Race Riots
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Source: Chicago Daily Tribune, editorial, 29 July 1919, pg. 8.
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It is becoming more and more evident that the white and colored people are not living in harmony in Chicago and that the tendency toward conciliation is not sufficient to bridge the chasm.
Riots are increasing in violence and frequency, not alone because of neighborhood friction, but because of conflicts in interests which are extensions of neighborhood life, such as at bathing beaches and on street cars.
The issue is beginning to be sharply drawn. The colored people do not seem disposed to recede from what they consider a just position in the community and the whites eem determined not to give way, as they conceive it, before a penetration of colored people into neighborhoods which heretofore have been restricted to white population.
The colored people insist upon just and equal advantages. White people take the position that the "encroachment" of Negroes is not just to them because depreciation of property values always follows.
Regardless of the validity of the claims of the whites, it is a matter of fact that these claims exist. The whites do resent the appearance of colored people in white neighborhoods and this resentment does, whether just or not, work a change in neighorhood feeling and in property values. We may as well look the facts squarely in the face and we ask the colored people to consider them.
If the whites and colored cannot refrain from riots and bloodshed and interminable violence on the bathing beaches, how long will it be before this question is asked: Shall there be separate bathing beaches for the whites and colored?
If the races cannot get along in certain neighborhoods without fights and brawls and police interference, how long will it be before segregation will be the only means of preventing daily murders and perhaps a recurrence, on a scale vastly enlarged, of the East St. Louis disaster?
If a colored person cannot enter a street car without this being the signal for shooting and furore, how long will it be before public policy and the protection of life and property makes necessary another system of transportation?
It is obvious that these questions will arouse complaint in persons who would like to see the races get together on a thoughtful basis and who consider equality the keynote of American institutions. There is no dispute of the colored man's plea for justice and equality. The question is as to the disposition of the fact.
Public policy has first call; this goes for all races and creeds in the population. Public policy requires that life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness be maintained. If the races are always at swords' points and individuals of each continually being sacrificed to the violent feeling which exists and which it is no use to deny, does it not follow that somewhere there must be a rule of conduct?
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 5 November 2001
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