After a rash of violent crimes that spring, including the killing of two white men by blacks, Mollman announced on May 15 that police patrols were being beefed up downtown and that acting city attorney Thomas L. Fekete had been instructed to prosecute strongly anyone caught violating the ordinance against carrying loaded guns inside the city limits. At the same time, a sign went up in the window of a pawnshop on Collinsville Avenue about half a block from city hall and the police station. It was propped up in the middle of a pile of several dozen cheap used pistols, and it recommended, BUY A GUN FOR PROTECTION.25
That spring, Mollman visited New Orleans to speak to the city’s Board of Trade and do a little fishing. On April 26, in an interview published the next day in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he said that thousands of blacks from the South had come to East St. Louis recently, and the number had grown so large it was beginning to create a problem for city officials “in regard to housing and segregation.” He tied the large number of arrivals to the need for workers by companies with union troubles, including the Aluminum Ore Company. “Conditions are very bad in East St. Louis because many plants are suffering for the want of labor.”26
The interview managed simultaneously to suggest that far more blacks were arriving in East St. Louis than the city could comfortably handle and that there were plenty of job openings in East St. Louis. The visit to New Orleans would come back to haunt Mollman. Although businessmen tended to recall that the mayor had discouraged blacks from coming, labor leaders remembered the mayor saying there were still plenty of jobs for blacks in East St. Louis.27
By mid-May, with the Chicago Defender’s Great Northern Drive officially under way, more than two thousand blacks were arriving in Chicago every two days, according to a daily newspaper, and trainload after trainload of blacks arrived in other Northern cities as well, including East St. Louis. As the trains crossed into Illinois and other Northern states, the blacks would ceremoniously move from their segregated cars and spread throughout the train and fill it with the rich harmony of joyous spirituals of exodus:
Going into Canaan, the promise has come;
Testing time is over, the victory is won.28
Downtown East St. Louis, it seemed to many whites, was simply overrun with blacks, most of them young men. Some of them seemed to lose their Southern inhibitions about how to behave around white people, perhaps under the illusion that they had left racist attitudes behind. Southern Illinois whites, even those whose instincts were not implacably racist, were not used to being treated in a “familiar” manner by blacks. There were reports of black men rubbing suggestively against white women on the streetcars, or sitting so close to them they were “practically in their laps.” Finally, at an industrialists’ meeting at the Aluminum Ore Company late in April or early in May, one large employer admitted, “Negroes are coming in here in such quantities that it is a menace to the community.” It was charged at the meeting that ten thousand blacks had moved to East St. Louis in the past year. (In fact, by the most reliable estimates, no more than five thousand blacks immigrated to East St. Louis between the beginning of 1916 and the late spring of 1917.)29
As for the crime rate, police arrest figures and most court records from that period in East St. Louis have long been missing, but there is little question that crime went up. Blacks—who were in the main much poorer than whites and shut out of most jobs—may well have contributed more than their statistical share to the rising crime rate. But criminals and hustlers and flimflam men of all hues were coming to wide-open East St. Louis from all over the country.
A careful reading of the East St. Louis Daily Journal—both large and small stories, not just the front-page headlines—for the second half of 1916 and the first half of 1917 shows that whites were committing most of the crimes.30 The two murders that had led to Mollman’s crackdown on “gun toters,” as the Journal put it, were the only reported killings of whites by blacks in a three-month period ending July 1. And some of the black crime reported so luridly in the Journal did not turn out to be black crime at all. For example, on May 25, the Journal announced at the top of the front page that a white policeman had been shot. The story was headlined:
“LEFTY” NEVILLE SHOT
BY NEGRO HIGHWAYMAN
According to the Journal, James “Lefty” Neville, a veteran uniformed policeman, was shot in the left arm while trying to arrest a black man who had been pulling stickups near Second Street and Missouri Avenue, a couple of blocks from the police station. Whites, according to the story, began muttering about lynching the robber, if they could find him. The Reverend George W. Allison and W. A. Miller of the YMCA looked into the matter and came to the conclusion that Neville had been shot by a white man, probably a pimp, in an argument over kickbacks from prostitution. In any event, Neville was soon promoted to chief of detectives, bad arm and all.31
By then the Journal had used the term “race riot” in a headline, over a May 24 report of blacks and whites brawling in a neighborhood southeast of downtown that blacks were moving into. Gangs of white and black teenagers were throwing rocks at each other until the police arrived and stopped the fight by shooting a young black man. He was in critical condition.
That same week, the umbrella Central Trades Union of East St. Louis, which represented about fifty separate labor organizations, sent out a news release informing the press of a resolution approved by the organization’s directors at their May 23 meeting. The fateful resolution began, “Gentlemen. 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.” It continued in that vein, mentioning “the influx of undesirable negroes” and alleging that ten thousand blacks had arrived in the last year or two. The Journal reported on the resolution, noting that the labor organization’s directors planned on attending the next regular meeting of the city council, on the evening of Monday, May 28, to discuss the influx of blacks with council members and the mayor. The union also placed an advertisement for the meeting in the Journal. Hundreds of East St. Louisans who were not associated with the Central Trades Union decided they wanted to attend that city council meeting and confront the mayor about the masses of blacks moving in.32
On the day of the city council meeting, East St. Louis residents were greeted at lunchtime by the first edition of the Journal displaying at the top of the front page a story headlined:
POLICE WATCH MANY THREATENING NEGROES
Police had been kept busy over the weekend answering frequent calls to deal with crime in neighborhoods that blacks had recently moved into, the paper reported, and many blacks were found carrying revolvers. A white man from Detroit was shot in the leg and foot when he didn’t respond quickly enough to a black holdup man, and “worse trouble,” the Journal reported, came from whites and blacks fighting at Tenth Street and Piggott Avenue southeast of downtown, where the arrival of police and the firing of a few shots “narrowly averted a riot.” Below that story, beneath a small one-column headline, was a brief report that the bodies of two black boys had been found in an East St. Louis canal. It was speculated that they had drowned while fishing.33
The evening of May 28 was pleasant and mild. By six thirty, the temperature was in the lower sixties, and East St. Louisans had already begun arriving downtown for the meeting. The most direct route from the main downtown streetcar stop to city hall went right by the Collinsville Avenue pawnshop with the guns in the window. The shop, which had a mostly black clientele, was closed, but the window was lit.
By seven P.M. the council chamber was packed to overflowing and the meeting was moved upstairs to the auditorium, which seated about twelve hundred. Just before the meeting began, a large group of women from the waitress and laundry workers union and the retail clerks union, dressed for a night on the dance floor, arrived with a flourish. They waved and swirled their long skirts as they walked into the crowded auditorium and were cheered loudly.
A labor leader explained later that the dramatic entrance was intended to make an impression on the mayor, putting a human face and figure on the dangers posed to pretty white women by the black immigrants from the cotton and cane fields of the Deep South.34
Outside, two white men, George Fisher and Arch Dodge, were heading up Main Street toward city hall when they ran into a couple of friends from the police department. One of the policemen warned the two not to go to the meeting. There was going to be trouble, he said, because a lot of men were going to the meeting just to stir up an attack on black people. The policemen did not seem inclined to intervene except to keep their friends away from city hall.35
By the time the meeting was called to order, all the seats were filled and dozens of men and women stood in the back or sat in the aisles. Mayor Mollman made a brief speech, warning against “hotheadedness” and announcing that the city council was prepared to stop the northward migration, although he was vague on exactly how that would be accomplished. He said he had recently spoken with his counterparts in large Southern cities, asking them to do what they could to stem the tide.
He stood down and the debate went back and forth, with all speakers agreeing that something must be done to prevent so many blacks from coming to East St. Louis. One repeated allegation was that much of the trouble was caused by a relatively few black holdup men who had influential lawyers and were able to get off scot-free with small fines and bribes paid to the corrupt justices of the peace. There were several reports of whites being held up twice or even three times by the same black man. People complained that black men, because they were willing to work for much less than the going wage, were stealing jobs that once had gone to white men, not just at the aluminum plant and the packing houses but all over town. Men who once were able to support their families “were now at the back door of the poorhouse,” one man said.36
Earl Jimmerson of the meat-cutters union cautioned against indiscriminate attacks on blacks. Several other labor leaders also warned against violence, and for a time, the voices of moderation seemed to prevail. Then a garrulous, jowly sixty-three-year-old lawyer named Alexander Flannigen rose to speak. He had an office right across the street from city hall, where he dabbled in both law and real estate, and had walked over early so he could get a place up near the front. No one had invited him, labor leaders insisted later, but no one had invited most of the people in the room. Flannigen was a former city treasurer who, while in office, had made full use of his access to public funds. When he left office, the joke went, “The only thing left was a postage stamp. And that was because he didn’t know it was there.” Flannigen didn’t seem embarrassed by such reports; indeed, he regularly referred to city hall as “the steal mill.”37
Flannigen told a few jokes, and he laughed as he told the crowd that his friends and neighbors had paid pretty good money for their houses, and they certainly didn’t want any “colored” moving in next door. But, he said, they couldn’t figure out any way to keep blacks from moving into their neighborhoods. He rambled on, remarking that these blacks never seemed to get completely moved in. A lot of their furniture remained in the front yard or maybe eventually made it as far as the porch. His florid face spread in a wide grin. The crowd “began getting itchy,” one man recalled.38
Then Flannigen said something serious. There are several versions of his exact words, but what he said in effect was that blacks couldn’t move their furniture into the house they had just bought if they couldn’t get to the front door. And then he said clearly, “As far as I know, there is no law against mob violence.” Even if there were such a law, he said (as there assuredly was), the police could hardly arrest an entire mob. Much of the crowd rose to its feet in cheers. The mayor began pacing up and down the aisles, trying to calm people down, joined by some of the labor leaders. Slowly, most of the people in the auditorium quieted down and took their seats, waiting for the meeting to continue, but fifty or a hundred men and women stayed standing and kept loudly cheering Flannigen’s speech. Then, as if on cue, they turned and pushed their way down the crowded aisles and stormed down the stairs and out the front door toward Collinsville Avenue.
Collinsville Avenue
Another crowd of men and women stood outside, waiting for the meeting to end. They had news. A block from city hall, a black holdup man had shot a white man, wounding him superficially, and had been arrested. By the time the report had been passed on to the newcomers and had made the rounds, the story was that the victim was dead. Just then, several policeman walked by with a young black man in handcuffs. The crowd surged toward them. Shouts rose from the mob. “Get a rope!” “Lynch him!” The mayor and several city officials and union leaders had come outside by then, and they tried to calm the mob down as the accused robber was led into the police station and put in a cell.39
Earl Jimmerson climbed onto the high steps of the police station next to city hall and shouted, “If there is any men in this crowd that carry union cards, if you think anything of that card, if you think anything of organized labor, for God’s sake go home. Don’t let the public press come out in big headlines in the morning and say this meeting was called by organized labor and caused a riot.”40
Half a block away, fifty or sixty men stood across the street from the pawnshop with the guns in the window on Collinsville Avenue, trying to work up the nerve to attack it in full view of the police station. “That’s where they’re getting those guns,” one man shouted. A few policemen and uniformed soldiers stood nearby, and the mob hesitated and lost the moment. But as more and more people left the meeting and came down the stairs to Main Street the angry crowd grew until, in less than an hour, it numbered about three hundred, mostly men. The rumors about blacks running amok had spread and been further amplified, and now it was said that white women had been attacked by blacks, and two white women and a young white girl had been shot.41
One common factor in virtually every race and ethnic riot are rumors of horrible acts on the part of the despised race. Often, the rumors involve sexual atrocities. Another common factor is that the rioters generally go through a period of indecision, when the mob seems to be in motion but without focus, as if waiting for an event that will give direction to their actions, a spark to ignite an explosion.42 That cool May evening in East St. Louis, the white mob stood milling around in front of the police station, anger rising in a gathering storm, when a paddy wagon pulled up and police emerged with another young black man in handcuffs.
Someone shouted, “That nigger shot somebody.” The mob roared in fury, and the riot began. A gang of white men broke off from the mob and rushed down Collinsville Avenue, the main north-south thoroughfare in East St. Louis, and attacked black men and women. “Every time you would hear them hit a nigger or knock down a nigger, they would yell like a rabbit hound,” recalled Earl Jimmerson. The union leader grabbed people around him and tried to get them to go home before someone was badly hurt. “I talked to one fellow there,” he said, “and I said, ‘you ought not to be doing that’ and he slapped me in the face.”43
Near the police station, someone yelled, “Let’s go get those guns in that nigger pawnshop,” and a gang of men rushed across the street, intent on grabbing the pistols. By then, policemen were nowhere to be seen, and the handful of soldiers just stood and watched. But the pawnbroker, Frank Marks, appeared in the doorway with a shotgun held in one hand, the butt pushed back against his shoulder.
Marks had been in a bad accident and had been in a hospital in St. Louis with a cast on his arm when he read in the morning Republic about the meeting that night. “There’s going to be trouble,” he said to a friend. He fretted until he couldn’t stand it anymore, checked himself out of the hospital, called a cab, and went to his pawnshop. He could barely stand, but he held his ground and chased the mob away, and he stayed on guard until the riot was over.44
Philip Wolf, head of the aluminum workers union, was having a quick beer in a saloon across the street from city hall, hoping
the trouble would die down, when he heard shouting and the pounding of feet just outside. He went to the door and saw a gang of men heading toward the South End. Another union man—John Simon, a veteran employee whose firing had helped provoke the aluminum strike—said to Wolf, “I sure hope none of our boys is in that gang.” The two men began walking south on Main, deciding they would grab anyone they knew and pull him out of the mob. But the gang broke up into small bunches that swarmed out from the center of downtown in every direction, beating and kicking blacks until they lay bloody in the streets.
Most of the rioters were young men, but a girl of sixteen or seventeen wearing a boy’s cap and a long spring coat was leading one gang. She would spot a black coming around a corner, and she would yell, “There’s one. Let’s go get him.” In the mob of whites that followed her were two young men in soldier uniforms—they were, it turned out, on leave before being shipped overseas and were just looking for thrills, beating up blacks. Another group of rioters grabbed a black man and laid him across a trolley track and began chanting for the driver to run the car over him. “Come on, come on, cut off his head. Cut off his feet.” The driver did not budge.45
Police arrested several blacks for carrying concealed weapons on the outskirts of the riot, but they did little or nothing to stop the rioters, who began setting fire to black homes and businesses. There was one notable exception to the laissez-faire attitude of the police. Two plainclothes detectives, Samuel Coppedge and Frank Wodley, drew their guns and stopped white rioters from burning down a row of houses in a black enclave at Third Street and Missouri Avenue.46
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