“You Remember Frank London Brown” Exhibition Opening Friday June 9th

Novelist, journalist, educator. Community leader, public housing activist, union organizer. Father, friend, jazz enthusiast. To Gwendolyn Brooks, he was “a tenant of the world.” To Langston Hughes, Brown was “a talented writer with something important to say.” In his brief, shining life, Frank London Brown played many roles within the vibrant cultural and political landscape of Black Chicago, and beyond. Brown’s path breaking 1959 novel Trumbull Park tells the story of his time in the public housing residence of the same name, which was assaulted by a riotous racist mob when the Chicago Housing Authority attempted to desegregate it. As an educator, Brown co-led what we believe to be the first Black history course in the Midwest, hosted through the Union Research Center at the University of Chicago, where he was also enrolled as a PhD candidate in the Committee on Social Thought.

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• June 7, 2023