Future Publics, Current Engagements by eguevara

Chicago, Then and Now

The Chicago teachers’ strike in September 2012 is an important piece of a long history of struggle that defines the city of Chicago. From its earliest days as, in the words of historian William Cronon, in his 1992 book Nature’s Metropolis “a polyglot world of Indian, French, British, and American cultures,” Chicago has been characterized by various struggles over space, power, dignity, justice and equality. In the spring of 1886, for example, Chicago was the heart of a national movement demanding shorter workdays for laborers, as tens of thousands of skilled and unskilled workers walked off the job and marched between May 1 and May 4. The Haymarket riots tragically ended in the deaths of many, but they also inspired the establishment of May 1 as the internationally recognized workers’ day. In May 1894, Pullman rail workers protested paternalistic company policies, wage cuts, and cost of living increases by striking and severely curtailing national railroad traffic through early July. The Pullman strike is significant not only because of the broad national support workers received from organizations like the American Railway Union and its charismatic president Eugene Debs, but also because it reinvigorated calls for increased government regulation and underscored the need for vibrant labor unions to protect workers’ rights. Both then and now, Chicago was fertile terrain for the development of powerful social movements grappling with rapid technological change, the effects of an economic crisis, and critical conversations about the role of government in an increasingly diverse and stratified social context.

In Richard Wright’s introduction to Drake and Cayton’s landmark study of African American urban life, Black Metropolis, (1945), he reflects, “there is an open and raw beauty about [Chicago] that seems either to kill or endow one with the spirit of life. I felt those extremes of possibility, death and hope, while I lived half hungry and afraid in a city to which I had fled with the dumb yearning to write, to tell my story.” Much of twentieth century Chicago is characterized by people fleeing to the city with hope for a better life. By 1900 Chicago was the second largest city in the United States as a result of high levels of immigration as well as internal migration. Eastern and Southern European immigrants arrived to work in the growing industrial economy and meat packing industries, dramatically transforming Chicago into the ethnic city it remains today. And the Great Migration of from the US South from 1910–1960s contributed to the rapid expansion of the city’s African American population that constituted 2%of the population prior to the Great Migration and reached 33% by 1970 (Nicholas Lemann, “Great Migration,” The Encyclopedia of Chicago, 2004). Anti-black racism and anti-immigrant sentiment helped to create rigid spatial boundaries within the city, with a color line that shifted, but was viciously enforced by violence, racial covenants and legal barriers. Referring to Chicago as the “city of neighborhoods,” certainly captures the diversity of twentieth-century Chicago, but it can also mask racial and ethnic tensions and inequality that marginalized the city’s African American, Latino and Asian residents. As in the previous century, Chicago communities strategized, organized, protested and were part of the powerful civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century aimed at dismantling racial segregation, job discrimination, unequal housing, and demanding full citizenship rights and inclusion in city and national government. These vibrant social movements were rooted in the hope and spirit of life Richard Wright referred to and were precisely the spaces that nurtured some of the most radical and original thinkers, organizers, and artists in twentieth century America.

Nineteenth and twentieth century struggles for justice and equity continue into the new millennium with some of the largest, most vibrant social movements taking place in Chicago. The immigrant rights marches of 2006 not only galvanized broader national mobilizations to bring attention to one of the most important issues facing the nation, they inspired, supported and advanced a broader vision and dialogue about citizenship, belonging and the future of the nation. Given this history, I cannot imagine a city better suited to host the 2013 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association and provide a space to contemplate our future publics, current engagements in a historically informed way.

Gina Perez is Eric and Jane Nord associate professor and chair of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College.

Alaka Wali and Dana-Ain Davis are the program chairs for the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting. They may be contacted at 2013aaaprogramchairs@gmail.com

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/future-publics-current-engagements-2/