and incapacitated members of the police force should be retired under a proper and satisfactory pension system.
There should be organization of the force for riot work, for the purpose of controlling rioting in its incipient stages.
GRAND JURY RECOMMENDATIONS
1. It is reasonable to believe that the colored people, if provided with proper housing facilities and an area sufficient in extent, would voluntarily segregate themselves. The present neighborhood known as the "Black Belt" could, by reasonable public improvement, assisted by our leading public citizens, be made a decent place to live in for a much larger population than it now accommodates. … This movement should enlist the financial and moral support of the industries employing large numbers of the black race.
2. Facilities for bathing, playgrounds, police protection, better housing and neighborhood conditions, are matters deserving the earnest attention of the proper authorities.
3. The employment of the colored people is imperative to the welfare of this community. Discriminating against the Negro, or, in other words, failure to give him an opportunity to make an honest livelihood after having induced him to migrate to this section of the country, simply adds to the already far too great number of hoodlums that infest our city.
4. This jury feels that in order to allay further race prejudice and to prevent the re-enactment of shameful crimes committed during the recent riots, efficient, prompt, and fearless justice on the part of the law-enforcing officers, as well as on the part of the judiciary, be meted out to the guilty ones, whether they be white or black.
5. … There is a lack of co-operation and harmony among the agencies of law enforcement, which impairs their efficiency, leads to miscarriages of justice, and wastes the public funds.
6. The parole law should be amended so that a criminal once paroled and subsequently arrested may not a second time be paroled.
7. The efficiency of the police force would be further greatly increased by the co-operation of the judiciary in refusing to grant wholesale continuances without carefully scrutinizing the results thereof when members of the police force are required to act as witnesses.
8. The police department is in need of a thorough house-cleaning. Every officer, no matter what his position is, who fails in his full duty should be dismissed. Grafters and those who allow themselves to be dominated by political influences, who are paid to protect the lives and property of our citizens, should be dismissed and punished to the fullest extent of the law.
9. It is the opinion of this jury that the police force is also inadequate in numbers, and at least one thousand (1,000) officers should be added to the existing force.
10. Policemen who have arrived at the age where their usefulness is a matter of the past should be pensioned, notwithstanding their present number, and notwithstanding the fact that the pension fund is already taxed to its utmost. The needed funds for this purpose should be provided.
11 … payment of salaries to public officers commensurate with the increased cost of living.
12. The authorities employed to enforce the law should thoroughly investigate clubs and other organizations posing as athletic and social clubs which really are organizations of hoodlums and criminals formed for the purpose of furthering the interest of local politics.
13. The jury also finds that vice of all kinds is rampant in the "Black Belt," and a thorough cleaning up of that district is absolutely essential to the peace and welfare of the community.
14. Political influence to a large extent is responsible for the brazenness with which the Chicago bum, pickpocket, and gun and hold-up man operates. It is also the opinion of the jury that the indeterminate-sentence law frequently operates in a miscarriage of justice, and it is our opinion that the court should fix the sentence of offenders at the time of their conviction.
15. Because of the large number of young boys involved in the rioting, the jury recommends the resumption of the activities of the Y.M.C.A., the Knights of Columbus, and Salvation Army, as well as other similar organizations. …
CHAPTER II
OTHER OUTBREAKS IN ILLINOIS
I. Minor Clashes in and near Chicago
1. CLASHES IN CHICAGO PRECEDING THE RIOT OF 1919
The race riot of 1919 in Chicago was preceded by a long series of more or less serious clashes between whites and Negroes. Some of these are discussed in the section of this report dealing with contacts in recreation. Others are here described to show the development of friction and conflict leading up to the 1919 riot. Two brutal and unprovoked murders of Negroes by gangs of white hoodlums preceded the riot by only a few weeks.
In many of the antecedent clashes a conspicuous part was played by gangs or clubs of white boys and young men. These operations frequently showed organization, and the gangsters were often armed with brass knuckles, clubs, and revolvers.
Some of the earlier clashes, however, did not have their origin in gang activities. For instance, it may be that the resentment by whites of the coming of Negroes into their neighborhood inspired the crowd of boys between twelve and sixteen years of age who, in February, 1917, stoned a four-flat building at 456 West Forty-sixth Street. Two Negro families moved into the two second-floor flats of this building. The next afternoon about 100 boys from nearby schools stoned the building. The two Negroes attempted to remonstrate but were driven back. One of them reached the office of the agent of the building, who notified the police. A patrol wagon responded, but the boys had disappeared. After it had gone the boys reappeared and renewed the stoning. Every window in the upper part of the building was broken. On a second riot call Captain Caughlin and Lieutenant James McGann and a squad of police rescued the Negroes, who shortly afterward sought other quarters.
Detectives learned the identity of thirty of the boys, some of whom confessed. With their parents they were compelled to appear at the Stock Yards police station and pay for the damage inflicted.
The death of a white man, wrongly thought to have been murdered by Negroes, led to rioting on the night of July 3, 1917, in which a party of white men in an automobile fired upon a group of Negroes at Fifty-third and Federal streets. Apparently no one was hit. Earlier in the evening Charles A. Maronde, a saloon-keeper at 5161 South State Street, had been found dead following an altercation with Negroes whose passage through his premises had irritated him. Two shots were fired, but it was not proved whether by Maronde or by the Negroes. A coroner's jury found that he had died of heart disease.
In July and August, 1917, there were minor outbreaks of trouble between Negroes and naval recruits from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. In some instances recruits and in others Negroes were reported to be the aggressors.
When organized gangs took part in clashes the results were more serious. A typical case started in the Kohler saloon at South State and Fifty-first streets on May 27, 1919, two months before the riot.
A group of about ten
