The Chicago area is located on ancestral lands of indigenous tribes, such as the Council of the Three Fires–comprised of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations–as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Illinois Nations. These tribes had thriving trade networks in the Great Lakes area prior to European contact. Post-European contact, the tribes maintained trade arrangements with both the French and British. Some roadways in Chicago reflect the trade roads followed by these tribes.
https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/diversity/chicago-indigenous
To see the city by river, and to explore it at the Chicago Open House event in October, explore the offerings of the Chicago Architecture foundation. You will also see artist Andrea Carlson’s banner, stating “You are on Potowatomi Land”. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/chicagoriverwalk/home/public-art.html
Chicago was incorporated as a City only in 1837. It is not even 200 years old. To combat Cholera as the population grew, the River was turned around, in a project lasting from appr, 1993 – 1900. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/
The Art institute was founded in 1879 and moved into its current building in 1883, immediately after the World Congress of Religions took place in the building from August 1893 to October 1893, as part of the Chicago Columbian Exposition, or World Fair. This is why this stretch of Michigan Avenue is now called the ‘Honorary Swami Vivekananda Way’. In a famous speech, Vivekananda introduced Hinduism to America and called for religious tolerance and an end to fanaticism.
https://www.artic.edu/about-us/mission-and-history/history
https://www.artic.edu/swami-vivekananda-and-his-1893-speech
The Great Migration was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states roughly from the 1910s until the 1970s. The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow.
https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration
Chicago books by publication date
Wau Bun Early Day (1856)
World’s Congress of Religions (1894)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Carrie (1900)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle (1906)
The Plan of Chicago (1909)
The Story of Old Fort Dearborn (1912)
Jane Addams. Twenty Years at Hull House (1912)
City of Big Shoulders (1914) poem
Chicago Race Riots (1919)
Checagou (1933)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Son (1940)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Boy (1945)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Golden_Arm_(novel) (1949)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Raisin_in_the_Sun (1959)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Malcolm_X (1965)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_on_Mango_Street (1984)
Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis (1991)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City (2003)
Black, Timuel D. (2003). Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Great Migration. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810123151.
Lost Buildings (2004) Video
The story of a boy named Tim Samuelson, who became obsessed with old buildings, especially the buildings of Louis Sullivan in Chicago, during the 1960’s and 70’s when they were being torn down. Lost Buildings is a collaboration between Ira Glass and graphic novelist Chris Ware: Ira did the sound, Chris did hundreds of drawings. The result is a 22-minute story, with sound and images, that has never been heard on the radio (it was originally produced as part of a live This American Life stage show). The DVD comes packaged inside a beautiful 100-page book, also meticulously designed by Chris Ware, and filled with photos of the Louis Sullivan buildings mentioned in the story.
Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005) digital + print
- Reading list: Social Scientists and Their City
Black, Timuel D. (2007). Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s Second Generation of Great Migration. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810122956.
A Power Stronger than Itself (2008)
Studs Terkel’s Chicago (2012)
Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870 (2012)
City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934 (2018)
The Chicago River (2019)
Sites
https://chicagostudies.uchicago.edu/neighborhoods
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdot/provdrs/ped/svcs/pedway.html
To do
Performative Diagrammatics 