CHAPTER X

PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS--_Continued_

B. INSTRUMENTS OF OPINION MAKING

I. THE PRESS

We cannot escape the conclusion that the press is the most powerful institution in this country. It can make men, it can destroy men. It can conduct crusades; it can put an end to crusades. It can create propaganda; it can stifle propaganda. It can subvert the Government; it can practically uphold the Government. It is at once the most powerful agency for good in the United States and the most dangerous institution known under our system of Government. More than all this, despite theoretical laws which restrain abuses of the Press, so determined are the American people that its freedom shall not be abridged that they have written into the Constitution of the United States (Amend. I) the express provision that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom ... of the press," and in practice the Press is free to destroy men, institutions and races, or to make them live, the power being limited only by the conscience and sagacity of the men who compose this powerful Fourth Estate.

--EDMUND BURKE

Sound opinions depend always upon accurate statements of facts. Upon the objective information which the press is supposed to provide, the public depends to guide its thinking. If the information source is polluted, pollution may be expected in the opinions based upon it. When the public is deluded by distortions of fact, one-sided presentations, exaggerations, and interpretations of fact controlled by definite policies of whatever sort, a situation is created which will inevitably accomplish great damage.

Race relations are at all times dependent upon the public opinion of the community. Considering the great number of delicate issues involved, the careful handling of this kind of news is a question of great concern and has been the subject of much comment and criticism both by Negroes and whites. These criticisms are frequent and vehement. Negroes in Chicago almost without exception point to the Chicago press as the responsible agent for many of their present difficulties. Throughout the country it is pointed out by both whites and Negroes that the policies of newspapers on racial matters have made relations more difficult, at times fostering new antagonism and enmities and even precipitating riots by inflaming the public against Negroes. For example, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, in its report on the church and social work, makes this comment: "We observe also with regret and deep concern ... the continuing incitement to riot by certain public officials and periodicals, especially the partisan press with its misrepresentation and inflaming spirit."

Said the _Survey_ magazine, May 15, 1920: "The custom of newspapers to ridicule the efforts of colored people is a gratuitous insult that they have to meet on every hand."

The _New Republic_ observes editorially: "Race riots within a week of one another occurred in Washington and Chicago.... The press made a race question of individual crime, and the mob, led by marines and soldiers, took up the issue which the press had presented to them."

Negroes are loud in their condemnation of the press throughout the country. Says one Negro newspaper:

Whatever be the cause of the motive, there is apparently a well-organized plan to discredit the race in America and to bring estrangement between fellow-Americans. A short-sighted ... press is contributing to this estrangement by playing upon the passions of the undiscriminating, and thoughtlessly, by its glaring and sensational headlines, emphasizing rumors of alleged crimes by Negroes.

The Associated Negro Press accuses the Associated Press of fostering ill feeling and hatred between whites and Negroes. It says:

The Associated Press (white) ... always in its first paragraph ... attributes the source of trouble to our people "molesting white women." That, the Associated Press knows, is always fuel for the fire of the fury.... It arouses certain elements of whites to indignation by the thoughts of the ever "burly black brutes," and it stirs the people of our group to a state of fighting, mad by the folly of it.

The _Philadelphia Tribune_, a Negro paper, said: "Daily papers keep up mob sentiment. They continue to fan the riot flames into a destructive blaze."

The method of news handling now in practice in the Chicago Press, white and Negro, appears to contribute in effect to strained relations between the races. This condition prompts a more than casual inquiry into these methods.

A few examples will illustrate. On the night of July 20, 1920, following the demonstration of a group of Negro fanatics, the self-styled "Abyssinians," a prominent newspaper printed in large headlines: "Race Riot--Two Whites Slain." The paper was an extra and widely distributed. At Sixty-third and Halsted streets four Negro ministers returning from a church conference in Gary, Indiana, were set upon by a mob of whites who had merely read the report, and were beaten unmercifully.

On January 23, 1920, the following article appeared in the _Chicago Herald-Examiner_:

STUDENTS DEFY NEGRO TEACHER

Pupils' Strike Starts at Altgeld School over Substitute; Parents Support Them

A revolt which threatened to require settlement by the Board of Education developed yesterday in the eighth grade of the Altgeld School, Seventy-first and Loomis streets. Two of the pupils have been suspended, others threaten a general walkout. Pickets are to be established about the school today, several students promised tonight to urge a general strike. The regular teacher was ill with influenza yesterday.

PUT NEGRO GIRL IN CHARGE

The only available substitute was a Negro girl, Effie Stewart, normal graduate and accredited eighth-grade instructor. She was taken to the schoolroom by Principal J. W. Brooks and given charge. As the principal left pandemonium broke loose. Disregarding the efforts of the teacher to restore calm, several of the boys arose and harangued the class to ignore the substitute. Half a dozen of the pupils left the room.

REFUSE TO OBEY HER

The teacher directed one of the pupils, Paul Brissono, to summon Principal Brooks to the room. Paul flatly refused. He walked out and reported the trouble to his parents at 1406 West Seventy-third Street. Genevieve Lindy, 6744 Laflin Street, next was told to go to the Principal's office for help. She declined and went home. Principal Brooks ordered both pupils suspended. He said the facts would be placed before the district superintendent, John A. Long. In the meantime many of the parents of eighth-grade pupils took a stand supporting their children.

The Commission sent investigators to check up the facts as a thorough test of a report which most whites believed and most Negroes did not believe. The Negro teacher in question, the school principal, the superintendent of schools, and some of the parents of white children in the school were interviewed. The following is the result of the Commission's investigation:

_a_) Every item noted by the press in this case was contradicted by the principal and teachers.

_b_) Principal Brooks stated that "the only part of the story that the newspapers gave straight was the color of the young lady teacher."

_c_) Superintendent of Schools Mortensen stated that there was no basis whatever for the story, and that no more trouble happened than often happened when mischievous boys took advantage of the absence of the regular teacher.

_d_) Miss Stewart, the colored substitute teacher involved, stated that she was assigned to the Altgeld School on Monday, to the Pullman School Tuesday, and back to the Altgeld Wednesday. On Monday she had charge of the eighth grade. About twenty-five minutes before recess five or six boys came to her stating that they had been appointed as monitors for that day and asked to be excused. This request was granted by Miss Stewart. Shortly afterward Miss Deneen, a white teacher, brought the boys back into the room, stating that they had been disorderly; she deprived them of their monitorship. One boy, Paul, mentioned in the article, resented this and was impudent to Miss Deneen. He was suspended by Miss Deneen to take effect the next day and to return only on condition that he made apologies for his conduct. He was present in the room on the same afternoon.

Miss Stewart first knew about the supposed strike when she read it in the morning paper. She stated that she had no trouble with any of the students during the entire day, and there was no occasion to call in the principal, Mr. Brooks. Miss Deneen also had some trouble with a girl in the same room. Miss Stewart had no trouble either with Paul or the girl mentioned in the case. Mr. Brooks at no time during that day was called into the room.

_e_) The parents of the children were incensed over the false publicity given them.

_f_) The suggestive effect of this report was immediate. At the Coleman School, according to the principal, the children were greatly excited over the account and looked upon it as a precedent which had not occurred to them. She thought that such publicity, even if true, could have no good effect upon the minds and conduct of the children.

The prominence given to the idea of "striking" also had its effect. Discussions of strikes for other causes followed in the Pullman School. Later, in February the students of the Crane Technical School threatened a strike because of the removal of a teacher from the junior staff to the high-school staff.

On June 18, 1918, a Negro organization expressed the views of Negroes on the _Chicago Tribune's_ handling of a news article entitled: "Negro Benefit Carries Mammy to Pearly Gates." The occasion of the article was a musical recital given by Negro artists at the Auditorium and patronized by many cultured whites and Negroes. It was a benefit performance in aid of the families of Negro soldiers. The letter of protest to the editor of the _Tribune_ read:

On Saturday, June 15, there appeared in your paper what purported to be an account of a meeting and concert at the Auditorium held for the benefit of Negro soldiers' families. Despite the fact that it was distinctly a patriotic affair, presenting on its program colored artists of unquestioned talent, and rendered in such a manner as to evoke the warmest praise from an appreciative and music loving audience, your reporter saw fit to tell of it by reciting what he knew or thought he knew about Negro "mammies."

The body of the article contains sixty-two lines. Thirteen of these are devoted to mention of the names of the colored artists, ten to a description of the crowd, which, by the way, was inaccurate, fourteen to another list of notables in attendance and twenty-five to an enraptured dissertation on "mammies." Not only is this reference grossly irrelevant, but to colored people it is positively distasteful as everyone should know by now.

The caption of the article "Negro Benefit Carries Mammy to Pearly Gates" could by no stretch of fancy be taken as the heading for an account of a musical concert.... There is no complaint against the limited appreciations of your reporter, neither do we protest against his fondness for the adolescent idol of his black mammy; but as a news item the account is ridiculously improper and out of place.

The patriotic endeavors of the colored people of this city have more than once been discouraged by just such thoughtlessness and incomprehension. You would do a great service to colored people and to our government in the prosecution of the war if in such accounts as appear you cause to be eliminated such personal reminiscences and irritating irrelevancies as are calculated to make patriotism difficult and racial relationship unsettled.

1. GENERAL SURVEY OF CHICAGO NEWSPAPERS

It was assumed by the Commission that so far as the ordinary reading public is concerned the study of the three Chicago white daily papers with the largest circulation and the three Negro weekly papers most widely read would provide an adequate basis for a test of news handling, and for measuring the effect on the public of accounts of racial happenings. The papers selected are listed in Table XXX.

TABLE XXX

============================+==================+======================= | | CIRCULATION[87] NAME OF PAPER | PUBLISHED +-----------+----------- | | Week Days | Sundays ----------------------------+------------------+-----------+----------- White | | | _Chicago Tribune_ | Every morning | 439,262 | 713,966 _Chicago Daily News_ | Every afternoon | 404,726 |........... | except Sundays | | _Chicago Herald-Examiner_ | Every morning | 289,094 | 596,851 Negro | | | _Chicago Defender_ | Weekly | 185,000 |........... _Chicago Whip_ | Weekly | 65,000 |........... _Chicago Searchlight_ | Weekly | 10,000 |........... ----------------------------+------------------+-----------+-----------

For the two-year period 1916 and 1917 the Commission listed from the _Chicago Tribune_, the _Chicago Daily News_, and the _Chicago Herald-Examiner_ 1,551 articles on racial matters. Of these articles 1,338 were news items, 108 were letters to the press, and 96 were editorials.

Table XXXI classifies these items according to subject:

TABLE XXXI

Number Subject of Articles Riots and clashes 309 Crime and vice 297 Soldiers 199 Politics 99 Housing 89 Ridicule 63 Illegitimate contacts 61 Sports 56 Migration 45 Personal 39 Special columns 33 Education 18 Meetings 17 Art 8 Business 5 ----- Total 1,338

These figures do not represent all articles appearing on racial issues during the two-year period. Many additional articles appeared in early editions and not in the editions examined.

Generally these articles indicated hastily acquired and partial information, giving high lights and picturing hysteria. Frequently they showed gross exaggeration. The less sensational articles, permitting a glimpse of the stabler side of Negro life, were less than seventy-five. The subjects receiving most frequent and extended treatment in these three papers were: crime, housing, politics, riots, and soldiers. In analyzing the articles themselves, under these specific headings, it appears that the appeal to the interests of the public is founded on definite assumptions in the public mind. It has come to be recognized by both whites and Negroes, but more especially by the latter, that crime is most often associated with the publication of Negro news in white newspapers.

_Crime._--The University Commission on Southern Race Problems in a recommendation to the white college men of the South said:

Colored people feel very keenly about the way crime committed, or alleged to have been committed, by Negroes is played up in the newspapers. We never see the Negro's good qualities mentioned. As a rule, when a Negro's name appears in the newspapers he has done something to somebody, or somebody has done something to him. It may be true that the newspaper's attitude toward the Negro does not influence white public opinion as much as the Negro thinks, but it is bound to affect the point of view of those white people who do not know the Negro.

As between North and South this press handling of racial matter seems but a question of degree. For a public which depends upon newspapers for its information an inordinately one-sided picture is presented. This emphasis on individual crimes specifying Negroes in each offense tends to stamp the entire Negro group as criminal. The following headings in white newspapers will suggest the inference of the public as to whether or not Negroes are criminally inclined:

NEGRO ROBBERS ATTACK WOMAN NEAR HER HOME Tear Open Her Waist in Search for Money, but Fail to Find $6 Which She Had

POLICE HUNT FOR NEGRO WHO HELD UP WOMAN Scour Englewood District for Short Black Man Who Threatened Girls with Revolver

NEGRO SLAYER ESCAPES FROM JAIL

AUSTIN WOMAN ATTACKED IN OWN HOME BY NEGRO

WOMAN SHOCKED BY NEGRO THIEF Mrs. John W. Beckwith Surprises Black Burglar in Her Home

RESCUE NEGRO FROM MOB THAT THREATENED LYNCHING Morgan Park Police Save William Shaw Who Attacked Woman from Infuriated Crowd

NEGRO ATTACKS WOMAN. HER SCREAMS BRING HELP Mrs. Joseph Westhouse Dragged into Dark Passageway on South Side Street

ARREST NEGRO SUSPECT. FIND MUCH IN POCKET Earnest Wallace Identified by Three Men as Ku Klux Robbers Who Held Them Up

MASKED NEGRO ROBS AS WHITE Arthur Hood Learns to Disguise Voice in Prison; Uses Talent

GIRLS FLEE FROM NEGRO Accused Wm. Brewere of Following Them

NEGRO TROOP RUNS AMUCK. THREE MEN ARE WOUNDED

NEGRO STANDS WITH KNIFE OVER SLEEPER IN PARK

NEGRO CAMP INTRUDER ARRESTED AFTER FIGHT

CORONER CLEARS POLICEMAN FOR KILLING NEGRO

NEGRO SHOT DEAD TRYING TO ESCAPE AFTER CRIME

NEGRO ATTACKS DANCER IN ROOM OFF LOOP STAGE Purpose Robbery

SAILORS CHARGE NEGRO INSULTERS IN EVANSTON

The frequent mention of Negroes in connection with crime by the white press has the following effects:

1. It plays upon the popular belief that Negroes are naturally criminal.

2. The constant recounting of crimes of Negroes, always naming the race of the offender, effects an association of Negroes with criminality.

3. It frequently involves reference to sex matters which provides a powerful stimulant to public interest.

4. It provides sensational and sometimes amusing material, and at the same time fixes the crimes upon a group with supposed criminal traits.

The beliefs handed down through tradition concerning the weak moral character of Negroes and their emotional nature are thus constantly and steadily held before the public. Police officers, judges, and other public officials are similarly affected, consciously or unconsciously, by these beliefs and by the constant mention of Negroes in relation to crime. Arrest on suspicion, conviction on scanty evidence, and severe punishments are the results. A vicious circle is thus created.

Crimes involving only Negroes as offenders and victims receive little newspaper attention. It might be supposed that they are uninteresting because there is no element of race conflict. As long as crimes are committed within the group, and this group is regarded as an isolated appendix of the community, there is little public interest in them, and consequently 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, it assumes a wider significance, and the information appears to become news of importance in the judgment of the press.

Instances of purely Negro crime, which in the community at large would have a strong appeal to public interest, take on news value only when the ludicrous or grotesque can be pictured. For the most part, this type of article is written by a reporter with some reputation for wit. He inserts the expected Negro dialect, whether with or without warrant, and proceeds to make an amusing story.

_Negro soldiers._--News interest in articles on Negro soldiers appears to be founded largely on sentiment. During the war Negro soldiers, especially from Illinois, were given unstinted praise by the public and the newspapers. Illustrative headlines follow:

CHICAGO SOLDIERS ARE READY Col. Dennison Declared to Reporter That Regiment 1,038 Strong Ready for Call to War

COLORED MEN SERVED IN THE COLONIAL ARMY Washington Favored Their Enlistment, but for a Time There Was Opposition

TO TRAIN COLORED MEN FOR OFFICERS

COLORED TROOPS TO GO SOUTH Baker Says the 8th Illinois Will Be Sent to Camp Logan

DRAMATIC FAREWELL TO COLORED TROOPS Cheers of Crowd Show Chicago Loyalty to Men of 8th Infantry

COLOR LINE WORRIES EXEMPTION BOARDS Negro District Officials Wonder How They Can Furnish 40 Per Cent All White

TOBACCO FOR NEGRO SOLDIERS Texas Club Will Give Midnight Benefit to Aid Fund

NEGRO STEVEDORES TO FRANCE Colored Workers Are Being Organized into Four United States Regiments

ARMY IGNORES COLOR LINE Negro Troops Ordered to Every Cantonment Where Available. War Department Not Affected by Protest, Latest Ruling Shows

8TH REGIMENT IS ORDERED TO HOUSTON Chicago Colored Infantry to Be Accorded Same Privilege as White Soldiers. Overrule City's Protest

COLORED SOLDIERS HELP LOAN Col. Dennison's Men in the 8th Infantry Are Enthusiastic

8TH REGIMENT READY TO BEGIN BOND DRIVE Spirit Shown by Officers Insures Good Response from Colored Soldiers

ORGANIZE NEGRO LABOR UNITS U.S. Army Will Soon Have 24 Companies of Colored Volunteers

_Politics._--In politics the listed articles were confined almost exclusively to suggestions of corruption, unfavorable criticism of Negro politicians, and treatment of Negro political support of Mayor Thompson as blind, careless, and venal loyalty.

The following headings on listed news items will indicate the character of emphasis:

MAYOR'S RULE SCORED BY VOTERS' LEAGUE Since Harding retired from Council, Moores has collapsed entirely. In combination with his colleague, Oscar De Priest, colored, he has become a partisan, willing to go to any length in behalf of the politicians fighting the Council.

M.L.V. URGES DEFEAT OF MAYOR'S CLIQUE. SECOND WARD, NEGRO WARD, NO RECOMMENDATIONS

HOT ON TRAIL OF VOTE FRAUDS LETTER E. H. Green's (Negro) Communication to Dr. Leroy N. Bundy (Negro) May Reach Grand Jury Alderman De Priest (Negro) Involved All Interested in Rounding Up Colored Republican Voters Talk of Colonizing

FIVE IN HOT FIGHT IN SECOND WARD It is said, however, that W. R. Cowan (Negro) and L. B. Anderson (Negro) have best chance.

COLORED MAN IN SENSATION St. Louis Dentist Said to Have Revealed Election Fraud

EAST ST. LOUIS BRIBERS SAFE Attorney-General Brundage says they are immune under law. These men were accused in confession of Bundy (Negro).

BLACK AND TANS WIN POINT Will Have Half the Delegation from Louisiana to Republican National Convention

DE PRIEST QUITS ELECTION RACE AT G.O.P. ORDER Indicted Alderman Ducks Impending War in Second Ward

3,000 NEGROES CHEER ATTACK ON ROOSEVELT

NEW YORK ELECTS ITS FIRST NEGRO TO THE LEGISLATURE Ed. A. Johnson

MAYOR LOSES BIG WARDS In recognition of what the second ward did, the administration has made more Negro appointments than ever before in Chicago. Yesterday the City Hall forces were led by Alderman De Priest, Corporation Counsel Ettleman, Dr. A. J. Cary, and Edward Wright. Morris won by 4,050 over Bibb.

IMPORT NEGROES FROM THE SOUTH TO SWING MID-WEST

NEGRO LEADER EJECTED FROM HUGHES QUARTERS E. H. Green Told to Move On When Authorship of Letter Is Traced

NEGRO VOTE MANIPULATION ALLEGED IN EAST ST. LOUIS

_Housing._--The subject of the housing of the Negro is interesting because of its peculiar connection with: (_a_) segregation; (_b_) bombing; (_c_) neighborhood antagonisms; (_d_) alleged depreciation of property; (_e_) Hyde Park-Kenwood efforts to keep Negroes out of the district.

During 1917 the _Tribune_ carried six articles on Negro housing. One was the mention of the purchase of a $75,000 lot by Mme. C. J. Walker, a colored woman living in New York. Two related to the efforts of white residents to keep Negroes out of white residence districts; two were devoted to the effort of white residents to put Negroes out of white districts; and one to a meeting of realty men at which, it was alleged, angry Negroes "blasted harmony on a housing plan." The plan in question was a segregated Negro district to which Negroes objected. Trends of subjects treated in news items are given:

ST. LOUIS VOTES TODAY ON NEGRO SEGREGATION

OFFERS HER HOME TO NEGROES ONLY West Side Woman Adopts Novel Revenge in Row with Neighbors Due to Spite Fence

NEGROES MAY BUY HOUSE ADJOINING SPITE FENCE Owner of Property Will Sell to Colored People Only in Plan for Revenge

RACE QUESTION LEFT TO BLACKS Negro Committee Given Power to Act in Morgan Park Feud

COMMITTEE REPRESENTING BOTH SIDES TO SUGGEST SOLUTION AT NEXT MEETING Com. L. T. Orr and Chas. R. Bixby, White, and G. H. Jackson, and G. R. Faulkner, Colored

RACE QUESTION TAKEN TO COURT Morgan Park Negro Alleges Conspiracy to Close His Building

NEGRO SUBURB PLANNED AFTER ENGLISH GARDENS Dunbar Park, Prepared by Frances Barry Byone

OAK PARK NEGRO HOME SET AFIRE. SEES WHITE MAN Shoots as Arson Suspect Stumbles over Hedge Screaming Second Attempt at Blaze

NEGRESS BUYS LONG ISLAND LOT AMONG HOMES OF RICH Mme. C. J. Walker $75,000 Lot

SEGREGATION OF NEGROES SOUGHT BY REALTY MEN Plan Legislation to Keep Colored People from White Areas

ANGRY NEGROES BLAST HARMONY IN HOUSING PLAN Bolt Meeting at Realty Board with Threats to Fight

NEGRO OWNER OF FLAT HOUSE TO WAR BACK Eugene F. Manns--Property in Morgan Park

COURT BLOCKS NEGRO INVASION Injunction to Halt Move until Improvements Are Put In

RACE SEGREGATION IS RENT BOOSTER'S AIM Owners Hope to Prevent Encroachments of Either Colored or White Citizens

TRY TO KEEP NEGRO OUT OF BLACK BELT Colored Organizations Do Not Want Newcomers to Go to Old District

URGE RACE SEGREGATION LAW Members of Real Estate Board to Move to Save South Side

TAKE UP HOUSING OF NEGROES Two White and Two Colored Realty Dealers Consider the Problem

_The migration._--The migration provided a subject of sufficient interest to stimulate a number of articles. Hordes of illiterate and impecunious Negroes were pouring into the city, according to some reports, at the rate of forty carloads a day; they brought smallpox and low living standards, imperiled health, and created a dangerous problem for the city. The combined estimates from day to day in the press would give a number of arrivals in Chicago, equal to or even more than the migration to the entire North. Thus the articles ran:

COMMITTEE TO DEAL WITH NEGRO INFLUX Body Formed to Solve Problems Due to Migration to Chicago from South

WORK OUT PLANS FOR MIGRATING NEGROES Influx from the South Cared For by the Urban League and Other Societies

OPPOSES IMPORTING NEGROES Illinois Defense Council Moves to Stop Influx from South

2,000 SOUTHERN NEGROES ARRIVE IN LAST TWO DAYS Stockyards Demand for Labor Cause of Influx

RUSH OF NEGROES TO CITY STARTS HEALTH INQUIRY Philadelphia Warns of Peril, Health; Police Heads to Act

NEGROES ARRIVE BY THOUSANDS--PERIL TO HEALTH Big Influx of Laborers Offers Vital Housing Problem to City

SEEK TO CHECK NEGRO ARRIVALS FROM THE SOUTH City Officials Would Halt Influx until Ready to Handle Problem

NEGROES LEAVING SOUTH; 308,749 IN FEW MONTHS

DEFENSE BOARD WARNED AGAINST NEGRO INFLUX Investigators See Peril Such as Resulted in East St. Louis

HALF A MILLION DARKIES FROM DIXIE SWARM TO THE NORTH TO BETTER THEMSELVES

NEGROES INCITED BY GERMAN SPIES Federal Agents Confirm Reports of New Conspiracy in South; Accuse Germans for Exodus from South

NORTH DOES NOT WELCOME INFLUX OF SOUTH'S NEGROES

NEGRO INFLUX BRINGS DISEASE Health Commissioner Orders Vaccination of Arrivals to Check Smallpox

_Racial contacts._--Aside from the riots and clashes the most intensively featured articles were those dealing with intimate racial contacts. They dealt with intermarriage, positions of authority for Negroes, intermingling of the races in resorts, and love affairs--in fact, the usual taboo themes and "forbidden" interracial practices. Some of these subjects are thus indicated:

WIFE VANISHES--HUSBAND SEEKS NEGRO

MAY PUT WOMAN ON TRIAL FOR PAYING NEGRO'S FARE San Diego Case First Instance of Man Not Being Taken under Mann Act

LITTLE MARJORIE GAY, BUT AGED MAMMY MOURNS Colored Woman Who Raised White Girl Says Officers Are Influencing Child

A STRANGE, TRUE STORY On Frank Jaubert, manager of New Orleans City Belt Railroad, who was accused of being a Negro. Reference to Marjorie Delbridge case.

MAMMY LOSES FIGHT TO KEEP DELBRIDGE GIRL Girl Declared Incorrigible, Delinquent and Ward of Juvenile Court

DIXIE WOMAN TO GIVE MAMMY AND HER CHILD NEW HOME TOGETHER Mrs. Brock Also Had a Mammy

ALL HER TROUBLES NEAR HAPPY END AS NEW HOME LOOMS WITH MAMMY

MAMMY KIDNAPS HER CHILD Negress Seizes Delbridge Girl; Flees in Auto

MAMMY DENIES KIDNAPPING WARD Search for Marjorie Delbridge Leaves Disappearance a Mystery. Mrs. Brock Through

2. INTENSIVE STUDY OF CHICAGO NEWSPAPERS

A careful study of the three selected white daily papers was made covering 1918, the year preceding the riot, to note relative space, prominence, importance, and the type of articles on racial matters. During the year 534 articles appeared on racial matters distributed among the three papers as follows:

NEWS ITEMS ON RACIAL MATTERS--1918

No. Items _Chicago Daily Tribune_ 253 _Chicago Herald-Examiner_ 157 _Chicago Daily News_ 124 --- Total 534

TABLE XXXII

CLASSIFICATION OF ARTICLES ACCORDING TO SUBJECT AND NEWSPAPER DURING 1918

Key: A = No. of Articles B = Amount of Space in Inches

=============================+==========+==========+==========+========== | |"HERALD- | | |"TRIBUNE" |EXAMINER" | "NEWS" | TOTAL SUBJECT +----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----- | A | B | A | B | A | B | A | B -----------------------------+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----- Crime and vice | 70 | 231 | 58 | 181 | 21 | 122 |149 | 534 Soldiers, war work | 33 | 136 | 21 | 88 | 28 | 196 | 82 | 420 Politics | 21 | 78 | 12 | 28 | 14 | 63 | 47 | 169 Riots | 15 | 80 | 5 | 19 | 2 | 3 | 22 | 103 Lynchings | 24 | 57 | 15 | 43 | 4 | 21 | 43 | 121 Editorials | 6 | 34 | 8 | 67 | 6 | 28 | 20 | 129 Organizations and movements | 13 | 25 | 8 | 22 | 4 | 27 | 25 | 75 Housing | 12 | 28 | 5 | 14 | 1 | 3 | 18 | 46 Personal and miscellaneous | 15 | 35 | 5 | 16 | 5 | 33 | 25 | 85 Industry, labor | 11 | 28 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 18 | 14 | 47 Athletic, sports | 8 | 12 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 24 Letters to editor and | | | | | | | | "Voice of People" | 13 | 107 | 9 | 30 | 21 | 34 | 43 | 171 Migration | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 126 | 11 | 130 Propaganda | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 6 Race relations | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 9 Radicalism | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 4 | 10 Guide post | 0 | 0 | 4 | 59 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 59 Intermarriage | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 Education | 3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8 Segregation | 4 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 15 Social service | 1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8 Theatrical | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 -----------------------------+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+-----

Most of the published information concerning the Negro and issues involving him magnifies his crimes and mistakes beyond all reasonable proportions. The Chicago public is aware of the sentiment against morons created by the newspaper practice of calling persons who attack women or girls morons--an unscientific classification, of course, since all who attack women are not morons. Negroes frequently say that if each crime committed by a "red-headed" man were listed as a crime committed by a "red-headed" man, a sentiment would soon be created sufficiently hostile to provoke prejudice against all red-headed men.

In 1918 there were more than 90,000 Negroes in Chicago. Practically all of the more serious crimes in this group, especially those involving whites and Negroes, were given publicity. This simple notation of crimes may be a part of the routine of journalism. It does not, however, explain the obvious appeal to passion found in many of them or even the prominence given to articles of a certain type. Crimes, riots, intermarriage, lynchings, and radicalism were the subjects of articles which, in their repetition and accumulative significance, presented a disproportionately unfavorable aspect of the Negro population.

The _Chicago Tribune_ published, in 1918, 145 articles which, because of their emphasis on crimes, clashes, political corruption, and efforts to "invade white neighborhoods" definitely placed Negroes in an unfavorable light. Of this number, twenty-three appeared on the first page of the first section and twenty on the first page of the second section. It also published eighty-four articles dealing with Negro soldiers, sports, industry, and personalities, which, aside from flippancy in treatment, did not place Negroes in an unfavorable light. Of this number, two were on the first page of the first section and three on the first page of the second section. The relative length of articles indicates another possible effect on the public. The unfavorable 145 articles contained 487 inches of printed matter, while the less colorful items contained 223 inches.

Front-page space amounting to eleven inches was given to favorable articles, and 158 inches to unfavorable. Of the articles concerning Negro soldiers appearing on the first page, four of the eleven inches concerned a report that two Negro soldiers had been killed following a dispute at Camp Merritt between a white sergeant and a Negro trooper.

The _Herald-Examiner_ published ninety-seven unfavorable and thirty favorable articles. Of this number, thirty-one unfavorable and six favorable appeared on the front page.

The _Chicago Daily News_ devoted thirty-three articles to unfavorable publicity and fifty-one to publicity of a favorable sort. Of these, eighteen unfavorable and eighteen favorable appeared on the first page.

_Bombing publicity._--The bombing of the homes of Negroes is an expression of lawlessness which in an orderly community should not be tolerated. The primary function of the newspaper is to report the facts. Upon this basis the public may then pass its judgment. In the case of a bombing it might be supposed that an orderly community would wish to know the persons involved, the damage effected, the motive, the action of the police and the result of efforts to capture the perpetrators of the act. Ordinarily this is done in most cases of lawlessness and in bombings not involving racial issues.

Of the forty-five racial bombings which took place in Chicago between July 1, 1917, and June 18, 1920, fourteen were not mentioned in any of the six large dailies of the city.[88] Of the remaining thirty-one, seven were reported in one paper, ten in two papers, nine in three papers, while five appeared in four papers. Not one of the forty-five cases appeared in more than four papers. Although there might have been a total of 270 news reports of these bombings only seventy-four actually appeared. Of the forty-five bombings the _Tribune_ and _Herald-Examiner_ each reported twenty, the _Post_ fourteen, the _News_ eleven, the _Journal_ eight, and the _American_ one. In all cases the reports openly recognized that these bombings were not the result of individual grievances but involved organized effort and activity on the part of groups or communities in the practice of throwing racial bombs. It was generally referred to as a "race bomb" or "race war bombs." Typical headings were:

_Journal_, April 7, 1919: RACE HATRED BOMB HURLS SIX FAMILIES FROM BED

_Journal_, November 19, 1918: BOMB HOME OF AGED NEGRO. EXPLOSION SEEN AS PROTEST BY WHITES

_Journal_, March 6, 1920: ATTRIBUTE BOMB TO SOUTH SIDE RACE WAR

_Journal_, March 31, 1920: ANOTHER BOMB IN RACE WAR. OWNER SELLS BUILDING TO NEGROES DESPITE OBJECTION OF NEIGHBORS

_Herald-Examiner_, May 25, 1920: NEGRO CLUB IS BOMBED. SOME BLAME POLITICS

_Chicago Tribune_, May 25, 1920: NEW RACE WAR WRECKS PORCH OF NEGROES' CLUB. THE CLUB IS COMPOSED OF 600 COLORED PERSONS

_Herald-Examiner_, June 13, 1920: TWO BUILDINGS BOMBED. RACE PREJUDICE BLAMED

_Herald-Examiner_, December 28, 1919: RACE WAR BOMB INJURES WOMAN

_Herald-Examiner_, September 24, 1918: POLICE SAID BOMB WAS INTENDED TO INTIMIDATE NEGROES WHO RECENTLY MOVED INTO THAT NEIGHBORHOOD

_Herald-Examiner_, April 7, 1919: A RACE WAR IS GENERALLY BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN BEHIND A BOMB EXPLOSION EARLY THIS MORNING AT 4212 ELLIS AVE.

_Herald-Examiner_, April 4, 1920: RACIAL DIFFERENCE RESPONSIBLE FOR BOMB

_Journal_, March 20, 1919: BELIEVE BOMB THROWING CONTINUATION OF A FEUD CARRIED ON BY THE WHITES AND BLACKS IN THE DISTRICT WHERE NEGROES HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO OCCUPY BUILDINGS FORMERLY OCCUPIED BY WHITE PEOPLE

In two instances a racial bombing was considered significant enough to occupy more than nine inches of one column. This space was given by the _Tribune_ and the _Herald-Examiner_.

Jesse Binga, a Negro banker, was bombed five times. The article in the _Daily News_ was five inches long. In the _Herald-Examiner_, April 20, 1919, there appeared an article, "Curious Boy Drops Bomb as It Explodes." The article covered eleven inches, of which eight inches were given to the story of a boy who picked up a bomb in the street and dropped it as a lady signaled him to drop it because it might be an explosive. At the end of this article were appended three inches containing a narrative of a racial bombing at 4722 Indiana Avenue where Wimes & Lassiter, Negro real-estate dealers, had an office.

The fifth bombing directed against Mr. Binga is treated humorously in spite of the serious damage done to his home.

The average length of racial bombing articles was about four and one-half inches. The explanations of motive offered were stereotyped in character and involved assumptions which it is not considered necessary here to analyze. It was explained that the person bombed was a Negro or that he had moved into a "distinctly white residential district," against which encroachment bombing had been instituted as an intimidating or expulsive measure. It was sometimes stated that the person was a real estate agent negotiating with Negroes concerning property in "restricted" districts. This sort of explanation was either stated in the headline or appended at the end in a brief sentence. The reports in the papers apparently undertook merely to notify the public that bombings had happened. The following are examples of press treatment of race bombings:

_Herald-Examiner_, May 25, 1918: This building was occupied by Negro families.... The white residents objected to the Negroes.

_Post_, November 19, 1918: BOMB SHATTERS NEGRO HOME IN "WHITE DISTRICT"

_Tribune_, March 19, 1919: BINGA PROPERTY WAS WRECKED Binga is an agent for buildings. He is colored, and has been leasing apartments formerly occupied by white tenants to colored.

_Post_, March 20, 1919: Police are investigating whether the bombs were thrown by members of the Janitors' Union retaliating against Jesse Binga, colored real estate dealer who had been hiring non-union janitors, or whether intended as another warning to the colored people to keep out of residential districts that have been hitherto exclusively white.

_Post_, April 7, 1919: BOMB EXPLODES IN FLAT WHERE NEGRO MOVED IN

_Tribune_, April 7, 1919: BOMB SET OFF IN NEGRO FLATS White residents of the district had held indignation meetings because he had peopled his building with colored folks.

_Herald-Examiner_, April 20, 1919: OFFICE OF WIMES & LASSITER, NEGRO REAL ESTATE DEALERS, WAS THE TARGET

_Tribune_, May 18, 1919: NEGRO FAMILY ON GRAND BOULEVARD OBJECT OF BOMB

_Post_, June 13, 1919: TWO BOMB BLASTS ON FRINGE OF NEGRO DISTRICT

_Post_, January 6, 1920: BOMB DAMAGES HOME OF NEGRO ON GRAND BOULEVARD Ernest Clark moved in recently. He is a Negro. All his neighbors are white.

_Daily News_, February 2, 1920: WHILE A BOMB WAS EXPLODED ANOTHER BATTLE IN THE SOUTH SIDE RACE WAR OVER THE SEGREGATION OF BLACKS IN RESIDENTIAL DISTRICTS

_Daily News_, February 10, 1920: BUILDING RECENTLY SOLD TO APPOMATTOX CLUB, A NEGRO ORGANIZATION

_Daily News_, February 13, 1920: TWO BOMBS TOSSED ... against encroachment of Negroes in white residential districts.

_Herald-Examiner_, March 11, 1920: SOUTH SIDE HOUSE SOLD TO NEGROES BOMBED

_Journal_, March 24, 1920: BOMB SHAKES BUILDING. DEAL FOR SALE OFF The prospective buyer was talking with ---- when there came a loud noise. [Buyer was colored.]

A typical example of newspaper reports of the bombings of Negro homes appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_ of April 4, 1920:

BOMB BLASTS IN FRONT OF NEGRO FLAT BUILDING

A black powder bomb was exploded last night in front of the vestibule of a four-story flat building 423 E. 48th Place, occupied by Negroes. The building is owned by Robert B. Jackson, who lives on the second floor. He recently purchased it from Louis Cohen. The apartment is in the neighborhood peopled mainly by whites, and the police believe racial differences are responsible for the bomb. The explosion did slight damages. No one was hurt.

One of the typical shorter reports also appeared in the same paper May 25, 1918:

BOMB EXPLODES BEFORE HOME OF NEGRO FAMILIES

A bomb exploded in the front of 4529 Vincennes Avenue early this morning, wrecked the front porch of the structure and broke windows for a block around. The building is occupied by Negro families. White residents objected to the Negroes.

Similar language was used in all the articles.

Most of the articles carried a suggestion of a race war on the South Side. Many of the reports helped to contribute to popular anticipation of future trouble. For example, in the _Post_ of January 6, 1920, page 1, column 3, a bombing was reported thus: "A bomb early today damaged the residence at 4404 Grand Boulevard which was said to have been a Negro 'sniping-post' during the race riot last summer."

The home at 4404 Grand Boulevard was owned and occupied by Mrs. Byron Clarke, and was not a sniping-post during the riot. It had been bombed four times, once while officers were guarding it. All papers used the expression, "No one was hurt." Property destruction was usually dismissed with statements like these: "All the glass was shattered"; "the front porch was demolished"; "about $---- damage was done"; or "the damages were slight." The _Daily News_ was exceptional in using the word "outrage" three times.

Two reports gave accounts of arrests, and all others in which police activity was mentioned merely said, "The police are investigating." None of the articles gave the results of any such investigation, other than that the police generally attributed the "hurling of the bomb" to the occupants of a black touring-car. The articles contained no condemnation of the bombings as lawlessness or crime except in the case of a bombing at 3401 Indiana Avenue, where a child was killed May 1, 1919. The _Chicago Tribune_ spoke of this death as an incident of that bombing.

One of the two arrests above referred to was that of a janitor who was not able to explain sufficiently his presence in or about a building which had just been bombed. He was taken into custody but was soon dismissed. The other arrest was that of the nephew of a prominent business man living in the neighborhood of the bombed property.

During the time from February, 1918, to February, 1919, prior to the Chicago riot, there were eleven bombings in the city. If each paper had reported each bombing there would have been sixty-six reports. Only seven reports actually appeared. During the six weeks immediately preceding the Chicago race riot, there were seven racial bombings. Of a possible forty-two reports, only four appeared, or two bombings in two papers. Thus violent and criminal expressions of hostility which might have been checked by arousing the public conscience silently continued. The resentment of Negroes increased, and the ignorance of the larger white public remained undisturbed. The articles were apparently written without much investigation. Upon the fifth bombing of Mr. Binga's home, the _American_, _Herald-Examiner_, and _Chicago Daily News_ quoted Mr. Binga as saying, "This is the limit; I am going." Mr. Binga declares that he did not say this, that he did not even see a reporter, and that he had not moved.

During the nine months following the riot, publicity on bombings increased to several times the former amount. Beginning in March, 1920, the articles again showed slackened interest. The _Tribune_ and _Herald-Examiner_, usually giving most frequent publicity to such matters, missed about every other one. The _Post_ had no reports, the _Journal_ two, the _News_ four, and the _American_ none. Seven bombings took place from March 1 to July 1.

The apparent indifference toward race bombings in the minds of editors, officials, and the public was indicated by the relative prominence given to a race bomb which threatened life and damaged property as compared with an "odor bomb" dropped in a moving-picture theater.

On the first page of the _Tribune_ of February 11, 1921, under the caption "Crow Raid Opens Inquiry into Bombs," were seventeen inches of space reporting cases of "odor bombs" and emphasizing the determination of the state's attorney to make investigation. At the bottom of the adjoining column were four inches devoted to a dynamite race bomb which damaged a three-story apartment and involved menace to life. No reference was made to any effort by the state's attorney or the police to investigate. Similar prominence was given to the "odor bomb" in the _Herald-Examiner_.

An editorial in the _Tribune_, February 14, 1921, condemning bombing made no reference to the fifty-six race bombings of recent record, but did refer to other bombing aimed at white citizens. The editorial reads:

THE BUSINESS OF BOMBING

Anthony D'Andrea, whose aldermanic campaign meeting Friday night was broken up by a bomb which injured seventeen persons, speaks with some indignation on the matter as indicating a bad moral slump in political methods. If it had been a union labor bomb, apparently, it would have been of no great importance.

"I'm a union man myself," he explains. "I wouldn't care if they threw a bomb at my house. That's all in the game."

On the latter point D'Andrea is right. It is "all in the game," but the game is one which gets out of control of the players. It is because bomb throwing has come to be accepted as "all in the game" of union labor warfare that it is now being extended to political warfare. The man, the gang, or the organization which sanctions or adopts bombing as a method of obtaining results in ordinary activities cannot expect to be able to restrict the use of such methods to one line of business.

Originally the bomb was a political weapon, as in the hands of the Russian nihilists. In late years it has grown popular with labor leaders of a certain class. Such bombings as the recent one at the Tyson apartments, ascribed by the police to labor troubles, and the repeated odor bomb outrages at movie theaters, are sufficient illustrations of its use by labor. The post-office bombing in 1918 and the numerous so-called race-bombs exploded on the South Side are illustrative of the widening use of bombs. In such progress D'Andrea should not be surprised that the bomb is being adopted by ward politicians. Properly applied, a good bomb can be expected to neutralize half a dozen or so precinct captains. Bomb throwing is becoming a business.

Friday night's bombing is a perfectly logical development. As a result several men may be cripples for life, if they do not die. It is time such logical developments are stopped. Among the scores of bomb outrages of the last few years, so far as we recall, there has not been a single case of punishment of the perpetrators. They are justified in believing that they are safe. As long as they retain that belief they will continue to extend the business of bombing. One thing will stop it. That is drastic punishment. Any person who throws a bomb is a potential murderer. Life in prison is none too severe a penalty. Good detectives can trap some of these men and good prosecution can send them to prison. It should be done and done now.

_The Abyssinian affair._--The "Abyssinian affair" referred to earlier in this part of the report, was treated with remarkably good judgment by the press. It is to be believed that further clashes were avoided by the effective way in which the newspapers pointed out that the demonstration was the work of fanatics rather than a race riot. Two days later, however, the _Chicago Tribune_ published an article ascribing the Abyssinian murders to "racial reds." The article ran:

"ABYSSINIAN" MURDERS BARE RACIAL "REDS"

Leaders Lay Unrest to Du Bois Creed

Shocked by the fantastic violence of Sunday night, when a United States sailor and a citizen were killed by pseudo-Abyssinian zealots, thoughtful colored leaders began a determined effort yesterday to stamp out anti-white exploitation and to bring about better understanding....

This type of exploitation, they say, is aimed at the more ignorant among the colored masses. It carries the same appeal as the glittering promises of the I.W.W. and the Communists to the illiterate and ignorant among the whites.

According to Negro leaders, this exploitation is based upon the theory of _social equality_. Its motive can be seen, they say, in recent utterances and writings of Negro intellectuals, in which a high pitch of "social equality" fervor is established as a panacea for the ills of the race. This theory, translated and exaggerated into ambiguous prophecies by the soap-box orator, is slowly being percolated through the masses of a race as yet generally unprepared by education to understand it.

Chief among the writers whose works have been of this intellectual caliber is Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois.... His latest volume, a "best seller" entitled _Darkwater_, has been widely circulated. It is a volume of almost super-intellectual caliber, and is bitter in tone.

In _Darkwater_, which is taken simply as a typical volume, are found the teachings, colored leaders say, which have been seized upon by those who, under the shadow of Dr. Du Bois' reputation among colored folk, would seek to incite and exploit.

The "colored leaders" quoted were F. L. Barnett, R. S. Abbott, and A. H. Roberts. They did not impute any such danger to Mr. Du Bois' books. Mr. Barnett, for example, mentioned the exploitation of the "Back to Africa" movement by Jonas and Redding, while Mr. Abbott and Mr. Roberts spoke of the lack of sympathy among Negroes for criminal types like Jonas and Redding. The article then stated the "Du Bois Creed," saying:

The agitators have used considerable skill in exploiting the Negroes by use of doctrines which they have taken from Dr. Du Bois, as expressed in _Darkwater_. Here are some of them:

"The world market most widely and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises 'darkies.'"

This is given as the underlying premise for the late war.

"But what of the darker world that watches?" the author continues. "Most men belong to this world. With Negro and Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the uplift in mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of the world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations."

The article quoted from _Darkwater_ a chapter, which, by cutting the text, left a suggestion of sex intimacy between a colored bank messenger and a white girl very different from the intention of the author. The entire article was calculated, through its suggestion and insinuation, to rouse racial antagonism. It is doubtful whether the "Abyssinian" leaders, who were ignorant fanatics little known within the Negro group, had read Du Bois' books. With all its wildness and fatuousness the movement was directed away from America and from whites. A photograph of Du Bois was published with the caption:

KARL MARX OF NEGROES Noted Colored Philosopher Whose Works Are Used by Agitators to Stir Race Hatred

_Miscegenation._--Similarly dangerous treatment is apparent in an article which appeared in the _Tribune_ of November 6, 1920, under the heading: "Miscegenation is O.K.'d in New Constitution."

The article called attention to a proposed provision in the new state constitution of Illinois against public discrimination on account of color, which was intended to put into the constitution rights already guaranteed by state laws. According to the article this law was tentatively agreed upon "during the newsy days surrounding the Republican National Convention and escaped the notice of the public generally." The article said:

Under the basic law, if adopted, a colored man and woman will be entitled to buy vacant seats of a grand opera box, otherwise occupied by whites. A Mongolian--if a citizen--and a mesochromic bride cannot be denied a vacant flat in the most "exclusive" apartment building.

A law prohibiting the Japanese, as in California, from owning land, will be illegal. Two colored people may take two of the four seats in the Blackstone restaurant beside the wives of two packers.

A member of the convention said yesterday that it is as broad and comprehensive as it can be made. He claimed that this sentence in the constitution will prevent the Legislature from prohibiting in any way the colored citizen from getting all the rights and privileges accorded to other citizens. According to this constitutional delegate and lawyer the new constitution, as now worded, will prevent segregation of the Negroes, Jim-Crow cars, or special schools for the colored.

A Negro lawyer said that the Morris section only recognizes openly the rights of equality which were settled by the Civil War and enunciated in an amendment to the federal Constitution.

The remainder of the article dealt in brief with fifteen other decisions of the Convention. These decisions were merely stated and not commented upon.

_Newspaper handling of the "back of the Yards" fire._--At the close of the Chicago riot fire was set to a large number of houses back of the Stock Yards. Since these were the homes of white persons, principally Lithuanians, it was generally assumed that it was an act of retaliation by Negroes. Articles in the newspapers strengthened the belief. The _Chicago Daily News_ article gave a full account of statements made by Fire Marshal O'Connor to the effect that Negroes were responsible. It stated that the police and militia were combing the South Side for a band of eight Negroes, alleged automobile fire bugs. These men, it was said, were stalled in an automobile at West Fifty-fifth and South Wood streets ten blocks south of the fire; when the police reached Fifty-fifth Street the Negroes had repaired their car and fled. John R. McCabe, Fire Department attorney, was reported as being positive that the fire was started by Negroes.

Investigation was made by the Commission to ascertain the facts concerning Negro responsibility for these incendiary fires. The state's attorney declared that no records had come to his office implicating Negroes, and that he had no information, except rumors which he seriously questioned. The records, he thought, were held at the Stock Yards police court. Inquiry at this police station disclosed the fact that no Negroes had been apprehended on this charge, and the belief was expressed that the act was committed by white men with blackened faces. The fire marshal's office had no record other than unsubstantiated rumors spread by persons living in the district. The matter had been dropped for lack of evidence.

_Negro revolt._--On January 4, 1920, during the general crusade against "reds" the _Herald-Examiner_ published a two-inch headline across the top of the first page saying:

REDS PLOT NEGRO REVOLT I.W.W. Bomb Plant Found on South Side

The article mentioned below 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's office. The article further stated: "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 Soldiers and Sailors Club."

Each organization named was, as a matter of fact, open to the public, though patronized almost entirely by Negroes. The Negro Improvement Association was by no means secret in its plans; it published a newspaper in which they were set forth. The slogan of this organization was then and is now, "Back to Africa," and not "Down with the United States."

The Free Thought Society mentioned is the Chicago Free Thought Educational Society. The following is a declaration of its principles:

In order to achieve a better understanding of the phenomena of nature, for ourselves and for such of our fellow-men as shall care to become affiliated with us, we do hereby bind ourselves by the following declaration of principles.

First: That the attainment of truth shall be the fundamental purpose of the work of this society and all its members.

Second: That truth shall be recognized as that body of conclusions which may be logically drawn from the facts of nature as evidence by the five senses, or may be demonstrated mathematically.

Third: That we abstain from all dogma, insisting upon a fair and impartial investigation of all subjects and at all times.

Fourth: That we do recognize a universal kinship binding together in one common band all members of the human society regardless of race, color or sex.

Among its members are W. E. Mollison, F. D. Summers, and among its honorary members are F. Percy Ward, lecturer for the Chicago Rationalist Society, and Clarence S. Darrow. 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. It served during war time as a recreational and social center for returning soldiers, and in 1920 became the South Side Branch of Community Service, Incorporated. At the time of the article it was under the general supervision of the Chicago Community Service, of which Eugene T. Lies, formerly of the United Charities, was director.

_Newspaper handling of the Waukegan riot._--Considerable excitement was occasioned by reports in all the Chicago daily papers of a race riot in Waukegan, about thirty-six miles north of Chicago. The first news reports gave the following versions:

THE BEGINNING OF THE RIOT

_Chicago Tribune_, June 1, 1920:

A group of Negro boys in Sheridan Road stood about stoning passing automobiles for several hours, finally shattering a windshield on the car of Lieut. H. B. Blazier and injuring Mrs. Blazier.

_A throng of sailors and marines were passing when Mrs. Blazier was injured and they immediately chased the Negro boys. The chase led to the Sherman House, a rooming place for Negroes, and when the persons living there defended the boys and sought to drive off the sailors, there was a prospect of serious trouble._

_Chicago Daily News_, June 1, 1920:

According to the police a thirteen-year-old colored boy and his little sister had been in ambush near Sheridan Road throwing stones at passing automobiles. _One of the stones_ struck the windshield of a car driven by a coal dealer, Chas. Bairscow, according to Assistant Chief of Police Thomas Tyrrell, and injured a woman occupant of the car. Another shattered the windshield of the car of Lieut. A. F. Blasier a naval officer. Mrs. Blasier was cut by flying glass. When he drove into the city Lieut. Blasier told several sailors of the affair and the news quickly spread. The town was alive with marines and sailors on "shore leave." They concentrated in the town square and upon a signal made an attack on the Sherman House, a hostelry occupied by Negroes.

CLASHES

_Chicago Tribune_, June 1, 1920:

For hours there were individual instances of attacks by both whites and Negroes in various parts of the town.

_Chicago Daily News_, June 1, 1920:

A general man hunt ensued. One group stormed the postoffice and tried to break open the doors, as it was thought a Negro was hiding there. Another made an attack on the house of Ike Franklin, colored. Ike had fled. Another group chased a Negro across the Genesee bridge in the center of the town. It had nearly captured him when the blue-jacket guards arrived in trucks. Under command of Provost Marshall Lieut. A. C. Fisher the town was quickly cleared. The police arrested the following six marines: Thomas Levinger, Charles Thrawle, John Smith, Burney Poston, Herman Blockhouse and Harold Denning.

RACE RIOTS AND THE POLICE

_Chicago Daily News_, June 1, 1920:

Acting Chief Tyrrell, after a cursory investigation, said that, as far as he could learn, Policeman Frank Bence, on whose beat the trouble started, was not in the vicinity at the outbreak. He said that if this proved true the man would be dismissed. The policeman said he was making a tour of alleys at the time of the stone throwing and knew nothing of it.

Inquiry by the Commission brought out the following facts: The first newspaper accounts of the riot indicated that Lieutenant Blazier and his wife were driving in one automobile, and that Mr. Bairscow was driving in another automobile. The story was that Mrs. Blazier was injured by glass from the windshield broken by stones, and that a woman occupant of the Bairscow car was similarly injured. Lieutenant Blazier and Mr. Bairscow were driving in the same car, the windshield of which was broken, instead of separate cars. There was no woman in the car and Lieutenant Blazier has no wife.

The story was telephoned into the _Tribune_ by a member of the staff of the _Waukegan Sun_. This was the source of the report of the woman being injured.

The stoning occurred one block away from the Sherman House, occupied by Negroes.

_Negro housing in Chicago._--The housing situation has frequently occasioned alarm on the part of whites and bitterness of feeling toward Negroes. Many newspaper articles, by their play upon racial fears, have increased the tension between the two groups. An example of this type of article is given:

WHITE TENANTS FEAR NEGROES WILL BUY BLOCK. FIRE CHIEF'S RESIDENCE ONE OF THOSE IN DANGER

Twenty-six houses on the old Chicago university campus in East Thirty-fourth Street, between Cottage Grove Avenue and Rhodes Avenue, are about to be sold to colored people, according to the tenants....

"I'm going to offer the houses to the present occupants at prices ranging from $6,000 to $7,000 on easy terms," Mr. O'Brien said. "Of course if they don't accept I'm going to do the best I can. I can't predict how things will turn out until the tenants have given me their reply. They'll be around tomorrow.

"Among the residents of the block are Fire Chief Thomas O'Connor, Dr. William E. Hall, and Dr. M. J. Moth.

"The tenants are all worried. Colored people have learned of this sale and for days have been walking up and down and pointing out houses, discussing, apparently, what they intended doing and where they planned to live. Unless every one of the twenty-six buys his house it will not remain a white neighborhood. And I don't believe we can get everyone to buy" [_Chicago Tribune_, February, 1920].

Inquiry by the Commission disclosed a situation similar to that underlying many discussions of "exclusive areas." The article was written by a member of the _Tribune_ staff. It was learned at Mr. O'Brien's office that he had come to that office inquiring about the matter. A member of the O'Brien firm stated to him that he did not think the matter had any racial significance because the firm intended to sell the houses to present tenants, all of whom happened to be white.

_Labeling fights as "riots."_--Attention might be called to the suggestion in articles which treat trivial disputes and street fights as race riots. On August 4, 1920, the _Evening Post_ published an article headed: "Negroes Held to Grand Jury after Riot in Street Car."

The article related a dispute over a car seat ending in a fight in which one man was stabbed. The entire article is given:

Six Negroes were arraigned in the South Chicago court today, charged with having started a "near" race riot in a Cottage Grove Avenue car last night. They were: Isaac Nelson, 3256 South Park Avenue; Henry Broadnax, 3235 Calumet Avenue; Samuel Bound, 3127 Cottage Grove Avenue; Albert McMurry, 3027 Cottage Grove Avenue; Abe Mitchell, 3703 South La Salle Street and Walter McConnor, 538 West 45th Street.

McConnor, who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, is said to have taken a seat which Herbert Douglas, 1637 East 78th Street, offered to a woman passenger.

In the scuffle which ensued, Douglas received a stab from a knife in the hands, it is alleged, of McConnor, and was taken to the South Chicago hospital. The Negroes were held on bonds of $400 to $3,500, pending jury trials.

In May, 1920, the _Tribune_ gave eight inches to an article with the headline: "Race Riot and Labor Riot in New England." The item reported a fight between a Negro waiter and a Harvard student in one of the college dining-halls. To show how trivial the incident was the article said in part:

The trouble began when Mayer (a colored waiter) made a slighting remark to Wilson (a white student) and, grabbing him by the hair struck him in the face. Wilson, in an attempt to defend himself, grabbed a water pitcher, and as he raised it, Mayer drew a revolver and pointed it at Wilson. Immediately the student body was in an uproar and rallied to the defense of Wilson.... The police are searching for Mayer.

The _Daily News_ referred to a "riot" precipitated by a colored chef's remarks. The incident referred to loud talking in the kitchen of a Greek restaurant and the chef's swearing at a cook which was overheard by a woman in the dining-room. She objected, and the police were called. Another such article appeared in the _Tribune_ under the heading: "Women in Riot. White versus Negro in Reformatory." The article told of state troops, local police, and a chaplain having been mobilized to stop a "race riot." The casualties given were one policeman bitten by a girl and several state troopers kicked and scratched.

An instance of undiscriminating news handling appeared in the _Chicago Tribune_ of July 24, 1917. During the race riot in East St. Louis, while the front pages of all the papers were filled with descriptions of the horrors, an article appeared in the fourth column of the first page, along with the East St. Louis riot news. It occupied fourteen inches and bore the heading: "Whites Were Firing at Blacks near Scene of Murder. Four Negroes Jailed after Slaying of Aged Man." Of the fourteen inches, six were given to an account of the murder in Chicago of a saloon-keeper by a Negro in which mobs of Negroes were said to have flourished guns; four inches were given to a totally irrelevant report that two young white girls were chased through Washington Park by a Negro; three inches more to a further account of the first murder, and one inch to a report that a Negro was shot by a policeman.

On the second page was an eleven-inch article with the large headline: "Lawyer Warns Negroes Here to Arm Themselves." Underneath was a five-inch report concerning a Negro held for trial on a girl's story of an attack. Nine inches were given in another article to a warning by Chicago labor leaders that "the influx of blacks" to replace the strikers in the plants was bringing a riot peril to Chicago. Under this article was an account of the freeing of a policeman for killing a Negro; and beneath this an article from Orange, Texas, with the headline: "Negro Shot Down Trying to Escape after Crime." Also on the same page nine inches were devoted to a condemnation of black politics in East St. Louis, and three inches to a minor clash in which a Negro was reported to have drawn a knife when attacked by six white youths. Two inches were given to the account of a clash between Negroes and whites in New York City and seventy-two inches to accounts of the East St. Louis riot.

The emphasis was on the work of the mob and the fact that Negroes were replacing strikers in East St. Louis, and that this was responsible for the riot. Some of the reports of Chicago incidents proved to be inaccurate. It developed that Charles A. Maronde, a saloon-keeper, who was supposed to have been killed by Negroes, his death precipitating a clash between Negroes and white persons, actually died of heart failure. There was no connection and no apparent reason for inserting the incident of the white girls being chased through the park by a Negro. This report was hearsay and was joined to the article in this manner: "About the time the Negroes were being fired upon, two young white girls were being chased by a Negro through Washington Park."

The item concerning the Negro held for trial on the charge of a white that he had attacked her, turned out to be the imaginings of a young girl, which involved a forty-three-year-old Negro, whose character had never before been questioned, and who, as the facts developed, was entirely innocent. Linked up in this article was an account of disciplining in the county jail; 150 prisoners had been locked in their cells and placed on bread and water because they were found shooting craps in the "bull pen."

_Flippant treatment and ridicule of Negroes._--The "human-interest" newspaper story is undoubtedly one of the most effective means of gaining public attention. But it presents a single incident from which the reader is likely to apply characteristics vividly set forth concerning an individual to the group of which the individual is a member. It therefore leads to unfair judgments of the group when the characteristics are not representative of the group, even if they are representative of the individuals. It may be written with genuine humor and with the best of intentions, or perhaps only with thoughtlessness of the effect. But that does not obviate the sense of injury when the group involved feels itself misrepresented and held up to ridicule.

Newspaper flippancy concerning Negroes has found a sensitive spot among members of the race. Often there are suggestions and exaggerated descriptions that can be characterized as nothing else than ridicule. Negroes especially resent misrepresentation of Negro weddings, since no accounts are given by white newspapers of more representative weddings.

A NEGRO WEDDING

"Yassah, I'se tuh git hitched up. I'se heighty-six and Emily's sixty-nine, but we done got license.

"Yassah, I am de man you is huntin'. Yes, suh, I'se agwine to git hitched with Emily Holland. De carryings-on are agwine to come off tomorrow night. Emily done got lonely like and I'se getting no 'count.

"I was in the wah wid de march to de sea, and I got fo' minie balls. One ob em took two ob my toes. I'se a-carrying de otha ball in my frame. Uncle Sam done provided fo me now wid a pension. It am enuf fo me an' Emily. It ain't too much, cause in de days ob de wah I done lay in trenches and fit all night in cold water."

BULLET IN HIS LAIGS

"I knowed how to bust bad coons in de army and I was p'moted to sahgent in Co. E, 60th Reg., U.S.A. Now comes the achings of bullets in my laigs and chest and I feel like I cain't walk no mo. Den it am de time when I wants a wife to look at me. Emily say she ain't ready fo to take on no mo 'sponsibility. Den I argufies with her.

"'How comes this heah 'sponsibility talk'? I say.

"'Taint no how come 'bout it,' she says, 'You is a ol' man.'

"'So is you a ol' woman,' I says."

IS YOU OR IS YOU AIN'T?

"Den we jaw aroun' about it for a long time. Yestiddy I say, 'Emily you all hab done been widout a husband fo' nigh onto 22 yeah.' She don't say nothin'. I talks 'bout it some mo', then I says, 'Emily, is you gwine to be my wife or is you ain't?' She says 'Yes' and den we get de license. Now we hab done got de ministah and it am all ready. I'se feelin' kinda sprightly like tonight and unless my misery comes on me thar sho'ly am agwine to be some 'spicious carryings-ons in dis abode tomorrow night" [_Chicago Tribune_, January 11, 1916].

During the war Negroes were as seriously engaged in battle and as freely sacrificing their lives as other soldiers. When deeds of heroism were cabled back to the United States, Negroes at home expected serious reports of the activities of the sons, husbands, and brothers whom they had given up to fight for their country. Exception was taken by them to newspaper treatment of a serious feat as merely ludicrous. For example:

BLACK YANK BAGS HUN; MAJOR WEARS CAPTAIN'S MONOCLE

Paris, Sept. 7 (Delayed). During the recent American advance out of Château Thierry, a Red Cross captain was looking about for suitable hospital sites, when he met an American Negro soldier marching along toward Château Thierry, following close behind a German major. The Negro had transferred his pack from his own back to the back of the German officer, and had also transferred the German major's monocle to his own eye. Thus equipped the black warrior was parading triumphantly down the road. As he passed the Red Cross captain he called out, "I say, look here what dis Niggah done got" [_Chicago Evening Post_].

The following is a news report, with dialect, which was supposed to have been cabled from Paris:

NEGRO STEVEDORE COMING BACK "BY WAY OF NEW OHLEENS"

August 17 (Delayed). George Washington Henry Clay Smith, Negro stevedore at one of the American base ports, expressed the feeling of a large part of the expeditionary force about ocean travel. "When dis heah wah is ovah," he said, "you-all will nevah see me goin' back across dat ole ocean. Ahm not goin' back to United States that away. Ahm goin' back by way of New Ohleens" [_Chicago Evening Post_, September 9, 1918].

"Crap shooting" is ordinarily regarded as the peculiar pastime and passion of Negroes. Popular expectation is fed by newspaper stories of these games, made even more humorous by dialect, and the frequent implications of levity in religious matters. Such stories would probably be enjoyed by Negroes if they did not have the effect of picturing this trait as an exclusively Negro form of gambling.

Or again, the newspaper plays up a supposed superstition of the Negro in such an article as appeared in the _Chicago Tribune_ of January 1, 1920, under the heading "Negroes Driven to Jail in Big Black Hearse." Pseudo-serious newspaper reference was made to Negro street sweepers as the "official chamber maids" of the city in an article in the _Chicago Herald_ of March 31, 1916, headed:

BLACK BIRDS AS WHITE WINGS

Negroes Supplant Sons of Italy as City's Official Chambermaids

Or again, a Negro saves a white man from a mob and is called a "darky" in the report of the incident:

DARKY PASTOR SAVES WHITE AUTOIST FROM NEGRO MOB

Newport News, Va., Oct. 27.--The attempt here today of a mob of Negroes to lynch Isadore Cohen after his automobile had run over a Negro child was frustrated by R. H. Green, a Negro preacher, who fought off the white man's assailants long enough to let him escape in the car. Cohen is held without bond [_Chicago Tribune_, October 28, 1920].

A Chicago colored boy is pictured at the Salvation Army Camp at Glen Ellyn. Under the picture is the title "Rastus." He has been given a piece of watermelon to complete the picture.

JOY SUPREME

"Come here, you Rastus, and git yo' pitcher took t' show how glad you are."

Rastus was glad and Rastus came hither, but he was so glad about going to the Salvation Army Camp yesterday with several hundred boys and girls from the poorer districts that he failed to register the smile his mammy demanded.

The annual camp of the Salvation Army at Glen Ellyn opened in the afternoon. In the morning the first group of children left over the Northwestern Railroad. Practically every nationality was represented [_Chicago Tribune_, July 3, 1920].

Another picture is given in another issue of a little Negro boy at the Juvenile Detention Home. It is headed "Losted," and carries the suggestion of loose family life:

LITTLE PICKANINNY WHO WAITS FATHER AND MOTHER TO CLAIM HIM

Who's lost a little colored boy about four years old? He's at the Juvenile Detention Home. He says his mother is "Mis' Brown" and his father "Mistuh Parsons."

He's got an inexpensive lavalliere for identification, a dime with a hole in it. He keeps the dime on his neck by means of a piece of string that runs through the hole [_Chicago Tribune_].

3. NEWSPAPER POLICY REGARDING NEGRO NEWS

The policy of a newspaper in handling racial news can be better determined by studying its articles and editorials than by asking the editors. In fact, when the editor of the _Tribune_ was asked concerning this matter he referred the Commission to the columns of his paper. It would be difficult to find a definite policy on the race question stated and consistently followed out by any newspaper in all items affecting race issues. Ordinarily when misleading emphasis, misinterpretation, and distortions of fact occur, they are due to the ignorance concerning Negroes which is fairly general among white persons, rather than to any inclination to injure a disadvantaged group of people. Reporters and editors frequently use, doubtless unwittingly, terms unnecessarily irritating to Negroes. Individual notions of relations between whites and Negroes determine the character, color, and emphasis of articles and editorials.

A conference of editors of the white press was held to discuss these matters with the Commission. The white press was represented by Edgar T. Cutter, district superintendent of the Associated Press, W. A. Curley, managing editor of the _Chicago American_, Victor F. Lawson, editor of the _Chicago Daily News_, and Julian Mason, managing editor of the _Chicago Evening Post_. A brief questionnaire was filled out and returned by Joseph M. Patterson, editor of the _Chicago Tribune_.

A. EDITORIAL POLICY

_Chicago American._--The _Chicago American_ had recently adopted a policy of eliminating the racial designation, "Negro" or "colored," unless some special circumstance made the mention of race of particular news value. Said Mr. Curley:

There was a meeting at which newspaper men were gathered together with some representatives of the colored race down in a clubhouse on Grand Boulevard, the Appomattox Club, and we were informed then that there was a feeling among the Negroes that the newspapers emphasized in crime stories particularly the fact that a man was a Negro. Our publisher and I discussed it, and we decided that there was no more reason to emphasize that it was a Negro bandit than that it was an Irish or Jew bandit.

Our general policy has been that we must treat the Negro with the same consideration and tolerance as we give any other nationality. When he had those troubles here before [the riot of July, 1919] we had some editorials to that effect.

Since the date of the meeting mentioned, the _American_ has consistently maintained this policy. Its editorials prior to that time had shown a spirit of tolerance and fairness. During the riot especially it published editorials designed to aid in the restoration of order.[89] It published perhaps the strongest of local newspaper editorials condemning the bombing of Negro homes.

_Chicago Daily News._--The _Chicago Daily News_ in its reference to Negroes used the expression "colored." Although it had sometimes published articles which were not representative, it had often given space and prominence to news concerning Negroes which presented them in a more favorable light. This was clearly manifested during the world-war. Its interest in a serious treatment of Negro affairs was shown in two special series of articles, the first by Junius B. Wood, the second by Carl Sandburg, both published later as booklets. These articles were well received and gave a necessary balance to the more usual publication of stories involving Negroes only in crimes. In a special column of the _Daily News_, "The Human Side of Things," many articles have been published relating to efforts for social welfare among Negroes.

Concerning the use of the racial designation in reporting crimes, Mr. Lawson explained that he considered it appropriate to mention race, as, for example, in giving an account of a lynching or the bombing of a Negro home. The racial designation, he believed, gave significance to the article. This consideration, he believed, balanced references in other cases. He said:

The newspaper point of view is to use the national, or professional, or racial distinction, the word giving the distinction, wherever it interprets the news that is being printed. There are some places where the character of the thing that is being told naturally suggests the name Negro, or the word Presbyterian, or Jew or Gentile or German or English, or Irish, and the newspaper never stops to suppress that. On the contrary it puts it in as interpreting fully the character of the news that is being told.

Concerning news items unnecessarily provoking race antagonism, as, for example, reports of speeches by a candidate for governor of Illinois on "White Supremacy," he thought that most of the papers as well as his own "played it down."

The statements of Mr. Lawson on other questions of policy are quoted:

_Mr. Lawson_: We regard items describing constructive work by Negroes or items indicating their advancement as better news than articles indicating degradation or criminality on their part. The _Daily News_ endeavors to appeal to all readers alike. Instructions in news handling comprehend the employment of fairness, conservatism, and candor; special instructions based on these principles are issued to cover special cases. The terms "darky," "nigger," "coon," "shine," "wench," and "negress" are not employed by members of the staff in writing news articles and are rarely admitted to any class of matter. The style of the _Daily News_ for many years has been to speak of the Negro as a colored man and the Negroes as colored people. When "Negro" is used it is rarely capitalized.

_Commissioner_: Is it objectionable?

_Mr. Lawson_: No, simply the style of the paper; typographic styles of paper vary. Some papers capitalize more than others. Some papers always spell the word "Bible" with a capital _B_. We don't. It simply follows the style of the paper. Dialects are very seldom employed in the news stories. They are not used to ridicule any race or nationality. The _Daily News_ recognizes the importance and delicacy of the race problems in Chicago in its news columns as elsewhere in the paper. It aims to assist constructive movements, eliminate sensationalism, and quiet prejudice, while at the same time presenting truthfully such facts as may be of interest and proper to the reading public as a whole. I think, perhaps, I ought to emphasize that last thought to this extent: the newspaper impulse is to print the news, that is the controlling, dominating purpose of the newspaper mind, to print the news. But circumstances will at times suggest some particular expression of that impulse. Many times, as Mr. Curley told you, we don't print the news, we suppress it in the public interest.

_Chairman_: But that is a difficult self-control.

_Mr. Lawson_: Yes, I think so. To err is human, to print the news is the natural impulse of newspaper people, but we do recognize--I know all newspapers recognize--a very definite responsibility that, in so far as it lies within a reasonable discretion and a reasonable ability to act, they must consider always the general public interest in any grave matter. I think Mr. ---- struck a very important interpretative status when he said he didn't like to have the designation of the race in any respect used as an expression of ridicule. Of course, that goes without saying. No newspaper that is wise, let alone a newspaper that is fair, will deliberately inflict derision on any class of its readers. It is a foolish thing to do aside from anything else, and anything that would seem to suggest a deliberate intent to bring the Negro race into derision, every man in the room would resent and properly. But I think, as I said before, that at times a purpose of derision is imagined when there hasn't been any. I think that is true and I don't think that it is surprising. If I were a member of a race that was fighting its way all the time toward a square deal and a fair show, I presume I'd be supersensitive about some things.

_Herald-Examiner._--The _Herald-Examiner's_ principal handling of the race issue has been through the presentation of news items. The term of designation employed is "Negro." On several occasions the _Herald-Examiner_ has made commendable effort to show in its columns that a friendly spirit exists between the two races. Most notable of these efforts was the picture of whites and Negroes fraternizing in an effort to restore order immediately after the "Abyssinian affair," in which two white persons were killed and several Negroes, including a Negro policeman, were injured. Some of its editorials on the Negro question were headed:

NEGRO EDUCATION Education the Best Solvent for the Negro Problem (Based on the Report of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States)

DISLOYALTY AND LYNCHING East St. Louis Massacres Have Not Been Properly Published. A Gulf Separates Governor Lowden's Denunciation of the Riot and the Treatment Accorded Slayers

THE BLACK MAN STOOD PAT On the Loyalty of Negroes

NO "PATRIOTIC" MOBS A Condemnation of Mob Violence in Illinois

On the other hand, some of the most emphasized misrepresentations of Negroes have appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_, as, for example, the story of the "Negro revolt,"[90] and various riot articles.

_Chicago Tribune._--The _Chicago Tribune_ stated its policy of handling Negro news to be one of "fair dealing and recognition of the difficulties." The managing editor stated that the _Tribune_ used dialect in cases of kindly human-interest stories, refrained from the use of terms like "darky," "coon," "Negroes," etc., and employed the term Negro, capitalizing the _N_. The last practice was begun at the instance of Negro leaders. During the threatened race riot the _Tribune_ sought the aid of leading Negro newspapers in Chicago. There were no definite instructions regarding the handling of Negro news matter. The difficulties in race relations recognized by the editors of the _Tribune_ are to be found in the following editorials:

WHITE AND BLACK IN CHICAGO

It is possible for whites and Negroes to live in peace in Chicago. They have done so for years, in normal conditions and in normal times. They have managed to live without much prejudice. There has been good feeling. The Negro has had political equality. There has been an attempt to give him a fair representation in public affairs and not to resent his presence there.

We admit frankly that if political equality had meant the election of Negro mayors, judges, and a majority of Negroes in the city council the whites would not have tolerated it. We do not believe that the whites of Chicago would be any different from the whites of the South in this respect....

We have been able to extend the essentials of citizenship to the Negroes freely because the whites are dominant in numbers. All the essentials are in the possession of the Negro. He is not Jim-Crowed by law. A line is drawn by usage. The law in fact forbids what actually is done. It is a futile law because it encounters instinct.

Legally a Negro has right to service anywhere the public generally is served. He does not get it. Wisely he does not ask for it. There has been an illegal, non-legal, or extra-legal adjustment founded upon common sense which has worked in the past, and it will work in the future.

The fact is that so long as this city is dominated by whites, whether because of their numbers without force or by their force if they were in the minority, there will be limitations placed upon the black people. They will be limitations which will not work an injustice to the black people, who have a right to their own development.

There is no objection to economic equality. There is a decided objection to the exploitation of black labor. During the war many Negroes were brought from the South. Thousands of them went into the Stock Yards. The war shut off the supply of common labor. The South supplied the want.

Thus the population of blacks doubled in war times. Concerns which brought the Negro here to exploit him damaged the community by throwing a race question upon it. Concerns which needed the Negro and put him upon an equal basis with the whites, without importing cheap labor to take the jobs of whites, were legitimately supplying their need for labor.

The race issue in California grew out of the fact that the Japanese were cutting under the price of white labor. That will produce race troubles as quickly as anything.

Concerns may have been derelict in not considering the housing problem. The imported Negroes could not live in the streets or vacant lots. They had to get under roofs, and in getting under roof they suddenly established new contact with white neighborhoods.

In this change there was bound to be trouble unless precautions were taken. In the present case there is no evidence of precaution and some of provocation. It is possible for that question to adjust itself. Such realty movements cannot take place without friction, but the friction need not lead to riots. The city is steadily shifting in residential character. Some of the people affected by the shifts do not like it, but in normal times the readjustment is not disturbing to the community. A spread of factories may change the character of a section. A spread of Negroes may do the same thing.

A writer once summed up the Negro question by saying, "The North has the principles and the South has the Negroes." We are coming to have the Negroes, and we want to keep the principles so far as they are applicable.

Industrial radicalism, expressed in the I.W.W. propaganda among the Negroes, will not help us to keep them. Thuggery will not help us to keep them. A rebellion by the Negroes against facts which exist and will persist will not help us to keep them, but we are confident that the situation in Chicago is susceptible of being handled in the fashion it always has been handled.

UNSETTLING THE RACE PROBLEM

... Regardless of what may be considered the justice of the claims of the races, the fact undeniably is that white and black will not mix in quantity. For this reason--the reason reached by the jury--the remedy seems obvious: there must be a plane upon which the races can live socially distinct but industrially co-operative.

We are not disposed to think that the mass of the Negroes want social equality in the full sense of the term. The _Tribune_ has had many intelligently composed letters from Negroes disclaiming any such desire. We believe the Negroes want an opportunity to develop their own society. If this is true there ought not be widespread objection to social segregation, directed by themselves and upon the theory of wholesome living conditions.

But against what we think is an inherent disregard for exact social equality there is appearing a very insidious propaganda among the Negroes. Whether it is being circulated as a radical irritant calculated to disturb political conditions or merely is the parlor philosophy of eager sociological transcendentalists, there is no means of determining.

The propaganda urging agitation for social equality may have every support under the law and under what ought to be human justice, but while fortified by what ought to be, it flies in the face of what is....

The blacks form less than 10 per cent of the population of the United States. They have less than one-tenth of a ghost of a show if the relations between white and black become bitterly hostile. The average black man and the average white man get along fairly well. Unless something happens to arouse their race prejudices and instincts they live by tolerance which may not be a solution of race difficulties, but it is a method of life and it is practical.

There is plenty of evidence just now that something is raising the race question. There is evidence, it is said, to support the story that agents had played on the imagination and ignorance of Negroes in Arkansas inciting them to arise against the whites and take their lands. Agitators have tried to excite the blacks. Some misguided sentimentalists have tried to organize whites and blacks for the compulsory recognition of social equality--a propaganda which is even more vicious than the red propaganda. There are numerous elements and factors of disorder, and the consequences already have been bad....

The position of the Negro is not a preferred one in American society. The Negro is at an economic disadvantage. He is needed in the South and has been brought into the North to meet labor emergencies, but he does not have an open field of work. These disadvantages cannot be removed by discussing them. They exist in race instincts and, along with the other disadvantages which the Negro meets, arise from causes not at the control of the reasoning faculties.

No sensible person imagines that he knows what to do about the race problem because he does not know a method of eradicating race instincts, and he would not want to eradicate them if he knew how. A person may know what will surely happen if the race instincts become inflamed and not have the slightest idea how to prevent contact from flaming into violent action.

We know that if it comes to violence the blacks will get the worst of it. We know that the situation as it exists now has many possibilities of danger. Both North and South have had enough violence. Both may have more. Communities may not be able to stop agitation or effectively to counteract it, but they can see that the processes of law are applied with severity.

Law strong enough to make the races live in peace will allow them to find their own ways of living in the same communities.

B. HANDLING OF NEGRO NEWS

_Chicago Evening Post._--The _Post_ is an afternoon paper. It does not carry a large amount of news on racial matters. The policy of this paper was thus expressed by the managing editor, Mr. Julian Mason:

We have always checked information very carefully because we have had a very close Negro sympathy for years and because we have had editorial writers who have had special contacts. For instance, during the race riots we were constantly in communication with a young Negro, Mr. Jackson, a Y.M.C.A. man, a fine man. We checked up with him every single day. We used to call up Mr. Barnett and some of the others.

We use the word "Negro" and the Negro dialect in what you call feature stories. I don't know why we should deprive American life of that flavor. We also use the word "darky" once in a while in a humorous sense, but not in news items.

_The Associated Press._--Mr. Edgar T. Cutter, district manager, Western District, the Associated Press, said in his testimony before the Commission:

The Associated Press is a non-money-making, non-sectarian, non-political organization. It is made up of over 1,260 daily papers. It is a mutual organization, and it gets its news by an exchange among the members. Aside from that, in big cities like Chicago we have our own bureaus which collect news in certain events. In Chicago the Associated Press gets its news from the five daily papers that are members, and from the city news bureau. This city news bureau, by the way, is kept up by the Chicago papers and therefore is supervised by them and carries the same class of news. Now on a big story such as the race riots, the Associated Press got its news from all these sources, and it also sent a staff man who was experienced in general newspaper work to the South to investigate for himself so we should get the absolute facts. The Associated Press makes a practice of covering only news of general interest, and it has made its reputation on the covering of facts. It never handles editorials, nor does it ever make a comment on any news. If a piece of news is not of general interest, at least throughout the state, it doesn't attempt to handle it. It confines itself to news that is of general interest throughout the country, and therefore it covers these matters very briefly.

_Question_: Do you personally in your representative capacity handle any of the news from the southern states?

_Mr. Cutter_: Only as it passes through here. Each district passes on its own news, but we verify it if it ever appears to be incorrect. But any item that reflects upon any person or upon any organization, even if we get it from our own newspapers, is first checked up to its source, if that is at all possible, and then if there is a matter of controversy and only one side has been stated, we always try to get a statement from the other side, from some head official. In case of Negro news, we have many times had as our representatives leading Negroes. Negro organizations have come into our office and we have solicited news from them....

In cases of lynchings and such things from the South, the Associated Press often has used twenty-five or fifty words and just let it pass with the mere fact. Where we have covered crime in full, big cases, very often it has been upon the demand of the members of the organizations.

News concerning Negroes is handled just the same as any news of any nationality. We use the words, "Negro" and "colored." And it is always the desire of the Associated Press and the attempt of the Associated Press not only not to injure any person but to show the proper respect to all religions, races, and all classes of society. It makes no difference whether we would capitalize the word "Negro" or not. Our copy goes to the newspaper and, as Mr. Lawson says, they follow their own ideas in that....

In all of our services we attempt to suppress news that we think might stir up race relations involving Japanese, Mexicans, Negroes, or any others, and we follow the lead of newspapers.

_Question_: What is the extent to which news from these members of the Associated Press is verified when it comes from regions or localities where there may be prejudice?

_Mr. Cutter_: Wherever there is any question of the news or wherever there are two sides, as in the labor question, we send a staff man out from headquarters who makes his reputation and that of the Associated Press upon covering both sides of the story equally. He knows very readily that if he doesn't cover that with thorough fairness, he is going to hear from it later from one side or the other.

_Chicago American._--Mr. William H. Curley, managing editor of the _Chicago American_, gave the following information:

Of course as to accuracy, we check that up the same as we do any item. We find out where the item came from; if it is a police item we find out who is responsible for it and send reporters immediately to cover it and rely upon them for accuracy regarding the report.

_Question_: Let me ask whether you do that with the same care and precision that you do in the case of a white man that is involved.

_Mr. Curley_: Absolutely.

_Question_: That is no insinuation against the newspapers, but, for instance, it is said that in the courts, if a man is a colored man he doesn't have the same thoughtful care that a man has if he is a white man.

_Mr. Curley_: A good many items, of course, come from the City Press that supplies all the newspapers. If it is a matter that is trivial, of course a newspaper won't send a special reporter but relies upon the City Press for accuracy. In a crime story we eliminate the word "Negro" unless there is some reason for it. We don't use any of the terms, "darky," "nigger," "coon," "shine," "wench," or "negress."

_Question_: Do you get news unsolicited regarding Negroes any more than other persons?

_Mr. Curley_: We don't take any news that comes in over the telephone without checking it.

_Question_: Regarding items coming from the South, is there any particular care or checking used to see whether they are true stories, trustworthy or not?

_Mr. Curley_: You have to take that as it comes because that is your news service. In other words, they are supposed to use their care down there the same as we do here. We have to rely on that.

_Chicago Daily News._--

_Mr. Lawson_: Sources of information are the same as in the case of other news, and in addition matter originally in Negroes' own publications, bulletins of welfare organizations, etc. Generally speaking, it may be said that more news on this subject comes from outside sources such as telephone tips and correspondence than from members of the staff. Perhaps 10 per cent comes from the Associated Press. This is an arbitrary estimate. The same methods are used to determine the accuracy of news concerning the Negroes that are used under other circumstances. The _Daily News_ does not publish any news except after determining its accuracy to the best of its ability. No special reporter may be said to be assigned to news of Negroes, but owing to his special study of the conditions in Chicago, however, Carl Sandburg is on occasion called into consultation or assigned a topic for investigation. I may say that years ago the Negro poet Dunbar was a reporter on the _News_.

Negro news is received from the Associated Press in the same manner as other news. It is not often re-written, and then only when the subject-matter is local to Chicago. Headlines are written to conform to the text of the article. The _Daily News_ is in touch with very reliable and well-informed Negroes in whom, because of long experience, it has confidence. It obtains information from them and seeks their viewpoint on serious matters. We regard items describing constructive work by the Negroes or items indicating their advancement as better news than articles indicating degradation or criminality on their part. The _Daily News_ endeavors to appeal to all readers alike.

_Chicago Tribune._--The following is taken from the replies in the questionnaire returned by Mr. Joseph M. Patterson, editor of the _Chicago Tribune_:

The sources of Negro news are the same as sources of other news. Some comes from the staff; some from the City News Bureau. Some of the local news concerning Negroes comes from reporters. No news of any consequence is received by telephone or correspondence. The Associated Press treats it on the same basis as other news. To insure accuracy the usual methods of inquiry are employed. However, most of this news comes from responsible news bureaus. Articles are re-written but only for condensation. During the threatened race riot the aid of leading Negro newspapers was sought to check information on serious matters. Each item is judged on its merits.

4. THE NEGRO PRESS

Among the considerations which have been urged by Negroes as making necessary the establishment of the Negro press are:

1. The indifference of white newspapers to the Negro group, their emphasis on the unfortunately spectacular, and the consequent loss of items of interest among Negroes throughout the country.

2. 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 destiny. There has never been sufficient capital for the adequate development of the Negro press. The purpose, however, has been served of collecting items of interest from all sections of the country, although they lack the facilities of so efficient an agency as the Associated Press.

For a time practically all of the northern Negro newspapers fell under the condemnation of the United States Attorney-General's office.[91] They were accused of radicalism and incitation to violence. Frequent criticisms of the Negro press declare it dangerous to the interests of cordial race relations. Ex-President Taft in the _Philadelphia Ledger_ said: "The editors of the colored press should be reasoned with to cease publishing articles, however true, having inciting effect."

Commenting on criticisms of this kind, Isaac Fisher, editor of the _Fisk University News_, said:

Since the Washington and Chicago riots, the colored newspapers have been bitterly arraigned in some quarters for being responsible for race hatred. But the singular part of the indictment is that these papers are not accused of "falsifying" the record, but of stating the grounds of the Negro's resentment; and there is growing up a school of thought which argues that the colored papers should refrain from publishing as news any facts, even though true, which serve to increase the bitterness of the colored people against the white people. The comments made by those who charge the Negro press with being the cause of race antagonism are unanimous in interpreting as "incendiary" all statements of facts whose bare recital makes the Negro discontented with present conditions.

It should also be noted that the charge of inciting to race hatred is laid against the Negro press specifically for the period which has followed the end of the late war; whereas the charge of inciting white people to wrath against the Negro is an old one which has been repeated again and again during the past thirty years.

But, while the Negro press is not as old as the white press and cannot possibly be charged with having "been on the job" quite so long, it is true, nevertheless, that some of its members have cast all prudence to the winds since the signing of the armistice, and have entered a mad race with the most "yellow" of yellow white journals in vitriolic race attacks, in this case upon all white people, in the attempt to meet the "yellow" white press more than half way.

Whatever the relative degree of culpability, "yellow" journalism is as reprehensible when supported by a part of the Negro press as it is when upheld by a part of the white press. The Negro might just as well learn now the lesson which the white man must learn if he would save the civilization which he has been laboring so long to perfect, i.e., that one's color and race do not excuse wrongdoing. If it is wrong for a white newspaper to make white people hate colored people, how can it be right for a Negro newspaper to make colored people hate white people?

A. CLASSIFICATION OF ARTICLES

The news items in Negro papers show a bias in reporting the opposite of that of many white papers. They emphasize the Negro's view, frequently to the point of distorting fact. If anything, they might be said to provide a compensatory interpretation of the news. The three Negro newspapers selected for study mentioned and briefly characterized in the foregoing pages will show a classification of news items appearing during a forty-week period.

In addition to general news items concerning Negroes, the _Defender_ gave one page to sporting news, one page to theatrical news, two pages to personal news items sent in by correspondents in other cities, and one page to local personal items. On its editorial page two and one-half columns each week were devoted to health articles by Dr. Wilberforce Williams.

The _Whip_ gave one page to sports, one to theatrical news and organization articles, one to out-of-town personal news items and one to local personal items. Its editorial page devoted one column to "Legal Hints to Women," one-half column to "Health Hints," one column to "Legal Catechism," and two columns to editorials from other papers.

The _Searchlight_ gave one page to theatrical, local personal news, and church notes. The editorial page contained two half-columns each week by "The Man about Town."

TABLE XXXIII

=============================================================== |"DEFENDER"| "WHIP" |"SEARCHLIGHT" SUBJECTS +----------+----------+------------- | Local Articles ---------------------------+----------+----------+------------- Crime | 53 | 46 | 42 Racial clashes | 6 | -- | 1 Education | 2 | 9 | 11 Business | 4 | 26 | 14 General news not involving | | | race issues | 5 | 66 | 65 Vice | 14 | 8 | 10 Bombing | 5 | 10 | 10 Politics | 26 | 60 | 61 Social work | 6 | 9 | 17 Public meetings | 2 | 16 | 13 Religion | 7 | 18 | 34 Science | 2 | 5 | 4 Negro progress | 2 | -- | 17 Negro soldiers | -- | 6 | -- Courts | 4 | 24 | 2 Discrimination | 3 | 9 | 1 Race contacts | -- | -- | -- Lynchings | -- | -- | -- Industrial relations | 8 | 10 | 1 Philanthropy | -- | 2 | -- Personal | 9 | -- | 34 Jim Crow | 1 | 1 | 3 General local welfare | 2 | 11 | 3 Art | -- | 3 | 1 General race relations | -- | 22 | 1 +----------+----------+------------- | Local Space +----------+----------+------------- Crime | 586 | 497 | 669 Racial clashes | 42 | 156 | 16 Education | 21 | 52 | 46 Discrimination | 23 | 62 | 101 Business | 58 | 199 | 187 General news not involving | | | race issues | 23 | 555 | 441 Vice | 112 | 89 | 201 Bombing | 50 | 121 | 98 Politics | 512 | 741 | 893 Social work | 24 | 41 | 110 Public meetings | 84 | 130 | 66 Religion | 59 | 238 | 257 Science | 59 | 30 | 46 Negro soldiers | -- | 57 | 48 Courts | 19 | 130 | 9 Race contacts | -- | 116 | -- Industrial relations | 72 | 400 | 13 Philanthropy | -- | -- | -- Personal | 113 | 45 | 176 Jim Crow | 6 | 8 | 98 Art | -- | 12 | 2 General local welfare | 35 | 78 | 13 General race relations | -- | 273 | 156 South | 7 | 105 | 152 Africa | 4 | -- | -- Migration | -- | -- | -- +----------+----------+------------- | Out-of-Town Articles ---------------------------+----------+----------+------------- Crime | 282 | 152 | 32 Racial clashes | 19 | 18 | 4 Education | 54 | 42 | 74 Business | 31 | 10 | 14 General news not involving | | | race issues | 81 | 104 | 138 Vice | 31 | 3 | -- Bombing | -- | -- | 2 Politics | 27 | 46 | 85 Social work | 12 | 6 | 42 Public meetings | 14 | 12 | 8 Religion | 36 | 23 | -- Science | -- | 4 | -- Negro progress | 28 | -- | 40 Negro soldiers | 11 | 11 | 33 Courts | 15 | 24 | 15 Discrimination | 30 | 21 | 10 Race contacts | 9 | 3 | 3 Lynchings | 32 | 54 | 32 Industrial relations | 8 | 16 | 22 Philanthropy | 11 | 4 | 2 Personal | 105 | 9 | 5 Jim Crow | 6 | 6 | 2 Art | 1 | 7 | 5 General race relations | 15 | 60 | 44 South | 38 | 50 | 5 Africa | 1 | 12 | 4 Migration | 2 | 3 | 5 +----------+----------+------------- | Out-of-Town Space +----------+----------+------------- Crime | 1,082 | 833 | 191 Racial clashes | 136 | 148 | 43 Education | 174 | 223 | 421 Business | 112 | 40 | 73 General news not involving | | | race issues | 216 | 434 | 538 Vice | 154 | 7 | -- Bombing | -- | -- | 5 Politics | 132 | 233 | 365 Social work | 40 | 41 | 164 Public meetings | 103 | 76 | 35 Negro progress | 82 | 244 | 198 Soldiers | 50 | 46 | 153 Courts | 120 | 108 | 66 Discrimination | 145 | 13 | 49 Race contacts | 44 | 32 | 13 Lynchings | 239 | 407 | 215 Industrial relations | 29 | 67 | 119 Philanthropy | 32 | 21 | 11 Personal | 213 | 48 | 20 Jim Crow | 36 | 21 | 13 Art | 2 | 22 | 19 General race relations | 124 | 382 | 308 South | 202 | 42 | 69 Africa | 21 | 55 | 18 Migration | 6 | 8 | 26 ---------------------------+----------+----------+------------

NOTE.--A much smaller period for study for Negro papers is necessary since practically all items appearing contain some reference to race.

TABLE XXXIV

===========================+=============+=============+============== | "DEFENDER" | "WHIP" |"SEARCHLIGHT" SUBJECTS +-------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------ |Article|Space|Article|Space|Article|Space ---------------------------+-------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------ General race relations | 12 | 137 | 39 | 525 | 53 | 868 Propaganda | 3 | 60 | 3 | 65 | 1 | 6 Constructive suggestions | 11 | 168 | 15 | 306 | 5 | 92 Criticism of leaders | 3 | 30 | 10 | 185 | 5 | 31 Criticisms of white | | | | | | persons or organizations | 6 | 101 | 6 | 83 | 4 | 59 Political propaganda | 30 | 398 | 10 | 154 | 17 | 251 Discrimination | 7 | 65 | -- | -- | 5 | 36 Industry | 5 | 39 | 4 | 65 | 6 | 39 Education | -- | -- | 3 | 35 | 5 | 53 South | 5 | 68 | 5 | 96 | 6 | 52 Negro progress | 5 | 57 | 9 | 265 | 14 | 111 General news, etc. | 3 | 42 | 12 | 174 | 9 | 83 Housing | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 6 Miscellaneous | 3 | 39 | -- | -- | -- | -- Provoked by incidents | | | | | | inimicable to Negroes | 1 | 9 | 1 | 15 | -- | -- ---------------------------+-------+-----+-------+-----+-------+------

_Crime publicity._--Sensational news was featured in each of the papers, especially cases in which whites and Negroes were involved. The intention appeared to be to present the Negro's side of the story. A measurement of news interest on different types of crime articles is possible in Table XXXV with space in inches.

TABLE XXXV

LOCAL AND OUT-OF-TOWN CRIMES COMBINED

=============+==============+==============+==============+=============== | CRIMES | CRIMES | CRIMES | CRIMES | INVOLVING | INVOLVING | INVOLVING | INVOLVING | ONLY NEGROES | NEGRO V. | WHITES V. | ONLY WHITES NEGRO | | WHITE | NEGROES | NEWSPAPERS +--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+------ | No. of |Space| No. of |Space| No. of |Space| No. of |Space |Articles| |Articles| |Articles| |Articles| -------------+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+------ _Defender_ | 233 |1,032| 90 | 467| 55 | 260| 4 | 31 _Whip_ | 75 | 495| 70 | 440| 44 | 350| 8 | 44 _Searchlight_| 26 | 121| 37 | 440| 11 | 67| 1 | 2 -------------+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+------

The method of presentation of articles revealed the strongest characteristic of Negro journalism. In this connection a random selection of headlines is interesting:

CRIMES INVOLVING WHITE ASSAILANTS AND NEGRO VICTIMS

"Free White Woman Who Killed Attorney" "Threatens Mother and Babes with Axe" "Bowman Milk Driver Brutally Assaults Woman" "Crime of Postmaster Starts Serious Trouble" "Commits Suicide to Escape Mob" "Baby Girl Assaulted by White Farm Hand" "Maid Is Robbed by White 'Iceman'" "Stepped on Man's Foot in Street Car; Shot" "Wouldn't Say 'Mister'; Is Beaten to Death" "Kills White Man for Girl's Honor" "Convict White Man on Rape Charge" "Protects Wife's Honor; Slain by Land-Owner" "White Tenants Kick on Living in Same Building with Owner" "White Woman Confesses Lies on Colored Men" "Kills Negro Minister for Stepping on His Foot" "White Confectioner Arrested for Refusing to Serve Trotter" "To Pay $750 for Attack on Negro Woman" "White Girl Robs Father's Bank; Elopes with Negro Taken in Rooming House; Half of Stolen Wealth Recovered" "Two Boys Shot; Crowd Blames White Man"

CRIMES INVOLVING NEGRO ASSAILANTS AND WHITE VICTIMS

"Laundryman Stabbed in Controversy over Price" "Boy Pupil Rebels at Scolding; Shoots Teacher" "Slayer Captured, Tried, Hanged, in 24 Hours" "Quarrel over Price of Cotton; Farmer Is Shot" "Hold Three for Murder of White Infantryman" "Haunted by Man's Face He Killed; Surrenders"

CRIMES INVOLVING ONLY NEGROES

"Woman Who Took a Life to Die Herself" "Mother Kills Self and Babe with Gas" "Wife Slayer Must Serve 20-Year Term" "Raids on Homes Net Pullman Goods" "Woman Dynamites Jail to Free Her Lover" "Bullet Strikes Brass Chain, Man's Life Saved" "Girl to Die on Gallows; Slew Rival" "Cost Girl Her Life to Stop Love Affair"

Definite differences of news value were noted, between articles appearing in Negro papers and those in white papers on the same topics. The items, for the most part, carried a specific appeal. Where the item was of general interest and appeared in both white and Negro papers, the facts usually corresponded.

The difference again lies in emphasis and prominence. Headlines for the same news, as shown in white and Negro papers, follow:

WHITE NEWSPAPERS NEGRO NEWSPAPERS

"Jim Crow Law Is Upheld by "Highest Court Upholds Jim Crow Law. U.S. High Court" Separate Cars for White and Colored [_Chicago Tribune_, People Declared Legal in Kentucky" April 20, 1920] [_Chicago Searchlight_, April 24, 1920]

"Miscegnation is O.K.'d in New "Morris Gets Civil Rights into Constitution. Negroes Given Constitution. Victory for Race Won All the Rights of Whites" at Springfield" [_Chicago Tribune_, [_Chicago Whip_, Nov. 6, 1920] July 10, 1920]

"Phillips High School for "Jim-Crow School Scheme Exposes Colored Pupils, Principal Attempt to Inaugurate Separate Suggests" Schools in Chicago--Discovered [_Chicago Tribune_, and Opposed" March 8, 1920] [_Chicago Searchlight_, July 31, 1920]

"Accuse Perrine of Color Line Ruling. Principal of Wendell Phillips Openly Attacked by Public Who Saw Children Jim Crowed at Commencement; Ask His Removal; Ministers Feared as Betrayers" [_Chicago Defender_, July 3, 1920]

_Group control._--Although the Negro population does not rely upon the Negro press for authentic general news it does rely upon it for news concerning Negroes. The _Chicago Whip_ devotes two columns of the paper to a section called "Under the Lash of the Whip," the "You Know 'Em, Editor," and "Nosey Knows." Persons who become offensive to the principles supported by the _Whip_ are put "Under the Lash." "Nosey Knows" and the "You Know 'Em, Editor" attempt to hold individual conduct of Negroes to conventional standards by the threat of semi-publicity, for example:

You know those new "loop hounds." I know them because they go to the loop for the purpose of visiting--no object of buying anything. Well, tell them it's alright to go to the loop, but they don't have to attract everybody's attention for blocks around with their loud talk, using their ignorant, non-sensical expressions. And should they get hungry while down there and feel like having lunch, don't stand outside the door of a restaurant with a surprised look on their faces--just tell them to walk right in, in an orderly and sensible manner and order what they want. They don't have to slip in like thieves.

You know the restaurants where those household insects known as flies are very prevalent. I know you know them, because they are all along State Street, Thirty-first and Thirty-fifth. Well, if you don't mind, kindly tell some of those proprietors that there is a way of ridding their places of such nuisances.

You probably don't know that lady who resides in a prominent building in the vicinity of Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue, and who tried to enveigle a young girl on the street car to her flat by telling her that she could meet some high class doctors and lawyers there. Well, you may not know her now, but if you watch the columns of the _Whip_ you will know her because she is gradually working her way to the penitentiary by the route of the seduction law. Everybody will know her then.

The _Searchlight_ carries a column by "The Man about Town" which is similar in character. Two examples of its criticism of Negro conduct were:

The gang that hangs around the "pillars of knowledge" in the county building every day at noon is becoming so obnoxious that they are attracting the attention of everybody who enters the building.

Politicians from every section of the city crowd there and shoot off their "hot air" in a loud tone of voice. They seem to think that the future of the country depends on what they say or do.

They have become so bold in their actions they have begun to stop some of our race women and engage them in conversation around that historic spot.

Now boys, cut out that "rough stuff" and take a walk around the block at noon and let the fresh air blow on your beautiful carcass; if you don't the sheriff will ask you to do so, or he may take some of you fellows to the North Side. Don't make yourself a nuisance around the city hall and county building. Hear me, boys.

Another thing that is very disgusting is the arrogance of the girl waitresses in some of these race restaurants. Instead of striving to please the patrons they act as though they were doing you a personal favor to serve you, and when you are through with your meal you must thank them for so doing and leave a piece of money at the cash stand for them. If you don't do that the very next time you go into that restaurant the waiter will not want to wait on you. The poor proprietor of the place, if he or she is one of the "brothers" or "sisters," is almost helpless in the matter because if he opens his mouth to one of these so-called waitresses about the mistreatment of their guests he is minus a waiter. Go down in the loop and see how the other folks attend to business and treat patrons. Awake, folks, from your slumber; you are fast asleep. Do you hear me?

A fight on vice in the Second Ward was begun by the _Searchlight_ and finally given strong emphasis by the local daily papers.

B. NEGRO NEWSPAPER POLICY

Although Negroes for their general news depend upon the white press, with its superior facilities, they look to the Negro press for full and specific news covering the activities of Negroes. The editorial columns, as well as the arrangement of news items and writing of headlines, are aimed at building up the morale of the Negro group. Frequently an attempt is made to get these papers into the hands of whites to acquaint them with the Negro's point of view.

A conference was held by the Commission with several Negro newspaper men. The Negro press was represented by R. S. Abbott, editor and publisher of the _Chicago Defender_; Nahum D. Brascher, editor-in-chief, and Claude Barnett, director of the Associated Negro Press; Willis N. Huggins, editor of the _Upreach Magazine_; and R. E. Parker, editor of the _Chicago Advocate_.

Mr. Brascher, of the Associated Negro Press, said:

The colored newspapers have recently gotten up to the point where most of us are proud to have them seen in the hands of our white friends and it is only through them that they can really get our viewpoint. We cannot hope to have the daily newspapers give our viewpoint and the aspirations and struggles that we are making, and some of the things that we are suffering. I am very much interested in having the editorial feeling of the newspaper get to the white people. Sometimes they may be termed as radical. I found in recent months that some of the weekly papers published in the South are saying things editorially that I would question about saying even here in Chicago, and, as we say in common parlance, getting away with it. I have in mind now one particular instance. In Houston, Texas, week before last, the entire circulation list of the _Houston Informer_ was stolen out of its office. The theft was attributed to the new organization of the Ku Klux Klan. The daily papers of Houston came out condemning that move, and also condemning the idea of the Ku Klux Klan, and this young man has an editorial in last week's issue that is one of the strongest I have ever seen on the matter, backed probably by some of the strong things that have been said in the daily papers.

Now if we could have people of Chicago know just how the sentiment is changing in the South in favor of a square deal and mutual toleration, we could soon get to a point where there'd be no fear on either side of working out our salvation, you might say, along co-operative lines.

Another instance concerned the _Plain Dealer_ in Birmingham, Ala. The Ku Klux Klan paraded the streets of that city about three weeks ago and in an editorial this paper came out and stated that if that was done to frighten the colored people, they had to do something different, because whenever they began to terrorize and came down into the neighborhood where colored people lived somebody there would be ready to meet them. That is a pretty strong statement for Birmingham, and they got away with it.

The _Chicago Defender_ gives the greatest amount of space to criminal news of a sensational type in the field of racial happenings. It is a great favorite in the South with Negroes because it publishes news condemning the practices of the South in terms forbidden to southern Negro journals. Of a circulation of 185,000, two-thirds of which is outside of Chicago, it was largely responsible for stimulating the migration to the North.

The term "Negro" is used occasionally in the _Defender_. Its policy is to use the term "race" man, where it is necessary to distinguish Negro from other groups. Adopting the opposite policy from the white papers, it places "white" after persons not Negroes to mark the distinction. Concerning this, Mr. R. S. Abbott, editor of the _Defender_, said:

We use that as a bridge, as you might say, which we intend to blow up pretty soon. We are leading the people away from the word "Negro," especially in our papers. And in cases where white men are well known in the country we never even put "white" after their names. We never put "colored" after a colored man's name in this city.

The _Defender's_ editorials are as a rule carefully written, balanced, and critical, at times in contrast with the popular appeal of the news articles. The _Whip's_ editorials usually are on some aspect of the general race problem in the United States. They are characterized by strong pronouncements of the views of Negroes and violent criticism of practices alleged to be inimicable to Negroes. An editorial from each of the papers will indicate the trends of interests. The first is from the _Defender_:

JUST BETWEEN OURSELVES

Character is what we are; reputation is what other people think we are. We get only the respect we demand; no more, no less. One of the greatest barriers to our progress is the individual who attempts to curry the favor of the whites by whom he is employed by openly humiliating and insulting others of his same flesh and blood. Because sections of this country reek with color prejudice, must we lend a helping hand to those who foster segregation, discrimination and "Jim Crowism" in general? And yet that is just what many are doing.

In the railroad service as waiters and porters we have a monopoly, and those whose runs require them to cross the Mason and Dixon line are often confronted with situations that require good common sense in handling. In many states the law requires the blacks and the whites to be separated on transportation lines, dining-rooms, places of amusement, etc. There is no question as to whether these laws are just or unjust. They are at least temporary laws and must be obeyed. But there is something mentally wrong with the porter or the waiter who lends himself to such measures, whether under orders from his superiors or not.

Admitting that to disobey such orders means the loss of a job, there are other jobs that pay a better wage where a man does not have to sacrifice his principles to hold. What other group of people in the world have those that could be induced at any price to place their heel on the neck of even the humblest member of their race? Are we less human, less interested in the welfare of our race than they? Are we still puppets, still chattels, still ignorant of the fact that as we respect ourselves, so others will respect us? This matter is put squarely up to you, Mr. Porter; to you, Mr. Waiter. Will you play the part of a man and refuse to humiliate your people? Will you cease playing the part of a spy? Will you singly and collectively tender your resignation to employers who require you to "Jim Crow" one of your own? If you will do these things there is only one thing that can happen--a speedy repeal of the offensive legislation.

Recently a young woman who was able to "pass" entered the Washington (D.C.) railroad station café and was given a seat at a table with several other ladies. Soon there entered two refined, well-dressed, unmistakably colored, young women who took seats at an unoccupied table. Immediately a colored waiter rushed over to them and after a few minutes of whispered conversation the embarrassed patrons followed the waiter to a far corner of the café, where semi-screened off they were permitted to dine. So enraged was the first young woman that she boldly went to the desk where stood the white higher-ups and several waiters, and gave them a curtain lecture they doubtless will not soon forget, not failing to tell them her own nationality. This incident happened in Washington, the seat of our government, where the doctrine of democracy is preached but not practiced.

Things worth having are worth fighting for. We must make sacrifices. If it is the policy of certain business places to discriminate let us not be a party to the discrimination. Let it be firmly fixed in the mind that we are a vital part of this nation's life, that we are a necessary "evil," that our places cannot and will not be filled with whites, no matter how drastic is our stand, providing we have right on our side, which we undoubtedly have in this instance. This heart to heart talk applies to those engaged in other lines of endeavor as well as it does to those who follow railroading. Many who run barber shops, for instance, display the sign, "For whites only." If we did not realize that these evils are the direct result of ignorance and lack of racial pride, it would indeed be discouraging. But, truly, we are still a child race. We must not be flattered by the tales of our marvelous advance during the last fifty years into dropping our oars and resting on our laurels, for we have barely started up the hill called success. When we have reached the first milestone on our journey--racial solidarity--the rest of the way will be comparatively easy. Success has come to the Jew and to the Japanese because they are clannish. Black isn't a bad shade; let's make it popular in complexions as well as in clothes.

This is from the _Whip_:

WHO'S AFRAID?

If the white races of the world are so sure of their inborn and inherent supremacy, if they are so sure that they are the salt of the earth and the born rulers of human kind, it appears to us as strange indeed that they should fear that their glory will be usurped, their power depreciated, and their world-wide domination seriously challenged.

As a general rule, the giant does not fear the pigmy, neither does man, the acme of civilization, fear that his civilization will be eclipsed by a new order of apes. Should the tribes and clans of the highest developed gorillas seek to overrun the accomplishments of humanity, no one would say, "Beware of monkey domination." Man, according to his own concepts, is only a little lower than the angels and the monkey just a little lower than himself. The white races claim that their darker brothers are lower in the graduated scale of their own making than themselves, yet they cry out, "Beware of the Yellow Peril and behold the Black Plague."

If the white races possess the keys to knowledge and the passwords to progress as well as the elixirs of strength, why should they fear danger of "Black domination" and "Yellow dictation"? The white man, even through the maze of his own conceit and out of the trance of his self-hypnotism, sees that "he and his heirs" shall not forever inherit the face of the earth.

The black and yellow races are breaking the white man's monopoly of organized brain and wealth. The white man sees this and in his own bigotry knows that these people are not his inferiors in latent abilities. He knows that the same fire of genius burns in the breasts of the black and yellow races as did in the dark and mediaeval ages. He knows that black and yellow men can unravel the mysteries of nature and the intricacies of science. He knows that creative and constructive ability has been beaten down by his might but yet it lives. The white races know that their present achievements are small in comparison with those which will be accomplished. It is feared that in the future, not in the mediate or immediate, but not far distant nevertheless, that the sleeping giant will awaken, shake off the listlessness of a thousand years and put into action again the powerful dynamo of his great reign and shake the world again.

We do not object to the cry of "Beware of the Yellow Peril and behold the Black Plague." It is the involuntary shriek of danger which is a part of man's reaction. White people know that they are not superior to the dark races. They know that the raillery about dark people being innately and inherently inferior is nothing more than the outcropping of race prejudice, color hatred and ignoble fear. They fear that should they lose the power of might and brute force, and equal opportunities are gained by the dark people, that they will be dethroned and surpassed. For this reason they warn of the unfitness and undesirability of their darker brothers. They ruthlessly declare that Japanese, East Indians and Negroes are not their equals and justify all of their tyranny upon this foolish subterfuge.

We are tired of subterfuge and evasiveness. If the white man wishes to maintain his power at the expense of the dark people of the world, let him cease his prattlings about charity, human kindness and benevolence. Let him admit that he is afraid of the rising tide of color and fear shakes his entire system. Let the world know that the cry of inferiority and unfitness is not conscientious and that apprehension clouds the brow of white humanity.

An editorial in the _Searchlight_ read:

CLEANING UP THE "BLACK BELT"

"Death Corner" has a local reputation which bespeaks an abominable state of affairs. Nice respectable persons dare not visit it unless heavily escorted. The "East Side" in New York provokes a shiver by the very sound of the name. The "Black Belt" carries the same dark background of hovering evil. One is expected to regard black belts as isolated plague-spots full of lurking pitfalls for unsuspecting innocents. It is spoken of as "that Black Belt down there." Little girls go there and go wrong and you never hear of them again. When trouble is threatened in the city the police force is dumped into it with clubs and pistols and rifles, patrol wagons, flivvers and ambulances. For you can never tell what is likely to break out in a place with so many mysterious corners and vicious characters. When the morals of the city come under scrutiny the crusaders send up a howl of helplessness for the rampant vices in that "Black Belt down there." The entire city believes it to be a bad place. The neglect of it is a standing disgrace to the city, and yet the only means of cleaning it up and bringing it up to the standard of the community as a whole discovered so far is by keeping the handful of white persons out of it. The protests against the mixed cafés, by far the loudest and most severe, seem to represent the sole spirit and motive of the effort. No attention is paid to the iron circle tightening around this section and making it practically impossible for Negroes to move out. No attention is paid to the rundown schools in the district. No one is interested in providing recreation facilities for the thousands of colored children growing up in the streets. No one of these reformers and critics has suggested that a branch of the public library be made convenient. The Juvenile Protective Association, an association whose purpose is to prevent criminality, walks around the district and speaks about it as disparagingly as the rest. The old Committee of Fifteen had no representative there to detect the out-cropping of vicious places. It had been thus for the eight years of its existence. And yet epithets are hurled at the district, and it is called bad names and the city turns up its nose and goes on.

C. NEGRO NEWS SOURCES

Negro newspapers are published weekly because they cannot compete with the daily papers in providing any part of the public with news from day to day.

For out-of-town news, the news letters of correspondents and accounts of incidents by specially designated representatives make up a large portion of the reports. All the papers have the service of a clipping bureau. Items in local papers are noted and, when practicable, the newspapers telegraph to some responsible person in town to send a full account of the incident. Traveling men from Chicago and friends of the paper scattered throughout the country also contribute to the news supply. News letters containing personal items are still continued in the _Defender_ and are said to be responsible for the first extension of its circulation. The _Defender_ and the _Whip_ have small staffs of reporters to cover local news. The objects of the Associated Negro Press were thus outlined by Mr. Barnett, a representative of that organization:

It is an organization of affiliated newspapers. We serve eighty-nine newspapers throughout the country, the total circulation of these papers as given to us for advertising purposes running a little in excess of 400,000....

We handle items only that are of national importance because we are a national news service. We gather all out of town items that we are able to gather for the same reason, if they are of national importance. As a news service we would not take any purely local item in Chicago unless it would interest readers in every section of the country. We also get service from a clipping bureau.

It all relates to the interests of the colored people. If there is anything which affects the country at large, which also has either an indirect or a direct influence upon our group, we feature it, but as a rule most of the news which we gather is about things which particularly affect colored people.

II. RUMOR

Rumors which significantly affect race relations consist largely of unfounded tales, incorrectly deduced conclusions, or partial statements of fact with significant content added by the narrator, all of which are given easy and irresponsible circulation by a credulous public during the excitement of a clash. Examples of this type of irritating untruth were found in the Chicago riot.

The number of Negroes killed during the riot (twenty-three Negroes and fifteen whites) has been magnified in popular accounts beyond all reasonable limits of credibility. It is popularly believed that more persons were killed than official records indicate. The exaggeration has not been confined to reports involving Negroes. For example, there was a report in circulation that more than seventy-five white policemen were killed during the riot. The rumor was traced to the half-jesting remark of a policeman that, as a member of a benefit organization, he had paid death dues on a number of policemen greater than the total deaths of the riot as popularly estimated at the time. This number was placed at seventy-five. The director of the Civic Bureau of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, writing to a friend in Chicago, asked for authentic information concerning the number of Negroes killed during the riot. He sought the information because, he said, the industrial editor of the _Outlook_ had told him that police officers said that "more than 2,000 Negroes were killed in the race riot," and that a certain labor report placed the number at 1,700. Suspecting that even the latter number was too large, although the police mentioned 10,000 wounded and killed, he wrote for information.

1. AN IMPRESSION STUDY

A special impression study was made with a class of forty-nine students in the University of Chicago, to measure the effect upon them of word-of-mouth rumor, gossip, and newspaper stories concerning the 1919 riot. Specific questions were asked concerning their understanding as to the number of whites and Negroes killed and their source of information. The students ranged in age from twenty to twenty-five years. Each was asked to indicate in the order of their influence upon him the sources of information which gave him his understanding of the magnitude of the riot. The following is a compilation from their statements.

Ten were out of the city at the time and got their information chiefly through newspapers published elsewhere. Their average opinion of the number killed was fifty-five. Thirteen were informed chiefly by second-hand stories quoting relatives who were in Chicago, policemen interviewed, and others, and their general impression of the number killed averaged 209. Thirty-three got their information from newspapers both in and out of the city, and their average impression of the number killed was 115. Twenty-four of those who were residing in Chicago got their information chiefly from newspapers published in the city, and their average impression was that 131 were killed.

A point of interest in comparison is that those who were out of town and read out-of-town newspapers believed seventy-three were killed, while those who got their information through local publications thought 131 were killed. One young woman made this interesting comment:

I think a very conservative estimate of the number killed would be about 450 or 500. My first source of information, newspapers. My father also told me of the affair and he is a medical director of an insurance company and therefore was in a more or less good position to know.

A young man said:

There were at least 200 people killed in the race riot. Sources of information: a policeman who was stationed at Forty-seventh Street and Wentworth, my own direct observations, and conversations with people who live in the Black Belt.

Another young man said:

About 200 were killed. Chief source of information a review of Carl Sandburg's pamphlet, and newspaper stories.

Another young woman thought that about 150 were killed. She said that her father maintained an office at Forty-third Street and St. Lawrence Avenue, which is in the Negro district. Another said:

If I remember correctly, about forty black and white people were killed and several hundred wounded, and there was a loss of several thousand dollars worth of property by fire. The chief information that impressed me was personal experiences. I witnessed one mob of 2,000 whites take a Negro on the West Side and burn him to death. The newspaper gave me my information of atrocities on both sides.

Another stated that he believed the number killed in the race riot in Chicago was about 275, and continued:

I base my guess on reports of the newspapers, i.e., the dailies of the city and particularly one weekly paper which in my opinion is entirely unbiased in such matters, the _Weekly Socialist_. I personally saw four Negroes lynched and shot to death.

It might be expected that a fairly balanced type of impression would come from university students. The effect of rumor stands out from the examination of this highly selected group. In exaggeration the word-of-mouth rumors led, followed by rumors circulated by newspapers and alleged first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses.

Rumors from policemen and relatives placed the average number of persons killed at 209, the largest average of the lot. This is significant when taken with the reports given in the foregoing pages which emanated from policemen. Undoubtedly their experiences were of such a nature as to make exaggeration easy and plausible. They were living in conditions far from normal, and their impressions were greatly magnified by the stress and the excitement of events. The out-of-town students were less affected by word-of-mouth rumor, and consequently their impressions showed the smallest average of persons killed.

Personal experiences show more vividly than anything else the unreliability of much of the testimony from observation that gives such frequent rise to rumor. One student said he saw a mob of 2,000 whites take a Negro on the West Side and burn him to death. Records show that only one Negro was killed on the West Side (Joseph Lovings). He was shot and stabbed many times, but not burned.[92] Another student "personally saw four Negroes lynched and shot to death." No Negroes were lynched in the riot.

2. THE BUBBLY CREEK RUMOR

A persistent rumor during the riot served to provide an explanation of the unaccounted deaths of the riot. It had plausibility and soon was accepted and even repeated on the floor of Congress in Washington as a fact. Bubbly Creek is a small branch of the Chicago River extending to the Stock Yards. Into it flows a great deal of waste from the slaughter houses. The surface of the water is thick with the scum of decomposed substances, hair, and trash. Bodies could be thrown into it and remain undetected for a long time. A rumor became current that bodies of riot victims were thrown into this stream. It became so persistent that efforts were actually made to discover them. Even when no bodies were found, the rumor did not weaken. Examples of how it cropped up in various ways are given:

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. [A juror in the coroner's inquest.]

I heard the story that 100 men had been taken out of Bubbly Creek. They used a net and a seine to drag them out. [A. L. Williams, attorney, before the coroner's jury.]

There is a story that was repeated on the floor of Congress that numerous colored people were caught down there [at the Stock Yards] and thrown in Bubbly Creek, and their bodies never recovered. A congressman from our district down there, representing our Stock Yards district, told me that on the floor of Congress it was recently stated that a man with a dumb-bell in his hand stood there at the big rock entrance of Exchange Avenue and knocked a half-dozen of these colored men on the heads as they passed through that rock door there. [A juror in the coroner's inquest.]

I hear they dragged two or three bodies out of Bubbly Creek. [A witness before the coroner's jury.]

A meat curer 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 come in the yards, but personally I never got any positive evidence that there was any people who was found there."

The _Chicago Daily News_ of July 29, 1919, printed the subheading: "Four Bodies in Bubbly Creek." The article did not give details, but said: "Bodies of four colored men were taken today from Bubbly Creek in the Stock Yards district, it is reported."

In its final report the coroner's jury made a conclusive statement regarding the Bubbly Creek rumor which stamped it as pure rumor.[93]

3. RIOT RUMORS

The state of mind produced by rumors is manifest in other experiences of riot. The following is an example:

At Forty-fourth Street and Grand Boulevard, a corner on which the only Negro family in the block lived at the time of the riot, an elderly white man clad in a worn dressing-gown, carpet slippers, and a skull cap, excitedly rushed from his house to the curb and shouted to a crowd: "They're giving ammunition away to the niggers at the Eighth Regiment Armory!" The crowd became excited and finally threatened the house of the Negro family. A cry went up, "Hang the niggers! The niggers in the house are firing at every white man that passes!" The police searched the house and found an 1894 model rifle, ammunition, that would not fit, and a decorated sword. The six Negroes in the house were taken to the police station.

During the riot a white man was caught 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 intended act by repeating a rumor then current that Negroes had set fire to the houses of whites back of the Yards.

One Negro said that a mob of white men knocked a colored woman down, cut her up frightfully, and then took her baby and dashed its brains out on the street-car tracks. He was of fair complexion and could easily be taken for white. He said:

I came upon the mob as they were laughing and shouting. Why I could have torn every one of the white cusses in a thousand pieces. Just think, they stood there laughing and shouting over what they had done. Why every drop of blood in my body boiled and at that moment I swore to God in heaven that I'd kill some white man if I swung for it.

This report was not substantiated by wide and thorough inquiry by the Commission.

_Rumor in the East St. Louis riot._--Under "Myths," hereinafter discussed, are given stereotyped sex stories circulated to produce antagonistic sentiment toward Negroes. Many rumors, however, which had no relation to sex crimes were circulated at the time of the East St. Louis riot. The following example taken from the testimony before one of the boards of inquiry pictures the effective use at East St. Louis of a rumor concerning an imaginary smallpox epidemic:

_Mr. Tower_: Other statements I heard were that people feared an epidemic of smallpox; that the County Hospital had been burdened for months with an average of thirty cases of smallpox.... The whole County became fearful. You could hear the same discussions away from East St. Louis. People were inflamed, and their feelings were directed against the big employers of East St. Louis feeling that they were responsible for the great influx of Negroes.

4. RUMORS PREDICTING RIOTS

Rumors that persist usually have some plausibility. The series which follows contains elements of possible truth. Rumors predicting race riots in Chicago centered about fixed dates on which excitement often existed each year. Thus July 4, a holiday celebrated with fireworks and noise in which shots would not be noticed, was the date set in popular expectation for the Chicago riot that broke out almost three weeks later. Signs had been posted in Washington Park to the effect that Negroes would be driven out of the park on that date.

All this expectation undoubtedly caused preparation for trouble. It is conceivable that this preparation at least accentuated the violence of the riot which began on July 27.

Hallowe'en night, when ruffians could mask and take reprisals with less fear of identification or detection than ordinarily, was the next date in popular expectation. An official report to Washington by a governmental agency on "Radicalism among Negroes," carried the rumor thus:

... A report was received at this office to the effect that an uprising of Negroes in Chicago has been planned for the night of October 31, 1919. This report came in a somewhat vague form, through children attending schools located in the colored districts. The Negroes were aroused over a report to the effect that the white residents of a certain South Side district were planning to drive out all colored inhabitants. The police were informed of the situation.

No riot occurred at or near that date.

May 1, 1920, was next rumored as the date when a riot would start surpassing in violence any that had yet occurred. Labor parades were planned in Chicago for May 1, 1920. It is also moving day, many residence leases then expiring. Thousands of Negroes, it was widely said, would be told to leave Hyde Park. Negroes, it was further said, had no intention of leaving and would oppose ejection even with force. This rumor was taken up and circulated by responsible authorities. As early as April 20, 1920, this article appeared in the _Herald-Examiner_:

U.S. SEES RACE RIOTS HERE MAY 1

Warning that race riots may occur in the South Side Negro districts May 1 was sent yesterday to John H. Alcock, first deputy superintendent of police, by the army intelligence department. The exact nature of the warning could not be learned and no information could be obtained as to the supposed source of the predicted trouble, but it is expected to arise when Negro families move into new homes in white sections of the South Side.

Numerous bombings have given strength to the belief that more trouble may develop this summer. Official notice to the police department is said to have been made by E. J. Rowens of the army intelligence staff.

No comment on the warning could be obtained from Chief of Police John J. Garrity or Superintendent Alcock. Capt. Michael Gallery of the Deering St. Station said that he believed such reports were absurd.

"I have been all through the Negro section of my district today," said Capt. Gallery. "All is serene and the Negroes are happy. I do not believe that there will be any trouble this summer."

Capt. Thomas Caughlin of the Cottage Grove Ave. Station in whose district the riots started last summer, said he was always prepared and on the lookout for trouble in his territory.

An inquiry based upon this "May 1" rumor came to the Commission. The manager of a West Side restaurant told the Commission that a Negro girl in his employ had asked him whether it would be safe for her to come to work on that day. Her sister had been warned in a friendly way by white fellow-waitresses in a downtown restaurant that she should not risk coming to work that day, "because there is going to be a race riot."

On May 1, as was to have been expected, thousands of persons were armed and ready for the anticipated clash.

No riots occurred. The report was later denied by the Army Intelligence Department.

Labor Day, 1920, was next set. Rumors flying fast were picked up by agents from the state's attorney's office. Reports by these agents from day to day show the persistence of the rumor. For example:

The U.S. Club which had planned to hold a meeting August 28, did not hold the meeting because they expected another race riot on Labor Day.

On August 28, Negroes in the barber shop on ---- State Street were carrying guns. Many went to Gary and Hammond to stock up against Labor Day but found that hardware dealers would not sell.

On August 29 little else was talked about in the Black Belt outside the coming riot on Labor Day. The statement of Garrity [chief of police] that an extra cordon of police would patrol the Black Belt was taken as confirmation of the rumor August 20.

_An averted clash._--Seeley Street on the West Side is a district where Negroes infrequently go. On the night of May 1, one of the dates scheduled in rumors and reports for a race riot in Chicago, the daughter of a pressroom foreman was returning home at night. As she passed an alley a man grabbed her by the arm and attempted to drag her into the alley. She managed to struggle away and ran home, reporting the incident incoherently to her father. Immediately he armed himself and went out looking for the assailant.

Near the alley where the incident occurred, a lone Negro was standing dressed in overalls. Across the street was a clubroom in which were a number of white men. When he saw the Negro his first impulse was to shoot. The Negro, however, gave no indication of being hunted, but reached into his pocket, looked at his watch, and continued to stand there.

It occurred to the father that he had not learned from the girl whether it was a white man or a Negro who had attempted to attack her. He went back home and asked, and she said it was a white man.

5. RUMORS CONCERNING NEGRO RADICALS

During the country-wide excitement over radicals caused by the activities of the Department of Justice in the fall of 1919, the Chicago office of the United States Army Intelligence Bureau sent to Washington reports concerning Negro organizations. These reports were founded upon scarcely anything more than suspicion due to lack of information and acquaintance with the Negro group. One section of a report made in October, 1919, read:

A convention of the colored organization known as the National Urban League was held in Detroit on October 15, 1919, at which Eugene Kinkle Jones, Negro agitator, presided. Mr. Jones has his headquarters at 127 East 23rd Street, New York City. Wm. D. Haywood was invited to speak at this convention.

The National Urban League is an organization of responsible Negroes and whites, with branches in thirty-one cities. It numbers among its executive officers L. Hollingsworth Wood, A. S. Frizzell, Robert R. Moton, Mrs. Julius Rosenwald, George W. Seligman, and Mrs. Booker T. Washington. Its avowed purposes are:

1. Try to show social welfare agencies the advantage of co-operation.

2. Secure and train social workers.

3. Protect women and children from unscrupulous persons.

4. Fit workers for work.

5. Help to secure playgrounds and other clean places of amusement.

6. Organize boys' and girls' clubs and neighborhood unions.

7. Help with probation oversight of delinquents.

8. Maintain a country home for convalescent women.

9. Investigate conditions of city life as a basis for practical work.

Concerning the reference to William D. Haywood and E. K. Jones, this statement was received by the Commission from E. K. Jones:

The National Urban League did hold its annual convention in Detroit, October 15, 1919. William D. Haywood was not invited to speak at this convention. Judging from the reference to Haywood the term "Negro agitator" as applied to myself connotes a most violently radical strain in whatever methods I might be using to bring about better conditions for the Negro.

Throughout my ten years' connection with the League, I have sought by courageous but practical methods to bring to the Negro an opportunity in American life and have urged Negroes to measure up in every way along lines of efficiency and be satisfied with nothing but a square deal and equal opportunity in our national life.

I have never suggested violence of any kind as a means toward this end, nor, in fact, has the idea ever arisen in my mind that this would be an effective means of attaining this end.

From the same Intelligence Bureau report this statement is taken: "Another recent report states that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with offices at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, is planning to flood the colored districts with I.W.W. literature."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a reputable organization of whites and Negroes numbering among its executive officers Hon. Moorfield Storey, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Arthur E. Spingarn, Oswald Garrison Villard, Mary White Ovington, and Dr. Charles E. Bentley. It has no relation with the I.W.W. and has never planned any distribution of I.W.W. literature.

6. RUMOR WITHIN THE NEGRO GROUP

The _Chicago Advocate_, a Negro paper of an irresponsible, sensational type, published under large headlines a report of a run on the Lincoln State Bank. The reason alleged was indignation over the refusal of the white officials of the bank to lend money on Negro property in Hyde Park. The bank officials were accused of discrimination in favor of an organization of men in Hyde Park who were making every effort to keep Negroes segregated within the "Black Belt." The Pyramid Building and Loan Association was said to have requested the loan. Since nearly 90 per cent of the depositors of the bank were supposed to be Negroes, the act was considered an insulting disloyalty to Negroes who supported the institution.

A number of Negroes, believing that their savings were in danger, rushed to the bank. Soon there was an actual run, and for several days long lines of depositors passed through the bank and carried away their savings. More than $243,000 was withdrawn. The report proved to be without foundation, and the three largest and most influential Negro newspapers aided in restoring normal business relations. The president of the bank charged the head of the Building and Loan Association and the editor of the newspaper that published the story with responsibility for this rumor.

7. RUMORS OF ATROCITIES

Of the type of rumor which has had effect upon the sentiments of Negroes concerning the Chicago riot, the following quotations from a pamphlet entitled _The Chicago Race Riots_, by Austin D. N. Sutton, a Negro, provide a good example:

In an investigation made personally by me, beginning about five o'clock Wednesday afternoon, July 30, until far into the evening, visiting the districts from Forty-seventh Street, East to Indiana Avenue, West to Wentworth Avenue, South to Fifty-fifth Street, I found a little short street between Forty-eighth and Fifth Avenue called Swan Street, that is not easily located, and very little known by the general public. Eye-witnesses said that men, women and children were being attacked and killed and thrown into the sewer, and no account of their whereabouts has ever been given.

I found about twenty refugees who had been run away from their homes on Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth and Fifth Avenue, also Wentworth and Princeton avenues. Their homes had been burned, and they were made to flee for their lives. I have the names and addresses of more than one hundred cases investigated, one more horrible case, where a young colored boy was gasolined and burned after having been killed and where colored women in the Stock Yards district were attacked and their breasts cut off. These things were perpetrated by the whites upon peaceful law-abiding blacks, some of whom had been residents for twenty-seven years in that neighborhood.

Thorough inquiries were made by the Commission into these alleged atrocities, and no evidence was found to show that anyone was "gasolined and burned" during the riot or that any colored women's breasts were cut off.

8. RUMORS AND THE MIGRATION

The rumors in circulation in the South at the beginning of the migration of Negroes to the North were responsible for the presence in Chicago of many who heard them. It is hard to conceive how the tale that the Germans were on their way through Texas to take the southern states could have been believed, yet it is reported that this extravagant rumor was taken seriously in some quarters.

On the outskirts of Meridian, Mississippi, a band of gypsies was encamped. The rumor gained circulation that the Indians were coming back to retake their land, lost many years ago. Further it was declared that the United States government was beginning a scheme to transport all the Negroes from the South to break up the Black Belt. Passed from mouth to mouth unrestrainedly, the tale became an established verity for many Negroes.

It was declared on the word of honor of "one in a position to know" that the packing-houses in Chicago needed and would get 50,000 Negro workers before the end of 1917. One explanation of the belief that the South was overrun with labor agents is the fact that Negroes at the South saw in every stranger a man from the North looking for laborers and their families. If he denied it, they thought that he was concealing his identity from the police, and if he said nothing, his silence was regarded as affirmation.

Hundreds of disappointments of prospective migrants were traced to the rumor that a train would leave on a certain date, sometimes after the presence of a stranger in town; they would come to the station prepared to leave, and when no agent appeared, would purchase their own tickets to the North. Wages and privileges in the North were greatly exaggerated. Some men, on being questioned, supposed that it was possible for any common laborer to earn $10 a day and that $50 a week was not unusual. The strength of this belief was remarked by several social agencies in Chicago which attempted to supply migrants with work. The actual wages paid, though much in excess of what they had been receiving, were disappointing. Similarly in the matter of privilege and "rights," it was later discovered by the migrants that unbounded liberty was not to be found in the North. Many cases of grotesque misconduct of newly arrived migrants in Chicago, against which more sober-minded Negroes preached, possibly had root in exaggerated reports of "freedom and privilege" in the North which had reached the South.[94]

III. MYTHS

There arise among groups of people various stories with little or no basis in fact, which, through repetition and unvaried association with the same persons or incidents, come to be regarded as true. These stories, when they persist through years and even through generations, are myths. They are usually the response to a prejudice or a desire.

In general they have some plausible and apparent justification. In turn they lend stability not only to the beliefs out of which they were born, but to themselves. Frequently they are the result of the assumption that because two things happen at the same time they are connected by the relationship of cause and effect. So long as these stories are uncorrected they hold and exercise a marked degree of control over personal conduct.

Myths are important in any consideration of the instruments of opinion-making. Fernand von Langenhove, a Belgian scientist associated with the Solvay Institute for Sociological Study at Brussels, has made probably the first researches in this field. He took as his material the reports spread in Germany by German soldiers concerning the Belgian priests. These myths, for the most part unfounded, began to spread and eventually were taken up by German authorities and given the stamp of official sanction. The reports were investigated and found to be false and libelous by German authorities themselves. The method by which these myths arose is thus described in his book _The Growth of a Legend_:

Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place. They were reproduced by the press and they soon permeated the whole of Germany.... Public credulity accepted these stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without hesitation and indorsed them with their authority. Even the Emperor echoed them and, taking them for a text, advanced in the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the President of the United States, the most terrible accusations against the Belgian people and clergy.

... It was the German army which, as we have seen, constituted the chief breeding ground for legendary stories. These were disseminated with great rapidity among the troops; the liaison officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the victualling posts assured the diffusion of them....

Submitted to the test of the German military inquiry these stories are shown to be without foundation. Received from the front and narrated by a soldier who professes to have been an eye witness, they are nevertheless clothed in the public view with special authority. Welcomed without control by the press, the stories recounted in letters from the front appear, however, in the eyes of the readers of a paper clothed with a new authority--that which attaches to printed matter. They lose in the columns of a paper their individual and particular character.... The statements thus obtain a substance and an objectivity of which they would otherwise be devoid. Mixed with authentic news, they are accepted by the public without mistrust. Is not their appearance in the paper a guaranty of accuracy?...

All these pseudo-historical publications are, however, only one aspect of the abundant literary production of the Great War....

So one finds in this literature of the lower classes the principal legendary episodes of which we have studied the origin and followed the development; accommodated to a fiction, woven into a web of intrigue, they have undergone new transformations; they have lost every indication of their source; they are transposed in the new circumstances imagined for them; they have usually been dissociated from the circumstances which individualize them and fix their time and place.

The evolution of myths concerning Negroes shows a striking resemblance to these mentioned by von Langenhove. In this category would fall the myths concerning Negro mentality, or the closing of the frontal sutures at the age of fourteen; the "rape myth," or the belief that some character weakness and inordinate sexual virility in Negroes make them rapists by nature; and the "insurrection myth," or the recurrent assertion and belief that Negroes are plotting the downfall of the government. These are general in their acceptance. They illustrate the tendency of authors observed by Langenhove in his study "to incorporate new ideas with the complex old ones and show that they are not surprising and that all earlier facts tend to prove it." The efforts of some recent writers on the Negro question may be noted.

In 1895 R. M. Bache[95] made one of the first experimental studies of the relative mentality of the white, Negro, and Indian races. His study was based on only ten Negroes. He began with an assumption of the inferiority of Negroes and was satisfied that he had proved it. In his tests the whites were slowest in reacting to the visual, auditory, and electrical stimulation, the Indians were quickest, and the Negroes about midway between. He deduced from this that the whites were superior, the Indians next, and the Negroes the lowest of the group. The Negroes he explained were slower than the Indians because they were of mixed white and Negro blood and had inherited the effects of slavery, while the Indians' mode of life compelled them to rely upon quick movement. Therefore he said the Indian was of a higher race than the Negro. Dr. Vogt, a German anthropologist, is responsible for the statement: "On examining the brain of a Negro I find a remarkable resemblance between the ape and the Negro, especially with reference to the development of the temporal lobe." He made this deduction from the examination of the skull of one Hottentot Negro woman.

A. T. Smith made association and memory tests and concluded[96] that the Negro child was psychologically different from the white child in power of abstraction, judgment, and analysis. He took a single Negro boy as typical.

For the purpose of studying myths pertinent to this inquiry instances were taken from the testimony in race riots, both in East St. Louis and Chicago. The excerpts which follow illustrate the tendency of myths to create and give currency to rumors:

NEGROES SECRETING ARMS

I returned in about an hour and learned from Col. Tripp that it had been reported that Negroes were forming and had large quantities of arms and ammunition at a saloon on the northeasterly corner of Nineteenth and Market Avenue; at the time the small detachment of troops remaining at the City Hall was loaded into an auto truck and Col. Tripp, Lieut. Col. Clayton, Chief of Police Ransom Payne and myself, in my automobile proceeded to the saloon and pool-room located at the northeasterly corner of Nineteenth Street and Market Avenue, where it was reported there were large stores of ammunition and arms.

We accompanied Col. Tripp into the building and found perhaps fifteen or eighteen Negro men; Col. Tripp ordered them to surrender arms and there being no ready compliance with the order, he thereupon ordered them searched and found one man who had a number of loaded shot-gun shells. [Testimony by Thomas L. Fekete, Jr., city attorney of East St. Louis, at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

NEGROES PLANNING ATTACK

_Question_: Now what happened Tuesday?

_Answer_: Well, Tuesday I spent most of my time in the City Hall except when we would be sent out on false alarms, calls from the different parts of the city. That was practically all of our work there then. There was no rioting on Tuesday, but they continued calling from different parts of the city that Negroes were forming and ready to attack, and we would send men, whenever they were available, out with squads, two squads of men to investigate, but invariably it was a false alarm. [Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

CONCEALING ARMS FOR INSURRECTION

We then searched the building, particularly the dwelling quarters above these rooms, for arms which it had been alleged Dr. L. N. Bundy had stored at this place. We found that Dr. Bundy had sent two cartons of his property to this place for safe-keeping and on opening the cartons, we discovered that they contained no firearms or ammunition, but contained automobile supplies and some stationery. [Testimony by Col. S. O. Tripp at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

NEGROES ARMING AND PLANNING AN ATTACK

Then we commenced to get reports from different parts of the city that Negroes were arming, getting ready to attack. One of the persistent rumors was there were two hundred Negroes armed around Sixty and Bond streets some place there. That rumor was so persistent that Col. Tripp ordered me to take Company B down and investigate it and the police sent one policeman along to show us the way and show us the place where it was supposed to be. We got down there within probably three blocks of the place and the policeman told us we better not get too close without forming a line of skirmishers, which I did. I divided the company into two platoons. One platoon under the Company commander and the other under the first lieutenant, and we combed that district all through. The policeman deserted us as soon as we started out and we were all left alone. We combed all over for an hour or probably more.

_Question_: Who was the commander of Company B?

_Answer_: Captain Eaton. We did not find a single thing except two Negroes who just came out of a house. We searched them and they were armed and we arrested them. We brought these back with us when we came perhaps an hour or an hour and a half later.

_Question_: Is there anything else that night?

_Answer_: Yes, it was not very long until we got rumors that at about 27th and 28th and Tudor that the Negroes and whites were in a pitched battle. That is about two miles I think southeast, and they asked me to go out and look into the situation and take a squad of men with me ... we got to Eighteenth and Bond and we were perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead of the truck and we were fired upon. We stopped the car and Brown returned the fire. We could see smoke coming from a vacant lot and by that time the truck came up and we formed a line of skirmishers and went through and could not find a single thing.

The Chief of Police was advised, on rumor, that Negroes were forming in the Black Belt for the purpose of marching on the whites. In response to this rumor, the witness [Col. S. O. Tripp], the Acting Mayor [Fekete], and the military officials left for the seat of the purported mobilization of Negroes, but found that the report was untrue. The record shows that during this temporary departure of authorities, military and civil, acts of lawlessness were being exerted against Negroes in other sections of the city. [Testimony by Major Wm. Klauser at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

ARMED AND MASSED ATTACKS BY NEGROES

... As we got to 27th and Tudor I found a first lieutenant of the Missouri National Guard there. I afterwards found out his name was Crawley. He had one soldier with him. He called him his orderly. I think his name was Murphy. There they were perhaps a dozen young men, about eighteen or twenty, armed with rifles and were lined up at 28th Street there under trees, that is behind trees, at least it looked that way in the night, and perhaps a half a block more north it looked to me two houses were burning; it was a big fire; they were burning, and they claimed that the Negroes had been firing at them and they were returning the fire, and I guess that is where the report came from. He advised me that it was a little dangerous work up there and that we had better form a few men, form a line of skirmishers, and I sent one bunch to the east side of the fire to see what we could find in there. So I did that. I gave Capt. Easterday a bunch of men, one detachment, and Lieut. Brown another, one on each side, and then Lieut. Crawley and one private went right through the center of it, right next to the place seemed deserted and we could not find anybody and we waited for the other detachments to come out and they did not find anything and I walked around, it seemed on the west side of the block, between 27th and 28th Streets, and I saw a couple of fellows sticking their heads up over the fence, the fence of an old two story brick building, and I hollered. I thought perhaps it was Lieut. Crawley and waited for him and we found a bunch of Negroes in there, perhaps twenty-five of them. Lieut. Crawley and myself lined them up and searched them and there was not a Negro who had any arms or ammunition, and we asked if there were any more in the house, and they said this private came in and already had three of us. So Lieut. Crawley said if I guard the ones outside he would go inside and run the rest out, so in the neighborhood of one hundred fifty or two hundred came out, men, women and children and we searched all of them but did not find anything on them. [Testimony by Thomas L. Fekete, city attorney at East St. Louis Inquiry into Conduct of Militia.]

1. THE RAPE MYTH

It is the common belief among whites that Negroes are rapists by nature. In this belief are involved the "fear obsession" of Negro men, held by many white women, fear of the "social equality" bugaboo, condonings of lynchings, and repressive social restriction as well as attempts at legislative restraints. The persistency of these assertions and this belief point to an interesting peculiarity of popular opinion.[97] There have been cases of rape involving Negroes, but they have contributed no such preponderance as would justify the wholesale charge against the Negro race. The tendency is to stress Negro sex offenses as though they alone constituted almost the whole of revolting crime. The usual proportion of white sex offenses is lost in the general statistics of crime. In the South, where it was first persistently asserted that Negro men have an abnormal tendency to sexual crimes, each crime, or attempted crime, and in many cases even suspected crime, of this sort has registered itself in a lynching.

In the twenty-year period between 1883 and 1903 there were lynched in the South 1,985 Negroes. Rape was assigned as the cause in 675 cases. In 1,310 cases other causes were given. James Welden Johnson, field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has prepared figures on lynchings and sex offenses charged to Negroes which point out the misrepresentation in easy but persistent charges and the unquestioning acceptance of them by the public. He says:

Whenever the Negro protests against lynching, nearly all southern newspapers and a great many northern newspapers call upon him to deprecate the crime which leads to lynching. The authentic statistics on lynching prove the falsehood on which this propaganda is based. In the past thirty-five years fifty Negro women have been lynched. In the twelve-month period, August, 1918-August, 1919 [when the statement was prepared] five Negro women were lynched.

LYNCHINGS ===========+===========+============== | | Number Years | Lynchings | Charged with | | Rape -----------+-----------+-------------- 1914-18[98]| 264 | 28 1883-1903 | 1,985 | 675 -----------+-----------+--------------

When the Congressional Committee on Immigration in 1911 made its study of crime in the United States, an investigation was made of 2,262 cases in the New York Court of General Sessions, and in that investigation it was found that the percentage for the crime of rape was lower for Negroes than for either the foreign-born whites or native whites.

NEW YORK COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS[99]

1911 Rape Native-born whites .8 per cent Foreign-born whites 1.8 per cent Negroes .5 per cent

Contrast these records, bad as they may appear, with the records for New York County, which is only a part of New York City, and we find that in this one county in the single year of 1917, 230 persons were indicted for rape. Of this number, 37 were indicted for rape in the first degree.

INDICTMENTS AND LYNCHINGS FOR RAPE

===============================+========+======================+======== Place | Year | Crime | Number -------------------------------+--------+----------------------+-------- Number indicted by Grand Jury, | 1917 | Rape | 230 New York County | | | Number of whites indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 37 Grand Jury, New York County | | | Number of Negroes indicted by | 1917 | Rape in first degree | 0 Grand Jury, New York County | | | Number of Negroes lynched in | {1914} | Charged with rape | 28 entire United States | {1918} | | -------------------------------+--------+----------------------+--------

That is, in just a part of New York City the number of persons indicted for rape in the first degree was nine more than the total number of Negroes lynched on the charge of rape in the entire United States during the period 1914-1918. Among these thirty-seven persons indicted by the New York County Grand Jury, there was not a single Negro. The evidence required by the Grand Jury of New York County to indict a person charged with rape must be more conclusive than the evidence required by a mob to lynch a Negro accused of rape.

In Chicago the statistics of sex offenses tell a significant story. Chicago judges in the criminal courts were questioned by the Commission on their experience to test the foundation of this belief. Their replies were practically unanimous. Some of them are given:

_Judge Pam_: You talk about sex cases. Whether you call them rape cases or crimes against children, I have more serious rape cases against white than I have against colored people. The most serious case I had was about ten days ago, and I sentenced the man to life imprisonment. I never had such a case involving a Negro.

_Commissioner_: We read a great deal in the papers about rape in the South. How does the colored man stand on that matter in comparison to the white man?

_Judge Thompson_: Practically the same.

_Commissioner_: You spoke about crimes involving sex. What is your experience with regard to whether they are committed more often by colored persons than whites?

_Judge Trude_: I don't think in Chicago they are committed more by Negroes than whites.

_Judge Thompson_: In my work with the criminal court I was astounded at the large number of crimes involving the sexual abuse of children, but I remember no case in which a colored defendant was charged with that crime. Almost all other races were represented, but I don't remember one colored man charged with the abuse of a child.... I tried many of those cases, but never tried a colored man for that offense. I would say the majority of them were slavic or German; practically no Scandinavian.

_Dr. Adler, State Criminologist_: We had the same thing here in Chicago of a colored man sent to the penitentiary on a charge of attempted rape or something of that sort, where the identification was made by a child of six or eight years who picked him out in a crowd under suspicion. No such evidence ought to be accepted. We are perfectly sure, and everybody else agrees that such evidence is not sufficient to warrant the action.

2. THE SEX MYTH

_East St. Louis riot._--The records of the Congressional Investigating Committee contain much evidence of the use of this myth in fomenting riots. Edward F. Mason, representing the interests of labor, gave a vivid account of the report that Negro men had committed vicious acts of assault against white girls in the East St. Louis streets. He stated further that 200 white women were among the 1,200 persons present at the meeting on the night of May 28, just prior to the riot, and that "we brought these girls along to see if we couldn't teach--we wanted to wake him [the mayor] up. He was in a trance. He couldn't see the thing like we did."

Alois Towers emphasized in his testimony the sentiment among the whites of East St. Louis just prior to the outbreak:

Mr. Chairman, yesterday I made the statement that the great influx of Negroes was responsible for the riot. I want to try and show some of the feelings that developed after this great influx of Negroes. It was a terrible feeling in the air. Everyone felt that something terrible was going to happen. On the street comers, wherever you went, you heard expressions against the Negro. You heard that the Negro was driving the white man out of the locality--by moving into the white neighborhood--that the whites were being forced out of their localities. Stories were afloat on the streets and on the street cars of the worst kind that would inflame the feelings. For instance, I heard one story so persistently that I commenced to think later on there might be some truth in it. First I thought it was just originated by some who might want to inflame the feelings of the people. I heard stories of this kind and I heard it no less than a dozen times on the streets of East St. Louis, that Negroes had made the boast that they were invited to East St. Louis; that great numbers of white people were taken away for war purposes; and that _there would be lots of white women for the Negroes in East St. Louis_.... The whole country became fearful. You could hear the same discussions away from East St. Louis. People were inflamed and their feelings were directed against big employers of East St. Louis, feeling that they were responsible for the great influx of Negroes.

Of actual assaults against white women there was found no evidence. Testimony by the mayor before the Military Committee investigating the conduct of soldiers adds substantiation to this fact:

_Q._: Now did you hear of any other complaints of these colored men from any source as to their conduct and behavior when they first came here other than being imported here to work in large numbers?

_A._: Yes sir.

_Q._: What do you know about it?

_A._: Some complaints that they were sticking up people, holding up people at night time, and various other police violations.

_Q._: Now were these complaints verified by the records, or otherwise?

_A._: I think they were, they were arrested and locked up, got trial and punishment, the usual procedure of the Police Department and Courts.

_Q._: You keep in pretty close touch with these Police Court Proceedings?

_A._: Yes sir.

_Q._: So you would say that there were more colored people arrested and convicted for such offenses as you mentioned than there were four or two years ago?

_A._: I have not made that comparison, but I would think so.

_Q._: Any other offenses except larceny and robbery?

_A._: No.

_Q._: Any sex outrages?

_A._: No.

_Q._: No complaints or prosecutions that white women were outraged by colored men?

_A._: No sir.

[Board of Inquiry, East St. Louis, Ill.]

_Washington riot._--The Washington race riot was precipitated by reports of alleged attacks upon white women by Negroes. These reports were featured in the daily newspapers with large front-page headlines, and suggestions were made that probable lynchings would follow the capture of the Negroes. The series of reported assaults totaled seven. In each it was claimed that a Negro had assaulted a white woman. When the fury and excitement of the riot had subsided and the facts were sifted, it was found that of the seven assaults reported, four were assaults upon colored women. Three of the alleged criminals arrested and held for assault were white men, and at least two of the white men were prosecuted for assaults upon colored women. It further developed that three of the assaults were supposed to have been committed by a suspect who at the time of the riots was under arrest.

_Waukegan riot._--A story with the implication that a sex issue was involved was the significant feature of the riot between marines from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, aided by citizens of Waukegan, and the Negro residents of Waukegan. It is entirely likely that the outburst was wholly precipitated by the entirely false report that "Mrs. Blazier, the wife of Lieutenant Blazier," was "attacked" by Negro boys.[100] Lieutenant Blazier, it developed, was unmarried and had no woman occupant in the car.

_Chicago riot._--The most atrocious murder of the Chicago riot of 1919 was precipitated by a report involving an Italian girl. The story circulated that she had been killed by a Negro. Joseph Lovings, an innocent Negro, chanced into the neighborhood on a bicycle. He was set upon and murdered. The coroner found fourteen bullet wounds, many stab wounds, contusion of the head, and fractures of the skull bones and of the limbs. The report proved a myth, for no girl was killed by anyone during the riot. The Negro killed was innocent of any injury, and if a girl was injured it had not been learned by whom the injury was inflicted. There had been no previous rioting on the West Side, where the murder was committed, and no further clashes followed it. The usual report of the burning of the Negro which followed an assault was also circulated, and this was false and unfounded.

In the frenzy of the rioting in Chicago a report gained circulation that white women were being attacked by Negroes. Some reports picked up by newspapers asserted that women were being shot as the riot grew. The _Chicago American_ during the riot pertinently made a plea for cool-headedness and intelligence in receiving reports. In an editorial it thus importuned the citizenry:

Don't circulate wild stories that tend to infuriate respectable citizens, both white and black. They are trying to suppress the hoodlums who have been responsible for all the rioting.

Don't believe every infuriating report you hear, and don't repeat them to others more credulous than yourself.

Depend on the _American_ to tell you what happened just as accurately as careful, intelligent reporting will permit.

The most notable instance of inflammatory faking was observed in one newspaper (not the _American_) yesterday afternoon. It ran across its front page in big type the heading: "Women Shot as Riots Grow." It was based on an incoherent, unsubstantiated rumor which later investigation proved has no foundation.

The same information was received by the _Evening American_ from the detective bureau, where the report was received. The _American_ published a few lines announcing that the police had received such reports. Men were rushed out, but the report could not be verified, and this newspaper withdrew further publication of the unverified report.

At Chicago Heights a race riot was reported on August 7, 1920. It was said in the press that a Negro motor-cyclist had run down a Hungarian boy. The actual report circulated was that a Negro had struck an Italian girl. The latter report was not true; the first one, contrary to press reports, did not start a riot. In fact, there was no riot.

In the racial clash of September 20, 1920, the sex myth again arose.[101] Immediately after one of the Negroes had struck Barrett down, the trio ran. Few persons actually knew what had occurred. Excitement waxed high when the wild report flew about that a Negro had attacked a white woman. A mob of several thousand men, women, and children formed to storm the church in which they had sought refuge.

An investigator from the Commission, sent out immediately after the clash, picked up traces of this myth in the sentiments of white residents of the neighborhood.

There was a story which everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know concerning trouble on the street-car lines between Negroes and whites. A middle-aged Irish woman on Union Avenue, who had been with the crowd at the church, gave the following account of it: "Not long ago, a Negro knocked a white woman off the cars. It never appeared in the papers. I never go on the cars where they [Negroes] are. You couldn't get me to go on a State Street car line."

A barber at Forty-fifth Street and Emerald Avenue said:

There was some trouble the Saturday before Labor Day. A Negro gave the conductor a dollar bill, and the conductor said he hadn't change and told him to get off the car. As he was getting off, he knocked against a white woman, and seven men in an automobile who were right behind the car saw him and chased him. They brought him up to the alley right across the street, beat him up, and cut up his head something awful.

IV. PROPAGANDA

Both whites and Negroes have recognized the value of propaganda as an instrument of opinion-making. Both employ it, sometimes openly, sometimes insidiously. Its effects may be unmistakably observed in much of the literature about the Negro. It is the purpose here to give attention to certain forms of propaganda now in circulation, with a view to defining roughly their place in the manufacture of sentiment on the race question in Chicago. In spite of similarity it would be obviously unfair to lump all sorts of propaganda, good and bad, under one general classification. It is possible, however, to classify different types from the examples which came to the attention of the Commission, as follows: (1) educational, (2) radical and revolutionary, (3) malicious, (4) defensive.

1. EDUCATIONAL PROPAGANDA

Propaganda on the race situation with a true educational purpose seems to be confined largely to organizations composed of both whites and Negroes, who make joint appeals to both groups. An example is the publicity campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This Association definitely asserts that it can best accomplish its ends by reaching "the conscience and heart of the American people," and publicity is the weapon. The _Crisis_ magazine is the principal organ of the Association, although the public is reached through various other channels.

From the report of the Association for 1919, the following figures covering the circulation of information is obtained: During that year 1,138,900 copies of the _Crisis_ were sold; officers of the Association traveled 101,009 miles, delivered 286 addresses, including eleven in Chicago, and contributed nineteen special articles, not including special releases, of press material to magazines of wide circulation.

2. RADICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PROPAGANDA

A broad basis of appeal to Negroes as a group is provided in their economic status. Placed by circumstances near the bottom of the industrial ladder, victims of exploitation, restlessly resentful of practices employed against them because of class as well as race, it might be reasoned that they would be vitally interested in a revolution, industrial if not social. The Industrial Workers of the World has reasoned after this fashion and, probably because class meant more to it than race, extended open arms to Negro workers. This appeal was even stronger in view of the attitude of partial exclusion adopted by many trades unions. To strengthen its organization, ally with it a restless group, 90 per cent of whom are laborers, while at the same time providing an unmistakable demonstration of its own disregard for race lines in its so-called struggle for "industrial freedom," the I.W.W. directed a definite propaganda toward the Negro group, and founded it upon a very human desire. Thousands of letters and pamphlets were addressed, "To the colored workingmen and women," calling them fellow-workers. Excerpts from one of them follow:

There is one question which, more than any other, presses upon the mind of the worker today, regardless of whether he be of one race or another, of one color or another, the question of how he can improve his conditions, raise his wages, shorten his hours of labor, and gain something more of freedom from his master, the owners of the industry wherein he labors.

To the black race, who, but recently, with the assistance of the white men of the northern states, broke their chains of bondage and ended chattel slavery, a prospect of further freedom or _real freedom_ should be most appealing.

For it is a fact that the Negro worker is no better off under the freedom he has gained than under the slavery from which he has escaped. As chattel slaves we were the property of our masters and, as a piece of valuable property, our masters were considerate of us and careful of our health and welfare. Today, as wage workers, the boss may work us to death, at the hardest and most hazardous labor, at the longest hours, at the lowest pay, we may quietly starve when out of work and the boss loses nothing by it and has no interest in us. To him the worker is but a machine for producing profits and when you, as a slave who sells himself to the master on the installment plan, become old, or broken in health or strength, or should you be killed while at work, the master merely gets another wage slave on the same terms.

We who have worked in the South know that conditions in lumber and turpentine camps, in the fields of cane, cotton and tobacco, in the mills and mines of Dixie, are such that the workers suffer a more miserable existence than ever prevailed among the chattel slaves before the great Civil War. Thousands of us have come and are coming northward, crossing the Mason and Dixon line, seeking better conditions. As wage slaves we have run away from the masters in the South, but to become the wage slaves of the masters in the North. In the North we find that the hardest work and the poorest pay are our portion. We are driven while on the job, and the high cost of living offsets any higher pay we might receive.

The only problem then, which the colored worker should consider, as a worker, is the problem of organization with other working men in the labor organization that best expresses the interest of the whole working class against the slavery and oppression of the whole capitalist class. Such an organization is the I.W.W., the _Industrial Workers of the World_, the only labor union that has never, _in theory or practice_, since its beginning, twelve years ago, barred the workers of any race or nation from membership. The following has stood as a principle of the I.W.W., embodied in its official constitution since its formation in 1905:

"By-Laws. Article I--Section 1

"No working man or woman shall be excluded from membership in Unions because of creed or color."

If you are a wage worker you are welcome in the I.W.W. halls, no matter what your color. By this you may see that the I.W.W. is not a white man's union, not a black man's union, not a red or yellow man's union, but a _working man's union_. _All of the working class in one big union._

In the I.W.W. all wage workers meet on common ground. No matter what language you may speak, whether you were born in Europe, in Asia or in any other part of the world, you will find a welcome as a fellow worker. In the harvest fields where the I.W.W. controls, last summer saw white men, black men and Japanese working together as union men and raising the pay of all who gathered the grain. In the great strikes the I.W.W. has conducted at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the woolen mills, in the iron mills of Minnesota and elsewhere, the I.W.W. has brought the workers of many races, colors and tongues together in victorious battles for a better life.

The foundation of the I.W.W. is _industrial unionism_. All workers in any division of any industry are organized into an _industrial union of all_ the workers in the _entire industry_; these _industrial unions_ in turn are organized into _industrial departments_ of connecting or kindred industries, while all are brought together in the _central organization of the Industrial Workers of the World--one big union of all the working class of the world_. No one but actual wage workers may join. The working class cannot depend upon anyone but itself to free it from wage slavery. "He who would be free, himself must strike the blow."

When the I.W.W. through this form of _industrial unionism_ has become powerful enough, it will institute an _industrial commonwealth_; it will end slavery and oppression forever and in its place will be a world of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers, a world where there will be no poverty and want among those who feed and clothe and house the world; a world where the word "master" and "slave" shall be forgotten; a world where peace and happiness shall reign and where the children of men shall live as brothers in a world-wide _industrial democracy_.

Another pamphlet published a hideous picture of a lynching in the South. In both of these pamphlets the appeal is about the same and may be summarized as follows:

The Negro is oppressed. He is subjected to the worst possible cruelties and indignities. The working men are oppressed. Negroes have left one slavery for another which is shared by white workers. Race hatred is played upon by capitalists to keep the two races apart and thus thwart their efforts at improving their condition. The I.W.W. union will unite all of the oppressed of all colors and all languages. One big union of defensive brotherhood, not only in America but throughout the world.

3. MALICIOUS PROPAGANDA

Anti-Negro propaganda is not wholly new in the North, but it has usually been carefully concealed. Recently there have been several conspicuous instances of open and organized effort to influence the minds of white persons against Negroes. The slogans, charges, and incriminations have included, with gross exaggeration, not only all of the actual but all of the fancied and rumored defects of Negro character. Ignorance and suspicion, fear and prejudice, have been played upon violently. A group of South Side real estate dealers and owners, anxious to preserve exclusively for whites sections of the city known as Hyde Park and Kenwood, formed themselves into an organization to protect property values on the assumption that the presence of Negroes depreciated real estate values. Since they did not own or control enough property to be in themselves effective, they sought to awaken the white residents to the "danger that menaced them." Funds were raised, meetings held, a journal started, bills and posters distributed, and many letters circulated. A bulletin was widely distributed with this heading:

YOUR RIGHTS AND MINE A Short Symposium on Current Events as Applied to and Effecting Realty Values in Kenwood and Hyde Park

It began by disclaiming any desire to foment or foster race antagonism, but stated its determination to work insistently and persistently along legal lines for the elimination of undesirables of whatever brand or color whose residence in this section lowered the value of real estate. The remainder of the bulletin, however, was devoted to a discussion of the Negro. A letter to Mayor Thompson from the president of the Association mentioned the vicious element of Negroes "haranguing about constitutional rights," aided by the Negro press, claiming social equality, and then attributed the riot to the scattering of Negroes in white residential sections. It spoke of a feeling that was rampant because the "legal rights of Negroes have been placed above his moral obligation to the white people." The _Chicago Tribune_ was quoted twice and the Chicago Real Estate Board once on the desirability of segregation. The _Daily News_ afforded a fourth quotation from an article in which three solutions were advanced--amalgamation, deportation, and segregation. As to amalgamation the article said: "Every white man would rather see the nation destroyed than adopt that method."

The _Property Owners' Journal_ became so bitter in its utterances that the protests of whites forced its discontinuance. A few selections from the _Journal_ picture the character of the campaign:

What a reputation for beauty Chicago would secure if visitors touring the city would see crowds of idle, insolent Negroes lounging on the South Side boulevards and adding beauty to the floricultural display in the parks, filling the streets with old newspapers and tomato containers and advertising the Poro-system for removing the marcelled kinks from Negro hair in the windows of the derelict remains of what had once been a clean, respectable residence.

THE NEW NEGRO

Negroes are boasting, individually and through the colored press, that the old order of things for the Negro is changing and that a new condition is about to begin. As a result of the boastful attitude, the Negro is filled with bold ideas, the realization of which means the overturning of their older views and conditions of life. The Negro is unwilling to resume his status of other years; he is exalting himself with idiotic ideas on social equality. Only a few days ago Attorney General Palmer informed the Senate of the nation of the Negroes' boldest and most impudent ambition, sex equality.

From the Negro viewpoint sex equality, according to Mr. Palmer, is not seen as the equality of men and women; it is the assertion by the Negro of a right to marry any person whom he chooses, regardless of color. The dangerous portion of their outrageous idea does not consist in the accident that some black or white occasionally may forget the dignity of their race and intermarry. That has happened before; doubtless it will recur many times. Where the trouble lies is in the fact that the Department of Justice has observed an organized tendency on the part of Negroes to regard themselves in such a light as to permit their idea to become a universal ambition of the Negro race.

As a corollary to their ambition on sex equality, it is not strange that they are attempting to force their presence as neighbors on the whites. The effrontery and impudence that nurses a desire on the part of the Negro to choose a white as a marriage mate certainly will not result in making the Negro a desirable neighbor. That fact alone is enough to determine the property owners of this district to declare to the Negroes that they must stay out. As neighbors they have nothing to offer. "They lived for uncounted centuries in Africa on their own resources, and never so much as improved the make-up of an arrow, coined a new word, or crept an inch nearer to a spiritual religion," and it is a certainty that their tenure of those unfortunate buildings now occupied by them will not be improved by a single nail if it is left to the Negro to provide and drive the nail.

Keep the Negro in his place, amongst his people, and he is healthy and loyal. Remove him, or allow "his newly discovered importance to remove him from his proper environment and the Negro becomes a nuisance." He develops into an overbearing, inflated, irascible individual, overburdening his brain to such an extent about social equality that he becomes dangerous to all with whom he comes in contact; he constitutes a nuisance of which the neighborhood is anxious to rid itself. If the new Negro desires to display his newly acquired veneer of impudence where it will be appreciated we advise that they parade it in their own district. Their presence here is intolerable.

As stated before, every colored man who moves into Hyde Park knows that he is damaging his white neighbor's property.

Therefore, he is making war on the white man.

Consequently, he is not entitled to any consideration and forfeits his right to be employed by the white man.

If employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes who reside in Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's property it would soon show good results.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR HYDE-PARKERS

Their solid vote is the Negroes' great weapon. They have a total vote in Chicago of about 40,000. This total vote is cast solid for the candidate who makes the best bargain with them. When both our principal political parties are split, and when each of them has two or more candidates in the field, this solid block of 40,000 becomes a possible power and might be able to defeat or elect a candidate.

This vote situation is the foundation of the Chicago Negro's effrontery and his evil design against the white man's property. He feels that he holds the balance of power and that he can dictate the policy of any administration that happens to be elected by his controlling black vote.

He therefore becomes arrogant, insulting, threatening. He abuses his rights and liberties and feels that he is perfectly safe in doing so for the reason that as he controls this block of votes he believes that he can practically dictate to the police department, the city administration and the courts. Consequently he is bold.

Now then, white property owners and voters, this vote situation must be corrected. It is time for you to think and ponder. Remember this, that this Negro vote power could not exist except for the fact that the candidate who caters to it is traveling on his belief that the white man will vote the ticket any way. The white voter is not supposed to think, nor to indulge in any investigations of a candidate to ascertain whether or not the candidate is favorable or inimical to his interests. No, the white voter is supposed to be a blind ass who has no care for his own interests, who does not know or care to know of the foul plots against him, who has no knowledge of what is going on around him, but who simply does as he is told and walks to the polls as in a dream, having eyes and seeing not, ears and hearing not, and religiously casts his vote for the ticket and against his own interests.

Wake up, white voters! Come out of your dream. Open your eyes and ears. It is high time that you realize what is going on. Hereafter in local affairs affecting your property and home interests, there should be only one test of a candidate and that one should be, "Will his election work for the betterment of Hyde Park or for its deterioration?"

The Negro should be consistent. As he segregates his vote and casts it all together in one block, so he should live together all in one block.

Some of the slogans of the organization were: "Our neighborhood must continue white"; "They shall not pass"; "Stay out of Hyde Park"; "We base our rights on priority, majority and anthropological superiority."

The sentiment was contagious.[102] Other literature of even more pronounced anti-Negro character followed. An unsigned card was distributed in large numbers throughout the district during the presidential campaign, showing a vicious looking Negro and words of warning for family protection.

The attempt still further to instill fear and bitterness was manifest in a pamphlet sent, by whom it is not known, to the wives of prominent white residents of the city and particularly of Hyde Park, entitled _An Appeal of White Women to American Womanhood_. It was a reprint from an article in the _New Times_, which in turn reprinted an appeal from the _German Women on the Rhine_. Although there could be slight connection between the conduct of colored French colonial troops on the Rhine and Chicago Negroes, its circulation in Hyde Park possibly helped to fan the flames of race feeling which had already been so deliberately kindled. The pamphlet detailed the "bestial ferocious conduct of Negroes against German women."

4. DEFENSIVE PROPAGANDA

Within the Negro group there are to be found many defensive programs designed for group protection. They rarely reach the point of organized effort for the control of opinion. The essence in all appeals is "protest," which is tacitly understood to be an effective sentiment to circulate. The most striking illustrations of this type of propaganda are those which follow definite provocations. The appeal of the propaganda is directed first to Negroes as a means of cementing the group from within, and indirectly to the whole group by way of impressing it with the strength of solidified opposition to insults. One example of this type will suffice.

Following the bombing of Negro homes and the inauguration of a campaign of reckless propaganda against Negroes in the interest of exclusive white residence neighborhoods, Negroes organized the "Protective Circle of Chicago." The object of this organization was to "oppose segregation, bombing and the defiance of the Constitution." The admitted method of combating these objectionable practices was propaganda. The question on which certain white people living in Hyde Park were greatly wrought up was that of keeping Negroes out of "white residential districts." Negroes were classed as "undesirables," and the efforts of the whites in offensive propaganda were aimed at proving it. Fortunately for the Negroes, an article appeared in a real estate publication, the _Real Estate News_, presenting with unusual force an aspect of the neighborhood dispute favorable to the contention of the Negroes. This was seized upon by the Protective Circle, and the editor consented to elaborate it. Twenty-five thousand copies were distributed among Negroes and whites, residents of the district.

The heading "Solving Chicago's Race Problem," coupled with the fact that the article had first appeared in a real estate periodical published by whites, immediately attracted attention. The subheadings of the article read: "South Side Property Owners Warned against Perils of Boycott and Terrorism Being Promoted by Local 'Protective Associations,'" "Conspiracies Violating Civil Rights Act Bring Danger of Heavy Damages or Imprisonment," "A Complete Analysis of Chicago's Race Movement Proves It to Be Small Factor in Causing Great Changes in Residential Values," and "How Influence of Stock Yards, Railroads, Auto Industry and City Growth Force Big and Sweeping Changes on South Side of Chicago." One paragraph of the article, printed in italics, ran:

Any association formed in Chicago for the purpose of, or having among its aims, refusal to sell, lease or rent property to any citizen of a certain race, is an unlawful association. Every act of such an association for advancement of such an aim is an act of conspiracy, punishable criminally and civilly in the District Court of the United States. And every member of such an association is equally guilty with every other member. If one member hires a bomber, or a thug who commits murder in pursuance of the aims of the association, all in the organization may be found guilty of conspiracy to destroy property or to commit murder, as the case may be.

At a mass meeting held by the Protective Circle at which there were 2,000 Negroes present, $1,000 was collected to advance this propaganda. As the chairman of the meeting stated:

We wanted to get at the responsibility for these bombings and intimidations, and we intended to give publicity to the Negro's side of the story. Papers will not print the Negro's story. We wanted to get this survey of white and colored property owned, and whites and Negroes bombed, and send it to every white person living in Kenwood, and just as we were about to start on our task, there came like a flash out of the sky an article by the editor of the _Real Estate News_. It was a godsend. We have secured thousands of copies of this paper and are buying more as fast as we can get funds. We intend to send copies to every white person interested in this question.

V. CONCLUSIONS

The inquiries of this Commission into racial sentiments which characterize the opinions and behavior of white persons toward Negroes lead us to the following conclusions:

That in seeking advice and information about Negroes, white persons almost without exception fail to select for their informants Negroes who are representative and can provide dependable information.

That Negroes as a group are often judged by the manners, conduct, and opinions of servants in families, or other Negroes whose general standing and training do not qualify them to be spokesmen of the group.

That the principal literature regarding Negroes is based upon traditional opinions and does not always portray accurately the present status of the group.

Most of the current beliefs concerning Negroes are traditional, and were acquired during an earlier period when Negroes were considerably less intelligent and responsible than now. Failure to change these opinions, in spite of the great progress of the Negro group, increases misunderstandings and the difficulties of mutual adjustment.

That the common disposition to regard all Negroes as belonging to one homogeneous group is as great a mistake as to assume that all white persons are of the same class and kind.

That much of the current literature and pseudo-scientific treatises concerning Negroes are responsible for such prevailing misconceptions as: that Negroes have inferior mentality; that Negroes have inferior morality; that Negroes are given to emotionalism; that Negroes have an innate tendency to commit crimes, especially sex crimes.

We believe that such deviations from recognized standards as have been apparent among Negroes are due to circumstances of position rather than to distinct racial traits. We urge especially upon white persons to exert their efforts toward discrediting stories and standing beliefs concerning Negroes which have no basis in fact but which constantly serve to keep alive a spirit of mutual fear, distrust, and opposition.

That much of the literature and scientific treatises concerning Negroes are responsible for such prevailing misconceptions as that Negroes are capable of mental and moral development only to an inferior degree, are given to an uncontrolled emotionalism, and have a distinctive innate tendency to commit crimes, especially sex crimes.