naval recruits.
The Sherman House was a dilapidated place on Genesee Street, the main street of the town. It had been abandoned by whites and was run as a lodging-house for thirty or thirty-five unmarried Negroes, chiefly factory workers. On the first floor was a poolroom and soft-drink "parlor," which some of the naval recruits had patronized.
A mischievous Negro boy of ten years, George Taylor, was primarily responsible for the outbreaks. On the afternoon of May 31 he and his little sister had been throwing stones at passing automobiles in Sheridan Road. One of these missiles broke the wind shield of an automobile driven by Lieutenant A. F. Blazier, an officer at the Great Lakes Station, who allowed this fact to become known to some of the recruits at the station. Late that evening an unorganized mob of recruits assembled at the Sherman House and threw stones, breaking nearly all the windows. The mob was rushed by all the available police in Waukegan, who took six prisoners. One reported incident was the chasing of a Negro by half a dozen bluejackets and marines and his rescue by the police.
Provost guards from the Naval Station rounded up the rioters and took them back to Great Lakes, thus ending the outbreak.
Two nights later, or June 2, 150 boys on leave from the Naval Training Station renewed the attack. They gathered in a ravine near the hotel and at ten o'clock they poured forth, led by a sailor carrying an American flag. The police had been warned and were ready with reinforcements.
About seventy-five feet from the lodging-house the police ordered the attackers to halt; no attention was paid to the command, and they fired their riot guns in the air, wounding two marines who were some distance away. Hand-to-hand fighting ensued, during which the police seized the flag and arrested two marines. The Great Lakes boys gathered about the police station and demanded their comrades.
Commander M. M. Frucht, executive officer of the Naval Station, who had already been sent to Waukegan by Commandant Bassett, appeared at the door and quieted the crowd with a promise that all concerned would have a square deal. He also advised them to return at once to the Naval Station.
The police released the two prisoners and gave back the flag. Two hundred provost guards from the Naval Station arrived in motor trucks while the crowd was at the police station.
Waukegan youths, evidently banded together for the purpose, searched the house of Edward Dorsey, Negro, at 905 Market Street, on the night of June 5. Ten of them, ranging from seventeen to twenty-two years, were arrested. They said they had heard that five white persons were held prisoners in Dorsey's home and that it was their intention to effect a rescue. It was asserted that a number of provost guards accompanied the crowd to the Dorsey house.
The general spirit of the people of Waukegan regarding Negroes may be judged from a proclamation by Mayor J. F. Bidinger, in which he disclaimed for the people of the city any intention to harass the Negro. Referring to reports that some of the white people of the town had participated in the disturbances, the mayor said: "In the first they did not, and in the second in no great numbers. Hoodlums generally run true to form and seldom overlook ready-made opportunity to manifest their peculiar taste in deviltry. Hence the mixing of a few of them into these fracases signifies nothing in so far as our general public is concerned."
Observers agreed with the mayor that the disturbances were not race riots. In this connection his proclamation said:
Now it is a definitely ascertained fact that no adult Negro was even remotely connected with the first stone-throwing; that the colored people did not then retaliate and have not since sought to retaliate in even the smallest measure; and that all the episodes have consisted simply of an attack upon people who have been as inoffensive throughout the entire affair as they could well be. All of which I submit stamps this affair as an example of disorderly conduct indeed, but not as a race riot.
3. THE "ABYSSINIAN" AFFAIR
Sunday afternoon, June 20, 1920, a small group of Negroes styling themselves "Abyssinians" ended a parade of their "order" in front of a café at 209 East Thirty-fifth Street frequented by both whites and Negroes. After a brief ceremony one of the leaders produced an American flag and deliberately burned it. He then began to destroy a second flag in the same manner. Two white policemen remonstrated with the men but were intimidated by threats and a brandishing of revolvers. They left immediately to notify police headquarters. Patrolman Owens, Negro, arrived as a second flag was lighted. Rushing up to the leader who held the burning flag in his hands and remonstrating with the group for their disloyalty, he was immediately shot and wounded. Robert Lawson Rose, a sailor on leave from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, protested against the destruction of the flag and he too was shot; he staggered into the doorway of a cigar store at 207 East Thirty-fifth Street. Some of the parade leaders got rifles from a closed automobile which had followed the parade and was standing near by, and fired into the cigar store. One of these bullets killed Joseph Hoyt, a clerk in the store. The sailor, Rose, also died from his wound. In all about twenty-five shots were fired during the fracas, and several persons were injured.
The men who did the shooting escaped but were arrested later. Crowds attracted by the demonstration quickly dispersed when the shooting began, and from then on there was virtually no disorder except for attacks at a railroad station on three Negro ministers who were returning to the city and knew nothing of the shooting. Nine Negroes were arrested and held to the grand jury. One of them was Grover Cleveland Redding, thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, who was the "prophet" of the "Abyssinian" order in Chicago. Redding, who had admitted the shooting of Rose, was held with Oscar McGavick for murder, and the others as accessories after the fact.[11]
The exact reason for this flag-burning has not been disclosed, although it was apparently intended to symbolize the feeling of the "Abyssinian" followers that it was time to forswear allegiance to the American government and consider themselves under allegiance to the Abyssinian government.
The guns used in the shooting were found by the police in a garage, together with the regalia of the "Abyssinians," and much of their printed matter and other effects.[12]
The "Abyssinian" affair might easily have been turned into another great outbreak such as that of July, 1919. But the police, profiting by their experience of the previous year, were vigilant. They had organized an emergency force which was quickly mobilized and put in service in the district. Moreover, there was evident such a feeling of restraint on the part of both whites and Negroes that they combined to hunt down the offenders.
Indicative of this spirit of co-operation to prevent racial conflict, and helpful to it, was the careful handling of the matter by the press. Practically every newspaper gave prominence to the way in which the two races worked together to this end, and all dwelt on the courageous action of the Negro policeman. A picture printed in the Herald-Examiner the following morning showed people of the two races fraternizing after the shooting. The Daily News in reporting the affray said that only the co-operation of the white and Negro merchants of the district stopped the disturbance; that rowdies in the neighborhood were ready for a fight, but that "the better class of whites and Negroes worked directly with the police to stop any such trouble as a recurrence of the rioting last summer, which occurred in the same neighborhood."
To understand the "Abyssinian" affair an acquaintance with other characters, certain group propaganda and movements, is necessary. The "Back to Africa" movement, which lent fervor and enthusiasm to the development of lawlessness and wanton killing by this group of unlettered Negroes, has been in progress for more than two years. The Black Star Steamship Line and the Universal Improvement Association, headed by a Negro, Marcus Garvey, a British subject, were organized to establish commercial relations with Africa. To arouse interest and secure funds for the enterprise, sentiment has been created among Negroes for the developing of sections of Africa where they may govern themselves and build up
