Dear all,
We are pleased to invite you to the next session of CREW’s seminar series “Acteurs/Chercheurs” on March 12, 2024 from 4pm-6pm. We will be hearing from Peter Cole, Professor of history at Western Illinois University and co-director of The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.
Professor Cole’s talk, "The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project," will discuss the motivations and aims of the commemoration project. Here is a short description:
Living in a largely ahistorical society contributes to the persistence of racism in America. In Chicago, for instance, shockingly few people know of the city’s worst incident of racial violence, the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, in which 38 people were killed and 537 injured. Fewer still know it played a major role in the segregation that still defines the city. Lack of awareness makes it easier to deny this legacy but moving towards equity demands learning and embracing painful historical truths. The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) seeks to attack such historical amnesia and denial that hold the city and entire country back. CRR19 seeks to educate about this history and legacy through public art. CRR19 is partnering with Firebird Community Arts’s Project FIRE, a trauma-informed glassblowing and ceramics program targeting Chicago BIPOC youth who have been victimized by violence. Project FIRE is in the process of designing the 38 markers, one for each person killed in 1919. Inspired by the ongoing Stolpersteine project based in Berlin, the artistic markers will be installed at each location a person was killed. Hence, when people walk down the streets of Chicago, they will be reminded of this history, which so profoundly impacted the city and still does today. To achieve justice and racial equality, CRR19 believes that we must remember the past.
The seminar will take place at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 8 av. de Saint-Mandé (75012, Paris), in room salle B115 and on Google Meet (meet.google.com/njx-cwwh-rto).
If you have any questions, please write to Olivier Maheo (maheo.prof) or myself (christen.bryson-charle).
Hoping to see many of you there!
Sincerely,
Olivier Maheo (scientific collaborator at the Institut d’histoire du temps présent / associate member of CREW) et Christen Bryson (CREW, Sorbonne Nouvelle).