Who or what was most responsible for the race riot of 1919?

Question

Who or what is to blame for the start of it

Answer 1

The kid who winged the rock.

On the afternoon of July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, a black youth, drowned off the 29th Street beach.

A stone throwing melee between blacks and whites on the beach prevented the boy from coming ashore safely. After clinging to a railroad tie for a lengthy period, he drowned when he no longer had the strength to hold on. This was the finding of the Cook County Coroner's Office after an inquest was held into the cause of death.

William Tuttle, Jr.'s book, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919, includes a 1969 interview with an eyewitness. This witness was one of the boys swimming and playing with Eugene Williams in Lake Michigan between 26th Street and the 29th Street Beach. He recalled having rocks thrown at them by a single white male standing on a breakwater 75 feet from their raft.

Eugene was struck in the forehead and as his friend attempted to aid him, Eugene panicked and drowned. The man on the breakwater left, running toward the 29th Street Beach.

By this time rioting had already erupted there precipitated by vocal and physical demonstrations against a group of blacks who wanted to use the beach in defiance of its tacit designation as a "white" beach. The rioting escalated when a white police officer refused to arrest the white man, by now identified as the perpetrator of the separate incident near 26th Street.

Instead he arrested a black individual.

Anger over this, coupled with rumors and innuendoes that spread in both camps regarding Eugene Williams death led to 5 days of rioting in Chicago that ultimately claimed the lives of 23 blacks and 15 whites, with 291 wounded and maimed.

The Coroner's Office spent 70 day sessions and 20 night sessions on inquest work and in examining 450 witnesses. Those findings, reported in the Coroner's Report of 1919 are followed by his recommendations to deal with the festering social and economic conditions that were the underlying factors of the riots.

Now you know!

Answer 2

You know if you know to use yahoo why not just enter cause of 1919 race riots in the search window.
You'd find info on race 1919 riots in Chicago
http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/disasters/riots_race.html
http://chicago.urban-history.org/scrapbks/raceriot/raceriot.htm
and elsewhere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Race_Riot

If you had to have just one cause it would probably be blacks returning from the war and having experienced the acceptance of Europeans were no long content to live in a racially unequal envoronment like the US.