Nightmare on 35th Street: Commemorating the Chicago 1919 Race Riots at the Vortex of Violence

Since the 2008 election of the first African American President of the United States, Barack Obama, racial hatred has been on the rise. During the 2016 presidential election, right-wing extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Ultra-Right groups have become more vocal resulting in civil rights organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center reporting a significant rise in hate crimes and threats. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump helped to stoke the fears of these hate groups with his incendiary campaign rhetoric of hate mostly against immigrants. This chapter provides a historical overview of racial hate and its manifestation of homegrown terrorism in America. Additionally, this chapter examines how hatred and fear became the source of lynching and race riots in America from the 18th to the 21st century. Understanding the past and present history of hatred directed at racial, ethnic and gender groups can help to bring a factual and more truthful point of view that can help reduce the recurrence of homegrown terrorism.

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An Overview of the Impact of Racial Hate and Its Manifestation of Homegrown Terrorism in America

Violent Extremism ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-7119-3.ch012 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 203-222

Author(s):

Benson G. Cooke

Keyword(s):

Civil Rights ◽

Significant Rise ◽

Point Of View ◽

Race Riots ◽

Civil Rights Organizations ◽

Racial Hatred ◽

American President ◽

Homegrown Terrorism ◽

And Gender ◽

Gender Groups

Since the 2008 election of the first African American President of the United States, Barack Obama, racial hatred has been on the rise. During the 2016 presidential election, right-wing extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Ultra-Right groups have become more vocal resulting in civil rights organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center reporting a significant rise in hate crimes and threats. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump helped to stoke the fears of these hate groups with his incendiary campaign rhetoric of hate mostly against immigrants. This chapter provides a historical overview of racial hate and its manifestation of homegrown terrorism in America. Additionally, this chapter examines how hatred and fear became the source of lynching and race riots in America from the 18th to the 21st century. Understanding the past and present history of hatred directed at racial, ethnic and gender groups can help to bring a factual and more truthful point of view that can help reduce the recurrence of homegrown terrorism.

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An Overview of Race Riots in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles

Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles ◽

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195328752.003.0001 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 3-33

Author(s):

Janet L. Abu-Lughod

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Los Angeles ◽

Race Riots

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Plessy’s Long Shadow

Silent Covenants ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195172720.003.0005 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Derrick Bell

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Due Process ◽

The United States ◽

Fourteenth Amendment ◽

Equal Protection ◽

Political Equality ◽

Race Riots ◽

Black And White ◽

The Law

The supreme court’s 1896 Decision in Plessy v. Ferguson served to bring the law into a dismal harmony with the nation’s view of race in life. The Court decided that segregation in public facilities through “separate but equal” accommodations for black citizens would satisfy the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. The years since the sporadically enforced policies of Reconstruction ended in 1876 had been hard for those former slaves and their offspring whose slavery had legally ended with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. To ensure their rights to due process and the equal protection of the law, the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Despite legislation intended to provide enforcement of these rights, the laws were poorly enforced and most were subsequently declared unconstitutional. Corrupting law but relying on intimidation and violence, southern governments stripped blacks of political power. Given meaningful if unspoken assurances that the federal government would not protect black civil rights, conservative southerners regained power utilizing racial fear and hatred to break up competing populist groups of poor black and white farmers. In addition to the disenfranchisement of blacks, whites sought to secure their power through intensive anti-Negro propaganda campaigns championing white supremacy. Literary and scientific leaders published tracts and books intended to “prove” the inhumanity of the Negro. In this hostile climate, segregation laws that had made a brief appearance during Reconstruction were revived across the South, accompanied by waves of violence punctuated by an increase in lynchings and race riots. In an effort both to protest the indignity of segregation and challenge its validity, Homer Plessy, acting for a New Orleans civil rights group, attempted to ride in a railroad car reserved for whites. He was arrested and convicted of violating Louisiana’s 1890 segregation law. On appeal, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment required absolute equality of the two races before the law, adding: “but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”

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