Free Hanging Curve by Troy Soos Page B

tells me you’ve been involved in a couple of murder investigations in the past, and had some success with them. Equally important, he vouches for your sense of justice.”
    I knew it was intended as a compliment, but I didn’t feel like thanking Karl for trying to draw me into this. “Those were murders, not lynchings,” I said, recalling Karl’s explanation of the difference. “Even if I do learn whether it was ballplayers or Klansmen behind Crawford’s killing, it was a mob of them, not one person. Do you really think I can track down everybody who took part? Or that the police would arrest them all if I did? What’s the point of me putting my neck out if there’s no chance it’s gonna do any good?”
    Aubury considered my argument before replying, “This isn’t about bringing Crawford’s killers to justice. I know that’s not going to happen. But I do want to prevent any additional deaths—to people of either race.”
    Karl spoke up. “Our concern is that there’s going to be retaliation for Crawford’s death, and then whites will retaliate for that, and so on and so on, until the whole damn city’s at war.”
    “We do not want a repeat of 1917,” Aubury said. “Hostilities escalated for two months before culminating in the riot.”
    I hadn’t known that there was a buildup to the riot; I thought they usually erupted suddenly. “How did it start?” I asked.
    “With a city council meeting,” Aubury answered softly. He began another ritual cleaning of his eyeglasses. “The United States had entered the war, and industries were short of workers. Some of the companies in East St. Louis recruited Negroes from the South, and they moved up here in droves—factory jobs are far more lucrative than picking cotton in Mississippi. But a lot of their new neighbors didn’t like the idea of colored folk taking ‘white’ jobs.
    “So, at the end of May, a mob of whites showed up at a city council meeting demanding that all Negroes be driven out of town. They found a friend in one of the local politicians, Alexander Flannigan, who said he agreed that ‘East St. Louis must remain a white man’s town.’ Then he pointed out that the citizens could do the evicting themselves because ‘there’s no law against mob violence.’
    “They took his advice. The mob left City Hall and ran out to the streets, pulling colored people from streetcars and beating them. Then they went to Negro homes and set them on fire. For three days, whites went on a rampage, trying to drive the colored population out. Some of the Negroes did leave, crossing over to this side of the river.
    “Fortunately, no one was killed. But over the next weeks, white agitators spread rumors that the colored people who remained were arming themselves for a Fourth of July massacre of white people. Newspapers picked up the rumors and published them as if they came from credible sources. Soon all of East St. Louis was living in fear.
    “Shortly before the holiday, a group of white men decided to make a preemptive attack. They drove through a colored neighborhood spraying the houses with bullets. Some residents fired back ... a couple of whites were killed. And then—” Aubury looked from Karl to me. “Well, if you two have time, perhaps I can take you on a little tour.”
     
    Karl and I waited at the intersection of Broadway and Collinsville Avenue in East St. Louis, not far from City Hall. We huddled in our overcoats against the chilly, overcast day.
    “I never noticed about the streetcars before,” I said.
    “Some things are hard to see,” he replied thoughtfully. “When you’re dining in a restaurant, you don’t bother to think about whether the waiter has had a chance to eat.”
    It took a moment until I got Karl’s point. “Guess you’re right.”
    Franklin Aubury couldn’t travel with us because he’d had to wait for a “colored” streetcar. And since St. Louis didn’t have nearly as many trolleys for Negroes as it had for