Illinois news

• Building a SWANA ecosystem on dance floors and beyond

  17-04-2025 17:30 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Founded in 2018, the collective Laylit emerged from a time of urgency and frustration as the first Trump presidency furthered negative stereotypes of immigrant communities and endangered the future of Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) diasporic communities through policies such as the Muslim ban. Desiring a platform to express their identities unapologetically, the founders […]
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• Red Clay Dance Company’s 16 centers perseverance and legacy in Vershawn Sanders-Ward Revival and Bebe Miller Premiere

  17-04-2025 15:00
  
  Turning Points performance by Red Clay Dance Company in Oct 2024 (Photo Credit: MReid Photography).
  The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago announces 16 by Red Clay Dance Company for three performances only, April 17-19, 2025, featuring Founding Artistic Director and CEO Vershawn Sanders-Ward (‘02)’s new staging of Written on the Flesh and a premiere by Bebe Miller—commissioned and set on Red Clay Dance Company dancers including Columbia alumni Amaya Arroyo (‘23) and
  
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• 1-800-TruckWreck to Provide Free Easter Meals to 1,000 Chicago Families

  17-04-2025 14:45
  
  Photo Credit: Getty Images
  This Easter, 1-800-TruckWreck and a few familiar Chicago voices are stepping up to help families put food on the table.
  On Friday, April 18, from 4 to 6 p.m., 1-800-TruckWreck, powered by Witherite Law Group, will team up with local radio personalities Joe Soto and Tone Kapone to give away 1,000 hams and food boxes at Salem Chicago’s House of Hope, located at 752 East 114th Street in Pullman. The event is free and open to the public. Meal boxes will be distribute
  
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• Met Gala First Look: Celebs Detail Their Connections To Black Dandyism

  17-04-2025 14:15
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  Celebrities are speaking out about their connection to Black Dandyism ahead of this year’s Met Gala.
  This year, the Met Gala is set to highlight Black menswear with its exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” The exhibit is inspired by Monica L. Miller’s book, “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.” The Met previously said the exhibit “presents a cultural and historical examination of Bl
  
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• Xiaohan Jiang’s plaintive pastoral landscapes

  17-04-2025 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviewed work made by Xiaohan Jiang. Xiaohan Jiang Does Xiaohan Jiang […]
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• Chicago’s Chatham Bucks Event Aims to Reclaim Power of the Black Dollar on April 19

  17-04-2025 14:00
  
  Brown Sugar Bakery Photo Courtesy of Greater Chatham Initiative
  On Saturday, April 19, a South Side community will take a powerful step in a national movement to reclaim and redirect Black spending power—an economic force estimated at nearly $2 trillion.
  The Chatham Business Association (CBA), in partnership with Alderman Will Hall, Progressive Baptist Church, and Salem Baptist Church, is leading the charge locally with a bold initiative: the Bulls Eye “Spend in the Black – Res
  
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• Biden Rips Trump’s Social Security Plans In First Post-Presidency Speech

  17-04-2025 13:30
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  Former President Joe Biden slammed Trump’s Social Security agenda in his first major speech since leaving the White House.
  On Tuesday (April 15), Biden delivered remarks at the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled (ACRD) conference in Chicago, where he ripped the Trump administration over its Social Security policies, per Fox News.
  “Seriously, people are now genuinely concerned for the first time in history, for the first and only time in hi
  
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• The Lager Beer Riot of 1855

  17-04-2025 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Chicago’s first police riot started with beer.  In his inaugural speech on March 13, 1855, newly elected, Kentucky-born mayor Levi D. Boone proposed the wholesale prohibition on the sale of alcohol in Chicago or, barring that, a substantial increase in the price of tavern licenses. To enforce his temperance agenda, Boone also outlined his vision […]
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• This Week In Black History April 16-22, 2025

  17-04-2025 03:00
  
  Edward “Duke” Ellington
   
  APRIL 16
  1862—President Abraham Lin­coln signs a bill ending slavery in Washington, D.C. Approximately nine months later he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation which had a highly emotional and symbolic impact but actually freed very few slaves when it was first pronounced. The Proclamation tar­geted slaves in the South. But at the time, Lincoln had virtually no con­trol over the rebellious slave-own­ing Southern states.1929&m
  
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