1917: The East St. Louis Riot
Big Idea
Representing Jim Crow attitudes that refused to acknowledge Black people as equal workers and neighbors in the city of East Saint Louis, on July 2, 1917 mobs of armed White people attacked Black workers and family members around the Aluminum Ore Company in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Jim Crow in Action
During the Great Migration, Black families continued to stream into St. Louis and East Saint Louis. At one point, upwards of 2,000 were arriving each week. They came seeking fleeing Jim Crow policies and seeking fairer employment. The racial tensions already existing in St. Louis and East Saint Louis only worsened with the influx of people.
When Black workers were hired by an East Saint Louis Aluminum Ore company as strikebreakers White workers responded by rioting, burning down buildings, and shooting African Americans as they sought to flee (Waxman, 2020). Trapped inside burning buildings many Black men, women, and children died inside from the fire or from incoming bullets. Rioters stoned African American women to death on the street and shot two infants in the head (Campbell, p. 22). Between thirty-nine and two hundred Black people died during the uprising and “three hundred homes and commercial buildings” were destroyed (Campbell, p. 22).
Below is an excerpt from one of the accounts of a Black woman in East Saint Louis:
The street cars ran right along in front of her house, and she saw white women stop the street cars and pull colored women off and beat them. One woman's clothes they tore off entirely, and then took off their shoes and beat her over the face and head with their shoe heels. Another woman who got away, ran down the street with every stitch of clothes torn off her back, leaving her with only her shoes and stockings on. Mrs. Howard saw two men beaten to death. She had escaped all excepting having rocks thrown at the house, until this soldier humiliated her by coming into her house and arresting her and the other women there, because they couldn't find any guns concealed. This happened on the morning of the 5th (Wells-Barnett, 1917, p. 6).
Black Reaction across the Country
"Negroes Did Not Start Trouble". St. Louis Argus. July 6, 1917.
Source: Wikipedia
Black leaders across the United States were outraged by such horrific violence and called for an investigation. Marcus Garvey referred to the riot as: “a massacre that will go down in history as one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind for which any class of people could be held guilty” (PBS, n.d., para. 4). Garvey’s speech about the riot, "The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riots," was subsequently published and became one of the catalyzers driving him to national prominence (para. 4).
Ida B. Wells published a book about the riot, The East St. Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century. In it she included interviews of those who had survived it.
Cartoon about the East St. Louis massacre of 1917 created by William Charles Morris for the New York Evening Mail.
Source: Wikipedia
The NAACP organized silent protest parades across the country calling attention to the riot and other horrific acts of violence perpetrated against Black people. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported as follows (1917):
All the impartial witnesses agree that the police were either indifferent or encouraged the barbarities, and that the major part of the National Guard was indifferent or inactive. No organized effort was made to protect the Negroes or disperse the murdering groups. The lack of frenzy and of a large infuriated mob made the task easy. Ten determined officers could have prevented most of the outrages. One hundred men acting with authority and vigor might have prevented any outrage (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1917).
While African American soldiers died for the United States in World War I, at home they were slaughtered by fellow Americans.
Community Members
Did you know? East Saint Louis decedents continue to advocate for justice for their loved ones. To read more about the descendants of this massacre and their efforts toward justice click here.
Your Turn
How do the East Saint Louis Race Riots once again demonstrate the ongoing battle for White control over economic livelihoods? How does the injustice of this event continue to impact Black lives today?
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Digital version of Ida B. Well’s History of the East Saint Louis Riot.
Read Elliot M. Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917. University of Illinois Press, 1964.
Read, Charles L. Lumpkins, American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics. Ohio University Press, 2008.
Read, Malcolm McLaughlin, “Reconsidering the East St Louis Race Riot of 1917,” IRSH 47 (2002), pp. 187–212.
NPR article on the ongoing impact of the East Saint Louis Race Riots.
Time article on the East Saint Louis Riot.
Explore information about other race riots across the country.
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Discussion questions related to the East St. Louis Riot from Southern Illinois University.
New York Historical Society Museum exhibit on Jim Crow and the riots that came out of African American resistance to White domination.
Resources from the Zinn Education Project on the Red Summer of 1919.
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Time article on the East Saint Louis Riot.
NPR article on the ongoing impact of the East Saint Louis Race Riots.
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Wells, I. (1918). The East St. Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century.
Holloway, Jonathan Scott; Keppel, Ben, eds. (2007). Black Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the Twentieth Century. University of Notre Dame Press.