Red Summer: Resistance and The New Negro

Red Summer: Resistance and The New Negro

Southern migrants hoped the Great Migration marked a turning point in history. Black veterans especially expressed hope The New Negro could demand fairness of treatment and equality of opportunity as reward for service to the country. Then, on July 28, 1919, a white policeman refused to arrest the white man suspected of murdering Eugene Williams. This familiar example of institutional discrimination fanned the flames of vengeance among black Chicagoans. When rumors spread of white gangs preparing to invade the “Black Belt,” African-American citizens prepared to defend the South Side district they considered home. “No longer content to turn the left cheek when smitten upon the right,” they met the violence and hatred of the invaders with violence generated by centuries of racial oppression.

On the evening of July 28, at 3642 South State Street, the white owner of a laundry left work with his wife and another woman. Three black men attacked, the white man, stabbing him until he died. An hour later, near the stockyards, a black man, Joseph Scott stabbed and killed Nicholas Kleinmark, who was the member of a white gang who boarded a streetcar with the intention of attacking Scott and two other black men. A white police officer arrested Scott and charged him with murder. Scott was held without counsel, “a travesty on justice and fair play.” Near the same time, a mob of 500 blacks gathered at Thirty-Fifth Street and Wabash Avenue stopping cars driven by whites. A member of the mob launched a brick that hit William J. Otterson in the head, killing him. At another location, an automobile of white invaders sprayed bullets near a crowd at East Thirty-Seventh Street. In response, a black man approached a white bystander, pulled a revolver, and shot and killed the white man. Later in the Black Belt, a mob of white invaders attacked three black men, including a black army lieutenant returning from a theater with three women companions. The officer defended himself, killing Clarence Metz, an action the coroner ruled justified. In a similar incident the following night, a black man returned fire on a mob of white boys, leading other blacks in the neighborhood to return fire as well. A bullet killed Berger Odman, one of the boy invaders. During the riot, blacks effectively responded to attacks. In total, 178 whites were injured and fourteen killed. White mobs never again invaded Chicago’s black belt, an indication white people understood the implications of black resistance.