Chicago Race Riot of 1919 - Background

Background

Unlike southern cities through the 1960s, Chicago did not segregate most public accommodations. In fact, according to Walter Francis White, pre-1915 Chicago had a reputation for equitable treatment of African Americans in general. However, early 20th-century Chicago beaches were segregated. African Americans had a long history in Chicago, with the city sending its first African-American representative to the state legislature in 1876. There had also been late 19th century tensions between ethnic Irish and African Americans, as most members of both competed for jobs among the lower classes.

Beginning in 1910, thousands of African Americans started moving from the South to Chicago as one destination in the Great Migration, fleeing lynchings, segregation and disfranchisement in the Deep South. The Ku Klux Klan committed 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 in 1919 in southern states. With the pull of industrial jobs in the stockyards and meatpacking industry beckoning as European immigration was cut off by World War I, from 1916 to 1919 the African-American population in Chicago increased from 44,000 to 109,000, for a total of 148 percent during the decade. African Americans settled in the South Side, where, as their population grew, they pressed against a neighborhood of ethnic Irish immigrant descendants established since the mid-19th century, and had to compete against them for jobs and housing. Southern African Americans had followed waves of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, who also added to the competition and tensions. Ethnic groups established territory in their areas of the city, which their young men often patrolled against outsiders. Because of agricultural problems, Southern whites also migrated to the city, about 20,000 by this period. The rapid influx of migrants caused overcrowding as a result of a lack of adequate low cost housing.

The postwar period found tensions rising in numerous cities where populations were increasing rapidly. People from different cultures jostled against each other and competed for space. In 1917, the Chicago Real Estate Board established a policy of block by block segregation. New arrivals in the Great Migration generally joined old neighbors on the South Side. By 1920, the area held 85% of Chicago's African Americans--middle and upper class and poor. In the postwar period, veterans of all groups were looking to re-enter the work force. Some whites resented African-American veterans. At the same time, African-American veterans exhibited greater militancy and pride as a result of having served to protect their country. They wanted to be treated as full citizens after fighting for the nation.

In Chicago, ethnic Irish dominated social and athletic clubs that were closely tied to the political structure of the city. Some had acted as enforcers for politicians. As the first major group of 19th-century European immigrants to settle in the city, the Irish had established formal and informal political strength. In Chicago, ethnic white gangs had been attacking African-American neighborhoods, and the police, overwhelmingly white and increasingly ethnic Irish, seemed little inclined to try to stop them. Meanwhile, newspapers carried sensational accounts of any African American allegedly involved in crime. An example of territory was the Bridgeport community area, an ethnic Irish neighborhood just west of the Black Belt. Ethnic Irish had long patrolled their neighborhood boundaries against all other ethnic groups, especially African Americans. A group known as the Hamburg Athletic Club, whose members included a 17-year-old Richard J. Daley, future mayor of Chicago, contributed to gang violence in the area.