Context

On July 27, 1919 an African American boy (Eugene Williams) was floating on a raft and got approached by an American man hitting the boy with rocks. After being hit by one of the rocks, the boy drowns. The American man did not receive any punishment for his actions. This tragedy was the major impact that led to the outbreak of race riots in Chicago and the red summer. After the police refused to punish the American man responsible for the boy's death, this created great tension between African Americans and Americans during this time.

“Unaware of the violence taking place by the 29th Street beach, five Black teenagers were enjoying the water on a raft and floated toward that part of the lake. A white man on the shore, George Stauber, began throwing rocks at the boys. One of the teens, Eugene Williams, was hit in the head with a rock and drowned. The white police officer on duty at the beach, Daniel Callahan, refused to arrest Stauber. It was not uncommon for the ethnic white Irish police officers to ignore white-on-Black crime in the city and that fact touched a raw nerve” (“July 27, 1919: Red Summer in Chicago”).

With people getting back from war, everyone was looking for job opportunities and building up the economy again. With the Great Migration on the rise this included African Americans. Whites were not supportive of this idea, though African Americans still needed jobs. Therefore, African Americans were put in harsher jobs with worse conditions and had to work longer hours and less pay.
From the segregation of jobs including African Americans, this caused blacks to speak up and demand higher equality and a more civilian society.

There were social tensions post-World War 1.

” World War I intensified the Great Migration, the mass emigration of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North and Midwest in hopes of escaping the poverty and discrimination of Jim Crow laws” ("The Race Riots of 1919”).