Chicago Riots
The Chicago Riots of 1967 were a significant episode in the city's history, emerging from longstanding racial tensions and socio-economic challenges faced by its African American community. The riots ignited on July 25, when African American youth, expressing feelings of frustration and hopelessness, engaged in acts of looting and violence primarily on the West Side. Over the following week, these disturbances spread to the South Side, resulting in clashes with police, property damage, and numerous arrests. The riots were influenced by racial conflicts in other U.S. cities, prompting a strong police response, including the use of live ammunition and tear gas.
The unrest prompted community leaders, like Reverend Jesse Jackson, to call for emergency measures, highlighting a broader discontent with systemic injustices, including police brutality and inadequate social conditions. The riots culminated in a series of protests and actions that underscored the community's demand for change, culminating in a significant national response. President Lyndon B. Johnson subsequently established the Kerner Commission to investigate the underlying causes of civil disorder, which highlighted similar struggles across urban America. The Chicago Riots thus became emblematic of the larger civil rights movement and the urgent need for social reform.
Chicago Riots
Date: July 25-September 24, 1967
A series of riots that occurred in Chicago during the summer of 1967. Combined with more extensive riots in more than thirty other U.S. cities during the summer, the Chicago riots indicated serious race relations problems in the nation.
Origins and History
Many African Americans from the southern United States began migrating to Chicago in the early 1900’s. Racism and mostly unsuccessful competition with whites over jobs and housing persisted for decades. As the summer of 1967 began, about eight hundred thousand African Americans, many feeling frustrated and hopeless, lived in the city’s crowded black ghettos.
The Riots
On Tuesday night, July 25, African American youths began looting, smashing car windows, and throwing firebombs on Chicago’s West Side. During the next week, vandalism, looting, and arson occurred on the South Side and the West Side. Police attributed the riots to reports of racial conflicts in other cities, and Mayor Richard Daley announced that live ammunition would be used against rioters. Police exchanged gunfire with youths firing from a building, and five Molotov cocktails were thrown into a store. About a hundred people were arrested. On August 1, an African American man was shot by a white man, and a firebomb was thrown. Fifty-two African Americans were arrested after they did not disperse, and more firebombs were thrown.
On August 3, the Reverend Jesse Jackson requested that Chicago be declared a disaster area. The situation calmed down, but on August 26, shots were fired while a blaze was being fought in the South Side, and nine African American youths were arrested. On September 14, an African American power rally sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) charged police with brutality and fascism, and window smashing, rock throwing at cars, and scattered sniper fire was reported. Police, aided by leaders of African American street gangs, calmed the area. The next day, African American students boycotted classes to protest inadequate school conditions.
On September 22, in the suburb of Maywood, five hundred people pelted police cars with bottles because no African American students had been nominated for homecoming queen. Thirty people were arrested. The following day, after police shot and critically wounded a burglary suspect, about three hundred African Americans threw bricks and bottles through store windows, and police used tear gas. On September 24, ten African Americans and eleven whites were arrested in Maywood by police in an attempt to prevent a third night of violence. The Chicago riots were over for the summer of 1967.
Impact
The riots of 1967 were largely responsible for President Lyndon B. Johnson appointing a Commission on Civil Disorders on July 27, 1967. The commission issued a report referred to as the Kerner Commission Report after its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois. Although the commission did not select Chicago for one of its in-depth investigations, the conditions described in the report were also found in Chicago, and the Chicago riots were part of the unrest that led to the report.
Additional Information
The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, published by Government Printing Office in 1968, gives the best understanding of the Chicago riot; Bantam Book’s 1968 reprint of the report, entitled The Kerner Report, gives a good background.