Making Cities Look Like Those Who Built Them

When you drive around Chicago, or any city like it, recognition for its leaders should not just be visible in Black neighborhoods

See that highway hugging Lake Michigan? That’s Chicago’s historic Lake Shore Drive. Just last week it was renamed for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the Black man who is credited with creating a trading post and being the first non-Native permanent resident of the area that is now known as Chicago.

I was surprisingly emotional when I covered the ceremony changing the name of a downtown Chicago street from Congress Drive to Ida B. Wells Drive.