The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 was the single most lethal race riot in the history of this country. For three days, white mobs hunted down and murdered African Americans on the city's south side, with little interference from law enforcement. The death toll is unknown because blacks were systematically counted as "missing" rather than "dead." An estimated thirty-three black people were killed, but historians estimate the number to be more than double that figure. Carl Sandburg's "The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919" is a riveting account of the worst race riots in American history that provides an eyewitness perspective to the events that led to thirty-eight deaths and five hundred injuries. Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois on January 6th, 1878. He received an industrial education in the public schools of Galesburg and became a printer's apprentice in 1894. Sandburg became a journalist for various newspapers in the Midwest, publishing his first article in The Saturday Evening Post when he was 17.