Negro Distrust of the Police Increased: MIGRATION, PROHIBITION, AND REGIME-BUILDING IN THE 1920S

Horace Jennings lay in the street as Chicago convulsed. Acrid smoke hung in the air, mingling with the smells of an urban midsummer heat wave: the damp dirt and mud of unpaved streets; the sulfurous odors of manufacturing plants; the animal smells of the packinghouses. Furies raged. Around the city and particularly on the South Side, feet pounded the pavement, echoing hearts beating in chests. The day before, July 27, 1919, the threat of a Red Summer had become Chicago’s reality, unleashing one of the worst race riots the United States had yet known. White Chicagoans marauded through black neighborhoods.