After the first world war many things changed in the United States. People began to move to new places, specificly people of the south were migrating to the North. This was reffered to as the Great Migration. Many African Americans of the South were moving in to Northern states looking for better jobs and more opperitunities. This seemed like a good idea but people of the North were not very fond of it. All of the new people in the North caused Economic competition, Police enificiency, competition for housing and many smaller things. all of these problems led barbaric riots in the City of Chicago Illinois.
Before this migration of African americans from southern states to the North racial differences had not been a large peoblem in the North. Chicago specificly had been known for its acceptance of all races. This quickly changed when people that were not fermiliear with city life at all came to Chicago and started competing in the Job and Housing markets. Even the Blacks that had been living in Chicago were not accepting to the blacks from the south. Tensions began to rise heavily.
Rising tensions between Blacks and Whites became so high that Riots started breaking out quite frequently. These riots all began on July 27, of 1919. An African american by the name of Eugene WIlliams was swimming on the beach of Lake Michigan. This beach had been known as an all white beach and many whites that were also enjoying their day on the beach did not take too kindly to the fact that Mr. Williams was using "their" beach. A white man brought it upon himself to make Mr. Williams leave the beach and he threw a stone that hit Eugene WIlliams in the back of the head which caused him to pass out and drown.
This incodent was the official beggining to the Chicago Race Riots that lasted an entire summer, from July 27, 1919 to August third, 1919. It was all because local police officials would not do anything about the horrible crime that had been commited on the beach that day. These fights between Blacks and Whites became known as the Red Summer and also the worst rioting in the history of Chicago. At the end of all the riots their were 38 people dead and Hundreds had become homeless and injured.
The main reason that all of these riots continued was because of corruption of the media and police officials. One example of corruption by the media was in a town in Arkansas. There had been a ficticious story set up by whites that black share croppers had plotted to slaughter about 100 white men. Whites took this to the media and this ficticious story was broudcasted everywhere. In reality it had been the Whited that had plotted to slaughter the blacks but nobody took the wors of the African Americans seriously.
There was a great demand for segregation between Blacks and whites but the Blacks did not want to go along with this plan, they just kept on Rioting. The "red summer" could have been completely avoided and handled in a much more sivalized fashion if the police had interveined as if they would have if it had been an African American that had thrown the stone at the back of a white mans head, but instead nothing was done at all which caused the African mericans to bring it upon themselves to try to solve their problem.
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| Damage from the riots |
Source one- Yale University, From this source i gathered information about Chicago before the Rtiots started and about the General causes of the Riots.
source two- Harvard University - This source gave me the detailed story that actually started the first riot and it also gave me some scenarios of the unfairness towards African Americans from law enforcement.
source three- Umich - This source was very helpful because it gave me specific numbers of the amount of people killed and injured in the riots along with more insight on how it was all started.
