The Journal of Negro History, Volume 8, 1923Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 8, 1923
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
_The Negro in Chicago. A study of race relations and a race riot._
By the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1922, pp. 672.
It is generally admitted that this report of the Commission on Race
Relations is the most important contribution to this interesting
subject. The very organization of the commission deepens this
impression. Before the end of this racial conflict in which 38
lives were lost and 537 persons injured between July 27 and August
6, 1919, representatives of 48 social, civic, commercial and
professional organizations of Chicago met on the first of August
and requested Governor Frank O. Lowden, of Illinois, to appoint an
emergency State Committee "to study the psychological, social and
economic causes underlying the conditions resulting in the present
race riot and to make such recommendations as will tend to prevent a
recurrence of such conditions in the future." In response to this
and other urgent requests, according to the report and pursuant to
his personal knowledge of the situation derived from investigations
made by him in Chicago during the riot, Governor Lowden appointed as
a commission, Edgar A. Bancroft, William Scott Bond, Edward Osgood
Brown, Harry Eugene Kelley, Victor F. Lawson, and Julius Rosenwald
as representatives of the white race and Robert S. Abbott, George
Cleveland Hall, George H. Jackson, Edward H. Morris, Adelbert
H. Roberts, and Lacey Kirk Williams representing the Negroes,
all to serve as a commission to undertake the work suggested by
the memorialists. Mr. Bancroft was designated by the Governor as
chairman but on account of his absence due to ill health, Dr. F. W.
Shepardson, Director of the State Department of Registration and
Education, was appointed to serve as acting chairman and on the
return of Mr. Bancroft, Dr. Shepardson was added to the commission
and made its Vice-Chairman. Inasmuch as the commission had no funds
a committee consisting of Messrs. James B. Forgan, chairman, Abel
Davis, Treasurer, Arthur Meeker, John J. Mitchell, and John G. Shedd,
together with Messrs. R. B. Beach and John F. Bowman of the staff of
the Chicago Association of Commerce, enabled the commission of inquiry
to meet this emergency. The actual work was done under the direction
of an Executive Secretary, Graham Romeyn Taylor and an Associate
Executive Secretary, Charles S. Johnson, the latter assuming charge of
the actual inquiries and investigation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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