Tensions in Cairo, Illinois — located on a narrow peninsula where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers converge, on land once home to the Illiniwek people — explodes on this day in 1967, after word spreads that police have killed a young black soldier, Robert Hunt, in a jail cell.

Confined to Pyramid Courts — a rat-infested, decaying project with lead-tainted water — black residents take to the streets. Businesses are looted, buildings set ablaze and police overwhelmed. 600 white residents form an armed vigilante patrol — deputized by the local sheriff — to patrol the streets with guns and dogs.

After days of shootouts and firebombings, the National Guard is deployed to restore order, but the unrest continues for weeks and years, with boycotts, firebombings, and gunfights into the early 1970s.