Since 2019, panelists Dr. Franklin Cosey-Gay and Dr. Peter Cole have co-directed the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) believing that this incident of race-based physical violence serves as one of root causes of segregation and associated poverty and gun violence in Chicago. The themes of containment, disruption, and stigmatization carry through from 1919 to present via structural mechanisms including restrictive covenants, redlining, FHA lending that excluded Blacks, the national highway act, urban renewal programs, white flight, and de-industrialization of Chicago.

Drs. Cosey-Gay and Cole will be in conversation with artists from Firebird Community Arts who are commissioned by the City of Chicago to create public art pieces commemorating the formative history of Chicago’s Race Riots of 1919. Panelists will surface the root causes of violence that are often not in the public narrative that contribute to 4 billion dollar wealth gap between white and Black Chicagoans.

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