Chicago

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/13/2021
  

  A Push to Save Landmarks of the ‘Great Migration’ — and Better Understand Today’s Racial Inequities

  A south Chicago house once owned by legendary blues singer Muddy Waters is being rehabilitated as a museum of the city's Black music and culture, just one of many battles to preserve the built environment and material history of the African American "Great Migration" to Chicago and other northern cities. 

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: Block Club Chicago
  3/3/2021
  

  ‘Badass Women’ Of Chicago History Highlighted In Virtual Tour

  Many Chicagoans wouldn't recognize the names of Enid Yandell, Bessie Coleman, Naomi Weisstein or Maria Tallchief. A new virtual tour hopes to change that. 

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• SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
  2/22/2021
  

  Take Down Chicago’s Lincoln Statues? It’s Iconoclasm Gone Mad

  by Sidney Blumenthal and Harold Holzer

  Two biographers of Lincoln question the Chicago Monuments Project, which has placed famous statues of the 16th president on a list of public memorials subject to possible removal.

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• SOURCE: WGN
  2/16/2021
  

  Group Fighting for Historic Landmark Recognition for Chicago Mansion with Deep History

  “Black women were migrating from the South and they had nowhere to go because economically, there were no jobs here for them,” Tate said. “So this was a place that spiritually, intellectually, socially, economically, they will magnify, to the point that they could go out and get a job and be somebody.”

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: Rolling Stone
  11/19/2020
  

  The Untouchables: An Investigation into the Violence of the Chicago Police

  by Paul Solotaroff

  Historian Simon Balto is among experts who place the Chicago Police Department's treatment of the city's Black communities in historical perspective. 

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• 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."

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• SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
  9/1/2020
  

  Emmett Till’s Home, a Launching Pad for the Civil Rights Movement, Deserves Landmark Status

  Landmark status would further honor Emmett and Mamie Till’s tragic but critical role in American history.

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• 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.” 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  8/19/2020
  

  The Virtual Democratic Convention Ignores Milwaukee At Its Peril

  by Mike Amezcua

  The 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago offers a cautionary example for Democrats today: the party's success depends on recognizing and meeting the needs of its constituents. 

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  7/29/2020
  

  Chicago Becomes a Stage for Fulfilling a Conservative Battle

  Conservatives have wanted the federal government to take control of crime in Chicago for decades — long before Trump got into politics.

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• SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
  7/27/2020
  

  Disinvestment in Black and Latino Chicago Neighborhoods is Rooted in Policy. Here’s how these Communities Continue to be Negatively Impacted.

  “When they were protesting in 1963, it was a desegregation protest but the things that people were chanting were like, ‘What do we want? Books! When do we want them? Now!’” said historian Elizabeth Todd-Breland.

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• 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." 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  6/6/2020
  

  How Racist Policing Took over American Cities, Explained by a Historian

  “The problem is the way policing was built,” historian Khalil Muhammad says.

• 
• SOURCE: ABC-7 Chicago
  6/7/2020
  

  Northwestern Historian Kevin Boyle Discusses History of Protests (Video)

  "It's the most profoundly American of acts, to protest peacefully in this nation," Boyle said.

• 
• SOURCE: The Village Voice
  5/31/2020
  

  Chicago 1968: Blood Outside the Arena (Reprinted 8/28/1968)

  The Village Voice reprints its coverage of the unrest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

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• SOURCE: Reel Chicago
  5/25/2020
  

  A City At War: Chicago During WW II

  The documentary, narrated by legendary journalist Bill Kurtis, is a comprehensive telling of nearly everything that happened in Chicagoland during World War II.