January 13, 2016 by South Side Weekly

2016

When a Gun is Not a Gun Tasers & the CPD LAQUAN MCDONALD EMAILS, TROY LARAVIERE & MORE INSIDE

South Side Weekly Call for Submissions for Weekly Lit The Weekly plans to begin publishing original poetry by South Side residents on a regular basis. Submit your work for consideration at lit@southsideweekly.com 2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

ÂŹ JANUARY 13, 2016

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side, and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Editor-in-Chief Osita Nwanevu Executive Editor Bess Cohen Managing Editors Jake Bittle, Olivia Stovicek Politics Editor Christian Belanger Education Editor Mari Cohen Music Editor Maha Ahmed Stage & Screen Julia Aizuss Editor Visual Arts Editor Emeline Posner Contributing Editors Lucia Ahrensdorf, Will Cabaniss, Sarah Claypoole, Eleonora Edreva, Lewis Page, Hafsa Razi Sammie Spector Social Media Editors Austin Brown, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Web Editor Andrew Koski Visuals Editor Ellie Mejia Layout Editor Baci Weiler Senior Writer: Stephen Urchick Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Amelia Dmowska, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, Michal Kranz, Zoe Makoul, Zach Taylor Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Finn Jubak, Alexander Pizzirani, Julie Wu Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Webmaster Publisher

Sofia Wyetzner Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com

Cover art by Thumy Phan.

IN CHICAGO A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors Harwood Highs and Lows A listicle recently published on RoadSnacks.net, a Durham, NCbased clickbait website with enticing page categories such as DANGEROUS, WORST, REDNECK, SNOBBIEST, DRUNKEST, and GHETTO, claims to have definitively ranked Chicago’s 10 Worst Suburbs, with south suburb Harwood Heights at #1. The article’s author (and website co-founder) Nick James writes the following: “Harwood Heights has reached new heights when it comes to being a sub-par [sic] place to live.” In a phone interview with the Tribune about the story, James defended his right to free speech, and the article is prefaced with, “This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. Don’t freak out.” But some Harwood Heights citizens have not taken the ranking so lightly. George Assimakopoulos, a lifelong resident of Harwood Heights and an employee of the Harwood Heights Public Works Department, teared up while describing the family-like closeness of the village to the Tribune. “You have no clue how upset I am,” he said. Other residents have also challenged the ranking, citing above-average scores on standardized test scores by Harwood Heights schoolchildren, and John Kritikos, proprietor of the Family Palace restaurant in Harwood Heights, has challenged James to visit the suburb—breakfast on him. From Shoppers to Stockbrokers Downtown has had more than its share of large protests recently, and it’s about to have another. After the success of their recent “Black Friday” and “Black Christmas” protests that blocked thousands of holiday shoppers from accessing Magnificent Mile stores, the organizers of the Coalition for a New Chicago are back, and their new target is the Chi-

cago Board of Trade. Protestors are going to be blocking the buildings of downtown’s Financial District starting at 6am on Friday, in a move meant to pressure the city into taking action against police violence in black communities. The Coalition’s president Rev. Gregory Livingston wants to send a personal message to Mayor Rahm Emanuel with this “Black Wall Street” protest: “Since the mayor has made it clear he only listens to the monied interests in this city, we’re going to take it straight to them." An Overseer for the Aldermen Chicago aldermen are soon to vote on an ordinance that gives Inspector General Joseph Ferguson the power to oversee City Council, in addition to his current oversight over much of the rest of the city government. The vote is expected to pass, a surprising turn of events for a City Council that has a history of resisting oversight and scrutiny. The previous City Council watchdog, Faisal Khan, held the position of Legislative Inspector General, a position that has remained vacant since his contract expired in November 2015. Khan butted heads with both aldermen and the administration during his term, with many accusing him both of being toothless and overreaching. As expected, some are less than pleased about the proposed appointment—4th Ward Alderman Will Burns has expressed concerns that there aren’t enough checks and balances in place to prevent politically motivated abuse. 34th Ward Alderman Carrie Austin argues that giving Ferguson oversight over the City Council would lead to uneven separation of power between City Council and the mayor’s office, the latter of which appoints the Inspector General. Then again, the current alternative is a City Council completely devoid of oversight.

IN THIS ISSUE meeting in the middle

"[Students] got to tell the story of what their neighborhood is and where they come from to people who had no idea about that." kristin lin...4 a reader’s guide to the city’s laquan mcdonald emails

Any member of the public can take a look at what these emails contain. austin brown...6

retelling a segregation story

tasers

Studies suggest that the use of force by Taser-equipped police departments leads to a net increase in police violence overall. michal kranz...8

Sixty years after its initial run, Gordon Parks’ seminal photo essay on segregation and family life opens. kristin lin...10 don’t call it activism

I was going to make America be America, make Chicago as if it was America, make CPS operate as if it’s a part of America. sonia schlesinger...11

JANUARY 13, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Meeting in the Middle TEAM Englewood students find creative freedom across the pond BY KRISTIN LIN

ast April, British poet Deborah ‘Debris’ Stevenson traveled almost four thousand miles to meet her students at TEAM Englewood Academy in person for the first time. In the preceding months, she had worked with TEAM Englewood students through Google Hangout as part of a cross-cultural poetry exchange program piloted and funded by the Poetry Foundation. Throughout the spring of 2015, a group of TEAM Englewood students participated in poetry workshops with a companion class at Bilborough Sixth Form College, a high school in Nottingham, U.K. The two classrooms shared their worlds through webcams, organizing workshops based on the poetry and culture of each city. The exchange, the first of its kind for the Poetry Foundation, culminated in a poetry anthology released last fall. The anthology was not always part of the plan. Initially, the Poetry Foundation approached English teacher Melissa Hughes about organizing an exchange program for her students at TEAM Englewood, where she also coaches the school’s slam poetry team. Hughes saw the program as an opportunity for her students to write more freely about their experiences to an audience without any local biases. “With Englewood, there’s this sort of notoriety [in Chicago] about what the neighborhood is, who lives here, what the young people are like who live here,” said Hughes. “So [students] got to write about and tell the story of what their neighborhood is and where they come from to people who had no preconceived, any idea about that…It wasn’t necessary to qualify any-

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thing. They could just say. That was, I think, a bit of freedom for a few of them.” Hughes worked with Ydalmi Noriega, manager of cross-program initiatives at the Poetry Foundation, to develop a curriculum and format for the exchange program. They hoped to find a classroom in the U.K. that could match Hughes’s group of students— an inner-city classroom with a thriving poetry community. They eventually connected with Stevenson, founder of Nottingham-based youth poetry collective Mouthy Poets, and Jane Bluett, an English teacher at Bilborough Sixth Form College. “[The goal was] to kind of cross-pollinate and make sure that conversations about poetry weren’t just staying at the local level in those classrooms,” said Noriega. Hughes arranged for two teaching artists to lead workshops about the slam scene in Chicago for Bilborough students; Bluett and Stevenson, on the other hand, collaborated to teach the Chicago students about the poetry community in Nottingham. “When the [Englewood] students were talking about [race] and the way it manifested itself over there, and the violence they’ve encountered or the violence they’ve heard about, they were very honest about that,” said Cara Thompson, a student at Bilborough. “I really appreciated that, and I appreciated their honesty. It made me want to be more honest as well, as a poet.” Dallas Battle, who was a senior at TEAM Englewood last academic year, used the workshop process to discover what she shared with Nottingham students. “Even though [they’re] far, far away from us, I learned that we have the same essential problems.”

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The technology and transatlantic communication sometimes hindered the exchange rather than facilitating it. All three instructors cited technological difficulties as a barrier to more effective workshops. Stevenson, for example, recalled having difficulty teaching to two audiences, one live and another connected through a webcam. Glitches aside, Stevenson said that the virtual workshops did contribute to the success of the program. “It united them in a way,” said Stevenson. “In that space, what we were concerned about was the quality of the writing and the reading.” In her original vision, Hughes had hoped that the students would visit each other’s classrooms, but the funding fell through. However, the Poetry Foundation’s budget for the program did allow Hughes and Stevenson to travel and lead workshops in each other’s classrooms. Battle recalled finally meeting Stevenson in Chicago. “She just lit up the room, and she just immediately started talking about poetry and us getting down to business,” she said. By the end of the spring semester, both classrooms had accumulated a wealth of poems. When the idea for an anthology was floated, the program leaders were quick to embrace it. “I think it’s really good to see that there’s an outcome and that they have ownership over that,” said Stevenson. “If you don’t have that tangible thing, then it can be difficult to remember what happened and remember the value of it.” The result was Middle Ground, a collection of poems written by the exchange participants—fourteen poets from Bilbor-

ough and seven from TEAM Englewood. Nottingham-based publishers Big White Shed and Mud Press compiled and edited the anthology over the summer of 2015. Big White Shed founder Anne Holloway, who has worked with Stevenson through her collective Mouthy Poets, delivered a hundred copies of the anthology to Bilborough College in October. As they flipped through the anthology, Bilborough students saw their work in a bound book for the first time. “Just actually holding the poetry collection was crazy because I don’t think any of us had been published before,” said Thompson, who is now in her last year at Bilborough. “So to see a physical copy of your work was incredible.” TEAM Englewood students were equally moved. Battle said she used to be a perfectionist with her writing, but that reading the anthology changed that. “It was really good and really touching,” she said, “because now I know that even my thoughts and even just the little things I think are still impressive.” Though the Poetry Foundation does not plan to fund another exchange, Battle will remember the lessons she learned during the making of Middle Ground. “Now I write every day and I run my own blog, and it’s just really, really cool knowing that people actually like the little things I have to say,” she said. She is now a college freshman hoping to study journalism. “It was really Debris [Stevenson] and publishing my stuff…[that made] me feel like I can actually do this.”

BOOKS The poetry anthology Middle Ground is the result of an exchange between a group of TEAM Englewood students and a class at Bilborough Sixth Form College in Nottingham, UK. Two poems are excerpted below.

Teaching My Mother To Give Birth. DALLAS BATTLE TEAM Englewood

Shouldn’t have had me. I’m already formed, so just push. Don’t push me away but push me into the world till I know how to push. Pushing thoughts out along with people along with dreams people have given me.

My Mum Has a Cup of Tears CODI HART Bilborough Sixth Form College

My mum has a cup of tears which she likes to embarrassingly show off to the world. My mum cries a cup of tears every time she goes to Weightwatchers and she’s put on weight. My mum takes her cup of tears everywhere and holds it over her face. My mum cries a cup of tears when I don’t like my dad’s cooking. My mum keeps the same cup out of fear of losing something important. My mum’s cup of tears leads her to be treated like the family bitch, but she won’t do anything about it but cry another cup. My mum would gladly pour her cup and cry another one for someone. My mum has a cup of tears to prove that she gave a shit when no one else did. My mum doesn’t cry a cup of tears out of being ashamed. She holds her cup up high. My mum wants there to be a tradition of having a cup of tears. My mum has dedication for her cup, she likes to cry in it at least twice a day. My mum cries out of love for her disgrace of a family and cries from sadness when they die, doesn’t feel ashamed of it but cries another cup. My mum gives me cups at funerals and weddings, and cries in hers when she sees it empty. My mum encourages free feelings but married my stone-hearted dad. My mum cries a lot, she cries for everyone, even if we don’t want to cry. Written on May 5, in response to reading ‘Daddy Dozens’ by Jamila Woods

JANUARY 13, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

A Readers' Guide to the City's Laquan McDonald Emails BY AUSTIN BROWN

n December 31, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from multiple media outlets, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office released approximately three thousand pages of emails relating to the now well-known shooting of Laquan McDonald and subsequent release of the dash-cam video of the event. However, access to this correspondence is not limited to reporters: any member of the public can take a look at what these emails contain. For those inclined to do so, the Weekly has gathered here some of the main characters in the glossary below, along with an annotated excerpt of the emails. Laquan McDonald: South Side seventeen-year-old who was shot sixteen times by Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014. Jason Van Dyke: Officer of the Chicago Police Department, indicted for the first-degree murder of Laquan McDonald. Rahm Emanuel: Mayor of Chicago.

Non-government parties

Jamie Kalven: Journalist and activist, founder of the Invisible Institute. With Craig Futterman, was part of the original team pushing for release of the Laquan McDonald video. Also primary party in Kalven v. Chicago, the successful suit he brought against the City of Chicago that led to release of previous police misconduct records. Brandon Smith cited the suit as one inspiration for his suit against the City of Chicago for the Laquan McDonald video. Craig Futterman: Faculty at the University of Chicago Law School, founder of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. With Jamie Kalven, was part of the original team pushing for release of the video. Brandon Smith: Independent Chicago journalist responsible for suing the city of Chicago, leading to the November 24 release of the video. Michael Robbins and Jeffrey Neslund: Attorneys for the family of Laquan McDonald. At the behest of both family of Laquan McDonald and legal office of the City of Chicago, they eventually decided not to pursue the public release of the video. The family settled a suit against the city for $5 million dollars. Mary Mitchell: Chicago Sun-Times reporter and editorial columnist. Ted Cox: DNAinfo City Hall reporter.

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Mayor’s Office

David Spielfogel: Senior mayoral advisor. Chicago Magazine ranked him twenty-third on their list of the 100 most powerful Chicagoans in 2015, calling him a “mini-Rahm.” Eileen Mitchell: Chief of staff. Kenneth Bennett: Deputy chief of staff and Director of the Office of Public Engagement. Chicago Magazine ranked him sixty-fifth on the same list as Spielfogel, citing his efforts to “repair his frayed relations with community leaders and residents, particularly blacks.” Also Chance the Rapper’s father. Kelley Quinn: Chief spokeswoman, director of communications. Adam Collins: Deputy director of communications. Janey Rountree: Deputy chief of staff for public safety. Clothilde Ewing: Chief of strategic planning. Melissa Green: Washington intergovernmental affairs director.

City of Chicago Law Office

Stephen Patton: Corporation counsel for the City of Chicago. Thomas Platt: Deputy corporation counsel for the City of Chicago.

Chicago Police Department

Anthony Guglielmi: Director of communications. Garry McCarthy: Former police superintendent, fired by Emanuel on December 1. Replaced by John Escalante, a thirty-year veteran of the CPD.

IPRA

Scott Ando: Former head of the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) who resigned on December 6. Replaced by Sharon Fairley, a former federal prosecutor.

Organizations IPRA: Independent Police Review Authority, an agency founded in 2007 to investigate cases of alleged misconduct by CPD officers. Multiple organizations, including the Better Government Association, have criticized them for the prolonged length of their investigations and method for determining fault: of the four hundred police shootings IPRA has ever investigated, only one was found to be unjustified. BGA: Better Government Association, an activist organization centered on Illinois government accountability and general government transparency. Invisible Institute: Activism and journalism organization based on the South Side. Focused on promoting visibility for the South Side and addressing perceived human rights violations through journalism, law, and public art projects. (The Weekly has collaborated with the Invisible Institute in a number of capacities.) Task Force on Police Accountability: Announced December 1 from the Mayor’s office, this task force is meant to review the current amount of training and accountability at the CPD. At the helm are four former lawyers with experience in the state of Illinois and a former state police director. Redactions: The City of Chicago Freedom of Information Act FAQ says “in some instances, private information may be redacted from government records, allowing the records to be released under FOIA.”

POLITICS

Five days before the Laquan McDonald video release, discussion in the Emanuel office focused on likability and putting a positive spin on public perception of the mayor’s office, testing out different ideas like the one explored in the below emails. Also, notice the time stamps: these emails are presented in reverse chronological order. Read this thread from the bottom up.

The subject of a demonstration involving red mortar board caps was brought up only minimally after this email conversation.

Representatives and advisors for Emanuel often workshopped responses in-email among themselves. It is unclear whether many proposals and ideas ever reached Emanuel himself.

One of the Emanuel administration's primary concerns, when discussing the release of the video, was widespread panic and unrest.

Grady is a preeminent Chicago lawyer, friend of Steve Patton. He is unaffiliated with the City of Chicago, the Mayor’s Office, and the CPD.

OFFICE OF THE MAYOR

JANUARY 13, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

Bringing Back the Taser

Faced with a need for reform, the CPD turns to a familiar weapon

The X2

BY MICHAL KRANZ

n December 30, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the Chicago Police Department will add an additional seven hundred Tasers to the force by June of this year, bringing the CPD’s number of stun guns to fourteen hundred. Officers will also be trained in de-escalation tactics that emphasize nonviolent confrontation methods. This announcement comes after weeks of intense criticism of the police department, the city government, and Emanuel himself after the video of Laquan McDonald being shot by Officer Jason Van Dyke was released to the public in November. Part of the impetus for this expansion of Tasers comes from the fact that officers involved in the McDonald shooting had requested that a Taser be brought to the scene. This request was never fulfilled, leading to speculation about what might have happened had the officers had access to such a device. The hope behind this move by the CPD seems to stem from an assumption that officers would use Tasers instead of firearms in tense situations, thus preventing shooting deaths while allowing officers to exert control over suspects or detainees. Acting superintendent John Escalante, who took over following Garry McCarthy’s recent firing, said that additional training should emphasize such methods. "We expect that every police officer develops skills and abilities that allow them to help dissolve confrontations by using the least amount of physical or lethal force," he said at a press conference December 30. "There's a difference between whether someone can use a gun and when they should use a gun.” The use of Tasers by police departments in the United States has risen rapidly over the last fifteen years. In 2000, only about seven percent of departments used the weapons, but by 2015 this number had risen to eighty percent, according to the Department of Justice. Taser International, the manufacturer of the eponymous stun guns, claims that their products have “saved more than 155,000 people,” and maintains that Tasers are safer 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

alternatives to live guns. Taser International has also begun concentrating efforts on manufacturing body cameras and marketing them to police departments as a way for police officers to tell “their side of the story,” as reported by Harper’s magazine. These body cameras have recently become the focus of a national debate about solutions to police brutality, and have been endorsed by advocates of reform in Chicago and elsewhere. This year, in addition to Tasers, the CPD will be broadening its use of body cameras and dash-cams in six of its police districts. But despite Taser’s assertions and investment in other police reform mechanisms, the reality of Taser safety is complex. According to a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice, a standard five- to fifteen-second Taser shock does not pose significant long-term health risks when tested in a controlled environment, with subjects who are calm and in good health. However, according to Amnesty International, repeated or longer shocks can produce adverse and potentially deadly affects, and even single shocks can produce lethal results in people who are under the influence of substances, are not in proper health, or whose bodies are in “fight or flight” mode. In a 2012 study published by the medical journal Circulation, shots to the chest are especially dangerous and can cause cardiac arrest. Amnesty International concluded in the aforementioned study that police had killed over five hundred people with Tasers since 2001. The timing of this announcement from the CPD is even more curious given the December release of another police video, this time from 2012, depicting mentally ill man Philip Coleman being repeatedly shocked with a Taser by Chicago police officers in his jail cell. Coleman died of his injuries the following day. The incident, which has elicited considerable criticism, occurred just after Chicago increased its Taser arsenal for the first time in 2011, during a period when CPD Taser use (predictably) skyrocketed. As for the effectiveness of Tasers in re-

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ducing deaths and injuries, a Department of Justice study of several police departments found that Tasers can lead to fewer officer and suspect injuries than pepper spray, batons, or bodily force. A 2009 study by the Police Executive Research Forum found that injuries to police officers decrease by seventy-six percent when the officers use Tasers. However, Tasers have continued to appear in high-profile cases of police brutality, which suggests that rather than using Tasers as an alternative to lethal force, often police officers in Chicago and across the country have used Tasers in situations that may not have required any force at all, unnecessarily escalating routine encounters like traffic stops. Sandra Bland, who infamously died in police custody last year, was threatened with a Taser during a traffic stop, and in 2014 two Hammond, Indiana police officers were investigated by the Department of Justice for firing a Taser at a woman inside her car during a stop. What's more, a 2009 study on the impact of stun weapons from the University of California San Francisco Medical Center found that the introduction of Tasers in California police departments increased sudden deaths and could have increased police shootings by escalating confrontations. This complicates the narrative presented by the CPD and Taser International, which presents Tasers as a lesser evil that can be used to prevent more grievous acts of violence. An analysis done by the Chicago Tribune in 2012 just after the 2011 Taser expansion found that Taser use jumped from 197 uses in 2009 to 857 in 2011, but shootings by police did not significantly decrease. While there were 114 shootings in 2009 and 109 in 2011, the number of shots that reached their target actually increased from 56 in 2009 to 58 in 2011. From 2010 to 2015, Chicago police have fatally shot 70 people, more than any other police department in the country, despite the introduction of Tasers in 2011.

ILLUSTRAT ANNOTATIO

These probes travel up to thirty-five feet and penet subject’s clothing, establ a conductor for the electric charge. This is how Tasers from normal “stun guns”: th don’t need direct contact i der to shock their target. (B also possible to shock som without the probes by drivi Taser directly into their bod cases where the target is w ing heavy clothing, howeve the probes are often unabl penetrate far enough.

Once the probe the Taser releas tric charge tha the parallel line probes and ent body. The char thousand volts trical outlet is a volts) but decre by the time it re get’s body.

POLICING

TION BY JULIE XU ONS BY JAKE BITTLE

Taser International only manufactures a few models of Taser; the X26 is by far the most popular among police departments and civilians. The “X26c” model, available for purchase by the public, has a smaller voltage and a smaller probe range.

Like a gun, the Taser is fired by aiming down the sights and pulling a trigger. The battery on the X26, located at the rear of the weapon, contains enough charge for about three hundred shots, but the probes can only be discharged once or twice before a reload is necessary.

o trate a lishing cal s differ hey in orBut it’s meone ing the dy.) In wearer, le to

es make contact, ses an elecat travels down e created by the ters the target’s rge begins at fifty (a normal elecabout a hundred eases substantially eaches the tar-

The charge can have different effect depending on the size, health, and clothing of the target, but in general it shuts down the body’s neuromuscular systems. This effectively paralyzes the target for up to thirty seconds. Contrary to popular belief, the charge is not designed to cause the target pain, but rather to contract the target’s muscles and prevent him or her from escaping or attacking.

In an accountability feature that foreshadows Taser International’s later development of police body cameras, the Taser releases tiny discs that record the serial number of the weapon in order to create a record of how and where the weapon was used.

The X26 model comes equipped with an LED flashlight and a laser pointer that indicates where the probes are aimed.

JANUARY 13, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

VISUAL ARTS

COURTESY & COPYRIGHT OF THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION

Left: Gordon Parks, “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama, 1956". Right: Gordon Parks, “Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama, 1956".

Retelling a Segregation Story The Rhona Hoffman Gallery brings Gordon Parks’s seminal photographs to Chicago BY KRISTIN LIN Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton Sr., arms folded like cross-stitches across their laps, stare forward on page 98 of Life magazine’s September 24, 1956 issue. Photojournalist and writer Gordon Parks photographed the elderly black couple while on assignment in Mobile, Alabama, where he spent several weeks photographing the four-generation family to document life in the segregated south. Photographs from this seminal photo essay, entitled “A Segregation Story,” are framed and on display at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in the West Loop. Hoffman, who had been approached by the Gordon Parks Foundation about featuring Parks’s work in her gallery, handpicked seventeen prints from Parks’s work. Life ran only twenty of Parks’s photos, 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

but the total number of pictures taken of the Thornton family exceeded 200. While images of prominent political figures and depictions of poverty within African-American communities often permeate the telling and retelling of the Jim Crow South, this exhibition of Parks’s work for Life emphasizes something else: the insidiousness of segregation, folded into the tender moments of family life. “A Segregation Story” is Parks’s account of how the political project of segregation was introduced to successive generations, not just through the law, but also through what today seem the most innocent of objects—drinking fountains and department stores; dolls and mannequins; houses and convenience stores.

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Parks focused often, but not exclusively, on the quiet lives of the oppressed and silenced in his photojournalism. The first African-American staff photographer at Life, Parks covered a wide range of social issues and subjects, from race relations and poverty to Marilyn Monroe and Malcolm X. His work spanned six decades, from when his career started in the early 1940s until his death in 2006; his legacy includes not just his photography, but also his work as an award-winning composer, author, and filmmaker. Parks may have traveled all over the world for his work, but Chicago and the South Side Community Art Center in Bronzeville served as a brief but important base for his early career.

Parks arrived in Chicago in 1940 from St. Paul, where he had lived since his adolescence. “Before long I had deserted the waterfronts, skyscrapers and canals for Chicago’s south side—the city’s sprawling black belt,” writes Parks in his autobiography Voices in the Mirror. “And there among the squalid, rickety tenements that housed the poor, a new way of seeing and feeling opened up to me….[my subjects in Chicago] convinced me that even the cheap camera I had bought was capable of making a serious comment on the human condition.” Parks’s first darkroom was in the basement of the South Side Community Art Center. He gave credit to his 1941 exhibition at the SSCAC for catching the attention of the

EDUCATION

Parks may have traveled all over the world for his work, but Chicago and the South Side Community Art Center in Bronzeville served as a brief but important base for his early career. Rosenwald Fellowship, which launched his project documenting rural American life for the Farm Security Administration. According to the SSCAC, Parks “maintain[ed] a relationship with the Center throughout his life.” Hoffman estimated that just under 1,000 people attended the opening reception for “Gordon Parks: A Segregation Story, 1956” last Friday evening, seventy-five years after his first Chicago exhibition. “I don’t think we’ve ever had close to 1,000 people at any opening,” said Hoffman, who opened her gallery in the West Loop in 1976. “The age group was from college age into the eighties, so just very, very rewarding.” Rhonda Brown brought her two sons to the exhibition. “The segregation piece is something that they have never experienced or really seen,” said Brown. “I also like the idea of them seeing segregation through art and how that was. It was real, that time.” Brown’s seventeen-year-old son Avery identified “Outside Looking In, Mobile Alabama, 1956” as his favorite piece in the exhibition. The backs of six African-American children line the foreground of the image, their fingers hooked onto the chain-link fence separating them from a small carnival in the blurred distance, where white parents stood waiting for their children to finish their ride. The largest print at the exhibition was the most expensive and perhaps the most famous of all. Priced at $50,000, “Department Store, Mobile, Alabama” captures a mother and her daughter, dressed in lace and ribbons, standing in front of department store doors. Daylight has not yet faded, but neon-lit signs fill the street—and most prominently featured is the one that looms over the two subjects: “Colored Entrance.” Its square frame stretch-

es almost four feet in width, giving the image a sizable presence in the gallery despite its placement in the back corner. Opening night was not the first time that Chicago-based artist Clifton Henri had seen “Department Store” in person. He also saw the image at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. His history with Parks’s work goes even further back—his first encounter with “Department Store” was as a high school student with a budding interest in photography. Parks was “one of the inspirations for me even becoming a photographer,” said Henri, who is now a portrait and documentary photographer himself. “I see my aunt, I see my grandmother’s sister” in the photograph, said Henri.“And just being able to see my family or see my friends or see my elders and influences in the work and represented well is important. It had a dramatic effect on me to kind of do the same—to take photographs and present the culture in a beautiful light.” Sixty years after the Thornton family stared out from the pages of Life, the images from “A Segregation Story” exist as reminder of a tangible past that America has been trying to shed since the Civil Rights Movement. Parks’s photography and legacy of documenting racism and oppression resonate all the more deeply with its contemporary audience for this reason, challenging us to stare back and fight forward. Rhona Hoffman Gallery, 118 N. Peoria St. Open through Saturday, February 20. Tuesday–Friday, 10am–5:30pm; Saturday, 11am–5:30pm. Free. (312) 455-1990. Rhonahoffmangallery. com

Don’t Call It Activism Troy LaRaviere on racial realities and the responsibilities of a school BY SONIA SCHLESINGER

roy LaRaviere, principal of Lakeview’s Blaine Elementary School, has made a name for himself as the CPS employee who speaks out. Heavily critical of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, standardized testing, charter schools, and much more, LaRaviere was formally reprimanded by the Board of Education in August. He has overseen significant academic growth at Blaine, however, winning the mayor’s principal merit pay award for three consecutive years. LaRaviere, the son of a mother from the North Side and a father from the South Side, grew up with his four siblings and single mother all over the South Side. He has taught in a wide variety of schools both in Champaign and Chicago, and currently resides in Beverly. The Weekly spoke to LaRaviere recently about his childhood, his job, and his activism.

’m from Chicago. I went to Chicago Public Schools—four of them. Altgeld, Sherman, Carter, and Mollison were the elementary schools and then there was Dunbar High School. My mother is white and my father is black. She was born and raised on the North Side. Five of us kids. After she became pregnant with my oldest brother, Michael, she was told she had to leave the North Side and couldn’t bring the kid in the house. So she left with pretty much no high school education and had to make a life for herself. She moved to South Side, was homeless for a while, had me and my other brothers and sisters. She was the only white person for miles but it was a pretty much basic life of an impoverished single family household in the slums on the South Side. I moved all over. We were in Englewood, Back of the Yards, Washington Park, Bronzeville. I ended up going to the vocational high school, a trade school; that’s what Dunbar was for, kids who decided college was not their path. My mother would send us to our grandparents’ house in a working class area of Auburn Gresham, now West Englewood, every weekend and all summer long, and that’s where I met a girl who would later become my girlfriend, who went to Whitney

Young. She was completely my opposite: I was one of five in a single-parent household, she was an only child with two parents. She was going to college from the day she was born. We both graduated in ’87 and she went off to [the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] and I went off to the US Navy. And I got out and she kept trying to convince me to go to college. My time in the Navy was pretty powerful in terms of me making the decision to speak up [against the Emanuel administration]. I was out there risking my life thousands of miles away for the freedoms we tell our kids they have in eighth grade constitution class. There was no way I was going to be out there and then relinquish those freedoms to an elected official and his board of education—no way in hell that would happen. I was going to make America be America, make Chicago as if it was America, make CPS operate as if it’s a part of America or force it to say, “No, we’re not.” Eventually I applied to college and was accepted to U of I and I remember being quite petrified that I was there. And [my girlfriend] gave me a book she was reading for a class: The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Barack Obama talks about that effect that book had on him in Dreams from My Father

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and it had a similar effect on me, just the constant trying to become a better human. And after I read it, I bought two books— I’ve never forgotten this. I went and bought a book called They Stole It But You Must Return It, which is a book about black history and culture, and this other book called How to Get Straight A’s. And those three books shaped the next three decades of my life. I remember reading that Straight A’s book from cover to cover, taking detailed notes. I took it seriously because I was petrified. I was suffering from “stereotype fright”: as a member of a marginalized group that is stereotyped not to perform well in a certain type of activity, you will shy away from it. And as an African-American at the U of I, where a majority of students classify themselves as white, I had internalized it. But I had my girlfriend and the books. And I’ll never forget my first semester: straight A’s, and the same the second and third semesters, and I thought, “I almost didn’t come here,” you know. I thought about my life. What was it about my experience growing up in America, in Illinois, on the South Side, that led to that false assessment of myself ? I realized I don’t want to make the same mistake society does and blame everything on schools. But those were the parts of my life I had most control over, and I decided to change my major and do teaching and decided no student like me would come through my classroom and leave it without a sense of who they are and what they could accomplish. I was lucky that I had someone else there to push me and I would be that for others. My first year teaching was typical. I struggled and I realized that teaching was a science. You don’t get into teaching and survive on motivation alone. I went back to the U of I after the first year to get a master’s and did my second year of teaching six years after my first, then did a PhD program. I’ve worked in majority Latino schools, black schools, and all of them have been pretty much high quality, mostly on the West Side

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and South Side. When Blaine Elementary School called about hiring me, one of my references called me and said they asked him some interesting questions. One was “If we bring him in as our principal, how would you recommend we introduce him to our community,” —essentially to all these people defined as white. The person who was my reference felt like that was kind of insulting, but I wasn’t insulted by it. I know where I live and I think too often we like to act like we don’t live in a place that has, you know, 300 years of slavery and segregation and red lining and “separate but equal.” We have to stop acting shocked every time we see the product of that culture—you know, we live in America, you’re gonna have that. It’s a part of who we became. You can’t get upset. But when they voted to hire me they welcomed me in, all saying “We’re looking forward to seeing you,” “So good to see you,” just one person after another in an audience mostly with people defined as white. Fifty years ago my mother had to leave the North Side because of the color of one of her sons and now another one of her sons was being brought back into the North Side with one of the most important responsibilities you can give to a person—authority over schools—and I thought about her and how proud she would have been and that made it very meaningful. My results were unparalleled. One of the things I was proud about was growth and we were one of only four schools to make improvements in three of four categories and one stat after another like that. I have done more as principal of Blaine than I could have ever done had I remained working on the West or South Side. But I knew there was some reason for me to be there—we were able to use the cultural capital and financial capital and organize the capital here at Blaine to positively affect schools.

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hen we start talking about CPS and worse and better [schools], there has to be an entire shift in terms of what we think of as a good school. I believe in evidence-based education practice. I would love to say that I came to Blaine with all these wonderful innovative practices. I came in and did what the evidence and research says you do. When these international surveys come out a politician says, “Look how horrible [the US is] doing; we’re like twentieth [in education],” one of the things they never do is look at countries above us and say, “What does that evidence say they are doing?” Well, one thing is that none of the ones at the top track their students as early and systematically as we do, within or between schools. Tracking means one group gets an advanced curriculum, another doesn’t, and when you have a curriculum like that, you automatically ensure that you have an achievement gap, particularly

ZELDA GALEWSKY

when most [students who are] getting the more advanced curriculum are relatively homogeneous in terms of social background. But there’s a lot that has to happen to change it because we have this belief system that’s been cultivated. We live in a country that has a history of beliefs about race and class that spread into a system with tracking. You know, at Blaine we’re not taking advanced curriculums away from those who traditionally got it. We’re expanding other students’ access to it to the point where over ninety percent of our kids have access to an advanced curriculum and as a result their performance increases, at least as measured by tests. I think that something similar and deliberate needs to happen at a district level. You have to take into account the false cultural beliefs that people have and understand that just because they’re false doesn’t mean you ignore them because those false beliefs are going

EDUCATION

Too often we like to act like we don’t live in a place that has, you know, 300 years, of slavery and segregation and red lining and separate but equal. We have to stop acting shocked every time we see the product of that culture. to affect behavior whether you yourself have them or not. The data shows that CPS is in the middle, fiftieth percentile—those are the students we get. So the failing system is a false narrative. It’s that people in the communities they come from are already behind. How can a kid three years behind on day one be the fault of that school? Teachers are still giving kids the chance to grow— under tremendously adverse circumstances. The problem is that they come to us so far behind and we don’t have a process and support structures in place for that. That’s where the mayor comes in. You know, he doesn’t like to look at himself. He represents a group of interests like banks who have access to the purse strings that he has on CPS and City Hall so that when they design education policy it has very little to do with evidence, my holy grail. They come in with economic theories based on no evidence that allow businesses to profit and that’s what this mayor is about. Emanuel represents companies that want to profit off our school system. And if he goes they’ll put someone else up to represent their interests, so it’s not just a Rahm Emanuel thing.

think the word “activist” marginalizes people. I’m a principal and part of my job is to influence policy that impacts my students. I don’t consider myself an activist, but a good principal who is living up to my responsibilities. Wherever I’ve gone I’ve seen parents who love their children and want the best for them and advocate the best they know how. And what I’ve seen is, in the school I am at now, the resources that they’re able to bring to children’s education not only in school but before they ever arrive are quite different. I remember my third year teaching I got a kid in trouble and the mother happened to be at school and she was just irate at me. I remember looking at her daughter’s percentile rank on ISAT [Illinois Standards Achievement Test]. It was thirteen and I looked at that woman and said “Ma’am, do you know what your daughter’s reading scores are?” That ended the conversation and she walked away. It was a real gut-shaking moment for me and I got extremely serious about thinking of a program for her that would take that thirteenth to something far higher, and I remember going home and spending my entire Thanksgiving break pouring over books and novels and reading programs, feeling like I

hadn’t challenged my kids enough. As much as I said I believed, if I really did I would be doing more, so I put together a reading program for her and decided to do it for every kid in the classroom. That classroom grew so much that year with kids going from forty-second to ninety-second percentile—and I’ll never forget—she went from thirteen to fifty. Still, the difference I could’ve made would’ve been much larger if they had gotten what they needed in that developmental stage before school ever begins.

hen I was in Champaign there was a kid… people basically called him my son and I did everything for him. They were about to expel him. I spent that entire year putting my heart and soul into him in particular— when school was out I’d go running and put him in my bike. I’d take him out to dinner with my wife, take him and his family out. You know, his mother had issues, father not around, brother headed to jail, and you can do all you want in the school. But I’ll never forget—I dropped him off at his house and his door was wide open so I walked into the house and there was no one there. It just gave me the strong belief that what I’m able to do in school doesn’t matter. When he goes home that’s a far greater influence on him than I will ever be, and if I wanted to be an influence I had to be there for him. I moved to Chicago the next year, got a job as a middle school teacher. He was still in Champaign, and a few years later he was in jail. It gave me a sense that our politicians and policymakers put way too much emphasis on schools and blame schools for their failure to enact policies that change people’s livelihoods and day-to-day conditions outside the school. That’s one of the reasons I feel that it’s necessary for me to speak up about larger policy issues that affect what my kids are able to do—things that I can’t address directly as teacher or principal but can articulate my understanding of to the public to influence policy.

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BULLETIN Taller Comunitario: Conocer y Proteger Sus Derechos Our Lady of Guadalupe UACC, 2955 W. 25th St. Friday, January 15, 6:30pm–8:30pm. Free. (773) 410-4625. Do you know how to respond to an immigration raid in your home, workplace, or neighborhood? This month, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials will reportedly increase raids on families who have recently arrived from Central America. First Defense Legal Aid will teach you about immigrant rights and response strategies in this evening workshop. For more information, contact Rev. Kim Ziyavo at (773) 410-4625 or KimZ4Justice@gmail.com. (Christine Schmidt)

Rights Lab at High Concept Labs High Concept Labs, 2233 S. Throop St. Saturday, January 16, 6:30pm-8:30pm. Free. highconceptlaboratories.org The first in a series of workshops on citizens’ rights in the twenty-first century will explore government surveillance of cell phone communications. A series of informational and interactive videos will “illuminate” how Stingray surveillance technology works on the streets of Chicago. ( Jake Bittle)

The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Anti-War Movement 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Sunday, January 17, 3pm. Free. (773) 684-1300. semcoop.com Four decades have passed since U.S. boots retreated from Vietnamese ground, but the Vietnam War and the counterculture that challenged it remain a crucial case study for non-interventionists and pacifists. Organizer and Yippie cofounder Nancy Kurshan will discuss the war with Frank Joyce and Bill Ayers in support of her new book on the topic. (Christopher Good)

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Screening of At the River I Stand Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Sunday, January 17. Reception 5pm; screening 5:30pm. (312) 852-7717. uri-eichen.com The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 has fixed itself in the public memory, while the Poor People’s Campaign and the Memphis sanitation workers strike that led up to his death tend to be forgotten. This screening of a documentary about the strike will be followed by a discussion. (Adam Thorp)

Kimberly Foxx at the Institute of Politics Institute of Politics, 5707 S. Woodlawn Ave. Tuesday, January 19, noon–1pm. Free. RSVP required. (773) 834-4671. politics.uchicago.edu In the wake of calls for the firing of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez over the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, Kimberly Foxx, who will challenge Alvarez for the position this coming March, has begun to receive more media attention. Come hear Foxx discuss juvenile reform, the school-to-prison pipeline, and probably her upcoming campaign. ( Jake Bittle)

Put the Guns Down 2016 Protest Chicago Police Headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave. Sunday, January 24, 3pm–7pm.

In a networking event hosted by the Coalition for Justice and Respect, African-American LGBTQ attendees will attempt to bridge the gap between the community’s needs and their resources. Several speakers, including public and elected officials, will be addressing politics, faith, health, equality, and marriage. (Zoe Makoul)

VISUAL ARTS Not a Bug Splat: Artists Against Drone Warfare Uri-Eichen Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted Ave. Opening reception Friday, January 15, 6pm– 10pm. Free. (312) 852-7717. uri-eichen.com From a drone’s eye view of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, you would see a massive poster depicting a young girl: an artist’s appeal to pilots smiting civilians. “Not a Bug Splat” will display photographs of the installation, and the opening reception will include a screening of the whistleblower documentary Citizenfour and a panel chaired by local activists. (Christopher Good)

National Wet Paint Biennial Zhou B. Art Center, 1029 W. 35th St. Opening reception Friday, January 15, 7pm–10pm. Through Saturday, February 13. Free. (773) 523-0200. wetpaintmfa.com

This protest against gun violence, organized by Chicago youth, will begin at CPD headquarters and make its way through Englewood to 79th Street. Attendees are encouraged to bring balloons and memorabilia to remember loved ones lost to gun violence. The protest will culminate in a prayer vigil and balloon release to honor the victims of gun and gang-related violence. (Zoe Makoul)

The Zhou B. Art Center will display the work of students and recent graduates from some of the country's foremost MFA programs in the National Wet Paint Biennial. The “wet paint” is as fresh as the students’ artistic ideas and provides an avenue for young artists to display their work and love of painting. (Kezie Nwachukwu)

State of African American Same Gender Loving Black LGBTQ Chicago Address

ACS Gallery, Zhou B. Art Center, fourth floor. 1029 W. 35th St. Friday, January 15, 7pm–10pm. Free. acs-mag.com

Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St. Sunday, January 31, 2pm–4pm. (773) 340-3751.

The graffiti art of international street artist Zorzorzor poignantly portrays women and has been featured in galleries from

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Zorzorzor

Berlin to Brooklyn—and now, Bridgeport. Zorzorzor’s solo exhibition at ACS Gallery on Friday will also be coupled with relaxing live music. (Chigozie Nwachukwu)

Stories Without Words: Geometric Abstraction Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St. Opening reception Friday, January 15, 7pm–10pm. Free. (773) 247-3000. bridgeportart.com It is said that Claude Debussy once called music “the space between the notes.” “Stories Without Words” transposes this mentality from the sonic to the visual. The curators of this exhibition joke that “geometric abstraction is to abstraction as veganism is to vegetarianism”—but there’s nothing bare-bones about the project’s conceptual underpinnings. (Christopher Good)

Call for Entries: Bridgeport Art Center’s 4th Annual Art Competition Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St. Application deadline January 30. $35 application fee. Applicants must be over eighteen and live within a 150 mile radius of Chicago. (773) 247-3000. bridgeportart.com Looking to showcase your art or earn up to $1000 in prize money? Mary Ellen Croteau and William Lieberman will judge artwork in six categories, selecting the best pieces for display in the Bridgeport Art Center’s fourth floor gallery. Submit yours today! (Sara Cohen)

MUSIC Glen David Andrews The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Saturday, January 16, doors 7pm, show 8pm. $15-$25. 21+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com Get down to brass tacks and celebrate the Louis Armstrong Festival’s “Satchmo Saturdays” with one of the greatest talents New Orleans has to offer: renowned blues trombonist Glen David Andrews. If that weren’t enough, the Dirt Red Brass Band’s

CALENDAR foot-stomping opening set should seal the deal. (Christopher Good)

A$AP Ferg The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Saturday, January 16, doors 10pm. $27.50 early bird, $35 general admission. 21+. (312) 753-5700. theshrinechicago.com A$AP Mob’s stout, boisterous lieutenant to A$AP Rocky’s prettyboy general, the Trap Lord himself A$AP Ferg hits up the South Side after his show at Uptown’s Aragon Ballroom with this special after-party at The Shrine, DJ’d by local mixtape legend The Kid Sean Mac. Ferg, one of the most sonically creative rappers in the game, should make this an after-party to remember. (Sam Stecklow)

Hug Chicago The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, January 17, 5pm. $20-$30. 18+. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com It might not be possible to hug an entire city—but it’s certainly possible to have a good time at the Promontory’s “Hug Chicago” event, thanks to headlining rapper GLC, a Kanye collaborator since The College Dropout days. GLC will be supported by Foster & Jack, a genre-bending trio of rappers and producers with a knack for live synths and guitar. (Christopher Good)

General Zod at Reggies Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St. Wednesday, January 20, 8pm. $5. 21+. (312) 9490120. reggieslive.com As it applies to the five-piece fusion band General Zod, fusion seems to mean a fusion of literally anything with anything else—from Jean Luc Ponty to Tony Williams. In this local band’s lineup, an accomplished violinist heads a group of rock instrumentalists. Zod will be joined by Shawn Maxwell’s New Tomorrow alt-jazz quartet. ( Jake Bittle)

Ginuwine The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Saturday, January 30, doors 9pm, show 11pm. $35 early bird, $42.50 general admission, $100

meet-and-greet. 21+. (312) 753-5700. theshrinechicago.com R&B’s eternal golden “Pony”-boy Ginuwine heads to The Shrine for a special meet-and-greet show to support his as-yet-unreleased tenth album, titled Bachelor Again but Wiser, a nod to both his début album, Ginuwine…the Bachelor, and his recent divorce from Solé. This is the first we’ve heard from Ginuwine since his R&B supergroup, TGT, broke up in 2013—and it’s been too long. (Sam Stecklow)

STAGE & SCREEN The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America Harold Washington Library (Cindy Pritzker Auditorium), 400 S. State St. Thursday, January 14, 6pm-7:30pm. (312) 747-4300. chipublib.bibliocommons.com Join writer Ethan Michaeli to discuss his new book on the history and legacy of the Chicago Defender, a groundbreaking newspaper that exposed Jim Crow abuses and reported on issues affecting African-Americans throughout the country. Learn about the newspaper that empowered the people it set out to defend. (Anne Li)

Indie City Writers Live-Lit 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Thursday, January 14, 6pm-8pm. Free. (773) 6841300. semcoop.org The Indie City Writers, an emerging local writing collective, make their reading debut at this event. The night of live lit is sure to be lit as nine of its members showcase the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry they’ve been working on. Don’t miss out on the rising literary talent of the South Side. (Ada Alozie)

Negroland Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, January 14, 6pm. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Author, critic, and professor Margo Jef-

ferson will be joined by writer and human rights activist Jamie Kalven for a discussion of Jefferson’s acclaimed 2015 book, Negroland: A Memoir. The two may choose to reminisce about their South Side school days: they are both graduates of the UofC Laboratory School. (Neal Jochmann)

African-American Female Comedy Showcase

Body and Soul, scored by Renee Baker

The eta Creative Arts Foundation presents a comedy show of up-and-coming and established African-American female comedians, hosted by Paulette Flowers and Diane Corder, “the Funky Diva of Comedy.” Gut-busting laughter is sure to fill the room as the women show off their talents and push their boundaries. (Ada Alozie)

Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Friday, January 15, 7pm-9:30pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org Join Black Cinema House for a night of crime and punishment—and Paul Robeson’s cinematic debut, in a screening of Oscar Micheaux’s 1925 silent film Body and Soul. The film comes complete with a new score composed by Renee Baker of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and recorded by the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project. (Christopher Good)

Eye of the Storm – The Bayard Rustin Story eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Sunday, January 17, 3pm. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org McKinley Johnson will give a reading of his 2009 musical, Eye of the Storm – The Bayard Rustin Story. The musical explores Rustin’s role as civil rights leader whose identity as a gay man left him marginalized within his own movement. Though Rustin was largely left out of the history books, chances are you won’t forget this bluesy drama. (Anna Christensen)

Black Perspectives in Horror Film Series: An Evening with Kellee Terrell Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Sunday, January 17, 4pm–6pm. (312) 8575561. rebuild-foundation.org

eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Monday, January 18. Doors 6pm, show 7pm. $10. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org

Story Club South Side Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, January 19. Workshop 6:30pm7:15pm, show 8pm. $10 suggested donation. (773) 655-6769. storyclubchicago.com You, a microphone, and eight minutes: this is the premise of Story Club South Side, which gathers storytellers and audience members alike for a night of live nonfiction. With featured speakers like performance artist Eileen Tull and bull-running boxer Bill Hillman, it’ll be a while before the “under cover” theme is under wraps. Come early for a free storytelling workshop. (Christopher Good)

Satchmo at the Waldorf Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 7. $38, discounts available for seniors, faculty, and students. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org Satchmo at the Waldorf, in its Midwest premiere, is a single-actor play that deals with the emotions, legacy, friendships, and fate of Louis Armstrong, set after his last show in 1971. As the highlight of Chicago’s Louis Armstrong Festival, this jazzy journey is one not to miss. (Margaret Mary Glazier)

Zombies, lesbians, hauntings, and dark secrets come together in this screening of two short horror films by Chicago filmmaker Kellee Terrell. A discussion with Terrell and series curator Joyy Norris will follow the screening. (Anna Christensen)

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