Never Been a Time by Harper Barnes Read Free Book Online Page A

Illinois, a white mob of six thousand men and women lynched two black men—an accused rapist and a companion—and burned their bodies. 16
    As the election approached, the
East St. Louis Daily Journal
, which was backing Wilson, blasted its readers with a series of lurid stories about crimes committed by “black colonizers” who were in East St. Louis without jobs, supporting themselves by breaking into railroad cars in the flood plain that once had been Bloody Island. A white watchman for the Mobile and Ohio was shot dead, apparently by a black man looting cars, and police chief Ransom Payne blamed a recent rash of crime on “Negroes [who] come into East St. Louis, are not known, shoot or rob someone, and get out before we know who they are.” 17 Ironically, in the midst of this supposed black crime wave, the suburban
Belleville News-Democrat
reported that blacks “must be behaving very well this fall.” Population at the county jail in Belleville, black and white, was actually lower than it had been in recent years. The editor speculated that blacks didn’t need to rob people because “it’s election year and the negroes in East St. Louis are being pretty well taken care of.” He added, “Jailers expect the rush to begin after Nov. 7.” 18
    In mid-October, a strong rumor swept through East St. Louis that a large group of blacks was planning on voting in Chicago at dawn, catching a train south and stopping at some town along the way to vote again, and arriving in East St. Louis before the polls closed to vote a third time. Another battalion of blacks was allegedly going to make the same journey in reverse. In charge of the scam, according to Democratic state prosecutors in northern Illinois, was East St. Louis’s own Dr. Leroy H. Bundy, a prosperous black dentist and entrepreneur who was the leading civil rights advocate in St. Clair County, a leader in the local chapter of the Afro-American Protective League. 19 (Although a branch of the NAACP had been founded in St. Louis in 1914, East St. Louis would not have one until 1924.)
    A former member of the St. Clair County Board of Supervisors, Bundy was the proud—even at times prideful—son of a prominent black family inCleveland. In his mid-thirties, hard working, and ambitious, he invested money from his dental practice in a small car dealership, a gas station, and an auto repair shop. He was outspoken and sometimes argumentative in his support of full equal rights for blacks. He was the sort of “New Negro” resented by many whites. The
Chicago Defender
described him as a “natural” leader whom “the ordinary fellow looks to for guidance.” 20
    Bundy was arrested in Chicago and held for questioning on allegations that he had masterminded at least three hundred illegal registrations in four predominantly black wards of that city’s south and west sides. He was soon released for lack of evidence, and the charges eventually died away, but the
East St. Louis Daily Journal
played the report of Bundy’s arrest as the turn story at the top of the right-hand column of the front page, the most prominent location in the paper. Below the Bundy report, in a secondary position, was a story headlined, HEAD OF MURDERED BOY FOUND IN DUMP. In the most horrific crime in years, a three-year-old boy had been kidnapped and beheaded by East St. Louis gangsters. The body and head were found in separate locations. The victim was white. So were the kidnappers. 21
    Two weeks before the November election, Wilson’s Justice Department announced that it was launching investigations into voting fraud in Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. The announcement was vague, but there was little doubt in the minds of Republicans that the principal targets were thousands of newly registered black voters in those three swing states. Four days later, the chairman of the Republican National Committee struck back, charging