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 white men entered the saloon together. When a Negro came in and called for a drink, one of the whites knocked him down and kicked him out of the front door. Arming himself with brickbats, the Negro called on the whites to come out. The gang crossed to another saloon on the opposite corner, and when they left it shortly afterward, they carried revolvers. They then beat the Negro, cutting his head. Dr. Homer Cooper, whose office is above the Kohler saloon, and one of his patients, Michael Pantaliono, witnessed the affray.
Roscoe C. Johnston, a Negro plain-clothes man who had been on the police force only four days, was told of the trouble by a citizen and found the gang in the second saloon. As he approached, Mart. Flannigan drew a revolver. Johnston called two plain-clothes men, who chanced to be outside, to summon a patrol wagon, then followed the gang back to the Kohler saloon and disarmed and arrested Flannigan. Johnston found three automatic revolvers behind the bar in the saloon and arrested three more of the men for carrying concealed weapons. Later six more of the men were taken when the patrol wagon returned to Kohler's, including Patten, the bartender.
The cases of these ten men were dismissed when they came to trial a week later before Judge Grant; lack of evidence was the reason given. Flannigan explained that he carried the gun to protect himself while taking money to the bank. These young men were said by onlookers to be members of "Ragen's Colts."
"Ragen's Colts" were frequently identified with lawlessness and specific clashes before and during the riot. They are typical of the gangs and "athletic clubs" which were responsible for much disorder, including attacks upon Negroes. This organization was sponsored by Frank Ragen, a politician whose record and methods have long offended the decent citizenship of Chicago. As a member of the Board of Cook County Commissioners, he allied himself with a spoils-seeking majority against which two or three public-spirited members waged a courageous struggle. His participation in the Board's deliberations was marked by such conduct as the hurling of a large record book and inkwells at members who opposed the "ring."
As part of his political following he gathered about him the young hoodlums who make up an important element of the club on which he bestowed his name. Ragen's influence has often been able to protect the "Colts" from punishment for criminal acts, including the persecution of Negroes.
Other "athletic" and "social" clubs, though not so notorious, have been of a like nature. Miss Mary McDowell, head resident of the University of Chicago Social Settlement, told the Commission that she knew of five such clubs composed of young men between seventeen and twenty-two:
Especially before the war they were always under obligation to some politician for renting a store and paying the initial expenses of their clubs. That's what started them, and it has come to be quite the fashion to get an empty store with big panes of glass on which they like to put their names. I am speaking now of "back of the Yards" conditions.
The Ragen Club is mostly Irish-American. The others are from the second generation of many nationalities. I don't think they have deliberate criminal desires. I think they get into these ways, and then they are used and exploited often
