BRONZEVILLE — A bike ride, dance performance and community gathering to reflect on the “Red Summer” of 1919 will take place this weekend as organizers continue their years-long project to honor victims of that summer’s racial violence through public art.
The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project‘s bike tour of places related to the race riot is Saturday at 35th and State streets. The tour is free, although donations are accepted and those who give at least $30 will receive a T-shirt. To register, click here.
Check-in begins at 9:15 a.m. in Illinois Tech’s parking lot at 35th and State, while the bike tour kicks off with a healing ceremony at 10 a.m. before departing. Riders are strongly encouraged to wear a helmet.
About 25 free Divvy bikes are available to adults on a first-come, first-serve basis, while a trolley is available for those who can’t or don’t want to bike.
The two-hour tour will travel about seven miles through Bronzeville and Bridgeport. Guides will tell the history of the racist killing of 17-year old Eugene Williams in 1919, the massive riot that followed and the incident’s impacts on modern-day Chicago.
As Williams swam with his friends in Lake Michigan on July 27, 1919, the group of Black youth unknowingly floated across an imaginary racial dividing line. Witnesses saw George Stauber, a 24-year-old white man, throw rocks at Williams from the “whites-only” beach at 29th Street.
Stauber hit Williams in the head and the teen drowned, but police refused to arrest Stauber, sparking racist violence that left 38 people dead.
The riot is “an origin story for segregation” in Chicago, as it stigmatized Black communities as violent and played a role in the city’s current housing divide, commemoration project co-director Franklin Cosey-Gay said in 2021.
This year’s tour also includes a dance performance by Reavis Elementary summer camp students titled “Vortex of Violence to Breaths of Healing,” which is choreographed by Deeply Rooted Dance Company co-founder Kevin Iega Jeff.
“Vortex of Violence” was how the Chicago Defender described the area around 35th and State streets during the riots, which was a flashpoint for violence and where the bike tour will depart from.
“That location is chosen intentionally [as] more people were killed there than anywhere else,” project co-director Peter Cole said. “Coincidentally, it’s also across the street from the current [Chicago public safety] headquarters, as Chicago Fire and Police moved into Bronzeville in 2000.”
A free lunch catered by Harold’s Chicken and Soul Vegan will follow the ride, along with music and chances to meet people involved in other historical and artistic projects.
Saturday’s bike tour and community event is followed by several related events on July 27 — the 104th anniversary of Williams’ killing. They include an annual “artistic ritual” honoring Black riot victims and a run organized by a local book club.
“Sunset 1919” is a free gathering of artists and neighbors to “peacefully honor the lives of Black people impacted” by the Chicago riots and other race riots across the nation that summer.
The session starts at 7 p.m. July 27 at the Eugene Williams Memorial Marker, about a quarter-mile north of 31st Street Beach. It’s organized by Lookingglass Theatre and coincides with the Weinberg/Newton Gallery’s “Disarm” exhibition, which also reflects on the riot and other forms and causes of violence.
The 40-minute program includes spoken word, movement, live music and the laying of 50 white carnations at Williams’ memorial marker. To register, click here.
Read and Run Chicago, a runners’ book club, will also hold a running tour of Bronzeville to explore sites featured in Claire Hartfield’s book about the 1919 riot, “A Few Red Drops.”
The five-mile run starts at 5 p.m. July 27 at the Eugene Williams Memorial Marker and returns to the marker to watch “Sunset 1919.” Tickets are $30, and a portion of the ticket price is donated to the commemoration project. To register, click here.
Project leaders are also working with the city’s Cultural Affairs department to install memorial markers where each of the 38 people were killed in the 1919 riot, Cole said. The glass markers are shaped like bricks, which were weaponized during the riot, he said.
“Some different community, historical and artistic groups have in the last few years started to develop a culture around the history of 1919,” Cole said. “Once the markers are installed, that [commemoration] will be 365 days a year, as opposed to one or two days a year.”
Firebird Community Arts, a Garfield Park-based studio that teaches glassblowing to youth healing from violence and trauma, is creating the markers and will display prototypes at Saturday’s event.
The memorial art project received a $200,000 grant that was announced on Juneteenth. The money — which was awarded by the city but paid for by the Mellon Foundation — is a welcome boost to the team of artists and supporters, Cole said.
However, the grant conditions will likely slow down a project that’s already taken several years to pull together. City officials have asked organizers to expand the art project with the influx of cash, to weatherproof the glass markers and make them more noticeable to passersby, Cole said.
“More money means we can do more [with the art installation], but the city is also saying, ‘We don’t want to move forward until we’ve figured out the whole thing,’ ” Cole said.
“We’ve been working on it for better part of five years, and we were excited to move on to the next step,” he said. “Instead, we’re excited to receive money and resources from the city and wait.”
The Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, for which the city delayed its promise to allocate funds for years, received a $1.8 million grant from the Mellon Foundation through the same program last month. Mayor Brandon Johnson pledged another $1 million in city funding and South Side land to the torture justice memorial.
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