THE CITY AT WAR: Chicago ⋆ 1919: 1919

One child's death exposed a city already at war with itself. On July 27, 1919, Black teenager Eugene Williams drowned after stones were thrown toward a raft near the unofficial color line at a Lake Michigan beach. When police refused to arrest the man accused, grief became fury. The City at War follows Chicago through the violence that came next: street clashes, attacks by white athletic clubs, block-by-block defense, unequal policing, food shortages, fires, and the arrival of the Illinois National Guard. Beneath the fighting lay older conflicts over housing, labor, migration, political machines, and the boundaries enforced around the Black Belt. Centering families, veterans, nurses, organizers, and survivors, Nicolas De Lacroix shows how a city's geography became a weapon. This narrative history restores the people behind the casualty totals and explains why the boundary remained after the streets grew quiet.