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Fight for Rights: The Chicago 1919 Riots and the Struggle for Black Justice Introduction This is a history of the fight for rights and citizenship undertaken by Black people in Chicago in that city’s first century. Covering the period from the 1830s to 1930s, this book looks at their successes and the forces that arose—in the streets, in city government, in the courts, and on the police force—to limit their extent. And it looks at how, and why, individuals and institutions attempted to justify those limits over time. Miscarriage of Justice Few legal records from the riot cases remain, but the one case we do have, a murder trial involving two Black teens, demonstrates how badly the legal system failed Black Chicagoans in the aftermath of the riots. In that case, those failures were not an accident. Government officials, judges, and jurors willfully ignored (and sometimes created) problems of law and facts in order to win convictions of the two teens.

Grand Jury Strike

On Wednesday, August 6, as the National Guard still patrolled Chicago, the grand jury hearing riot cases went on strike. In the middle of a presentation, one of the jurors interrupted Assistant State's Attorney Robert Rollo, demanding to know if there were any cases on the docket that did not involve Black suspects.

Rollo assured that juror that cases against whites would be presented in due course but admitted that the only cases he had prepared for the day were against Black people. Another assistant state's attorney, William Duval, told the jurors that in the thirty cases that were being prepared for them, there were some cases against whites.

After a brief caucus, the grand jury decided to refuse to hear any more cases and adjourned until Thursday. It also informed Rollo and Duval that, when it returned, it expected them to present cases against whites, as well as Blacks.

That afternoon, Maclay Hoyne denounced the grand jurors for exceeding their authority. “The state's attorney,” he said, “is doing his duty and expects the grand jury to do its duty and he needs no suggestions from any one as to how he should do his duty.”

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Attorney General Edward J. Brundage Edward Jackson Brundage was born May 13, 1869. He was an attourney with a degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law, and he served as Illinois Attorney General from 1917 to1925.

During the 1919 riots, Brundage prevented Colonel Lorenzen from searching all houses in the Black Belt. After the riots, Brundage joined State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne and Coroner Peter Hoffman to conduct, they said, “the greatest criminal investigation in the history of the state.” However, after the grand jury strike, Brundage spoke out against the state's attorney office. Every Black citizen, he explained, had “political rights, and those rights, given him by law, [that] he should be entitled to enjoy. Those who would deny them are lawless, and if the law is to be venerated all laws must be honored.” He then disappeared from efforts to prosecute the riot cases.

He died January 20, 1934.

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State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne