Ghosts in the Schoolyard, Eve L. Ewing
Ghosts in the Schoolyard, Eve L. Ewing
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Ghosts in the Schoolyard
Racism and School Closings in Chicago’s South Side

Author: Eve L. Ewing

Narrator: Lisa Reneé Pitts

Unabridged: 6 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/25/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Eve L. Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they're an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together.

Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open?

Ewing's answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.

About Eve L. Ewing

Eve L. Ewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the author of Electric Arches, which received awards from the American Library Association and the Poetry Society of America and was named one of the year's best books by NPR and the Chicago Tribune. She is also author of Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side and coauthor, with Nate Marshall, of No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of social service administration. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, and many other venues.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dave

“If there was racial harmony and equality in the year 2019, maybe we wouldn’t need to talk about the race riots of 1919”—Peter Cole City in a Garden (after Carl Sandburg) The Negro crowd from Twenty-ninth Street got into action, and white men who came in contact with it were beaten. . . Farther to the......more

A history lesson in the form of poetry. 1919 is a brief poetry collection based on historical accounts of the Chicago race riots of the eponymous year 1919. It's a cool approach and overall I found the poems to be interesting and moving. Thank you to Libro.FM for providing a free audio copy for Blac......more

Goodreads review by Allison

I absolutely love poetry collections that deeply focus around one historical event or close theme, and this book is no different. Eve L. Ewing explores the Chicago race riot of 1919 through poetry, with poems tracing the lead-up, the riot, and it's effects. With quotes from the 1922 study "The Negro......more

Goodreads review by Deborah

In 1919, race riots roared through Chicago killing 23 blacks and 5 whites, injuring 537, and leaving 1,000 homeless. 5,000 to 6,000 National Guard were called to restore order. 17-year-old Eugene Williams was swimming in Lake Michigan when he was killed by thrown rocks after drifting toward a “white......more