On this day, July 27, in 1919

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 began, lasting 5 days and claiming the lives or 23 blacks and 15 whites. The riot was sparked when a black teenager named Eugene Williams drowned after a group of white men pelted him with rocks when he drifted into the ‘all-white’ section of a beach. The uprising was a culmination of the city’s re-occurring racial violence and the deteriorating social and economic conditions faced by blacks, but it also reflected growing racial tensions nationwide. The year 1919 saw over 20 race riots, as black and white WWI veterans returned home to fierce job competition caused by inflation and rising unemployment rates.