“Race Women” in the “White City”: Race, Space, Gender, and Chicago's Red Summer of 1919

Abstract

The second decade of the 20th century saw the beginning of the Great Migration of African Americans to cities such as Chicago. The city’s existing African American community expressed concern for the welfare of girls and women coming to a strange, potentially dangerous, new place and worked to ease their transition to life there. This article employs a “documentary archaeology” approach, using texts from the period to understand material conditions experienced by members of “the Race,” especially women, in Chicago ca. 1920. It includes a special emphasis on space, how people moved through it, and how it was used in struggles for domination and equality. A rumored spatial transgression was the spark for Chicago’s “riot” of 1919. During the violence, Black spaces were decimated. The events, including many deaths, were so shocking that a commission was established at the time to study the Great Migration and its consequences for Chicago. That commission’s report is at the center of the archive consulted for the analysis presented here. Reflecting the ideologies of the era, its analyses emphasized race over gender as a determining factor in the life experiences of female members of the Race. I argue that the spatial distribution of racialized risk was different for women than for men, and, furthermore, that the dangers women faced were chronic rather than acute.