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Chicago 101

My recommendations for learning about the recent history of the greatest city on Earth.

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A photo of the Chicago skyline taken from the west at sunrise.
A photo of the Chicago skyline taken from the west at sunrise.
By Laurie Merrell
7 min read
Chicago 101

I was born and raised in Chicago, but it wasn’t until I moved back to the city as an adult in 2019 that I began a personal project of trying to formally learn more about the city’s history, especially the second half of the 20th century to the present. I began trying to read, listen to, and watch a variety of media, making use of social media recommendations (see, for example, this post from Nader Issa on X and the associated replies) and my own exploration.

So, when a Chicago transplant friend read “Ghosts in the Schoolyard” on my recommendation last year and asked for more suggestions, I went a little overboard and created an entire proto-curriculum for my personal “Chicago 101”. Now that I have a blog, I figured I’d share it with the world.

This list represents the media I would recommend to learn about some key themes and trends in recent Chicago history, composed of material that is (in my opinion) fairly digestible and not too long. The list reflects my own personal biases and interests in foregrounding education, policing, and housing as key topic areas; emphasizing local journalism; and centering progressive perspectives.

Education

  • 📘 Ghosts in the Schoolyard by Eve L Ewing
    • Summary: This book gives an overview of the 2013 school closures in Chicago and the effect of those closures on their communities.
    • Why I recommend it: This is my #1 recommendation for people who want to understand recent Chicago history. The 2013 school closures were a hugely disruptive and impactful event, and are intimately connected with the political rise of the Chicago Teachers Union (and, thus, Mayor Brandon Johnson). The book is clear and accessible while covering complicated and fraught history with care and compassion.
    • Supplemental material:
      • 📰 In 2023 (the ten-year anniversary of the closures), the Sun-Times and WBEZ did a big retrospective project about the closures and the promises that were made at the time. Sarah Karp also spoke about this reporting at Chi Hack Night.
      • 📘 No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Chapter 4 by Jane McAlevey gives an overview of the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike and the rise of CORE (Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators). It’s a telling that is very sympathetic to CORE and gives a sense of the huge magnitude of the strike, which kicked off a national wave of teacher organizing. It provides some history on CORE’s remaking of CTU into a “fighting union”.

Policing

  • 🎧 16 Shots Podcast from WBEZ
    • Summary: This podcast covers the 2014 police killing of Laquan McDonald, the official suppression of the story, and subsequent trial of Jason Van Dyke, the cop who killed him.
    • Why I recommend it: The murder of Laquan McDonald and associated coverup was a key galvanizing incident for recent racial justice organizing in Chicago. The fallout led to significant changes including the election of “progressive prosecutor” Kim Foxx and the fact that Rahm Emanuel didn’t run for a third term (which gave us Lori Lightfoot).
    • Supplemental material:
      • 🎧 You Didn’t See Nothin is a podcast retrospective on a 1997 racist attack on a Black child in Bridgeport. The host was a young adult at the time and looks back on the secondhand impacts the attack had on his own life.
      • 📰 The Revolutionary Column | Is Kim Foxx a scape/GOAT? by Bella BAHHS – I think this interview shows how far abolitionist politics came in Chicago in a relatively short period of time, with Kim Foxx being elected on the back of the coverup of McDonald’s murder and then herself being subject to abolitionist critique.
  • 📰 House of Screams by John Conroy, Chicago Reader article from 1990
    • Summary: Contemporaneous reporting about Chicago police torture overseen by Jon Burge.
    • Why I recommend it: This was the piece that effectively broke the story of the Jon Burge police torture scandal, which has led to the passage of Chicago’s nationally unique package of reparations for police torture survivors. It’s an important piece of Chicago journalism history and I think it’s powerful to read the actual story.
    • Supplemental material:

Housing

  • 📘 High-Risers by Ben Austen
    • Summary: An overview of the history of the Cabrini-Green public housing project through the lives of several of its residents.
    • Why I recommend it: This book covers the full history of the Cabrini-Green high rises and foregrounds the experiences of the people who lived there. It’s a useful counter to the dehumanization and demonization that has so often dominated cultural depictions of public housing and its inhabitants and gives a multidimensional portrait of the Cabrini-Green community.
    • Supplemental material:
      • 📰 Cabrini-Green: A History of Broken Promises - 2021 reporting by Alejandra Cancino about the promises that were made to residents when Cabrini-Green was torn down and how few of those commitments have been honored. Cancino also presented this reporting at Chi Hack Night.
      • 📘 The Battle of Lincoln Park is a book by Daniel Kay Hertz about the history of housing in Lincoln Park that gives a perspective on other housing trends in the areas around Cabrini-Green and the relationship between public housing, urban renewal, and wealthy homeowners.
      • 🎧 Help This Garden Grow is a podcast about legendary environmental justice organizer Hazel Johnson, and focuses on her work in the Altgeld Gardens public housing community on the far South Side of Chicago.

Mayoral Politics

  • 📽️ City So Real documentary (available on multiple streaming platforms)
    • Summary: This documentary covers the 2019 Chicago mayoral election and (in a follow-up episode) some of the events of the summer of 2020 regarding COVID policies and the George Floyd uprising.
    • Why I recommend it: This documentary gives a helpful overview of some important dynamics in Chicago local electoral politics and introduces many of the people who have been prominent in the last few mayoral election cycles. It’s also an interesting time capsule of the summer of 2020.
    • Supplemental material:
  • 📘 Fire on the Prairie by Gary Rivlin
    • Summary: Story of the election(s) and mayoralty of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor and staunch progressive.
    • Why I recommend it: Washington remains incredibly popular and influential. He is still regularly invoked by left-wing politicians today and the racist “Council Wars” backlash against his policies was a revealingly ugly period in the city’s recent history.
    • Supplemental material:
      • 🏛️ Harold Washington exhibit at the DuSable Museum - the DuSable Museum has a permanent exhibit on Washington, including a slightly off-putting (in my opinion) animatronic figure and a very cool display of campaign buttons.
      • 📘 Queer Clout is a book about the arc of LGBTQ rights and politics in Chicago. It’s not necessarily focused on Washington but it does cover some of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and how the city tried to respond.
      • 📰 WTTW coverage of Ed Burke indictment - Ed Burke was one of the ringleaders of the council members who blocked Washington at every turn. He was found guilty of corruption charges in 2023.
  • 📘 Boss by Mike Royko
    • Summary: An overview of the life and times of “Hizzoner” Mayor Richard J Daley who was the powerful Machine boss of Chicago for much of the second half of the 20th century. The author Mike Royko is a legendary Chicago columnist.
    • Why I recommend it: Daley was a larger-than-life figure in Chicago politics and the Machine legacy still has significant impacts today. A lot of prominent infrastructure (ex. O’Hare airport, McCormick Place, University of Illinois, expressways, etc.) was built under him, so he literally shaped the city according to his beliefs.
    • Supplemental material:

Post photo by Brad Knight on Unsplash

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