The eCrozier

One hundred years ago this month, 38 people were killed in what became known as the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. The riot was years in the making; a result of the combustible combination of racism and demagoguery by white leaders in Chicago. For years, African-Americans in what became known as the Great Black Migration had been moving from southern states (escaping the Jim Crow south) to Chicago in order to make a better living for their families. Many of these African-Americans took the low wage jobs being offered. Nicholas Lemann tells this story of mass migration in his excellent book, The Promised Land (1991). Working-class white people in Chicago were told to see this migration differently. They were warned to view it as a threat to their own livelihoods because employers could hire African-Americans at a lower wage. Rather than address the choices employers were making, they hyped up the “Negro Invasion.”

The riot began after a young black man who was swimming with his friends in Lake Michigan drifted near a beach “reserved” for white people. A white man, spotting this young African-American, and having been “warned” of the “Negro Invasion,” threw rocks at him. The young man was knocked out and drowned in the lake. Word spread fast in the African-American community about the murdered young man and a powder keg of repressed resentment exploded. African-Americans who were tired of being on the receiving end of violence regrettably resorted to violence themselves. White people responded in kind, which surprised no one. In addition to the 38 killed, hundreds were injured during the riot that followed.

The language used by the demagogues one hundred years ago in Chicago said it all. Chicago was experiencing a “Negro Invasion.” They accompanied this inflammatory language with other descriptors (e.g., “they’re going to rape our women and take our jobs”) to frighten and arouse the white residents of Chicago. It’s the exact same language used today by our President and others to describe immigrants from Latin America and other non-white countries. There’s an old saying: “It’s funny how history repeats itself.” But there’s nothing funny about this repetition. It’s sadistic and mean, and it places the blame on the shoulders of the wrong people just like 100 years ago in Chicago. It’s classic demagoguery.

So, we’ve been here before. 1919, not uncoincidentally, was also one of the peak years in the U.S. for lynchings. Do we really want to repeat that brutality today? We allowed demagogues then to lead us in all manner of despicable behaviors in this country. Those of us who are white look back from the perspective of today and ask: “How could white people just like us have done such things?” Will white people 100 years from now look back and ask how we tolerated in this generation the violence toward and scapegoating of people with a different skin color as ourselves? Or, will we choose a different course this time? The playbook of demagogues is always the same: Exploit people’s insecurities whatever they are and then tell those same fearful people who they need to blame and punish. History shows us that violence and murder always follow. We must reject such demagoguery if we’re to have hope for a just future as a people.

+Scott