Peoria Street Riot largely ignored 70 years on

An ocean of ink and millions of pixels were expended to commemorate the 1919 Chicago Race Riot of a hundred years ago last July and rightly so. But virtually nothing has been noted about the infamous Peoria Street Riot that raged for four nights beginning 70 years ago November 8 around 5643 S. Peoria in then all white Englewood. Though inspired by white fear of encroaching black residents to the Irish community around Visitation Church at 56th and Peoria, the riot was directed at fellow whites, not blacks.

How could this be? Just three weeks earlier, two white couples, the Sennetts and the Bindmans moved into 5643 S. Peoria to begin its conversion into a two flat. Though white, both couples had communist connections, black acquaintances and no ties to the Irish neighborhood. Aaron Bindman was a union organizer for the International Longshoremen’s Union. On Tuesday, November 8th he invited 16 union stewards, eight of whom were black, over for a union meeting and party. When neighbors detected the unwanted strangers, a mob formed and begin pelting the house with rocks amid cries of “Burn them out.” The partygoers fled, leaving the Sennetts and Bindmans to hunker down for safety. Local police arrived but sided with the rioters, refusing to break up the mob and arrest ringleaders. The mayhem continued for three more nights before the beating of a single black pulled from a streetcar nearby on the fifth day finally prompted city officials to flood the area with police to prevent a full on race riot from developing. The other 12 injuries requiring hospitalization were progressive whites from nearby University of Chicago and other organizations who came to Peoria Street to provide support and protection to the beleaguered couples. Before or after being beaten by local thugs, those whites were then arrested by unhelpful police for disorderly conduct. Nearby Visitation Church supported the rioters; even negotiating a sale of the unwanted house to the parish within a year of the riot. The Sennetts stayed in Chicago till 1957; the Bindmans till 1959. Both left for more hospitable climes but were forever scared by hatred that nearly destroyed their home and lives over fear of blacks and communism. The riot prompted a city wide discussion of open housing which became more frequent with the Supreme Court decision banning restrictive covenants a year earlier that had keep homes exclusively for whites by contract.

Commemorate the bloody 1919 Chicago Race Riot a century on, but let’s not ignore the bizarre Peoria Street Riot that unfolded seventy years ago this month.