“The week of violence following Williams’s death left dozens dead, hundreds wounded, thousands homeless, and a city struggling with racial inequality—a problem that persists a century later, but is little talked about.
‘Everybody knows about the south side of Chicago, but nobody knows how it really began. This is how it really began,’ Pinder says.
There is currently only one memorial to the victims of the 1919 race riots: a plaque set in a boulder near the beach where Williams drowned. It was installed in 2010 by now-retired Elmhurst high school teacher Mike Torney and his students.
Pinder says he didn’t think the fixed stone was “enough.” So, over two years, the artist planned a “living monument” that would offer Chicagoans the opportunity to physically explore the connections between their past and present” - Elise Schimke