Public Newsroom 102: Reporting on Race and Riots—1919 to Today

This year marks 100 years since the 1919 race riots in Chicago. Sparked by the murder of African American teenager Eugene Williams, who drowned after being stoned by a white man near a whites-only South Side beach, these riots are an oft-overlooked part of the city’s history. Media coverage at the time of Williams’ death and the ensuing violence largely got the story wrong with few notable exceptions, especially Carl Sandburg’s reporting for the Chicago Daily News. At this newsroom, we draw connections to how reporting on the 1919 riots relates to the coverage of segregation nearly half a century later and what, if anything, has changed today. Our featured guests for the evening are Ethan Michaeli, author of The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (2015), The Obsidian Collection Archives founder Angela Ford, and City Bureau Co-Founder Darryl Holliday. The evening’s conversation between Michaeli, Ford and Holliday is part of a year-long series, Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots, led by the Newberry Library.