Chicago's Black Literary Renaissance: A Bus Tour

Part of the larger Chicago Black Renaissance, the literary movement started in the 1930s and continued to foster important African-America authors through the 1950s. On this bus tour, we'll visit some of the foundational cultural institutions of the movement (George Cleveland Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library, South Side Community Art Center, The Chicago Defender) as well as the homes of iconic authors (Richard Wright, Gendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry). Along the way, we'll explore how these and other authors used their personal experiences and observations of the city to create literature that explored the devastating effects of prejudice during the Jim Crow era and up to the Civil Rights movement.