Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 14
Eugene’s father died just over a year and a half later, with
his death certificate listing “aortic regurgitation” as the
cause — some may regard his death as heartbreak. In 1923,
the city awarded Eugene’s mother $4,500 as compensation
for the loss of her only child.9
A multiracial body called the Chicago Commission on
Race Relations was formed to investigate the causes for
the riots in the hopes of preventing them from happening
again.10
In 1922, the commission issued a report that examined the
factors that contributed to the riot, including the role of
the press.11
It found that the city’s white newspapers had falsely
spread rumors that white people made up a majority of
those who were killed and injured during the riot. In
reality, Black people accounted for 23 of the 38 people
who were killed and two-thirds of the more than 500
people who were injured.12
And the white press also sparked fear by falsely claiming
that heavily armed Black residents were attacking white
residents.13 The Chicago Daily News quoted Alderman
Joseph McDonough, who called on white residents to
“defend ourselves if the city authorities won’t protect
us.”14
McDonough also claimed that bombs were going off and
that he saw “white men and women running through the
streets dragging children by the hands and carrying babies
in their arms. Frightened white men told me the police
captains had just rushed through the district crying, ‘For
God’s sake, arm; they are coming; we cannot hold them.’”
Meanwhile, the commission found that Chicago’s white
press primarily depicted the city’s Black residents through
stories about crime:
Constant identification of Negroes with
certain definite crimes could have no other
effect than to stamp the entire Negro group
in the public mind as generally criminal.
This in turn contributes to the already
existing belief that Negroes as a group are
more likely to be criminal than others and
thus they are arrested more readily than
others.18
The commission called for white newspapers to “apply
the same standards of accuracy, fairness and sense
of proportion with the avoidance of exaggeration in
publishing news about Negroes as about whites” and to
“exercise great caution in dealing with unverified reports
of crime of Negroes against white women and should
avoid the designation of trivial fights as race riots.”19
It also recommended “capitalization of the word ‘Negro’
in racial designation and avoidance of the word ‘nigger,’ as
contemptuous and needlessly provocative.”20
Nearly half a century later, the racial uprisings that took
place in the “long, hot summer” of 1967 in Detroit,
Newark and more than 150 other cities across the
country resulted in President Lyndon B. Johnson forming
the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
— known as the Kerner Commission — to examine the
root causes of the uprisings in an effort to prevent this
from happening again.21
15
But the commission found no evidence of “any bombs
going off during the riot, nor of police captains warning
the white people to arm, nor of any fear by whites of a
Negro invasion.”16
The commission studied both white and Black press
coverage of the tragedy. It urged the Black press to be
more accurate in its reporting on racial incidents, to
abandon “sensational headlines and articles” and educate
“Negro readers” on the “available means and opportunities
of adjusting themselves and their fellows into more
harmonious relations with their white neighbors and
fellow citizens.”17
14
In 1968, the Kerner Commission released its report,
which included a chapter focused on how white news
outlets contributed to the country’s racial division and
unrest. It noted that “far too often, the press acts and talks
about Negroes as if Negroes don't read the newspapers
or watch television, give birth, marry, die, and go to PTA
meetings.”22
And now, a little more than 50 years after the historic
Kerner Commission report, nationwide and international
uprisings have erupted following the public execution of
George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was killed in
Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, by a white police officer
who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 8
minutes — even after Floyd lost consciousness.23
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