restore order. A Congressional Committee investigated the facts of the riot and the underlying conditions, which included industrial disturbances and shameful corruption in local government.[13]
The coroner of St. Clair County in which East St. Louis is situated, held thirty-eight inquests, as a result of which it was found that twenty-six of these deaths had been due to gun-shot wounds, four to drowning, four to burns, two to fractured skulls, one to hemorrhage of the brain, and one to pneumonia after a fracture of the thyroid cartilage. Hundreds of persons were estimated to have been more or less seriously injured, seventy having been treated in St. Mary's Hospital. It has been impossible to get an accurate accounting of the deaths and injuries. One man who had taken a deep interest in the situation estimated that from 200 to 300 Negroes were killed.
About 200 people were arrested. Some of these were released, some were charged with rioting and conspiracy, and others with arson. Two white women were tried for conspiracy and rioting, and fined $50.00. Ten Negroes were convicted of rioting and murder. Indictments of 104 white persons grew out of the immediate activities of the rioters. Three policemen were among those indicted for murder in connection with firing upon Negro bystanders. In this same group of assailants were seven soldiers who were court-martialed. No finding in their cases has been announced. Three white men were indicted for murder in connection with a raid upon a street-car load of Negro passengers in which a father and son were killed, a mother was wounded severely, and a little daughter escaped. Twenty-six men, two of them Negroes, were indicted for arson.
The effort to bring the guilty to justice was commented upon and summarized by this Congressional Committee as follows:
Assistant Attorney General Middlekauf had active charge of the prosecutions growing out of the riot, and he showed neither fear nor favor. Capable, determined, and courageous, he allowed neither political influence nor personal appeals to swerve him from the strict line of duty.
As a result of these prosecutions by the attorney general's office 11 Negroes and 8 white men are in the State penitentiary, 2 additional white men have been sentenced to prison terms, 14 white men have been given jail sentences, 27 white men, including the former night chief of police and three policemen, have pleaded guilty to rioting and have been punished.
These convictions were obtained in the face of organized, determined effort, backed with abundant funds, to head off the prosecutions and convictions. In the case of Mayor Mollman there seems to have been an open, paid advertising campaign to slander and intimidate the attorney general.
The burned area of the city was on Fifth Street, Broadway, Walnut Street, Eighth Street, Eleventh Street and Bond Avenue, as well as "the Flats" on Seventh Street, between Division and Missouri avenues. This latter area was that occupied by Negroes. There were 312 buildings and forty-four railroad cars totally or partially destroyed, with a total loss of $393,600.
The riots in East St. Louis may be traced, more or less directly, to a number of causes, the influence of each being apparent.
Without doubt conditions resulting from the migration of a large number of Negroes from the South, a movement which was more or less general at that time, account in large measure for the riots, but also involved in it all are the facts that there had been industrial friction, and that the city was flagrantly misgoverned.
The Congressional Committee observed an effort to shift the blame from one element to another. The labor interests sought to place responsibility for the riots upon the employers, who, they said, had brought great numbers of Negroes to East St. Louis in order that they might more readily dominate the employment situation. The employers, on the other hand, thought the blame rested upon the city and county administration because of laxity in law enforcement, exploitation of Negroes for political purposes, and all sorts of political corruption, including the "protection" of vice and crime. The political ring sought to dodge responsibility by emphasizing economic and industrial causes of the outbreak.
Whatever may have been the conditions resulting from the influx of Negroes, they were undoubtedly actuated by a desire to improve their condition. Some 10,000 or 12,000 Negroes had come to St. Clair County from the South during the winter of 1916–17. During the year and a half preceding the riot, the number of such migrants was estimated at 18,000, although it was reported that many had returned during the winter of 1916–17, because of the unaccustomed cold climate. It is certain that this influx severely taxed the housing accommodations of East St. Louis, which were of the insanitary and inadequate nature that so often characterizes urban districts in which the Negroes find that they must live. The report of the Congressional Committee on this point says:
It is a lamentable fact that the employers of labor paid too little heed to the comfort or welfare of their men. They saw them crowded into wretched cabins without water or any of the conveniences of life, their wives and children condemned to live in the disreputable quarters of the town, and made no effort to lift them out of the mire. The Negroes gravitated to the insanitary sections, existed in the squalor of filthy cabins and made no complaint, but the white workmen had a higher outlook, and failure to provide them with better homes added to their bitter dissatisfaction with the burdens placed upon them by having to compete with black labor.
It is likewise in evidence that special inducements were offered to the southern Negroes to come to East St. Louis, as well as to other industrial centers in the North. Advertisements were placed in southern newspapers, offering employment at wages far in excess of those paid in the South. Low railroad rates were offered, and in some instances during this general migration the railroads are said to have transported Negroes free in order that they might be employed by the railroads. Failures of crops in the South, floods and ill treatment of Negroes there, coupled with the hope that they would find fairer treatment in the North, as well as better wages and living conditions, were the direct causes of migration. After this had become fairly general it was further stimulated by Negroes who had come North, and who wrote home painting northern conditions in glowing colors.
From the industrial point of view it should be noted that in the summer of 1916 there had been a strike of 4,000 white men in the packing-plants of East St. Louis. It was asserted that Negroes were used in these plants as strike breakers. A report on the Negro migration by the United States Department of Labor states that when the strike was ended Negroes were still employed, and some of the white men lost their positions. It says further: "The white leaders undoubtedly realized that the effectiveness of striking was materially lessened by this importation of black workers."
Furthermore, it is stated in the report of the Congressional Committee that the Aluminum Ore Company, during a strike, brought hundreds of Negroes to the city as strike breakers in order to defeat organized labor, "a precedent which aroused intense hatred and antagonism, and caused countless tragedies as its aftermath. The feeling of resentment grew with each succeeding day. White men walked the streets in idleness and their families suffered for food and warmth and clothes, while their places as laborers were taken by strange Negroes who were compelled to live in hovels and who were used to keep down wages."
In May, 1917, a strike followed demands which had been made upon the Aluminum Ore Company by the "Aluminum Ore Employees' Protective Association." These related to alleged injustices and discriminations said to have been practiced against the employees. The company failed to comply with these demands, and a thousand white workers struck.
Closely related to this situation was a notice sent to the delegates of the Central Trades Labor Union by the secretary of the Union, dated May 23, which declared that the immigration of the southern Negro had reached a point where "drastic action must be taken if we intend to work and to live peaceably in this community." This notice declared that these men were being used "to the detriment of our white citizens by some of the capitalists and a few real estate owners." It called a meeting to present to the mayor and city council a demand for action to "retard this growing menace, and also devise a way to get rid of
