John Turner Harris

John Turner Harris was a young black boy in 1919 when the race riots of Chicago erupted around him. He and his friends, the Williams boys, inadvertently sparked the ensuing violence by swimming too close to the beach reserved for white people one warm day, resulting in one white man becoming angry and hurling rocks towards their group. One rock struck John's friend Eugene, and the latter died of his wounds in the water, prompting black bathers to demand justice which the local police was not willing to provide: as a result, white and black bathers began to fight, and white and black residents of Chicago all around the city began to attack on another in outbursts of mob violence. John did not open up about his experiences during the riots for many years, according to the author, and when he did, he was a much older...