Today in 1917, an explosion of white and police violence directed at East St. Louis' blacks left dozens dead and a nation horrified. A grand jury indicted 7 cops for murder, rioting, and conspiracy. The charges were dropped. The cops were fined $150. https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2017/06/28/first-hand-accounts-show-the-horror-of-east-louis-1917-race-riot

Only a few of the white mob's ringleaders faced jail time. The city's police chief resigned. The mayor was indicted on "malfeasance on office," but the charge was dropped. Meanwhile, 13 people, all black, were found guilty and sentenced to 14-year sentences.

A black dentist, Leroy Bundy, organized a self-defense force to halt the mob's incursion into a black neighborhood. In a sham trial, he was accused of being a mob leader and sentenced to life in prison. The conviction was overturned in 1920 by the Illinois Supreme Court.

The violence was heavily documented by reporters. Days later, journalist Ida B. Wells and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. DuBois arrived, interviewing and photographing victims, including a badly burned 71-year-old Narcis Gurley, "afraid to come out till the blazing walls fell in."

It's known as "The East St. Louis Race Riot." But "riot" fails to describe the roles of ESTL's white business leaders, politicians, and police in the anti-black violence. When I interviewed descendants whose father escaped death, they didn't call it a riot, but "a race war."

"The story that was passed to us by our father, by our uncle, by our aunts and cousins who were all survivors," one descendent told me:

"It wasn't a riot for them. It was a fight for their very life and existence." https://bit.ly/2AsOM3s