Romi Crawford - "Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect" - Chicago Humanities Festival

Romi Crawford will discuss her book, "Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect." She will be joined in conversation by Darlene Blackburn and Robert E. Paige. This will be a two-part experience revisiting one of Chicago’s iconic public artworks and the movement it anchored.

Presented in partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival

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About the Book: The Wall of Respect, a work of public art created in 1967 at the corner of Forty-third Street and Langley Avenue on Chicago’s South Side, depicted Black leaders in music, literature, politics, and sports. The Wall sparked a nationwide mural movement, provided a platform for community engagement, and was a foundational work of the Black Arts Movement. There is no longer any physical indication of its existence, but it still needs to be remembered. Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect argues against making a monument of it, or of other historically significant events, in the formal language of grandness and permanence. Instead, Romi Crawford proposes the concept of “fleeting monuments,” asking a range of artists and writers to realize antiheroic, nonstatic, and impermanent strategies for commemoration. Through the intimate and portable format of a book, Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect recognizes and pays tribute to the Wall while proposing new strategies for commemoration and public memory that inspire us today as we endeavor to preserve the recent murals, installations, and other forms of public art created to support racial justice.

About the Author: Romi Crawford (Ph.D.) is Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research and writing explore areas of race and ethnicity as these relate to American visual culture (including art, film, and photography). She is the author of Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect (Green Lantern Press, 2021).

About the Interlocutors: Darlene Blackburn is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Blackburn crafted a rich career influenced by African and Caribbean traditions. Her work inspired Black dancers who gained acclaim in the U.S. and worldwide. She founded the Darlene Blackburn Dance Troupe in 1963, which pioneered storytelling through interpretative, improvisational dance. Blackburn organized troupes to study and perform in Ghana and Nigeria during the 1970s. In the 1980s she earned degrees in physical education, taught at several colleges, and produced events with the Illinois Arts Council, the DuSable Museum, and Urban Gateways. Blackburn choreographed plays at the Goodman and Court Theaters in Chicago and was commissioned by Northwestern University to choreograph the 1988 production of “Harlem Renaissance.”

Robert E. Paige is an artist and textile designer allied with the Black Arts Movement, who trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked at the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He traveled to Italy and Western Africa to learn the history and manufacturing techniques of textiles, and began producing scarves and drapings with the Fiorio Milano company to retail retail at department stores such as Carson Pirie Scott. Sears Roebuck sold his Dakkabar collection nationwide.

Thabiti Lewis is Professor of English and Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Washington State University Vancouver. He is the author of Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (2010), the editor of Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara (University of Mississippi Press, 2012), a collection of Bambara’s important interviews, and the author of Black People Are My Business: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation (2020). Lewis is also the co-director and co-producer with Pavithra Narayanan of the documentary film, Bam! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement (2019). As a literary critic, Lewis engages critical race theory and feminism. Lewis has been focused on re-examining the Black Arts moment, as well as using sports culture to help people better understand, become aware of, and eliminate racism in our society.