Chicago 
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5/1/2022
High Crimes and Lingering Consequences: How Land Sale Contracts Looted Black Wealth and Gutted Chicago Communities
by Tiff Beatty
Chicago artist Tonika Lewis Johnson is creating public installations documenting properties where Black residents were subjected to predatory contract home sales, and connecting the past to the present struggles of the city's south and west sides.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
3/23/2022
Planning For The People Y Qué? From Advocacy Planners To Hardcore Punks
by Mike Amezcua
"Punk fliers are planning documents. Not the official kind produced by city planning departments, of course, nor the grassroots plans by neighborhood activists resisting investment capital and gentrification. But these fliers contain a planning schema all the same."
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SOURCE: Fox 32
3/14/2022
Chicago's Ukrainian Community Includes Many Who Escaped WWII; They See a Repeated Nightmare
The Ukrainian community in Chicago includes many who fled either Nazi or Stalinist forces as children 80 years ago.
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SOURCE: Hyde Park Herald
3/3/2022
Chicago Landmarks Commission Authorizes $250,000 for Rehab of Muddy Waters's House
The grant advances the renovation of the house on Chicago's south side for use as a museum and educational space.
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SOURCE: WTTW
2/26/2022
Historian Mike Amezcua on "Making Mexican Chicago"
Both industry and local realtors were key players in the development of La Villita in southwest Chicago.
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SOURCE: Union of Concerned Scientists
2/15/2022
For Black History Month, Honor the Environmental Justice Activism of Hazel Johnson
Hazel Johnson was pushed to environmental justice activism when her husband's cancer death made her aware of the toll of industrial pollution on her Chicago neighborhood. Today, it remains important to connect environmental protection and social justice.
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SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
1/3/2021
A Blueprint for Leadership from 1980s Chicago
by Brentin Mock
Harold Washington faced stiff resistance from his own party when he became Chicago's first Black mayor in 1983; his response stressing public infrastructure and voting rights foreshadowed the Biden administration's efforts to overcome intransigence and obstructionism.
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SOURCE: Public Seminar
12/15/2021
Puerto Rican History Deserves More than a Mural
by Jacqueline Lazú
Instead of rehashing "West Side Story," Hollywood should tell the story of Chicago's Young Lords Organization.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/17/2021
Timuel Black, 102: Historian and Organizer of Black Chicago
Timuel Black mobilized the political power of the predominantly Black South Side of Chicago, taught others — including a young Barack Obama — how to do the same, and in his final decades compiled oral histories giving voice to his community’s Black working class.
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SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
10/13/2021
Timuel Black, Historian and Civil Rights Activist, Dies at 102
Among those expressing sadness at Mr. Black’s death was Barack Obama, who said “the city of Chicago and the world lost an icon with the passing of Timuel Black."
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SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
10/8/2021
How the Chicago Fire Changed the City's Architecture
Chicago-based historians D. Bradford Hunt and Dominic Pacyga argue that the Great Fire of 1871 did impact the city by inaugurating an age of big renewal plans, as well as through the city's prized architecture and parks.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/6/2021
"We All Know Where We Came From": 2021 White Sox Carry on History of Latino Baseball
The Chicago White Sox have returned to the baseball postseason in part because of their core of players from Latin America, which has long been a trademark of the club.
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SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
9/9/2021
In Slasher Film ‘Candyman,’ the Horror Is U.S. Housing Policy
by Brentin Mock
“Candyman isn't the only ghost in this show,” says Stanford Carpenter, a cultural anthropologist based in Chicago. “The other ghost is Cabrini-Green. In both cases, the thing that makes them scary is that they were made that way by white systemic racism.”
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SOURCE: New York Times
9/6/2021
Dawn Turner Looks Back on Her ’70s Girlhood, and Those Who Got Left Behind
"In episodic chapters that read like self-contained short stories woven together into a whole, Turner seeks to understand how three Black girls with very similar aspirations ended up with wildly divergent fates."
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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.
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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?
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SOURCE: UChicago News
5/25/2021
The Hidden History Of “Guerrilla Television”: UChicago Scholars Preserve Decades-Old Videos
Technological innovation in the 1960s allowed more people to shoot video and push for community-based television. University of Chicago scholars are working to digitize and preserve "guerrilla television."
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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."
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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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