crowd. He was not convicted.
"Sniping" was a form of retaliation by Negroes which grew out of the automobile raids. These raiding automobiles were fired upon from yards, porches, and windows throughout the "Black Belt." One of the most serious cases reported was at Thirty-first and State streets, where Negroes barricaded the streets with rubbish boxes. Motorcycle Policeman Cheney rammed through and was hit by a bullet. His companion officer following was knocked from his machine and the machine punctured with bullets.
After the wounding of Policeman Cheney and Sergeant Murray, of the Sixth Precinct, policemen made a thorough search of all Negro homes near the scene of the "sniping." Thirty-four Negroes were arrested. Of these, ten were discharged, ten were found not guilty, one was given one day in jail, one was given five days in jail, one was fined and put on probation, two were fined $10 and costs, one was fined $25; six were given thirty days each in the House of Correction, and one, who admitted firing twice but said he was firing at one of the automobiles, was sentenced to six months in the House of Correction. His case was taken to the appellate court.
Concerted retaliatory race action showed itself in the Italian district around Taylor and Loomis streets when rumor said that a little Italian girl had been killed or wounded by a shot fired by a Negro. Joseph Lovings, an innocent Negro, came upon the excited crowd of Italians. There was a short chase through back yards. Finally Lovings was dragged from his hiding-place in a basement and brutally murdered by the crowd. The coroner reported fourteen bullet wounds on his body, eight still having bullets in them; also various stab wounds, contusions of the head, and fractures of the skull. Rumor made the tale more hideous, saying that Lovings was burned after gasoline had been poured over the dead body. This was not true.
This same massing of race against race was shown in a similar clash between Italians and Negroes on the North Side. The results here, however, were not serious. It was reported in this last case that immediately after the fracas the Negroes and Italians were again on good terms. This was not true in the neighborhood of the Lovings outrage. Miss Jane Addams, of Hull-House, which is near the scene of Lovings' death, testified before the Commission that before the riot the Italians held no particular animosity toward Negroes, for those in the neighborhood were mostly from South Italy and accustomed to the dark-skinned races, but that they were developing antipathy. In the September following the riot, she said the neighborhood was still full of wild stories so stereotyped in character that they appeared to indicate propaganda spread for a purpose.
The gang which operated in the "Loop" was composed partly of soldiers and sailors in uniform; they were boys of from seventeen to twenty-two, out for a "rough" time and using race prejudice as a shield for robbery. At times this crowd numbered 100. Its depredations began shortly after 2:00 a.m. Tuesday. The La Salle Street railroad station was entered twice, and Negro men were beaten and robbed. About 3:00 a.m. activities were transferred to Wabash Avenue. In the hunt for Negroes one restaurant was wrecked and the vandalism was continued in another restaurant where two Negroes were found. One was severely injured and the other was shot down. The gangsters rolled the body into the gutter and turned the pockets inside out; they stood on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Adams Street and divided the spoils, openly boasting later of having secured $52, a diamond ring, a watch, and a brooch.
Attacks in the "Loop" continued as late as ten o'clock Tuesday morning, Negroes being chased through the streets and beaten. Warned by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, business men with stores on Wabash Avenue came to protect their property. The rioting was reported to the police by the restaurant men. Policemen rescued two Negroes that morning, but so many policemen had been concentrated in and near the "Black Belt" that there were only a few patrolmen in the whole "Loop" district, and these did not actively endeavor to cope with the mob. In the meantime two Negroes were killed and others injured, while property was seriously damaged.
Tuesday's raids marked the peak of daring during the riot, and their subsidence was as gradual as their rise. For the next two days the gangs roamed the streets, intermittently attacking Negro homes. After Tuesday midnight their operations were not so open or so concerted. The riot gradually decreased in feeling and scope till the last event of a serious nature occurred, the incendiary fires back of the Stock Yards.
While there is general agreement that these fires were incendiary, no clue could be found to the perpetrators. Negroes were suspected, as all the houses burned belonged to whites. In spite of this fact, and the testimony of thirteen people who said they saw Negroes in the vicinity before or during the fires, a rumor persisted that the fires were set by white people with blackened faces. One of the men living in the burned district who testified to seeing a motor truck filled with Negroes said, when asked about the color of the men, "Sure, I know they were colored. Of course I don't know whether they were painted." An early milk-wagon driver said that he saw Negroes come out of a barn on Forty-third Street and Hermitage Avenue. Immediately afterward the barn burst into flames. He ran to a policeman and reported it. The policeman said he was "too busy" and "it is all right anyway." One of the colonels commanding a regiment of militia said he thought white people with blackened faces had set fire to the houses; he got this opinion from talking to the police in charge of that district.
Miss Mary McDowell, of the University of Chicago Settlement, which is located back of the Yards, said in testimony before the Commission:
I don't think the Negroes did burn the houses. I think the white hoodlums burned them. The Negroes weren't back there, they stayed at home after that Monday. When we got hold of the firemen confidentially, they said no Negroes set fire to them at all, but the newspapers said so and the people were full of fear. All kinds of mythical stories were afloat for some time.
The general superintendent of Armour & Company was asked, when testifying before the Commission, if he knew of any substantial reason why Negroes were accused of setting fires back of the Yards. He answered:
That statement was originated in the minds of a few individuals, radicals. It does not exist in the minds of the conservative and thinking people of the community, even those living in back of the Yards. They know better. I believe it goes without saying that there isn't a colored man, regardless of how little brains he'd have, who would attempt to go over into the Polish district and set fire to anybody's house over there. He wouldn't get that far.
The controlling superintendent of Swift & Company said he could not say it from his own experience, but he understood there was as much friction between the Poles and Lithuanians who worked together in the Yards as between the Negroes and the whites. The homes burned belonged to Lithuanians. The grand jury stated in its report: "The jury believes that these fires were started for the purpose of inciting race feeling by blaming same on the blacks."
The methods of attack used by Negroes and whites during the riot differed; the Negroes usually clung to individual attack and the whites to mob action. Negroes used chiefly firearms and knives, and the whites used their fists, bricks, stones, baseball bats, pieces of iron, hammers. Among the white men, 69 per cent were shot or stabbed and 31 per cent were beaten; among the Negroes almost the reverse was true, 35 per cent being shot and stabbed and 65 per cent beaten. A colonel in charge of a regiment of militia on riot duty says they found few whites but many Negroes armed.
Arms and ammunition.—The foregoing figures and statements gave some color to the belief persistent during and after the riot that Negroes had stores of arms and ammunition. A lieutenant of police testified before the coroner's jury that he had known in advance that the riot was coming because "there were guns in every house out there; I knew they were there for a purpose." He said he had heard that Negroes had been advised to arm themselves and defend their homes, that the Constitution of the United States provided for that. The state's attorney said before the Commission that prior to the riot he had received reports from detectives of private agencies stating the same thing. He was informed that Negroes readily got firearms from Gary, Indiana, and that porters on the Pullman trains brought them in from outside places. He further stated: "I am very definitely assured of the
