The Chicago Race Riots Of 1919

In Chapter 4 of his book, which is aptly titled “Postwar Passions”, Daniels chooses to focus on the experiences of African-Americans in the post-WWI era, specifically focusing on race riots that occurred during the “Red Summer” of 1919. (104) There is a long-standing history of racial discord between whites and African-Americans, but the post-WWI years are a unique time. It has been more than fifty years since slavery has been abolished, but it will still take another forty plus years before discrimination on the basis of race is made illegal in America. Industrialization after the turn of the century and blatant racism in the South led to the migration of millions of African-Americans to northern

A large influx of colored people created many problems. First, there was a major problem in the availability in housing, of which was responded to with racism. This is the root for the hatred between the black and white communities. There wasn’t enough housing in the “black belt” community, so Negroes began to spill into white neighborhoods. The very existence of a colored person in a neighborhood would lower the property values. When a house was sold to a colored person, the rent for the house would be higher than the previous, white owner’s rent. Real Estate companies believed that “it is a matter of common knowledge that house after house…whether under white or black agents, comes to the Negro at an increased rental” (Sandburg 46). They sold housing despite the fact that “the Negro in Chicago, paid a lower wage than the white workman” (47), and that black people would have

During the mid-20th century there was much racial discrimination, specifically in home ownership. During this period there was mass immigration of Southern blacks to the north. In Lawndale Chicago, there was adverse reactions to this. As the

Provided the unofficial definition, majority of the United States could easily guess the word: “The slums outside of Los Angeles. This area is very poor and revolves around gang violence, sex and drug dealing.” That’s correct, you guessed it right! It’s the infamous Compton. The city that everyone has heard in the news or in a song at one point or another. This definition was taken from Urban Dictionary, a site that allows anyone to define specific words and terms. It is easy to see that Compton is often related with drugs, crime and gangs, but the general public fails to realize the truth behind the suburb. The smaller Los Angeles district is filled with hard working people that have been disenfranchised and defined as numbers and statistics.

The Great Migration was a relocation of 6-7 million African Americans from the rural south to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West from 1916 to 1930 which had a huge impact on Urban life in the United states. They were driven from their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregations laws, many blacks headed North, Where they took advantages of the need for industrial workers that first arose during the first World War. Between 1910 and 1930, The African American population decreased in the South and increased in the Northern states by about forty percent as a result of the migration. This “Great Migration” was on the largest internal movement of people in the history of the United states and it is a shift that impacted culture, politics, and economics as a new African American communities struggled

Urban Blacks were also encounter with extreme racial violence in neighborhoods and at work. Different ethnic groups of new immigrants obtained power and used conflict as a strategy of diminishing urban Blacks power level. They began blocking Urban Black workers going to work throughout new immigrant’s neighborhoods. Race riots have played a crucial role in the social establishment of race, prejudice, and discrimination across the United States. Race riots uncovered fundamental tensions in societies experiencing swift technological and economic changes. In 1920, there were many race riots and other violence in many places, such as Red Summer Race Riots of 1919 and the St. Louis Riot of 1917 that took place during the segregation in the South and the Black urban migration to the North. These race riots were response to the reality that Urban Blacks were carrying on a powerful struggle against White supremacy. During race riots, Urban Blacks lived through a renewed flow of riots, massacres, and racial terrorism.

This paper explains a very important moment in the history of our government that took place in Illinois in 1917. As World War I was beginning for the United States things were heating up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Anti-black riots killed or injured over one hundred black civilians. Then a Silent Parade of over ten thousand black citizens from New York broke out. Civil rights have always been an issue in our government, and according to www.kidzworld.com, after these anti black riots, things eventually led to the development of the The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and from that, Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on the bus. The creation of the NAACP also influenced the Little Rock, Arkansas incident, Martin L. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, and many other things which eventually led to equal rights for everyone with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This paper will explain the riots and how it shaped our government into providing equal jobs for all races.

The Chicago Race Riots of 1919 helped to further show how African Americans are looked as inferior, not just within the citizens of the United States, but the Congress and criminal justice system. White and black beaches were separated by an invisible line; the black beach on 25th street and whites on 29th street. The story of Eugene Williams swimming on the beach worsened after a white police officer, Dan Callahan, refused to intervene or arrest the group of white men responsible for his death, in turn starting the deadliest racial violence in Chicago history. The riot lasted a week with protestors full of rage mostly on the South side with white gangs attacking isolated blacks and blacks attacking isolated whites.

Recent events that have highlighted racial tension in the United States have had even a larger number of opinions that vary regarding why the nation continues to struggle with such a challenging issue. In our text Chapter 6 titled “The City/Suburban Divide” (Judd & Swanstrom, 2015, p. 136) identifies a subject that very well may contribute to the tension. A reference to the “urban crisis” describes a landscape that is littered with “high levels of segregation, inequality and poverty, along with racial and ethnic tensions.” (Judd, et al., p. 165) Many scholars argue that the crisis was a result of the demographic changes the nation experienced following World War II as advancements in technology and infrastructure aided White Mobility. The term “White Flight” has been used to describe a massive relocation early in the twentieth century when the White Middle-Class population left the cities for suburban areas following the great migration.

When most people here the topic of the Chicago Race Riot they usually do not know a lot of information about it. The Chicago Race Riot was an important part of history for the state of Illinois and America as a country. This paper will discuss the causes of the Chicago Race Riot, violence between Americans, and how is important to Illinois’s history.

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was the culmination of racial tensions both endemic in American society as a whole in the period, and certain tensions peculiar to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921, Greenwood and its African American population became the outlet for these often violent tensions seething among Tulsa’s white population. The following paper seeks to shed some further understanding on what motivated and pushed the whites of Tulsa, Oklahoma to such a violent, extreme reaction during the riot.

During the early twentieth century, the United States was enduring significant social and economic changes due to its transformation into a commercial and industrial world power. As the need for labor escalated within many urban areas, millions of Europeans emigrated from Southern and Eastern Europe with the hopes of capitalizing upon these employment opportunities and attaining a better life. Simultaneously, many African-Americans migrated from the rural South into major cities, bearing the same intentions as those of the European immigrants. The presence of these minority groups generated both racial and class fears within white middle and upper class Americans. The fervent ethnocentrism resulting from these fears,

At the start of the twentieth century, America was still facing racial inequality post-Civil War and segregation of whites and blacks after the Reconstruction Era. With the blacks being fed up with their current conditions, they participated in the Great Migration, in which they moved from the South to the North for a better life filled with more opportunities; blacks were ready for real reform of American society. Realizing the seriousness of this

Racial segregation has had a long history in Chicago. While separation by nationality had always been apparent in the city, with neighborhoods typically being dominated by a certain ethnicity, no group of Chicagoans experienced the degree of segregation that African Americans faced in everything from the housing districts to public services. Forced to live only in designated areas by de facto segregation, redlining, and other tactics, they had limited chances to escape the cycle of danger and discrimination of the city. Confined to only their deteriorating neighborhoods,they had little chance.

The period of time after World War I the country saw significant changes economically, socially and politically. In the years that followed WWI “tens of thousands of southern blacks and returning black soldiers flocked to the nation’s Northern cities looking for good jobs and a measure of respect and security” (Hartt 1921). This made white Americans fearful that there would not be any jobs for them not to mention housing for them and their families. Because of this fear they attacked black citizens in a series of urban race riots. In an article that was written by Rollin Hartt he