From World War I through the end of the Vietnam War, African Americans left the American South en masse. Like many other migrants and immigrants, they were often obstructed, misrepresented, and rebuked. Yet they kept coming, and their movement, as well as its aftermath, culturally redefined the United States, along with the migrants themselves. This incredible panel of archivists, journalists, and artists will consider Chicago as a city whose history, neighborhoods, and identity have been indelibly marked by the Great Migration.
Panelists
Laurice Bell, Executive Director of Shorefront Legacy Center, is the creator of Intergenerational Interview Project, an oral history series documenting the experiences of Evanston’s reparations recipients, as well as a key producer of Stolen School, a documentary exploring the legacy of Black educational resistance.
Lee Bey is a journalist and architecture critic whose book, Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, 2019), documents the unsung architectural importance of Chicago’s south side neighborhoods.
Tonika Lewis Johnson, a 2025 MacArthur Fellow, is a photographer and social justice activist whose multimedia Folded Map Project unpacks the geographic and sociocultural legacies of Chicago’s post-migration communities.
Yohance LaCour is a Pulitzer and Peabody Award-winning investigative journalist whose podcast, You Didn’t See Nothin’, reconsiders an infamous Chicago 1997 hate crime in the light of ongoing anti-Blackness and “racial reconciliation” narratives.
Cost: Free and public welcome!
Jill Mannor
(847) 467-3970
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