American Pharaoh by Elizabeth Taylor, Adam Cohen Page A

the Scandinavians, never molest peaceable black people. Americans never think
     of doing such a thing. No other nationality consider themselves ‘degraded’ by seeing blacks earning their own living by labor.” 36
    Nor was the Catholic Church a force for racial tolerance during these tense times. The Church had more reason to fear the
     black influx than other white institutions. Unlike some faiths, Catholicism is firmly rooted in geography: Catholics’ relationship
     to their Church is determined by the parish in which they reside. Catholics “ascribe sacramental qualities to the neighborhood,”
     one historian has explained, “with the cross on top of the church and the bells ringing each day before Mass as visual and
     aural reminders of the sacred.” Protestants and Jews who saw blacks moving into their neighborhoods could move to the suburbs,
     taking their houses of worship with them or joining new ones when they settled in. But for Catholics, the ties to the land
     were greater, and the threat of losing their parish more deeply felt. “[E]verything they have been taught to value, as Catholics
     and Americans, is perceived as at risk,” wrote a reporter in Cicero, describing the racial siege felt by a parish there. “The
     churches and schools they built would become empty, the neighborhood priests, if any were left, would become missionaries.
     . . .” In 1917, the same year the Chicago Real Estate Board endorsed new steps to preserve racial segregation, Chicago’s Archbishop
     George Mundelein declared that Saint Monica’s Parish would henceforth be reserved for the city’s black Catholics. Since Mundelein
     had in the past opposed “national” parishes on principle, it seemed clear that his intention was to keep the races separate
     within the Church. 37
    The demographic pressures kept mounting as trainload after train-load of blacks arrived from the South — and it was not clear
     how much longer these new migrants could be squeezed into the borders of the overcrowded Black Belt. The end of World War
     I had brought the return of black soldiers, many of whom were less willing to accept racial discrimination back home after
     they had risked their lives for their country. And Chicago had just reelected William Thompson, a mayor many whites felt they
     could not trust to keep blacks from moving into their neighborhoods. Republican Thompson’s close ties to the black community,
     and his record number of black appointees, had led resentful whites to dub his City Hall “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The racial backlash
     growing in white neighborhoods was palpable, and word began to spread in the black community that whites were plotting some
     kind of bloody attack to re-assert their control of the city — perhaps even an invasion of the Black Belt designed to drive
     blacks out of Chicago. 38
    On July 27, 1919, these tensions exploded when six black teenagers went swimming in the wrong part of Lake Michigan. Young
     Eugene Williams drifted too close to a “white” beach on the South Side, and drowned after being hit by a rock thrown by a
     white man standing on the shore. False rumors spread rapidly through both the white and black communities. Blacks reported
     that a policeman had held a gun on a black crowd while whites threw stones; whites spread word that it was a white swimmer
     who had drowned after being hit by a rock thrown by a black. Five days of bloody riots ensued, from July 27 to July 31, followed
     by another week of intermittent violence. White gangs roamed the South Side, attacking blacks indiscriminately, and whites
     drove through the Black Belt shooting at blacks out of car windows. Black gangs wandered through black neighborhoods, beating
     up white merchants. In the end, it took the state militia and a driving rainstorm to bring about a tense peace. But before
     the hostilities had died down, 23 blacks and 15 whites had been killed, and another 537 injured, two-thirds of them