Evidence that organized bands of white youths have been making a business of burning Negro dwellings was said to have been handed to Attorney General Brundage and Assistant State's Attorney Irwin Walker. … Chief of Police Garrity, also informed of the Fire Marshal's charges, declared several so-called athletic clubs in the Stock Yards district may lose their charters as a result.
A report about the Aylward Club was to the effect that as the Negroes came from the Stock Yards on Monday, a gang of its members armed with clubs was waiting for them and that each singled out a Negro and beat him, the police looking on.
The names of a number of gang ringleaders were reported by investigators. For illustration, L. Dennis, a Negro of 6059 Throop Street, was attacked on the night of Monday, July 28, by a mob led by three roughs whose names were learned and whose loafing place was at Sixty-third Street and Racine Avenue. A mob of thirty white men who shot Francis Green, Negro, eighteen years old, at Garfield Boulevard and State Street had a club headquarters in the vicinity of Fifty-fourth Street and their "hangout" was at the corner of Garfield Boulevard and State Street.
Other clubs mentioned in riot testimony before the coroner's jury, but not in connection with riot clashes, are the Pine Club, the Hamburgers, the Emeralds, the White Club, Favis Grey's, and the Mayflower. The police closed the clubs for a period of several months after the riot. There were then in existence a number of Negro gambling clubs, and the state's attorney declared that it was the colored gamblers who "started this shooting and tearing around town," and that "as soon as they heard the news that the boy Williams was drowned, they filled three or four machines and started out to shoot."
A saloon-keeper near Wabash Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, one of the leaders of these colored gamblers, was identified by a white woman as being in an automobile with five other Negroes exhorting colored men to riot after the drowning of Williams. The next day he was arrested in an automobile with other colored men who were said to be shooting into the homes of white people. They were arrested but were discharged by Judge Barasa at the Stock Yards court.
Police raids were made on some of the "Black Belt" clubs on August 23. At the Ranier Club, 3010 South State Street, two revolvers, one razor, one "black-jack," seven cartridges, one cattle knife, and one ordinary knife were found. At the Pioneer Club, 3512 South State Street, eight guns, four packages of cartridges and twenty-four knives were taken. A raid at 2700 South State Street netted four guns, one hunting-knife, and fifty-eight cartridges and bullets.
The foreman of the grand jury which investigated the riots discussing the "athletic" and "social" clubs before the Commission, said:
Most of them were closed immediately after the riots. There were "Ragen's Colts," as they were known, concerning whom the grand jury were particularly anxious to get something concrete, although no evidence was presented that convicted any of the members of that club. There were the Hamburgers, another athletic club, the Lotus Club, the Mayflower, and various clubs. These were white clubs.
Asked if they really were athletic clubs, he replied:
I think they are athletic only with their fists and brass knuckles and guns. We had Mr. Ragen before the grand jury, and he told us of the noble work that they were doing in the district, that Father Brian, who had charge of these boys, taught them to box and how to build themselves up physically, and they were doing a most noble work, and you would think that Ragen was a public benefactor. During the deliberations of this grand jury a number of anonymous letters were written with reference to "Ragen's Colts," and most of the explanations of the fact that they failed to put their names on these letters were that they were afraid they would lose their lives.
The grand jury included in its report this reference to the gang and club phase of the riot:
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. In the opinion of this jury many of the crimes committed in the "Black Belt" by whites and the fires that were started back of the Yards, which, however, were credited to the Negroes, were more than likely the work of the gangs operating on the Southwest Side under the guise of these clubs, and the jury believes that these fires were started for the purpose of inciting race feeling by blaming same on the blacks. These gangs have apparently taken an active part in the race riots, and no arrests of their members have been made as far as this jury is aware.
SCENES FROM FIRE IN IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOOD "BACK OF THE YARDS"
NEGROES UNDER PROTECTION OF POLICE LEAVING WRECKED HOUSE IN RIOT ZONE
The coroner's jury which conducted inquests into the thirty-eight riot deaths said:
The suggestion has also been made that race hatred and tendency to race rioting had its birth and was fostered in the numerous social and athletic clubs made up of young men and scattered throughout the city. We doubt this, but if in part true, it calls for the inspection and control of such clubs. These clubs are here, they are popular, they take the place of the disappearing saloon and poolroom. Properly governed and controlled, they should be encouraged and fostered and, when necessary, disciplined.
Hoodlums are the nucleus of a mob—the young, idle, vicious, and in many instances degenerate and criminal, impatient of restraint of law, gather together, and when fortified by sufficient numbers, start out on a mission of disorder, law-breaking, destruction, and murder. Mobs, white or colored, grow about a nucleus of this character.
Types of clashes.—Racial outbreaks are often characterized by hangings, burnings, and mutilations, and frequently the cause given for them is a reported Negro attack upon a white woman. None of these features appeared in the Chicago riot. An attempted hanging was reported by a white detective but was unsubstantiated. A report that Joseph Lovings, one of the Negroes killed in the riot, was burned, was heralded abroad and even carried to the United States Senate, but it was false. The coroner's physicians found no burns on his body.
Reports of assaults upon women were at no time mentioned or even hinted at as a cause of the Chicago riot, but after the disorder started reports of such crimes were published in the white and Negro press, but they had no foundation in fact.
Of the ten women wounded in the Chicago riot, seven were white, two were Negroes, and the race of one is unknown. All but one of these ten injuries appears to have been accidental. The exception was the case of Roxy Pratt, a Negro woman who, with her brother, was chased down Wells Street from Forty-seventh by gangsters and was seriously wounded by a bullet. No cases of direct attacks upon white women by Negro men were reported.
The Commission has the record of numerous instances, principally during the first twenty-four hours, where individuals of opposing races met, knives or guns were drawn, and injury was inflicted without the element of mob stimulus.
On Monday mobs operated in sudden, excited assaults, and attacks on street cars provided outstanding cases, five persons being killed and many injured. Nicholas Kleinmark, a white assailant, was stabbed to death by a Negro named Scott, acting in self-defense. Negroes killed were Henry Goodman at Thirtieth and Union streets; John Mills, on Forty-seventh Street near Union; Louis Taylor