Black East St. Louis: Politics and Economy in a Border
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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts BLACK EAST ST. LOUIS: POLITICS AND ECONOMY IN A BORDER CITY, 1860-1945 A Thesis in History by Charles L. Lumpkins © 2006 Charles L. Lumpkins Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2006 The thesis of Charles L. Lumpkins has been reviewed and approved* by the following: Nan Elizabeth Woodruff Professor of History Thesis Adviser Chair of Committee Daniel L. Letwin Associate Professor of History Alan V. Derickson Associate Professor of History Robyn Spencer Assistant Professor of African/African American Studies and History Lovalerie King Assistant Professor of English Sally McMurry Professor of History Head of the Department of History *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT This dissertation, covering from the 1860s to 1945, is the first study to center African Americans in the history of the politics and economy of the small industrial, majority white city of East St. Louis, Illinois. This investigation adds to the literature the border region concept, black people’s pivotal relation to real estate politician- businessmen whose politics and economic policies proved disastrous to city residents, and the importance of patronage and black machine politics. It examines the African American urban experience in context of continuous waves of black migrations, urbanization, industrialization, progressive era politics, the Great Depression, and the World Wars. Though black East St. Louisans, between the 1890s and the 1920s, encountered increasing segregation, discrimination, and racial violence, they experienced, not a nadir, but much ferment, building a rich institutional culture, entering the urban industrial economy in significant numbers, undergoing class differentiation, and engaging in a wide range of political and social actions, including electoral politics to secure patronage and win political seats in city and county governments. Black townspeople saw their nascent independent black political machine, but not their community, destroyed during the infamous 1917 “race riots,” which until this dissertation had been the sole topic of black history in pre-World War II East St. Louis. Black residents continued with their political and social actions after the riots, but in a more sharply iv segregated environment. Black East St. Louisans reentered city affairs, but only as junior partners when shifts in the national economy and politics occurred during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Research employs primary source materials in local, regional, and national archives and libraries and, to a lesser extent, secondary literature and oral history. This study concludes that black politics became acceptable to local white power holders when it no longer advanced independence from white political machines. v Contents Acknowledgements.……………………………………………………………………....vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1. Historical Roots of an African American Community In a Small Industrial Border City, 1800-1900……………………….………15 Chapter 2. Black East St. Louis in the Progressive Era, 1900 to 1915…………………..66 Chapter 3. The Wartime Great Migration, Labor Conflicts, Political Struggles, and Mass Anti-Black Violence of May 1917…………………...117 Chapter 4. To Make East St. Louis a “White Man’s Town”: Mass Anti-Black Violence of July 1917………………………………………….168 Chapter 5. To Restore Black Political Power, 1917-1929……………………………...223 Chapter 6. To Break the Deadlock, 1930-1945………………………………………...275 Postscript…………………………………………………………………………….….330 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………....334 vi Acknowledgments I extend my thanks for the assistance that I received during the dissertation process. I am grateful for the financial support from the King V. Hostick Award of the Illinois Historical Society, the Huggins-Quarles Dissertation Award of the Organization of American Historians, the Ford Foundation Minority Dissertation Fellowship, and the Newberry Library Short-Term Fellowship that allowed me to conduct the extensive archival research necessary for the project. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my “East St. Louis contacts.” I was honored to have met East St. Louisans Phillip L. Beck, Sr., Lee Annie Bonner, Marion Dunn, Jeanne A. Faulkner, Mattie Malone, Lillian Parks, Frances Nash Terrell, Claudia Nash Thomas, William Thomas, Olga Wayne, Lena Weathers, Katie Wright, Richard Younge, and Wyvetter Hoover Younge. Their generosity in granting me oral history interviews formed my imperative to finish this dissertation. I am truly grateful to Dr. Andrew Theising who shared scholarly research on East St. Louis, extended hospitality, gave guided tours of the city, and engaged in conversations with me about my topic. Through Andrew I contacted Dr. Malcolm McLaughlin of England, then completing his dissertation on the 1917 East St. Louis race riots. vii I am thankful for the assistance of staff at the Illinois State Library, Missouri State Historical Library, St. Louis Public Library, Olin Library at Washington University in St. Louis, Chicago Public Library, Newberry Library, Belleville (Illinois) Public Library, East St. Louis Public Library, Library of Congress, and National Archives in Washington, D.C. I want to thank individually Cheryl Schnirring at the Illinois State Historical Library, Charles L. Cali at Illinois State Archives, Doris Wesley at Thomas Jefferson Library at the University of Missouri, Martin Tuohy at National Archives— Great Lakes Facility, Stephen Kerber at Lovejoy Library of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and Dr. Walter Hill at National Archives II in College Park, Maryland. I wish to thank those at The Pennsylvania State University who assisted me. My committee members Dr. Nan Elizabeth Woodruff (chair and adviser), Dr. Daniel Letwin, Dr. Alan Derickson, Dr. Robyn Spencer, and Dr. Lovalerie King had the patience of Job. I appreciated the writing grant that the History Department awarded me. I give heartfelt thanks to former fellow graduate student, Dr. Barbara A. Gannon, for her assistance and encouragement. I thank the African/African American Studies Department faculty, in particular Dr. Cary Fraser for countless hours of intellectual exchange and Dr. David McBride for keeping me focused. I extend my appreciation to departmental secretaries, Darla Franks, Antonia Mooney, and especially Amy Dietz for their support. Finally, I express my thanks to friends and relatives. I am grateful for the encouragement I received from Jay Pomponio, Leslie Shriver, Roslyn Nadler, and my Russian friends Eugenni, and Yuri. My deepest thanks and love go to my son Charles and Rita, my “better half,” for their willingness to embark on this adventure. Rita read viii drafts and often discussed with me the East St. Louis story. I take sole responsibility for any errors or omissions in this work. Introduction Historians usually think of East St. Louis, Illinois, as the place where the first major wartime “race riot” occurred in July 1917 when mobs of white people invaded a black enclave in the downtown district and assaulted and murdered innocent people.1 No one, however, has looked at this event within the larger context of the city’s history and the continuing history of African American politics that both preceded and followed the July massacre.2 This dissertation, centering the actions of black people in the historical narrative, traces the history of black politics, particularly in the electoral arena, from mid-nineteenth century through World War II, revealing the institutional structures of that politics and the goals that African Americans sought to achieve in relation to local and national economic and political transformations.3 1 Quotation marks enclosing “race riots” indicate the need to employ an appropriate term for a specific form of mass racial violence. H. Leon Prather, Sr., We Have Taken a City: Wilmington Racial Massacre and Coup of 1898 ([Canbury, N.J.] Associated University Presses, 1984), 11, 173, wants to replace the term “race riot.” 2 Presently two scholarly histories exist. The first, and now classic, work is Elliott M. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964). The second is Malcolm McLaughlin, Power, Community, and Racial Killing in East St. Louis (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). Mclaughlin responds to, updates, and corrects Rudwick, uses social psychology to explain white assaults on black people, and adds an epilog on the issue of reparations. 3 Since black East St. Louisan sources no longer exist, evidence for black politics comes mainly from white sources like the East St. Louis Daily Journal. Titles of black East St. Louisan newspapers whose issues no longer exist are Messenger (late 1890s), Southern Illinois Press (early 1920s), Advance Citizen (1920s), East St. Louis Globe (early 1930s), East St. Louis Citizen (1930s), Spotlight (1930s), East St. Louis Gazette (late 1930s), The 2 East St. Louis emerged as an industrial city across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri. Like Gary, Indiana, was to Chicago, East St. Louis became an industrial satellite of the commercial metropolis of St. Louis. Railroads sliced through neighborhoods, establishing large train yards and acres of repair shops and freight houses that made the city a national railroad hub second only to Chicago. By 1910, the city had become a center of heavy industrial manufacture that included