As Chicago celebrates the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, our city is embracing a renewed sense of possibility. At nearly the same moment, another remarkable civic milestone quietly reached completion.
Across Chicago, all 38 people killed during the Chicago race riot of 1919 are now permanently commemorated through public art installed at or near the places they lost their lives.
These two milestones are different in purpose, but deeply connected in meaning. One is encouraging us to imagine our future, while the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project asks us to confront our past.
Together, they remind us that remembering history is not the same as reckoning with it.
More than a century has passed since the race riot in 1919, yet its legacy continues to shape the city we know today.
The story begins with five Black children seeking relief from the summer heat in Lake Michigan. What could be more Chicago than that?
When the children unknowingly crossed an invisible racial boundary in the water, a white man began throwing rocks. One struck 17-year-old Eugene Williams, who drowned. A white police officer refused to arrest the man responsible.
Anger spread. Rumors spread faster. Within hours, violence engulfed Chicago. By week’s end, 38 people had been killed, more than 500 injured, and over 1,000, primarily Black folks, had been left homeless.
When we ask why Chicago remains one of America’s most segregated cities, the answer cannot begin with redlining. It began in 1919 with residential segregation accelerating through restrictive covenants, and it laid the foundation for the redlining, predatory housing contracts, disinvestment and unequal development that still defines much of Chicago.
Our city’s collective historical amnesia was precisely why, on the centennial of the murder of Eugene Williams, several hundred people convened in Bronzeville to remember. That community event inspired the creation of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.
Our vision was simple: Every person who lost their life should be remembered where they lost it. It is now a reality. The installation of the memorials means that for the first time in Chicago’s history, every person killed during the riot has a permanent place in our public landscape.
The completion of all 38 memorial markers represents the culmination of more than six years of collaboration among artists, historians, educators, community partners and residents committed to preserving this history
The memorials are scattered across nearly 30 square miles of Chicago, from the lakefront to Bronzeville, Bridgeport, Englewood, Washington Park, Back of the Yards, Little Italy and the Loop.
Public art possesses a unique power. Public art works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, year-in and year-out and “finds” people not looking to be educated, inspired or provoked. That’s the genius.
The memorials were created through an extraordinary partnership with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Chicago Monuments Project, Mellon Foundation, Organic Oneness and Firebird Community Arts’ nationally recognized Project FIRE, where young people affected by gun violence researched each victim and handcrafted every marker from glass.
Each marker is intentionally shaped like a brick, a painful reminder of one of the weapons commonly used during the violence of 1919.
Like so many other Chicagoans, none of the youth artists previously knew this history. Today they’ve helped to cement this history, literally, into our city’s sidewalks for generations to discover.
Our signature annual event tells the history and legacy of 1919 and celebrates the resilience and beauty of Chicago’s Black community. This year’s event will happen on Saturday, when Chicagoans will gather at the lakefront, where there are two memorials, including one for Eugene Williams, to begin our annual commemoration and community bike ride.
We invite you to join us and visit one marker or all 38, read the names, learn their stories, walk these neighborhoods, and bring your children and neighbors. Go to chicagoraceriot.org for more information.
Because every one of those 38 lives mattered, join us so we can grow awareness, build community and keep the historical memory alive.
For too long, silence defined this chapter of Chicago’s history, but as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission noted, “The truth hurts but silence kills.”
Today, through 38 memorial markers across our city, truth has finally found a permanent home.
Peter Cole, Franklin Cosey-Gay, Dunni Cosey-Gay and Myles X. Francis together lead the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project, a community-led initiative dedicated to researching, commemorating and educating the public about the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 through public art, education and civic engagement.