Seely 1 Lesson Plan: The Red Summer: An Examination of Urban ...

Seely 1 

Lesson Plan: 

The Red Summer: An Examination of Urban Violence and Race Relations in Chicago 

Focus: 

This lesson will primarily focus on the relationship between the 

concentration of African Americans in an urban area, such as Chicago, and the 

increased violence between blacks and whites. An analysis of the Chicago Race 

Riots of 1919 will serve as an in-depth case study. Students will focus their research 

on the social, economic, and political conditions of Chicago and attempt to explain 

how these conditions led to the Red Summer. Students will be examining primary 

sources derived from various newspapers and photographers, detailing the 

accounts before and after the riots. Students will discuss these observations in 

class. 

Objectives: 

• Following the lesson, students will be able to recognize at least five reasons 

why tension existed between blacks and whites in Chicago. 

• Following class, students will be able to create their own argument why 

violence in urban areas, such as Chicago, became more prominent and more 

violent. 

• Following the discussion, students will understand both sides to the racial 

tension that existed within Chicago. 

• Following the activity, students will be able to link commonalities between 

the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and the movement towards civil rights. 

Procedure: 

• Begin class by summarizing the previous lesson. Students will answer a 

general question concerning whether the concentration of a particular group 

of people makes any ethnic or racial group an easy target for violence? (5- 

10) 

• Following any questions by students, the students will be introduced to the 

story of Eugene Williams and the start of the Chicago Race Riot using an 

excerpt from William M. Tuttle’s Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer. 

Students will discuss their initial feelings and attitudes toward the event. 

(10) 

• Students will then divide up into groups of 4 to read Walter White’s Chicago 

and its Eight Reasons. Each group will have the responsibility to explore one 

of the eight issues and discuss its relevance to the topic. Students will also be 

examining documents and pictures that correspond to the topic. (35-40) 

• Have students circle their desks around the room, preparing for discussion. 

We will discuss several questions and ultimately draw our own conclusions 

on the relationship between racial concentration in urban environments and 

the correlation to violence toward them. (30) 

• To conclude the lesson, students will determine which factor had the most 

influence on the violence that occurred in 1919. This will be assigned as a 

written homework assignment.


Assessment: 

• Students will be assessed in several different ways. Students will first be 

assessed on their homework. Students will also be assessed on their 

participation in the class discussion and their ability to create new question 

or add to the class discussion in a positive way. Students will be assessed 

also at the end of class to see if they understand how major topics of 

American history are connected together. In addition, students will be 

assessed on their ability to retain information through their unit exam and a 

chapter quiz. 

Sources, Materials, and Accommodations: 

• “Chicago and Its Eight Reasons”: Walter White Considers the Causes of the 

1919 Chicago Race Riot 

• Maps/Charts discussing African American populations, locations, etc… 

• Primary Sources (Chicago Defender, Chicago Daily Tribune, Photographs) 

Plan “B” Option: 

• If class time is running out, I will assign the summary as homework and 

discuss the issue during the next available class. 

• If class time is excess, I will have students write their reasoning in class and 

will be further discussed if time permits.

Seely 3









The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 

After World War I ended in November 1918, thousands of American 

servicemen, black and white, returned home from Europe and looked 

for jobs, as many of them had held prior to the war, in the factories, 

mills, and warehouses of the nation's major industrial cities. White 

soldiers often sought to reclaim jobs they had held before going to war. 

Black soldiers, by contrast, expected their status as war veterans to 

qualify them for jobs they had previously been denied on the basis of 

race. As the postwar economy contracted, however, the total number of 

job openings declined. In many cities, whites and blacks found 

themselves, unhappily, competing for the same jobs. Racial tensions 

steadily escalated until, in the summer of 1919, race riots erupted in no 

less than twenty American cities. The largest and most violent of these 

riots occurred in Chicago. 

The riot began on July 27, after an African-American youth named 

Eugene Williams, while swimming with friends in Lake Michigan near 

29th Street, strayed into an area informally reserved for the exclusive 

use of white bathers. For this, Williams was pelted with stones by an 

unruly group of young white men and soon drowned. When the police 

ignored eyewitness accounts of the event and refused to arrest those 

responsible for the boy's death, indignant crowds of blacks gathered in 

protest. Distorted accounts of the incident inflamed already tense 

relations between black and white Chicagoans. For the next two weeks, 

gangs of unruly whites and mobs of outraged blacks clashed with one 

another in sporadic fighting across the city's South Side. On the fourth 

day of rioting, the state militia was deployed to restore order, but the 

fighting continued. In the end, the violence claimed the lives of 38 

Chicagoans: 23 blacks, 15 whites. Additionally, over 500 were injured. 

And hundreds of families lost everything when their homes were 

torched by rioters. 

In the wake of some of the worst rioting in the city's history, Chicagoans 

looked for ways to prevent similar episodes in the future. Some offered 

quick fixes, including some that would have legitimated racial 

discrimination in matters of hiring and housing. One proposal called for 

banning African-Americans from working alongside whites in the 

stockyards; another suggested that zoning laws be used to formally 

segregate black and white residential areas. Such proposals, though 

given much attention in newspapers catering to the city's majority white 

population, were rejected by Chicago's African-American and liberal 

white residents. 

Instead, city leaders and concerned citizens took the occasion to


examine more closely the state of relations between white and black 

Chicagoans. They formed a special commission--the Chicago 

Commission on Race Relations--to investigate the sociological origins of 

the riot and suggest ways to improve race relations in the city. This 

commission concluded that a variety of factors--competition for jobs, 

inadequate housing options for blacks, inconsistent enforcement of the 

law, and other forms of direct and indirect racial discrimination--had 

soured relations between white and black Chicagoans and created an 

environment conducive to race riots. While improvements in these 

areas would be slow and difficult to attain, the commission's 

recommendations at least envisioned a future in which racial equality, 

not racial segregation, would be the standard for all municipal policies. 

1919 Race Riot Documents 

Seeking the Cause 

Source: Chicago Defender, editorial, 9 August 

1919, pg. 16. 

SO MANY THEORIES HAVE BEEN ADVANCED as to the probable 

cause of the outbreaks between the races in the different northern cities that 

it is difficult for the man or woman whose opinion is based on the stories 

presented in the daily press to select any one that will hold longer than a day, 

or until the next edition of the paper appears. Those who try to make these 

outbursts of the lawless acute, those who believe, for instance, that the 

regrettable affair at the bathing beach here in Chicago was sufficient to set in 

motion this machine of destruction, are far from the right track. 

DOES ANY LOGICAL thinking man or woman believe that the recent 

world war could have been staged on an incident as trivial-- speaking, in the 

larger sense-- as the killing of one, two or a dozen relatives of a royal 

family? Is it not conceded that for years Germany, France, England, Russia 

and Japan had axes to grind, that they cherished little love for each other, 

that territorial aggrandizement, trade monopoly and other vital questions 

were gnawing at their very heart strings? Was it not clearly proven that 

Germany contemplated and prepared for war for forty years. Had a friendly 

feeling existed would not the killing of these members of the royal family 

been amicably adjusted without further bloodshed? 

SINCE THE BLACK MAN became an economic factor in the life of the 

North two things happened. The South awakened to the fact that they were 

losing their main prop, and financial destruction stared them in the face if 

means were not immediately devised to check the vast hordes of labor that 

were leaving that section. The southerner may be a little behind the times,


but he has learned the art of squealing as loud as anybody when his 

pocketbook is meddled with. First his free slave labor was wrested from him; 

now the North is gobbling up his cheap labor. While he cried with one breath 

for deliverance from the Black man, with the next came all sorts of pleadings 

and dire threats to the one who enticed the Black man from the land of cane 

and cotton. Enigma? Yes, but what's to be done about it? 

THE NORTHERNER, too, had an awakening when, through necessity he 

placed the Black man in his shops, factories and industrial plants, he found 

not the shiftless, lazy tout that had been pictured, but a bright, energetic, apt, 

useful and reliable workman, so a permanent place was found for him and he 

was asked to have his brothers come and partake of his good fortune. 

THERE IS ALWAYS FRICTION when two bodies try to occupy the same 

place at the same time. The close of the war threw thousands out of 

employment. The American white man, believing himself justly entitled to 

first pick, questioned the right of a Black man to be holding a job he could 

fill. The Black man, dating his final papers entitling him to a place in the sun 

from the day he landed from overseas, where he had been offering his life for 

the honor of his country, pointed to his record as an American citizen and 

refused longer to be the tool of any man. This display of manhood brought 

his enemies to their feet and by fair means or foul it was seemingly agreed to 

poison the minds of our friends. The methods employed have been both 

cunning and dastardly. The bourbon press throughout the country have aided 

and abetted this insidious propaganda and have constantly played their trump 

card, "A big, burly black brute attacks a white woman." 

IT IS AS IMPOSSIBLE to segregate a group of people who comprise such a 

large percentage of the whole population as it is to fly to the moon. And 

every instance where segregation has been practiced we find a retarded 

growth and the mob supreme, while the price of a human life is at the zero 

mark. 

Torch Rioters Give Firemen Continuous Job 

Alarms by Score During the Night; Stones Fly. 

Source: Chicago Daily Tribune, 31 July 1919, pg. 2. 

More than forty fires touched off by rioters in the black belt last night kept engine and truck 

companies clanging up and down the streets almost continuously from 8:30 until 10 o'clock. 

It was not until the troops moved into the district that the firemen were able to catch their 

breath. The calls came so fast the fire alarm operators could hardly keep track of them and 

engine company No. 50, at Forty-seventh street and Wentworth avenue, was kept so busy 

that two companies-- engine company No. 19 and truck company 15-- were sent to its aid. 

Fifty-two alarms had been turned in by 10:30, more than forty of which were said to be in


the district bounded by Wells street and Wentworth Avenue and Thirty-ninth and Fifty-third 

streets. During the day sixty-five alarms had been sounded. 

Mob at Burning Building. 

When firemen reached a burning two story brick building at 5029 Shields avenue they found 

a howling mob outside and two old Negro men, two colored women, and a white girl 

cowering under a large table on the second floor. The occupants were rescued and the fire 

extinguished. Negroes set fire to the home of a Mrs. Donohue, at 746 West Fifty-Second 

Street, and shots were being fired into the windows when the fire companies reached the 

scene. 

At 4757 South Wells street, occupied by Negroes, a crowd dragged a talking machine and 

other articles of furniture outside and set fire to them. Firemen extinguished a blaze at 5422 

South La Salle street at 10 o'clock, only to be called back to put out a second one at 11:30. 

Barns and wood sheds in the rear of houses occupied by Negroes were set on fire at 215, 

245, and 248 West Forty-Sixth Street. Several homes vacated by Negroes during the day 

were found in flames. 

Other Fires. 

Other addresses at which fires broke out were: 

5031 Shields avenue. 

4802 Wentworth avenue. 

4447 Wentworth avenue. 

4746 South Wells street. 


148 West Forty-fourth street. 



4535 Portland avenue. 



6817 Elizabeth street. 




Firemen Stoned. 

Several false alarms were turned in by rioters, evidently with the intention of stoning the 

firemen when they arrived on the scene. This occurred on several occasions. Marshal Joseph 

Kenyon of the 12th battalion was responding to an alarm at Fifty-fourth and Dearborn 

streets with engine company No. 51 when he was turned back by the police and warned 

there was no fire there. 

A crowd of Negroes stopped in front of the headquarters of engine company 61 at 5300 

Wentworth avenue and attacked twenty white men. Firemen closed the doors to the station, 

whereupon the Negroes began firing through the doors. Several men climbed through the 

windows to escape the crowd outside.


Whites fired the house at 5432 La Salle street, into which a colored family had just moved. 

The family fled to safety. 

Shot at His Window. 

Charles Cromier was sitting in his window at 2839 Cottage Grove avenue watching the 

clashing mobs. A stray bullet lodged in his head and he fell back into the room. Spectators 

saw him being helped to a chair by a woman. 

Racial feeling, which had been on par with the weather during the day took fire shortly after 

5 o'clock when white bathers at the Twenty-ninth street improvised beach saw a colored boy 

on a raft paddling into what they termed "white" territory. 

A snarl of protest went up from the whites and soon a volley of rocks and stones were sent 

in his direction. One rock, said to have been thrown by George Stauber of 2904 Cottage 

Grove avenue, struck the lad and he toppled into the water. 

Cop Refuses to Interfere. 

Colored men who were present attempted to go to his rescue, but they were kept back by 

the whites, it is said. Colored men and women, it is alleged, asked Policeman Dan Callahan 

of the Cottage Grove station to arrest Stauber, but he is said to have refused. 

Then, indignant at the conduct of the policeman, the Negroes set upon Stauber and 

commenced to pommel him. The whites came to his rescue and then the battle royal was on. 

Fists flew and rocks were hurled. Bathers from the colored Twenty-fifth street beach were 

attracted to the scene of the battling and aided their comrades in driving the whites into the 

water. 

Negroes Chase Policeman. 

Then they turned on Policeman Callahan and drove him down Twenty-ninth street. He ran 

into a drug store at Twenty-ninth street and Cottage Grove avenue and phoned the Cottage 

Grove avenue station. 

Two wagon loads of cops rolled to the scene, and in a scuffle that ensued here Policeman 

John O'Brien and three blacks were shot. 

Riot calls were sent to the Cottage Grove avenue station and more reserves were sent into 

the black belt. By this time the battling had spread along Cottage Grove avenue and 

outbreaks were conspicuous at nearly every corner. 

Meanwhile the fighting continued along the lake. Miss Mame McDonald and her sister, 

Frances, had been bathing with a friend, Lieut. Runkle, a convalescing soldier. A colored 

woman walked up to the trio and made insulting remarks, it is said. 

Runkle attempted to interfere, but the colored woman voiced a series of oaths and promptly 

struck the soldier in the face. Negroes in the vicinity hurled stones and rocks at the women 

and both were slightly injured. 

Reserves Called Out. 

In less than a half hour after the beach outbreak, Cottage Grove avenue and State street


from Twenty-ninth south to Thirty-fifth were bubbling cauldrons of action. 

When the situation had gotten beyond the control of the Cottage Grove police, Acting Chief 

of Police Alcock was notified. He immediately sent out a call to every station in the city to 

rush all available men to the black belt. Before they arrived colored and white men were 

mobbed in turn. The blacks added to the racial feeling by carrying guns and brandishing 

knives. It was not until the reserves arrived that the rioting was quelled. 

Whites Arm Selves. 

News of the afternoon doings had spread through all parts of the south side by nightfall, and 

whites stood at all prominent corners ready to avenge the beatings their brethren had 

received. Along Halsted and State streets they were armed with clubs, and every Negro who 

appeared was pommeled. 

Lewis Phillips, colored, was riding in a Thirty-ninth street car, when a white man took a pot 

shot from the corner as the car neared Halsted street. Phillips was wounded in the groin and 

was taken to the Provident hospital. 

Melvin Davies, colored, of 2816 Cottage Grove avenue, was waiting for a Thirty-fifth street 

car at Parnell avenue when he was slugged from behind. His assailants disappeared.


An armed solider and Chicago police officers patrolling the streets of Chicago (July, 1919)


Results of the Race Riot: Vandalized African-American home (July 29,1919) 

Brick-wielding Whites in Pursuit of a Black Victim, 1919


CHICAGO AND ITS EIGHT REASONS (Chicago: October 1919) 

Walter F. White 

MANY causes have been assigned for the three days of race rioting, from July 27 to 30 in 

Chicago, each touching some particular phase of the general condition that led up to the 

outbreak. Labor union officials attribute it to the action of the packers, while the packers 

are equally sure that the unions themselves are directly responsible. The city 

administration feels that the riots were brought on to discredit the Thompson forces, 

while leaders of the anti-Thompson forces, prominent among them being State's Attorney 

Maclay Hoyne, are sure that the administration is directly responsible. In this manner 

charges and counter-charges are made, but, as is usually the case, the Negro is made to 

bear the brunt of it all—to be “the scapegoat.” A background of strained race relations 

brought to a head more rapidly through political corruption, economic competition and 

clashes due to the overflow of the greatly increased colored population into sections 

outside of the so-called “Black Belt,” embracing the Second and Third Wards, all of these 

contributed, aided by magnifying of Negro crime by newspapers, to the formation of a 

situation where only a spark was needed to ignite the flames of racial antagonism. That 

spark was contributed by a white youth when he knocked a colored lad off a raft at the 

29th Street bathing beach and the colored boy was drowned. 

Four weeks spent in studying the situation in Chicago, immediately following the 

outbreaks, seem to show at least eight general causes for the riots, and the same 

conditions, to a greater or less degree, can be found in almost every large city with an 

appreciable Negro population. These causes, taken after a careful study in order of 

their prominence, are: 

1. Race Prejudice. 2. Economic Competition. 3. Political Corruption and 

Exploitation of Negro Voters. 4. Police Inefficiency. 5. Newspaper Lies about Negro 

Crime. 6. Unpunished Crimes Against Negroes. 7. Housing. 8. Reaction of Whites 

and Negroes from War. 

Some of these can be grouped under the same headings, but due to the prominence of 

each they are listed as separate causes. 

Prior to 1915, Chicago had been famous for its remarkably fair attitude toward colored 

citizens. Since that time, when the migratory movement from the South assumed large 

proportions, the situation has steadily grown more and more tense. This was due in part 

to the introduction of many Negroes who were unfamiliar with city image ways and could 

not, naturally, adapt themselves immediately to their new environment. Outside of a few 

sporadic attempts, little was done to teach them the rudimentary principles of sanitation, of 

conduct or of their new status as citizens under a system different from that in the South. 

During their period of absorption into the new life, their care-free, at times irresponsible and 

sometimes even boisterous, conduct caused complications difficult to adjust. But equally 

important, though seldom considered, is the fact that many Southern whites have also come 

into the North, many of them to Chicago, drawn by the same economic advantages that 

attracted the colored workman. The exact figure is unknown, but it is estimated by men who


should know that fully 20,000 of them are in Chicago. These have spread the virus race 

hatred and evidences of it can be seen in Chicago on every hand. This same cause underlies 

each of the other seven causes. 

With regard to economic competition, the age-long dispute between capital and labor 

enters. Large numbers of Negroes were brought from the South by the packers and there 

is little doubt that this was done in part so that the Negro might be used as a club over the 

heads of the unions. John Fitzpatrick and Ed Nockels, president and secretary, 

respectively, of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and William Buck, editor of the New 

Majority, a labor organ, openly charge that the packers subsidized colored ministers, 

politicians and Y. M. C. A. secretaries to prevent the colored workmen at the stockyards 

from entering the unions. On the other hand, the Negro workman is not at all sure as to 

the sincerity of the unions themselves. The Negro in Chicago yet remembers the waiters' 

strike some years ago, when colored union workers walked out at the command of the 

unions and when the strike was settled, the unions did not insist that Negro waiters be 

given their jobs back along with whites, and, as a result, colored men have never been 

able to get back into some of the hotels even to the present day. The Negro is between 

“the devil and the deep blue sea.” He feels that if he goes into the unions, he will lose the 

friendship of the employers. He knows that if he does not, he is going to be met with the 

bitter antagonism of the unions. With the exception of statements made by organizers, 

who cannot be held to accountability because of their minor official connection, no 

statements have been made by the local union leaders, outside of high sounding, but 

meaningless, protestations of friendship for the Negro worker. He feels that he has been 

given promises too long already. In fact, he is “fed up” on them. What he wants are 

binding statements and guarantees that cannot be broken at will. 

With the possible exception of Philadelphia, there is probably no city in America with 

more of political trickery, chicanery and exploitation than Chicago. Against the united 

and bitter opposition of every daily newspaper in Chicago, William Hale Thompson was 

elected again as mayor, due, as was claimed, to the Negro and German vote. While it is 

not possible to state that the anti-Thompson element deliberately brought on the riots, yet 

it is safe to say that they were not averse to its coming. The possibility of such a clash 

was seen many months before it actually occurred, yet no steps were taken to prevent it. 

The purpose of this was to secure a two-fold result. First, it would alienate the Negro set 

from Thompson through a belief that was expected to grow among the colored vote when 

it was seen that the police force under the direction of the mayor was unable or unwilling 

to protect the colored people from assault by mobs. Secondly, it would discourage the 

Negroes from registering and voting and thus eliminate the powerful Negro vote in 

Chicago. Whether or not this results remains to be seen. In talking with a prominent 

colored citizen of Chicago, asking why the Negroes supported Thompson so unitedly, his 

very significant reply was: 

“The Negro in Chicago, as in every other part of America, is fighting for the fundamental 

rights of citizenship. If a candidate for office is wrong on every other public question 

except this, the Negroes are going to vote for that man, for that is their only way of 

securing the things they want and that are denied them.”


The value of the Negro vote to Thompson can be seen in a glance at the recent election 

figures. His plurality was 28,000 votes. In the second ward it was 14,000 and in the third, 

10 000. The second and third wards constitute most of what is known as the “Black Belt.” 

The fourth contributing cause was the woeful inefficiency and criminal negligence of the 

police authorities of Chicago, both prior to and during the riots. Prostitution, gambling 

and the illicit sale of whisky flourish openly and apparently without any fear whatever of 

police interference. In a most dangerous statement, State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne, on 

August 25, declared that the riots were due solely to vice in the second ward. He seemed 

either to forget or to ignore the flagrant disregard of law and order and even of the 

common principles of decency in city management existing in many other sections of the 

city. 

All of this tended to contribute to open disregard for law and almost contempt for it. Due 

either to political “pull” or to reciprocal arrangements, many notorious dives run and 

policemen are afraid to arrest the proprietors. 

During the riots the conduct of the police force as a whole was equally open to criticism. 

State's Attorney Hoyne openly charged the police with arresting colored rioters and with 

an unwillingness to arrest white rioters. Those who were arrested were at once released. 

In one case a colored man who was fair enough to appear to be white was arrested for 

carrying concealed weapons, together with five white men and a number of colored men. 

All were taken to a police station; the light colored man and the five whites being put into 

one cell and the other colored men in another. In a few minutes the light colored man and 

the five whites were released and their ammunition given back to them with the remark, 

You'll probably need this before the night is over." 

Fifth on the list is the effect of newspaper publicity concerning Negro crime. With the 

exception of the Daily News, all of the papers of Chicago have played up in prominent 

style with glaring, prejudice-breeding headlines every crime or suspected crime 

committed by Negroes. Headlines such as “NEGRO BRUTALLY MURDERS 

PROMINENT CITIZEN,” “NEGRO ROBS HOUSE” and the like have appeared with 

alarming frequency and the news articles beneath such headlines have been of the same 

sort. During the rioting such headlines as “NEGRO BANDITS TERRORIZE TOWN,” 

“RIOTERS BURN 100 HOMES—NEGROES SUSPECTED OF HAVING PLOTTED 

BLAZE” appeared. In the latter case a story was told of witnesses seeing Negroes in 

automobiles applying torches and fleeing. This was the story given to the press by Fire 

Attorney John R. McCabe after a casual and hasty survey. Later the office of State Fire 

Marshall Gamber proved conclusively that the fires were not caused by Negroes, but 

by whites. As can easily be seen such newspaper accounts did not tend to lessen the 

bitterness of feeling between the conflicting groups. Further, many wild and unfounded 

rumors were published in the press—incendiary and inflammatory to the highest degree, 

a few of them being given below in order to show their nature. Some are: 

*Over 1,000 Negroes had been slain and their bodies thrown in “Bubbly Creek” and 

the Chicago River.


*A Negro had been lynched and hanged from a “Loop” building overlooking 

Madison Street. 

*A white woman had been attacked and mutilated by a Negro on State Street. 

*A Negro woman had been slain, her breasts cut off and her infant had been killed 

by having its brains dashed out against a wall. 

*A white child had been outraged by a colored man. 

*A white child bad been kidnapped by a band of colored men and its body later 

found, badly mutilated and dismembered. 

Immediately following the riots, a white woman was murdered in Evanston, III. 

Immediately the crime was laid at the door of a colored man with whom the woman had 

been intimate a number of years. Pitiful stories were told of the woman waiting for hours 

on street corners for “just one look at her Billiken-like, mulatto lover,” played up under 

headlines such as “CONFESSION EXPECTED TODAY FKOM NEGRO SUSPECT,” 

“NEGRO SUSPECT RAPIDLY WEAKENING” and the like which clearly led one to 

believe that the colored man was guilty. A few days later, in an obscure item on an inside 

page, a short account was given of the release of the colored suspect “because insufficient 

evidence to hold him” existed. A long period of such publicity had inflamed the minds of 

many people against Negroes who otherwise would have been unprejudiced. Much of the 

blame for the riots can be laid to such sources. 

For a long period prior to the riots, organized gangs of white hoodlums had been 

perpetrating crimes against Negroes for which no arrests had been made. These gangs in 

many instances masqueraded under the name of “Athletic and Social Clubs” and later 

direct connection was shown between them and incendiary fires started during the riots. 

Colored men, women and children had been beaten in the parks, most of them in Jackson 

and Lincoln Parks. In one case a young colored girl was beaten and thrown into a lagoon. 

In other cases Negroes were beaten so severely that they had to be taken to hospitals. All 

of these cases had caused many colored people to wonder if they could expect any 

protection whatever from the authorities. Particularly vicious in their attacks was an 

organization known locally as “Regan's Colts.” 

Much has been written and said concerning the housing situation in Chicago and its effect 

on the racial situation. The problem is a simple one. Since 1915 the colored population of 

Chicago has more than doubled, increasing in four years from a little over 50,000 to what 

is now estimated to be between 125,000 and 150,000. Most of them lived in the area 

bounded by the railroad on the west, 30th Street on the north, 40th Street on the south and 

Ellis Avenue on cast. Already overcrowded this so called “Black Belt” could not possibly 

bold the doubled colored population. One cannot put ten gallons of water in a five-gallon 

pail. Although many Negroes had been living in “white” neighborhoods, the increased 

exodus from the old areas created an hysterical group of persons who formed “Property 

Owners' Associations” for the purpose of keeping intact white neighborhoods. Prominent 

among these was the Kenwood-Hyde Park Property Owners' Improvement Association, 

as well as the Park Manor Improvement Association. Early in June the writer, while in 

Chicago, attended a private meeting of the first named at the Kenwood Club House, at 

Lake Park Avenue and 47th Street. Various plans were discussed for keeping the Negroes


in “their part of the town,” such as securing the discharge of colored persons from 

positions they held when they attempted to move into “white” neighborhoods, purchasing 

mortgages of Negroes buying homes and ejecting them when mortgage notes fell due and 

were unpaid, and many more of the same calibre. The language of many speakers was 

vicious and strongly prejudicial and had the distinct effect of creating race bitterness. 

In a number of cases during the period from January, 1918, to August, 1919, there were 

bombings of colored homes and houses occupied by Negroes outside of the “Black 

Belt.” During this period no less than twenty bombings took place, yet 

only two persons have been arrested and neither of the two has been 

convicted, both cases being continued. 

Finally, the new spirit aroused in Negroes by their war experiences 

enters into the problem. From Local Board No. 4, embracing the 

neighborhood in the vicinity of State and 35th Streets, containing over 

30,000 inhabitants of which fully ninety per cent are colored, over 

9,000 men registered and l,850 went to camp. These men, with their 

new outlook on life injected the same spirit of independence into their 

companions, a thing that is true of many other sections of America. 

One of the greatest surprises to many of those who came down to 

“clean out the niggers” is that these same “niggers” fought hack. 

Colored men saw their own kind being killed, heard of many more and 

believed that their lives and liberty were at stake. In such a spirit most 

of the fighting was done. 

THE “INFURIATED” WHITE MOB IN CHICAGO


Questions for discussion: 

1. Do you think that there is a strong correlation between urban violence and a 

concentration of a particular ethnic group? 

2. What are you initial thoughts and feelings on the case of Eugene Williams? 

3. Do you feel that one particular party is responsible for the events that 

occurred on July 27 th , 1919? Why or why not? 

4. What examples can you come up with that illustrate bias in the newspaper 

accounts? 

5. What do you feel is the most important reason for the violent acts during the 

Red Summer? 

6. If you were a city official at this time, what would you have done to eliminate 

the tension and violence between African Americans and whites? 

7. After evaluating the evidence, are minorities more likely to be victims and/or 

engaged in violent acts when centralized in urban areas?

Seely 1 Lesson Plan: The Red Summer: An Examination of Urban ...

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