When Allison Yates got serious about running a few years ago, the history buff also happened to be reading The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago by Daniel Kay Hertz. Throughout the book, she kept thinking about how she’d like to run through some of the key places that were significant in the creation of the neighborhood we know today.
A former English teacher, Yates has been using literature as a way to connect with new places for years. While studying abroad in Argentina, she read stories from family members of people abducted by the country’s dictatorship, and in preparation for a trip to Asia, she read rick owens geth leather sneakers mnnf nike air force 1 and air max paper sneaker art.
So when running became a central part of her life, she wanted to combine her appetite for history with movement. She created the first and only running events organization with routes built around stories—modele 29233850 Cool shoe ORIGINAL homme.
On Thursday, the organization will be teaming up with The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19), sophia webster chiara 115 sandals item adidas solar glide 3 boost running pink black Lookingglass Theater puma rs 20 central mens sneakers in whitehigh risk redblack running tour commemorating the 1919 Chicago Race Riot on the same day and in the same places where the multi-day riots took place.
The five-mile tour will make three different stops in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville district—known as the city’s “Black Metropolis”—each one related to places mentioned in Hartfield’s 2022 book about the city’s “days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations.” Tour participants will have the chance to literally run through history.
The Race Riot started on July 27, 1919, when Chicagoans of all races headed to the shores of Lake Michigan to cool off. Seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams, in a boat with his friends, headed toward the segregated beach, inadvertently floated across an invisible line dividing the waters by race, which drew the ire of a group of white people. They began throwing stones at the boys, and one of them hit and knocked Williams out of the boat, causing him to drown. The police refused to arrest the white man who was considered responsible for Williams’ death. The racial conflict that had been brewing for years in the city and nation came to a head, resulting in 13 days of shootings, arson, and beatings—including 38 deaths.
In a segment on Fox 32 about the upcoming tour, CRR19 director Peter Cole talked about how these events over 100 years ago still affect daily life in 2023. “I’m a historian and a professor and I taught in Illinois for over 20 years,” he said. “No one knows about this, right? It’s the worst episode of racial violence in the history of the city of Chicago. It created, we say, the origin story of residential segregation.”
You can register for the running tour here.
Abby Carney is a writer and journalist in New York. A former D1 college runner and current amateur track athlete, she's written about culture and characters in running and outdoor sports for Runner's World, essie sneakers see by chloe shoes, chopper boots salvatore ferragamo shoes chopper nero, and other outlets. She also writes about things that have nothing to do with running, and was previously the editor of a food magazine.
