Black Chicagoland Is… brings together richly textured photography, the music and sounds of Black Chicagoland, and inner musings from Black Chicagolanders to thicken how we understand Black life within and beyond Chicago’s iconic South Side. Dr. april l. graham-jackson and Roderick E. Jakson have reimagined Black Chicago as “Black Chicagoland” to draw attention to the the forgotten suburbs hugging Chicago’s periphery, to the places often hidden beneath the surface, and the spaces on the fringes where Black life is and has always been present.

Black Chicagoland Is… engages Black life through its mythologized but often erased racial histories, deep cultural innovations, Black placemaking practices, and shifting spatial boundaries that insist that there is more to be learned of what Richard Wright called “the known city.” Rod’s camerawork and april’s sound and geographic research emerges from the contested terrain of the Chicago city map, between the municipality’s community areas and residential neighborhoods as well as the suburbs where Black Chicagolanders have always located themselves.

For more information, check out BlackChicagoland.com, which includes photographs, sound installations, a timeline of Black Chicagoland history, a bibliography of various literary resources, and a geography primer detailing the spatial organization of the Chicago Metropolitan Area (Chicagoland).

All photos on this page were taken by Roderick E. Jackson.