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.Another crucial factor in the black exodus was the pull exerted by RobertAbbott s Chicago Defender, the most important black newspaper in the city andthe most widely read black newspaper in the South.In May, 1917, Abbottlaunched the Defender s Great Northern Drive to convince southern blacksto fl ee Egypt and come up to the Promised Land (Spear, 135).The Great Migration of 1916 19 was different from the migrations of the1880s and 90s.It was more sudden, involved larger numbers, and drew moreattention.And it involved migrants who were, for the most part, poorer and lesswell-educated than before; they were also more likely to come from the lowerrather than the upper south, fully one-third of the Great Migration originatingin Mississippi and Alabama (Spear, 138 45; Drake and Cayton, 58 64).Fortunately, the job market for blacks in Chicago expanded significantly,with factory jobs opening up at Swift, Armour, Pullman, International Harvester,and other companies.In 1910, 51 percent of black men in Chicago worked indomestic service; by 1920, only 28 percent did.19 But if there was some improve-ment in the employment situation, there was little in the residential sphere.TheGreat Migration created a new impetus for concentration, most of the migrantsheading straight from the terminus of the Illinois Central Railroad at TwelfthStreet and Michigan Avenue to the black neighborhoods on the South Side.By1920, 35 percent of blacks in Chicago lived in census tracts that were over 75percent black, and half lived in predominantly black areas.20 The black belt, inother words, was converting from a mixed to an exclusively black population: itsdensity increased sharply; its area consolidated, extending now from Twenty-sixthto Fifty-first Streets and from Wentworth to Cottage Grove Avenue (Spear, 222);and its center continued to march southward, stopping now at Thirty-fifth andState Streets.Eighty-fi ve percent of Chicago s blacks lived here.21Whites living nearby began to grow nervous.Before the Great Migration,with no real competition between them for jobs or houses, blacks experiencedonly sporadic violence from whites in Chicago.During the Great Migration,however, overcrowding in the black belt threatened nearby white neighborhoods,especially those of working-class Irish and Poles to the west and middle-classwhites to the south and east.In 1917, alarmed at what they saw as an overfl ow-ing black belt, white property owner associations on the South Side began tofocus on protecting their neighborhoods from racial succession, the processwhereby a residential area moves from dominance by one race to another.Andworking-class athletic clubs, like those in the Irish neighborhoods west ofthe black belt, began openly assaulting blacks on the street. Ghetto 71Meanwhile, the Chicago public schools were becoming more segregated:before World War I, only two or three schools in the city were predominantlyblack; by 1920, eleven were (Spear 203 4).22 Public parks, beaches, and play-grounds were also sources of confl ict: Irish and Polish gangs, for example, ter-rorized blacks who tried to use the Armour Square recreation center (Spear,206).The real point of hostility, however, was residential incursions, especiallyeast of Cottage Grove Avenue and south of Fifty-fi rst Street.In 1918, theKenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners Association announced its inten-tion to keep Hyde Park white (Spear, 210).But blacks continued to movein.The result? Between 1917 and 1921, 58 homes or businesses in the blackbelt were bombed (Drake and Cayton, 178; Spear, 211).In the Red Summer of 1919, with the national economy moving intoa recession, tensions escalated dramatically.That year, the athletic clubs wereespecially active along the western boundary of the black belt and in WashingtonPark.23 On the night of June 21, two blacks were killed; and on Sunday, July27, a black youth named Eugene Williams was killed by a gang of whites atthe Twenty-ninth Street public beach.When the police refused to make anyarrests, blacks rioted.Later that night, whites retaliated, assaulting 38 blacksand killing two.On Monday night, July 28, 20 people were killed and hundredsinjured.The violence continued on Tuesday.Finally on Wednesday, July 30,the state militia were called in, and the violence waned.By the end, 38 peoplewere dead, and 537 injured, black and white (Spear, 216).24The 1919 riots changed everything.It was a turning point for race relationsin Chicago, destroy[ing] whatever hope remained for a peacefully integratedcity (Spear, 221).25 Although a state Commission on Race Relations issueda report condemning forced residential segregation in the city and criticizingliving conditions in the black belt (Drake and Cayton, 69ff), there were fewsigns of interracial cooperation.Police and prosecutors targeted blacks for arrestand trial; whites clamored for stricter segregation; more bombings occurred;and, in 1921, the Chicago Real Estate Board voted unanimously to expel anymember who sells a Negro property in a block where there are only whiteowners (Drake and Cayton, 179).The most important result of the 1919 riots, however, was the adoptionby Chicago whites of the most potent weapon yet devised for defending theresidential color line: racially restrictive real estate covenants (Spear, 221)
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