Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings in Chicago's South Side

Eve L. Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures-they're an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together.



Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched sim...