Remembering Red Summer with Franklin Cosey Gay and Peter Cole

In 1922 a commission made up of prominent citizens—six Black men and six white men appointed by the governor of Illinois—issued a report about the 1919 Race Riot entitled The Negro in Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot. Eve Ewing’s dazzling poetry collection, 1919, excerpts small bits from the report as epigraphs for each poem, comments like “…the presence of Negroes in large  numbers in our great cities is not a menace in itself,” and “the sentiment was expressed that Negro invasion of the district was the worst calamity that had struck the city since the Great Fire.” Today the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) aims to ignite conversations about white supremacy in Chicago and around the country and the world. Formally launched on the 100th anniversary of the riot, CRR19 remembers the worst incident of racial violence in the city’s history, and the events that swept the city and set the framework for racial segregation to this very day. We’re joined by Franklin Cosey Gay and Peter Cole, co-directors of CRR19 on the eve of their annual commemoration and slow-rolling south-side bike tour.