Curated OER
History Matters: Walter White Considers the Causes of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot
An article by NAACP executive secretary, Walter White, discusses the eight reasons he saw for the Chicago Race Riots in July, 1919. He goes into great detail to support these causes.
Curated OER
History Matters: "Says Lax Condidtions Caused Race Riots"
Read several articles from the Chicago Daily News on July 28, 1919, reporting on the various aspects of the Chicago race riots. One article, by Carl Sandburg, used sources from the black community.
University of California
History Project: Chicago Race Riot, 1919
This lesson plan for high school students explores the race riot in Chicago in the summer of 1919. Students are asked to explain the reasons for the riot and address the questions in the lesson plan. Included are excerpts from 26 primary...
Other
University of Illinois: Gangs and the 1919 Chicago Race Riot
Features an article describing the history of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot and the crucial role that white gangs played in this riot, as told in the 1922 report of The Chicago Commission on Race Relations.
Stanford University
Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Chicago Race Riots
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students use primary source documents to investigate central historical questions. In this investigation, students deliberate the origins of the Chicago race riots by exploring five documents that...
The Newberry Library
The Newberry: Chicago Defined: Space and Place, Homes and Journeys
Learning module examines how writers and artists have portrayed the city of Chicago as well as the response to the city's changing population and character during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Primary sources and questions for...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Chicago Riots
An analysis of the 1919 Chicago race riot and a description of African American life in Chicago. One analysis is provided by Charles Johnson, editor of the Urban League's magazine Opportunity, describing the problems that beset black...
Curated OER
History Matters: "A Crowd of Howling Negroes"
Read the reporting from the Chicago Daily Tribune on the Chicago race riot in the summer of 1919. Find an accounting of the many incidents and a partial list of those injured.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: Postwar Unrest
Section on the period of unrest at home and abroad following WWI.
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: Modern American Poetry: Sandburg on Race
This article from the University of Illinois covers the work of Carl Sandburg as a reporter in Chicago during the riots of 1919.
Other
Socialist Worker: Causes of the 1919 Race Riots
Read about the racism in unions throughout the United States after World War I, culminating in race riots in 1919, especially in Chicago.
Chicago History Museum
Encyclopedia of Chicago: Carl Sandburg, the Chicago Race Riots, July 1919
Read a part of an article written by Carl Sandburg for the Chicago Daily News reporting on the Chicago Race Riots of 1919.
Northwestern University
Homicide in Chicago : 1919: The Race Riot
Find information about the race riots in Chicago in the summer of 1919. Read case details, causes of the riots, and photographs of the incidents.
Yale University
Gilder Lehrman Center: The Causes of the Chicago Race Riot
From a contemporary article in The Crisis, Vol. XVIII, October, 1919, Walter White enumerates what he sees as the causes of the Chicago Race Riot. Very interesting to read a viewpoint written only a few months after the riot.
PBS
Wnet: Thirteen: The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Red Summer (1919)
The summer of 1919 saw race riots in many cities, for the most part started by whites. Read about the causes and results of these riots.
Black Past
Black Past: Chicago Race Riot, 1919
This short encyclopedia article recounts the events that led up to the Chicago Race Riot in 1919.