The Chicago Race Riots: July, 1919

By Carl Sandburg, Walter Lippmann and Paul Buhle

Nearly a century ago, an African-American teenager crossed an invisible line of segregation at a Chicago beach and paid with his life. The incident set off days of violence that resulted in several dozen deaths and hundreds of injuries as well as the destruction of homes and businesses. This contemporary account was written by Pulitzer Prize–winning author and poet Carl Sandburg, who reported on the riots for the Chicago Daily News.
Few other journalists of the era explored the issues of discrimination in housing, politics, and organized labor that fueled the 1919 riots in Chicago and across America. Sandburg offered readers rare insights into the plight of black Americans, whose voices were seldom heard in white publications. His in-depth reports on the living and working conditions of Chicago's black community, written before and after the riots, illuminate the social conditions that fostered racial tensions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Oct 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9780486279107

Carl Sandburg

CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967) was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln and again in 1951 for Complete Poems. Before becoming known as a poet, he worked as a milkman, an ice harvester, a dishwasher, a salesman, a fireman, and a journalist. Among his classics are the Rootabaga Stories, which he wrote for his young daughters at the beginning of his long and distinguished literary career.