Is desegregation the solution for inequity in schools? How does segregation impact public education on Chicago’s West Side today?
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum organized a book-talk and public discussion exploring education and the fight for self-determination and equitable public schools on the West Side of Chicago. Barbara Sizemore was a powerful black educator and former principal in North Lawndale in the 1960s. She championed excellence in black schools and all-black spaces and received backlash from Civil Rights activists and desegregationists. Learn more about her legacy and about others who fought for black independence in education and those who continue to elevate self-determination on Chicago’s West Side.
Speakers included Elizabeth Todd-Breland, author of A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s, who will share her research on Barbara Sizemore's fight for black-led education during school integration; Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, Prexy Nesbitt, a native West Sider, activist and educator, who comes from a family of West Side public educators who worked with Sizemore; and Ayesha Jaco, a Chicago based Philanthropist, Educator and Choreographer. She is the Co-Founder of M.U.R.A.L., formerly the Lupe Fiasco Foundation and a Senior Program Officer at West Side United; Rufus Williams, President and CEO of BBF Family Services in North Lawndale.
About the book: In 2012, Chicago teachers began the school year with the city’s first teachers strike in 25 years and ended with the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history. A Political Education recovers this hidden history, laying bare ruptures and enduring tensions between the politics of black achievement, urban inequality, and U.S. democracy. Books available for purchase from Seminary Co-op Bookstore
Making the West Side is a Jane Addams Hull-House Museum initiative that brings together scholars, activists, neighborhood residents, and other stakeholders to investigate the history of neighborhood change on Chicago’s West Side.
Image: Sarah-Ji (Love + Struggle Photos) West Side CTU Strike 2012.
Images: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum/Brandon Fields
