With slavery being
abolished, African
Americans are begin-
ning to move North in search of
opportunity.This is leading to a
Great Migration, a long-term
movement of African Americans from the South to the urban North; this is transforming Chicago and other northern cities starting in 1916, and is still going on today. Many African Americans left with nothing, being poorly dressed they stood out from the rest of the population. Chicago is estimating that slightly more than 500,000 of the approximately 7 million African Americans who left the South will be migrating, many will be in Chicago. Along with this great migration many white Northerners did not like their new neighbors. The tension has been and will continue to rise between the whites and blacks, this has been causing Race Riots in multiple cities. Constantly the different races would begin to fight. The summer of 1919 is referred to as the Red summer because of all the fighting and deaths that occurred.” On the afternoon of July 27, 1919, a stone-throwing melee between blacks and whites began after a black youth mistakenly swam into territory claimed by whites off the 29th Street beach in Chicago. Amidst the mayhem, Eugene Williams, a black youth, drowned. When a white police officer refused to arrest the white men involved in the death, and instead arrested a black man, racial tensions escalated. Fighting broke out between gangs and mobs of both races. Violence escalated with each incident, and for 13 days Chicago was in a state of turmoil. By the time the riot ended, 23 blacks and 15 whites were dead, 537 injured, and 1,000 black families were left homeless. The Chicago riot was part of a national racial frenzy of clashes, massacres, and lynching’s throughout the North and the South. All of the incidents were initiated by whites.” This incident was the biggest in Chicago history. Not only was it instigated by whites, ironically the black male was arrested and one killed. All this was over territory in a beach and this is not the only incident. This is happening to African Americans across the world.
Great Migration leads to Race Riots in Chicago By:Tristan Jimenez
By: Tristan
Jimenez