Perfect storm in the Windy City
By James McManus |
August 12, 2012, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
OUT of a clear blue sky, amid a wave of terrorist bombings, a commercial airship crashes among the skyscrapers of the financial district, burning victims alive at their desks. But this catastrophe was not the work of al-Qaida. It happened on July 21, 1919, when a stray spark ignited the 10,000 cubic feet of hydrogen in the Goodyear blimp Wingfoot Express as it floated above Chicago's crowded Loop. It exploded through the skylight of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, killing more than a dozen people.
Yet America's first major aviation disaster was just the beginning of what Gary Krist, in "City of Scoundrels," suggests were the worst two weeks in Chicago history. On July 22, a six-year-old girl disappeared. She was last seen with a man who had shown "conspicuous interest" in young girls. The suspect was arrested and interrogated, without producing a solid lead.
While this horrific whodunit was unfolding, wider municipal crises were also terrifying Chicagoans, including a rash of bombings thought to be the work of either Bolshevik revolutionaries or those hoping to intimidate the city's black population, which had doubled in less than three years. "Half a Million Darkies From Dixie" is how Colonel Robert R McCormick's Tribune described the migration, inflaming the resentment of working-class whites forced to compete for scarce jobs and housing.
Still devoted to the party of Lincoln, black voters were crucial to Republican Mayor William Hale Thompson's re-election in April. He appointed blacks to prominent civic posts and boosted their paltry numbers in his police department.
These unstable elements achieved critical mass on July 27, when five young black men swimming in Lake Michigan drifted across the invisible line dividing segregated beaches near 29th Street. A man on the whites-only beach hurled rocks at them, killing Eugene Williams, who drowned after being struck in the head. When a white cop began arresting a black man instead of the stone-thrower, sporadic violence mushroomed into a shooting war.
What might have become a one-sided massacre shifted closer to an even contest when black former doughboys aggressively defended their community. "Well, Negroes, you must get guns, guns I said!" one black weekly encouraged them.
Yet the battles did not keep transit workers from voting to strike, leaving the city, Krist writes, "paralyzed at its most vulnerable moment." Worse, Mayor Thompson and Governor Frank O Lowden chose to play chicken with the racial crisis, daring each other to call out the militia. By the time the National Guard was finally deployed, 136 whites and 263 blacks had been slaughtered.
Into this blood-soaked narrative Krist weaves no shortage of textured if disparate stories. Though some readers may find it precariously overpopulated, "City of Scoundrels" is a lavishly intricate, well-paced account of a great city lashed to the breaking point by a political perfect storm.
Krist, the author of "The White Cascade" and five works of fiction, renders a nuanced portrait of a mayor most often remembered as a demagogue heading a crooked machine.
But above all, "City of Scoundrels" illuminates how the riots of 1919 were a turning point for African-Americans. "We made the supreme sacrifice," one black veteran told the poet-reporter Carl Sandburg, "now we want to see our country live up to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
Yet America's first major aviation disaster was just the beginning of what Gary Krist, in "City of Scoundrels," suggests were the worst two weeks in Chicago history. On July 22, a six-year-old girl disappeared. She was last seen with a man who had shown "conspicuous interest" in young girls. The suspect was arrested and interrogated, without producing a solid lead.
While this horrific whodunit was unfolding, wider municipal crises were also terrifying Chicagoans, including a rash of bombings thought to be the work of either Bolshevik revolutionaries or those hoping to intimidate the city's black population, which had doubled in less than three years. "Half a Million Darkies From Dixie" is how Colonel Robert R McCormick's Tribune described the migration, inflaming the resentment of working-class whites forced to compete for scarce jobs and housing.
Still devoted to the party of Lincoln, black voters were crucial to Republican Mayor William Hale Thompson's re-election in April. He appointed blacks to prominent civic posts and boosted their paltry numbers in his police department.
These unstable elements achieved critical mass on July 27, when five young black men swimming in Lake Michigan drifted across the invisible line dividing segregated beaches near 29th Street. A man on the whites-only beach hurled rocks at them, killing Eugene Williams, who drowned after being struck in the head. When a white cop began arresting a black man instead of the stone-thrower, sporadic violence mushroomed into a shooting war.
What might have become a one-sided massacre shifted closer to an even contest when black former doughboys aggressively defended their community. "Well, Negroes, you must get guns, guns I said!" one black weekly encouraged them.
Yet the battles did not keep transit workers from voting to strike, leaving the city, Krist writes, "paralyzed at its most vulnerable moment." Worse, Mayor Thompson and Governor Frank O Lowden chose to play chicken with the racial crisis, daring each other to call out the militia. By the time the National Guard was finally deployed, 136 whites and 263 blacks had been slaughtered.
Into this blood-soaked narrative Krist weaves no shortage of textured if disparate stories. Though some readers may find it precariously overpopulated, "City of Scoundrels" is a lavishly intricate, well-paced account of a great city lashed to the breaking point by a political perfect storm.
Krist, the author of "The White Cascade" and five works of fiction, renders a nuanced portrait of a mayor most often remembered as a demagogue heading a crooked machine.
But above all, "City of Scoundrels" illuminates how the riots of 1919 were a turning point for African-Americans. "We made the supreme sacrifice," one black veteran told the poet-reporter Carl Sandburg, "now we want to see our country live up to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
