Chicago History Podcast

Episode 224 - Cicero Race Riots of 1951, The (with special guest Shermann "Dilla" Thomas, the Urban Historian)

Apr 10, 2021

26:50

It is a suburb on the outskirts of Chicago with ties to Al Capone, manufacturing, and in the 1950’s was the site of three days of chaos, sparked by an African American family trying to legally move into an apartment building in the all-white city. This is the story of the Cicero Race Riots of 1951.

NOTE: This episode deals with racial violence, the destruction of personal property, and a few words to denote African Americans that were used in publications of the day that are no longer politically correct, but to be fair to the reporting of the stories are important for context. Listen accordingly.

#ChicagoHistory #ChicagoSuburbs #CiceroIL #RaceRiots #CiceroRaceRiots #1951 #HaveryClarkJr #NationalGuard #FiskUniversity

Check out Dilla - The Urban Historian on TikTok and Instagram @6figga_dilla

Additional reading on this subject (any purchase through these links will help benefit the show):

The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America by Nicholas Lemann
https://amzn.to/2Pvzum5
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
https://amzn.to/3fMatgV
Images of America: Cicero - The First Suburb West by Betty Carlson Kay
https://amzn.to/3fLN5jL
Images of America: Cicero Revisited by Douglas Deuchler
https://amzn.to/3dCOwyq

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