Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Essay -- African American

Unit 4 Paper On July 27, 1919, a young black man named Eugene Williams swam past an invisible line of segregation at a popular public beach on Lake Michigan, Chicago. He was stoned by several white bystanders, knocked unconscious and drowned, and his death set off one of the bloodiest riots in Chicago’s history (Shogun 96). The Chicago race riot was not the result of the incident alone. Several factors, including the economic, social and political differences between blacks and whites, the post-war atmosphere and the psychology of race relations in 1919, combined to make Chicago a prime target for this event. Although the riot was a catalyst for several short-term solutions to the racial tensions, it did little to improve race relations in the long run. It was many years before the nation truly addressed the underlying conflicts that sparked the riot of 1919. This observation is reflected in many of author James Baldwin’s essays in which he emphasizes that positive change can only occur when both races recognize the Negro as an equal among men politically, economically and socially. There is some history that explains why the incident on that Chicago beach escalated to the point where 23 blacks and 15 whites were killed, 500 more were injured and 1,000 blacks were left homeless (96). When the local police were summoned to the scene, they refused to arrest the white man identified as the one who instigated the attack. It was generally acknowledged that the state should â€Å"look the other way† as long as private violence stayed at a low level (Waskow 265). This police indifference, viewed by most blacks as racial bias, played a major role in enraging the black population. In the wake of the Chica... ...on.† 1956. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 606-613. Lee, Alfred McClung. Race Riot/by Alfred McClung Lee and Norman Daymond Humphrey. New York: The Dryden Press, 1943. Lee, Alfred McClung. Race riots aren’t necessary/by Alfred McClung Lee in cooperation with the American Council on Race Relations. New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1945. Mitchell, J. Paul. Race Riots in Black and White. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Sandburg, Carl. The Chicago Race Riots. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969. Shogan, Robert. The Detroit race riot; a study in violence, by Robert Shogan and Tom Craig. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1964. Waskow, Arthur I. â€Å"The 1919 race riots [microform]: a study in the connections between conflict and violence/Arthur I Waskow.† Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1963.