<strong>Seely</strong> 10
<strong>Seely</strong> 11 <strong>The</strong> Chicago Race Riot <strong>of</strong> 1919 After World War I ended in November 1918, thousands <strong>of</strong> American servicemen, black and white, returned home from Europe and looked for jobs, as many <strong>of</strong> them had held prior to the war, in the factories, mills, and warehouses <strong>of</strong> the nation's major industrial cities. White soldiers <strong>of</strong>ten 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 <strong>of</strong> race. As the postwar economy contracted, however, the total number <strong>of</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong> 1919, race riots erupted in no less than twenty American cities. <strong>The</strong> largest and most violent <strong>of</strong> these riots occurred in Chicago. <strong>The</strong> 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 <strong>of</strong> white bathers. For this, Williams was pelted with stones by an unruly group <strong>of</strong> young white men and soon drowned. When the police ignored eyewitness accounts <strong>of</strong> the event and refused to arrest those responsible for the boy's death, indignant crowds <strong>of</strong> blacks gathered in protest. Distorted accounts <strong>of</strong> the incident inflamed already tense relations between black and white Chicagoans. For the next two weeks, gangs <strong>of</strong> unruly whites and mobs <strong>of</strong> outraged blacks clashed with one another in sporadic fighting across the city's South Side. On the fourth day <strong>of</strong> rioting, the state militia was deployed to restore order, but the fighting continued. In the end, the violence claimed the lives <strong>of</strong> 38 Chicagoans: 23 blacks, 15 whites. Additionally, over 500 were injured. <strong>An</strong>d hundreds <strong>of</strong> families lost everything when their homes were torched by rioters. In the wake <strong>of</strong> some <strong>of</strong> the worst rioting in the city's history, Chicagoans looked for ways to prevent similar episodes in the future. Some <strong>of</strong>fered quick fixes, including some that would have legitimated racial discrimination in matters <strong>of</strong> 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