Sighting public history : a re-education on race and space in the City of Chicago

Abstract

Sighting Public History is an effort to see Chicago, a city which I have always called home, and to see it with fresh eyes. The project takes as its focus sites of black public history: locations in the built environment where history is put to work in the public realm. It is an effort to re-educate one's self using the visual grammar of the city. The project uses the concept of sights -- authored photographs, maps and written reflections -- to offer a subjective view of public history at work in Chicago's historically black South and West Sides. Where and how are histories of the black experience put to work here? How do public parks and boulevards, streetscapes and thresholds of private homes, and collections and exhibitions of storied black cultural organizations compose an urban constellation of black public history? How does this constellation perform a powerful pedagogic function by teaching individuals and communities about the history of race in the city -- including the systemic injustices borne by Chicago's black communities, and the way these communities have responded through politics, art, cultural programming, and community organizing? Ultimately, Sighting Public History asks, what kinds of history do Chicago's black communities carry, and how are these histories carried?