 In 1922, six whites and six African-Americans were commissioned to discover the true roots of the riots.It claimed that returning soldiers from World War I not receiving their original jobs and homes instigated the riots.In 1930, Mayor William Hale Thompson, a flamboyant Republican, invoked the riot in a misleading pamphlet urging African Americans to vote against the Republican nominee, Rep. Ruth Hanna McCormick, in the United States Senate race for her late husband's seat.