July 27, 1919. Riots, halts and finishes.

White mob during the Chicago riot.

On this day in 1919 the Red Summer came to Chicago when race riots broke out following a young black man accidentally wondering onto the white area of an informally segregated beach.  This caused whiles to react, resulting in their throwing rocks at black swimmers.  The young man was killed in the process.  Things descended from there with white mobs invading black areas. Authorities were intentionally slow to react. By the time the matter concluded on August 3, 23 blacks had died and 15 whites.

Illinois State Guardsman and Chicago policemen.  Authorities were slow to call out the State Guard, but when 6,000 Guardsmen were deployed to the city the riots came to an end.

The riots in Chicago, which had a large black population and which was a target destination of the Great Migration, are generally regarded as the worst of the Red Summer.  The city had been a powder keg all summer long and when violence erupted, white youth gangs were a major contributor to it, including the Hamburg Athletic Club which the then 17 year old future Mayor Daley was part of (his activities during the riots are unknown).

Ultimately the State of Illinois deployed the Illinois State Guard, deployment of the National Guard being impossible due to its not existing following its conscription during World War One. The State Guard forces, equipped largely with Spanish American War era arms, were not unsubstantial and the slowness in committing them and the lack of cooperation of the City of Chicago in addressing the violence contributed to the disaster.

Given the events, the cartoon run in the Chicago Tribune on this Sunday seems odd.

Cartoon from the Chicago Tribune, July 27, 1919.

Another disaster occurred at St. Ignatius Montana when fire destroyed the town.

In Iowa, the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy took the day off from moving, but not maintenance.

Apparently the quality of the food was becoming a concern.

Progress itself was a concern in the Round the Rim trip of the Air Corps, as reported in the Cheyenne paper. The bomber detailed to the effort had done a nose digger the prior day in Jay, New York.

In France, Firmin Lambot came out the winner in that years Tour de France.

Firmin Lambot

Thursday, July 24, 1919. A "Quiet and uneventful day" on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, Cedar Rapids to Marshalltown, Iowa. 75 miles in 9.5 hours. The Round The Rim flight takes off from Washington D.C. National Association of Negro Musicians meets in Chicago..

A typical day for the Motor Transport Convoy.

Breakdowns, rescues by the Militor, lunch and with the Red Cross.  The Knights of Columbus, in this instance, provided refreshments and dinner at Marshalltown, Iowa.

A "Quiet and uneventful day".

The Knights of Columbus were one of the many U.S. service organizations that responded to World War One.  As we addressed earlier, an organization like the USO didn't exist during the Great War, and service organizations filled that roll instead.  The war was now over, of course, but many of them were still acting in that role as mobilization wound down, and of course they would have responded to events like this in any event.  The KoC is a Catholic service organization.

It wasn't as quiet at Bolling Field at Washington D.C. where the U.S. Army commenced a second transcontinental expedition, this time by air.

A single Martin GMB bomber with five crewmen took off to circumnavigate the rim of the U.S. border, counter clockwise in what was billed the Round the Rim Flight.

The country had been crossed by air before, as indeed the country had been driven across before, but a giant flight around the periphery of the country was new.  That the air branch of the Army would commences this while the Army was driving across the center of the country is a bit of an odd coincidence, if it is.

The flight by a single aircraft was about 10,000 miles in length, and it took until November to complete.  Completion, we'd note, was a returning to Bolling Field.

Stealing thunder?  The Round The Rim Flight made the front page of the Casper paper.

The National Association of Negro Musicians commenced its first meeting in Chicago.  It's the nation's oldest organization of black musicians and had formed that prior May.

African Americans had a strong presence in American music since it became a thing of its own.  The Great Migration had brought, and was very much then bringing, African American musicians and forms of music north, and into the American mainstream at the time, with jazz and blues influenced musical forms very much on the rise.  That the conference was held in Chicago, a northern city, cannot be regarded as an accident.