The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) commemorates the worst incident of racial violence in the city’s history. The event has been long forgotten despite its impact on the subsequent shape and development of the city. Our 2-hour historic bike tour allows people to see, first-hand, some of the locations related to the events of 1919, the long shadow of residential segregation, as well as the incredible resilience of the local Black community.
Formally launched on the 100th anniversary of the riot, we aim to ignite conversations about past and present racism in Chicago and across the US. The path to achieving racial equity and justice first demands acknowledging the horrors of the past and the ways that structural inequities persist in communities of color.
Stolpersteine, an ongoing German project commemorating Holocaust victims, offers us a powerful model for how to use dispersed public art to remember past atrocities and provoke conversations about their legacy. Inspired by Stolpersteine, CRR19 proposes to create and install commemorative markers at each of the 38 locations where someone was killed in 1919.
You can make a donation to support the project here: https://chicagoraceriot.org/donate
Learn more and RSVP for the bike tour here. (RSVP REQUIRED. If you get an error, please open the form in a new tab or window).
