Eve L. Ewing's 1919 (#poem)

or does it explode

July 27 was hot, 96 degrees, or fourteen points above normal. It was the culmination of a series of days with high temperatures around 95 degrees, which meant that nerves were strained. (11)

man it was so hot

how hot was it

it was so hot

you could cook an egg

on that big forehead of yours

 

you a lie

 

man i tell you it was so hot

 

how hot

 

it was so hot

i dropped a tomato in the lake

and made campbell's soup

nuh uh

it was so hot

the sun tried to get in the swimming pool

and everybody else had to get out

boy that's hot

who you tellin

that day was so hot

how hot

it was so hot

our dreams laid out on the sidewalk

and said 'never mind, we good'

-Eve L. Ewing

On July 27th, 1919, a race riot broke out in Chicago. The beaches of the south side were de facto segregated, and a seventeen-year-old Black boy strayed too close what was thought of as a White beach. He may have been struck by a stone--stones were thrown--or he may have been afraid to come into the White beach when his strength ran out, but in any case he drowned. The police, on the scene, took no action, and a riot started that engulfed the city. Twenty-three Black people were killed and fifteen White people in addition to numerous injuries and enormous property damage.

In the aftermath, a committee was appointed by the governor of Illinois to investigate; it consisted of six White people and six Black people. They produced a report: The Negro in Chicago, a Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot, that came out in 1922. The report sounds (by the standards of the time) balanced enough; the epigraph to the poem above comes from that report.

Eve L. Ewing is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, as well as a poet. (She also writes for Marvel Comics!) In the course of her academic research, she was reading the report and was inspired to write this short book of poems in reaction. The title of this poem of course alludes to Langston Hughes' Harlem, sometimes known as A Dream Deferred. ("What happens to a dream deferred?/.../or does it explode?"--in this case it exploded.)

As a Chicagoan, I knew the basic outlines of the story but not as many details as I now know after finishing the book, which also includes a historical overview. I did not know for instance that Mayor Daley (the first Mayor Daley, Richard J.) was likely a rioter, though he refused to talk about it and it was never definitely proven. This is shocking...though also not. He would have been seventeen at the time of the riot.

 

Anyway, a fascinating short volume and one I'm glad my library was able to supply.