Sharing from @africanarchives: (𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐈𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐎 𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐓)
On the evening of July 11, 1951, one of the biggest riots in U.S. history began after a young black couple moved into an apartment in all-white Cicero, IL, west of Chicago. The husband, Harvey Clark, was a World War II veteran who migrated to Chicago from Mississippi and was working as a bus driver.
He and his wife Johnetta had been crammed with their two children in a two-room tenement along with a family of five on the city's overcrowded South Side. The couple found more space and cheaper rents in Cicero, closer to his work. The local sheriff turned them away when they first tried to move in.
With a court order in hand, the couple moved their belongings into the new apartment on July 11, as a mob formed around them, heckling and throwing rocks. The mob, many of them eastern European immigrants, grew to as many as 4,000 by nightfall. The couple fled, unable to stay overnight in the new apartment.
That night, the mob stormed the apartment and hurled the family's belongings out of a third floor window: the sofa, the chairs, the clothes, the baby pictures. The mob tore out the fixtures: the stove, the radiators, the sinks. They smashed the piano, overturned the refrigerator, bashed in the toilet. They set the family's belongings on fire and then firebombed the building, leaving even the apartment's white tenants homeless…)
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
2087
dailybridgerton
titsay
