The foreman of the August grand jury which investigated the riot cases said in testifying before the Commission:
The lead we got to investigate the Forty-seventh Street district was from an anonymous letter stating that Ragen had such influence in the Forty-seventh Street police station that these individuals were allowed to go without due process of law.
I didn't believe that was a fact in this particular instance. We did learn that Ragen was a great power in that district and at the time of our investigation we learned that some of the "Ragen's Colts" had broken into the police station and pried open a door of a closet where they had a good deal of evidence in the nature of weapons of prisoners concealed, and they got all of this evidence out of there without the police knowing anything about it.
The station referred to is at Forty-seventh and Halsted streets. Gangs operated for hours up and down Forty-seventh Street, Wells, Princeton, Shields, and Wentworth avenues and Federal Street without hindrance from the police.
CROWDS ARMED WITH BRICKS SEARCHING FOR A NEGRO
WHITES STONING NEGRO TO DEATH
Actual photograph of the killing of a Negro by the mob shown above after chasing him into his home.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE POLICE
He was knocked from the stairway by a brick. Two men are here shown hurling bricks at the dying Negro.
A judge of the municipal court said in testimony before the Commission: "They seemed to think they had a sort of protection which entitled them to go out and assault anybody. When the race riots occurred it gave them something to satiate the desire to inflict their evil propensities on others."
Besides shouting as they rode down the streets in trucks that they were out to "get the niggers," they defied the law in other ways. When the militia men came on the scene on the fourth day of the riot, they testified to trouble with these gangsters. One of the colonels testified before the Commission: "They didn't like to be controlled. They would load up heavy trucks with rowdies and try to force through the lines. They'd come tooting their horns and having back pressure explosions like gatling guns."
Some of the "athletic club" gangsters had criminal records. L—— W—— was accused of being one of the leaders of the gang around Forty-seventh and Wells streets. He himself said boastfully, "I have been arrested about fifteen times for 'disorderly' and never was arrested with a knife or a gun." Several witnesses said they had seen him during the riot one night leading the mob and brandishing a razor and the next night waving a gun. He was not arrested. D—— H——, seventeen years old, was identified as being active in the rioting near Forty-seventh Street and Forrestville Avenue. His defense was that he was not closer to the Negro assaulted than across the street, but because he was arrested the year before for a "stick-up" people looked "funny" at him when anything happened. R—— C—— was accused of having been implicated in the arson cases on Shields Avenue. When his mother was interviewed, she said she knew nothing of the rioting, but said her son was at the time in the county jail, "but not for that." W—— G—— was identified many times as having taken part in the arson on Wentworth Avenue. He was indicted for both arson and conspiracy to riot. Two years before the riot he had been arrested for larceny.
All who discussed gangs before the Commission said that most of the members were boys of seventeen to twenty-two years of age. Witnesses before the coroner's juries testified to the youth of the participants in mobs. Many of the active assailants of street cars were boys. In the case of the Negro Hardy who was killed on a street car, it was said that the murderers were not over twenty years, and many were nearer sixteen. In the raids in the Ogden Park district the participants were between the ages of fifteen and twenty. The raid just west of Wentworth Avenue, where a number of houses were much damaged, was perpetrated by boys of these ages. The attacking mob on Forty-third Street near Forrestville Avenue, was led by boys of eighteen to twenty-one. The only two hoodlums caught participating in the outrages in the "Loop," the downtown business district, were seventeen and about twenty-one. Most of those arrested on suspicion in the arson cases were taken before the boys' court. Negroes involved in many cases as assailants were also youthful. The young Negro boys who killed Lazzeroni were fourteen to eighteen; those who killed Pareko and Perel were about sixteen.
A member of "Ragen's Colts" is said to have boasted that their territory extended from Cottage Grove Avenue to Ashland Avenue and from Forty-third Street to Sixty-third Street. At Sixty-third Street and Cottage Grove Avenue they were said to have attacked a colored man in a restaurant and thrown him out of the window. It was reported that trucks of a downtown store, each carrying about thirty men, yelling that they were "Ragen's Colts" and that "Ragen's bunch" were going to clean out the community, came to Sixtieth Street and Racine Avenue. Some of the boys who took part in the assault upon Negroes at Sixtieth and Ada streets were reputed to be members of "Ragen's Colts." The club, according to some of its own members, operated with automobiles from which they managed to "bump off a number of Niggers." A truck driver said he had driven some "Ragen's Colts" to Forty-seventh and Halsted streets, where they "dropped" four or five people, then he drove them back to the "Ragen's Colts" clubhouse at Fifty-second and Halsted streets. "And," he says, "they had plenty of guns and ammunition." State's Attorney Hoyne, however, said that no evidence could be found that "Ragen's Colts" had a store of arms. Members of the Illinois Reserve Militia reported that they had been threatened by "Ragen's Colts" that they would be picked off one by one when they got off duty.
One of the most serious cases of rioting in which members of "Ragen's Colts" were reported to be implicated was the raid upon Shields Avenue, where there were nine houses occupied by Negroes. At 8:30 Tuesday evening 200 or 300 gangsters started at one corner and worked through the block, throwing furniture out of windows and setting fires. A white man who owned a house on this street which he rented to Negroes says that after the raid several young men warned him, "If you open your mouth against 'Ragen's' we will not only burn your house down but we will 'do' you."
The Lorraine Club, according to five witnesses, was also implicated in arson and raids upon homes of Negroes. Their operations, according to reports, were on Forty-seventh Street and on Wells Street and Wentworth Avenue between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth streets. Negroes were chased, guns were fired, windows broken, front doors smashed in, furniture destroyed, and finally homes were burned. All Negro families were driven out. The attack was planned, and news of its imminence spread abroad in the morning. Rioting started in the afternoon of July 29, and culminated late that night. There was no interference from the police at any time. It was said that one of the leaders of the gang who had an express and coal yard carried away furniture in his wagon. Another was recognized as a youth who had shot a Negro woman during the afternoon. They are reported to have attacked an undertaker and friends who came to remove the body of a dead Negro. Three of the rioters were arrested upon the identification of several people, but two were released in the municipal court, and the third had a "no bill" returned before the grand jury. One was released because no witnesses were present to prosecute him. The witnesses said they were not notified.
A member of the Lorraine Club denied that his club had anything to do with this riot, but said it was Our Flag Club that did the "dirty work." Our Flag Club is located farther east on Forty-seventh Street near Union Avenue. When John Mills was dragged from a street car at this point and killed, a policeman recognized several of the club's members in the crowd, but vouchsafed the opinion that they were not part of the aggressive mob, "for they did not run as did the others when the patrol came down the street." Another policeman said he had never had any trouble with the club.
Eight members of the Sparklers' Club were seen at the fire at 5919 Wentworth Avenue, a building in which two Negro families lived. The arson is reported to have been planned in a neighboring cigar store. One of the boys put waste soaked in gasoline under the porch and ran. Two of