A People's History of Chicago

A People's History of Chicago

A People's History of Chicago

A People's History of Chicago

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Overview

Known variously as “‘the Windy City,”’ “‘the City of Big Shoulders,”’ or “‘Chi-Raq,”’ Chicago is one of the most widely celebrated, routinely demonized, and thoroughly contested cities in the world.

Chicago is the city of Gwendolyn Brooks and Chief Keef, Al Capone and Richard Wright, Lucy Parsons and Nelson Algren, Harold Washington and Studs Terkel. It is the city of Fred Hampton, House Music, and the Haymarket Martyrs. Writing in the tradition of Howard Zinn, Kevin Coval’s A People’s History of Chicago celebrates the history of this great American city from the perspective of those on the margins, whose stories often go untold. These seventy-seven poems (for the city’s seventy-seven neighborhoods) honor the everyday lives and enduring resistance of the city’s workers, poor people, and people of color, whose cultural and political revolutions continue to shape the social landscape.

Kevin Coval is the poet/author/editor of seven books including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and the play, This Iis Modern Art, co-written with Idris Goodwin. Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival and the Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors, Coval teaches hip-hop aesthetics at the University of Illinois–-Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has named him “the voice of the new Chicago“ and the Boston Globe calls him “the city’s unofficial poet laureate.”


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781608466719
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Publication date: 03/28/2017
Series: Breakbeat Poets
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 152
Sales rank: 696,272
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Kevin Coval is a poet and community builder. As the artistic director of Young Chicago Authors, founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival, and professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago—where he teaches hip-hop aesthetics—he’s mentored thousands of young writers, artists and musicians.

He is the author and editor of ten books, including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and Schtick, and co-author of the play, This is Modern Art. His work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Drunken Boat, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Fake Shore Drive, Huffington Post, and four seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam.

Table of Contents

Foreword Chance the Rapper ix

Shikaakwa 1

Iasalle Wrote It Down Wrong 2

The Father Is a Black Man 4

The Treaty of Chicago 6

Hog Butcher for the World 7

Albert Parsons Can Hang 9

How to Be Down 10

The L Gets Open 11

The white City 12

Eugene Debs Reads Marx in Prison 13

Reversing the Flow of the Chicago River 14

The Great Migration 15

The Eastland Disaster 16

The Murder of Eugene Williams 18

Society for Human Rights (America's First Gay Rights Organization) 19

Thomas Dorsey, Gospel's Daddy 21

Gwendolyn Brooks Stands in the Mecca 23

Hansberry vs. Lee 26

Muddy Waters Goes Electric 28

Nelson Algren Meets Simone de Beauvoir at the Palmer House 29

Pickle with a Peppermint Stick 31

Sun Ra Becomes a Synthesizer 33

Hugh hefner, a Play Boy 34

Mamie Till Bears the Movement 35

King daley Unfurls His burnham Plan 36

The Division Street Riots 37

Martin Luther King Prays in Marquette Park 38

Studs Terkel Drops a Mixtape 40

Carl Sandburg Village (Where My Parents Met) 41

Wall of Respect 43

AfriCOBRA 44

The Assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton 46

Don L. Lee Becomes Haki Madhubuti 48

The Chicago 21 Plan 49

Leaving Aldine 50

Ode to Steppin 51

Disco Demolition 52

Mayor byrne Moves Into & Out of Cabrini Green 54

Ron Hardy Plays the Record Backwards 56

The Assassination of Rudy Lozano 58

Marc Smith Invents the Poetry Slam 59

Collateral Damage 61

The Day Harold Died 63

Patronage 64

Fresh to Death 66

Molemen Beat Tapes 67

Graffiti Blasters: An Erasure (A Buff) 69

The Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act 70

The Etymology of Chicago Joe 71

Common's Resurrection 73

The Supreme Court Makes Color Illegal 74

Erasing the Green 75

Ida B. Wells Testifies in the Ghost Town 77

How to Teach Poetry in Chicago Public Schools 79

Lenard Clark Pedals for Air 81

Baby Come On: An Ode to Footwork 83

A Moratorium on the Death Penalty 85

Praise the House Party 87

Día de las Madres 89

Kanye Says What's on Everybody's Mind 91

I Wasn't in Grant Park when Obama Was Elected 93

Republic Windows Workers Sit In 94

The Night the Modern Wing Was Bombed 95

When King Louie First Heard the Word Chiraq 97

An Elegy for Dr. Margaret Burroughs 100

A Dedication to the Inaugural Poet 103

Memoir of the Red X 105

Chief Keef's Epiphany at Lollapalooza 107

Teachers' Strike in the Chicago Tradition 108

During Ramadan the Gates of Heaven Are Open 110

Ms. Devine Explains the Meaning of Modern Art: A Found Poem 112

Two Cities Celebrate Independence Day 113

We Charge Genocide 115

Atoning for the Neo-liberal in All or rahm emanuel as the Chicken on Kapparot 116

400 Days 119

The Night the Cubs Win the World Series 122

Chicago Has My Heart 124

Notes 129

Illustration Credits 131

Acknowledgments 133

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