It’s the weekend. The Sun is shining. Temperatures are soaring. Children are heading to the beach and playing in the water. In normal circumstances, these would hardly be the ingredients for one of the worst outbreaks of violence in a nation’s history But then, Chicago in 1919 was no normal city
Entire neighbourhoods in Chicago’s south side were burned to the ground during the riots of 1919
For months, tensions between the Illinois metropolis’s black and white communities had been running high. Resentments had simmered, insults had been thrown, fights had broken out. And now as the mercury topped 30°C, those tensions spiralled out of control.