The Chicago Commission on Race Relations: The Negro in Chicago

The Chicago Commission on Race Relations:

The Negro in Chicago

After four days of rioting, eighty-one prominent Chicagoans called upon Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois to appoint “an emergency state committee to study the psychological, social, and economic causes underlying the conditions resulting in the present race riot and to make such recommendations . . . to prevent a recurrence of such conditions in the future.” Lowden appointed a Commission with six white and six Negro members. He called upon the commission “to get the facts and interpret them” so that blacks and whites might find a way to live peacefully. The commission began work in October but experienced difficulty finding property owners willing to lease office space to Negros. During an eleven month investigation, the Commission organized thirty conferences that sought information from 175 experts. They also employed twenty-two white and fifteen Negro researchers to investigate conditions leading to the riots. At the conclusion of their work, the commission concluded peace would result “only after the disappearance of prejudice.” In their recommendations, they called upon the police to enforce laws fairly and to protect all citizens “without regard to color” by paying “particular and continuous attention’ to the activities of the “athletic clubs . . . found to be a fruitful source of race conflict.” The commission called for the provision of better schools and sanitation and recreation facilities, while encouraging labor unions, newspapers, streetcar companies, social and civic organizations, and churches to promote racial harmony and tolerance. Chicago could accomplish this task most immediately by providing “more and better housing to accommodate the great increase in Negro population.” Employers and labor unions needed to insure opportunities for Negroes to gain work while avoiding their use as strikebreakers in the highly contested struggle over jobs. Critics accepted the Commission’s conclusion racism caused the strike. But prominent white Americans like Walter Lippmann candidly admitted segregation was the most practical means to avoid race riots. Lippmann wrote

"Since permanent degradation is unthinkable, and amalgamation undesirable for both blacks and whites, the ideal would seem to lie in what might be called race parallelism. Parallel lines may be equally long and equally straight; they do not join except in infinity, which is further away than anyone need worry about just now."