Gary Krist offers a detailed look at the summer of
1919 in Chicago, which featured a dirigible crashing into a bank, a
kidnapping-murder, a race riot, and a transit strike in his popular
history City of Scoundrels. Although the book covers almost an entire year
in Chicago’s history, its focus is on a twelve day period that began
with the Wingfoot Air Express dirigible crashing into the Illinois Bank
and Trust Building and ended with the suppression of a race riot on the
South Side.
With his main focus on the major headlines, Krist
manages to weave a story with human elements, partly by incorporating
the stories of individuals such as Sterling Morton, heir to the Morton
Salt fortune and a militia soldier stationed in Chicago during the
riots. Less tied in to the
activities is Emily Frankenstein, a young girl whose daily diary entries
allow Krist to explore how someone not involved directly with any of the
events saw them, including her concern over her boyfriend’s safety at
the height of the riots.
The rivalry between Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson and Illinois
governor Frank O. Lowden is also an important part of the story, for the
two men's antipathy, borne out of Lowden's perceived betrayal of
Thompson, caused the two men to act in ways detrimental to the city
because they didn't want to allow the other to take credit and would
rather see their actions fail, whether in relation to the streetcar
strike or the riot.
By following the activity of the various
crises on a day-by-day basis, Krist is able to show how most of that
activity overlapped. The streetcar strike and the riot, in
particular, played off each other and caused a worsening of the
situation. This structure also serves as a reminder that Chicago
was a vast city and there is no single narrative which can possibly come
close to explaining everything that was happening.
Although Krist’s thesis is that the crisis over
a twelve day period changed Chicago, he fails to knit the various events
into a coherent whole. The
Wingfoot Air Express crash is handled on its own with the inquest barely
overlapping with the riots which began as the inquest was wrapping up.
The disappearance of Willingham was taking place on the far North
side, away from the majority of the riots and Krist indicates that the
search and funeral were hardly hampered by the transit strike.
The ongoing bombing campaign that targeted African Americans and
landlords who rented to them throughout 1919 and 1920 is given short
shrift in the narrative and, although Krist does link it to the riots as
one exacerbating factor, he fails to provide support that all these
events taken together changed Chicago’s direction, especially with his
explanation that Thompson was able to regain his popularity by the end
of the year.
Krist does manage to create a sense of the time,
offering up a Chicago which was physically very different than the
modern city, but which was dealing with problems, from graft to racial
issues, which still linger, and sometimes flair up, in the modern city.
His style is inviting and makes the reader want to learn more about the
city and the individuals who populated it during this period.
