Summary Of Stanley Norvell's Letter To Mary Lawson

Stanley B. Norvell wrote this letter to Victor Lawson in response to the Chicago race riots in the summer of 1919. Norvell and others were directed to assemble a biracial committee by the Governor of Illinois to discover what the causes of the riots were. His letter describes in detail that there is a new negro and that the white man does not understand nor tries to understand him. The cause of all this violence was started when a black teenager, Eugene Williams, was swimming in Lake Michigan and drifted towards the white’s only portion of the beach. White teenagers responded by throwing rocks at him, when one of the rocks hit him in the head and he drowned. This was a single act of violence, but when the police didn’t arrest the white teenager who killed him, a violent riot broke out that lasted for the next week. The riot was finally put down when the Army arrives and restores order among the people of Chicago. Norvell’s letter explains that there is a new black and that he is not the same as they were before. He explains the white people are judging the poor and middle class black that can’t
One of the biggest portions of this is racism, which is not just towards ones skin color but towards their political stance. In The Case Against the “Reds,” 1920, Attorney General Palmer states the communist are an evil empire that are trying to undermine the livelihood of the American people and to cause a mutiny of the American Government. He describes that in the Communist Party Manifesto, they encourage the working class to start causing strikes and end Capitalism. In Eugene V. Debs Attacks Capitalist Warmongers, the American Government is racist towards the Socialist Party based off of what they believe in. They take it to such an extent that they will pass a bill and eventually arrest people for treason for not supporting the