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Fight for Rights: The Chicago 1919 Riots and the Struggle for Black Justice Introduction This is a history of the fight for rights and citizenship undertaken by Black people in Chicago in that city’s first century. Covering the period from the 1830s to 1930s, this book looks at their successes and the forces that arose—in the streets, in city government, in the courts, and on the police force—to limit their extent. And it looks at how, and why, individuals and institutions attempted to justify those limits over time. Miscarriage of Justice Few legal records from the riot cases remain, but the one case we do have, a murder trial involving two Black teens, demonstrates how badly the legal system failed Black Chicagoans in the aftermath of the riots. In that case, those failures were not an accident. Government officials, judges, and jurors willfully ignored (and sometimes created) problems of law and facts in order to win convictions of the two teens.

Black Rights in Chicago Before 1919

It is better for a minority to bear an injustice than for an overwhelming majority to bear an injustice.

Anonymous white Chicagoan
to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 1921

The battles on Chicago’s streets in the city’s 1919 riots were part of a long war that Black people fought for rights and dignity in Chicago. Over the years, those battles were fought in government chambers, newspaper columns, and courtrooms. And they were also fought at work, in shops, in restaurants, and with landlords. Those earlier battles did not cause the 1919 riots in Chicago (too many of the participants in the riots were newcomers to the city for that to be true), though they laid the foundation for what happened in July and August 1919.

That means this story of Chicago's race riots needs to begin well before the people alive in 1919 were born.

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Contents of this path:
1. Introduction This is a history of the fight for rights and citizenship undertaken by Black people in Chicago in that city’s first century. Covering the period from the 1830s to 1930s, this book looks at their successes and the forces that arose—in the streets, in city government, in the courts, and on the police force—to limit their extent. And it looks at how, and why, individuals and institutions attempted to justify those limits over time.
2. Black Rights in Chicago Before 1919
3. Dead Lines: July 27 to August 11, 1919
4. Two Societies
5. Unequal Justice Before the Law
6. Miscarriage of Justice Few legal records from the riot cases remain, but the one case we do have, a murder trial involving two Black teens, demonstrates how badly the legal system failed Black Chicagoans in the aftermath of the riots. In that case, those failures were not an accident. Government officials, judges, and jurors willfully ignored (and sometimes created) problems of law and facts in order to win convictions of the two teens.
7. The 1920s
10. Appendix: Chicago's Police Department

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