On July 20, 2022, author and sociologist Eve L. Ewing and Ebony Lumumba presented “Mississippi to Chicago” as part of the History Is Lunch series. The program was part of a joint 2022 initiative by MDAH and the Mississippi Museum of Art focusing on the Great Migration.
University of Chicago professor Eve Ewing read from her book of poetry 1919, which centers on the Chicago race riot in the summer of that year. “When a Black boy swimming in Lake Michigan was stoned by whites and drowned, Chicago police refused to make any arrest,” said Ewing. “The toll of nearly two weeks of violence was 38 dead, more than 500 injured, and 1,000 Black families who were made homeless.”
After the reading, Ewing was in conversation with Ebony Lumumba, chair of the Department of English, Modern Foreign Languages, and Speech at Jackson State University. “I’m interested in exploring how racism and other large-scale structures of social inequality affect young people, whether in Jackson, Mississippi, or Chicago, Illinois, and how public school systems serve to interrupt or perpetuate these social problems,” said Ewing.
Eve L. Ewing is an assistant professor in the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and an associate faculty member in the Department of Sociology. She earned her PhD from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an EdM in Education Policy and Management from Harvard University, an MAT in elementary education from Dominican University, and an AB in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. Ewing's book Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018, and she is the author of the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the novel for young readers Maya and the Robot, and the Ironheart and Champions series for Marvel Comics. Ewing’s work has been published in Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic, among others.
Ebony Lumumba is associate professor of English and chair of the Department of English, Modern Foreign Languages, and Speech at Jackson State University. She earned her PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Mississippi, her MA from Georgia State University, and her BA from Spelman College. Lumumba was the 2013 Eudora Welty Research Fellow and in 2014 was the Humanities Teacher of the Year for Tougaloo College. She is a member of the board of directors for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, the Foundation for Mississippi History, the Mississippi Humanities Council, The International Ballet Competition, New Stage Theater, and the Mississippi Book Festival, and participates on the national advisory boards of the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Mississippi Museum of Art. Lumumba is married to Jackson mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi.
