On Saturday, February 23, 2019, the Newberry and its 13 project partners inaugurated a year-long series of public programs reckoning with the legacy of the 1919 Chicago race riots and their impact on the city’s social, political, and cultural landscape.
The opening event, held at the DuSable Museum of African American History, set the template for subsequent programs in the series, engaging 240 attendees in thoughtful conversation about how racial inequity has been created, reinforced, and resisted over the past 100 years.
Funded by a “Community Conversations” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, “Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots” seeks to heighten the 1919 Chicago race riots in our collective memory through interactive contemplation of the past.
