On their way to or from the Art Institute of Chicago, the ‘L’ train, or anywhere else in the Loop, tens of thousands of people pass through the intersection of Adams Street and Wabash Avenue every day. But what too few people know is that over the course of one week in 1919 at that very crossroads, white mobs terrorized their Black neighbors, leading to at least one murder on that spot.

On July 27 that year, Black teen Eugene Williams allegedly crossed over to the whites-only side of the beach. A white man hit the boy in the head with a stone causing him to drown in Lake Michigan. The refusal to arrest the murderer sparked the riot. Over days, 537 people were injured and 38 were killed. Twenty-three of the dead were Black people.

Fast forward more than a century after that tragic day preparations are currently being made to install memorials there and at other riot sites. The Chicago Sun Times reports  that Western Illinois University at Macomb history professor Peter Cole got the idea for the memorials while traveling in Germany in 2018.

A year later, during the riots centennial, he and fellow anti-violence activist Franklin Cosey-Gay founded the nonprofit Organic Oneness to launch the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project. They have a goal to educate the public about the event through public art.

They spent years collecting donations and refining the design before beginning production of the glass markers, which bear the names of each victim. These memorials will be placed on the sidewalks near the locations of the crimes, one for each victim.

“It’s about using art to reach the public in a way I never could,” Cole told the Sun-Times.

The group has already put up a few markers, and they hope to have another seven up by the beginning of summer, just in time for the annual bike tour of significant sites from those riots. The markers, which will include the names and other information about the victims, will be set into the ground at strategic locations along the streets and sidewalks.

Cole, a native of South Florida, learned about it from his father, Benjamin, while Cosey-Gay, a native of the South Side, learned about it while pursuing an advanced degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

“He’s not a historian, but he talked to me about the city when I would ride the bus with him,” said Cosey-Gay. “When they would pass the 29th Street beach, where Williams was killed, his father talked about the riot. It stuck with him when he became an anti-violence worker as an adult.

“We talk a lot about violence at the surface, but we don’t talk about the root causes. I thought it was an origin story for Chicago that was important,” he said.

Cole has spent the last 22 years lecturing about the riots at Western Illinois University, and he estimates that he has reached a total of 2,500 students. This art installation, he hopes, will teach far more.

“That’s the genius of art in the public space,” Cole told the Sun-Times. “They can reach those who never had the time or the interest to care.”