Using official reports, academic studies, journalistic and literary sources, and original maps from census data, this study investigates Chicago's "riot zone" where most of the interracial violence occurred in late-July, 1919, within and surrounding the city's de facto segregated Black Belt. The race riot was not principally about labor or the workplace following an influx of African American migrants to Chicago from the South; it was about social and residential space. The violence against blacks during the riot was mostly committed by Irish-American gangs, but the actions of these young men represented the most extreme expression of a shared desire among whites to keep blacks geographically sequestered.<br/><br/> The study relates the riot to the formation of a white racial identity among the children of European immigrants, which developed in tandem with new perceptions of manhood. In turn, manhood in this era was becoming tied less to work and more to race. For many children and grandchildren of immigrants, the legacy of the riot was the growing bond between whiteness and masculinity. <br/><br/> African Americans were not mere victims of the violence. A shared reverence for black soldiers and a "New Negro" ethos helped to arouse the rapidly growing, and increasingly indignant African American population in Chicago. Their militant response to racial aggression in part grew out of the disappointment with the realization that black military service in Europe failed to open up opportunities in America.<br/><br/> Residential segregation in Chicago did not begin with the race riot. But any hope of mixed living in the interwar years was lost after 1919. The violence between the white and black lower classes helped wealthier whites to justify a policy of "segregation by agreement" in order to keep the peace.
Lamberti, Christopher M.,
"Riot Zone: Chicago 1919"
(2013).
History Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z09S1PCC
