28 Days of Black Liberation 2025 series
“At 11:30 p.m. on January 16, 1947, a fire began in the center room of the attic at 1733 West Washburne Avenue, a turn-of-the-century four story-brick building on Chicago’s Near West Side. The attic was divided into three separate rooms with a long hallway connecting them. The fire ignited the cheap construction materials used to build the inner walls and quickly spread to the front and back of the attic … Six months later, James Hickman would shoot and kill his landlord, David Coleman. By the end of the year, he would be on trial for murder.”
People Wasn’t Made to Burn by Joe Allen tells the story of the social murder of James Hickman’s four youngest children; his trial and successful community defense campaign; and the racist legal system protecting landlords and the owning class.
This week of the 28 Days of Black Liberation we will walk through the chapters of this book, pulling out the connections between the inhumane housing conditions in 1940s Black Chicago, and the centuries’ old tradition of slumlords elaborately scheming to squeeze profits out of poor renters to this day.