Exactly 100 years ago... it was the height of a busy economy boosted by the industrialization spurred by the "Great War", soon to be known as World War One, which the United States had just entered less that two months before, and its industry had already been churning feverishly to supply it. Factories were springing up and working overtime, especially in the Northeast and the Midwest. The floodgates of the "Great Migration" of African Americans had begun a torrent of black workers out of the South and into the urban areas where these factories located -- a migration estimated at 400,000 in the years 1916-1918 alone. The expansion in Northern industrial activity faced large losses of work force as it left for Europe to join the War, which had already arrested the influx of European immigrants that had been arriving for these same jobs a few years earlier.
One of these burgeoning industrial centers was East St.Louis Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St Louis. During spring 1917 Blacks were arriving in St. Louis at the rate of 2,000 per week, with many of them finding work at the Aluminum Ore Company and the American Steel Company in East St. Louis.
Some whites feared loss of job and wage security because of the new competition, and further resented newcomers arriving from a rural, very different culture. Tensions between the groups ran high and escalated when rumors were spread about Black men and white women socializing at labor meetings 1
"Silent Parade" protest of the East St. Louis Riots four weeks later, New York City
One hundred years to the day. Two years earlier, the recent influx of European immigrants and the subsequent response of the Great Migration sparked national cultural clashes that culminated in the re-forming of the then-defunct Ku Klux Klan to oppose both of these elements (as well as Catholics, Jews and labor unions in general) And two years later, after the War had ended and many of the white labor force returned home to find their jobs taken by relocated blacks, the Red Summer of 1919 brought the most extreme five months of rampant racial violence in United States history.
July 1 1917 can be counted as a mid-point of that period.
One of these burgeoning industrial centers was East St.Louis Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St Louis. During spring 1917 Blacks were arriving in St. Louis at the rate of 2,000 per week, with many of them finding work at the Aluminum Ore Company and the American Steel Company in East St. Louis.
Some whites feared loss of job and wage security because of the new competition, and further resented newcomers arriving from a rural, very different culture. Tensions between the groups ran high and escalated when rumors were spread about Black men and white women socializing at labor meetings 1
St.Louis Post-Dispatch:
>> Absentee robber barons crushed labor strikes in 1916 and 1917 by hiring strikebreakers, both white and black. Embittered union leaders, remembering only black faces, demanded that City Hall "get rid of the migrants."
On the night of July 1, 1917, white men in a Ford drove through a black neighborhood, firing [guns] into houses. Armed blacks gathered at Bond Avenue and 10th Street. Two white detectives drove up in a Ford — and died in a volley of gunfire.
Their car became the match for one of the nation's bloodiest race riots, possibly its worst. Less a riot than an ethnic cleansing, white mobs shot and beat blacks, including children, as police officers and state militiamen largely stood by. The official death count was 39 blacks and nine whites, although police estimated a death toll closer to 100. Nobody knows, largely because local investigations were inept.
Violence exploded at 1:30 p.m. July 2 after whites poured from their meeting in the Labor Temple, at Collinsville and St. Louis avenues. Mobs attacked the first black people they could find. At Collinsville and State Street, whites stopped a streetcar and murdered Lena Cook's husband and son. Mob gunfire killed a white bystander.
"Get a ******," became the mob cry, followed by, "Get another." Rioters killed many of their victims with paving stones, which had been stacked for street repairs. Whites with pistols finished off the injured. Some blacks fought back, but the odds were hopeless.
On July 3, a harrowing story in the Post-Dispatch by reporter Carlos F. Hurd described the "massacre of helpless negroes" in East St. Louis, "where a black skin was a death warrant."
Fire consumed 312 homes and buildings, mostly in black neighborhoods near and south of downtown. Hundreds of blacks fled across the Eads Bridge to St. Louis. The killing didn't end until after dark. << 2
>> Absentee robber barons crushed labor strikes in 1916 and 1917 by hiring strikebreakers, both white and black. Embittered union leaders, remembering only black faces, demanded that City Hall "get rid of the migrants."
On the night of July 1, 1917, white men in a Ford drove through a black neighborhood, firing [guns] into houses. Armed blacks gathered at Bond Avenue and 10th Street. Two white detectives drove up in a Ford — and died in a volley of gunfire.
Their car became the match for one of the nation's bloodiest race riots, possibly its worst. Less a riot than an ethnic cleansing, white mobs shot and beat blacks, including children, as police officers and state militiamen largely stood by. The official death count was 39 blacks and nine whites, although police estimated a death toll closer to 100. Nobody knows, largely because local investigations were inept.
Violence exploded at 1:30 p.m. July 2 after whites poured from their meeting in the Labor Temple, at Collinsville and St. Louis avenues. Mobs attacked the first black people they could find. At Collinsville and State Street, whites stopped a streetcar and murdered Lena Cook's husband and son. Mob gunfire killed a white bystander.
"Get a ******," became the mob cry, followed by, "Get another." Rioters killed many of their victims with paving stones, which had been stacked for street repairs. Whites with pistols finished off the injured. Some blacks fought back, but the odds were hopeless.
On July 3, a harrowing story in the Post-Dispatch by reporter Carlos F. Hurd described the "massacre of helpless negroes" in East St. Louis, "where a black skin was a death warrant."
Fire consumed 312 homes and buildings, mostly in black neighborhoods near and south of downtown. Hundreds of blacks fled across the Eads Bridge to St. Louis. The killing didn't end until after dark. << 2
>> The ferocious brutality of the attacks and the failure of the authorities to protect innocent lives contributed to the radicalization of many blacks in St. Louis and the nation.[18] Marcus Garvey declared in an inflammatory speech that the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind" and a "wholesale massacre of our people", insisting that "This is no time for fine words, but a time to lift one's voice against the savagery of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy."[2][19] << 3
"Silent Parade" protest of the East St. Louis Riots four weeks later, New York City
One hundred years to the day. Two years earlier, the recent influx of European immigrants and the subsequent response of the Great Migration sparked national cultural clashes that culminated in the re-forming of the then-defunct Ku Klux Klan to oppose both of these elements (as well as Catholics, Jews and labor unions in general) And two years later, after the War had ended and many of the white labor force returned home to find their jobs taken by relocated blacks, the Red Summer of 1919 brought the most extreme five months of rampant racial violence in United States history.
July 1 1917 can be counted as a mid-point of that period.
