Document 22–5: Stanley B. Norvell, Letter to Victor F. Lawson, 1919

Reading the American Past: Printed Page 137

DOCUMENT 22–5

An African American Responds to the Chicago Race Riot

Race riots exploded in almost two dozen American cities during the summer of 1919. White mobs attacked African Americans indiscriminately beating, shooting, and lynching them. Shortly after the bloody riot in Chicago, the governor of Illinois appointed a biracial commission to study the causes of the melee. Stanley B. Norvell, an African American Chicagoan, wrote the following letter to Victor F. Lawson, editor of the Chicago Daily News, who had just been appointed as one of the white members of the commission to study the riot. Norvell described whites' ignorance of blacks and pointed out that a “new Negro” had been created by the experiences of World War I and the continuing injustices of white racism.

This selection has been omitted intentionally in this electronic edition.

From Stanley B. Norvell to Victor F. Lawson, in William Tuttle, ed., “Views of a Negro during the Red Summer of 1919,” Journal of Negro History 51 (July 1966), 211–18.

Questions for Reading and Discussion

  1. According to Norvell, what were the causes of the Chicago race riot?
  2. Why did few white men “know the Negro”? How did whites judge “the race”? Why could whites not “accurately deduce what I am or what I represent,” according to Norvell?
  3. What did Norvell mean by saying, “Today we have with us a new Negro”? How did education influence attitudes among blacks and whites? How did World War I contribute to new attitudes among African Americans?
  4. How did “the goggles of race prejudice” shape the experiences of blacks and whites? What assumptions did Norvell make about the motivations of whites and blacks and how they might be changed?