Scope and Contents:
This collection contains a report from the Chicago Council Against Racial and Religious Discrimination on the Cicero Riots of 1951. The report was compiled by Dr. Homer A. Jack.
The Chicago Council Against Racial and Religious Discrimination was a non-profit organization founded in 1943. The Council worked alongside the Chicago NAACP, the Chicago Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The organization primarily focused on discriminatory housing and zoning practices in Chicago, Illinois, and the surrounding area. Homer A. Jack (1916-1993) was born in Rochester, New York. Jack earned a Ph.D. in biology from Cornell University in 1940, and later became a Unitarian minister in 1944. He is best known for his activism and helping found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.
This collection consists of a nine-page report on the Cicero Riots of 1951 from the Chicago Council Against Racial and Religious Discrimination. In Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, white mobs broke out into violence after Henry E. Clark and his family, who were African American, moved into an apartment building on West 19th Street. A federal grand jury would later indict several Cicero officials and police officers for violating Clark's civil rights. The report in this collection was complied by Dr. Homer A. Jack. Board Members and Waitstill H. Sharp, the Director of the Council, are listed at the top of the document’s first page, along with the address of the meeting on West Madison Street in Chicago, Illinois. The document criticizes the policies and attitudes of politicians in Cicero and the neighboring town of Berwyn, Illinois, and the roles both played in perpetuating discrimination against the Black community. The document reports the events leading up to the Cicero Riots as well as community members’ immediate responses to the aftermath.
The Library purchased this record with support from the Bruce C. Creamer fund in 2021.
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