rule. In every land and clime man obeys the second law of his nature and seeks his own kind, avoiding every other, and ever, ever is he warring with his unlike neighbor, families, classes, societies, tribes, and nations.
There are men who proclaim to the world and ourselves that the destiny of the black man and the white man is one. I do not believe it; I cannot believe it. Now, listen! As far back as September 18, 1858, in his famous joint debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, that wonderful, Godlike man, the liberator of the slaves, said this (Now listen, 1858, over sixty years ago): "I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and the black race. I am not nor ever have been in favor of qualifying them to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races living together on terms of social and political equality."
Other remarks of speakers at these meetings were:
The depreciation of our property in this district has been two hundred and fifty millions since the invasion. If someone told you that there was to be an invasion that would injure your homes to that extent, wouldn't you rise up as one man and one woman, and say as General Foch said: "They shall not pass"?
There isn't an insurance company in America that will turn around and try to buck our organization when we as one man give them to understand that it is dangerous to insure some people.
Why I remember fifteen or twenty years ago that the district down here at Wabash Avenue and Calumet was one of the most beautiful and highest-class neighborhoods of this great city. Go down there today and see the ramshackle broken-down and tumble-down district. That is the result of the new menace that is threatening this great Hyde Park district. And then tell me whether there are or not enough red-blooded, patriotic, loyal, courageous citizens of Hyde Park to save this glorious district from the menace which has brought so much pain and so much disaster to the district to the south of us.
You cannot mix oil and water. You cannot assimilate races of a different color as neighbors along social lines. Remember this: That order is heaven's first law.
Throughout the meetings, profession was made of friendliness toward the Negroes, together with a desire to serve their needs and accord them fair treatment. The Property Owners' Journal, published by the Association, was less guarded. While some of its columns made similar professions, its remarks in other columns were characterized by extreme racial bitterness and antagonism.
An apparently conciliatory attitude was also taken by speakers at meetings of the Hyde Park Association and its Grand Boulevard branch. In a meeting of the latter on January 19, 1920, the chairman declared that he wished to say for publication: "We have no quarrel with the colored people. We have no desire to intimidate them by violence." The mission of the organization, he said, was peaceable, and it was the purpose to proceed according to law and order. The Association, he averred, had been charged "by the colored press" with being parties to bombing outrages. He wanted it known that "we have denounced officially the action of anyone or any set of people who would indulge in a practice of that character." The story of the bombing campaign is given in another section of this report.
At another meeting it was asserted that the Kenwood and Hyde Park Association had a membership of 1,000 persons, and it was estimated that in the district to which it applied the investment in real estate was $1,000,000,000. The purpose of the organization was declared to be "to guard that $1,000,000,000 against depreciation from anything." One speaker said he did not believe there was a piece of property west of Cottage Grove Avenue in Hyde Park that was worth 33 cents on the dollar "as it stands now with this invasion." He said his home cost about $25,000, but he felt safe in saying that he could not then get $8,000 for it. A city alderman was one of the speakers at this meeting.
Most of the real estate dealers in the area were claimed as members of the Kenwood and Hyde Park Association or its Grand Boulevard branch. Special reference was made at various times and in scathing terms to dealers who declined to affiliate. At the meeting of the Grand Boulevard district on January 19, 1920, it was reported that the Executive Committee of the parent association had succeeded during the previous two or three months in educating real estate men. "The colored man," a speaker said, "would have never been in this district had not our real estate men in their ambition to acquire wealth and commissions, which is perfectly legitimate, put them here, although this action on their part has been very shortsighted, as some of them now admit." This speaker said also that the Association's "greatest successes" had been in getting all but five or six of the real estate men to sign a pledge not to show or rent or sell any property "within our locality that we claim jurisdiction of in the future to colored people."
PROPORTION OF NEGROES TO TOTAL POPULATION
1920
DATA OBTAINED FROM FEDERAL CENSUS
The Property Owners' Journal exerted no little influence in the creation of this sentiment. Claiming a wide circulation, its utterances were so extreme in bitterness against Negroes that many of the residents of the district, although opposed to the coming in of Negroes, held aloof from the organization because they could not indorse appeals to race hatred and advocacy of measures which they felt were illegal and dangerously near to violence. These extracts are from its issue of December 13, 1919:
To damage a man's property and destroy its value is to rob him. The person who commits that act is a robber. Every owner has the right to defend his property to the utmost of his ability with every means at his disposal.
Any property owner who sells property anywhere in our district to undesirables is an enemy to the white owner and should be discovered and punished.
Protect your property!
Property conservatively valued at $50,000,000 owned by some 10,000 individuals is menaced by a possible Negro invasion of Hyde Park. The thing is simply impossible and must not occur.
These are from its issue of January 1, 1920:
As stated before, every colored man who moves into Hyde Park knows that he is damaging his white neighbors' property. Therefore, he is making war on the white man. Consequently, he is not entitled to any consideration and forfeits his right to be employed by the white man. If employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes who persist in residing in Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's property, it would soon show good results.
The Negro is using the Constitution and its legal rights to abuse the moral rights of the white.
This is from its issue of February 15, 1920:
There is nothing in the make-up of a Negro, physically or mentally, which should induce anyone to welcome him as a neighbor. The best of them are insanitary, insurance companies class them as poor risks, ruin alone follows in their path. They are as proud as peacocks, but have nothing of the peacock's beauty. Certain classes of the Negroes, such as the Pullman porters, political heelers and hairdressers are clamoring for equality. They are not content with remaining with the creditable members of their race, they seem to want to mingle with the whites. Their inordinate vanity, their desire to shine as social lights caused them to stray out of their paths and lose themselves. We who would direct them back where they belong, towards their people, are censured and called "unjust." Far more unjust are their actions to the members of their race who have no desire to interfere with the homes of the white citizens of this district. The great majority of the Negroes are not stirred by any false ambition that results only in discord. Wherever friction arises between the races, the suffering is usually endured by the innocent.
