Fernwood Park race riot

The Fernwood Park Race Riot was a Race Massacre instigated by white residents against African American residents who inhabited the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) veterans' housing project in the Fernwood Park neighborhood in Chicago. Area residents viewed this as one of several attempts by the CHA to initiate racial integration into white communities. The riot took place between 98th and 111th streets and lasted for three days, from the day veterans and their families moved into the project, August 13th, 1947 to August 16th, 1947. The Chicago Police Department did little to stop the rioting, as was the case a year before at the Airport Homes race riots. It was one of the worst race riots in Chicago history. Housing projects in Chicago emerged during the 1940s with the sole purpose of resolving the shortage of affordable homes for war-industry workers, many who were African American, as America prepared for World War II. As Chicago proved to be a crucial steel production center for the war effort, hundreds of thousands of black workers and their families migrated from the South to Chicago in the second wave of the Great Migration. Historian Devereux Bowly iterates some alarming statistics about public housing in Chicago that arose from 1940 census data: 1) 55,157 housing units were overcrowded (exceeding 1.5 persons per room), and 2) 206,103 housing units either had no access to a private bathroom or needed major repairs to interior structures. To answer to such dismal conditions, the CHA opened four housing projects in low income areas with high concentrations of war-industry workers: the Frances Cabrini Homes in August 1942, the Lawndale Gardens in December 1942, the Bridgeport Homes in May 1943, and the Robert H. Brooks Homes in March 1943. For families to live in these new projects, they needed to have at least one child; the family had to have one member working in a critical war industry (like steel); the family income had to total less than $2,000; and it was preferred that the family's nationality was American.