She was in her second year at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education when the Chicago school closure plan was announced. Chicago’s public schools, she noted, are only about 10 percent white. “The city is so segregated, and most people don’t come to the South Side,” she said. As a teenager, she was active in Young Chicago Authors, a youth arts incubator whose open mic poetry events helped artists like Chance the Rapper, Noname and Jamila Woods get their start. It was there that Dr. Ewing, who worked on the organization’s magazine, met some of her current, close-knit circle of friends and collaborators.

Source: New York Times October 21, 2018 18:33 UTC