Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Thursday 25 July 2019

Segregation among issues Chicago faces 100 years after riots

By NOREEN NASIR Associ- “The boundaries of the
ated Press black belt will eventually
CHICAGO (AP) — On a hot expand — particularly af-
July day in 1919, a black ter World War II during a
17-year-old swimming in second wave of migration
Lake Michigan drifted in a from the South, at which
dangerous direction — to- point the racially restrictive
ward the white section of a policies become less ac-
Chicago beach. ceptable,” he said.
White beachgoers, angry “The Supreme Court will
at Eugene Williams’ intru- strike down, for instance,
sion, hurled rocks at him. restrictive covenants in
One struck him in the head, 1948. But what happens is
and he drowned. And so the black belt merely ex-
began a week of riots that pands. And we never see
would kill 38 people — 23 racial integration in a sus-
of them black, 15 of them tained way on the South
white — and leave more Side of Chicago. All we
than 500 people injured, have is a larger segregated
according to the Chicago space until the migration
Historical Society. really stops, at which point
It happened 100 years we have fairly well-defined
ago, in the “Red Summer” boundaries. Residents cer-
of race riots that spread In this July 10, 2019, photo, a wreathe lies in front of a site commemorating the 1919 race riots in tainly know them.”
across the United States. Chicago. South Sider Riccardo Holy-
But the terror of those days Associated Press field, 31, knows them well.
still reverberates in a city July 27, a group of black recently as she reflected on Jim Crow — a system of op- “Back in the old days, you
that continues to grapple witnesses pointed to a the day she made the trek pressive laws that perpetu- might’ve gotten punished
with segregation, housing white man they accused to Chicago from Louisiana ated racism, inequality and in the way of brutality” if you
discrimination, and deep of throwing rocks, but po- with her mother and sister. brutality. Many white work- were on “the wrong side of
tension between residents lice refused to arrest him. “I could hear my uncle say- ers saw the influx of black town,” said Holyfield, who is
and police. A crowd gathered and a ing, ‘Here they come.’ And people as a threat to their black. “Now, they’re going
The nation’s third-largest black man was arrested that meant the white folks livelihoods. to punish you with tickets.
city is still contending with instead. Fighting broke were coming down the “Even if Eugene Williams ... That mind frame from a
the 2014 killing of 17-year- out along the beach and street.” had not been hit on the long time ago, where that
old Laquan McDonald spread from there. At her uncle’s urging, she head by a rock, almost person’s not supposed to
by a white police officer, White mobs raided black and the other children hid certainly, racial violence be over here, it’s still here.
and with the protests that neighborhoods on the behind a piano in his South would’ve taken place in It’s systematic now.”
erupted a year later when South Side, burning homes Side home as a white mob Chicago on a massive ___
officials released dashcam and attacking people. drew closer. “He stood in scale,” said Brad Hunt, Chicago has seen some
video of that shooting. Black residents, determined the window, pulled out his vice president for research progress. Just this year, the
“There’s a clear trajectory to hold their ground, fought gun,” Mitchell said. and academic programs city for the first time elected
for me in that Eugene Wil- back with guns and fists. “He was ready for the riot.” at Chicago’s Newberry Li- a black woman, Lori Light-
liams, in a way, is (1955 Mis- While Juanita Mitchell has Some historians say the vio- brary. foot, as mayor. And the
sissippi lynching victim and trouble remembering some lence may have been in- There is reason to believe state’s attorney, schools
Chicagoan) Emmett Till, things from her childhood, evitable. that the riots helped re- chief and transit authority
who is, in a way, Laquan the memories of July 1919 Tensions had been building make Chicago’s racial president are black.
McDonald,” said Eve L. remain clear. along with the Great Mi- landscape: “That kind of To change that, some say,
Ewing, an assistant profes- “We thought we were gration, the shift of South- mob violence drove poli- the city must both come to
sor at the University of Chi- coming to a party,” the ern blacks to Northern cit- cies,” Ewing said. “In order terms with its racial history
cago and author of a new 107-year-old woman said ies as they fled life under to understand the segrega- and press forward: “If we
collection of poems called tion that we live with and want to dream of a differ-
“1919.” the racial inequalities that ent future, it’s incumbent
___ we live with in the 21st cen- upon us to have the moral
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hundreds tury, it is necessary to begin courage, the intellectual
of African Americans died 100 years earlier.” ambition and the political
at the hands of white mob Over time, racially restric- imagination to think about
violence during “Red Sum- tive covenants gave way what it would look like to
mer” but little is widely to messaging from hom- make a different world,”
known about this spate of eowners’ associations dis- Ewing said.
violence a century later. couraging members from No national events are
As part of its coverage of selling to black families — scheduled to mark the
the 100th anniversary of all to keep certain Chicago centenary of the Red Sum-
Red Summer, AP will take neighborhoods white and mer, but some local groups
a multiplatform look at the to concentrate the African plan to recognize it. The
attacks and the communi- American population in the Newberry Library is marking
ties where they occurred. city’s “black belt,” a string the anniversary with pro-
https://www.apnews.com/ of neighborhoods on the gramming throughout the
RedSummer South Side. year in Chicago, partner-
___ In this 1919 photo provided by the Chicago History Museum, “1919 does influence the ing with local organizations
After Williams’ body was armed National Guard and African American men stand on a racial geography of the to educate people about
pulled from the water on sidewalk during race riots in Chicago. Associated Press city today,” said Hunt. the unrest.q