By Elaine Lewinnek
On 27 July 1919, a black boy swam across an invisible line in the water. “By common consent and custom,” an imaginary line extending out across Lake Michigan from Chicago’s 29th Street separated the area where blacks were permitted to swim from where whites swam. Seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams crossed that line. He may have strayed across it by accident or may have challenged it on purpose. We do not know his motives because the whites on the beach reacted by throwing stones and Eugene Williams drowned. Police at the beach arrested black bystanders, infuriating other blacks so much that one black man shot at the police, who returned fire, shooting into the crowd of blacks. The violence spread from there. Over the next week, in the middle of that hot summer of 1919, 38 people died, 537 were hospitalized, and approximately 1,000 were left homeless. White and black Chicagoans fought over access to beaches, parks, streetcars, and especially residential space. The burning of houses, during this riot, inflamed passions almost as much as the killing of people. It took a rainstorm and the state militia to end the violence in July 1919, which nevertheless simmered just below the surface, erupting in smaller clashes between blacks and whites throughout the next four decades, especially every May, during Chicago’s traditional moving season.
Family leaving damaged home after 1919 Chicago race riot by Chicago Commission on Race Relations. Negro in Chicago: The Negro in Chicago; a study of race relations and a race riot (1922). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The 1910s were the first decade of the Great Migration, a decade when 70,000 blacks had moved to Chicago, more than doubling the existing black population. This was also a decade when the lines of Chicago’s residential apartheid were hardening. Historically, Chicago’s blacks found homes in industrial suburbs such as Maywood and Chicago Heights, domestic service hubs such as Evanston and Glencoe, rustic owner-built suburbs such as Robbins and Dixmoor, and some recently-annexed suburban space such as Morgan Park and Lilydale. Increasingly, though, blacks were confined to a narrow four-block strip around State Street on Chicago’s South Side known as the Black Belt. Half of Chicago’s blacks lived there in 1900, while 90% of Chicago’s blacks lived there by 1930.
The Black Belt was a crowded space where two or three families often squeezed into one-room apartments, landlords neglected to repair rotting floors or hinge-less doors, schools eventually ran on shifts so that each child was educated for only half a day, and the police tolerated gamblers and brothels. It was so unhealthy that Richard Wright called it “our death sentence without a trial.” Blacks who tried to move beyond the Black Belt were met with vandalism, arson, and bomb-throwers, including 24 bombs thrown in the first half of 1919 alone.
Earlier, some Chicago neighborhoods had welcomed black homeowners, but after the First World War there was an increasingly widespread belief that blacks hurt property values. Chicago realtor L. M. Smith and his Kenwood and Hyde Park Property Owners Association spread the notion that any black moving into a neighborhood was akin to a thief, robbing that street of its property values. By the 1920s, Chicago Realtors prohibited members from introducing any new racial group into a neighborhood and encouraged the spread of restrictive covenants, legally barring blacks while also consolidating ideas of whiteness. As late as 1945, two Chicago sociologists reported that, while “English, German, Scotch, Irish, and Scandinavian have little adverse effect on property values[,] Northern Italians are considered less desirable, followed by Bohemians and Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Greeks, and Russian Jews of the Lower class. Southern Italians, along with Negroes and Mexicans, are at the bottom of the scale.” As historians of race recognize, many European immigrants were considered not quite white before 1950. Those immigrants eventually joined the alliance of groups considered white partly because realtors, mortgage lenders, and housing economists established a bright line between the property values of “whites” and those of blacks.
The lines established in 1919 have lingered. As late as 1990, among Chicago’s suburban blacks, almost half of them lived in the same fourteen suburbs that blacks had lived in before 1920: they had not gained access to newer spaces. It was black neighborhoods that suffered disproportionately from urban renewal and the construction of tall-tower public housing in the twentieth century, further reinforcing the overlaps between race and space in Chicago. Many whites inherit property whose value has increased because of the racist real-estate policies founded after the violence of 1919. Recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates has recently used the history of Chicago’s property market to publicize “The Case for Reparations,” after generations of denying blacks access to homeowner equity.
It is worth remembering the events of 95 years ago, when Eugene Williams and 37 other people died, as Chicagoans clashed in the streets over emerging ideas of racialized property values.
Elaine Lewinnek is a professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton and the author of The Working Man’s Reward: Chicago’s Early Suburbs and the Roots of American Sprawl.
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And the Denver winner is . . .
Last month we posted Denver artist Robert Maestas' info about a national competition he'd entered. His story and art piece solidly deserved to win. La Bloga does not claim that our readers put Maestas over the top or anything, but here's a letter from him about the results:
This is an update to tell everyone who voted for “A Father’s Struggle” Thank You! Your support was greatly appreciated and because of your votes the art piece and story was awarded top honors in the "Art With A Story" online gallery exhibition.
If you care to view the original art piece and story, they will be exhibited during January, 2011 (including the January First Friday Artwalk) at Artwork Network Gallery, 878 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO. (For further info: 303-388-7420)
Thank you again,
Robert Maestas, artist
Below is the e-mail I received from the Creative Director of Artwork Network:
"We received 83 artist entries in our “Art with a Story” juried show. It was a tough deliberation, for both the public and the jury. We received over 1,500 votes, and had to enlist a fourth juror to help us narrow down our favorites.
"I’m sending this email to say congratulations! Of all those entries, the Public has awarded “A Father's Struggle” with Best Story/Art Combo! This is a fantastic piece, and we’re thrilled you gave us the privilege of hearing the story behind your work.
"Of course one of the prizes that comes along with this honor is an exhibit in the Artwork Network showroom in Denver, Colorado. We want to showcase your winning piece during the month of January 2011 including the January First Friday Artwalk.
"Again, Congratulations!"
(signed) Jessica Bradley
Creative Director
Artwork Network
______________________________________
Y este pendejo . . .
This was brought to our attention by one of Juan Vasquez's nieces from Mexico. It's a great LOL reflection of how the American world (meant in its widest context) has changed. At the same time, it shows that change is not necessarily one smooth path, but instead can result from opposing forces of progress against forces of what?--illness? get-high? You fill in the word you feel is appropriate.
We're only translating the first parts of the piece, since it's one of those things that might be funnier in the original. Even if you only know a little Spanish, the point might be obvious. Specifically, here is how it starts:
"El político más poderoso del mundo es N
It's been a surprisingly light week, which has given me time to work on some stuff of my own, which is good.
At the same time it's also given me the opportunity to laze around my house wasting time and not showering until nearly three-thirty in the afternoon, which is not quite as good.
(My wife doesn't appreciate the odors).
The above cat drawing is a little sketch I finished off this morning for a possible job, proving that even on the laziest of weeks there is still work to do.
Steve~
Donnio, Sylviane. 2007. I'd Really Like To Eat A Child. Illustrated by Dorothee de Monfreid.
Achilles is a moody yet charming baby crocodile who is tired of eating bananas for breakfast every day. His mama was always telling him how big and handsome he was. And noticing what beautiful teeth he had. So one day, he decides that he is READY to eat a child. No more of this banana nonsense for him.
But one morning, Achilles refused to eat. This worried Mama Crocodile.
"Don't you want a tasty banana for breakfast?" she asked.
"No thanks, Mom," Achilles answered. "Today I'd really like to ead a child."
"What an idea, my little Achilles!" his mother cried. "Well, children don't grow on banana trees, only bananas do, and that's what I have for breakfast!"
"I know, but I'd really like to eat a child!"
The accompanying picture of Achilles making a sulking pouty (disgruntled) face is priceless! (I love the artwork by the way). And I had no idea there was a way to draw crocodiles where they would look genuinely worried or concerned.
This new idea takes hold and holds fast. No matter what his parents say, Achilles is insistent that a human child is the only thing he'll eat. There's no bribing him to each chocolate cake or anything else...his parents are distraught. What will they do with their poor baby who won't eat anything?
The answer comes in a strange way. A girl. A child. On her own near the river. Who is more in danger? The child or the crocodile? Is Achilles as big and fierce as he thinks he is? Is he really ready to match wits with a child?
I'd Really Like to Eat A Child is a fun picture book. The illustrations and text are both fabulous.
Rebecca OUP-US
Homer Simpson had a point, “you don’t make friends with salad,” especially on the 4th of July. A good party requires a good barbeque and Andrew Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, is here to test your knowledge. Think you are the king of all grill masters? See how many of the following questions you can get right. The answers are at the end.
1. The word barbecue likely originated in: (more…)
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Rebecca OUP-US
To get you excited for the 4th of July holiday we asked Donald Ritchie to blog for us. Ritchie is the author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion. His post is sure to make you feel patriotic!
Presidents and legislators often catch flack for taking holidays and not attending to the people’s business, but sometimes a timely break can help move things along. If not for a 4th of July recess, for instance, the U.S. Constitution and the federal government as we know it might never have existed. (more…)
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Half of an Elephant by Gusti. Copy supplied by publisher, Kane/Miller. Originally published in Mexico 2006.
The Plot:
An elephant is fast asleep when CRACK the world is split in two. He wakes up half an elephant and now has to search for his other half.
The Good:
The plot is a mix of silly and serious as elephant (and every other animal) has to go looking for it's other half. In a weird way, this is like an adult romance break up and get back together story: elephant has to learn to be strong on it's own! Elephant is so desperate to be whole that it hooks up with the wrong half of an animal! And at the end, when the two halves reunite because after all, they belong together, each half retains its independence. It applies to any situation where someone "cannot live without the other person" yet find out... yes, the can.
The illustrations are very inventive; as described on the book flap, they are "digital images of numerous discarded objects to show children that art can be created from objects that usually end up in the garbage can." As such, I can easily see this being used to inspire art projects. Aside from the story itself, it's fun to look at the various animals and figure out what they are made of.
For some reason; I think because of the combination of "found objects" and the way the half animals survive despite being cut in two; I also read this as magical realism in picture book format. OK, so magical realism isn't quite the term I mean... but I cannot think of a term to use where the text of the story is so serious and factual while discussing something that is impossible. The serious treatment of something magical; the treating it as every day and normal; appealed to me, especially since the illustrations are also other-worldly.
Links:
Kane/Miller Play Pages (great for parents & teachers) PDF
Propernoun review
Kids Lit review
a whimsy Pick for 2006
Big A little a review
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Sounds VERY cute!!! I'll see if I can find a copy of this. I like the sound of it.
Thanks for the review.