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EAST ST. LOUIS, Il. (KMOV) – East St. Louis natives are remembering the 1917 race massacre with a new marker and a rally calling for reparations.
A new marker was placed at the East St. Louis Higher Education Campus last year.
The East St. Louis Historical Society, the St. Clair County Historical Society and Illinois Historical Society all partnered to bring the new marker to the city.
The riot/massacre happened from roughly July 1 to July 3 in 1917 because a local company replaced white workers, who went on strike, with black workers. Historians don’t know how many people died. Several white people and an estimated 40 to maybe hundreds of black people were killed.
“We don’t say riots because it wasn’t a riot, it was a massacre,” said Jaye Willis, the executive director of the East St. Louis Historical Society. “Back in 1917, some of the houses that were burned and the people who were murdered lived on this property.”
Willis helped established the East St. Louis Historical Society in 2019.
In 2017, the City of East St. Louis placed 24 markers across the city memorializing pivotal events that happened during the riots of July 1917.
“I hadn’t even heard of the race riot until several years ago,” said Larita Rice-Barnes, an East St. Louis native and activist with the Metro East Organizing Coalition. “I have my parents who grew up in the early 50s and they didn’t even know about the race riot.”
Rice-Barnes is working with other activists and city officials to create a reparations committee for the City of East St. Louis.
The city council will vote to add the commission in July.
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