(light music) (birds chirping) - The beach at 31st Street is lovely, but behind the beauty is a dark history.

I am still just struck by looking behind us, how beautiful it is.

- What a beautiful scene that turns incredibly tragic.

- [Geoffrey Voiceover] Historian Courtney Joseph and I gaze across the water and across time to a spot where racial violence exploded in the red summer of 1919.

- What I wanna start with is Eugene Williams.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you know much like Emmett Till, he's the kid who got murdered.

- Yeah, unfortunately.

- But what was he like?

Do we know what Eugene Williams was like?

- We do.

We know a little bit about him.

His parents migrated to Chicago anywhere from 1906 to 1909.

(light music) - [Geoffrey] It was the beginning of the first wave of the Great Migration.

Approximately 2 million African Americans fled the rural South for industrial cities in the North.

Because of racist housing policies in Chicago, most migrants were restricted to living in a narrow strip along South State Street, today known as Bronzeville.

- The places now that you can kind of do like Black history tours and stuff, kind of not too far away from where we are right now.

- [Geoffrey] It was hot on July 27th, 1919 when Eugene Williams and several friends headed to the beach and jumped into the lake holding onto a homemade raft.

Chicago in 1919 was officially integrated, but many of its parks were defacto segregated.

A 24-year-old white man named George Stauber apparently believed the boys drifted across an invisible color line.

Witnesses later said Stauber was standing on a pier when he began throwing rocks.

- When one hits Eugene in the side of his head and he begins to drown and his friends, who also cannot swim that well, cannot save him.

And they're also being attacked with these rocks.

And they swim away.

And by the time anyone can go, he has already passed away.

- [Geoffrey] A group of African American beachgoers approached a white police officer on the beach and demanded that the rock thrower be arrested.

- And not only did the police not want to make the arrest, but stood in when a Black officer tried to step in to arrest the man, stopped him from doing it.

And an African American shoots a gun into the air and the police then shoot into the crowd.

And from there, the riot begins.

- [Geoffrey] The melee spilled over into surrounding neighborhoods.

White mobs targeted Black homes in Bronzeville in particular.

- [Courtney] So arson and beatings and looting of property and all sorts of things happen that the police themselves can't quell and in many ways don't try to.

- [Geoffrey] It was the worst possible homecoming for some Black residents of Chicago who expected a hero's welcome after fighting for the US in the First World War.

- One of the most infamous photos is a soldier dressed in his uniform standing toe to toe with a white Chicagoan.

They're looking at each other in the eye and there's this defiance in the photograph of like, "You know, I'm a US soldier.

How could that not be more American?"

And instead it's this, you know, need to kind of put them back in their place as second-class citizens that I think is part of the powder keg that pops on that July day.

(dramatic tense music) (somber music) - The riot raged for a week, before Governor Frank Lowden called up the National Guard, and order was finally restored.

Thousands were injured in the riot, which left 38 people dead, 23 Blacks and 15 whites.

George Stauber, the alleged rock-thrower was charged with manslaughter, but was acquitted.

It took 90 years for the city to recognize the tragedy with a granite marker along the lake.

The plaque quotes Dr. Martin Luther King: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Only light can do that."