One For The Road: The 1919 Race Riots
By Samantha Abernethy in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 26, 2012 10:40PM
On this date in 1919, the drowning of a black teenager near a whites-only beach set off a race riot that raged until August 6 resulting in 38 people dead and 537 injured. The Tribune writes:
On this stifling hot summer Sunday, Eugene Williams, a black teenager, drifted south of that line while swimming with friends. Whites picked up rocks and let fly. Some accounts say Williams was hit on the head and went under. Others say he became tired and was too afraid to come ashore. Either way, he drowned, touching off the deadliest episode of racial violence in Chicago history.
The Encyclopedia of Chicago describes it as a "seven-day orgy of shootings, arsons, and beatings." Violence was focused in residential areas of the South Side, particularly near the stockyards.
The police force, owing both to understaffing and the open sympathy of many officers with the white rioters, was ineffective; only the long-delayed intervention of the state militia brought the violence to a halt, and heavenly intervention in the form of rain was probably an important factor as well.
According to the Tribune Mayor Richard J. Daley "repeatedly was asked what he did during the riots. He always refused to answer."