Dying to swim in Chicago: Race riots and the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919

How the drowning of a Black boy led to two weeks of racist violence and exposed the segregation at the heart of Chicago.

It is easy to miss the plaque nestled amidst the trees and expanse of lawn near 29th Street along the lakefront on Chicago’s South Side. Paid for by York High School students in the predominantly white suburb of Elmhurst, 26km (16 miles) east of Chicago, it was installed in 2009. But, today, 102 years after one of the longest and bloodiest race riots in the city’s history, few Chicagoans are aware of the marker or the events it commemorates. According to Peter Cole, founding director of the Chicago Race Riot (CRR19) project, “no one in Illinois actually thinks about or remembers the Chicago race riot of 1919, let alone its legacy.” This absence of collective memory and lack of recognition of the significance of the event is due in part to lax record-keeping about the riot, and the slipshod way in which the media covered the story. As Robert Loerzel concluded in 2019 when he tried to write a story on the incident that triggered the race riot, even the most basic facts about the Black teenager and other key actors at the centre of the story were unavailable. Loerzel argues that: “This was typical of journalism in the early 20th century. For one thing, few newspapers reported in depth about the lives of Black Chicagoans.”