Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot that Sparked the Civil Rights Movement
Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot that Sparked the Civil Rights Movement, Harper Barnes directs the attention to a 1917 race riot that took place in East St. Louis, Illinois. On July 2 and 3 the riot killed at least 48 men, women, children, and destroyed a large road of mostly black neighborhoods across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. Surprisingly, the author believes this riot was officially the deadliest of a series of devastating racial battles that swept through various cities in World War I era. The book begins in Philadelphia in the 1800s, which provides a proper historical and geographical context to the 1917 riot. The details of how most of the African community came to be in East St. Louis and the elucidation of the violence offers a fascinating insight on American history, and one can also compare these events to some of the issues of race relations of today.
This riot began with a labor dispute. A system built on levels of class is an unlit stick of dynamite, but to interweave race is the spark that caused the explosion. Months before the riot, local industrialists wanted to destabilize the local work force by driving down wages and limiting strikes. So business owners decided to create a reserve of scabs. This is the beginning of how Barnes traces the influx of American Africans to East St. Louis. Through hiring agents, business leaders put out the word across several states that there were jobs available in East St. Louis. Poor rural people of African descent -- many of them fleeing the lynch mobs in their home areas -- arrived only to discover that the number of jobs had been exaggerated. As a result, American African neighborhoods became even more crowded and began encroaching on European neighborhoods. Impoverished people began to fill the streets; some even resorted to a life of crime to survive. In addition, mix in economic and racial resentment among...