Join authors Essence McDowell and Mariame Kaba for the launch of Lifting As They Climbed: Mapping a History of Trailblazing Black Women in Chicago, an essential guidebook to influential Black women from Chicago’s South and West Sides, and their social, cultural, and artistic contributions to movements both past and present. 

Lifting As They Climbed showcases seventy-eight women—activists, artists, musicians, and more—through sites and landmarks on Chicago’s South and West Sides. The launch event will include a *virtual tour* and clips from a short film about the women featured in the book.

Including Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mahalia Jackson, and many others, this updated and extended edition is a testament to women whose stories have gone largely untold, and whose lives reveal powerful connections between their endeavors and present-day struggles for radical community-building and solidarity. With no “official” landmarks to preserve the history of their social justice efforts, this book is an intervention against their erasure.

Order a copy of the book at 30% off here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2003-lifting-as-they-climbed

***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning and ASL will be provided.***

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Speakers:

Essence McDowell is a writer, researcher, and communications strategist who has worked with numerous organizations including the Illinois Humanities Council, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, INCITE!, Black Feminist Future, Chicago Public Library, and the Cook County Historic Archives. She is currently the director of arts and communications at the Social Justice Initiative and community organizing to create a resource hub for a national Black Women's Organizing Coalition.

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, librarian, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame co-leads the initiative Interrupting Criminalization, a project she co-founded with Andrea Ritchie in 2018. She is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us, Missing Daddy, See You Soon and coauthor of Let This Radicalize You with Kelly Hayes and No More Police with Andrea Ritchie.