The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots
comprising the nation’s Red Summer, has shaped the last century but
is not widely discussed. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L.
Ewing explores the story of this event—which lasted eight days and
resulted in thirty-eight deaths and almost 500 injuries—through
poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and
thrive in the city. Ewing uses speculative and Afrofuturist lenses to
recast history, and illuminates the thin line between the past and
the present.
