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Bike and bus tour to commemorate victims of 1919 Chicago Race Riot, now honored with historical markers

By CNN

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    CHICAGO, Illiinois (WBBM) — Monday marks 107 years since the start of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, and a seven-mile bike and bus tour of sites related to the history of the riot is planned for this weekend.

The riot started on July 27, 1919, after the murder of 17-year-old Eugene Williams. Williams, who was Black, was on a raft in Lake Michigan when he accidentally drifted into an area reserved for whites.

A group of whites threw stones at Williams, causing him to drown. No one was arrested, which fueled outrage and violence through Chicago’s South Side. Whites and police attacked African Americans as Black soldiers stood guard. A total of 38 people died and more than 500 were hurt.

About 5,000 families were also left homeless.

Dr. Peter Cole and Dr. Franklin Cosey-Gay are co-directors of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project. Cole said the 1919 riot still impacts us in 2026.

“Chicago is notorious for being very segregated. That didn’t just happen sometime randomly. It happened after the 1919 Race Riots, where basically political and business elites in the city chose segregation. Eugene Williams was murdered for being in a white part of the lake. Today, we still have people who are killed or sometimes harassed for being in the wrong place,” Cole said. “Right now, Black History is being erased by the current presidential administration. This matters now because if we don’t talk about it, it disappears, and then we suddenly don’t know our history. And if I don’t know my history, I don’t know who I am.”

The commemoration project recently completed the installation of 38 markers, one for each person killed in the riot. The handcrafted glass memorial markers were created by youth artists who are survivors of violence, in partnership with Firebird Community Arts’ Project FIRE.

The memorials are embedded at sites throughout Chicago and near the locations where the victims lost their lives.

“We know it’s very important to have public art, because you are able to engage individuals who might not be looking to engaged. You know, you don’t have to go to a library. You don’t have to attend a lecture. But you can just be walking in a public space, said Cosey-Gay. “We thought it was very important to the history of segregation and violence to survivors of violence today.”

One of the 38 markers can be found at 200 S. Wabash Ave., in the middle of the Loop, honoring the life of riot violence victim Paul Hardiwck.

“Paul Hardiwck was a Black man who worked at the Palmer House, and a mob of white people just steps from where we currently stand were looking for random Black people to attack,” Cole said in an interview at the CBS Chicago Broadcast Center downtown. “Two people were killed in the Loop. It didn’t just happen in one little part of the city — across 30 square miles of our city, including just a few blocks from here.”

The 8th annual CRR19 Historic Bike and Bus Tour starts at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, July 25, at Eugene Williams Memorial Plaza, located along the Lakefront Trail a couple of blocks north of 31st Street in Burnham Park. The ride ends at Illinois Institute of Technology Parking Lot D5, on the north side of 35th Street between the Chicago Transit Authority Green Line ‘L’ tracks and De La Salle Institute.

“This is a slow roll. We have children from 5 years old — my nieces, my daughters have participated — to our senior population,” said Cosey-Gay. “So we have a slow roll that covers not only the significance of the riots itself, but also the individuals and institutions that were important towards resistance against that, that still stand to this day. So it is an opportunity for everyone to ride.”

A bus trolley will be available for up to 40 riders for anyone not able to ride a bicycle.

“We stop multiple locations in Bronzeville and Bridgeport to tell the history of 1919, the legacy of 1919, but also to celebrate… really the resilience of the Black community,” said Cole.

This is also the first bike tour since all 38 markers for the victims of violence during the riot have been completed.

Check-in for the ride starts at 9:15 a.m. Organizers recommend using in IIT Parking Lot D5, which is free, as parking near the 31st Street Beach costs money and is expected to fill up.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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