One housing complex can’t reverse decades of historical trends—but city officials hope 43 Green can be a model for equitable development.
Tag: Great Migration
Posted inMusic
Chicago’s 1920s nightlife incubated world-changing musical and social experiments
The Roaring Twenties have often been portrayed as a time of wealth, glamor, and social change. Technological advances, including more widespread electrification and increased use of automobiles, plus the growth of mass media such as radio and movies, drove a booming economy—though then as now the benefits were inequitably distributed. Inspired by movie stars and […]
Posted inUncategorized
How a gospel vocal style walked into Chicago and out to the world
“Walk around, walk around, walk around, walk around,” the background singers chant, their a cappella harmonies chugging fire like a train bound for glory. Then the clouds open and a high tenor floats out of the sky. “I want,” it says, before swooping up into a falsetto yodel that seems to reach beyond heaven itself: […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago rapbrarian Roy Kinsey makes music for summer celebrations with Juke Skywalker Vol. 1
Chicago rapper and librarian Roy Kinsey has drawn national attention for his remarkable concept albums and their sensitive, piercingly thoughtful lyrics. In 2018 he dropped Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey, a deeply personal and thoroughly researched record about race in America that’s informed by Kinsey’s family history and the Great Migration; last year he […]
Posted inMusic
Give your money to Mary Lane
Chicago blueswoman Mary Lane has been making music for more than 70 years. She should be a legend, but she can barely pay her bills.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Blackivists on documenting movements
A group of Black archivists is helping communities create their own narratives, filling in what history books have left out.
Posted inMusic
Rapbrarian Roy Kinsey finds his voice in queer hip-hop
With his next album, Roy Kinsey wants to make the music he wishes he’d heard as a young queer man of color.
Posted inNews & Politics
Is Chicago’s legacy of segregation causing a reverse Great Migration?
Black Chicagoans are leaving the city, and an unexamined history of racial discrimination may be to blame.
Posted inNews & Politics
Mount Greenwood is Chicago’s Upside Down
No demogorgon roams this parallel universe, but a majority of its electorate did back the man who’s been called the swamp monster: President Donald Trump.
Posted inFood & Drink
The Chicago Food Encyclopedia is an historical treat
A new reference guide is a fun (and mouth-watering) way to learn about the city.
Posted inBest of Chicago
A block in Oakland is an oasis, and a tale of segregation
The 4100 block of South Berkeley Avenue might be beautiful, but it has a troubled history.
Posted inMusic
The Reader’s comprehensive guide to the 2016 Chicago Jazz Festival
This year’s Chicago Jazz Festival captures the music’s proliferating diversity, with the Bad Plus, Anat Cohen, Erwin Helfer, Tarbaby, JD Allen, the Liberation Music Orchestra, and much more.
Posted inArts & Culture
For Natalie Y. Moore, south-side Chicago isn’t a headline—it’s home
The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation grounds political reporting in personal experience.
Posted inBlogs
The Warmth of Other Suns vs. Chicago: City on the Make: Greatest Chicago Book tournament, final four
Which of these two titles will advance to the final round?
Posted inBlogs
Native Son vs. The Warmth of Other Suns: Greatest Chicago Book round one
Two books that consider the effects of the Great Migration face off in the second bout of the first round of our contest.