The Living Legacy of the Pullman Porters

The Pullman Porter Museum renews its push for a national registry

by Juan Caicedo 5 months ago 1 Comment

Armani Howard

In 1995, Dr. Lyn Hughes founded the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum to commemorate the thousands of African-American men who staffed Pullman sleeping cars for more than a century, between 1869 and 1969. Twenty-three years later, Hughes is convinced that the museum’s renewed attempt to catalogue the 20,000 descendants of these men will constitute her legacy. “Long after I’m gone,” she said, “it will be in history books. It will be part of the record that nobody can take away, no matter who’s mayor, no matter who’s alderman, no matter who’s president.”

Fair and Fowl

Urban Livestock Expo shines a spotlight on Chicago’s backyard livestock

by Juan Caicedo 2 years ago 1 Comment

A trio of children inspect one of Lidia Andronic's chicks. (Benjamin Unger)

The animals at the fifth annual Urban Livestock Expo, unlike their wilder counterparts, are indifferent to the fact that it’s an unusually warm and sun-drenched winter day. They have been convened in the ventilated lobby of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences (CHSAS) by local nonprofit Advocates for Urban Agriculture for an event intended to showcase the urban livestock community and to educate would-be urban farmers. Many of the presenters at last Saturday’s event are on double duty, discussing their livelihoods with attendees before dashing into classrooms to teach workshops.

Labor | Stage & Screen

Screening Solidarity

With a new series on labor, South Side Projections stirs up further conversation

by Juan Caicedo 2 years ago 1 Comment

Michael W. Phillips, Jr.

Union Maids, one of the last films screened in South Side Projections’s “Alternative Histories of Labor” series, chronicles the lives of three female labor organizers in 1930s and 1940s in Chicago. At one point, one of the titular “maids,” Katherine Hyndman, recalls a funeral procession for three black men who were shot in the back by policemen as they carried furniture back into their homes following an eviction. The procession marched all the way from 31st Street down to the Englewood train station on 63rd. “State Street was crowded with thousands of people from wall to wall, from one end of State Street to the other,” Hyndman says. “It was just a mass of people….The streetcars would just barely crawl along through the crowds. And that was the first time in my life that I have seen white people sobbing, really sobbing, there was such a strong feeling.”