The Depression Comes to the South Side: Protest and Politics in the Black Metropolis, 1930–1933

By Christopher Robert Reed

“Incorporate[s] microhistories and multiple biographies into a broader understanding of a community as complex and iconic as black Chicago.” —Journal of American Studies

In the 1920s, the South Side of Chicago was looked on as the new Black Metropolis, but by the turn of the decade that vision was already in decline—a victim of the Depression. In this timely book, Christopher Robert Reed explores early Depression-era politics on the city’s South Side.

The economic crisis caused diverse responses from groups in the black community, distinguished by their political ideologies and stated goals. Some favored government intervention, others reform of social services. Some found expression in mass street demonstrations, militant advocacy of expanded civil rights, or revolutionary calls for a complete overhaul of the capitalist economic system. Reed examines the complex interactions among these various groups as they played out within the community as it sought to find common ground to address the economic stresses that threatened to tear the Black Metropolis apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780253005526

Book preview

THE DEPRESSION COMES TO THE SOUTH SIDE

BLACKS IN THE DIASPORA

FOUNDING EDITORS: Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey, Jr., and David Barry Gaspar

SERIES EDITOR: Tracy Sharpley-Whiting

ADVISORY BOARD: Herman L. Bennett, Kim D. Butler, Judith A. Byfield, and Leslie A. Schwalm

THE DEPRESSION COMES TO THE SOUTH SIDE

PROTEST AND POLITICS IN THE BLACK METROPOLIS, 1930–1933

CHRISTOPHER ROBERT REED

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bloomington, and Indianapolis

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

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Bloomington, Indiana 47404–3797 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

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© 2011 by Christopher Robert Reed

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Reed, Christopher Robert.

The Depression comes to the South Side : protest and politics in the Black metropolis, 1930-1933 / Christopher Robert Reed.

p. cm. — (Blacks in the diaspora)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-35652-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Illinois—Chicago—Politics and government—20th century. 2. African Americans—Illinois—Chicago—Social conditions—20th century. 3. African Americans—Civil rights—Illinois—Chicago—History—20th century. 4. Depressions—1929—Illinois—Chicago—Social aspects. 5. South Chicago (Ill.)—Politics and government—20th century. 6. South Chicago (Ill.)—Social conditions—20th century. 7. Chicago (Ill.)—Politics and government—20th century. 8. Chicago (Ill.)—Social conditions—20th century. I. Title.

F548.9.N4R444 2011

323.1196'073077311—dc22

2011011595

1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11

To the contributors to Roosevelt University’s rich scholarly tradition of the 1960s:

Elizabeth Balanoff

St. Clair Drake Charles V. Hamilton

Paul Johnson

Don S. Kirschner

August Meier

Lorenzo Dow Turner

Frank Untermyer

Alice Zimring

[Twenty] banks have closed their doors in Chicago on Monday and Tuesday. This morning the Lincoln State Bank closed—these banks . . . all in the Colored district. It is terrible. The Douglass Bank is the only bank open in our district.

—ARCHIE L. WEAVER TO ROBERT W. BAGNALL, JUNE 10 1931, PAPERS OF THE NAACP, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Chicago is one of the hardest hit cities as far as unemployment is concerned.

—ARCHIE L. WEAVER TO ROY WILKINS, JUNE 17, 1932, PAPERS OF THE NAACP, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Introduction

1. The Impact of the Depression on Home Life, Institutions, and Organizations

2. The Ineffectiveness of Conventional Politics

3. Protest Activism in the Streets: An Alternative to Conventional Politics

4. Organized Protest Responses—From Militant to Revolutionary: The NAACP and the Communist Party

5. Organized Efforts in Behalf of Civil Rights

6. Cultural Stirrings and Conclusion

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

PREFACE

The last several decades have witnessed a resurgence of popular interest into the dynamics of life in Chicago’s famed black South Side community during the first half of the twentieth century. This curiosity has, in turn, accelerated academic inquisitiveness about the historic Black Metropolis. For its part, recent scholarship has combined with outstanding past academic as well as literary production from the likes of Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and many others to revive the saga of the Black Metropolis, now euphemistically referred to as Bronzeville. The trials and triumphs described and analyzed in St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s tome, Black Metropolis (1945), have informed both lay and academic readership as to what historian Leon F. Litwack has labeled interior history. More accurately, Black Metropolis now represents the model still in use for understanding the African American experience in the North during the early twentieth century.

The historical impact of one of the last century’s most traumatic experiences, the Great Depression, along with its accompanying feature, global war, had yet to be examined as to its effects from the point of view of the Black Metropolis. This volume tackles the task of exploring historical occurrences during the initial period of the Depression’s devastation and up to immediately before the advent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ameliorative New Deal programs in 1933. With documentation and interpretations from the ideological Left and middle grounds now more accessible, these have been carefully combined with the reports of traditional mainstream sources. The Depression Comes to the South Side: Protest and Politics in the Black Metropolis, 1930–1933 aims to answer heretofore unanswered or misunderstood questions as to the extent of black involvement in the struggle for economic survival four generations ago.

The stereotype of the passive citizen of the South Side, as found in the Julius Rosenwald Papers and distilled in the epigram to chapter 4, or even in the protagonist of Richard Wright’s Native Son, has gained as much popular credibility as the image of the Chicago residents who populated the pages of Drake and Cayton’s Black Metropolis, and who often risked their lives in active pursuit of economic and social justice. Thanks to stimulating suggestions over several decades from Professors John H. Bracey Jr. and John E. Higginson of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to investigate the actions of the usually unsung activists of the Depression decade, such as workers Harry Haywood and Odis Hyde, this book took a more comprehensive view of activism beyond that associated with the traditional reform organizations of the period. Likewise, noted civil rights attorney Lawrence Kennon and publisher Bennett Johnson reminded me that the activities of Communist Claude Lightfoot, another participant-observer of the 1930s, could not be overlooked. Importantly, the informative research, conversations, and writings of the late Professors August Meier and Elliot M. Rudwick at Kent State University aided me in an appreciation of the Chicago NAACP, the Chicago Urban League, and various ad hoc organizations, and the roles they played in guiding the Black Metropolis’s vast population to survive this economic ordeal.

Scholarly advice flowed as readers of this manuscript in its roughest form braved the author’s sometimes complex, often confusing concepts and interpretations and rendered their valued criticisms and suggestions. Dean Lynn Y. Weiner of Roosevelt University and Pia Hunter of the University of Illinois at Chicago volunteered first and stayed the course, to their credit and benefit. They were joined in this effort by Marionette Catherine Phelps, who has proved a faithful and insightful reviewer. Moreover, Professors Clovis Semmes, Robert T. Starks, Timuel D. Black; Darlene Clark Hine, and Robert Howard, all members of the Black Chicago History Forum, demonstrated that organization’s valuable role as they provided insight and clarifications on key historical events in Chicago history. Acknowledgment must be accorded the staff at the Harold Washington Library Center of the Chicago Public Library for their professional approach to scholarly research over many years. Their ranks included Theresa Yoder and Maja Walsh in Special Collections, Warren Watson and George Tibbits in the Reference Division, and Ronisha Epps and Claudia Armstrong in Microfilms. At the offices of the Chicago Landmarks Commission, where the author serves as a member, Brian Goeken, Susan E. Perry, Terry Tatum, Heidi Sperry, Matt Crawford, and Beth Johnson provided needed assistance through their deep knowledge of Chicago’s architecture and design. Librarian Pia Hunter, assisted by microfilm technicians April Pittman and Delores Thomas, at the main library at the University of Illinois at Chicago were generous in lending their skills as this project proceeded. Lastly, at my alma mater, Roosevelt University, I received continuous technical assistance from Lynnett Davis, Rosalyn Collins, Helen Taylor, Dayne Agnew, Cheryl Williams-Sledge, Jaime Reyes, Vincent Perkins, Bernard Turner, Heidi Foster, Mary Foster, and Chris Mich, as well as printing assistance from Wayne Magnus and Richard Woodfork.

The editorial staff at the Indiana University Press encouraged the production of this book, along with providing valuable suggestions. So, loud huzzahs go out to editorial director Robert J. Sloan and project manager Brian Herrmann, along with copyeditor Emma Young. The entire Reed family, including my wife, Marva, children, and grandchildren, as well as Wallene Evens and Rev. John D. Slaughter, Sr., contributed in various ways to what exists in the end as a personal salute to courageous and determined Chicagoans of the 1930s.

THE DEPRESSION COMES TO THE SOUTH SIDE

Introduction

On 31st Street the old Royal Gardens Cabaret has been converted into a shelter. Incognito under its chaste green and white paint the ornately carved ceiling and deep stairway betray its frivolous, gaudy past. The years gone and fewer, here was the centre of Chicago’s night life.

—THYRA EDWARDS, 1932

In Dickensian terms, if the decade of the 1920s, dubbed the Jazz or Aspirin Age, represented the best of times with the emergence of a racially self-contained Black Metropolis of national renown, then the decade of the 1930s certainly illustrated all aspects of the worst of times. Both the black-run political machine and the strength of the political economy that had supported the Black Metropolis through its black-owned banks and myriad businesses had disappeared.¹ In contrast, the buoyant gaiety of the previous decade in the creative arts, impressively expressed in jazz, blues, dance, and the visual arts, maintained its energy despite general economic distress. In the shadow of the nation’s worst economic collapse, the declining quality of life for the African American residents of Chicago’s vaunted South Side community reached a nadir. At least it seemed that way, first to the few and then to the many, as the ravages of the economic depression swept through the entirety of the African American community’s multilayered class structure, just as they had the whole city.

The abandonment of the once proud Royal Gardens Cabaret on 31st Street displayed the most convincing evidence that the economy was, more than faltering, in a state of perpetual free fall. The cabaret was transformed from its former status as a vital entertainment venue and converted into a shelter for the homeless of all races. The public was experientially divided: some stood in disbelief of what they were witnessing, while others were left nodding their heads in affirmation at the steady deterioration of the entirety of the American economy. The process of economic disintegration had begun slowly around 1926 and then accelerated into full force over the next four years. By 1930, economic experts, displaced workers, and distressed housewives were all talking with equal readiness about the four successive quarters of the shocking decline in all sectors of the nation’s economy, while day by day and dollar by shrinking dollar the public experienced it in all its devastation. This unraveling of the nation’s economic fabric in employment, business, credit, and public confidence spared no race or region, so the Black Metropolis faced the probability of decline and subsequent disappearance as quickly as it had emerged. On the cusp of a national catastrophe, hope shone through in very few areas.

Foreboding signs of economic dislocation appeared as early as 1926, notwithstanding the somewhat idyllic picture of industrial and overall economic stability presented by E. Franklin Frazier and Claude A. Barnett on the eve of the Great Depression (that picture of the twenties has since been challenged by historical writer Gareth Canaan).² By 1926–1927 prevailing unemployment became an accurate barometer of the state of the economy.³ The truthfulness of the old economic adage depicting the precarious position of the black worker in the American labor force as being the last hired, the first fired began to take its toll within the Black Metropolis and throughout the surrounding black enclaves. The formation of the Joint Committee for Employment within the Black Metropolis, aimed at amelioration of the crisis, illustrated the larger response.⁴

At the same time, the Chicago Urban League likewise geared its resources to fight this pending disaster. Both the records of the Chicago Urban League and the Chicago Defender indicated that unemployment of black workers was growing. College students who belonged to the Washington Intercollegiate Club responded by volunteering and canvassing the South Side in cooperation with the League to create a greater number of positions and jobs for Negroes.⁵ The Chicago Urban League subsequently directed its energies in 1927 to increasing employment for high school–educated black youth in stores located within their communities, where black patronage was high.⁶

As economic conditions worsened at the end of the decade, African Americans responded in a well-organized fashion with a Don’t Spend Your Money Where You Can’t Work campaign directed against the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1929. The objective was simple: make every hard-earned dollar spent in the Black Metropolis return an additional benefit of job creation.⁷ Significantly, this campaign represented the opening phase of a movement that would eventually sweep the largest cities of the North. Inaugurated by the Chicago Whip, it was the manifestation of organized, non-union protest by workers both within and outside the ranks of labor. Another phenomenon appeared simultaneously with the advent of direct-action protest as a means to promote the economic interests of African Americans.

On a very personal level, depositors at the Binga State bank began to live out of their savings after having saved for a rainy day. That day had arrived and the response of the black community was both timely and appropriate, personal and organizational. Withdrawals of deposits forecast even bigger problems ahead and accounted for the individual’s reaction.⁸ The next decade, the 1930s, would bring a level of economic deprivation that shattered dreams and even hopes for a better future. The challenge to the creators and supporters of the Black Metropolis was to maintain its stability with a vision for growth in the distant future. The question of the day became, would the buoyancy of the Black Metropolis give way to the dismalness of the Black Belt period that had preceded the halcyon days of the 1920s?

In order to understand the hitherto unexplained complexities of thinking and behavior in the declining Black Metropolis of Chicago’s South Side, an exploration of the linkages between various channels, or avenues, employed in the search for amelioration and resolution of the most severe results of economic depression seems warranted. The latter circumstances included the threat of starvation; grueling malnutrition; massive, unrelenting unemployment; and homelessness. In their disparate efforts to accomplish their goals, proponents of various initiatives bolstered by distinct ideologies or doctrines ranged across the spectrum in their choices of possible actions. These included the conventional approach found in positive governmental intervention; the reformist thrust utilized in social service activities; the iconoclastic actions appearing in massive, organized as well as unorganized, street demonstrations; the militant activism found in expanded civil rights advocacy; and the revolutionary undercurrent present in the rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism that was activated by an attempt at a complete overhaul of the capitalist economic system. When the worst effects of decades of uncontrolled monopoly capitalism resulted in the financial collapse of October, 1929 that triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s, ordinary citizens looked to various levels of government and the two major political parties for solutions. These avenues of remediation proving to be totally ineffective, the door opened to individual, group, and organizational initiatives to achieve an end to the crisis. Organized efforts seeking to improve conditions entered the stage of stultification and near collapse.

Securing jobs rested as the core of the solution, no matter the channels chosen or the efforts expended. The political economy had always acted to supply work, whether through government, corporate, or small business opportunities. So, the potential for the American dream to remain alive and open to all was threatened by the magnitude of the existing crisis. Now, with a loss of effectiveness throughout the structures and system of job creation, citizens pursued other means to remedy their problems. Some bright spots appeared in the collaboration between politics and protest, as exemplified by the black state legislators and the Chicago NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) applying pressure group tactics on white legislators throughout the state to force contractors to use more equitable hiring practices. Another bright spot was the coordinated efforts of African American politicians who allied with the federated Colored Citizens World’s Fair Council to increase hiring and prevent discrimination on the fairgrounds upon the opening of A Century of Progress, or as the event was popularly known, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.

As important as racial consciousness, solidarity, and self-help had become in the public mentality during this period of crisis, these features of black culture merely acted as impediments to seeing the fullest dimensions of the problem and its needed solutions. Even the Communists who railed against the superficiality of race as an issue of importance endorsed as a means toward change the concept of Black Belt nationalism in the southern United States and in northern cities such as Chicago. This became official party policy at the Sixth World Congress of the Third International, held in 1928.

When Washington State resident Horace R. Cayton arrived in Chicago in the fall of 1931, he certainly did not have an inkling of what to expect in the city. The demographic features staggered his imagination, as he confronted hundreds of thousands of African Americans when he had been used to only dozens at large public events in his former hometown, Seattle.⁹ As he documented, the formidable and pervasive influences of the Great Depression extended beyond its effects on individuals and families to dampen the political and the major race advancement and protest organizations on the South Side as the Black Metropolis foundered. Despite the high spirits evident in the twenties, the economic deprivation of the thirties seemed to drain every aspect of life of its vitality.

In the absence of satisfactory plans to solve the basic ills of the Depression, frustration among the masses grew in intensity. As a result, the streets became the venues of last resort for those seeking to cope with the problems of the Depression, a phenomenon manifested in the Don’t Spend Your Money Where You Can’t Work campaign, the Street Car Riots and subsequent outdoor demonstrations, the eviction disturbances and riot of August 3, 1931, and the relief office disturbances. Yet, as dramatic as these episodes of protest were, in immediate terms they were futile in a metropolitan society whose locus of power was Chicago City Hall. On a more positive note, though, they did drive a point home: the theatrics of the Communist Party, and the protest of the Chicago Whip and the aspiring street car workers did ramp up the volume of public pressure that led to New Deal changes, making some previously unattainable goals appear suddenly reachable.

The most important question involving organizational relationships, however, remained whether politics could exist alongside race and protest organizations in a condition that was based on more than antagonistic missions. Interestingly, politics, as a force with the capability to make and change public policy in regard to race and economic relations, had a minor salutary, but a major deleterious effect on the operations of race advancement and protest organizations. Black politicians, with their access, albeit limited, to policy-making apparatuses in the city, the state, and the nation were in positions to directly influence the quality of black life during the early years of the Depression. However, they lacked the necessary will and power to initiate change in the social and economic sphere, because public policy dictated that a laissez faire approach be followed. During this period, public offices for blacks proved to be worthless commodities. Only a response that was massive in scope and that emanated from a locus such as Washington could solve the problems of the Depression. This response finally came when the national elections of 1932 brought Franklin D. Roosevelt into power in March 1933 with his comprehensive New Deal program aimed directly at the ills and, importantly, the root causes of the Depression.

During the first three years of the Depression decade, the temper of the times dictated a comprehensive and well-organized approach to solve the problems of social deprivation and dislocation of the economy. The political organizations of both major parties experienced failure in programmatic changes meant to meet the immediate needs of the times until the introduction of the programs of the New Deal in 1933. Most importantly, black political activities represented an aberration in Chicago politics. African Americans consistently introduced the element of race into their political actions and decisions at a time when whites were primarily focusing on the economic conditions of the period. Part of the answer was found in the racial thinking that pervaded the Black Metropolis, but the leadership provided by Congressman Oscar DePriest and the other black politicians who belonged to the black South Side’s Republican submachine also contributed to this pattern of political development.¹⁰

That blacks could continue to ignore the economic realities of the day in their politics is also explainable by the precarious position they held in the city’s economy, one in which they had never advanced beyond racial limits because of existing racism, even during the city’s halcyon days. The distress of the Depression decade merely brought a continuation of the same dismal conditions they had always experienced. The lack of a clear expression of black dissatisfaction manifested at the polls in national, state, and local elections was understandable in light of what blacks primarily wanted out of life in America: their full rights and privileges as citizens. To blacks, economic betterment would come as a result of the winning of these rights and privileges. The Great Depression influenced black political thought and behavior most by raising doubts about Republican leadership, especially Mayor William Big Bill Thompson and Congressman Oscar DePriest, as the party’s once dominant position was weakened by the rise of the Democrats, led locally by machine-building Mayor Anton Tony Cermak. This need to break with the Republican Party and embrace the more progressive Democratic Party of Roosevelt was a process delayed until the decade’s end by the strength of racial ideology.

With the political channel demonstrating only impotence as to the probability of major change, heightened activism emanating from the major organizations and unexpectedly from the masses in the streets presented alternative choices. Economic conditions caused significant changes as well within the structures, operations, and agendas of the Chicago Urban League, the Chicago NAACP, and the Chicago chapter of the Communist Party as they