Documents of the Harlem Renaissance by Davis Thomas J.;Brock Brenda M.;

Author:Davis, Thomas J.;Brock, Brenda M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC
Published: 2020-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Document 35

“The Massacre in East St. Louis,” NAACP (1917)

Racist mob murder of blacks in America was more than a feature of the countryside: it repeatedly invaded U.S. cities in the first decades of the 1900s. The East St. Louis, Illinois, riots of 1917 demonstrated the depth and desperation of white animosity toward blacks moving up from the South in the Great Migration and competing for industrial jobs and living space. From an outbreak at the end of May and then with what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the leading regional newspaper, described as a “massacre” from July 1 to July 3, 1917, thousands of whites attacked blacks wherever they found them and invaded the city’s black section, torching much of it. The mobs murdered at least 200 blacks and left 6,000 homeless.

The unsettling episode occurred only weeks after U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917 at President Woodrow Wilson’s urging that “the world must be made safe for democracy.” In response to the scene in East St. Louis, New York Evening Mail newspaper political cartoonist William Charles Morris sketched a kneeling black mother with outstretched arms and crying babes at her breast in front of Wilson pleading, “Mr. President, why not make America safe for democracy?”

The NAACP magazine The Crisis chronicled and documented the events, beginning with an incendiary call by white trade unionist leaders in May and continuing with a detailed account of the violence in July. Also, the NAACP issued a call and organized a silent protest march along New York City’s Fifth Avenue on July 28, drawing about 10,000 participants.

Three documents follow. The first is a letter from East St. Louis white labor union officials, the second is a report in the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis, and the third is a NAACP statement on black labor.

Mason, Edward F. [Secretary, Central Trades & Labor Union; on the letterhead of the Central Trades and Labor Union, dated East St. Louis, Illinois, May 23, 1917]

To the delegates to the Central Trades and Labor Union:

Greeting:

The immigration of the Southern Negro into our city for the past eight months has reached the point where drastic action must be taken if we intend to work and live peaceably in this community.

Since this influx of undesirable negroes has started no less than ten thousand have come into this locality.

These men are being used to the detriment of our white citizens by some of the capitalists and a few of the real estate owners.

On next Monday evening the entire body of delegates to the Central Trades and Labor Unions will call upon the Mayor and City Council and demand that they take some action to retard this growing menace and also devise a way to get rid of a certain portion of those who are already here.

This is not a protest against the negro who has been a long resident of East St. Louis, and is a law-abiding citizen.

We earnestly request that you be in attendance on next Monday evening at 8:00 o’clock, at 137 Collinsville Avenue, where we will meet and then go to the City Hall.

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