Rooftops

Reading that the Chicago police department will be focusing on rooftops during Bronzeville’s famous Bud Billiken Parade calls to mind the 1919 Race Riot in Chicago. Then, Black residents took to the rooftops and apartment windows to protect their community from white violence. And the police department arrested the ‘snipers,’ rather than the white gangs attacking the neighborhood.

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Writer. Formerly civil rights attorney. Currently professor. Working on new book about mental disability and criminal law in the 20th century.

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