Red Summer In Chicago: 100 Years After The Race Riots
100 years ago this week, some of the bloodiest race riots this country has ever experienced erupted in more than two dozen cities, including Chicago. It was known as the Red Summer.
Exactly 100 years ago today, Chicago was in the throes of a brutal heat wave. Thousands flocked to the beaches lining Lake Michigan for some relief. Among them: a group of black boys that included 17-year-old Eugene Williams. Eugene, who was on a raft, inadvertently drifted over the invisible line that separated the black and white sections of the 29th St Beach. One white beachgoer, insulted, began throwing rocks at the black kids. Eugene Williams slipped off his raft and drowned.
That incident ignited a race riot that would go down in history as one of the country's bloodiest, and least-known, to date.
And Chicago wasn't the only place this happened. What would come to be referred to as the country's Red Summer was a series of
