Students and teaching artists from Young Chicago Authors/Photo: David W. Johnson
Part of the 2020 Best of Chicago edition.
Best Community Leader: Diane Latiker
The final murder of September occurred at 11:32am. Dailon Russel, a seventeen-year-old Black boy, was shot in Austin. According to the police report, two males walked up to Dailon and fired bullets into his abdomen. Five -hundred-and-eighty-nine people were murdered in the first nine months of this year. That’s ninety-seven more dead than all of 2019. Twelve more than all of 2018. In the previous two years, eighty percent of murder victims were Black, most of them Black, most of them young. Six hundred people were murdered in Chicago in 2003, most of them Black, most of them young. The year before, 654. There’s a staggering and numbing quality to murder statistics in Chicago. For most people, violence is innate to Black life in Chicago, constant as the wind, unavoidable as a winter chill.
Seventeen years ago, in her Roseland living room, Diane Latiker decided to fight against this seemingly immovable natural force. She saw how gangs and guns affected her neighborhood, particularly the young. In other words, she saw the obvious reality we all do. Instead of embracing the powerlessness we all feel, Diane Latiker invited ten young Black kids into her living room and started a conversation about life off the streets. What were their hopes? What were the pitfalls? Almost two decades later, that conversation has grown into Kids Off The Block, Diane’s nonprofit aimed at providing “at-risk low-income youth positive alternatives to gangs, drugs, truancy, violence and the juvenile justice system.”
Kids Off The Block takes a holistic approach to violence intervention. According to the organization website, KOB focuses on three areas: social health, social inclusion and art. They offer poetry, music and art classes. They provide summer jobs, counseling and soft skill training. Their services are free. They have pulled thousands of Black youth out of harm’s way. Latiker’s work has received awards and recognition from CNN, BET and The Goldin Institute among other publications and institutions. She spoke before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2019. The world spent this past summer discussing and imagining alternatives to community aide, beyond policing, beyond politics as usual. We have all considered the question: What if justice isn’t punitive? What if the answer to young Black death isn’t more force? What if it’s more care?
Maybe Diane Latiker has already provided the answer. Maybe, if Diane’s vision was embraced by larger systems, Dailon Russel would have lived a full life. (Gabe Bump, author, “Everywhere You Don’t Belong”)
Best Future Upon Us
NLCP Peace Warriors
What happens when kids are brought together inside—now virtually—a West Side high school (North Lawndale College Prep) and taught, through a training program, to adopt the nonviolent philosophies and practices of Dr. King as a way of life? When they are instilled with the power of peace through love while gaining an understanding that their circumstances do not determine their destiny? What happens when an early childhood program is set up with multiple purposes, of ending the disease known as hopelessness while focusing on benevolence as a defense mechanism and a lifelong tool for survival? Peace Warriors are born. (Scoop Jackson)
Best Artist to Explore American History and Its Impact on Contemporary Culture
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams—painter-sculptor-muralist—is a seriously accomplished artist. His black-painted steel sculpture, “Letter to Bessie Coleman,” uses tracery symbolism to honor the first African-American female pilot in one of his public installations with the most impact. In Williams’ collective work, he explores a conversation about American history and social relevance. The Chicago Arts Club took notice and staged “The Black Tractor Project,” the artist’s celebratory response to the largest civil rights settlement in the country against the U.S Department of Agriculture, Pigford v. Glickman, also known as “The Black Farmers Settlement” which included his own relatives. “I viewed the settlement as a profound moment in American history and my family’s history,” states the artist. His next move: an upcoming group show with seventy local artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art with the agenda “to imagine a more equitable and interconnected world,” scheduled to open in November. (Yetta Starr)
Best All-Around Creative
Virgil Abloh, Off-White, Louis Vuitton
“Don’t be a victim to the statistics—you can be a kid from Chicago with the same skin tone as me and create work around your circumstance,” Virgil Abloh said last year on the opening day of his Museum of Contemporary Art “Figures of Speech” exhibition. He should know. By then, the kid from Rockford was on top of the world: A designer, artist, DJ, owner and art director of RSVP Gallery, founder of Milan-based label Off-White and Louis Vuitton creative director named by Time as one of the one hundred most influential people. At the intersections of fashion, design, music and architecture, he constantly reinvents himself, looks for inspiration everywhere—from Chicago’s cityscape, to hip-hop, to Warhol and Duchamp—and pretty much anything he touches turns to gold—even if that’s an IKEA tote bag. There’s no stopping him, so you should be paying attention— he could be stepping out of his comfort zone to make his next big, bold move happen right about now. (Vasia Rigou)
Best Social Media Strategist
Covania Washington
Founder of Bomb & Bossy, Covania Washington is a sought-after social media strategist who provides high-quality and eye-catching social media marketing content for her clients. Her niche is creating content that goes viral, yet it feels authentic and not fluffy like many things seen on social media. (Kia Smith)
Best Creative Community for Young BIPOC
True Chicago
It’s been an honor to be a part of True Chicago’s growth as it strives to educate, expand and energize creatives by encouraging them to use their creative voices with confidence. With an intentional focus on Black and brown creatives ages fifteen to twenty-five, the David Johnson-founded organization provides education and mentorship that expands the perception of viable careers in the creative arts. The True Chicago Conference is a yearly youth conference including workshops designed to inspire artists to challenge themselves and invest in their local community. Through artistic practice each creative is made to understand how each person has the power to illustrate stories that evoke deeper meaning, become part of our culture, and give back to their communities—all at the same time. (Tuan Huynh, senior art director, Leo Burnett, co-artistic director, True Chicago)
Best “Gone Too Soon” Chicago Artist
Juice WRLD
“The party never ends” —”Legends Never Die” posthumous album outro
The Chicago-born native Juice WRLD, known as Jarad Anthony HiggIns, made a memorable and heavy-hitting impact in the music industry before his untimely death last December. He had just turned twenty-one. His goal as an artist wasn’t to romanticize a relationship between himself and narcotics, but to help others know they weren’t alone in fighting their addictions. This allowed fans to connect with “The Lucid Dreams” rapper on a personal level, as he lyrically divulged his racing thoughts that were constantly swirling. Juice WRLD will be remembered for his kindness and talent. As the rapper always proclaimed: Legends never die. (Kori Nichole Barnes)
Best Resource for Music Nerds (and Researchers)
CBMR at Columbia College
Founded at Columbia College Chicago in 1983, the Center for Black Music Research catalogs and preserves materials from Black music around the world. The CBMR collection, still at Columbia, represents genres from ragtime to hip-hop, calypso to salsa, gospel to opera. It’s a one-of-a-kind research and archival repository, housing dissertations, oral histories, music scores, photos, and more than 10,000 audio and visual recordings, commercial and rare. Special collections include the “The Great Lakes Experience Collection” (including Chicago’s Von Freeman) and, coming soon, The Chicago House Music Oral History Project. (John Moss)
618 S. Michigan
Best Alternative to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in North Lawndale
Farm on Ogden
The Chicago Botanic Garden and Lawndale Christian Health Center opened their 20,000-square-foot facility in 2018 to bring fresh produce to a community in dire need of healthy options and to generate job opportunities. Inside its walls are a neighborhood market, job-training center, community learning space and an aquaponic farm. Despite North Lawndale’s rich cultural history, many residents suffer from diet-related diseases at rates that far exceed city and national averages. The VeggieRx program helps residents with prescribed vegetables to help facilitate lifestyle changes along with nutrition education and cooking lessons. (Chris Cason)
3555 Ogden
Best “Fit Is Not A Goal, It Is A Way Of Life” Ways of Life
The Black Workout Coalition
Throughout the city you will find them. On the Lakefront, in old churches, emptying their cars and SUVs of workout equipment to set up shop in city parks from Mandrake (Henry Brown) to Eckhart (Bernard). Running clubs from GumboFit to Black Chicago Runners (who were featured in the Wall Street Journal) to Malik Scott’s More Than Fit Training to Steven Hunter’s Go With The Flow yoga to Dre Nicole-Everett’s D3 Boot Camp to Aaron Foster’s Cycle Therapy, Black Chi’s “get fit, get healthy” community is, in a word, beautiful. (Raymond Alexander)
Best Footworker-Streetwear Designer
Sterling “Steelo” Lofton
Steelo, a member of The Era Footwork Crew, has travelled the world performing and teaching the mesmerizing Chicago-born street dance that has risen in national and international popularity over the past decade. In addition to dancing, choreographing and teaching, he designs and creates his own streetwear line “Stitched by Steelo.” Lofton was selected as a Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2020 Lab Artist, receiving support to develop “y,” a performance about fashion and dance in Black history. (Sharon Hoyer)
Best Anti-Racism Community Art Project
Nick Cave, Facility
“As challenging as 2020 and this moment have been, all has fielded me toward being even more purposeful with my work,” says Nick Cave. “This summer, my partner Bob Faust and I launched ‘Amends’ here at Facility and across the street with Carl Schurz High School. It was a project that collected and aired apologies, acknowledgements and mantras toward the eradication of racism. This will continue this fall with a new spoken-word work by J. Ivy that incorporates these amends,” he says. “I also just opened ‘Until,’ a project that asks if there is racism in heaven, at The Momentary in Bentonville. And a virtual show titled “As It Was and Still Is” as well as a series of interventions as part of ‘States of Being,’ both at Jack Shainman Gallery.” Ready to prompt conversations about race, violence and identity, Cave’s politically charged artwork is needed more than ever. (Vasia Rigou)
Best Model Coach and Photographer
Blake Martin
Known for putting on the most cutting-edge fashion shows in Chicago, chances are you’ve heard of Blake Martin before. With high-profile celebrity clients such as Mercedes-Benz, VH1, Timberland and Gucci, these days you can find Martin behind the camera. Lead photographer and creative director for Voodoo Photography, he displays his eye for detail and pushes the bounds of creativity with each of his shoots. (Kia Smith)
Best Community Health Initiative in Response to the Pandemic from a Dance Company
Red Clay Dance Company’s Dance Pamoja Challenge
When the virus first shuttered live performances and in-person dance classes, Vershawn Sanders-Ward, founding director of the Fuller Park-based Red Clay Dance, reflected on how her Afro Contemporary company could and should function in a time of crisis. Through conversations with clinical pharmacist and Red Clay student Dr. Jewel Younge and a partnership with UIC and ACCESS Community Health Network, Sanders-Ward created a wellness program for Black families on the South Side hit hardest by the pandemic, which included free COVID testing, blood pressure and blood-sugar monitoring, mindfulness sessions, access to a blog with information on healthy recipes and places to buy ingredients and online counseling. And, yes, virtual dance classes. (Sharon Hoyer)
Best Community-Focused Design Studio
blkHaUS studios
Fo Wilson and Norman Teague founded blkHaUS studios in 2016 as a way to adapt modernist design to create objects, spaces and experiences that can uplift or transform marginalized communities. Their wide-ranging projects have included a beautifully minimal community garden site in Greater Grand Crossing, to make the garden a more accessible and welcoming place, and a Commons Artist Project at the MCA, which invited community members to share their personal collections in order to question museum collection practices. (Kerry Cardoza)
Best Fine Art Artist and Photographer
Tyesha Moores
Hailing from the Austin area, Tyesha Moores is a fine-art artist, photographer and creator of “The BLACK Book,” a coffee-table book that manifests the urban vernacular of Chicago youth. Never before has our language been so vividly displayed for the world to see, and after selling over a hundred copies and counting, “The BLACK Book” allows people to see themselves as fine art. (Kia Smith)
Best Post-WH Black Capitalism
Barack and Michelle Obama
They are building a love/hate empire that many (Black Chicagoans) are having problems with and loving at the same time. It’s the price of fame at the expense of some who DGAF about presidential libraries, increased property and neighborhood value and Netflix series. Symbolism v. Substance. As grounded (and necessary!) as both Michelle and Barack are, their recent and current endeavors leave open the question: are their feet really on the concrete where Black blood continues to spill? (Scoop Jackson)
Best New All-Inclusive Pop-Up
Dionna and Danyelle Gray, Womanish Experience
Womanish is not just another pop-up. Inspired by the Gray sisters’ passion for women empowerment, the immersive five-floor exhibition explores the identity and perspectives of women and gender non-confirming people at-large. Through sociopolitical installations, rooms created by womxn artists and plenty of virtual content, the Womanish experience provides a Insta-worthy safe space to connect and have fun. (Vasia Rigou)
Best Curator Striving to Expand Chicago’s Artistic Archives
Tempestt Hazel
Along with work as a writer, curator and program officer at the Field Foundation, Tempestt Hazel is executive director of Sixty Inches from Center, an online publication and archival initiative aimed at uplifting and preserving the work of local artists, particularly those who historically have been left out of mainstream narratives. Sixty partners with Chicago Artists Files at the Harold Washington Library to document and archive contemporary artists and art spaces for posterity; all Chicago artists are welcome to get in touch about preserving their work. (Kerry Cardoza)
Best Line From an HBO Series Shot Around Chicago
“The only thing that you white women are disillusioned with is yourselves.” [“Lovecraft Country,” Episode 5] (Scoop Jackson)
Best South Side Housing Project to Better Black Communities
NBA and Own Our Own
“This project promises to make a lasting impact on the neighborhood’s social infrastructure and help community members to achieve greater economic equity.” —Robert Covington
No one can deny the history of housing segregation and lack of Black ownership in Chicago. Houston Rockets forward Robert Covington and former Chicago Bull Luol Deng partnered with Own Our Own, an inner city-focused real estate fund, to combat this history in the city’s South Side. The project aims to build a 143-unit multifamily property in the West Pullman neighborhood featuring community gardens, art projects, community resources and an outdoor playground. It’s an investment that will create opportunities for Black real estate ownership and empower future communities, as well as sustain other initiatives that meet the needs of the Black families. (Sania Blu)
Best Editorial Director
Parneshia Jones
Jones recently became editorial director of Northwestern University Press, but she is established as an editorial force in Chicago and at the Press. After earning her MFA, she got her start as an intern at Third World Press. As a poetry editor at Northwestern, her first acquisition went on to become Nikky Finney’s National Book Award-winning poetry collection “Head Off & Split.” She was also instrumental in establishing the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for a second book prize by an African American poet as well as the the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. In her new position, Jones is now one of two Black women nationwide who serve as university press directors. (Tara Betts)
Best Streetwear Label
Fake Decent
Sidney Britton, also known as “Uncle Tommy’s Son” and “Sid The Gent,” is one-third of the Fli Nation and Fake Decent brands, which was created in 2017 by three friends on a mission to show Chicago’s true colors and make a real connection between the streets and streetwear. Britton says, “The things that make me stand out as a fashion influencer are the way I show my love for the city through fashion, my support for the local streetwear scene, my storytelling, and my awareness of the pulse of what’s happening.” (Kia Smith)
Best Space to Build a Brand from Scratch
Otis Gibson, BRNDHAUS PL-ZN
BRNDHAUS PL-ZN is an innovative brand factory. Created by Otis D. Gibson and Heather Knapp, the team behind creative agency GERTRUDE, the massive, 35,000-square-foot, seven-city-lot space in the heart of Pilsen has a sole goal: to foster creativity and community collaboration within the city’s creative and entrepreneurial community. Providing the tools to bring a brand to life—from planning and strategy, to consumer testing and co-creation, to branding, to communications, to creating and activating brand experiences—opportunities to connect online and offline, office spaces and art galleries, even in-house beer and coffee, BRNDHAUS PL-ZN is a creative hub Chicago didn’t know it needed. (Vasia Rigou)
Best Alternative Journalism
The Triibe
As the presence of historic giants like Johnson Publishing and The Chicago Defender have diminished, The Triibe offers an outlet for younger writers to tell counter-stories to show what the mainstream press has overlooked. The Triibe offers critical perspectives and reported stories that articulate the experiences of Chicago’s Black citizens, especially the city’s young people. The online coverage and social media coverage keeps a close eye on government officials, the latest Chicago-based artists and performers, protests and locally researched stories. Regular updates about resources during shelter-in-place have been invaluable. But so have stories like Vee L. Harrison’s piece about a so-called West Side “house party” that was actually a memorial for the attendees’ friend, Tink Purcell. Harrison’s piece dispelled an assumption about irresponsibility and spoke to people at the memorial to support that story, which is an accomplishment versus media sources that rely on tweets and cellphone videos for their stories. Co-founders Morgan Elise Johnson and Tiffany Walden spearhead a publication that offers space for millennials to craft their own narratives, but they also represent representation that is more just. (Tara Betts)
Best Street Art
“Same Ol ‘9”
Just drive or walk down 79th between Bennett and Constance. The mural speaks for itself. Speaks for the city. (Bob Arthur III)
Part of the 2020 Best of Chicago edition: read the full feature here, or get a copy in print here.
