News of the Chicago police murder of three Black militants–C.P. member Abe Gray, and John O’Neil and Thomas Page of the South Side Unemployed Council during an eviction defense at 5016 S. Dearborn St., on August 3, 1931. Tens of thousands would march behind their coffins in protest.

‘Three Dead, Scores Wounded in Massacre by Chicago Cops’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 8 No. 187. August 5, 1931.

COMMUNIST PARTY CALLS FOR MASS PROTEST AT FUNERAL OF 3 VICTIMS

Police Fired Volley Into Negro, White Workers Protesting Eviction of Unemployed Negro Woman; 3 Cops Hurt As Workers Defend Themselves

Entire Working Class of Chicago Roused by Murderous Police Attack on Negro Workers–Police Plan More Repressive Measures

BULLETIN.

CHICAGO, August 4. N.A.A.C.P. leaders and Negro and white landlords and real estate agents are directly responsible for the police massacre of Negro workers here on Tuesday.

In a meeting Friday night, July 24, at the office of Hobbs and Grubb, 446 E. 47th Street, these traitors called upon the police to use drastic measures against the white and Negro workers who resist the evictions of unemployed workers. During the previous week several unemployed colored families had been returned to their homes by the Unemployed Councils after they had been evicted.

The Chicago Whip, reporting the meeting, says, “The police were condemned for their failure to thwart the efforts of the radical groups which have been restoring evicted families in the district.”

The Whip also reports the following as present at the meeting which conspired for a bloody police terror against the workers: Attorney Henry W. Hammond, attorney for the Chicago branch of the NAACP, Attorney Nathan K. McGill, general manager of the Chicago Defender, Assistant State Attorneys Taylor and Lovelace.

Among the real estate interests represented were the firm of De Priest and De Priest, H.F. Blackman, Coleman, Dean and Draper and Kramer.

CHICAGO, August 4. Three workers were killed and many white and Negro workers wounded Tuesday afternoon when police opened a murderous point blank fire into a crowd of several hundred workers demonstrating against the eviction of Rose Warrick, an unemployed Negro woman.

The workers, who were assembled in front of 5016 S. Dearborn St., heroically defended themselves with the result that several policemen were badly beaten up. The wounded workers were taken into their homes by other white and Negro workers.

Of the three murdered workers. Gray was a Communist and John O’Neil a member of the Unemployed Council. The name of the third worker is not known.

The massacre of the workers war under the direct supervision of Lieutenant Hardy, who rushed to the scene of the demonstration with additional forces and riot guns and led the police in an open volley of shots directly into the mass of workers assembled in front of the building.

This massacre of defenseless unemployed colored and white workers protesting the boss policy of throwing the families and furniture of unemployed workers into the streets has roused the whole working class of Chicago and especially the Negro masses. The whole police force of Chicago South Side in an attempt to terrorize the neighborhood. Already, according to reports, about 30 workers have been arrested and thrown into jail.

The massacre of defenseless workers in the streets of Chicago was preceded by a reign of terror on the part of the police against the workers in different parts of the city. This reign of terror was aimed at smashing the fight against evictions. Acting Police Commissioner John H. Alcock threatened the workers with a blood both several days ago, declaring:

“We are going to have serious trouble any day now, perhaps.” By this statement Alcock clearly indicated that the police were preparing for a slaughter of unemployed workers in defense of the rights to thrown jobless workers and their wives and little children on the streets to “root hog or die.”

The landlords on the South Side had a meeting the other day and demanded the most drastic action on the part of the police against the workers to crush their fight against the evictions of unemployed workers. Tens of evictions had been stopped within recent days by militant mass action of the workers in returning the furniture to the flats.

The Communist Party has issued a leaflet denouncing this massacre of unemployed workers. It is being distributed all over Chicago. It contains the following demands: (1) Arrest of the police murderers of workers with death penalty for them; (2) Release of all arrested workers; (3) Right of workers to defend themselves against murderous attacks of police; (4) evictions of unemployed workers must stop; (5) For full rights of colored and white workers to organize and hold meetings; (6) Immediate relief for the unemployed.

A delegation will go to Mayor Cermak at City Hall today, demanding the immediate arrest of the police who murdered the workers and the release of the arrested workers.

A mass funeral will be held for the murdered workers in which thousands of colored and white workers will participate.

The massacre Tuesday Is a continuation of a long series of police acts of terrorism against Negro and white workers of Chicago. Particularly has this terrorism been directed against the colored workers, scores of whom are arrested almost daily without cause and railroaded to prison sentences. Only last week the Chicago World, a Negro paper, carried an editorial protesting against the police terror against the Negro workers.

Protest the Chicago Massacre!

THE police of the Chicago bankers, pork packers and landlords Monday fired with riot guns on the unemployed workers of that city. Three Negro workers are murdered by the Chicago police! Many are wounded and dozens are thrown into jail!

The workers are learning from bitter experiences that the eviction and deliberate starvation of one “friendless” Negro worker is an insult and a blow at the whole working class, black and white, and must be resisted in the interest of all.

The solidarity of our class, as expressed in the Unemployed Council of Chicago was expressed by the heroic defense of this Negro unemployed working woman, Mrs. Rose Warrick, by thousands of followers of the Unemployed Council. The inspiration and leadership of the 10,000,000 unemployed workers in this country by the Communist Party and our Party’s unqualified insistence upon the taking up of the cause of the Negro by the whole working class–our Party’s leadership in the struggle against starvation, the struggle for unemployment insurance and against evictions–has inspired the Chicago workers to this heroic stand.

At the cost of the blood of our class, the evictions of the unemployed, Negro and white, have already been stopped for the time being.

The cold-blooded massacre of Negro workers was not an accidental Incident. This is not even the outcome of the general brutal attitude of the Chicago capitalist class police flunkeys towards the working class and the Negro people. This was a deliberate, planned murder. With hundreds of thousands of workers out of employment and literally starving, the wholesale eviction of these workers from their homes was undertaken by the authorities for the benefit of the parasitic landlords. As a matter of defense of the lives of their wives and children, the workers under the leadership of the Unemployed Council resisted these evictions. Masses of workers came to places where working class families were evicted and carried the furniture back into the houses. It was human life against the dirty dollars of the landlords.

A few days ago a group of landlords, especially those interested in the South Side segregated district where Negro workers are herded together like cattle in lousy tenements and charged double the rent charged to whites, decided to call upon the city government to evict unemployed families and to use force and violence against all who objected. This meeting was held at a law office at 446 E. 47th St., Chicago. A representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Henry W. Hammon, attorney for its Chicago branch, participated, and the decision was made to call upon the police “for a vigorous and organized prosecution of all those who participate in restoring the furniture of evicted tenants.” The N.A.A.C.P. lawyer and the others present declared their purpose of obtaining police action especially against those who defended tenants on the South Side of Chicago, the Negro section.

It is therefore deliberately that Police Lieut. Hardy went at the head of a large force of uniformed thugs equipped with riot guns to the home of Rose Warrick for the purpose of shooting down the followers of the Unemployed Council who were in the act of returning Mrs. Warrick’s furniture to her flat.

It was deliberately planned murder. The dirty dollars of the landlords against the lives of the working class.

It was deliberate murder planned by the city government of Chicago. It was deliberately planned and sponsored by Mayor Cermak and authorized, and official instructions given to the uniformed gunmen whom the Chicago workers have learned to know as heartless watch-dogs of the capitalist class.

But even the cold-blooded murder on Chicago streets has not terrorized the Chicago workers, Negro and white! The capitalist class thugs learned a lesson on Monday! They learned that the Negro workers of Chicago, and the white workers as well, standing solidly together are determined no longer to be helpless victims of the criminal class which rules and exploits them. Before the blood of the working class martyrs had dried upon the street, thousands of Negro and white workers made. a mass demonstration in protest against the murder.

Bigger struggles are ahead. Already the intimation is that the capitalist government of Illinois will send troops to Chicago to shoot down the workers, to strengthen the reign of terror and to accomplish the breaking up of the organizations of the working class which have dared to fight for their right to live.

The finest courage and the finest organizing ability of our class are now being tested in Chicago.

The masses of Chicago must now turn out–Negro and white–by scores of thousands to express their protest against this massacre. Whether the police murderers will now try to prohibit our class from burying its dead remains to be seen. But whether or not, the funeral of the three martyred Negro workers must be the affair of the whole mass of hundreds of thousands of Chicago workers, Negro and white. The funeral of our brothers must be a mighty fist of the working class in the face of the murderous capitalist class which assassinated them.

We demand that criminal responsibility for the massacre be placed upon the Mayor and Chief of Police of the city of Chicago even before it is placed upon the uniformed gunmen who fired the shots.

We demand the immediate release of the workers who have been thrown into jail by the police murderers.

The working class must uphold its right to defend itself against the murderous attacks of the police.

We demand that the evictions of unemployed workers be stopped and not be resumed.

We demand full rights of Negro and white workers to organize and hold meetings without police interference.

We demand relief for the unemployed! Social insurance against capitalist starvation.

We call for the solidarity of Negro and white workers! The white parasites who murdered three Negro workers on Monday would like nothing better than to start another race war by inciting degenerate elements of the white population into violent acts against Negroes. The white workers must fight for the Negro workers’ rights!

We demand the removal of the uniformed thugs and dicks from the district.

We call upon the white workers of Chicago and everywhere to come to the front as the first defenders of the Negro workers.

Down with Jim Crow discrimination against Negroes!

Down with segregation; down with double rent for Negroes!

Negro and white workers of Chicago! Make the defense of the innocent Negro boys framed up at Scottsboro and the tenant farmers at Camp Hill, Ala., a part of your fight!

Negro and white workers! Unite In the Unemployed Councils and the revolutionary unions of the Trade Union Unity League!

Negro workers and white workers! Join and build up your revolutionary Party of leadership—the Communist Party.

Negro and white workers of the whole country—not only in Chicago!

Join In protest against the murder of the newest Chicago martyrs!

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n193-NY-aug-12-1931-DW-LOC.pdf