The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago Commission on Race Relations
to the hospital, where he died the following morning. Donegan's only offense seems to have been that he had had a white wife for more than thirty years. He bore a good reputation, and the mob had found no reason for lynching him.
Abe Raymer, who was supposed to have been the leader of the mob, was charged with the murder of Donegan, but was released.
As an example of the disorder which occurred Friday evening, it is narrated that Eugene W. Chafin, Prohibition candidate for the presidency, was delivering an address on the east side of the public square. A Negro pursued by the mob ran toward the speaker's stand from Fifth and Washington streets, where he had been pulled from a street car. Two men helped him to the speaker's stand, while Chafin at the front of the platform threatened to shoot into the crowd. Although he had no revolver he made a motion toward his hip pocket. During the mêlée before gaining the platform the Negro drew a knife from his pocket and slashed several white men. When he had escaped from the rear of the platform, missiles flew in the direction of Mr. Chafin, one of them hitting him on the head.
Four men were rounded up who had been blacked up to resemble Negroes and had been firing on soldiers during the night in an effort to substantiate the assertion that the Negroes did not welcome the soldiers.
Sunday was quiet. No effort was made to reorganize the mob. The whole city was as if under martial law. The saloons were shut and every place of business was closed at 9:00 p.m.
The people who took part in the mob violence had no grievances against the Negroes. They were hoodlums and underworld folk. Many of the hoodlums, according to one observer, were less than twenty years old.
During the rioting four white men were killed. They were: Louis Johnson, of 1208 East Reynolds Street, whose body was found at the foot of the stairs leading to the barroom in Loper's restaurant. He was shot through the abdomen; John Colwell, of 1517 Matheny Street, who died at St. John's Hospital; J. W. Scott, of 125 East Adams Street, who was shot in the lungs; Frank Delmore, who was killed by a stray bullet.
Seventy-nine persons were injured. The property destroyed included Loper's restaurant and automobile, Scott Burton's barber shop, the Delmonico saloon, and one block of houses between Tenth and Eleventh streets, which were burned, with all their contents. Scores of families were left destitute. Many Negroes were severely beaten before they were able to escape from the district. Numbers of these homeless colored people swarmed to neighboring towns and to Chicago. Three thousand of them were concentrated at Camp Lincoln, the National Guard camp grounds. Some of the refugees were cared for at the arsenal.
Current comment concerning the riots suggested political corruption and laxity of law enforcement as important underlying causes of the riots. An assistant state's attorney in Springfield charged that saloons had long been violating the law, and that the law was not generally enforced as it ought to be. He cited these conditions as responsible in large measure for the rioting and murders. Pastors in their sermons on the riot focused attention on the way in which vicious elements were permitted to flout the law with impunity. This comment came so generally and insistently from those conversant with the situation that the Chicago Daily News was led to remark editorially upon the responsibility of the public authorities of Springfield. It said:
Vice and other forms of law breaking have been given wide latitude here. The notoriety of Springfield's evil resorts has been widespread.
A mob which murders, burns and loots, is a highly undesirable substitute even for a complacent city administration. It is a logical result, however, of long temporizing with vice and harboring of the vicious. When a mob begins to shoot and hang, to destroy and pillage, there is instant recognition on the part of responsible persons of the beauty of law enforcement and of general orderliness.
On the Sunday following the riots some Springfield saloon-keepers took advantage of the fact that large crowds of sight-seers had come to town to open their places, in violation of the order by Mayor Reece to remain closed. Some of them were arrested for defiance of the mayor's proclamation to remain closed until order had been restored.
By Monday or Tuesday order was pretty well restored in Springfield. Some of the National Guard troops were kept on duty for several days. Almost 100 arrests were made, and a special grand jury returned more than fifty indictments.
III. East St. Louis Riots
May 28 and July 2, 1917
Following a period of bitter racial feeling, frequently marked by open friction, a clash between whites and Negroes in East St. Louis, Illinois, occurred on May 28, 1917, in which, following rumors that a white man had been killed by Negroes, a number of Negroes were beaten by a mob of white men. This outbreak was the forerunner of a much more serious riot on July 2, in which at least thirty-nine Negroes and eight white people were killed, much property was destroyed by fire, and the local authorities proved so ineffective and demoralized that the state militia was required to restore order. A Congressional Committee investigated the facts of the riot and the underlying conditions, which included industrial disturbances and shameful corruption in local government.[13]
The coroner of St. Clair County in which East St. Louis is situated, held thirty-eight inquests, as a result of which it was found that twenty-six of these deaths had been due to gun-shot wounds, four to drowning, four to burns, two to fractured skulls, one to hemorrhage of the brain, and one to pneumonia after a fracture of the thyroid cartilage. Hundreds of persons were estimated to have been more or less seriously injured, seventy having been treated in St. Mary's Hospital. It has been impossible to get an accurate accounting of the deaths and injuries. One man who had taken a deep interest in the situation estimated that from 200 to 300 Negroes were killed.
About 200 people were arrested. Some of these were released, some were charged with rioting and conspiracy, and others with arson. Two white women were tried for conspiracy and rioting, and fined $50.00. Ten Negroes were convicted of rioting and murder. Indictments of 104 white persons grew out of the immediate activities of the rioters. Three policemen were among those indicted for murder in connection with firing upon Negro bystanders. In this same group of assailants were seven soldiers who were court-martialed. No finding in their cases has been announced. Three white men were indicted for murder in connection with a raid upon a street-car load of Negro passengers in which a father and son were killed, a mother was wounded severely, and a little daughter escaped. Twenty-six men, two of them Negroes, were indicted for arson.
The effort to bring the guilty to justice was commented upon and summarized by this Congressional Committee as follows:
Assistant Attorney General Middlekauf had active charge of the prosecutions growing out of the riot, and he showed neither fear nor favor. Capable, determined, and courageous, he allowed neither political influence nor personal appeals to swerve him from the strict line of duty.
As a result of these prosecutions by the attorney general's office 11 Negroes and 8 white men are in the State penitentiary, 2 additional white men have been sentenced to prison terms, 14 white men have been given jail sentences, 27 white men, including the former night chief of police and three policemen, have pleaded guilty to rioting and have been punished.
These convictions were obtained in the face of organized, determined effort, backed with abundant funds, to head off the prosecutions and convictions. In the case of Mayor Mollman there seems to have been an open, paid advertising campaign to slander and intimidate the attorney general.
The burned area of the city was on Fifth Street, Broadway, Walnut Street, Eighth Street, Eleventh Street and Bond Avenue, as well as "the Flats" on Seventh Street, between Division and Missouri avenues. This latter area was that occupied by Negroes. There were 312 buildings and forty-four railroad cars totally or partially destroyed, with a total loss of $393,600.
The riots in East St. Louis may be traced, more or less directly, to a number of causes, the influence of each being apparent.
Without doubt conditions resulting from the migration of a large number of Negroes