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Article: Chicago Riots of 1919
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CHICAGO RIOTS OF 1919
CHICAGO RIOTS OF 1919.
During the 1910s Chicago's African American population more than doubled to 109,000. Attracted by better jobs and living conditions, blacks in Chicago expected more than the segregated, overcrowded, crime-ridden neighborhoods of the black belt. Seeking housing in white communities, blacks found themselves unwelcome and sometimes attacked. Competition for jobs and housing increased racial tensions.
But increasingly militant blacks no longer accepted white supremacy and unfair treatment. When on 27 July 1919 Eugene Williams drowned after drifting on a raft into the white section of a Lake Michigan beach, the worst race riot of the violent Red ...