In the Heat of the City: Remembering Eugene Williams

“It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself. Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become.” — James Baldwin

We tend to think ecology only has to do with plant and animal communities, but cities, communities and regions dominated by humans, operate by the same rules as all life forms—simple or complex. The health of one community can and will affect the health of those surrounding and dependent on it.

In July, Chicago quietly and somberly remembered those who died twenty years ago in one of the worst urban disasters in U.S. history—the heat wave in the summer of 1995 that contributed to the deaths of over 700 people. For a bit of perspective, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed large swaths of the city, killed just over 300 people.

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