Departments

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Chicago

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    7/7/2021

    Chicago Versus Lake Michigan

    The history of Chicago is defined by efforts to tame water for navigation, sanitation, and drinking. Climate change is raising the stakes of that battle. 

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
    6/8/2021

    When Monuments Go Bad

    Chicago is engaging in a broad and unprecedented study of the city's monuments and the political and cultural implications of memorialization in public space. Will this help avoid the bitter controversies and protests that have erupted in other cities? 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/21/2021

    Some Representations of Native Americans Erase their History

    by Hayley Negrin

    "Visibly racist and inaccurate representations of Indigenous people in public spaces send a message to Indigenous people everywhere that they are not in control of their own destiny, that they are not permitted to define themselves. The process of conquest continues."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/12/2021

    A Mansion Sale Built on the Myth of a Notorious Cow

    The Chicago Fire of 1871 has been the wellspring of plenty of myths. A real estate listing for a southside mansion is just the latest. Historians Carl Smith and Ann Durkin Keating comment. 

  • SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
    3/5/2021

    A Monumental Error in the Making

    by Harold Holzer

    Daniel Chester French's statue "The Republic" is on a list of public monuments to be reviewed by the city of Chicago. Removing it would be destroying an important link to the city's past. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/10/2021

    "Judas and the Black Messiah" Is an American Tragedy

    The performances of the lead actors in "Judas and the Black Messiah" elevate the story of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton's assassination by the police and FBI to a complex story of the Black freedom movement. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/9/2021

    What ‘Defund the Police’ Really Means

    by Simon Balto

    The debate about "defunding police" must return to the community-driven vision of activists like assassinated Black Panther Fred Hampton, who envisioned a program of community empowerment that could divert the vast resources spent on policing toward other social ends. 

  • SOURCE: Belt
    9/1/2020

    Cleveland and Chicago: Cities of Segregation

    "Berlin had a wall, but they took to it with hammers and pickaxes and tore it down. Cleveland and Chicago have walls too, but not the kind you can tear down with a pickaxe. They’ve been erected in places that are harder to reach than a river or a street: bitter, entrenched hearts and minds, both black and white, going back for generations, on either side of town."

  • SOURCE: Vanity Fair
    8/25/2020

    Blue Bloods: America's Brotherhood of Police Officers

    by Eve L. Ewing

    “How many unions are there where you’re assigned a gun and told you can shoot people?” Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner asked me during a phone interview. “I mean, they have superpowers. They are given superpowers over the lives and freedom of other people. Over the integrity of their bodies.” 

  • SOURCE: The Metropole
    6/25/2020

    Building The Chicago Police State: A Review Of Occupied Territory

    by Davarian L. Baldwin

    "With scrupulous archival detail and sharp analytic focus, Occupied Territory shows how Chicago’s “powerful carceral machinery,” which present-day Black communities condemns for its under-protection and over-policing, was built in the early twentieth century."