Journalist and activist Ida B. Wells took great risks to expose the horrors of racism and fight injustice through her investigative writings. Wells’ life and groundbreaking work are the subject of a new WTTW Chicago Stories documentary airing Friday.
Chicago History
ABC will air a short-run series “Women of the Movement” next season about Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son Emmett Till became a symbol of the civil rights movement after he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
German architect Helmut Jahn died Saturday after being struck by a car while riding a bicycle in the western suburbs. Geoffrey Baer takes a look at Jahn’s work and his legacy in a special edition of Ask Geoffrey.
When she died 12 years ago, photographer Vivian Maier went from anonymous to fairly famous. Now the onetime North Shore nanny is receiving more posthumous praise, this time for a show of her mostly unseen color photographs of local people and places.
Pervis Staples, whose tenor voice complimented his father’s and sisters’ in the legendary gospel group The Staple Singers, has died, a spokesman announced Wednesday. He was 85.
It’s a story many Chicagoans know, but since the Oscar-nominated film “Judas and the Black Messiah” was released, more people are learning about the life and death of Fred Hampton. We talk with his widow and his son.
What can an apartment building that once hosted royalty tell us about Chicago’s Norwegian American community? Geoffrey Baer has the story of this former social club designed by a pair of famous Chicago architects.
Renaming 17 miles of Lake Shore Drive for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, Chicago’s first permanent non-Indigenous settler, would be a massive undertaking without precedent in the city’s history, city officials told aldermen Thursday.
After helming the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville for many years, the South Side native has returned to the city to lead the Chicago History Museum. Donald Lassere joins us to talk about expanding the museum’s mission to all of Chicago.
Themes of justice, pride and community have blossomed in murals along Chicago’s streets and storefronts, creating a constantly evolving and thought-provoking backdrop to a tumultuous year.
Our trip down memory lane with the WTTW program “Our People” from the late 1960s and early ‘70s brought back memories for one former Chicagoan. Here is his story.
On Chicago’s South Side, there’s a bridge spanning the Dan Ryan expressway that looks more like a Disney World monorail than part of a working CTA train line.
The murders of Emmett Till and George Floyd were separated by more than six decades, contrasting circumstances and countless protests, but their families say they feel an intimate connection in their grief and what comes next.
The big reveal is still nearly a year away, but the city has shared teaser images of the work in progress on the Tiffany glass dome and decorative finishes in the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall.
When Avelino Maldonado started his spice distribution company in Chicago, the biggest waves of Latino immigrants had yet to arrive. Sixty-four years later, Latinos comprise nearly 30% of the city’s population, and La Criolla’s new owners hope to bring their Latin flavor to another generation of cooks.
The Chicago Public Library has filled a gap in the legacy of former Mayor Harold Washington by digitizing scores of his written speeches, available to the public in a searchable online collection, library officials announced this week.
