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WIU History Professor Peter Cole, pictured at last month's Bronzeville Bike Tour. (photograph by Beto de Freitas)
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Public Art Project Founded by WIU History Professor Receives Funding from Chicago Cultural Agency

August 23, 2022

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MACOMB, IL – A public art project, founded by a Western Illinois University professor to remember the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, received a boost last week in the form of a $50,000 award from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE).

WIU History Professor Peter Cole developed the CRR 19 project in an effort to place markers around the city in the locations where each of 38 lives were lost. The project is co-directed by Cole and The University of Chicago Medicine's Violence Recovery Program Director Franklin N. Cosey-Gay.

The award was announced last week in conjunction with the release of the final report of the Chicago Monuments Project advisory committee. The planning and implementation grant is one of eight awarded by DCASE to add to the city's collection and "memorialize events, people or groups that historically have been excluded or underrepresented," DCASE said in a press release.

Cole said the award advances the CRR 19 organization's goal of creating the historic markers this fall and winter, so installations can begin in Spring 2023.

"CRR19 seeks to help the city of Chicago (and, by extension, the state of Illinois and entire country) more accurately and fully address its history including the city's worst incident of racial violence ever--when 38 people were killed and 537 injured in a single week," said Cole. "CRR19 confronts this past to disrupt the narrative that conveniently ignores the suffering of African Americans, indigenous peoples and others historically victimized in the United States. While this path might be painful, ignoring racism and racial violence has failed to achieve the beloved community that we, as Americans, aspire to."

The CRR 19 project was launched in 2019, on the 100th anniversary of the riot.

For more information on the project, visit bit.ly/CRR1919.

For more information about the CRR19 project, visit chicagoraceriot.org, or follow the project at @chicagoraceriot on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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