Friday, August 2, 2019

Chicago 1919 Race Riot-- Part 8: Wendell Phillips High School


Continuing with the bike tour:

**  244 Pershing Road, Wendell Phillips High School, where racial demographics were shifting before the riots.  It became Chicago's first predominantly black high school in 1920.  Notable grads include Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke and John H. Johnson.

Some others:  Gwendolyn Brooks and Herbie Hancock.

Today it is Phillips Academy, one of the best schools in Chicago and a football powerhouse.

**  318-324 E. 43rd St., The Forum, built in 1897, was once the hub for social, political and civic events in the black community.  Shuttered in the 1990s and abandoned and now reclaimed for revitalization.

BRIDGEPORT and BACK OF THE YARDS stops:

**  Armour Square Park at 33rd and Wentworth streets on the dividing line between black and white communities.  Opened in 1905, it's been the site of racial violence since 1913, including the 1997 savage beating of black teen Lenard Clark.

**  The Union Stockyards Gate, at Exchange Avenue and Peoria Street, where tensions between Blacks and Whites over competition for meatpacking jobs exploded during the riots.



No comments: