The Negro in Chicago - A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago Commission on Race Relations
They turned into a vacant lot and went through alleys until they emerged on Forty-fifth Street near Emerald Avenue, evidently trying to work their way east to the main Negro neighborhood. The crowd, however, had thickened so rapidly that they took refuge in St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, just east of Lowe Avenue.
The mob was checked by the appearance and quieting remarks of Father Thomas M. Burke, pastor of the church. He told them that the Negroes had sought sanctuary, that there were laws to punish them, and that it was not the province of a mob to wreak summary vengeance.
Meanwhile the police were already arriving. A patrol wagon had left the Stock Yards station about seven o'clock, and followed the pursuing crowd. Acting Lieutenant Bullard telephoned at once to Chief Garrity, and extra police were quickly thrown into the neighborhood to control the crowd.
Samuel C. Rank, lieutenant of police at the Thirteenth Precinct station, Forty-seventh Place and Halsted Street, had received the alarm about seven o'clock. He sent five detectives and followed shortly after to the scene of the disturbance. He went into the church with Sergeant Brown and three detectives. Lieutenant Rank forced a number of the mob to leave the church and locked the doors. Captain Hogan, of the Tenth Police Precinct, and Chief Garrity arrived about this time. The three Negroes were taken through a rear entrance to a patrol wagon in the alley and removed to the Hyde Park police station, a considerable distance away.
The crowd in front of the church had grown by this time to 3,000 or 4,000. In order to quiet them they were again addressed by Father Burke, who told them the Negroes had been removed from the church. They dispersed about 10:30 p.m.
Profiting by the experience of 1919 Chief Garrity made prompt use of prearranged plans to check all such disorders in their incipiency. He immediately closed saloons and "clubs" in which young hoodlums were accustomed to gather. He had the police patrol the streets by twos. He drew a "dead line" to prevent Negroes from entering the district. With his forces well organized and distributed, he set up headquarters at the Stock Yards Precinct station and spent the night there, with Captain Westbrook, commander of the second battalion of police, Captain Hogan, and Lieutenant Ira McDonnell, of the Desplaines Street station. Street cars and automobiles approaching the police "dead line" were stopped and all Negro passengers warned off. Street gatherings were broken up and people were searched for weapons. People were also kept moving in the streets. This display of force undoubtedly had its quieting effect. Nevertheless, a stray Negro was here and there attacked despite the vigilance of the police.
During the five or six hours following the murder, racial street fights occurred at Forty-fifth Street and Wabash Avenue. A mob stormed a house at 229 East Forty-fifth Street, attempted to burn it and did considerable damage. Frank Gavin, a white man, 1509 Marquette Road, was shot in the back during the mobbing of a Negro at Fifty-third Street and Racine Avenue. Hoodlums pulled Negroes from street cars and beat them. A Negro who had been dragged from a car at Thirty-ninth and Emerald Avenue, was rescued by several white women after he had been severely beaten with clubs. A man and a small boy, Negroes, were attacked by a gang at Fuller Park, Forty-fifth Street and Shields Avenue. At Forty-seventh and Halsted streets three Negroes were taken from a car and slugged, and two others had a similar experience at Forty-seventh Street and Union Avenue. Frank Stevens, a white man, 3738 Langley Avenue, was badly injured by a crowd of Negroes at Thirty-ninth Street and Normal Avenue.
Precautions were continued next day for the protection of Negroes working in the Stock Yards, and frequenting the district where the disorders had occurred. This district ran as far west as Racine Avenue and as far east as Prairie; as far north as Thirty-second Street and as far south as Fifty-third Street. Negroes working at the Stock Yards had police escorts to and from their work, and the car lines on Halsted and Forty-seventh and Thirty-fifth streets, and on Racine Avenue, which are much used by the Negroes, were especially guarded. Only one clash was recorded the following day. By six o'clock Wednesday morning, thirty-seven hours after the murder, the special police concentration was discontinued.
Nine persons in all were reported injured during this disturbance. Nine men were arrested, including the three Negroes whom Barrett had encountered. These three were: Samuel Hayes, forty years old, 519 East Thirty-fifth Street; Henry Snow, thirty-two years old, 517 East Thirty-fifth Street; and Frank Gatewood, forty-three years old, 3446 Prairie Avenue.
Witnesses at the inquest differed as to whether there was any provocation for the stabbing of Barrett. Only one of them testified that he heard any of the four persons say anything. This was Carl Duwell, a printer, 466 West Twenty-fourth Place, who had just alighted from a Halsted Street car. He said that Barrett was following the three colored men and seemed to be threatening them, saying "You want to fight?" One of the Negroes suddenly turned and struck at Barrett, slashing his throat. The Negroes had been walking fast, with Barrett following a few feet behind them. After he was struck, Barrett staggered a few feet to the curb and fell.
Barrett's widow said he was not in the habit of carrying weapons, but it was current talk that he had been arrested a number of times for street fights with Negroes. He had been a policeman in the service of the South Park Commission, and was an ex-soldier. William Sianis, at whose stand Barrett had his shoes shined just before the murder, said that Barrett was apparently sober. Neighborhood gossip was to the effect that Barrett had been drinking at McNally's saloon at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets. Also Duwell's testimony indicated that Barrett had been drinking.
According to Police Captain Hogan, when the Negroes were arrested in the church, knives were found on the persons of two of them. One of these, Sam Hayes, admitted to the police at that time that he had stabbed a white man at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets. His story was that when he asked the newsboy at the corner for a newspaper in which to wrap his overalls, Barrett threatened him and then struck him, and the stabbing followed.
During the night following the murder, Chief of Police Garrity issued a statement which was published conspicuously in the morning newspapers, and was most effectively worded to prevent misunderstanding of the incident and avert use of it to inflame racial hostility. The statement began:
There has been no race riot. The killing at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets was merely a street-corner fight. There was grave danger that it would be followed by serious trouble. Precautionary measures were taken at once to forestall the recurrence of the riots, with the destruction of life and property, of last summer.
This was followed by a detailed account of the special measures and distribution of police to handle the situation.
II. The Springfield Riot
August 14–15, 1908
The race riot at Springfield, Illinois, in August, 1908, which cost the lives of two Negroes and four white men, is an outstanding example of the racial bitterness and brutality that can be provoked by unsubstantiated rumor or, as in this case, by deliberate falsehood. The two Negro victims were innocent and unoffending. They were lynched under the shadow of the capitol of Lincoln's state, within half a mile of the only home he ever owned, and two miles from the monument which marks the grave of the great emancipator.
A second fundamental factor in the Springfield riot situation was the fertile field prepared by admittedly lax law enforcement and by tolerance in the community of vicious conditions, the worst of which were permitted to surround the Negro areas.
The spark which touched off the explosion was the old story of the violation of a white woman by a Negro, and not until the damage had been done was its falsity confessed by the woman who had told it.
On the night of Friday, August 14, 1908, according to her story, Mrs. H——, wife of a street-railway conductor, was asleep in her room. She was alone in the house. She declared that a Negro entered, dragged her from her bed to the back yard, and there committed the crime. She said she had attempted to scream but was choked by her assailant, who left her lying unconscious in the garden.
A Negro, George Richardson, who had been at work on a neighboring lawn the day before the attack, was accused by Mrs.