicago Race Riot 1919 stoning.png|A fifth picture from the series;an African-American man assaulted with stones during the Chicago Race Riot. Note that this picture was printed backwards – see corrected version at and 7th Its report stated that, on July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, an African-American youth, drifted towards an informally segregated beach on the South Side while holding onto a railroad tie. He was subsequently hit by a stone as a white man threw rocks at him and other African Americans to drive them away from the white part of the 29th Street beach in the city's Douglas community on the South Side. A witness recalled seeing a single white male standing on a breakwater from the raft of the African Americans and throwing rocks at them. Williams was struck in the forehead. He then panicked, lost his grip on the railroad tie, and drowned. The assailant ran toward 29th Street, where a different fight already had started when African Americans tried to use a section of the beach there, in defiance of its tacit segregation. Historians noted, "South Side youth gangs, including the Hamburg Athletic Club, were later found to have been among the primary instigators of the racial violence. For weeks, in the spring and summer of 1919, they had been anticipating, even eagerly awaiting, a race riot" and, "On several occasions, they themselves had endeavored to precipitate one, and now that racial violence threatened to become generalized and unrestrained throughout Chicago, they were set to exploit the chaos." , with the large Union Stock Yards visible, and the then 29th Street beach at lower center-right. North is to the right. Early reports detailed injuries to police officers and a Chicago fireman. The conduct of the white police force was criticized during and after the riots. State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne accused the police of arresting African-American rioters, while refusing to arrest white rioters. The one man prosecuted for Williams's death was acquitted. Ramifications and later investigations The rioting impacted Chicago's economy. Low-income areas, such as tenement housing, were especially impacted as areas of possible riots. Some of the South Side's industry was closed during the riot. Businesses in the Loop also were affected by closure of the street cars. Many workers stayed away from affected areas. At the Union Stock Yard, one of Chicago's largest employers, all 15,000 African-American workers initially were expected to return to work on Monday, August 4, 1919. But after arson near white employees' homes near the Stock Yards on August 3, the management banned African-American employees from the stockyards in fear of further rioting. Governor Lowden noted his opinion that the troubles were related to labor issues rather than race. Nearly one-third of the African-American employees were non-union, and were resented by union employees for that reason. African-American workers were kept out of the stockyards for ten days after the end of the riot because of continued unrest. On August 8, 1919, about 3,000 non-union African Americans showed up for work under protection of special police, deputy sheriffs, and militia. The white union employees threatened to strike unless such security forces were discontinued. Their main grievance against African Americans was that they were non-union and had been used by management as strikebreakers in earlier years. Many African Americans fled the city as a result of the riots and damage. Richard J. Daley was a member, and years later was elected president, of the Hamburg Athletic Club in Bridgeport. Daley served as Chicago's mayor from 1955 to 1976. In his long political career, he never confirmed or denied involvement in the riots. In 1930, Mayor William Hale Thompson, a flamboyant Republican, invoked the riot in a misleading pamphlet urging African Americans to vote against the Republican nominee, Rep. Ruth Hanna McCormick, in the United States Senate race for her late husband's seat. She was the widow of Sen. Joseph Medill McCormick as well as the sister-in-law of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick. The McCormicks were a powerful Chicago family, whom Thompson opposed. In 2019, Eve Ewing published a collection of poetry on the Chicago Race Riots of 1919, called 1919. A boulder at 29th Street near the lakefront, with a plaque installed in 2009, commemorates the Race Riots. (29th Street Beach no longer exists, as land reclamation has extended the lakeshore further into the lake) The Chicago Race Riots Commemoration Project (CRR19), launched in 2019, is working to install 38 markers around the South Side to pay tribute to the 38 lives that were lost. The first five markers were unveiled at a ceremony in June 2024. As of November 2025, nineteen markers have been installed, each a glass brick handmade by participants in Project FIRE, Firebird Community Arts’ rehabilitative program that enrolls young survivors of gun violence in glassblowing classes, and each brick incorporating a historical photograph relevant to those being remembered as well as an image of a Project FIRE creator, and each brick is encased in a colored concrete frame. CRR19 also hosts an annual bike tour in late July that explores the history of the Chicago race riots of 1919 and the city's legacy of residential segregation. In 2021, a grave marker was erected in Lincoln Cemetery at the previously unmarked grave of teenager Eugene Williams, the first victim at 29th Street Beach, whose death touched off the days of rioting. ==See also==