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At daylight, Sheriff Babb put through a call to Governor Adlai Stevenson, who called out five companies of National Guardsmen. Most of the day was spent in making preparations for the night. Vans, trucks and private cars shuttled back & forth, trying to save the belongings of tenants. One tenant, a retired Chicago cop, said, as he helped with the moving, "I saw a lot of things as a policeman but never anything like that. These people are savages."
"Go! Go! Go!" By 7 o'clock the mob was back and pressing against police lines, which blocked off the area around the apartment house for a full block. Mostly, they were young fellows in T-shirts and dungarees, but there were also housewives in cotton dresses, a father holding his child on his shoulder to give him a better view. The crowd was good-natured, as if going to a game, and the cops acted like ushers politely handling the overflow at a football stadium. But as darkness fell, some in the crowd got false courage from the night. They tossed firecrackers over police lines. Pressing forward inch by inch, the mob began to push the police back. From time to time the crowd would chant: "Go! Go! Go!"
At about 8:30 there was the first tinkling of glass from the apartment house: a steel ball bearing, fired from a sling shot, hit a window. Police lines gave slowly, and within another half hour, the crowd, chanting "Go! Go Go!", had crept up to within 150 yards of the building. Cook County Police Lieut. Jack Johnson, an ex-marine who was in charge of the police detail, kept muttering: "Why the hell don't the Guard come on in?"
Shortly before 10 o'clock, the mob moved close enough to hit the apartment house with bricks and stones. The chant of "Go! Go! Go!", the firecrackers and the sound of breaking glass became a steady din. Then, just as the mob seemed to be getting out of hand, there was the sound of sirens down the street and a cry: "It's the Guard!"
As the jeeps, trucks, and yellow school buses filled with helmeted soldiers moved slowly up the street, the crowd booed, showered the convoy with firecrackers, bricks and stones, called out, "You lousy finks," "Why the hell aren't you in Korea?" Out of the cars tumbled frightened-looking young Guardsmen, summoned that day from their jobs in grocery stores and gas stations. Each Guardsman had his bayonet fixed. The crowd inched backwards. Some in the front row of the mob were nicked by bayonets, and several Guardsmen were felled by bricks and by ball bearings fired from slingshots. Around the corner, several young vandals lit and tossed red railroad flares atop the apartment house; Cicero firemen braved a rain of stones to put out the fire. Gradually—though it took four hours—the Guard got the best of the mob, and emboldened police started dragging the most obstreperous young fellows out of the crowd. They took their prisoners over to look at a line of wounded Guardsmen, then loaded them into paddy wagons. Totals for Cicero's three violent nights: 23 hurt, 119 arrested.