Contents

 

Foreword by Chance the Rapper


Shikaakwa

lasalle Wrote It Down Wrong

The Father Is a Black Man

The Treaty of Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World

Albert Parsons Can Hang

How to Be Down

The L Gets Open

The white City

Eugene Debs Reads Marx in Prison

Reversing the Flow of the Chicago River

The Great Migration

The Eastland Disaster

The Murder of Eugene Williams

Society for Human Rights (America’s First Gay Rights Organization)

Thomas Dorsey, Gospel’s Daddy

Gwendolyn Brooks Stands in the Mecca

Hansberry vs. Lee

Muddy Waters Goes Electric

Nelson Algren Meets Simone de Beauvoir at the Palmer House

Pickle with a Peppermint Stick

Sun Ra Becomes a Synthesizer

hugh hefner, a Play Boy

Mamie Till Bears the Movement

king daley Unfurls His burnham Plan

The Division Street Riots

Martin Luther King Prays in Marquette Park

Studs Terkel Drops a Mixtape

Carl Sandburg Village (Where My Parents Met)

Wall of Respect

AfriCOBRA

The Assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton

Don L. Lee Becomes Haki Madhubuti

The Chicago 21 Plan

Leaving Aldine

Ode to Steppin

Disco Demolition

mayor byrne Moves Into & Out of Cabrini Green

Ron Hardy Plays the Record Backwards

The Assassination of Rudy Lozano

Marc Smith Invents the Poetry Slam

Collateral Damage

The Day Harold Died

Patronage

Fresh to Death

Molemen Beat Tapes

Graffiti Blasters: An Erasure (A Buff)

The Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act

The Etymology of Chicago Joe

Common’s Resurrection

The Supreme Court Makes Color Illegal

Erasing the Green

Ida B. Wells Testifies in the Ghost Town

How to Teach Poetry in Chicago Public Schools

Lenard Clark Pedals for Air

Baby Come On: An Ode to Footwork

A Moratorium on the Death Penalty

Praise the House Party

Día de las Madres

Kanye Says What’s on Everybody’s Mind

I Wasn’t in Grant Park when obama Was Elected

Republic Windows Workers Sit In

The Night the Modern Wing Was Bombed

When King Louie First Heard the Word Chiraq

An Elegy for Dr. Margaret Burroughs

A Dedication to the Inaugural Poet

Memoir of the Red X

Chief Keef’s Epiphany at Lollapalooza

Teachers’ Strike in the Chicago Tradition

During Ramadan the Gates of Heaven Are Open

Ms. Devine Explains the Meaning of Modern Art: A Found Poem

Two Cities Celebrate Independence Day

We Charge Genocide

Atoning for the Neoliberal in All
or rahm emanuel as the Chicken on Kapparot

400 Days

The Night the Cubs Win the World Series

Chicago Has My Heart


Notes

Illustration Credits

Acknowledgments