In the Press
One Book One Northwestern event brings NU students, faculty and community together for intergenerational storytelling
The 2023 One Book Annual Intergenerational Storytelling Event invited young and senior adults to the Norris University Center to share their stories. The Tuesday evening event centered the idea that a story is the shortest path for people to build connections.
Northwestern students tour Chicago Torture Justice Center, learning the history of police torture in Chicago
About 15 Northwestern undergraduate and graduate students traveled to the Chicago Torture Justice Center to learn about the city’s history of police torture Saturday on a trip organized by One Book One Northwestern.
CTJC was created in 2015 after the Chicago City Council passed the Reparations Ordinance, granting reparations to torture survivors of Jon Burge, a former Chicago police commander who tortured predominantly Black defendants to obtain false confessions in the ’70s and ’80s. The package funded the CTJC, public school education on torture, $5.5 million in financial compensation and free access to Chicago city college education for survivors and their families, among other initiatives. Students on the trip heard stories from former prisoners tortured by Burge, and about the CTJC's continued efforts to research and seek reparations for police violence.
“Monuments to the Unthinkable”—In The Atlantic's Cover Story, Clint Smith Reports from Germany on What the U.S. Can Learn about Atonement
Questions of public memory—“specifically how people, communities, and nations should account for the crimes of their past”—animate the work of the Atlantic staff writer, author, and poet Clint Smith. In a sweeping new cover story that builds on his best-selling book How the Word Is Passed, Smith travels to Germany to better understand the country’s efforts to memorialize the atrocities of the Holocaust, such that German citizens are faced with the memory of its victims in everyday life. As Smith considers where those efforts have succeeded and failed, he asks what America would look like if we could figure out how to memorialize the sins of our history. Smith’s December cover story, “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” asks how a nation can fully acknowledge and atone for its past.
Community leaders host bus tour on Evanston’s Black History
Before the 1960s, when Northwestern did not allow Black students to live on campus, the Emerson Street YMCA provided them with beds. When Evanston Township High School did not permit Black students to use their pool, the YMCA offered them a place to swim. And when Black political scientist and civil rights activist Ralph Bunche conducted research at the University, he lived at the YMCA. The former site of the YMCA was one of many highlights in a Saturday tour of Black history in Evanston, led by local historian Dino Robinson and Evanston Community Foundation Director of Community Leadership Karli Butler.
‘How the Word is Passed’ author speaks at One Book keynote
Smith’s debut non-fiction work, which is an award-winning New York Times bestseller, was the One Book One Northwestern selection for the 2022-23 academic year. He was on campus to talk about it this week and had a keynote conversation Tuesday, Oct. 18, with One Book faculty chair and History professor Leslie Harris.
Engaging with one of America’s most traumatic legacies
Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith delivered two keynote lectures about his book “How the Word Is Passed, A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America,” on Northwestern’s Chicago and Evanston campuses Tuesday, Oct. 18. The book is the One Book One Northwestern selection for the 2022-2023 academic year.
History Prof. Kate Masur discusses Black organizing in pre-Civil War Illinois
On Feb. 7, 1865, the Illinois legislature repealed its “black laws” — codified restrictions on Black citizens’ rights — following strong advocacy by Black lobbyists. Almost two centuries later, this day passes by each year without widespread acknowledgment. Attendees at history Prof. Kate Masur’s “Remembering Illinois’s Early Black History” lecture pondered why Illinois does not celebrate this day, among other questions, at the Dittmar Gallery on Thursday night.
"Why is this happening?" - Chris Haynes Podcast with Clint Smith on MSNBC
Right now, the United States is in the midst of a massive historical battle over its own narrative, specifically the legacy of slavery and race in America. The backlash to that fight is spilling into public policy as Republican state legislatures push to regulate the way students are taught about the founding of our country. In Clint Smith's new book "How The Word is Passed", Smith studies our understanding of slavery through the stories we tell of it.
Clint Smith interviewed on award-winning book about slavery's legacy
Clint Smith, whose book How the Word Is Passed was chosen for One Book One Northwestern, joins President Michael Schill and History Professor Leslie Harris for an interview at at Galvin Hall on campus.
Clint Smith, author of NU’s ‘One Book’ choice, to speak Oct. 18
Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with The History of Slavery Across America, will be the keynote speaker for “One Book One Northwestern” on Tuesday, Oct. 18, an event open to the greater Evanston community.