page_title: Leonidas C. Dyer
section_title: St. Louis riots 1917
hierarchical_section_title: Leonidas C. Dyer / Congressional career / Anti-lynching bill / St. Louis riots 1917
caption_attribution_description: A man lynched from a tree. Face partially concealed by angle and headgear.
context_page_description: Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer was an American politician, reformer, civil rights activist, and military officer who served 11 terms in the U.S. Congress as a Republican Representative from Missouri from 1911 to 1933. In 1898, enrolling in the U.S. Army as a private, Dyer served notably in the Spanish–American War; and was promoted to colonel at the war's end.
  Working as an attorney in St. Louis, Dyer started an anti-usury campaign and was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1910. As a progressive reformer, Dyer authored an anti-usury law in 1914 that limited excessive loan rates by bank lenders in the nation's capital, then still governed by Congress.
  Horrified by the race riots in St. Louis and East St. Louis in 1917 and the high rate of reported lynchings in the South, Dyer introduced the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in 1918. In 1920, the Republican Party supported such legislation in its platform from the National Convention. In January 1922, Dyer's bill was passed by the House, which approved it by a wide margin due to "insistent countrywide demand".
context_section_description: In May 1917, a riot broke out in St. Louis, where mobs of ethnic white men attacked black workers, strikebreakers who had been brought in to replace American Federation of Labor strikers. In July 1917, mob violence broke out in East St. Louis against blacks, also against a background of competition over jobs. Two white police officers were killed early in the confrontation. In retaliation, ethnic white mobs killed 35 blacks, mutilated the bodies, and threw them into the Mississippi River. White rioters openly targeted and lynched several blacks.  Those who attempted to stop the lynchings were threatened by the white mob with physical violence. As blacks fled into St. Louis, white rioters threatened to kill them upon their return. The white Illinois National guard, who were brought into quell the riot, instead participated in the violence against blacks or did nothing to stop the violence. One black child was shot and thrown into a burning building, while white prostitutes openly attacked black women. After the riots, of the 134 persons indicted, only 9 whites who were put on trial went to prison while 12 indicted blacks who went to trial were imprisoned. Nearly 1/3 of the total 134 persons indicted were black. The conviction rate, mathematically, was more than doubled for blacks than for whites.
  Dyer was distressed by such mob violence, with its disregard for the courts and the "rule of law". His district in St. Louis had mostly African-American residents and he wanted to protect his constituents and other citizens. Many black people from his district had migrated to St. Louis from the South, in the exodus known as the Great Migration. They settled in St. Louis along with immigrants from southern and eastern Europe where industrialization had led to a strong economy and an increase in jobs. Dyer also knew of the continuing high rate of lynchings, mostly of blacks by whites in the South. Working with W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who had been working on a national anti-lynching campaign, Dyer helped develop and agreed to sponsor anti-lynching legislation.
caption: Mob violence and lynching were common against African Americans in the South from the 1890s through the 1920s.
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