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Tense: A black veteran and a member of the Illinois state militia face off during one of the many riots in Chicago
during the Red Summer of 1919, remembered in concerts in Brooklyn Heights on March 1 and 3.
Cry of the century
Grace Chorale recalls the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It’s a somber song.
A concert of choral music that
commemorates the “Red Summer”
of 1919, when racist violence in northern
cities led to hundreds of deaths,
will ring out through St. Ann and the
Holy Trinity Church on March 1 and 3.
Grace Chorale of Brooklyn’s “A Long
Dark Shadow” will showcase three vocal
works that relate to that violent summer
100 years ago, a pivotal time that
has been largely forgotten, said the choral
group’s director.
“Most Americans aren’t that familiar
with that summer, but many historians
argue that it was one of the most
troubling events of American history,”
said Jason Asbury.
During the early 20th century many
African-Americans fled Jim Crow segregation
in the south, some finding jobs
in northern cities that suffered from labor
shortages during World War I. But
when white soldiers returned from the
war, they resented the new arrivals —
and they wanted their old jobs back.
Tensions boiled over at a segregated
Lake Michigan beach, where a white
man killed a black teenager named
Eugene Williams for swimming in the
“wrong” area.
That murder, and the refusal of police
to arrest the man responsible, ignited
months of racist violence in Chicago
and beyond, with white mobs roaming
northern cities, lynching black people,
and destroying their homes and businesses.
Those deadly months galvanized the
nascent civil and voting rights movements,
according to Asbury.
“The more I learned about the Red
Summer the more I saw that the foundation
of the civil rights movement and
the events of the 1960s were mobilized
in 1919,” he said.
To raise awareness of this history, the
choral group commissioned a brand new
work. “A Stone to the Head: The Death of
Eugene Williams,” composed by Princeton
Music graduates Flannery Cunningham
and Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa,
which tells the story of Williams and
connects his death to the ongoing struggle
with police violence against communities
of color, Asbury said.
The material was tough for many of
the Grace Chorale’s mostly white singers
to process when they started rehearsing
back in November, according to Asbury,
but that just shows how Americans need
to lean in to their discomfort surrounding
the country’s racist legacy in order
to overcome it.
“The first rehearsal we went through
the score, I think everyone was uncomfortable
reading this text about a white
mob lynching an African American,”
he said. “To be living with this during
the last three months has shown that
there’s no escaping the legacy of how
this country has treated African Americans
in the last 400 years, and it’s up to
us to untangle that and to address that
legacy as individuals.”
The concert will also feature the 1940
choral ballad “And They Lynched Him
on a Tree,” with additional voices from
the Brooklyn College Symphonic Choir
and Conservatory Singers and the String
Orchestra of Brooklyn, along with an
excerpt from Duke Ellington’s rarely
heard suite “The River.”
“A Long Dark Shadow” at St. Ann
and the Holy Trinity Church 147
Montague St., between Henry and
Clinton streets in Brooklyn Heights,
(917) 450–8172, www.gracechorale.
org. March 1 at 7 pm and March 3
at 3 pm. $20.
Chicago Tribune
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