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In Chicago, blacks and whites worked together in the meatpacking plants, but racial tensions limited interracial union organizing. Managers often pitted black and white workers against one another. Black workers knew that unions often ignored their needs except during strikes, when bosses would try to hire them as "scabs," or replacement workers. Nevertheless, many African-American workers hoped that unity with white laborers could help them make economic gains. In early 1919, an organizing drive in the meatpacking plants brought in 6,000 African-American workers, strengthening the union's ability to fight for higher wages and better working conditions. 
However, 1919 was also marked by nationwide racial violence. As World War I ended, white gangs went on violent rampages from Washington, D.C., to Omaha, Nebraska, and other cities where the African-American presence had grown. In July 1919, Chicago suffered a terrible riot. An African-American teenager swimming in Lake Michigan floated into a "white" area, and drowned after being stoned by a white crowd. Violence spread rapidly. Black Chicagoans, including World War I veterans, fought back. By the riot's end, 23 people were killed and more than five hundred injured. Afterwards, racial tension spread and black membership in Chicago unions declined. In the 1920s, continuing white hostility gave new life to the Ku Klux Klan. Previously confined to the South, the Klan moved north and added Catholics and Jews to their list of enemies. A major film, Birth of A Nation (which, ironically, pioneered many modern filmmaking techniques), glorified the Klan's role during Reconstruction, encouraging its growth. The NAACP protested against the film and succeeded in having it banned in Chicago; but the film drew record crowds elsewhere. "People We Can Get Along Without"
Migrants also faced tensions within the African-American community. Conflicts between migrants and native black Chicagoans reflected their different economic interests. Long-time African-American residents sometimes looked down on the newcomers as crude country people who gave all African Americans a bad name. As new arrivals created social clubs and churches that reflected southern styles, earlier residents criticized migrants for lacking a proper sense of restraint. Because of discrimination, African Americans of all social and economic classes had to live in the same neighborhoods. Doctors, preachers, and teachers were neighbors with manual and domestic laborers, street hustlers, and hucksters. African-American neighborhoods were divided by differences in lifestyle and culture; ultimately, however, the sense of common identity and interest that had carried African Americans through slavery and Jim Crow helped them live and work together for equality and better lives.
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