"Before Laquan McDonald, before Emmett Till, there was Eugene Williams. In the summer of 1919, the murder of Williams, a black teenager, at the hands of a white man, and the subsequent refusal of police to arrest Williams’ killer touched off the fiercest and deadliest rioting Chicago has ever seen" (Block Club Chicago story). The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) exists to commemorate this history, still the worst racial violence in the city’s history. Legendary activist and long-time Chicagoan Ida B. Wells described it as follows: “The colored people of Chicago were the victims of a premeditated orgy of assaults, bloodshed and murder.”

CRR19 fills a yawning gap in the city's cultural and historical landscape since the city never has really acknowledged the fact that 38 people were killed and 537 injured in a massive conflagration that mightily contributed to the subsequent hardening and deepening of racial segregation that still defines the city. Attempting to forget or deny the past, obviously, has not resulted in a city (or country) free of racial conflict so we're trying a different approach.

Taking inspiration from an ongoing German public art project called Stolpersteine, our intention is to create and install artistic markers at the locations where each of the 38 people were killed in 1919. The German project began in the 1990s with 20 "stones" in Berlin and continues to this day--with upwards of 75,000 and counting across 24 countries. That's because this subtle, dispersed public art has proven quite powerful at provoking conversation and reflection of past atrocities. By contrast, the city of Chicago never has acknowledged this racist history.

Contributions will go to the artists along with materials, installation costs, logistics, and public programming about the history of 1919 and our public art project commemorating it, specifically to create and install artistic markers at each of the 38 locations where someone was killed in 1919.

Before and shortly after the the hundredth anniversary of the riot is the ideal time to take a great leap forward! That is when more people are paying attention. If we raise sufficient funds soon, we hope to install our first marker before the end of the calendar year, 2019.

Hence, NOW is the time to begin this project--during the 100th anniversary year of the 1919 riot. NOW is the moment for Chicago to confront its bloodiest chapter and heal the wounds that time alone has not. We must remember America's troubled past of racial violence and white supremacy if we wish to improve the future.