Most Americans think of the civil rights movement as a southern phenomenon, aimed at toppling the legal system of segregation that stripped African Americans of the rights the Constitution guaranteed them. But the movement also swept through the north, where it confronted a set of racial practices every bit as devastating as the South's. This seminar will examine the history of that movement in Chicago over much of the twentieth century. We will explore the long, bitter struggle over neighborhood segregation, from the South Side to Cicero; trace the movement's campaigns to integrate schools and workplaces; and examine its relationship with the city's tangled politics as it tried to transform what was - and is - one of the nation's most segregated cities.
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