The Negro in Chicago - A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago Commission on Race Relations
afternoon by the detective. They are believed to be the ones who seriously wounded Mrs. Margaret Kelley, white woman, at W. 47th and Wentworth. She was shot in the back and may die. The names of those under arrest were not given out.
[Note.—"Murder" changed to "seriously injured" in the main story. Mrs. Mary Kelly was shot in the arm according to the police report and not in the back.]
The men arrested for the shooting were Henry Harris and Scott Brown, deputy sheriffs, and four others according to the records of the state's attorney. Sheriff Peters says of the case, that Harris was charged with shooting someone, but when the case came up the charge was dropped. Sheriff Peters was convinced that Harris was innocent.
Daily News, July 29. Headline, given place of first importance in the pink section: "Women Shot as Riots Grow." Columns 7 and 8 of first-page white section are headed, "Attack White Women as Race Riots Grow. Death Roster Is 30."
The item reads: "Race rioters began to attack white women this afternoon according to report received at the Detective Bureau and the Stock Yards Police Station." The article continues, that Swift & Company had not received any such reports of attacks on their women employees. But farther on the item gives an account of a Swift & Company truck filled with girl employees fired upon by Negroes at Forty-seventh Street and the Panhandle railroad. The driver was reported killed and several of the girls injured.
The juxtaposition of "Death roster is 30" and "Attack white women" gives a wrong impression. The "several girls injured" at Forty-seventh Street evidently refers to the case of Mrs. Mary Kelly. The records of the state's attorney's office also show that Josephine Mansfield was supposed to have been wounded by Harris, et al., but the charge was dropped. She was wounded in the shoulder, according to the police report.
Daily News, July 30:
Alderman McDonough described a raid into the white district the night before by a carload of colored men who passed Thirty-fifth Street and Wallace "shouting and shooting." The gunmen shot down a woman and a little boy who stood close by.
[Note.—No record of such a case.]
Here is the "injury done to women" story as it appeared in the Negro press:
Chicago Defender, August 2:
An unidentified young woman and three-months-old baby were found dead on the street at the intersection of Forty-seventh and Wentworth. She had attempted to board a car there when the mob seized her, beat her, slashed her body to ribbons, and beat the baby's brains out against a telegraph pole. Not satisfied with this one rioter severed her breasts and a white youngster bore it aloft on a pole triumphantly while the crowd hooted gleefully. The whole time this was happening several policemen were in the crowd but did not make any attempt to make a rescue until too late.
Concerning all of these stories it may be stated that the coroner had no cases of deaths of women and children brought before him. There was nothing in the police reports or the files of the state's attorney or hospital reports or the reports of Olivet Baptist Church, which would give any foundation for reports of the killing of a woman and child, white or Negro.
There were other rumors which had the same anger-producing effect as reports of attacks on women. A notable case of this kind was the fatal clash at the Angelus, an apartment house for white people at Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue, on Monday, July 28 (see p. 6). The trouble here grew from four o'clock in the afternoon until it culminated in the shooting at 8:00 p.m. The excitement was stimulated by the rapid spread of various rumors. It was said that a white mob was gathering at Thirty-fifth Street and Wentworth Avenue, only a few blocks from the colored mob which was massed on Thirty-fifth Street from State Street to Wabash Avenue. The rumor was that the white men are armed and prepared to "clean up the 'Black Belt.'" Another rumor had it that a Negro's sister had been killed while coming home from the Stock Yards where she worked. Finally came the rumor that a white person had fired a shot from the Angelus building, wounding a colored boy. The rumor quickly went through the crowd swarming around the building, but no one heard or saw the shooting. A search of the building disclosed no firearms. Police Sergeant Middleton, Negro, described the situation as "everybody trying to tell you something and you couldn't get anything." Another Negro policeman said it was "just a rumor that went around through the crowd and everybody was saying, 'He shot from that window'; I would go to that window and the crowd would say, 'That is the window over there.'"
The anger-provoking power of rumor was seen in the ensuing clash. About 1,500 Negroes massed on one corner of Thirty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue, and about 100 policemen grouped themselves at the intersection of the two streets. At the sight of a brick flying from the Negro mob the police fired a volley into the midst of the mob. More shots came quickly from both sides. Four Negroes were killed, and many were injured, among both the Negroes and the police.
The Angelus rumor appeared as follows in a Negro newspaper, the Chicago Defender, August 2: "White occupants of the Angelus apartments began firing shots and throwing missiles from their windows. One man was shot through the head but before his name could be secured he was spirited away."
In the case of Joseph Lovings, a Negro killed by an Italian mob, press reports that were entirely false tended strongly to provoke the anger of Negro mobs. For example:
Herald-Examiner, July 30: "He had been shot, stabbed and gasoline had been thrown on his body which had been set afire. The police extinguished the fire and took the body to the County Morgue."
Tribune, July 30: "This report says that he was stabbed and shot sixteen times, then his body saturated with gasoline and set afire."
The coroner's jury in commenting on this rumor said: "It gives us satisfaction to say that this rumor, from our investigation, is false and unsubstantiated."
Among the horror rumors one finds such examples as the story of the white man who stood at the entrance to Exchange Avenue and knocked down half a dozen Negroes as they came by. This was current in the Stock Yards and was told by one of the workers at the inquest on the body of William Dozier, Negro, killed in the Yards. Another rumor had it that a Negro woman nicknamed "Heavy" had partly slashed off the head of a white man. This was picked up by a detective circulating among white people living in the "Black Belt."
But chief among horror rumors was the Bubbly Creek rumor, which took this form in the press:
Daily News, July 29. Subheadline: "Four Bodies in Bubbly Creek." The article does not give details but says, "Bodies of four colored men were taken today from Bubbly Creek in the Stock Yards district, it is reported."
This was one of the most persistent rumors of the riot, and intelligent men were found repeating it in half-credulous tones. A meat curer, talking in the superintendent's office of Swift & Company, said: "Well, I hear they did drag two or three out of Bubbly Creek. … Dead bodies, that is the report that came to the Yards, but personally I never got any positive evidence that there was any people who was found there."
A juror on the coroner's panel said: "A man told a friend of mine—I can furnish the name of that man—a man told him that he saw fifty-six bodies taken out of Bubbly Creek. They made a statement they used a net and seine to drag them out."
Mr. Williams, Negro attorney, said he was told that the bodies of 100 Negroes had been found in Bubbly Creek.
In its final report, the coroner's jury made this conclusive statement regarding the Bubbly Creek rumor:
Bubbly Creek has been the favorite cemetery for the undiscovered dead, and our inquiry has been partly directed to that stream. In our inquiry we have been assisted by the Stock Yards officials and workers, by adjacent property owners and residents, by private detective bureaus, the Police Department, Department of Health, State's Attorney's office, by observing and intelligent colored citizens, and by other agencies, and we are firmly of the opinion that these reports, so widely circulated, are erroneous, misleading, and without foundation in fact, the race riot victims numbering thirty-eight, and no more, nor are there any colored citizens reported to us as missing.
Rumor,