Genealogy

Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Over the last century, an array of political and cultural forces have created clear lines of division between racial groups.

When the story of segregation in Chicago is told, it often starts, rightfully, with the policies that have enforced it. During the Great Depression, then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Housing Act of 1934, which introduced mortgages with fixed, low interest rates and longer repayment periods that made home ownership possible for more low-income families.

WTTW explores segregation in Chicago throughout firsthand experiences, including 15 individual documentary pieces and text journalism stories in partnership with WTTW News, South Side Weekly, and Invisible Institute.

FIRSTHAND: Segregation tackles one of Chicago’s most enduring facts of life, doing what research studies, facts, and figures about the racial divide in Chicago cannot do: it shows how segregation and its inequities impact everyday life in Chicago. The 15 stories and 6 talks together reveal the social, economic, and political causes and costs of segregation, the promises and perils of integration, the difference between imposed segregation and self-segregation, and the inspiring efforts to dismantle and disrupt the inequities and divisions that flow from segregation.

Chicago is one of the most segregated big cities in America, and it comes at a cost. The Metropolitan Planning Council found that segregation costs the region $4.4 billion in lost income, 83,000 fewer bachelor’s degrees, and about 200 lives cut short by homicides every year. In FIRSTHAND: SEGREGATION, WTTW explores the impact racial divisions have on individuals, the city, and our region with a documentary series, reported stories, expert talks, and community discussions. FIRSTHAND: SEGREGATION is part of the award-winning FIRSTHAND multiplatform, multi-year initiative focusing on the firsthand perspectives of people facing critical issues in Chicago.

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Happy holidays from the air!

Nineteenth-century American cities, including the rapidly growing and industrializing Chicago,  were crowded, dirty places with little green space. So why wouldn’t you want to hop on a train to escape it all for a day and enjoy some entertainment in a beautiful setting surrounded by nature?

The busy streets of London, Paris, or Rome often come to mind when thinking of the big cities of the Middle Ages. But one of the largest and most complex societies of roughly that same time period was Cahokia, a Native American society sitting squarely in the middle of the United States. Located in present-day Collinsville, Illinois near St. Louis, the city that is now known as Cahokia was the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico, according to UNESCO. The city’s original name is unknown. It was later named Cahokia for a tribe of the Illiniwek Confederacy who lived near the mounds in the eighteenth century when French explorers came to the area.

During the middle of the nineteenth century, as steamboats carrying freight and passengers chugged up and down the Mississippi River, boatmen measuring the depth of the treacherous river would cry out “mark twain” to let the boat pilot know the water was two fathoms deep — in other words, safe enough to pass.

How did Chicago become one of America’s boldest and most dynamic cities with its location way out in the middle of the country? The keys to that story are in the waterways — both natural and human-made — and in the land that drew people to settle here. Traveling by air beyond Chicago’s borders, out into Illinois, and back through time, the water and land that paint the landscape tell the stories of people who fought, built, reshaped, and restored this region.

Imagine soaring high above the dazzling fall foliage, rippling sand dunes, snow-covered landscapes, lakes and rivers, imposing skyscrapers, and spectacular state parks of the Chicago region. WTTW host and writer Geoffrey Baer takes to the skies again to travel Beyond Chicago from the Air, narrating along with exhilarating drone photography that traverses the Chicago area, Illinois and parts of Indiana and Missouri.

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