Headline: CEREMONY
MARKS `SCENES OF HORROR' BURIED IN AREA'S MEMORY
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman
Publication: ST.
LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Sept. 29, 1996
Section: NEWS, Page: 6A, Edition: EARLY FIVE STAR
THE TEMPERATURE
WAS a chilly 46 degrees at 7 a.m. Saturday as about 100 people gathered near
the East St. Louis riverfront.
Poet-critic
Eugene B. Redmond pointed to the Mississippi River as he recited a poem about
the "river of bones and flesh and blood." A spirited group of men
in African garb pounded drums with their hands at speeds that made them impossible
to follow.
Bishop
Michael Bates, pastor of the Word Harvest Full Gospel Baptist Church in St.
Louis, told the gathering that "if a man doesn't know from whence he comes,
he certainly doesn't know where he's going."
Kofi
Maalik of Chicago performed a colorful African ceremony giving nourishment of
water and food "to free the souls of the ancestors killed in 1917."
The
gathering was part of a black political convention being held here this weekend.
Organizers of the convention felt it was important for their delegates - many
of whom are not from St. Louis - to understand what happened here nearly 80
years ago.
They'd be surprised to learn how many St. Louisans don't know what happened either.
In 1917, gangs
of whites terrorized blacks in East St. Louis, killing at least 39, forcing
thousands to flee and causing those blacks with jobs in the city to return only
under special precautions.
It
was in that year that the Aluminum Ore Co. hired thousands of blacks from the
rural South as replacements for white workers who had gone out on strike. Employers
in a variety of industries found that the blacks would work more cheaply than
whites, and many displaced their white workers with black ones.
The
result was legions of white families who went hungry because their chief breadwinners
had lost their jobs. But it wasn't easy for the blacks either, whose numbers
overwhelmed the city's employment opportunities. Those who were fortunate enough
to find work often found themselves living in hovels, earning less than in the
jobs they'd left behind in the South.
On the night of
July 1, 1917, a Ford automobile drove through a black neighborhood, terrorizing
residents as the car's occupants fired guns indiscriminately. No one was injured,
but a black crowd assembled to the calling of church bells that night.
A police car arrived, and the group immediately opened
fire on it, killing two white officers inside. No one knows whether the intention
was to kill police officers. Some suggest that because the police car was a
Ford like the one that had terrorized the neighborhood, angry residents might
not have known the difference.
Regardless, the
shootings caused a bloody riot the next day, as mobs of whites ripped into black
neighborhoods, torturing, beating and shooting black men, women and children.
In some cases, homes of blacks were set ablaze while whites with guns waited
to shoot the occupants who fled.
Some
blacks were set afire; others were hanged. The murders were carried out randomly;
in one case, a black St. Louis family was returning home from a fishing trip
when they were attacked. The mob killed a 14-year-old boy and his father and
scalped his mother.
East
St. Louis was a city on fire.
At the end of
the day, 47 people were reported dead - 39 black, eight white. More than 240
buildings and 44 rail cars were destroyed by fire. The damage was estimated
at $500,000, more than $2.5 million in today's dollars.
Reports indicate that about 300 National Guardsmen arrived
early during the riot, but in some instances they turned against the blacks,
as did many police officers.
According to the
1918 report of a congressional investigating committee, "Scenes of horror
that would have shocked a savage were viewed with placid unconcern by hundreds,
whose hearts knew no pity and who seemed to revel in the feast of blood and
cruelty."
Terrorized
blacks fled the city in thousands. The congressional report said: "The
fright of the (black) laborers went to such an extent - and it was fully justified
by existing conditions - that special means of transportation had to be provided
for them back and forth between St. Louis and East St. Louis in order to get
them to work at all."
More than 21 people were arrested, though only 21 ever went to the penitentiary for their crimes: nine whites and 12 blacks.
The riot was a low point in this area's history.
It was against
that backdrop that those killed were honored Saturday morning, in a dignified
remembrance of the senseless murders of 1917.
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